Raven dropped her bags, approached the desk, and studied the crossword for a minute.
“Oh, what’s that image of a snake eating its tail called?” Raven asked, tapping her temple to help the word emerge. “It starts with an ‘o’.”
She’d seen it once on a tarot box.
The lady, Linda—as she later introduced herself—stared off into the distance for a while before her face grew wide with a smile, and she scribbled down the letters that made up the word “ouroboros.”
“Thank you,” Linda said, grinning. “And welcome to Cedar Lake.”
Once Raven had been checked in, she left the office for her room with extra pillows and complimentary cookies. She found a clean space and a massive bed, so sleep came easily.
In the morning, with GPS as her guide, she left the motel and drove through the town’s still-quiet main street until she hit a narrow road that took her up a mountain. Pine trees stood on either side, forming a canopy above where only some sunlight managed to peek through the gaps in the branches and needles.
“Where the hell…” She pressed close to the steering wheel, trying to spot civilization.
Before she could worry, a sign appeared:Mountaintop Adventures, 8 kilometers ahead. And minutes later, after turning onto an unpaved path, a cabin in a grass field bracketed by an imposing forest materialized.
Raven approached the cabin and parked her car next to a shuttle bus and four pickup trucks differing only in color. The butterflies went into full effect when she cut the engine; she was still wrapping her head around the idea of coming into a lot of money.
As she made her way to the steps of the main office, the confident stride she’d intended had a tipsy-off-mimosas wobble to it because of the gravel under her heels, so when Raven reached the entrance, she took a few seconds to recenter.
“Embrace it. Claim it,” she said, touching the citrine pendant on her necklace.
When she opened the door, however, the mayhem within stopped her cold.
Three people, a middle-aged blonde woman wielding a broom and two younger men, were running around the disarrayed cabin.
They were chasing something. A squirrel, Raven quickly realized.
“Close the door!” the woman shouted, and Raven scrambled inside, slamming the door behind her and making herself as small as possible against a wall.
The tiny rodent continued to evade capture, leaving his pursuers breathless in its wake.
“Bodie! Get to the other side! We’ll corner him there,” the woman said, and the jacked white guy among them darted to follow instructions.
Once in position, Bodie turned to the lanky man wearing a band T-shirt and asked, “Where did you put the nuts?”
The only response was a Ziploc bag traversing the air in an arch from the band T-shirt guy’s hand to Bodie’s, who dumped the nuts into a small pile on the floor.
The squirrel, now calmer, was coaxed by the woman and her broom toward the food. It eventually took the bait.
What now?Raven thought just before a thickset man with skin the color of rich coffee grounds entered the room carrying a blanket.
He stood tall and sturdy like the mountain they were on but moved with the poise of an ice skater as he leaped over a table and overturned chairs to reach the cornered squirrel.
“Careful now, people,” the man said, his voice low and sing-songy as he inched closer to the squirrel.
Raven braced for another chase, but the man gently swept the rodent into the blanket folds, eliminating that possibility.
“Oh, thank God,” one said as the group surrounded the cradled squirrel.
“Did he break the splint?”
“Yeah, we gotta redo it.”
Raven stood there for a few minutes, watching them coo over the animal. She was unsure they remembered she was there, so she politely cleared her throat.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt,” Raven said when four heads turned in her direction.
