Carrion Crow

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

The wind howled, then gentled, carrying echoes of whispers through the trees. The forest came alive with the Unquiet and the Lost. Voices that had long survived their physical forms rose, sighing their secrets in the hopes that finally, finally, there would be someone to hear them.

"My lover killed me..."

"My bones lie beneath the willows at the river's edge..."

"My hands did not cause my death..."

"I was innocent, but they killed me rather than seeking the truth..."

"Tell them..."

"Clear my name...."

"Avenge me..."

"Restore me to my kin..."

Far above it all, a bird took flight, soaring on wings as black as soot.

Tina Barnes picked her way toward the edge of the forest, flinching with every step. "Was there literally no-one else that you could have dragged to help you with this wretched job? There's a very good reason that I hate going to new places without a thorough investigation beforehand!"

Sympathetic noises came from behind her, but the pace didn't slow. "Unfortunately, they're all out on assignment, but surveillance says the candle is lit again, and Terrence is showing signs of being a Carrion Crow. If he is, I want to find out and document it before the bodies start showing up around him."

Valerie had wrapped her hair today, though the ends were still in danger of picking up an unfortunate amount of leaves once they hit the tree-line. Her nephew, his hair in short dreadlocks with bright metallic beads on the end, just looked exasperated. "You still haven't told me what a Carrion Crow is, Aunt Valerie."

Tina sighed, resigned to her fate. "Pretty much what they sound like: people who have an uncanny habit of dead bodies cropping up around them, and events sort of... fall into place around them to help them find clues to solve the mystery."

Terrance gave her such a skeptical look that he missed the moss-covered object rising slowly but steadily from the willow roots until he tripped over it. Valerie reached down to help him up, "At least your first corpse is an old one. Easier to argue coincidence around the Mundane population. Call it in, would you, dearest?"

Tina did so, pulling a face at the moss-covered human femur, "You work for Government Intelligence at the highest levels. You can't pull out ID and tell the local Force to back off, it's above their clearance?"

Valerie gave her a flat look. "Tina, you're my wife and I love you dearly, but please take a minute to really think about what you just said."

Tina winced, remembering that while the UK didn't have quite the racial and cultural tensions of certain other countries, partially due to the lack of guns and emphasis on de-escalation and rigorous training in the same that they put their Law Enforcement though, it wasn't non-existent, either. "Yeah, sorry, that came out wrong. I blame the Bond marathon and not enough sleep."

Valerie's expression gentled, and she paused in handing Terrance a pack of wet-wipes. "Nightmares again?"

Tina shrugged. "Just regular ones this time, I think. I didn't recognize the setting, but I knew the people, so it's possible the setting was a film location or something I saw in a poster. I need to work on identifying the differences between a castle and a fortress. What's the big deal with the candle, anyway?"

Terrance shrugged. "Local legend says that it only lights up when there's about to be a lot of supernatural activity." He crossed his arms defensively, "What? I googled it while you two were doing Car Karaoke to Taylor Swift. We all do what we have to!"

Both women pointedly ignored his conflicting opinions on music tastes. Valerie gestured toward the trees. "Anecdotal evidence suggests that it also coincides with the Gifted coming into their powers. Hence us getting sent out here."

Tina's phone made an alert sound as she tried to will away the impending headache, only partially due to the barely-audible approaching sirens. "Rachel's on her way, too. Terrance, go with your gut feelings: what do you think?"

The young man shot her an appalled look, but leaned back. "It's faint, but there's a pattern in the moss. Whoever this skeleton belongs to, I think they had help getting that way."

Valerie smiled approvingly, "The hard part will be learning how to phrase what your insight tells you in a way that doesn't make people suspicious. Consider this practice for your ambitions of working in the Education sector."

Tina patted him on the shoulder. "You can re-evaluate and lament your life choices later. All Gifted do, eventually."

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