ChaPter 2 - Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr

Carnival of souls
That was the real difference: Selah had turned whatever
rental they’d had into an actual home. She’d bought paint and
rollers, and she’d spent days turning a plain house into a real
home. Boring white walls became a different color in each
house. “Make it an adventure,” she’d said. One house had
ceilings painted like a sky, blue with big, fluffy clouds. Another
had a tree painted on Mallory’s bedroom wall. Selah had added
hooks for her robe and her coat at the ends of two big branches.
Beige carpet was covered with rugs, the splashes of color Selah
pulled from battered boxes to make boring space into flowerstrewn
fields or calm ponds. Claiming a house was a game,
one they’d played over and over in new towns. Now that it was
just Mallory and Adam, the walls of every house were white,
and the only color on the carpet was from the stains left by the
last residents.
Mallory walked into the dining room and sat down.
Mutely, she put both guns on the weathered wooden table,
and then she proceeded to wipe down first her .357 and then
the 9mm. She’d been handling guns since she was seven, and
the process—much like the routine of aiming and discharging
her weapons—was reassuring. It was a cue that things were
normal, that her life was unchanged even as the houses she
slept in year after year changed.
“We have to move again,” Adam said from the doorway to
the dining room.
She paused. “When?”
“Now.” His mouth was a grim line.
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