Ink and Bone Read Online Free PDF Page A

invite less trouble into her life. Our choices, even the small one s, all have consequences , her mother always said. Giving some old gardener the finger was probably a fine example of a bad choice.
    She was about to go inside instead when she saw them in the distance by the tall oak tree. The Three Sisters—Abigail, Sarah, and Patience, daughters of Faith Good and Finley’s distant relatives on the maternal side (obviously). They had been dancing in the periphery of Finley’s life since she was a little girl, her constant companions, friends, troublemakers, confidantes, and whisperers of secret things. They’d been strangely quiet, in fact mostly absent, since Finley had arrived in The Hollows. Now, here they were. Patience sitting quietly, bent over a book, her dark hair pulled back into a tight bun, collar buttoned up to her chin; Abigail spinning around pointlessly, long skirts and wild auburn hair flouncing, like a child playing a game only she understood; Sarah, pale and blonde, watching her, laughing. As ever, Finley was as pleased to see them as she was wary. What are you up to, girls? And then they were gone.
    “I was going to grab some coffee,” she said after a moment of watching. “And go over my notes.”
    If he wondered what she was staring at, he didn’t ask.
    “Sounds like a plan,” he said. He followed her inside to the small commissary adjacent to the psych building.
    The coffee at the commissary wasn’t too bad. She ordered a double shot and sat down at a table by the window, opened her notebook. Jason sat across from her, took out his laptop.
    “You’re old school, huh?”
    “I guess so,” she said.
    She took notes in class, then copied them over when she got home. That’s how her mom had taught her to study. Even though most people had their laptops or tablets in class, tapping all through the lecture, Finley still preferred the black-and-white mottled composition notebook. Things didn’t seem real unless they were written in ink on paper. Words on a screen floated, seemed virtual and insubstantial. Ink sank in and stayed, rooted in the real world.
    Finley hadn’t exactly invited Jason to sit, and she was afraid that he was going to keep talking, but he didn’t. In fact, there was something so easy about his energy that she forgot he was there as they read in silence and then walked together to class. He gave her a nod as if to say good luck, and they each went to the seats they had occupied all semester. Then she pushed him out of her head. No boys. She had enough trouble with Rainer, her ex-boyfriend from Seattle who had followed her—unbidden—to The Hollows and was now, annoyingly, tending bar at Jake’s Pub, a cop hangout just off the town square.
    *  *  *
    Finley took her exam, losing time and herself as she focused on the pages in front of her. The squeak-clink had receded to just the faintest whisper on the edge of her consciousness, and for a time she forgot about it altogether.

TWO
    T rees made Merri Gleason anxious now, especially when there were so many of them and nothing else. They stood sentry, an impenetrable green wall on either side of the road, ancient and knowing, looking down. How long had they stood there, she found herself wondering, watching in that impervious, detached way? What had they witnessed? If she was honest, she’d always been a bit suspicious of nature—unlike her husband. All the things he loved about it— the quiet, the solitude, the separation from the hectic busyness of modern life—made her nervous and edgy.
    She glanced at her cell phone mounted on the dash. No signal. That made her nervous, too. The car wouldn’t break down, but if it did , how long would it be before anyone drove past? How long would she sit on the shoulder of the road among the trees? Would she be forced to walk? She hadn’t seen another vehicle in she didn’t know how long. And P.S.—what was she doing here? Her errand, which seemed so right and true, so