the ghosts Julia claimed to see or feel. About the baby-shoe prank. About riding into town alone. But Julia would just shrug.
Then she’d take her bike and ride into town alone.
Hannah didn’t know whether or not to tell Aunt Fae. On one hand, it seemed to be the only thing keeping her sister from calling their mother and demanding they come home. On the other, if Julia got herself killed, they’d definitely have to go home.
Hannah had been spending so much of her time in the library. The ceiling-high shelves stocked with old, musty books that she had never even heard of: Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, Love in the Time of Cholera. She’d tried to read some of them, but mostly she’d fall asleep. She still wasn’t sleeping well, and she wasn’t having nightmares, exactly, just dreams of wandering the halls of the castle. She woke up this morning standing in the kitchen. This never happened at home, and it was unsettling. Scary, even. And it was even more frightening that she couldn’t talk to Julia about it.
Hannah hated to admit it, but Julia was right. Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart were different this summer. They were quieter, more solemn. Uncle Stuart hadn’t even pulled a quarter out of her ear yet. He didn’t always come to dinner, sometimes staying in his greenhouse long after sunset, potting herbs under the bright fluorescent lights.
Without warning, there was screaming coming from the hallway.
Julia and Aunt Fae. Fighting!
Hannah bolted upright, crept quickly to the doorway, but stayed back, out of view.
“You cannot break into rooms that are locked! That is not allowed. If I find you in that room again, I’ll send you both home!” Aunt Fae was madder than Hannah had ever heard her.
“What secrets are you keeping from us?” Julia shouted back, her voice loud. Righteous.
“You are a child. I’m an adult. I can keep anything from you that I want. You are a guest in my house. This is my house.” Aunt Fae’s voice lowered, menacing.
“What if I don’t want to stay here . . . with a liar?” A pause. Then, quieter, “Or worse?”
“What does that mean, child?”
“Oh, like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know what you’ve done.”
There was some kind of movement in the hall—a whisper, a scuffle. Hannah couldn’t make it out.
Then Aunt Fae’s voice. “You will obey my rules. You don’t know half of what you think you do.”
Julia slammed her bedroom door so hard a book in the library fell off the top shelf. Hannah shrank back against the bookcase, her heart in her throat. What had all that meant?
Hannah slunk back down the hall to her own bedroom. She eased open the doors between their rooms, and her sister lay faceup on her bed, her arms folded behind her head, fat tears stuck on plump cheeks.
“What was that about?” Hannah prodded, without waiting for her sister to acknowledge her.
“I tried to tell you I want to go home. You don’t care. There is evil here. A death. Something. It’s enough to drive a person crazy. Jinny says—”
“You talk to Jinny? Does Aunt Fae know?”
“No. She’s helping me.”
“With what?”
Julia turned her head to look at Hannah, her nose running, and Hannah almost hugged her. But couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her sister’s need for attention—to take it far enough to anger their aunt this much—felt vulgar.
Julia sensed the hesitation in Hannah. “Never mind.”
Hannah paused. “What did you find?”
Julia stared at Hannah for a long while before answering. “Nothing. I found nothing.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Now
“He said he would fucking kill you himself?” Wyatt asked.
“Yes, and that I’d end up in the ravine too.” Hannah stood in Wyatt’s house. She’d called him from her locked car in the parking lot of Pinker’s, and he’d given her his address. He lived outside of town in a rustic A-frame with a slate roof nestled a half mile back a dirt road in the woods. A wall of windows faced north, and the view looked out onto shale cliffs and, just beyond that, the glittering gray stripe of the Beaverkill. The house was beautiful, and it was everything about Wyatt that Hannah remembered: warm, welcoming, charming. The great room had been outfitted with large skylights, and the whole house felt like an extension of the forest around it. “This is a gorgeous home, Wyatt.” She said it softly, almost regretfully. “How did you find something like this?”