Alaka’i Rhoden is known around Never as the resident Doctor and all-round Wise Man to solve or help the residents of the town. The few who earn his help are beholden to contracts and to utmost secrecy, but that doesn’t seem to worry them. Having arrived in Never twenty one years ago, Alaka’i has all but made his place in town and is comfortably suited to this new way of life. But he never seems to age, does he? Isn’t that weird to you?
‘Blessed’ to wander the earth until he’s sought redemption, Jasper Koskinen has made a habit of simply living. Worn by the three and a half centuries he’s lived, his survival is one of a matter of habit. Never is the latest place his feet have carried him to. Like the many nameless villages and towns he’s settled in before, he plans on licking his wounds, making what money he can, and seeing what this place holds for him.
Della learned early to let go of everything that doesn’t matter–you need both hands to hold on tight to anything you want to keep. Don’t get bogged down by the weight of inconsequential bullshit, or somebody or something will snatch what matters right out of your hands. She’d lost two daughters and a son before she’d seen twenty years. When she finally escaped the misery of her past, she promised herself that she’d never again lose anything she truly loved. She built the Silk Rose Saloon in St. Louis with blood money taken from the last man who’d laid a hand on her. That seemed like a square deal, but Missouri was still a dangerous place for a woman to openly defy the expectations of gender, race, and society. When the Silk Rose went up in flames one night, taking most of its staff with it, the neighbors shook their heads and clucked their tongues and whispered What else could she expect, living like that? Evidence of arson was brushed under the rug. But Della had made a promise to herself, and she knew her soul would never rest easy anyway, so she bargained with the only thing she had left to lose.
Twelve years ago, the Silk Rose unfolded itself whole on a street corner in Never, New Mexico, with Dellaphina Jones on the deed as sole proprietress. Customers may find that the rooms have a whiff of smoke–or maybe brimstone–now and then, but everything is otherwise circumspect.
Reverend Hawthorne Lichfield is the reverend of the House of His Eternal Glory, a small parish church and source of shelter located on the Hawthorne Homestead. The church has the unconventional belief that one cannot abstain from sin if they have never sinned. Questionable activities often unfold at Eternal Glory that serve as an outlet for one’s deepest or darkest desires. If Eternal Glory sounds like a cult, it is. But it entices members with the promise of a better life and the constant reminder that it is never too late to repent for the sins weighing on one’s soul.
Once a notorious outlaw, Alasdair Keary rode the legends of his death at the hand of bounty hunters all the way to freedom. He and his father found safety and community in the town of Never under new names and a new way of living, but Alasdair will always be an outlaw at heart.
Aaron Baylis came west from the Midwest in search of freedom, fresh air, and a new start. He traded the crowded streets of the city for the open skies of New Mexico, thinking the job of sheriff in a small, quiet town like Never would offer a slower pace and a chance to settle into his own skin. But Never is anything but ordinary.
Still new to the role, Aaron is adapting to the town’s oddities — Strange behavior, unusual disappearances, the occasional unexplainable event — with the kind of steady patience that makes him well-liked by locals. He doesn’t yet realize the town hides supernatural forces in plain sight, but he’s beginning to suspect there’s something off about Never. Oddly enough, it’s a feeling he doesn’t mind. Perhaps it’s because Aaron himself is no stranger to secrecy. Quietly gay in a time and place that offers little safety for it, he’s learned how to guard pieces of himself from the world.
As the mysteries around him grow deeper, Aaron begins to wonder if this strange, watchful town might be the one place where a man like him — One with secrets, heart, and hope — might actually belong.
Jo Dove was born into the wrong shape. She’s known that as long as she’s known anything, and almost as soon as she understood that fundamental fact, she learned how to hide it. Boys weren’t interested in fabrics. Boys didn’t pay attention to fashion. Most of all, boys didn’t cry when they got their hair cut short or got their face shoved into the mud or got a whipping by their papa for all those sins combined. Boys kept their chin up and said Yes’m and Nossir and did their chores and ate their scraps and were grateful, dammit, for every word that didn’t come with a slap. Smart boys kept their mouths shut and their eyes open, until they could steal enough money to disappear.
If boys-who-were-girls couldn’t steal enough, sometimes they found a way to make a deal, and they disappeared anyway. Jo’s deal put her in debt to a demon, but it also opened a door out of Mississippi and straight into a new life. Never might fall short of paradise, but it’s miles better than where she came from, and it brought her to the first taste of home she’s ever known in the arms of the Silk Rose and Madame Dellaphina Jones. She still has a debt to pay. Someday, the devil’s going to collect. But until then, she’ll make the best of this life with her voice and her body and all the charm the good Lord gave her.
