Page 3 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

The Devil’s Town

D ecker awoke with a start.

His hand stung from flinging it against the headboard, fitful thrashing as he always did after feeding.

He groaned, staring at the ceiling and trying to block out the instant flood of Rotham, blood, kill.

The chapel light.

Matted corn husks rustled inside his thin mattress as he rolled to the side, squinting at the sliver of dusk visible through the curtains. His bones ached with a brief taste of humanity.

Must have slept longer this time. Maybe a day, maybe two.

Dusty boards creaked under him as he slowly rose, dressed, and scrubbed away dust and dried blood. He tied his hair away from his face and glanced towards the window again.

Not a soul had opened the chapel doors since Decker had closed them three years ago. Curiosity overcame the part of him that chastised nosiness.

Prying the nail loose that pinned the curtains to the wall, he tugged a corner open, and the nail rattled through a knot in the plank floor .

Harsh edges of the steeple pierced through the sunset and wooden shingles flaked away from the skeleton of a once-fine church. The holy building was now wind-whipped boards and broken windows holding services for vermin.

Empty until a few days ago.

Decker descended the creaky stairs, his mind far from the liveliness filling the saloon.

Regulars clustered between two tables with cards at each and filled cups. Safine always carried on the business while he recovered from his feeding. He wound between them, murmuring a quiet “Good evening”, and, “I’m just fine, headache’s gone”.

Safine leaned behind the bar, muttering as she fished out the nail clanking in the bottom of her cup. Dark circles smudged her eyes—likely why she was drinking strong black at sundown—but she was ever lively as she hooked the rusted metal and flicked it at him.

“What the hell were you up to, stompin’ around up there?”

Decker mopped up the coffee droplets with one of the towels, too distracted to answer her. “You see it the other night when we came back?”

“See what?” Fingers deep in her lukewarm coffee again, searching for more things fallen from the ceiling, she was only half interested.

“There was a light at the chapel.”

“Was there?” She finally drained the chipped cup, acting unbothered with the news. Her eyes still turned wary when they met with Decker’s .

Their run-in with the last preacher hadn’t ended well for any of them—Elias Lane had been a pious snake of a man who ruined their town, claiming evil slept there.

Evil slept even more soundly after Decker put him six feet under. No one else had tried to take up residence in the chapel since.

A stranger fresh off the train wandered in, a thin layer of dust clinging to his freshly shined boots. He wavered between tables instead of slinging heartily into a seat like most did. Finally, he joined a card game at the second table, his back to the wall and his shoulders tight.

Ender’s Ridge bustled with life most days.

Travelers from the train at Ridgewater who couldn’t know better and crossed the bridge, vaqueros rounding up their cattle at the stockyards, gold rushers heading further west all stopped in for a drink—or to restock at McKinney’s Mercantile, or tap their foot to the girls at the dance hall, unaware they could be trapped there until they danced bloody through their boot-soles and fell victim to the wide-eyed, sharp-toothed fae.

Any human without magic remained blissfully unaware of what the town hid from them with Ender’s Blessing.

Decker could flash his fangs at a stranger and all they’d see was a friendly smile.

And you, with the heartbeat like a scared little rabbit. Who are you? Why are you here?

The heartbeat he didn’t know murmured at the edge of his mind. A constant ticking like the broken clock, calling to him.

Decker wasn’t a nosy person. Like most folks in town, he kept to himself. He couldn’t even enter the chapel unless he was invited in—like Safine had done for him years ago when he killed the last reverend.

Still, he cleared his throat and dropped his voice under the hum of placed bets and chatter in the room. “I could pay the old chapel a visit.”

“You’re talkin’ like Cricket now, getting into everything.” Safine rolled her eyes. “Speak of the devil, he left early this morning. Said he had business to attend to in Silver Creek. Sure we’ll hear of another stagecoach robbery in a few days,” she said, a note of pride entering her voice.

Nothing would surprise him with Cricket anymore. The law always trailed him here and then became vacant-eyed, like they couldn’t remember why they were in the forgotten part of Ridgewater. The Blessing or part of his damn luck, he supposed.

“I’m just wonderin’ about our new neighbor,” Decker said, knowing damn well it wasn’t his business. “Could be another preacher.”

“Not if he knows what’s good for him. Or maybe it’s not a him .” Safine suddenly brightened, waggling her eyebrows at him. “Maybe it’s a lady , claiming her late husband’s chapel for herself and she’ll need a friendly neighbor like me.”

“Don’t get your hopes too high,” he scoffed.

“My hopes are always high, darling.”

Despite her witching, Safine was indistinguishable from a human woman with all her desires and hopes and veiled longing.

One day Decker would bury their rings with her while he remained unchanged—he only wished Safine could be graced with the kind of love she deserved before she went cold .

“There must have been a landslide upstream last night. River was stained red this morning. Didn’t last more than a few hours but Mr. McKinney was all in a mood because he said it was bad for business—” Safine’s chatter was a pleasant hum as the night waned, catching him up on what he’d missed.

Patrons abandoned the tables before nightfall, one by one, until only he and Safi remained, clearing away cigar stumps and glasses, washing and stacking them in neat rows under the bar, dusting off the bottles and casks along the back counter, and sweeping out the sand and leaves tracked in after the long day.

Sand tracked back in with the arrival of a small grey goose who quacked, wiggled her tail feathers, and craned her neck at Safine.

“Miss Lucy Goosey. Haven’t headed south yet?” She bent down to pet her. Lucy hissed and snapped needle-sharp teeth, as she always did, then retreated under the table to be lured out with strips of dried meat Safine always kept on hand for that exact reason.

Decker blocked out the heartbeat next door with deft fingers remembering a tune across the piano keys even though his self-taught understanding left much to be desired for someone who had a lifetime to learn.

But the tune was simple and lively—taught to him from an Irish miner heading to California—and Safine tapped along.

Quiet evenings were rare at the Goose, and she took advantage, bringing her work downstairs to funnel powder into amber bottles and grind teeth with a mortar and pestle, dusting clouds of herbs and bone into the soft breeze trailing through the swinging doors.

She blended the mundane and the arcane in the way she’d been taught back in New Orleans, with her own Western twist. Decker didn’t much understand it, but she could conjure up a solution for almost any ailment as long as she had human remnants to give life to her spells—she always said anything from a cough to an unwanted suitor could be fixed.

Sometimes she used the unwanted suitor to fix the cough.

Lucy settled under her table, bill tucked under her wing as if the floor was more comfortable than the pool of water they kept filled for her outside.

Over the years he’d been here, strangers became acquaintances, and those became friends, and a road rarely walked became known like a lover.

Ender’s Ridge was the closest he’d felt to home since leaving India.

Safine, too, felt like home, twining inextricably into his heart as if she’d always been there.

He’d watched the scared girl who once begged him to take care of her husband grow into a woman who would have inflicted the same bruises and then killed her husband with his own empty whiskey bottle instead of finding comfort in a stranger.

Decker hesitated over the piano keys as he forgot the beginning note of the next song.

In his second of silence, the heartbeat sang in his ear like church bells.

Soft footfalls crossed the threshold and brown eyes holding a pervasive worry met his own.

A pained, hesitant smile fluttered to the stranger’s lips. “I’m sorry, I know it’s late. I couldn’t find a doctor in town.”

The piano bench groaned as Decker stood.

He was from back East. Sounded like it and looked like it .

Black polished shoes, Sunday-starched pants, pearl buttons done up on his ironed black shirt. A white collar strangled his delicate throat. The same frantic heartbeat from the chapel rattled in his chest.

His left hand dripped with blood, knotted cloth blooming stark red against his white-collar skin.

Safine sprung into action. “I sure can help with that, come here—”

“I’m sorry about the mess—” he rushed. One brunet curl escaped from his desperately tamed hair and tapped against his forehead.

“I haven’t even introduced myself—” he pulled out a chair and Lucy Goosey hissed at him, hackles flaring on her neck, and he shrank back at the advancing bristle of feathers. “My goodness, my apologies—”

He was like a train careening off-course and barreling over a cliff. Decker could do nothing but watch in helpless awe as he dragged Safine off the tracks with him.

She swept her arm across the table, gathering up her things before he could question her work. The bottle of tooth powder teetered on the edge.

The stranger tried to help.

Safine snatched at the bottle before he could reach it.

Lucy hissed.

Safine hissed back.

Crushed teeth and glass scattered across the floor like a glittering mine packed with too much dynamite.

Safine swore.