Flower for the Dead

She was warm once. This is the story of how she went cold, and what she refused to lose on the way. Before she was Marigold, she was Ixchel: a curandera's granddaughter in the highlands of Guatemala, a girl who said her prayers out loud where anyone could hear them. Then the shadow that had been moving through the villages came for her, and the road north began. The road takes everything it can. Her name. Her voice. The people she loves. A girl with a marigold behind her ear tells her what the flower is for, and does not live to finish the road. Ixchel keeps one thing hidden, a faith folded so small that no one can find it to take. She dies in the desert. She wakes in the ground. And on her first night as something that needs blood, she learns what she is by killing a stranger who only wanted to help her. What she becomes next is not a monster. It is a mourner: the keeper of the dead, the bright thing the dead can follow home. Told in her own voice, looking back from the cold side of death, Flower for the Dead is the complete origin of Marigold, a companion novella to the Vampires of Tucson series. Marigold has no novel of her own. This is the only telling she gets. Content note: A psychological exploration of trauma, survival, and supernatural transformation. Contains references to trafficking and abuse within a survivor-focused narrative. Mature themes, restrained depiction.