Excerpt from Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The snap of bone splitting in two rang through the air as I pulled the head from the crow's body, blood covering my hands. Sabrina's scream stopped, and the few birds that were left took off like dust being blown back into the air. When I looked back down, Sabrina's face had gone slack. Her eyes and mouth were closed like a zipper.

I dropped the crow's body from one hand and reached toward her, but then I felt a tug against my spine, like an invisible rope pulling. Before I could touch her, the rope tugged again, harder, and I was back in my bed. The crow's head, its beak pressing into my palm and its warm blood on my skin, still in my hand.

At the thought of Sabrina, a cave I've tried to keep hidden somewhere deep in my body opens up. Her unrelenting scream echoes through me, stretching back in time. I sob in the bathtub, wet hair clinging to my cheeks.

After a few minutes, I grab the bar of Ivory soap and lather it between my palms. A stinging in a cut I can't see starts in the bed of my hand and travels through my arm, inches into my armpit, slides into my heart. I reasoned away the first two dreams. I told myself I was still dreaming when I thought I was awake. That it was all in my head. Now fear settles in me like sediment at the bottom of a lake. I can't reason this away anymore. The hurt is still in my palm even if the crow's head isn't.

I get out of the shower and slowly dry off. Take my time putting on clothes, an old band T-shirt and faded jeans, trying to slow my breath. It only kind of works. I hear a caw from outside my apartment window. When I pull back the curtains, I see three crows sitting on the telephone pole, easing into the backdrop of Vancouver spring.

That's something else about the past three weeks. The crows. All of a sudden, they're everywhere I look. They've started showing up on the telephone pole in my alleyway. Every morning, I wake up to their caws. I swear they're watching me. Through the windows, I can see their heads turn to follow me as I move across the apartment. A rush of guilt heats my neck as I remember the feeling of a spine snapping in my hands.

I skip breakfast and rush out. My body vibrates with adrenaline, but all that's around me are flowers and a breeze carrying the smell of the ocean a couple of blocks away. I jog to Whole Foods, passing old heritage houses that have been converted into fourplexes and apartments. It's my day off, but I know Joli is working and I want to see someone familiar, ground myself in reality again. When I walk into the store, I spot them at the far till. Their back is to me, their thick, dark hair straight and loose. They are ringing through an elderly couple wearing matching visors when they look back at me, like they could feel it when I walked in.

"Mackenzie!" they yell across the long rows of tills, startling the couple into a jump. They laugh and it comforts me like a blanket. I exhale a breath I hadn't noticed I'd been holding and walk over to them. "You're not even here this early when you're scheduled to be," they say, arching their eyebrows.

When I first moved to Vancouver, Mom reached out to Joli's mom, Dianne, a friend of a cousin who worked as an instructor at the Native Education College. "So you aren't alone," Mom said, but I knew it was more for her peace of mind than for me. Cree people aren't great at being subtle.

As soon as she met me, Dianne wrapped me in a hug so tight I forgot myself for a minute. She helped me find a small bachelor apartment—not an easy thing to do in Vancouver, where homes are empty and unaffordable and the cost of living is triple what it is in my hometown. But she knew a landlord renting a place for extra cheap since they started the SkyTrain construction next to it. Any maintenance on the building had stopped, since it would be torn down eventually anyways, so I try to live as small and quietly as I can in hopes they forget I'm there.

Dianne also got me to volunteer when she needed help at the college for a while. Best of all, though, was that she introduced me to Joli. Joli was my age, early twenties, and tall with a round face that drew in light like the moon draws in the tide. They and Dianne are Squamish. Joli reminds me of my older twin sisters, Sabrina and Tracey, though they're nothing like either of them. It's funny what our minds will parallel when we want something bad enough.

Excerpted from Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. Copyright © 2023 by Jessica Johns. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.