In the Company of Women

By Kari Kilgore

Through the distant past and forward into the future

A hot July night. An American Midwestern town, steeped in traditional values.
A group of seventeen-year-old girls, on the brink of their new lives as women.
Only one resists, longing for another choice. A path to her own future.
Can she break free from all who passed before her?

An excerpt from In the Company of Women:

Facing Down Fate
After years of dreaming of this night, since she was old enough to understand the words spoken in the service the week before, it was all Cathy could do to stop herself from running out the door.

The women would be waiting, of course.
But maybe she could dart through. Brian had a car, a blue late Seventies Chevette in really good shape. They could go right now and never look back.

Except Brian wouldn't.

And even more so, Cathy wouldn't.

She could only hope, and maybe even pray, that she would not be the one after all. That she'd walk out of here the same as she walked in. That she'd get the time she still needed to figure out all the rest.

"Come on, Cathy," Rhonda said, her voice soft and shaky. "Time's up."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Feb 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393321293

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

In the Company of Women

For my parents, who loved scary movies, and let me experience The Exorcist, Dark Shadows, and Trilogy of Terror before I turned ten

---

and let me form my own impressions.

In the Company of Women

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Chapter 1

Cathy Robertson couldn’t find much difference between walking on a muggy July evening and swimming in a heated pool. The air was thick and sluggish, pulling at her, doing its best to keep her from moving at all. Her thick brown hair collected sweat and humidity, sending both rolling down her forehead and neck, especially under the braid hanging down her back.

Her feet came the closest to poolside reality, with her toes and heels squishing and sliding against the rubber of her cheap flip-flops.

The smells were the contrast, she decided, drawing in a sodden breath. Instead of harsh, burning chlorine, she caught drifting aromas of grilling chicken, freshly mown grass, and some kind of sweet flower blooming nearby.

Only a faint whiff of her own armpits, thank God, even though her t-shirt and denim shorts were both damp after several blocks.

The church was just ahead, the simple square brick building an even stronger contrast with the glass and metal storefronts all along the street. Downtown Sparsburg wasn’t much more than a handful of shops, a post office, and her Uncle Ron’s garage. Cathy was pretty sure she could throw a softball across the whole works if she gave it a good effort. Maybe on a cooler night.

The town didn’t need to be much, not really. Cathy had laughed the first time she heard the term bedroom