Homecoming

The rain came down in heavy sheets, pounding against the windshield like a thousand tiny fists. The wipers struggled to keep up, dragging across the glass with a tired squeal, but Mara barely noticed. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary, knuckles pale under the dim dashboard light.

She shouldn’t have come back.

The thought looped endlessly in her mind, matching the rhythmic thrum of rain on the roof. But the call from Chief Lorraine Hale had left her with little choice. Fifteen years of distance evaporated in a single sentence:

"We’ve got another one, Mara… and this one feels personal."

Ashgrove hadn’t been her home for a very long time, but as the “Welcome to Ashgrove” sign emerged through the curtain of rain, something inside her chest twisted painfully. The place hadn’t changed much. Same cracked roads, same crooked streetlights throwing uneven shadows on the wet asphalt. Same suffocating silence.

Only now, there was blood in the silence.

Blue and red lights shimmered faintly ahead, flashing through the mist like dying fireflies. Mara slowed as she reached the barricade two patrol cars parked haphazardly across the road, their doors still open, engines humming softly.

An officer stepped out from behind the tape, his uniform drenched and sticking to his skin. He looked young barely old enough to shave. He hesitated when he saw her.

Detective Quinn?

Yeah. Her voice came out rougher than intended, unused to saying the title here. “Where’s Hale?”

He jerked his chin toward the dark line of trees. “By the clearing. They’re… waiting on you.”

Something in his tone made Mara’s chest tighten. She slipped under the yellow tape, boots sinking slightly in the wet mud as she made her way into the woods.

The deeper she went, the heavier the air became thick with damp earth, decaying leaves, and something faintly metallic that clung stubbornly to the back of her throat.

Blood.

She didn’t need to see it to know.

Chief Lorraine Hale stood in the middle of a small clearing, hood up, arms folded tightly against her chest. Her sharp profile was lit intermittently by the halogen lamps set up around the perimeter. The years had deepened the lines around her eyes, but her presence hadn’t softened.

Mara,Hale said simply when she turned.

Lorraine.

They held each other’s gaze for a beat longer than necessary memories unspoken passing silently between them. This wasn’t just another case.

You should see this yourself, Hale said finally, her voice lower than usual.

Mara followed her to the center of the clearing… and stopped cold.

The woman lay on her back beneath the tangled roots of a fallen tree, face pale and still, her soaked blouse clinging to her body. The rain had flattened strands of chestnut hair across her cheeks.

But it wasn’t the death that made Mara’s stomach turn.

It was the staging.

The victim’s arms had been placed deliberately, palms open as if offering something invisible. Around her, burned feathers had been arranged in a perfect circle, each one curled black at the edges but startlingly white at the center.

And on her chest, carved deep enough to bleed but with a surgeon’s precision, was a single symbol: a spiral intersected by three jagged lines.

Mara’s breath caught in her throat. That symbol…

She’d seen it before.

Leah Drayton,x Hale said quietly, as though speaking the name too loudly would disturb the stillness. Thirty-five. Local schoolteacher. Lived two towns over. No known enemies. No criminal record. Nothing connects her here.

Except this, Mara murmured, crouching beside the body. Her gloved fingers hovered just above the carved mark, tracing the air without touching it. “This isn’t random.”

No, Hale agreed grimly. “It’s deliberate.”

Mara kept her gaze fixed on the feathers. “Have you seen this symbol before?”

Hale shook her head. “First time. But from your face, I’m guessing you have.”

Mara hesitated, lips parting then closing again. She couldn’t say it. Not yet. Not until she was sure.

But in her mind, the memory replayed vividly: a damp basement, the acrid sting of smoke, and her father’s voice whispering in the dark…

An officer approached, breathless, holding up a sealed evidence bag. Inside was another burned feather, this one tied with a strip of faded red ribbon.

“Found this buried a few inches under the soil, about twenty feet north,” he said. “It was meant to be found.”

Mara stared at it for a long moment, her chest heavy. Whoever did this wasn’t just killing.

They were sending messages.

By the time they returned to the cars, the coroner’s team had begun securing the scene. Mara reached her SUV, the rain tapping relentlessly on the roof. She opened the door, ready to jot down her notes and froze.

Something small and white clung to her windshield, trapped beneath the wiper blade.

She pulled it free carefully, heart thudding against her ribs.

A single burned feather.

Attached to it was a slip of damp paper, the ink smudged but still legible.

“Welcome home, Mara.”

The world seemed to tilt slightly beneath her feet.

She turned sharply, scanning the dark tree line, the distant patrol cars, the empty spaces between the lamps.

Somewhere out there, unseen, someone was watching.

And they wanted her to know it.