A quiet room in the hills. A spirit that imitates people. Lights in the woods that have no business being there.
Welcome to Brackenlake.
After sixty years chasing the things that aren’t supposed to exist, Maris Rose has decided to retire… more or less. She’s signed away most of her savings for a room at Five Eldar, a nursing home above town, and she’s been promised a soft bed and a quiet few years. Brackenlake, everyone agrees, is due for a calm spell.
Brackenlake has other ideas.
Her first night, Maris learns there’s a curious spirit haunting the home. By morning, she’s taken on a client, a fifty-year-old murder, and a spirit that wears the faces of the people you trust most. And that’s before her old friend Hackerty calls about the trees out in the forest: six of them, half turned to glass overnight.
With a government man who answers nothing, a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorist who’s right far more often than he should be, and something moving through the dark that isn’t from anywhere near here, Maris finds herself with two cases, a bad pair of hips, and a gift that’s getting harder to carry every year.
She’s already seen how her own story ends. She made her peace with that a long time ago.
She’d just like to finish the work first.
Titles in the Cordelia Rose Paranormal Mysteries series include: Cheap Omens (prelude) ~ Strange Tidings ~ Weird Visions ~
This story may contain language, violence, and/or sexual situations intended for an adult 18+ audience.
