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The kids had loved the Bone Man They’d worked alongside him in the fields, had learned about the blues froo with hi to keep the secret always

There had been a lot of evenings during that long suer autumn when the Bone Man had sat on the porch steps and played acoustic blues to keep back the night and the night terrors The young s with legendary bluesmen such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf Guthrie hadn’t known or cared if the stories were true, but the music he played was beautiful and sad and soh the worst season they’d ever had The Black Harvest, which had started out with a vicious crop blight that had turned half the crops into bug-​infested garbage, and then with the series of brutal uitar were a charainst evil Now the uitar was

Guthrie bought a stone in another town and set it on the grave, and he read a prayer over the young rave, and then he left and never returned Years later Malcolrave, but he never could reht ended but the sky turned dark and bruised and they had months of heavy rains

The next year’s harvest was norht was lifted In tih when the stories were told about it over the following years, the name of "Bone Man" came to replace that of "Reaper," and all of the evil was ascribed to him

Down in Dark Hollow, the devil’s bones lay in the earth like seeds of hate, waiting for another year’s harvest

Part I

Down at the Crossroads

I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees Asked the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please

Robert Johnson, "Crossroads Blues"

Out there at the crossroads, hs, "Crossroads"

De at the crossroads of the hell I look to the left I look to the right There’re hands that grab me on every side

Tracy Chapman, "Crossroads"

Chapter 1

Modern Day

1

Malcolm Crow pretended to be asleep because that was the only way he could get to see Val naked He kept his breathing regular and his eyes shut until she got out of bed and headed into the bathroom Then he opened his eyes just a fraction, until he could see her standing there at the sink, as naked and uninhibited as could be If she kneatching she’d have put on a T-​shirt or robe

It drove him bonkers She had no probleht, where the shadows hid her--though she underestiht vision, which was excellent--but if theythe day, even here in her roo, even if it was a caeous, tall, tanned and toned froors of farm life, even farer She was strong and sliravity of early h not thin like a runway model’s, were slender and deceptivelystudy of these particular aesthetics, perfect She had black hair that was just long enough for a bobbed ponytail, which she usually shoved through the back of a John Deere ball cap Her pubic thatch was triift froed her to li she was currently wearing was a s about Val Guthrie that wasn’t perfect, an assess her teeth, theher breasts bounce a little and which in turnerect under the heaped quilts and hoped that he wouldn’t be pitching a visible tent, should she look

Cro that Val was self-​conscious about her scars, no matter how much Crow tried to convince her that, in the first place who cared? and in the second, he thought they were kind of sexy Fifteen years ago Val had wrecked threesome dents She had a four-​inch scar across her stomach, a few ed little ones dotting the curved landscape of her left shoulder, left breast, and the upper ribs Those scars were linked by a few patches of healed burns The third and last crash had been bad and Val had given up on Harleys and moved on to the relative safety of four e Viper

Val finished brushing, rinsed, spat, and then washed her face and hands in the basin Croas fully erect now and wished she would come back to bed so he could contrive to wake up out of an erotic drea those lines He knew he had to wait until she was back in bed before he affected to awaken

She switched off the bathroo to see if Croas still asleep before co during the next few moments as she assessed, decided the coast was clear, and quickly crossed the broad stretch of hardwood floor to the giant king-​sized bed With smooth and practiced efficiency she slipped under the covers, turned her back, and nestled back against hihs

And then stopped as she felt so person