Paracosm - Bleath: The Hauntings
Date: 2015-10-14 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Paranormal; Fantasy; Young Adult; Fiction; Suspense; Supernatural; Mystery Thriller; Action; Mystery; Thriller & Suspense; Thrillers & Suspense; Ghosts; Religion & Spirituality; Occult & Paran
Description: Psychology Student, Zoe Cosgrove, arrives in the West Virginian town of Bleath to study a strange phenomenon--a cluster of children who are experiencing paracosms (beliefs in self-created imaginary worlds). The mayor of Bleath provides Zoe with accommodation at the empty Wilmont house. It's not the friendly farmhouse Zoe was picturing, and worse, the house seems to change day by day. The walls change and strange objects appear. Late at night, scratching noises scrape along the staircase banister and inside the trinket box under her bed. And out in the wheat field below her bedroom window, ghos

PARACOSM

BLEATH: THE HAUNTINGS

ANYA ALLYN

Copyright Anya Allyn 2015

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination, else used fictitiously. Any resemblance to the above, or resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, including by electronic means. Brief quotations are allowed. Permission in writing must be sought for any longer reproductions.

PARACOSM is a standalone novel. It is part of a wider world, having a deep connection to The Dark Carousel series.

For more information about the Bleath: The Haunted series, please go here: http://anyaallyn.com/project/bleath-the-hauntings/

Psychology Student, Zoe Cosgrove, arrives in the West Virginian town of Bleath to study a strange phenomenon--a cluster of children who are experiencing paracosms (beliefs in self-created imaginary worlds).

The mayor of Bleath provides Zoe with accommodation at the empty Wilmont house. It's not the friendly farmhouse Zoe was picturing, and worse, the house seems to change day by day. The walls change and strange objects appear. Late at night, scratching noises scrape along the staircase banister and inside the trinket box under her bed. And out in the wheat field below her bedroom window, ghostly figures seem to wait . . . .

Is Zoe slipping into an imaginary world of her own? Or are the things she's experiencing terrifying real?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9.  10.  11.  12.  13.  14.  15.  16.   17.  18.  19.   20.  21.  22.  23.  24.  25.  26.  27.  28.  29.  30.

END

TO YOU

ANYA ALLYN

CREDITS

THE DARK CAROUSEL series

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.

WET, COPPERY SCENTS OF THE night and rain-misted wheat mixed with a lingering, burned smell. Dropping to her knees, Zoe Cosgrove clawed at the disturbed earth, rushing to bury the body—until only a hand was still exposed, moonlight glinting dully on the heavy metal ring.

A low cry expelled from deep inside Zoe’s chest as she pitched the last of the dirt onto the body.

Only then did she allow herself to stop and breathe, raising her head.

The Wilmont house stood in a straight line from her, fifty feet or so away, its Queen Anne Victorian lines and nooks and spindle work bathed in bluish light.

She’d arrived in this small West Virginian town just a week ago. She couldn’t have guessed then how a house could change—reinventing itself day by day. And she couldn’t have guessed what she would be prepared to do to survive.

This house and this town—they were not like other houses and other towns.

Pulling herself to her feet, she wiped clods of mud on her jeans, eyeing her handiwork below.

The burial was done.

The man beside her grasped her hand, his fingers tightening on hers. “Time to run.”

They raced together into the wheat fields.

2.

ONE WEEK EARLIER

THE WORLD WAS SUFFUSED IN a surreal red sunset as Zoe swung her 1989 Corolla onto the exit for Bleath.

A small hum of excitement rose inside her. She’d been traveling since the morning, and this trip was twice the distance of the longest journey she’d ever taken alone. But she’d done it. Exhausted but quietly exhilarated, she turned the radio up loud. This was a time for celebration. She clenched her hand in the air in a solitary fist-bump.

A wooden sign on the left-hand side of the road read:

BLEATH

Population 3,667

A small town was going to be a culture shock after New York City—the only place she’d ever known. She’d lived in a three-bedroom apartment with her parents and brother since she was three. And now she was heading off by herself for an entire month, to conduct research for her final year thesis at college.

A sharply inclining hill stood before her, obscuring her view. Her car protested at the sudden change from the dead-flat highway as she drove up the incline.

C’mon, you can do it, you old beast. We’ll do it together.

Exhaling a relieved breath at the crest of the hill, she surveyed the view ahead. There was nothing much to see. The bare trees lining either side of the road forked and twisted their tangle of branches back toward the highway. Vines—the only greenery—twisted their snake-like fingers through the trees.

The road speared straight ahead with no streets leading from it. She headed down.

The radio crackled and died.

For a second, she had the sensation she was driving through some kind of tunnel with a sound barrier. She couldn’t detect a single noise outside her open window, save for the rattles and hum of her car. The air itself seemed . . . thick.

The wooden hippie beads that hung over her rear-vision mirror swung silently in opposite directions, a present from a boy she’d once dated.

From the periphery of her vision, she thought she caught sight of bodies swaying from nooses—bodies that hung from the branches, swinging in time with her beads.

Prickles ran like water down her bare neck and arms.

Jerking her head around, she scanned the woods.

No bodies. Okay. Okay. Just a trick of the fading light and bundles of vines.

Get it together, Zoe. You’re an adult. Twenty-two. Just because this is your first trip by yourself doesn’t mean you have to start freaking. Mom already did enough of that for you before you left.

3.

OKAY, THIS IS TOO DAMNED QUIET, Zoe thought. That’s why I’m freaking.

She’d spent the last year of her busy life begging for a bit of peace and quiet. Constant parties and the grinding noise of her then-boyfriend’s band practicing. But this quiet was unnerving.

She pushed a CD into the player.

The thumping music settled her. There was nothing in this world that drum beat couldn’t push out. Except for Darien North.

With every mile she’d driven over the past seven hours, she’d won another piece of mental distance between herself and Darien.

With Darien, everything had been binary. He was either on or off, hot or cold, winning or losing, excited or dead bored. At the precise point he decided things had become too predictable in his relationship with Zoe, he slept with Kara Dwight, a terminally quiet girl from their psychology class who shouted her inner thoughts via a different slogan T-shirt each day.

The next week, in between tailspinning and mortally shredding every photo she had of Darien and herself together, Zoe read something that gave her a different focus. In a psychology journal, she’d read about an odd cluster of children in a town called Bleath who’d developed paracosms—imaginary worlds that seemed real to them. She’d been anxiously trying to find a subject on which to base her college thesis for months, and now she had it. Paracosms. It seemed so right. Because she’d created an imaginary world around herself and Darien: one in which they had a future.

As far as she knew, no one had studied these kids before. So her thesis would be a whole new contribution to the world of child psychology and imaginary play. At least, she hoped so. She knew precisely nothing about Bleath, and all she’d been able to dig up about it was that it had a long history and had a high percentage of psychics living there.

Zoe had made a few enquiries and then called the mayor of Bleath, Mr. Montalban. He’d been more than helpful, inviting her to stay in an empty farmhouse in town. And he’d sounded impressed with her preliminary research: Children experiencing paracosms were often exceptionally bright, with both Tolkien and C. S. Lewis having paracosms as children that later led to the writing of their classics.

For the next month, Zoe would be staying in Bleath. Far away from Darien. Life had something good in it again.

Mom had been a bit panic-stricken about her living away from home for the first time—trying to hide it but at the same time asking her again and again about every last detail of her stay.

Zoe hadn’t needed to leave home to attend college. Her parents had purposely bought their apartment near two good colleges when she was just a toddler.

She turned down a side road. The mayor, Mr. Montalban, had told her to take the first right. And then right again. Then left on the driveway past an old well.

She followed the directions but couldn’t spot the damned well.

Fields of wheat stretched out on one side of the road, as far as she could see. It had to be seven feet tall or more, standing perfectly straight and in obedient rows.

A girl of about twelve was perched on a fence, long legs beneath a short, white dress. In the darkening light, she looked almost ghostly.

Pulling the car off to the side of the road, Zoe eased herself from the car and stretched. It had been a long, long drive.

“Hello,” she called. “I’m Zoe. I’m trying to find the Wilmont farmhouse. I was told I had to turn off just after a well.”

The girl pointed behind her. “That’s the well.”

Frowning, Zoe stepped closer. She could only just make out the edges of some rounded sandstone blocks. Vines had almost completely overgrown it.

“Wow, I doubt I would have noticed that from the road. I’m guessing it hasn’t been used for a long time.”

The girl fixed serious blue eyes on Zoe. “I think someone drowned in it and they decided not to use it anymore.”

Zoe exhaled a long breath. “Nice. Okay. Thanks for your help.”

“You’re pretty.”

Biting down on her lip, Zoe looked at the girl in surprise. She never knew how to take compliments. “Um, thanks.”

“I couldn’t tell, before.”

“Before what?”

The girl handed her a sketchpad that she had by her side.

Zoe bent her head over to study the picture that the pad was opened onto. It was a pencil drawing of a wheat field. A girl was running through the field, long hair streaming around her, her face transfigured with fear. The wheat almost looked like an enemy of the girl, their heads pointed like spears in her the direction.

The picture was drawn with childlike lines, but one thing made Zoe gasp. The girl in the picture resembled Zoe herself. She had Zoe’s very distinctive features, black hair and deep complexion—a mix of Zoe’s Black American mother and Chinese father.

“What is this?” Zoe demanded sharply.

“I just draw what I see,” the girl said defensively.

Zoe checked herself. Either the likeness was a coincidence or the mayor had told people that Zoe was coming and had given out her name. Zoe was easy enough to find online, on Facebook and old spoof videos she’d made with friends. If the latter was true, it was strange that the girl would draw this picture, but Zoe reasoned that it was a small, isolated town and maybe they had to create their own entertainment.

“It’s a great picture. You’re very talented.” Zoe made herself smile. “Do you live nearby?”

“I live on the other side of the wheat belt. We moved in six months ago.”

“Oh? Where’d you move from?”

“We moved from Florida to Australia, and now here.”

“That’s a lot of big moves. Why’d your parents move back to the States again?”

“Because of my sister.”

Zoe watched the girl’s face. She could tell by the twitch in her forehead that it hurt her to say the word sister. Something serious had happened. Zoe didn’t know whether she should ask or not. But she remembered a time when she was a kid and the worst thing possible had happened and no one wanted to talk about it with her.

“Because of your sister?” Zoe repeated softly.

The girl folded bony arms across her chest. “She and her boyfriend went missing on a hike. In the mountains next to our home. That was back when I was eleven. Everyone thinks they’re dead. But I know they’re not.”

Zoe’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God, that’s . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry you lost your sister.”

“She’s not lost. She’s just in one of the otherworlds.”

Immediately, Zoe started making mental notes. Was she one of the children who had created paracosms? The disappearance of a sister could certainly be enough to trigger something like that.

“Well, I’m sorry she’s not with you,” Zoe said, taking care with each word. “I’m guessing your parents moved away because the memories were too painful.”

She shook her head. “They moved because my psychiatrist told them to. I kept running away to get to the place where I knew I could find her. I tried to show my parents where she was. I drew lots and lots of pictures to show them. Hundreds. And I wrote poems about my sister. But they wouldn’t listen.”

“It sounds like they tried to do what they thought was best.”

“Yes, they love us,” the girl agreed.

“Of course they do.” Zoe turned her head back to the road. “I’d better go find the farmhouse before it gets dark.”

The girl pressed her mouth together in the way people do when they want to stop themselves from saying something. Zoe knew the girl had lost the battle when for a moment, she jammed her eyes shut. “Zoe, you should leave. In case you get taken, too. Mom says I shouldn’t say that stuff to people, but sometimes, I have to.”

Zoe began to wonder how much any of what the girl had told her was true and how much was fantasy. Did she really have a sister who vanished? The mayor had given her a list of kids that she could interview, but none fit the description of this girl. Maybe the whole thing of kids and fantasy worlds was more widespread here than the mayor wanted to admit.

“Hey.” Zoe smiled. “I can take care of myself. Well, I should get to the house.” As she stepped away, she glanced back over her shoulder. “What’s your name? I hope we get to know each other better.”

The girl returned a level gaze. “Prudence.”

4.

DUST PLUMED IN THE REAR-VIEW mirror as Zoe drove the long, private dirt road to the Wilmont house.

At the end of the road stood a tall, double-story Queen Anne Victorian, the sunset staining its weathered boards a deep blood red.

The house wasn’t at all what she expected. She’d imagined a typical, single-story farmhouse with a wide, welcoming veranda. There was nothing welcoming about this house.

It’s fine. It’s just a house. This isn’t a farmstay vacation. You’re here to work.

She parked the car just outside its front porch and went to knock on the door. She’d been told it would be empty, but still, it felt polite to knock.

No answer came. She turned the knob and entered. A musty odor floated in the dark air. At least it didn’t smell wet and moldy. Zoe was super-sensitive to mold. It made her face and sinuses swell like a prize pumpkin.

Shivering in the cold inside the house, she took a look around. The plantation blinds and surfaces of the house seemed wiped free of dust. Someone had been in to give the place a clean before her arrival. The walls were covered in faded blue vertical stripes. The furniture was basic and spare, but there was a table to set up her laptop on and write. She didn’t give the kitchen much of a glance. She didn’t intend on doing much cooking anyway.

Taking her phone out from her handbag, she first tried calling her mother and then the mayor. She didn’t get through to either of them, getting a high-pitched signal instead. She’d have to drive into town to call her mother—she’d made Zoe promise to let her know the minute she arrived.

She was about to head back out to her car when a scratching noise echoed down the stairs. Was someone here, after all?

The boards on the stairs were thinly covered in a floral carpet, except where the carpet had grown threadbare, showing the grayed wood beneath, like skeletal bones through rotting clothing. She trod lightly, almost feeling as if she were disturbing a grave.

At the top of the stairs was a bare wall covered in the same striped wallpaper as the rest of the house. A less-faded area of wallpaper told of a painting or something rectangular that had been removed. A bathroom and bedroom stood facing each other to one side of the stair landing, and three rooms stood on the other side of it.

The sound had already stopped as she stepped along the wood-paneled hallway at the top of the stairs.

Paintings of pastoral scenes adorned the hallway. All the bedrooms were locked except for the one nearest the bathroom. Guessing that this room was the one she was meant to take, she stepped inside it and set down her suitcase just inside the door. The room was generous in size, with a large four-poster bed and a dressing table. A shelf of vintage dolls was fixed to the wall, the dolls all staring blankly from their stands. The window gave a view of the wheat fields between its shutters.

She crossed to the window.

The fields looked beautiful in the deep light, the amber heads of wheat rippling and swaying in a light breeze. So different from the city she’d left behind. Almost mesmerizing. She wondered if these kinds of intense colors and play of light in country towns had profound effects upon the people who lived in them. Did it make them more likely to invent fantastical things—leprechauns and fairies? Even the hanging people she’d imagined earlier?

Pulling out a notebook, she sat cross-legged on the bed and wrote down her thoughts. Maybe she could use this as the introductory paragraph to her thesis.

The scratching noise returned.

Oh God. It was coming from this room.

Under the bed.

Holding a breath, she slid her legs from the bed and crouched on the floorboards.

The sound ceased.

Tentatively, she drew back the bed covers that hung to the floor. All she could see in the darkness was a box. Whatever creature was in that box had made the noise. A rodent?

As she drew the box out, she saw carvings of farm images on its wooden surfaces—a sun, wheat, a crow. Too small for a toy box. A child’s trinket box perhaps. Taking a quick breath, she unlatched it. A dark streak sprang out at her, scratching her across the arm with its claws. A cat. A blue-toned cat. Maybe a Burmese. It tore across the room and out the door.

How long had the poor thing been trapped in the box? Not long, she comforted herself, as the box didn’t stink to high heaven the way it would had the cat been here for days. She grasped her right arm. Four angry red lines seeped drops of blood from her flesh. She watched as the droplets fell from her fingers to the floor. The blood soaked into the board and vanished, almost as if the floorboards were thirstily drinking the blood in.

With a shiver, she pulled herself to her feet. She needed to wash the cat scratches. The cat could have some kind of disease.

She hurried into the bathroom. The wall tiles here were a soft white, a decorative floral flourish at the center of each tile. A metal filigree frame surrounded a cracked mirror. A claw-foot tub stood beneath a painting of a garden. The bathroom didn’t seem to match with the heavy décor of the rest of the house.

The rusted faucets were stuck tight. With two hands, she managed to tug the cold water faucet around. Dark water spurted into the sink, taking a full minute to turn clear. She let the water run over her arm.

Through the small, multi-paned window of the bathroom, she caught a flash of red below. A man wearing a loose, unbuttoned, checked red shirt. He was kneeling in front of a gate, hammering in a nail. A pickup truck was parked a short distance behind him.

Zoe headed downstairs and through the house to the back of the property. The man didn’t seem to hear her approaching. He kept two nails between his lips while tapping a third nail into the gate. His hair fell across his forehead and down to his collar. Sweat dampened his shirt across the middle of his back.

“Uh, hello?” Zoe stepped up behind him.

He stopped hammering and turned. Taking the nails from his mouth, he grinned, rising to his full height. Zoe caught her breath. He was gorgeous. Dark hair and blue eyes and a wicked dimple in his cheek.

“Hi.” He raised his hand in a single wave. “I’m Karstan. Just fixing some stuff around here for you. This gate would drive you crazy banging away at night if the wind creeps up.” Grabbing the gate, he swung it shut and put the catch down. “See? It actually closes now.”

“That’s nice of you, especially seeing as I’m not going to be here long. I’m Zoe, anyway.”

“Hello Zoe anyway.”

She smiled at his joke.

His gaze flicked downward to her arm. “That looks nasty.”

“A cat just scratched me. Upstairs. Poor thing had somehow locked itself inside a box. It went nuts when I let it out.”

“Ah, that’s Bluebell. Her owner died a year ago. A couple of times, people tried to give Bluebell a new home, but she prefers to just stick it out around here. She gets enough mice from the fields to keep her fed, and there’s a dam for water.”

“She’s got no company though,” Zoe mused. “I bet she misses whoever used to live here.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Wilmont would have fussed over her. But you can keep her company while you’re staying at the farm.”

“Bluebell and I didn’t start out on the best foot, but I’ll try.” She shrugged. “I should probably get to the mayor’s house now. To let him know I’m here. My phone doesn’t seem to be picking up a signal.”

“Yeah, we’re in a bit of a valley here. Reception is a bit scrambled. You need to head into town for better reception.” He shoved the hammer into the front pocket of his jeans. “If you wanna go to the mayor’s house, jump in. I’ll drive you.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I was going there anyway.”

“You were?” she asked doubtfully.

“Well, yeah. I live there. The mayor’s my dad.”

His face broke out in a broad smile that made Zoe forgive him for not telling her that straight away.

“I’ve got a medical kit in the pickup,” he told her. “Let’s get your arm fixed up.”

She followed him to his car, where he dabbed her scratched skin with some antiseptic cream and then gently wrapped her arm. Up close, he was startlingly good looking. She was acutely aware that her breathing had become as shallow as a schoolgirl’s. Worse, she suspected he knew it.

A white SUV drove in along the dirt road, breaking the awkward moment.

Karstan gestured toward the vehicle. “That would be my dad now.”

Automatically, Zoe adjusted her vest and scarf, wishing she had her jacket on and that she’d had time to freshen up. She wanted to look professional, like someone who could be trusted to be here in town conducting interviews with children.

The SUV pulled up just outside the gate. A man slightly taller than Karstan and a woman dressed in a yellow dress stepped out.

“Miss Cosgrove,” the mayor boomed, “welcome to Bleath.” His hair and eyes were a steely color, his smile as wide and generous as Karstan’s. “We hope you’ll enjoy your stay here. This is my wife, Diana. You’re welcome to call me Falco. And I see you’ve already met Karstan.”

He clasped the hand that Zoe offered in both of his in a firm handshake.

“I have dinner cooking away at home for all of us.” Mrs. Montalban linked her arm through Zoe’s. “I hope you like Chicken Parmigiana.” Her eyes were a bright blue, like her son’s.

“Love it,” Zoe answered. In truth, she was more a salads and fish girl, but this was probably the only home-cooked meal she was going to have during her stay. The rest of the time she’d planned to buy takeout.

“Oh, but what happened here?” Mrs. Montalban said, glancing down at Zoe’s bandaged arm and frowning.

“It’s nothing. Just the cat. It got trapped somewhere and I went to help it.”

She laughed lightly. “Not very grateful. But that’s cats for you.”

“We’ll arrange for Bluebell to be taken away from here during your stay,” said the mayor. “The old girl’s probably getting a bit too territorial, having this place all to herself.”

“Oh no,” Zoe replied quickly. “Don’t take her away from her home. I’m fine.”

Diana Montalban patted Zoe’s arm with her free hand. “My husband tells me you’ll be researching the little worlds that children imagine. How fascinating. Karstan used to get inside of cardboard boxes and pretend he was heading into space.”

Karstan groaned. “I was four.”

“I might have met one of the children already,” Zoe told Mrs. Montalban.

“Oh?” She gave a questioning smile.

“She was near the well when I was driving in. I stopped to ask her for directions. Her name’s Prudence.”

“Poor child.” Mrs. Montalban frowned then as though she was thinking. “I’m not sure if her parents would agree to her being part of this. She’s quite traumatized by the loss of her sister.”

“So, it’s true? Her sister did go missing?”

“Yes, she did. In Australia, a year before they moved here. Tragic.”

Karstan packed up his toolkit and headed back to his pickup.

“Put the tools in the tray,” Mr. Montalban called to Karstan. “I’m sure Zoe doesn’t want to share a seat with those.”

Karstan turned and winked at Zoe.

Night pushed in as the two cars drove into town. The houses here were mostly of the Queen Anne vintage, although in much better repair than the Wilmont place. Bleath seemed like a town from another era, save for the modern cars. And from the look of the cars that Zoe could see, they were expensive. The people here had money.

Karstan turned to her. “I’ll show you around town tomorrow.”

“Won’t you be working?”

He grinned, steering the pickup around a corner so sharp that his shoulder nudged hers. “What do you think I do for work?”

“I don’t know. I’m guessing by the pickup and the tools that you fix things?” She shrugged helplessly.

His eyebrows shot up. “You thought I was the town handyman?”

“No idea, to tell you the truth.” She smiled, actually enjoying herself. She was finding it hard to believe she’d gone from the pits of the universe after what Darien did to actually finding it fun being in a guy’s company again. “Why don’t you tell me?”

His mouth curved upward as he stopped in front of a set of high iron gates. “You’re just going to hang out with me long enough to find out.”

“Will I be surprised?”

“Very.” He said it in a low, self-assured voice.

She felt her heart do a small flip.

Nope, Zoe. All kinds of nope. You know exactly what’s happening here. He knows he’s got you in the palm of his hand already.

But then, Zoe reasoned, she was only going to be in town for a short time. What did it matter? If a guy like Karstan Montalban wanted to hang with her, where was the downside?

The gates opened automatically. His parents drove in first, and he followed. The Montalban property was situated to the center of town, on a large plot of land. The house was imposing, constructed of stone rather than wood, with no less than eight heavy pillars running along the front of it and almost resembling an ancient church.

Inside, the house was very formal, everything so perfect and feminine that Zoe couldn’t imagine Karstan living here, with his dirty boots and swagger and stubble on his chin.

But Karstan strode straight in and carelessly parked himself on the sofa, bending to pull off his boots.

“Karstan.” His mother shot him a despairing glance. “Go get cleaned up for dinner.”

He shot her a wide smile, and her expression instantly turned doting.

“Back before you know it,” Karstan told Zoe, and he disappeared up the curved staircase.

“Twenty-two years old and still not housebroken.” Mrs. Montalban gave Zoe a helpless look. “Well, at least he’s good at repairing things. I sent him over a couple of hours ago to see if anything needed fixing around the Wilmont house. I did give it a bit of a dusting inside the house this morning, but it does need quite a bit of airing. I hope the bed’s okay—I know it’s very old. It belonged to the mother of the lady who lived there.”

“It’s all perfect,” Zoe told her. “And thank you both.”

The mayor poured three glasses of red wine and handed one to Zoe. “May this relax you after that long drive you just had. And please let us know if you need anything.”

“Lovely,” Zoe said appreciatively, taking the glass. “Yes, it was the longest I’ve ever driven alone.” As she spoke the words, she again felt good about having done that. She was moving on from Darien, not just in distance.

Thinking about the journey reminded her she still had to call Mom.

“There’s one thing,” Zoe said, taking a sip. “I wasn’t able to call my parents from the house. Karstan mentioned that I’d have better luck in town.”

“Of course.” Diana ushered her through to a small sitting room. “You can call from here. Have a seat and make yourself comfortable.”

By the time Zoe finished her phone conversation with her mother, Karstan returned, wearing a clean white T-shirt and black jeans. Zoe tried not to stare at the lean, defined lines of his body as she replaced the phone in her handbag.

“Well, dinner’s ready if everyone else is,” called Mrs. Montalban.

“Yeah! Let’s go eat!” Karstan showed Zoe through to the dining room.

A chandelier reflected in the polished wood of the oval dining table, the table large enough to seat at least twelve. A wide painting was positioned on the wall above it—a picture of people who were sitting around the same table, waiting for dinner. Privately, Zoe wondered why the Montalbans had a painting done of their dining table.

Mr. Montalban took over from his wife and served out dinner.

Zoe ate a mouthful and set down her fork. “This is beautiful.”

The rich, cheesy, well-salted meal was a world away from the steamed, no-added-salt plain fish, chicken and vegetables she normally ate, but it was very tasty. Karstan obviously enjoyed his food, digging in with relish.

“So glad you like it.” Her eyes were bright as she smiled, and she kept the smile in place as she inclined her head. “So . . . a thesis on the children of Bleath. How fascinating.”

“I can’t wait to get started,” Zoe replied. “It’s so interesting how some children develop entire worlds of their own. Some of those worlds are complete with their own languages and geography. It’s almost as if they’re growing up in two separate worlds. Their own and the real world.”

Karstan grinned, spearing a potato with his fork. “Yeah, but which is which? Maybe this world we’re in now is just some kid’s fantasy.”

Zoe and Karstan’s parents laughed.

“Who knows?” Zoe shot back. “I certainly wish some of it was imaginary.” A picture of Darien pushed into her mind—the look on his face and the shrug in his shoulder when he told her she wasn’t enough for him. It had stung more than when she’d found out, the day before, that he’d slept with Kara.

Zoe covered up her thoughts with a smile, hoping it didn’t look forced.

“Narnia was one of Karstan’s favorite books,” said Mrs. Montalban. “Falco tells me that you mentioned C. S. Lewis as having a paracosm when he was young?”

Nodding, Zoe dabbed her mouth with a napkin. She’d been researching the subject for two weeks now and loved telling people about it. “At the time, influenza was rife and parents were keeping their children at home. Imagination was a way for kids to escape. C. S. Lewis and his brother joined their fantasy worlds together and made a place called Boxen. Two of the Bronte sisters did something similar—Emily and Anne. Together, they created an island called Gondol, which had four kingdoms, each with a different climate.”

Mr. Montalban poured himself another glass of red wine. “So, we might expect a crop of writers to come out of Bleath in decades to come.”

“Maybe.” Zoe grinned, knowing he wasn’t serious. She thought back to her research. “Paracosms can also come about as a coping mechanism. The child might have suffered a death in the family or an upheaval. And they’re trying to process what happened in an environment they find safer—an imaginary world.” She frowned then, pushing peas around her plate with her fork. “In Bleath, there’s another element that I might need to look into. There seems to be a lot of clairvoyants here. Supposed contact with the spirit world. I’m wondering if that is one of the things having an effect upon the psyche of the town’s children.”

“My dear, you sound a little . . . disparaging of our town.” Falco Montalban cleared his throat. “We are very open to such things in Bleath. Perhaps that does differentiate us from other towns, but there’s something to be said for being unique.”

Feeling awkward at her blunder, Zoe went to answer, but the painting on the wall drew her gaze again. There were no plates or cutlery on the table in the picture. The candles in the two candelabras in the middle of the table were black, their flames straining toward a woman, their orange reflection in her glazed eyes. Only a breeze could cause the flames to flicker at such a sharp slant, but there was no sign of any ruffles in the hair of the people.

The people weren’t waiting for dinner. They were waiting . . . for something else.

This wasn’t a painting of diners sitting and conversing at all.

It was a painting of a séance.

Unable to look away, Zoe noticed another thing. The couple sitting together at the top end of the table holding hands with their eyes closed—they were a much younger Mr. and Mrs. Montalban. And, by their position at the table and the way in which everyone was looking toward them, it seemed that they were the ones leading the séance.

Taking in a breath that felt like it had no oxygen in it, Zoe’s knife and fork dropped through her fingers, clattering on the plate. She saw that Karstan and his parents had followed her gaze to the painting.

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She stumbled over her words, busying herself with placing the cutlery tidily on the side of the plate.

“We assist people through difficult times.” The mayor brushed his fingers through the air, as if he were merely talking about lending people a few dollars when they were down on their luck.

“That’s . . . admirable. I had no idea that you were both involved in the, uh, unique aspects of your town. Please forgive me.” Zoe put her hands in her lap, nervously screwing up the napkin.

“No need to apologize, dear.” Diana Montalban exchanged glances with her son and then gazed at Zoe. “And it’s not just Falco and myself. Karstan is showing quite a talent of his own. It’s still developing, but his raw gifts in clairvoyance are very sought after.”

Zoe couldn’t stop herself from gaping at Karstan. “You’re a medium, too?”

Karstan winked at her. “See? I predicted you’d be surprised.” Shrugging playfully, he gulped the last of his wine. “I have lots of talents. Fixing gates, wrapping hurt arms, calling up the dead . . . .”

“Okay, I have to say I’ve never met a medium before,” said Zoe. “Now I’ve met three. Well, except for a fortune teller I once saw when I went to a fair with my friends.”

“Those people are as far from the real thing as possible,” Mr. Montalban scoffed. “Mediums that are the real deal don’t need to go hawking themselves in fairs.”

“We do have a local carnival where our clairvoyants gather,” Diana Montalban broke in, “but that’s just because visitors to our town expect it.”

“I’m taking Zoe there Friday night,” said Karstan.

“You are?” Zoe blinked, trying to remember if a carnival had even been mentioned.

“Yeah. Unless you have something else going on. You haven’t seen Bleath until you’ve been to the carnival.”

“I . . . okay. Sure. Sounds like fun.”

Diana rested her chin on her clasped, manicured hands, smiling at Zoe’s awkward response and not seeming fazed at all that her son had just asked a girl out in front of them. “You’ll enjoy it, Zoe. Visitors always do.”

5.

ZOE WISHED SHE’D THOUGHT TO leave a light on. The Wilmont house was enveloped in a darkness as thick as oil.

The wheels of Karstan’s pickup crunched on the gravel driveway as he drove away. She wished she’d taken him up on his offer to walk her to the door. As she unlocked the front door and pushed it open, a low creak echoed around the house’s interior.

That damned cat better not be lurking in there somewhere, waiting to scratch my eyes out.

“Bluebell! Bluebell!” she called.

Hell, where’s the light switch?

She didn’t know where any of the switches were. She hadn’t had to turn any of them on yet. She felt around the door frame until she found something knobbly and pressed it down. Her shoulders relaxed as the room flooded with light. She intended going straight upstairs to bed, but she hadn’t wanted to go up there in the dark. Night in the country was a completely different animal to night in the city. Where she lived, there were always sources of light somewhere. Her bedroom at home had the faint night-time glints of neon signs a block away.

She decided that the downstairs light could just stay on all night. It made her feel a bit more secure and less like she were underground.

Each stair groaned underfoot on her way to the top floor. The house felt as old as it looked. Again she felt as if she were unsettling it, stepping on its bones.

She really, really wished she’d left a light on up here before she went to dinner at the Montalban’s house. Fumbling inside the bedroom, she groped around the surfaces until she found a lamp fixed to the wall. Now, she just needed to find its switch.

Beyond the window, far into the distance, she saw a pinprick of yellowish light. It was high—there had to be a house up in the hills there.

Immediately below the window, moonlight picked out the heads of wheat in the field. They rippled like a sea under the weight of a breeze. Karstan had been right about a wind blowing in later. She was glad he’d fixed the gate. Trying to sleep with a gate crashing about would have been murder.

Her fingers felt for the lamp’s switch.

At that moment, tall shapes appeared in the wheat field. People. People standing and staring at the house.

No, they weren’t standing.

They were floating.

Standing up straight, but floating . . . .

Her fingers found a pull cord under the lamp. She yanked it down in a reflex action.

The lamp sprang to life.

She threw her back against the wall, just beneath the lamp. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. A strangled sound came from somewhere deep in her throat.

With the light on, she could no longer see outside.

But she knew they could see her.

Zoe, you could not have seen that. It had to be a reflection . . . something other than what it looked like.

Her fingers and body were stiff as she pulled the cord again, switching the light off. The room plunged into darkness.

There was nothing in the wheat field. Just a crop of wheat. Just wheat.

Still, she remained there in the dark, watching as seconds ticked away, making herself certain.

She tugged on the light once more, her chest heaving in relief at the yellow glow that surrounded her.

What had just happened? She’d just imagined . . . floating people?

She spun around. What could have caused a reflection on the window pane? Her gaze centered on the shelf of dolls on their stands. They looked like they were floating, didn’t they? Hoisted up on their stands, most of their little doll feet didn’t quite touch the shelf’s surface. That was it. It had to have been the dolls.

Her legs were jelly as she sat on the edge of the bed.

How had she managed to see a shelf of dolls as ghostly figures in the field? That was crazy. Her mind had somehow distorted the images of the dolls beyond recognition.

She stared at her suitcase. It was still unpacked. In the morning, if she wanted to, she could just leave. She’d have to start again with her thesis, on another topic.

But she’d already done so much groundwork for this. And she was here now.

Stilling her nerves, she crept over to the window again. When she put her face right up against the window and cupped her hands around her face, she could see outside well enough.

No floating figures appeared among the wheat.

She remembered her father once telling her not to dismiss her fears, no matter how silly she thought they were. Instead, you had to look your fear in the eye and ask it to give you its name.

Okay, fear, what’s your name? Zoe whispered. Give it up.

The name came to her. The unknown. She was afraid of the unknown. Her future had been packaged up with Darien, but now she was on her own, trying to navigate this new type of future. Maybe that had meshed together with the talk of the spirit world at the Montalbans and maybe even that picture that Prudence had drawn.

You need to calm yourself, Zoe.

How could she ever expect to enter the world of psychology as a professional if she couldn’t explain her own imaginary visions? How could she ever expect to help a kid like Prudence? Maybe she could even include what had happened tonight in her thesis. How the suggestion of the spirit world had been a trigger to imagining things.

Drawing a deep breath, she stepped across to her suitcase and picked out her pajamas. She changed quickly, relaxing into the comforting feel of the soft fabric.

She found a bedside lamp with a softer light than the overhead lamp and decided to leave it on while she slept. Before getting into bed, she locked the door.

Better to lock it.

A thread of doubt remained as she pulled the bed covers over her, a thread that Zoe couldn’t quite pick free from her mind.

She tried to ignore the thought that drifted like a storm cloud at the edges of a blue sky: Locking the door won’t keep out what you saw in the wheat field.

6.

ZOE WOKE TO THE SOUND of knocking downstairs.

She sat up startled, not remembering where she was. Then she remembered. The Wilmont house. Snatches of the nightmares she’d had last night stayed with her—visions of herself running through the wheat field, screaming and terrified, dark figures pursuing her.

Throwing off the blankets, she padded downstairs.

She opened the door to Karstan’s broad smile.

“Nice PJs.” His smile dropped a little as he studied her face. “Rough night? You look a bit the worse for wear.”

At first, she worried that Karstan had just seen her the way she looked when she first woke up in the morning: heavy-eyed, with springy hair that hadn’t been tamed yet. But then she reasoned that she wasn’t trying to impress him.

“I just kept waking up with . . . weird dreams.” She shrugged awkwardly. It almost seemed too intimate a subject to be discussing with someone she hardly knew. “Anyway, what are you doing here at the crack of dawn?” She didn’t want to admit she was glad to see his face.

“Brought you some eggs for breakfast. Fresh from the hen.” He held up a small basket filled with eggs, wrapped cheese and a pitcher of milk.

“Oh wow. Thank you. I have to tell you I’m not really a breakfast person though. It’s usually just coffee and toast for me.”

“You’ll like eggs the way I make them.”

“You’re going to cook them?”

“Yeah. Does that surprise you?”

She shot him a bemused look. “Maybe.” Was there anything that Karstan didn’t do?

He wriggled past her, brushing against her side. “Well, I’m nothing if not surprising.”

She followed him to the kitchen. “I guess you surprised me last night, too. I didn’t expect that your job was going to be . . . uh . . . .”

“A spirit guide?”

“Yes. That.”

Stopping, he rested his eyes on hers. “To tell you the truth, I’m not as good as my parents think I am.” The corner of his mouth flicked upward ruefully. “I just tell clients what they want to hear and that’s enough to keep them happy.”

“Then why do you do it? If you don’t want to, that is.”

“I’m the mayor’s son. My parents are proud of who they are and the history of the town. It’s just easier to go along with it. And because of who my parents are, it’s just too easy for people to believe in my act.” He searched through the cupboards, drawing out a pan and washing it in the sink.

She leaned against the kitchen bench. “Have you thought about just heading off? I mean, like, just leave town and go do something else?”

“Leave Bleath? That would be a big step. There’s a lot to do here. I can’t just leave it all to my parents.”

“They’d cope, right? I mean, country kids have to leave the farm to go to college all the time.”

“I did college here in town. Studied history. I’m twenty-two now. I’m not doing any more college.”

“So, you never wanted to do anything else?”

He shook the water from the pan. “Maybe I’d like to travel a bit. But I like Bleath. I’m happy here.” Playfully, he flicked water at her from his wet fingers. “Hey, instead of trying to rearrange my life, you could make yourself useful. I need some herbs. Head out to the garden and grab some parsley and dill and a red pepper. Oh, and a couple of mushrooms.”

“How d’you know those things are growing out there?”

“Saw them yesterday when I was fixing your gates.”

“Okay, I’m gone.”

After she stepped out through the door that led from the kitchen to the outside, she realized she didn’t know what dill looked like. The herb gardens were laid out in wooden troughs close to the house. She grabbed the parsley and a pepper, and then snatched a few pieces of different things and hoped one of them was right. There were mushrooms sprouting around the base of a tree. She really, really hoped Karstan knew his mushrooms, because she certainly didn’t.

He laughed when she handed him the bunches of herbs and mushrooms. “Let’s see . . . no dill, and you picked a poisonous mushroom alongside the good ones. Don’t go offering to cook for me, okay? Better wash your hands.”

Her eyebrows shot up, and she stepped over to run water over her hands at the sink. At least that answered her question about Karstan and mushrooms.

She slid onto a stool, munching a piece of parsley. “I can cook. I’m just used to buying food nicely labeled.”

“Well, I’m afraid things don’t grow from the ground with labels,” he joked.

He whisked and cooked the eggs, producing two omelettes that looked like crepes, with cheesy mushrooms and herbs inside.It tasted light and delicious.

“You weren’t kidding,” she said, trying a second piece. “I really do like eggs the way you make them. Hands down best-ever omelette.”

“Told ya.” He gave a fleeting wink as he straightened on the stool. “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

“Um, I’m interviewing the Kane family and their son Lincoln this morning. In about an hour. They live up in the hills somewhere.”

“You’ll need your wits about you with Lincoln Kane. That’s if you can even understand anything the kid says.”

“Really? My notes say he kind of developed his own language. Don’t tell me he speaks in that language all the time?”

“If he speaks at all, yeah.”

“Wow. I haven’t come across that kind of thing before in my research.”

“Good luck in getting anything useable from him you can write down.”

“How does he cope at school, without being able to communicate?”

“His parents homeschool him. They had to take him out of regular school.”

“And he was normal beforehand? I mean, before he started talking in the other language?”

“Yeah. Far as I know.” He chowed down the rest of his omelette. “Hey, I’ll show you ’round town after you go see the kid. If you want.”

“That would be awesome. I’ll probably be back here around ten.”

“Don’t bother driving all the way back. You’ll pass a huge old tree just before you leave the hills. Meet you there.”

“A tree?” Zoe puzzled. “How am I supposed to know which one?”

“It’s a willow, on the bend of the river. You’ll pass it on the way up to the Kane’s house. The area is a picnic spot.”

“Okay, but I’m not sure exactly what time I’ll—”

“Hey, you’re on Bleath time now. We don’t mind waiting here.”

His smile was wide and generous. Zoe liked the idea of being on Bleath time but it was going to take a little getting used to.

Karstan left, with his basket and with his broad shoulders that Zoe was not looking at as she watched him walk away.

After a quick shower, she changed into clothes that she hoped looked smart-casual and headed off in her car.

The morning sun sparked off the road on the way up the hills. At a bend in the road, just as she began the drive up the first hill, a willow tree hung over a low wooden fence. The tree, gnarled and huge, looked as if it belonged in a children’s fairy tale, its thin branches dipping lazily into a river. Acres of low-growing grass surrounded the river on both sides. Behind the grass, wheat fields claimed the land.

Okay, so that’s Karstan’s big old willow tree and picnic area.

She kept driving, hoping her vehicle was going to make it up the sharp climb. The houses were more farmhouse style in this part of Bleath, some even ramshackle. She was glad when the Kane house ended up being in the lower end of the hills. She drove in along the dirt road to a house that was a patchwork of additions and repairs, the boards on the front veranda buckling like orange peels left out in the sun.

Small blonde children dressed in well-worn clothing weaved in and out of the edges of a wheat field.

Wheat grows everywhere in this town, Zoe thought.

The couple who walked down the path to greet her didn’t look like farmers, not that she had a clear concept of what farmers looked like. Exiting her car, Zoe walked to them and introduced herself. The man introduced them both as Mr. and Mrs. Kane. No first names.

“Lincoln’s not having a good day.” The woman shot a nervous sideways glance at her husband. She was thin, with deep depressions between her eyebrows that told of a permanently worried expression.

“Oh?” Zoe kept the disappointment from her voice. “Should I come back another day?”

“He doesn’t have many good days,” Mrs. Kane told her. “You could be waiting a while. It’s probably best you just go ahead with it.”

“What’s all this about, anyway?” The man lifted his chin in a questioning gesture. “You can’t help him, right? You’re just here to help yourself.”

“Darren,” his wife scolded. “The more we know the better. She’s a college student, studying this kind of thing.”

Although the woman just reproached her husband, her eyes remained downcast and without the conviction of her words. She seemed around the same age as her husband—in her early thirties—but she had the round-shouldered, defeated look of someone much older.

“Okay,” he agreed. “But keep it short. Linc gets stressed having to talk to people.”

Darren Kane had rangy lines to his tall body, his hands large and muscled.

“I’d like to talk with you two first, if that’s okay.” Zoe chose her words with caution. She suspected that a wrong word would have Mr. Kane sending her packing back to her car.

“For sure.” Mrs. Kane gave a smile that stretched in thin lines and had no warmth in it. “Can we get you something? A cool drink? Fresh orange juice?”

“Thank you, but I’m fine.”

“Okay then. Come and sit on the veranda with us.” She gestured toward the house. “I’m Jenny, by the way. And those are our three youngest playing over there. Kate, Amy, and Sophie. Aged eight, three, and almost two. And of course we have Lincoln, who’s ten.”

Mrs. Kane’s first name, coming so much later than the introductions, seemed like an afterthought.

Zoe angled her head over to the three children who were now chasing each other, chickens flapping around them. “Must be fantastic raising kids here. So much space.”

“Yeah, they got that in spades,” said Darren. “And they’ve got each other. They don’t need anyone else.”

Zoe walked with the Kanes and seated herself on a chair that was as rickety as the veranda itself. Mrs. Kane sat beside her. Mr. Kane remained standing, leaning against a wooden beam, his movements anything but relaxed.

“How long ago did Lincoln start imagining other worlds?” Zoe started.

“About three years. Yes, I’d say three.” Mrs. Kane nodded. “He was seven when we moved to Bleath.”

“The imaginary worlds started when you moved to Bleath, Jenny?” Zoe repeated. She wanted to be certain. She didn’t know if it was important, but she knew she needed to get as many facts together as possible.

“Yes,” Jenny affirmed. “Probably a few weeks after.”

“Can you pinpoint anything that might have triggered it? Was it a difficult move?”

Darren folded his arms, jutting his elbows out as though to keep people well away. “Nothing difficult about it. This was supposed to be the dream. Moving to the country, getting a little hobby farm. I hurt myself in a workplace accident. Couldn’t haul bricks around anymore. The kids love it here.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your accident.”

“Things happen.” He gave a shrug that Zoe guessed was meant to be casual, but came across as stiff.

Zoe turned to Mrs. Kane. “When you said that Lincoln isn’t having a good day, what did you mean?”

“To be honest, he’s not having any good days now. He won’t utter a sound.” Jenny drew her lips in, pausing for a second to check on the location of her daughters. “It’s like he’s gone completely into himself. It’s scary, to tell the truth.”

“I don’t mean to be rude in asking this question, but have you taken him to—”

“Psychiatrists?” Darren cut in. “Of course. Of course we have. Their therapies did jack all. So we stopped all that. Lincoln’s happy enough. Well, he’s not unhappy.”

“Maybe you’d just better come in and see him yourself.” Jenny Kane shuffled to her feet.

Zoe understood that Jenny wanted her to talk with her son, and that she was worried that her husband was getting close to sending Zoe away.

Feeling Darren’s eyes on her back, Zoe followed Jenny into the house.

Inside, the house was dark, furniture crammed in and obscuring part of the windows. Toys and clothing were strewn from one end of the house to the other.

Jenny didn’t make an excuse for the state of the house, as Zoe expected she would. In Zoe’s experience, women—her mom’s friends and female family members—tended to apologize for the state of the house even if there was nothing out of place except for a couple of coffee cups and magazines. Whereas the male partners of those women tended to blithely step around the mess as though it had nothing to do with them. But Zoe couldn’t decide whether Jenny Kane was comfortable with the mess or whether she was suffering depression.

Lincoln’s room was at the other end of the house, past rooms filled with pink tangles of soft toys and yet more clothing—his sisters’ rooms.

Jenny knocked then pushed the door open.

She looked back at Zoe with a vaguely confused expression. “I thought he was in here . . . .” She spun around to head back along the hall. “I’ll go find him.”

“If you don’t mind,” Zoe said quickly, “could I see his room?”

Jenny gave a half-shrug. “Sure.”

Stepping inside, Zoe opened the blinds. The room was unlike that of the boy’s sisters. Everything was in neat rows—his books, his model cars collection, his sets of pencils. His bed was made.

On his desk sat a sculpture made of clay. It looked like a twisting, writhing mass of discarded snake skin—that had somehow kept their shape—with a beast-like serpent emerging from one of the skins.

Intrigued, Zoe bent to examine it. Within the sculpture, a small boy hid inside one of the snake-skin tunnels, his body miniature in proportion.

“What is this?” Zoe swivelled her head back to Mrs. Kane.

She pulled her mouth down. “Back when he used to speak to us, he said the world he was escaping to was a world of ice, and these were the creatures that lived there. They ruled it. They had shadows that could roam free and turn people to black dust at a touch.”

“It scares me.”

Zoe believed her. Jenny had her eyes fixed on the sculpture as though it were something other than a pile of clay shaped by a young child.

“Jenny,” said Zoe, trying to change the subject. “The mayor’s son tells me you’re homeschooling Lincoln?”

She looked up. “No one can teach Lincoln anything. He teaches himself. He’s . . . smart as a whip. He’s already at college level in two of the subjects he chose to study.”

“Can I ask what these subjects are?”

As she pointed to one of his rows of books, pride was evident in her voice. “Astronomy and astrophysics. Just don’t ask me anything about those subjects. They go way over my head.” She glanced out of the window. “There he is. Up in the oak tree. My Lincoln.”

Taking a step behind Jenny, Zoe looked out. “Can I go see him?”

“If you can climb.”

Showing herself out of the house, Zoe walked in a line alongside the wheat field to the oak tree.

Peering upward, she waved at the tow-headed boy who was sitting in the crook of a high branch. “Hi Lincoln. I’m Zoe. I’m very interested in your ice world. Can we talk?”

He turned his face to her but gave no response.

“Okay,” she called, as though replying to him, “I’ll come to you.”

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d climbed a tree, and as far as she remembered, she’d only ever climbed a couple. Finding footholds on the way up to Lincoln proved to be more difficult than she thought. She was glad, at least, that she’d worn pants instead of a skirt.

The whole time, Lincoln watched, not offering any clue as to the best way to ascend the branches. Her heels slipped constantly on her way up. But she made it to the branch closest to the one he was perched on.

She surveyed him silently for a moment. He was small for a ten-year-old, his eyes a pale blue color like his parents’. His gaze was steady, not giving any inroads.

“Whew! I made it. Didn’t think I would,” she said brightly. “Your mom just showed me the model you made of the creature. It was amazing.”

He tilted his head.

That was a response, Zoe supposed. “What was the model of?”

The boy steepled his hands and made a triangle, peering at her behind his triangle of fingers.

Maybe she was asking the wrong question. She tried again. “Can you tell me about the world that creature comes from?”

He made a sound, a sound that chilled Zoe to the bone. A vibrating rattle at the back of his throat that didn’t sound human.

“Wow, I wish I knew what that meant,” she said, forcing her voice to stay even. “I really want to understand you, but I can’t.”

He stared back, moving his hands away from his face.

“Lincoln, I know you’re interested in astronomy. I’m fascinated by space and the stars and planets, too.”

He raised his narrow, pointed chin in an imperative way that reminded Zoe of his father. “Anything you can imagine, it’s out there.”

She almost jumped at the sudden sound of his voice. It was so controlled, sounding so odd coming from a diminutive child of ten.

Encouraged, she asked more questions. But Lincoln didn’t speak to her again.

She decided that this small piece of Lincoln Kane was all she was going to get today.

“Well, I’m going now, Lincoln. Maybe I’ll see you again before I leave Bleath.”

She climbed down the tree as awkwardly as she’d climbed it.

Jenny was hanging out a basket of clothing when Zoe returned, the girls playing with various trucks and dolls around her feet. Jenny expressed surprise when Zoe told her that Lincoln hadn’t said much, saying that she didn’t think he would talk at all. Her hair fell back from her neck and shoulders as she pinned a pair of wet jeans to the clothes line. Her left ear was slightly swollen, the skin on the side of her neck marked by a roundish bruise that had faded to a purplish yellow.

Jenny straightened abruptly as she noticed where Zoe was looking. “Picked up a load of firewood in an awkward way a week or so back, and it smacked me in the ear. Won’t make that mistake again.” She gave a one-note laugh.

Zoe winced sympathetically. “Oh no. That would have hurt.”

Darren Kane didn’t bother speaking to Zoe at all, turning around briefly but returning to his task of chopping wood, sweat in a wide line down the back of his shirt.

As Zoe drove away, she committed to memory everything she’d learned about Lincoln today, almost forgetting that she was meant to meet up with Karstan. She sped straight past the willow tree and then had to backtrack.

Karstan was sitting on the grass, his back against the trunk of the willow, a guitar balanced on his knees. As she climbed the fence and walked to him, she could hear the rifts of what he was playing. Something a little bit country and a little bit grunge.

“Do this often?” Zoe smiled.

“The willow likes it,” he quipped. He strummed to a finish and then stood. “Jump in my chariot, m’lady.” He pointed with his thumb toward the pickup.

“But, my car?” Zoe questioned.

“Just leave it. I’ll drive you back to pick it up later. Can’t show you the sights if you’re not beside me.”

As a dimple indented his cheek, she couldn’t help but think that being beside Karstan would be a nice place to be.

As they headed into town, Zoe was relieved to see a good range of stores. She’d barely seen the town center the night before. She hated to admit it, but she was a city girl, used to shopping malls. There were two full streets of two-story, vintage-style stores, all joined together.

“So this is the hub,” said Karstan. “Well, it’s the retail hub anyway.”

“What’s the other kind of hub?”

“The meeting hall. Where concerned citizens meet twice a month to discuss town business.”

“Sounds thrilling,” Zoe commented wryly.

“Yeah, it’s a blast and a half.” He pointed to a life-size statue of a stern-looking couple in the center of the town square. “That’s Florence and Louis Montalban. They founded this town a few hundred years ago.”

Banners were festooned across the street, announcing the coming Spirit of the Harvest, whatever that was. People-like figures made of straw were tied to flag poles.

Karstan shrugged. “No big deal. Happens every year. The day before the wheat gets cut down, we hold a festival in town, with floats and stuff.”

“Well, you guys certainly have a lot of wheat here. No wonder you celebrate getting through all that.”

“Yeah. There’s a huge bakery here. Bleath makes all its own bread and wheat products.”

He drove through to the end of the main street, parking the car and pointing upward. “If you look straight up into the hills, up to the highest point, you can see the big top of the carnival. It’s a resident carnival. It’s kind of a tradition to go there after church on Sundays.”

“The carnival’s always there?”

“Yeah. Always. Locals get to go on the rides for free. It’s open from Friday night to Sunday.”

“How does it manage to make any money?”

“It fleeces the visitors.” He smiled at his own joke. “But yeah, it runs at a loss.”

As he turned the corner, she caught sight of the forbidding-looking sandstone church that stood at the end of a town square. “Do many people go to church here?”

“Most of the younger people ditch it. We go swimming in the springs in summer and go mountain and dirt biking in the fall and winter.”

He pulled the pickup over to the side. “Hungry?”

“For sure. Must be the air here.”

“Get ready for the best pies in town.”

“Pies sound great. I’ll buy, because you made breakfast.”

“Okay, if Lorna will let you. She always gives them to me for free. I do small jobs for her from time to time. She calls me if there’s a mouse in among the sacks of flour or something. A small thing to me but a big thing to her.”

As Karstan predicted, when they walked to the bakery and ordered pies, Lorna didn’t allow Zoe to pay. She raised her plump arms and shooed Zoe and Karstan away.

They stepped along the street munching the pies, Karstan pointing out various stores and their history. Some people that they passed greeted Karstan and stared at Zoe curiously, but most kept to themselves.

“It’s tourist season,” Karstan explained. “A lot of people in town are visitors.”

At first, Zoe was puzzled. Why so many people coming to this little, isolated town? Then she remembered that Bleath had a high number of clairvoyants. Was that what was drawing all these tourists?

The front window displays of a toy store named Littlewoods’ Tiny Treasures caught Zoe’s attention. Everything was wooden and exquisitely hand-carved.

She peered closely at a dollhouse that was as tall as herself, furnished with antique furniture, each piece painted and upholstered. In the basement of the dollhouse, oversize dolls sat at an oversize table on oversize chairs—a pair of Raggedy Ann brother and sister dolls, a jointed bear, and a porcelain doll. In a bedroom, ten large beds were positioned, a few of them with tiny dolls sleeping in them, arms crossed over their chests. A tiny carousel stood in the center of the basement.

The effect was whimsical, and Zoe couldn’t tear her gaze away.

“C’mon.” Karstan grinned, looking amused at Zoe’s entrancement. “Let’s go inside.”

A bell tinkled as they entered.

The toy store was unlike any Zoe had ever seen before. Not a plastic multi-produced toy anywhere. It was filled with carved and handmade items, all painted—some that looked new and others that seemed antique.

She stood on tiptoes to gain a better view of the dollhouse.

“It’s a copy of a real house,” came a voice behind her, the voice of an older lady.

Zoe twisted herself around. “Oh, hi.”

“Hello to you, too. I’m Pearl Littlewoods. Would you like a better view of the dollhouse?” The woman barely came up to Zoe’s shoulder, her hair white and fluffy and her makeup in brighter colors than Zoe had ever seen a woman of her age—perhaps early seventies—wear.

Zoe nodded. “Love to.”

“Are you here just for the day, dear?”

“For a month. I’m here as a student, doing research.”

“Oh. That sounds kind of tedious, I hope you don’t mind me saying. I do hope you manage to turn it into some sort of vacation. Bleath is lovely in the fall.”

Zoe guessed that Pearl was the type of woman who said exactly what she thought, her sweet-old-lady looks allowing her to get away with it.

Pearl swiveled the stand that held the dollhouse around. She flicked a switch near the carousel, and it started to spin. Zoe expected it to play “Greensleeves” or some other tinny carnival tune. But it played classical music.

“You said this house is a model of a real house,” said Zoe. “But surely it doesn’t really have a carousel and giant dolls in the basement?”

“Oh yes, yes it does,” Pearl told her. “The owner used to run a circus, and he was quite eccentric. He set up the basement for his granddaughter to play in, as I understand.”

“I’m going to guess the dollhouse is not for sale.”

“No, I’d never sell it,” Pearl confirmed. “Many of the display pieces here were created by the hand of a master toymaker. I paint many of the new pieces—the wooden dolls and so forth. But they’re not anywhere near as special.”

“They’re lovely.” Walking over to a high shelf, Zoe examined the dolls there. Each one was astonishingly unique—features, hair, and clothing. Both men and women. All intricately carved and lovingly painted and on stands the same as on the shelf in her bedroom at the Wilmont house. Zoe took down a girl with long red hair and freckled skin, gently touching her frilled dress. “These are simply amazing. I’m guessing these are for display, too.”

“Oh, you’re sweet.” She hobbled across to Zoe, slightly dragging her left foot. “Yes, a lot of time and effort went into those, and I couldn’t bear for them to leave the store.”

Karstan smiled at Mrs. Littlewoods indulgently. “What did you do to yourself, Pearl? You’re not walking very well.”

Zoe glanced down at Mrs. Littlewoods’s red shoes. She hadn’t realized the old woman didn’t always walk that way.

Pearl sighed. “Tripped on the stairs in the dark and twisted my ankle. It’s a bit painful, all told.”

“You poor thing,” said Zoe sympathetically. “Do you have any family who could come in and take over for a while?”

“Just my sisters here in Bleath. But they’re as old as the hills, like me. And they’ve got their own businesses to run. The busy time is really only between ten in the morning and lunch. I can manage. People blow in from out of town, browse the stores, and then stop in for Lorna’s pies. Then they head up into the hills to sightsee or have a picnic if they haven’t already eaten.”

Karstan ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it, looking deep in thought. “Zoe, what about you? You said you wanted to spend some time getting to know the town. What better way than working here for a few days? You’d get to meet a lot of the townsfolk.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” said Pearl.

Zoe opened her eyes wide. “Oh, I’m sure there’d be a local who’d be disappointed if they weren’t offered that position.”

Mrs. Littlewoods shook her head regretfully. “We have lots of jobs in town that aren’t being filled. Too many of our young people go away to college in other towns.”

“Can I ask what would be involved?” Zoe asked. “I’ll have some free time a day but not a lot.”

“Oh, just setting up stock and selling it,” Pearl told her. “Let’s say, from tomorrow until Sunday. A bit of floor sweeping if leaves have blown in. From ten to twelve midday. Fifteen dollars an hour.”

“Too easy.” Zoe smiled at Mrs. Littlewoods.

Karstan was right. She would get more of a feel for Bleath being in the center of town in the mornings. She’d just have to rearrange one or two of her interviews. And thirty dollars a day would provide enough money for her to eat for the next five days. She wouldn’t even be cutting into her savings.

7.

ZOE PULLED ON A WHITE poncho over denim shorts and then plaited her long hair to the right side of her shoulder. She liked this look. It was simple and it suited her. She kind of hoped Karstan would like it too, if she happened to see him today. She was trying not to admit to herself that she really wanted to see him.

Mrs. Littlewoods was already busy serving half a dozen customers when Zoe stepped into the toy store.

“Good morning, Zoe.” Pearl beamed at her. She wore a smock dress with a huge floppy bow on the high neckline, and powdery pink blush on her cheeks.

“Good morning. You can take a seat now, Mrs. Littlewoods, and rest up.”

“You’re a godsend. Now, should I stay and help you with the cash register for a while?”

“No, I think I’ve got it.”

Pearl had spent an hour yesterday teaching Zoe how the shelves were stocked and how to use the register.

“Well then, I’m off to paint some new dolls in my workshop.” She frowned as she looked down at Zoe’s poncho. “You have a thread hanging down, dear.” Mrs. Littlewoods produced a tiny pair of scissors from her smock pocket and snipped the thread, then pottered away, straightening items on the shelves as she left.

Zoe shot Mrs. Littlewoods’s retreating figure an amused glance then settled in behind the counter. The line of customers had grown ever longer while she’d had that short conversation with Pearl. They were standing patiently, but Zoe noted a subtle eagerness in their eyes, and she guessed they were mostly visitors. Some of them were clutching programs—pamphlets that listed all the events happening each day. She wondered if they were just excited to be in a town of mediums and séances or if they were true believers.

Zoe made a point of chatting to each customer she served. There were only a few townspeople among them, most of them buying toys for their children or the novelty items such as fridge magnets. The visitors were buying sets of tarot cards and souvenirs of Bleath.

A lanky, bespectacled man placed a pile of vintage horror magazines on the counter, all while cramming a pie into his mouth and trying to make a call on his phone. He left his events pamphlet on the counter and a pile of crumbs.

Looking down at the crumbs in disgust, Zoe was glad he was the last customer for the moment. It was close to noon and the store had emptied, as Pearl had said it would.

Zoe jerked her head up at a sudden movement toward the back of the store. A man stood there browsing a toy shelf. He had a fedora tipped low on his forehead, a scarf wrapped around his neck. She was sure she’d seen him in here earlier. As far as she could remember, he hadn’t come to the counter and bought anything.

Dusting the counter clean, she picked up the pamphlet. As she was about to drop the pamphlet in the trash, she decided to take a quick look through it.

Bleath had a full program for every day of the week. Psychic readings, tarot cards, healing sessions, séances, and tours of the town. Zoe made a mental note to join one of the tours where people learned about Bleath’s history.

Her gaze fell upon a name she knew.

Karstan Montalban

Spirit Guide

Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays.

Boreades House

Call for details.

He wasn’t kidding about what he did for a living, Zoe reflected. There it was in black and white. There were no times given anywhere. People obviously had to call to find out when events were happening. Now she knew why Karstan hadn’t dropped in this morning. Today was Wednesday, and he’d be working. Holding a séance. She was still having trouble wrapping her head around Karstan’s job.

Mrs. Littlewoods came shuffling up to the counter in slippers. “Did you survive your first morning, Zoe?”

Zoe was shaken from her thoughts. “It was fun.”

“Oh, I am glad.” She held up a soft pink baby-sized sweater. “What do you think? It’s for my granddaughter’s baby. She’ll be having the child any day now.”

“It’s really sweet,” Zoe told her. “So, it’s a girl?”

“Yes, but my granddaughter doesn’t know that yet.” Mrs. Littlewoods winked.

Zoe laughed, not knowing whether Pearl was serious or not. “I’m glad you got time to do a bit of knitting today.”

“Not anywhere near as much as me.” She fished thirty dollars from her apron pocket. “Thank you for being here.”

“Thank you.” Zoe said earnestly. She slipped the bills into the front pocket of her shorts. “It’s a fun place to work.”

“You enjoyed your first day here?”

“Loved it. I think I’m going to be sorry to leave Bleath.”

“Well, looks like the customers have all headed for the hills, so to speak. I might close the store.”

“There was one customer still here.” Zoe raised her chin, scanning the aisles. The man with the fedora was nowhere to be seen. “No, looks like I’m mistaken. He’s gone.”

The bell tinkled as a woman entered the store. She wore her shiny dark hair in a perfect bob.

“Pearl, I’m after some wooden clips,” called the woman. “My customers just love your painted—” She stopped short when she noticed Zoe. “Oh, who’s this? New employee?”

“Tegan, this is Zoe. She’ll only be here for a short while. She’s a college student doing some sort of research. She’s helping me while I’m on the mend with my foot.”

Tegan clucked in sympathy at Pearl. “Hope you’re doing better.” She turned her attention to Zoe, pinning her with vibrant green eyes. “Hi there, Zoe. Hope you enjoy our little town while you’re here.”

“It’s been great so far, and this is only my second day,” Zoe answered.

“Well, I work in the hairdressing salon a little ways down the street. If you need anything, I’m sure my boss will cut you a special deal. You’re one of us now.”

Zoe’s hand went instantly to her braid, her thoughts turning to the carnival night with Karstan. Zoe used straighteners to control her frizzy mane, and the ends tended to dry out. “My hair’s due for a treatment. Maybe Friday?”

“Oh, for sure. Anytime. Things are slow at the moment. It’s usually in the summer that people get frantic about their hair.”

Zoe laughed. “I can relate.”

Later, as Zoe drove home to the Wilmont house, she began mentally writing up her first impressions of Bleath. She’d met so many people today, all with different stories to tell. She planned taking the afternoon to type everything up into her laptop. If she waited, her impressions could merge too much with the people she was beginning to get to know. People like Mrs. Littlewoods, Lorna—and Karstan—would form the face of Bleath, and she’d forget the unsettling façade she’d first glimpsed upon entering the town. She’d forget how her unconscious fears had rocked her mind. She’d forget how the old houses and the terrifying open spaces had affected the psyche of Zoe, the city girl.

Things were changed by the act of being viewed and observed. She was aware that her observations were forming a lens for others to peer into Bleath. She knew that every observation was colored by the observer, and she needed to give the most impartial view she could manage.

8.

ZOE SLEPT SOLIDLY, WAKING TO a morning that somehow seemed open. As though a door that was normally kept securely locked had unexpectedly been left ajar.

This was a day for exploring.

She had three hours free before she was due to start work at the toy store. She’d explore the house and grounds of the Wilmont property today. The property was part of the history of this town, and it was a gift that she’d been allowed to stay here. She could also take photographs to put together with her thesis.

Jumping from the bed, she dressed quickly. She skipped her usual breakfast of coffee and toast. She missed Karstan and his best-ever omelettes.

As she stepped outside, a sudden gust of wind shook golden leaves free of the Japanese maple. Zoe wandered beneath, letting the leaves drift onto her. Behind the maple, the rich, early sun touched the heads of wheat, burnishing them to a coppery color. This place could be beautiful when it wanted to be.

Taking a fallen leaf from the ground, she studied its intense color palette.

This leaf is exactly what’s different about this place compared to home, she mused. The intensity. Everything was more intense here. As though you could even hear your own heart beat if you stopped to listen.

Zipping up her hoodie against the frosty chill, she inspected the old sheds and stable. There wasn’t much to see without a flashlight or lamp. She guessed no one had been in them for decades, the damp air inside them dark and trapped in time. She poked her head into the last of the sheds. Old sacks sat piled up in one corner. A movement near the back of the shed caught her attention. She squinted, barely able to see. She could just make out the outline of a man as he sharpened a tool. He held up the huge curved blade of a scythe, inspecting it closely.

Zoe felt her legs freeze in place.

Who was this? And why would he be sharpening a dangerous blade in the dark?

“Hello?” she called tentatively then instinctively turned her head back toward the house—and her car. She needed to know she could run and get away if she had to.

The man hadn’t answered by the time she spun back around.

The shed was empty. She scanned every dark crevice, her eyes adjusting to the dimness. There was nowhere he could hide. She spotted the scythe positioned on a hook against the wall, looking as though it hadn’t been disturbed for a long time.

There had been no man.

What she had imagined was a scythe being held up was merely a tool hanging on the wall.

She stepped away quickly. What was it about Bleath that was making her see this stuff? She was like a little kid staying overnight in an unfamiliar place, seeing monsters around every corner.

In the bright sunshine, the shadowed image of the man faded in her mind, although a patch of jitters in the middle of her back refused to go away. She kept walking, willing herself to enjoy the morning.

To the right of the house stood gnarled trees in old orchards. She couldn’t tell what had once grown there.

She followed a garden path made of stepping stones until it spread out into a circle, with the remains of an old rose garden in the center. The garden was a tangle of roses, weeds, and rusty gardening tools. Zoe peered into the middle of it. There was a mess of junk: old costume jewelry, a handbag, trinket boxes, a small broken mirror. Everything with decidedly art deco lines. Inside a cracked glass jar, a wooden doll stood, half-covered in moss. The sight of the doll made her shiver.

Someone must have buried it all here a long time ago. By the look of the scratched-up soil, the cat had been digging into it. If she had gardening gloves, she could rake through it and take a better look. But she didn’t. And she wasn’t going to risk being pricked by rose thorns and grazed by rusted tools, let alone the dirt factor.

Grass and weeds tripped and knotted around her feet as she continued along the stepping-stone path. The path became completely overgrown and impossible to follow. It seemed to have once led to the well. She tossed up whether it was worth battling her way through to the well. She decided it would make a nice, historical photo. People didn’t have wells anymore—not where she came from anyway. The only wells she’d seen before were those garden features in people’s front yards that always looked a bit cheesy.

She trudged through to the well. Close up, she could see the worn, rounded stone and moss growing in the mortar. There was something mournful about the well, something about its isolated position and in the way that vines had wound themselves tightly around the exterior, cracking the stone in places and claiming the well for their own.

She snapped two photos. She decided that they would look great in black and white, with the contrast bumped way up to show the mood.

Taking a few steps forward, she leaned over the lip of the well, gazing into its circular depths. It speared down so deep it was just black at the bottom. As she watched, the darkness at the bottom of the well seemed to crawl up the walls, climbing faster and faster as it moved toward the top. Gripping the edge, she tried to pull herself back. But she was immobile.

Zoe managed to snap her head back and spring away from the well.

No, the well released her.

Gasping, she backed away.

The world of sunlight and grass and wheat fields enveloped her again.

Dizzy. She’d been dizzy. The same type of vertigo people get from heights. The well was so deep, she’d been afraid of falling in, she reasoned.

Still, she rushed away and back to the house. She’d lost any interest in the well or exploring further.

The best way of making sense of it was to write about it. She needed to write down what happened. Later, when her time in Bleath was up and she’d returned home, she knew she’d have trouble remembering how vivid some of her experiences here in Bleath had been. The notes would help her understand how the things that people imagined seemed so real to them.

First, she intended having a coffee. She put the kettle on boil, hooking a foot around a chair leg and pulling it out. But before she went to sit down, something caught her eye and made her stop still.

The house seemed different.

Had the walls been this dusty lilac color before? She could have sworn they were blue.

The thought came back to her that the act of observing something could change it.

But that was about perceptions. Things didn’t actually physically change.

Blue and lilac were close in color. The wallpaper stripes that looked blue in one light could easily look green or gray or lilac in another. And two people could look at the same time and say the walls were one or the other. And both would be right.

You’re overthinking this, Zoe.

They’re just walls.

Still, she jumped as the kettle boiled. Pouring the water, she settled back into her chair. She mixed in the sachet of powdered milk and ground coffee, wishing she had some cold milk to cool it down. She took a burning gulp anyway. The familiarity of the taste soothed her.

She cradled the cup in her hands, staring out the window at the picture-perfect fall trees.

Was there something about this town that affected the people here? She’d felt it almost as soon as she entered Bleath. The heaviness, the otherness of the town. Was this town affecting the psyche of the children here? And how? She needed to find out. But she suspected she’d need a lot more time than her allotted month.

Pulling her laptop from her bag, she set it up on the table. A small white diary fell to the floor. Sighing, she scooped it up. At the suggestion of a counselor, she’d starting using a diary just after Darien broke up with her. She’d forgotten it was at the bottom of her cavernous bag. After faithfully writing in the diary every day for a fortnight, she’d given up. She hadn’t written an entry since. She tried to pretend that meant she was over him but failed to convince herself. She wasn’t over him. The diary had remained untouched because it hurt too much to even write down his name.

A photo poked from between the diary’s pages. She pulled it out. It was a photo of herself and Darien, snapped at a party six months ago. It had been a 1920s dress-up thing. She’d worn a silver dress that looked damned good against her brown skin and a silver headband, her long, dark hair loose. Darien had worn a mobster’s pinstripe suit that suited his dark coloring to a T. He had his arm around her waist and a cigar hanging from the edge of a smug smile. Everyone had said how perfect they looked together.

Darien had the identical photo pinned to his dorm wall at college. She wondered if it was still there.

Of course it’s still there, she thought. He wouldn’t bother to take the photo down because Darien didn’t love her. The daily reminder of that photo wouldn’t faze him at all. When he got a new girlfriend, she would tear it from the wall.

Pushing the diary aside as though it was laced with poison, she opened up the laptop and began typing. She created a folder named The Wilmont House. She wrote down what happened, afterwards realizing she’d left out the parts where she’d felt like she’d been frozen and unable to move. Because it sounded kind of . . . hysterical. She wanted to be accurate, but she also didn’t want one of her college professors reading that part and thinking she had a screw loose. She mused that personal accounts were, by nature, as biased as anything. They either didn’t tell the full truth—by omission—or they exaggerated the truth.

Closing her eyes, she typed in the missing parts. She decided she had to record everything. And later, at home, she’d decide what to keep and what not to keep for her thesis.

“Do you always write with your eyes shut?” A deep, smirking voice cut through her concentration.

Zoe raised her eyes to a tall figure standing in the kitchen doorway.

Karstan. Dressed in blue. Blue jeans. Blue t-shirt. Blue eyes under his tousled crop of hair.

She slammed down the lid of the laptop. “Helps me think.”

He strode across to the table. “It’s cute.”

“Funny.” She made a wry face. “Hey, I missed your omelette this morning.”

“Oh yeah? I can still make you one.”

He leaned a hand on the table as he said that. For a second, she imagined him leaning a little lower . . . and kissing her. She blinked tightly, forcing the thought away.

He frowned, eyeing her as though she was a zoo exhibit. “You seem a little tense or something. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s great.”

“You like the toy store?”

“I love the toy store.”

“Good.”

His voice. His voice. His voice. It stole her breath away. Anything he said sounded so damned sexy. Even if it was just one word.

His gaze fell to the diary. He flicked it open with a finger. Before she could grab it, he snatched it up.

“Hey, what’s this?” He held the diary up high, higher than she could reach. He began reading: I can’t keep pretending everything’s okay. Every time he walks past, I’m a mess inside.

“Don’t read that,” she breathed, climbing on a chair to try to seize the diary back.

“Is this about me?” he joked, taking a step away.

“It’s personal. You don’t read people’s diaries.”

“But you had this just lying there waiting for someone to read it.”

“I did not.”

“Zoe, I can’t concentrate on reading this with you trying to snatch it away from me,” he said in a pretend pompous voice.

“Just give it back.”

“I think I need a more private reading place.” He headed back out the door.

He broke into a run as she followed. At first, she thought he was going to make a beeline for his pickup, which was parked all the way out on the road. But he raced away into the wheat field instead.

She charged after him. After entering the field, he could have gone any which way. She bit into her lower lip in frustration, hot, watery tears forming in her eyes. Karstan was just another guy who did unpredictable things to her.

“Karstan!”

“Right here.”

She pushed through the wheat and found him standing there, still reading.

“Can I have it back now?” she asked in a controlled voice.

“Yeah. In a sec.” He bent his head over the page and starting reading out loud again: I don’t know who I am anymore. Darien was supposed to be my future. That’s what he said he was. And now I’ve been cut loose and I’m bleeding. No one gets that about me. I don’t show how I feel, but I’m haemorrhaging my soul here, and people are just treading over the blood I’m spilling, telling me it’s going to be okay. It’s not going to be okay.

Zoe’s chest sunk inward. Did she really write that? It sounded so damned dramatic.

The next moment, she knew why it sounded so different to her ears now. It was because Karstan had been speaking the words. For the first time, she saw the whole thing with Darien and her in another shade of light. She was okay. She wasn’t haemorrhaging her soul. She was being dramatic. People broke up with people all the time. They cheated on them and lied to them, and she wasn’t the first person those things had happened to.

Karstan snapped the book shut. “That’s the last thing you wrote.”

“It was a messy breakup,” she told him. “And none of your business.”

“Whoever this Darien character is, I want to punch him to the floor for making you feel like that.”

“I don’t feel like that anymore.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I just had a bad day when I wrote that stuff.”

“Seems like you had two straight weeks of bad days.”

“Good on you for reading my diary. Now give it back.”

“Okay, but you have to come and get it.”

Zoe marched over to him and reached for the book.

But he caught her hand with his other hand and pulled her close. Bending his head, he kissed her. A quick kiss, but it stormed through her.

“Don’t let guys hurt you,” he told her. “Run away from bad boys.”

She couldn’t speak. Grabbing the diary, she folded her arms around it and started back for the house, her mind burning from shame and her lips burning from his touch.

Did he think he could do anything he liked? Taking her diary, reading it out loud, and then kissing her?

“Zoe!” Running after her, he grasped her arm. She stopped but didn’t turn back to him.

He exhaled audibly, walking around in front of her and shaking his dark waves of hair. “Sorry if I crossed the line.”

“Don’t do that again. Ever.”

“The kiss, or reading your diary?” A small grin played at the edge of his mouth.

“Both.”

His grin turned downward. “Still friends?”

“Friends don’t do that kind of stuff.”

“I’m a country man. I’m not the most subtle person. I really like you.”

“Maybe we should start again.” She stuck out her hand for a handshake. “I’m Zoe. Here to conduct a study for my college thesis.”

He shook her hand. “I’m Karstan. At your service.”

“I don’t need you to be at my service.”

“I thought we were starting again,” he said, sounding injured. “You have to pretend I haven’t made you angry with me.”

She was confused about him now, but she’d had to admit that he’d been a help to her since she’d arrived in Bleath. Maybe she needed to forgive him. “Okay, I don’t need to pretend. I’m not angry anymore. I’d like us to be friends.”

He grinned widely now, showing his evenly spaced teeth.

“But a country man is the last thing you are,” she added. “Last time I checked, country boys didn’t hold séances.”

His long lashes angled downward. “Yeah. You win.”

“Maybe I’ll come and watch your next one.”

He jolted his head up, looking straight at her. “Maybe you won’t. You’ve obviously got no interest in séances and such.”

“But they’re as much a part of this town as anything else. So why shouldn’t I?”

“Because what I do is kind of embarrassing to me, that’s why.”

“That’s rich, coming from someone who just read my diary.”

“How about we agree not to speak about diaries or séances ever again?”

He spoke as though she was going to be here forever and as though they’d already known each other forever. She realized the sting of him reading her diary had already vanished. And his kiss hadn’t been unwanted—it had just come at a bad time.

Apart from this morning, something about Karstan was just so easy and comfortable. Like she could slip into his rhythm and be soothed, his words like lullabies in her ears.

But she didn’t want his words to be lullabies. Darien’s lullabies had ended up being like the Rock-a-bye Baby rhyme—the bough breaking and making her fall.

“How about we agree not to make promises we can’t keep?” she said firmly, surprising herself.

His eyebrows shot up. “Game and match, Zoe Cosgrove.”

He walked away whistling then stalled and looked back over his shoulder. “Dinner and the carnival at eight tomorrow night? Almost forgot what I came here to ask you.”

She almost answered with, it’s a date, then checked herself. She didn’t want this to be a date. “Dinner too? Eight it is. I’m paying.”

“Okay, ladies’ choice who pays. See you then.” He paused, jamming his hands into his pockets. “Hey, wear boots.”

“Boots?”

“Just do it.” He gave a quick grin.

His tone was quieter now. Maybe he figured out that he did the wrong thing, she thought. He kept walking, across and up the dirt path to his pickup, which was parked out on the road, near the well. No wonder she hadn’t heard his car drive in, because he hadn’t actually driven it in. Had he wanted to sneak up on her?

She made a mental note to ask him why he parked out there.

9.

IT WAS A BUSY MORNING at Littlewoods’ Tiny Treasures.

Zoe’s two hours sped past. She stayed an extra hour just to help with the influx of customers. She served the last trickle of customers at one in the afternoon, grabbing a quick pie at the bakery. She then jumped into her car to go looking for Ava MacGregor’s house—the little girl she was interviewing next.

Ava MacGregor’s house ended up being close to the center of town. Which was fortunate, as Zoe would have been running late otherwise. She stepped out of her car in front of a set of high gates. Behind the gate, rows of poppies lined either side of a stone path. Gardens of flowers grew obediently in rockeries. The house itself was huge and much more modern than most in Bleath.

Zoe snapped a photo—making a mental note to ask if she could use the photo in her thesis. She unlatched the gate and closed it carefully behind her as two fluff-ball black puppies raced across the lawn toward her.

The pups jumped at her excitedly, springing off her legs as she rang the doorbell.

A man with a phone plastered to his ear answered the door. He was wearing a slightly crumpled suit, his bald head almost touching the top of the door frame. “Yes?”

“I’m Zoe Cosgrove. Here to talk to Ava?” She hated that she’d put that request in the tone of a question. She’d have to make an effort to sound a lot more professional.

“Well, come on in. But leave the mutts out. They’re chewing everything in damned sight.” His voice sounded vaguely Texan.

But the dogs wriggled past his legs and into the house.

Sighing heavily, he turned and walked after them. He put the phone back to his ear. “Yeah, Mike, go ahead with that.”

Zoe wandered behind him.

Beyond the foyer stood a large open space with a shiny marble floor. The dogs skidded and rolled across it. Zoe gasped as she noticed a swaying reflection in the marble and raised her eyes. A young girl clung to a rope high off the floor—the rope wound around the top of the stairway bannister. She wore a spangled bolero cardigan and red shorts and boots, her blonde hair drawn into a high ponytail.

“I told you no more ropes, Duckie,” the man called to her. He sounded more exasperated than worried.

“It’s okay, Daddy. I know what I’m doing.”

“There’s someone here to see you, so you’re gonna have to come down anyway,” the man told the girl.

Leaning back, the girl surveyed Zoe upside-down, without interest.

Her father pushed the phone into the pocket of his business shirt. “This is Ava. She’s insisted on being called Duckie for the past three years. If you can get her to stay still for more than a minute, you’re welcome to talk to her.”

Zoe copied the name Duckie over the name Ava in her mind. She wanted to be sure she called the girl by her preferred name.

Duckie pulled herself up and began climbing the rope to the top stair landing.

“How old is she?” Zoe asked the man quietly.

“Eight or nine.”

Zoe shot him a frown without meaning to. It was strange he didn’t know how old his own daughter was.

“My wife’s abroad,” he said by way of apology. “She takes note of the birthdays.”

“Mr. MacGregor, I’m going to be recording this interview with Duckie. Do I have your permission for that?”

“Oh sure. And call me Stewart.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey, and if you figure out how long this stage is likely to last, let me know. She’s wearing me out.”

Zoe shot him a close-lipped smile as she set up her recording device. It wasn’t likely that she’d discover any such thing. “Can I ask what you know about Duckie’s imaginary world?”

“Eh? Oh, that. Yeah. Well, Duckie’s an odd one. Thinks she ran away to join the circus, even though she didn’t, of course.”

“I’m not quite following.”

“She thinks she’s some kind of circus performer in the world she escapes to, that’s what I’m saying. You follow? But not any old circus. This is a circus that was last around in the 1920s. She’s got the lingo and she’s got the stunts. All just came out of nowhere. Bam.”

“Wow. How long has this been happening?”

“You’d have to ask the wife. I’d say about three years. She was just a little thing when she started with all this.” He turned as Duckie slid down the bannister side-saddle. “Here she is now.”

He placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Honey, this lady’s here to have a few words with you. About your circus.”

Duckie shot Zoe a suspicious look. “Us circus folk don’t like to talk with outsiders.”

“Well, how about you just show me what you can do? Your dad said you know how to do lots of circus stuff.”

She shrugged, flipping her ponytail with her hand. “Sure, doll. I can do that.”

“As long as it’s safe,” Zoe added anxiously. “No climbing.”

Duckie didn’t give much warning before she performed five somersaults across the wide floor, the puppies charging around her the whole time. She stopped near a hall table, with perfect timing. Without taking a breath, she picked up three small crystal statues and juggled them.

“Told ya,” said Mr. MacGregor, not batting an eyelid. His phone buzzed in his pocket. “Excuse me, will ya? Duckie, make Zoe feel welcome. I won’t be long.”

Duckie set the statues back down on the table.

Zoe’s claps echoed hollowly in the cavernous room. “You must have been training hard to learn to do all that.”

Duckie put her hands on her tiny waist. “That’s circus life. You got to give the people what they want.”

“Do you know how to do other stuff?”

“Yeah, but I can’t show you it here. We don’t have trapezes. Or elephants.” Her dark eyes were serious.

“Wow, elephants, huh?”

She bent down to snuggle the puppies. One of them made a bright yellow puddle on the pale marble.

“Should we go outside?” Zoe suggested.

Duckie shrugged. “We can if you want.” She led Zoe through a shining white kitchen to the yard. The yard was unlike any of the rustic, cottage-like gardens Zoe had seen so far in Bleath. The grass was manicured and the shrubs cut in fantastical shapes. Elephants and mermaids and others.

“Who does all this?” Zoe ran a hand along the tail of a dolphin.

“The gardeners. Daddy asks what I want and he tells the gardeners.”

The dogs tore around, unconcerned with the incredible sculptures.

She needed to get a real conversation started with Duckie but wasn’t sure how to proceed. She had the feeling that Duckie would cut her off cold if she pushed. Duckie had already said she didn’t talk to outsiders. Zoe had to make herself seem to be on the little girl’s side.

Zoe ran a hand over a large shrub shaped like a big top. “I love the circus.”

“What do you love about it, exactly?” Duckie’s voice was cautious.

“Well, people get so stuffy when they go places like the theatre or ballet. But you can be a big kid at the circus and just enjoy yourself.”

The girl smiled with very pretty teeth. “Yeah, people can be a bunch of stuffy stiffs. But they let loose at the circus.”

Zoe sat herself on the grass, letting the puppies jump on her freely. “What are their names?”

“Raggedy and Raggedy.”

“Both the same name?”

“Yes. That way, if one runs away, I’ve still got a Raggedy. I named them after the Raggedy dolls that belong to a girl at the circus. Boy and girl dolls. She calls both of them Raggedy.”

Zoe remembered her grandmother having a brother and sister doll pair named Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. Zoe had found them kind of scary, sitting there on their cabinet shelf, watching her with their button eyes.

“Sounds like you’ve gotten to know the circus people well,” Zoe commented.

She shrugged, continuing to play with the dogs.

“Do the people there wonder who you are?” Zoe ventured, trying to ignore the fact that one of the puppies was now gnawing on her shoe.

“I told them I’m the bastard kid of one of the circus hands,” said Duckie in a nonchalant voice. “The circus took me in and don’t question it when I come and go. I’m heading over to the other side more and more these days.”

Surprised by her harsh answer, Zoe sat back for a moment before asking the next question. “Does it feel like family? On the other side?”

“Not exactly. They’re pretty tough on me. But I like that. And the girl with the dolls—Sparrow—she’s taken me under her wing.”

“Sparrow?”

“That’s her performance name. She won’t tell me her real name.”

“Is that how you got the name Duckie? Is it a performance name, too?”

“You got it, doll. They gave me that name because I was always trailing after someone, trying to learn what I could. Just like a baby duck. I was six back then.”

“So, you’re nine now?”

“Got it in the bag.”

“What do you like most about the circus?”

“I like the applause. And the excitement. And I like the animals. The animals don’t pretend anything.” She grew quiet. “One day, I’ll go to the other side and I won’t come back.”

Zoe held her breath. The girl was telling her more than Zoe thought she would.

“Have you given your circus a name?” Zoe bit her lip hard. She’d phrased that badly, and she knew that the second the words had tumbled from her lips.

The girl slitted her dark-brown eyes. “It already has a name. The Fiveash Circus. And the circus isn’t mine.”

“Yes, sorry. That’s what I meant.”

One of the puppies tore at the tassels on Duckie’s bolero cardigan.

“You’re going to ruin it,” Duckie admonished the dog. Slipping the cardigan off, she turned to hang it over the back of the chair behind her.

Zoe noticed bruises around her wrists. “What happened there? The bruises?”

Duckie turned sharply, folding her arms against her body. “I fell from the trapeze and the guy caught me. Just in time, too.”

The handprints were large and fresh. Could it be Duckie’s father, and Duckie was trying to cover up for him? If it wasn’t him, why hadn’t he noticed such large bruises on his daughter? Was the whole invention of the circus a way for Duckie to escape from her home life?

Zoe ached to ask Duckie deeper questions. But she was wary of setting off alarm bells in the little girl’s mind. Duckie was obviously used to keeping things to herself.

“It isn’t nice to get hurt,” Zoe said carefully.

“You get used to getting hurt. It’s part of the circus.”

“But you’re just a kid.”

“There’s a saying in the circus: You can be safe at your funeral.”

“They say that?”

“Dollface, they say lots of things.”

She sounded so, so much older than her years. More than that, she sounded like she was from another era. The 20s era. Who was she getting this stuff from? Zoe wished the girl’s mother was here. Perhaps the mother spoke like this. But Ava’s mother wouldn’t have been around in that era either.

“Where is it—the circus?” Zoe asked.

“It goes everywhere.”

“A traveling circus?”

“Of course.”

“But how do you manage to find it?”

“I always find it. The Path leads straight there.”

“There’s a path?”

“In the wheat fields.”

Zoe shivered. She was growing to hate the wheat fields. “How did you get onto the Path, the first time?”

“The Magician showed me the way.”

“So, he’s from the circus world?”

“Of course.”

It seemed obvious that Duckie was fielding Zoe’s questions. Zoe decided to ask a question that might give her more answers. “Can you take me to the Path?”

“No. It’s too dangerous. I tried to take Melody Holmes there once. She was my best friend. But I lost her, somewhere in the gray.”

“What’s the gray?”

“Everything goes gray when you take the path. Melody got scared and wanted to go back. But you can’t go back. Not when you’re in the middle.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“It didn’t happen to me,” she insisted. “It happened to Melody. But Melody wasn’t someone I should have been bringing through to my world, anyway. Too much of a scaredy-pants. I should have brought a different girl.”

The father walked out, awkwardly balancing a tray of mini-packets of candy and cookies, and a pitcher of juice. “I didn’t know what you girls would like, so I threw a few things in the mix.”

“That’s okay, Daddy, Zoe was just leaving.” She turned to look at Zoe with a pointed look on her face.

He shrugged, turning to Zoe, making the juice slosh from the pitcher. “Oh, well, that’s okay then. Did you get what you wanted?”

“It was a great conversation about the circus.” Zoe nodded.

He grunted. “Maybe you can come back again. Do some girl stuff with Duckie. Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with her. But she seems to like you.”

“I’ll be working down at the toy store tomorrow, if Duckie wants to drop by.”

“The toy store, eh? Might just take you up on that one.”

“I got a performance at the circus tomorrow, Daddy,” Duckie said. “I don’t have time to play with toys.”

“I’ll come back another time, if Duckie will have me,” said Zoe.

The little girl stared steadily at Zoe, tilting her head. “If it’s not soon, it might be too late.”

It was only as Zoe was driving away that she wondered if that was just another fantasy of Duckie’s or if it was a cry for help.

Zoe drove straight to the Wilmont house and typed up everything about her strange conversation with Duckie MacGregor before she forgot it—all the nuances that the recording device couldn’t record. Like the distant look on Duckie’s face when she spoke about her circus.

And she wrote down the name of the girl Duckie had told her had been her best friend. Melody Holmes. Melody was probably part of Duckie’s paracosm, but she needed to check to make sure.

One thing the kids with paracosms had in common so far was their isolation. These kids seemed so alone. It was hard to determine which had come first—the isolation or the imaginary worlds.

10.

ZOE WOKE, STARTLED BY A noise that grated along her bones.

Caught between heavy sleep and being fully roused, she checked her watch. Two in the damned morning.

The sound came again.

Scratching.

Intense.

Could it be a branch caught somewhere, being buffeted by the wind? The wind was pretty fierce out there. So fierce she could hear the rustling of the wheat fields as the dark air whipped through them.

The scratching grew louder.

She stilled, listening.

In conspiracy with the wind, the old house groaned and rattled, weighted with age and secrets.

The noise was coming from inside the room.

From beneath the bed.

She snapped fully awake.

Dumb cat locked itself in the box again.

Sliding from the bed, Zoe knelt to the floor and dragged the chest out.

She jerked her head up as two points of light caught her eye.

Bluebell sat on the corner chair of the room, her moonlit cat’s eyes staring at Zoe.

Zoe’s fingers froze on the chest.

I’m not opening that.

Not. Not. Not.

“It’s just a box,” Zoe told herself.

She flung the lid open.

The box was empty.

*

Zoe parked her car near the town square and dozed there, waiting for the time to turn to ten o’clock. She’d run out of the Wilmont house at first light. Watching the tourists stroll around the square, she felt stupid now to have been so afraid of a noise last night.

As soon as the clock display announced it was nine o’clock, Zoe decided she’d go in early to the toy store. She could help get things ready for Pearl.

Pearl rubbed her eyes tiredly as she greeted Zoe. “You are a gem.”

“You look like you could use a good sleep.” Zoe eyed the elderly lady with concern.

“Oh, never mind me. I’ve been working hard on the new doll, trying to get it finished.” She patted Zoe’s hand. “But thanks to you, I’ve been able to keep my feet up.”

As the minutes ticked toward ten, the store became busy again. Zoe noted the extra edge of excitement on people’s faces today. The deeper flush of pink on cold-stung cheeks and the searching look in people’s eyes and their quick movements. No shuffling through the toy store and lazy browsing today. People were on a schedule, asking her where to find certain mystics and tarot readers. She had to tell them she was new and didn’t know, and then they’d stare back in disbelief. As though they couldn’t accept that there was someone new to the town who was not immediately seeking out its spirit whisperers.

Outside, rain lashed the pavements, the clouds a deep, threatening gray. But the stream of customers didn’t stop.

For the third time this week, she spotted the odd man in the toy store, the one with the fedora. He’d still never bought anything. She wondered if he had no money to buy, although his clothing looked not only eccentric but expensive.

Duckie and her father didn’t show up at the toy store at all. Not that Zoe thought they would. Was Duckie in her bedroom right now, lost in her thrilling world of the big top? Zoe needed to figure out how to help her—and how to help Lincoln.

At midday, she gratefully took her morning’s pay from Mrs. Littlewoods and headed down the street to buy one of the town’s famous pies. People clutched scarves and collars close beneath their chins, but their eyes remained alive. The day grew even darker, with a dampness saturating the air—the town unearthed and its secrets waiting to be revealed.

She remembered the brochure she’d seen of the week’s events. Fridays and the weekends were the busiest here. Karstan was working today, at the Boreades house, wherever that was. An idea formed in her mind. She’d already told Karstan she was going to go and watch him conduct a séance, and even though she’d been joking at the time, it seemed to make sense now. If she truly wanted some understanding of Bleath, what better way than this? And, she had to admit, if Karstan was going to find it embarrassing if she attended, then it was the perfect payback for him reading her diary.

Zoe walked down to the Bleath Hair Salon to have her hair done. She pushed the glass door open.

Three hairdressers sat inside chatting.

Tegan jumped to her feet. “Zoe! Good to see you again!”

“Hi. Hope this is a good time?” Zoe asked out of courtesy, even though the salon was empty.

“No bookings for the afternoon so far,” said Tegan. “You’ll get star treatment.” She introduced her to a man and woman who were still sitting on the stools. “Yvonne and Reynold, this is Zoe. She’s been working mornings at Littlewoods.”

“Well you just park yourself and let Tegan work her magic,” said Reynold. “You have great hair. So strong looking.”

“I just wish it didn’t frizz so much, especially when there’s rain on the way,” said Zoe. “Like today.”

“Yeah, the atmosphere’s really heavy out there. Doesn’t help you girls.” Reynold chuckled, running his hands over his short, spiked hair.

Tegan showed Zoe to a chair. Leaning Zoe’s head back over a sink, she began washing her hair. “Do you want a trim, too? The ends are looking a little dry.”

“Yep. Go for it.”

Wind pushed rain about in erratic patterns outside. Zoe doubted she and Karstan would still be going to the carnival. And if they didn’t go to the carnival, what were they going to do after dinner?

“Tegan,” Zoe said, settling into the chair. “Could you tell me what there is to do here on a Friday night? Apart from the carnival I mean. Is there a cinema?”

“There’s a little cinema on Rye Street. Plays mostly arthouse with some new stuff. That’s about it, really. Were you planning on heading out by yourself?”

“Um, no. With Karstan Montalban.”

She made an O with her red lips and opened her dark eyes wide. “Ooh, Karstan? He rarely takes a girl out.”

“It’s not a date,” Zoe hurried to say. “He’s just showing me around town.”

“Didn’t he already do that? Seems he’s going above and beyond.” Tegan winked.

“Well, I haven’t seen the carnival yet,” Zoe said, realizing she couldn’t rescue herself now. And what did it matter if they thought she was going out on a date with him anyway?

“Hope the rain dries up for you. It’s not like any carnival you’ve ever seen before.” Guiding Zoe’s head up, she began towel drying her hair.

“There seems to be quite a lot that’s different about Bleath,” Zoe commented.

“Yep,” called Yvonne from her stool. “Takes away a bit of the boredom of living in a small town.”

Zoe relaxed, almost falling into sleep as Tegan smoothed a treatment through her hair and wrapped it up in a warm towel. The three hairdressers chatted to her about life in Bleath for the next twenty minutes. Until it was time to rinse the treatment out.

“I’ll put a bit of anti-frizz styler through before I dry it,” Tegan told her. “Hope it lasts through the weather.”

Tegan expertly blow dried Zoe’s hair in a way Zoe could never manage to do herself.

Zoe studied herself in the mirror, thinking what a difference good hair made. “I wish it looked like this all the time.”

“Sweetheart, you’re a knockout,” called Reynold from across the room.

“Tegan did an amazing job.” Zoe nodded. “I want to take her back with me to NYC.”

Tegan unclipped the protective smock from around Zoe’s shoulders.

“Oh, I forgot to ask,” said Zoe. “Where exactly is the Boreades house?”

Tegan exchanged glances with Yvonne and Reynold. “The Boreades house? You’re planning on going there?”

“Well, I . . . maybe. It was just a thought.”

“Sure, hon,” said Tegan. “If you head up into the hills as high as you can go, almost as high as the carnival, you’ll see a forked road. Take the one that veers left and follow it as far as it goes. It’s a bit of a steep climb. You can’t miss the house.”

“Oh, all the way up there? Okay, thanks.” Zoe smiled, but inwardly she was cringing at the thought of driving to the top of the hills in heavy rain.

She paid and stepped back onto the emptied street. Pulling her jacket’s hood over her head, she hurried along to the parking lot where she’d left her car.

The toy store had already closed. All the stores had stopped trading. She angled her head back to the hairdressing salon. The CLOSED sign had been turned facing outward on the door. It was hard to believe that less than an hour ago, the stores and street had been bustling. The street now had the outward appearance of an abandoned town.

Dense, steel-wool clouds were pushing downward, closing out the light, moving the day into an early twilight.

An almost nauseous sensation wound through Zoe’s spine. The thought came to her that this was the real Bleath and the rest just a façade.

But that was crazy.

Maybe the sick feeling was kind of an aftermath of hearing Karstan reading out parts of her diary earlier. It had brought the pain rushing back. She’d cried a river during those days. Maybe being on her own like this, away from friends and family, she was forced to confront the worst thing about what Darien did. He’d triggered that old childhood feeling that she had no control over her life.

When she was eight, her mother’s sister had been found murdered in her apartment. Zoe’s mom had fallen into a black depression in the months afterward. The experience had left Zoe with the lingering thought that life could turn upside down at any moment. Things you thought were safe were not safe. Things you thought were real and good were not real and good.

Thunder rolled like dice on the thick table of clouds.

11.

RAIN SHEETED IN FRONT OF her windscreen as she drove into the hills. Her car hated the rain and steep climb as much as she did, threatening to either skid out of control or shudder to a stop at any second. She’d saved enough to buy a better car last year, but then she’d blown the lot on a vacation to Canada with Darien.

Wind whipped the flags on the carnival big top as she neared the peak of the hills.

Hills schmills, Zoe thought darkly, they should call this place what it is. A damned mountain.

The road forked in front of her. Okay, I go left here. Left onto a gravel road that’s wide enough for only one car, with steep drops either side, that winds around and I won’t be able to see what’s coming the other way.

She turned left, kicking herself for taking the Canadian vacation instead of getting herself a decent car. She took the road slowly, praying her car made it and that no vehicle came in the other direction. She’d be forced to go right to the edge of the drop-off if another car was coming down the hill. She imagined her wheels slipping over the edge, and she shivered.

She didn’t breathe easily again until she spotted the house. The Boreades house, tall and sprawling, occupied a place atop a forbidding-looking hill—the hill vertical and gouged, looking as though it had been clawed away. Tendrils of smoke puffed from a chimney, not traveling far before being pummelled by the rain. As Zoe drove the rest of the way, she watched the whole town of Bleath spreading out far below. Six or seven cars were parked on the grassy land in front of the house, including Karstan’s pickup. As she drove next to the pickup, she glanced at the car’s digital clock. She was late. The trip had taken longer than she’d expected, and she’d taken it slow on the way up.

Through the curtain of rain, she studied the house and land. The property looked as though gardens had once surrounded the house but had grown over. Ivy twisted around the iron fences, the double gate having the stylized image of a griffin in flight carved into it.

The house was constructed of stone, just like the Montalbans’ house, the surfaces darkened. It rose three stories high, the top story with enormous stained-glass windows on all sides, with the two windows that she could see from this angle bearing the same griffin image of the gate.

Zoe wondered if this house had been chosen to hold séances in specifically due to its isolation and its eerily abandoned look. Maybe it would be all too easy to imagine ghosts here.

She stepped from the car, drawing her hood over her head, wishing that she hadn’t come. It wasn’t for fun and games that people came to Boreades House. She had no business being here.

But she was here now. And she wasn’t about to head straight back down the hills in this weather. She hurried to the gate and pushed it open then walked along a path to a front door that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a castle.

Okay, do I knock? Nope. It’s a séance. No one’s going to be happy about me rocking up if it’s already started. I’ll just sneak in.

Surprisingly, the door opened fairly silently, considering the weight of it.

She closed it behind her. A small foyer stood before her, with a coat stand.

A cloistered, dark hush enveloped her. She had the sensation of air pressing against her, but that wasn’t possible. Air inside houses didn’t do that. It was nerves. She didn’t know what Karstan would feel about her turning up here today. Or what his spirit-guide session would be like.

She stepped along a hall that opened onto two main large spaces. One of the spaces was empty, a wood fire sending a warm glow onto the upholstered chairs. In the other space, a dozen or so people sat around a large oval table. They looked as though they were waiting. Karstan wasn’t there, and Zoe guessed they were waiting for him. She was relieved that the séance hadn’t started yet.

A door was ajar further down the corridor—she could only just see the back of a man that could be Karstan. She crept closer. It was him. In a suit, with his wavy locks neat and tamed.

He turned as she nudged the door open.

“Shut it,” he hissed. Anger flashed in his eyes, but just briefly.

Flinching, she stepped inside and closed the door.

“What are you doing here, Zo?” His tone softened. And he’d called her Zo, like a friend would.

She relaxed but was still tentative as she walked to him. Something about him was very different.

A medley of scents thickened in the air. Incense, alcohol . . . and pot.

He stubbed out a joint in a potted plant. A glass of what looked like bourbon sat on the small table beside him. “I didn’t want you to see this.”

“See what?”

“This, dummy.” He waved his hand. “My Friday morning preparations.”

“You do this every Friday morning? Drink, and smoke pot?”

He eyed her with a wry expression. “Yeah. I do. I need something to get me through it. This is the biggest day of the week, and people expect a lot.”

“Do you get nervous?”

“I get nervous, but also, I just don’t want to be here.”

“Sucks that you have to do something you hate.”

He exhaled, drumming his fingers on the plush leather arm of the chair. “One of these days, someone’s going to work out I’m a fake, and then it’ll all be over. I dread that day, but at the same time, maybe it would be the best thing.”

“Or you could just walk away.”

“We’ve been through that. There’s no walking away.”

“Sorry. But I’m going to keep working on you. Sometimes, when push comes shove, we have to do things we never thought we’d do.”

“Thanks for the psych session.”

She bit into her lip, hoping she hadn’t hurt his pride. “Mind if I stay and watch today?”

“You sure you want to?”

“Yes. I want to see what you do.”

Gulping down the rest of his drink, he stood. “Okay, Miss Zoe Cosgrove, will you do me the pleasure of accompanying the resident medium to the spiritual gathering?”

“I will indeed.” She smiled, taking his arm.

Together, they walked along the hall and into the dining room. Questioning faces turned toward them.

“Zoe is new in town, and she’s going to sit in on this session. If anyone has any objections, please state so now. We don’t want any negative energy once we’ve begun.”

A man—with powdery gray hair and a sad, drooping face that reminded Zoe of a bulldog—touched the ends of his fingers together. “She reminds me of my Katherine.”

Zoe didn’t know who his Katherine was, but she suspected she was long dead.

“As long as there’s no screaming.” A thin woman with sharp edges everywhere—her shoulders, her fingernails, lines of her cheeks, and her harsh dark eyeliner—straightened in her chair.

“I don’t plan on screaming,” Zoe muttered, plunging her hands into the pockets of her jeans, uncomfortable with the eleven sets of eyes on her.

The woman made an expression that looked as if she was shrugging her face. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

Karstan seemed to decide that the people had voted it was okay for Zoe to stay, pulling out a chair for her.

Zoe settled herself. She had to remember everything that happened, so she could write about it later.

The people were mainly older, from their forties to seventies, their eyes intense and expectant. Black candles stood in a series of candelabras down the center of the table, emitting a scent that she could only describe as acrid. No wonder she hadn’t smelled Karstan’s pot until she actually entered the room that he’d been in.

Walking around to the top end of the table, Karstan eyed the group of people. “Welcome, friends. All of you but one has formed this circle before, and you’ll know what’s coming up ahead. We must stay united and strong. There are no guarantees, and I cannot predict which spirits will be attracted to our little gathering. But I hope you all find something today that helps you in some way.”

The people murmured in anticipation.

Karstan pressed his hands onto the table, his arms straight, staring ahead. “I sense a spirit. A presence. Can you feel it?”

The others instinctively looked around. Karstan was certainly creating an atmosphere, right off the bat. A few people nodded.

“The energy of the spirit is weak, fleeting. They need to take our energy to show themselves,” said Karstan. “We must attempt to aid them by holding hands and forming an unbreakable circle.”

The woman sitting on the right side grasped Zoe’s hands. Her many-ringed fingers felt hard and cold.

Bending his head, Karstan reached to hold Zoe’s left hand and the hand of the man on the other side of the table. Karstan gave Zoe’s hand a soft squeeze, but he didn’t look at her.

“Repeat this thrice,” said Karstan. “We form an unbreakable circle. Spirits, speak to us.”

The group chanted his words three times.

Karstan furrowed his brow in deep concentration. Sweat beaded on his temples. “Something’s wrong. I’m detecting an energy in the room that’s preventing the spirit from making itself known.”

People seemed to snap out of their trance, looking around to see what could be the cause of the hostile energy. Heads turned toward Zoe.

She lowered her eyes to the candles flickering in the middle of the table. They think I’m the one who’s stopping this charade. I’ve got to pretend to be here as a believer.

She let her eyes go unfocused on the flame. “We form an unbreakable circle,” she whispered. “Take our energy and show yourself.”

The flames flickered wildly as though a sudden breeze had whipped through the room. But the air was as still and oppressive as it had been before.

Zoe swore she could feel a presence behind her.

“Come with me,” a voice whispered in waves near her ear.

Trembling, Zoe eyed the other people. No one else seemed to hear it. No one but Zoe.

Karstan’s fingers grew tight on hers, his knuckles whitening. “Let us gather our strength. I can feel something coming through. Someone who needs us. Let’s try again.”

They repeated the chant. This time, Zoe joined in.

We form an unbreakable circle. Spirits, speak to us.

She gasped as she caught sight of an image passing through the dark mirror on the wall. Too quick to see. Then the image appeared again as if out of nowhere. A woman, staring out, her eyes hollow and haunted. Her brown hair in knotted strings around her face, leaves and dirt matted through it. “Come with me,” she repeated.

Zoe pressed herself back in her chair. “No . . . .” she breathed.

The woman climbed through the mirror, her eyes fixed on Zoe. Her movements were wrong, in a way Zoe couldn’t begin to understand. As if her limbs were broken.

Zoe screamed.

Karstan broke his grip on Zoe’s hand. “What’s going on?”

Rising, Zoe shook her head. “I can’t be part of this anymore.”

The woman with the dark eyeliner shook her head. “I don’t want to question your actions, Mr. Montalban Junior, but I requested no hysterics. We don’t cut off spirits who choose to contact us.”

Karstan tensed, raising his eyes to the woman. “Mrs. Bloom, this is Zoe’s first time. She seems to have attracted a malicious spirit. We can’t expect her to handle that on her own.”

A thin, nervous-looking man adjusted his glasses. “But she’s not alone. We’re all here. Nothing was going to happen to her.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know that,” Karstan told him. “Perhaps we’d better end this session. This spirit is keeping the others at bay. There’s nothing more to do here today.”

Zoe was surprised when the protests stopped. The others left the table as though what he had said made perfect sense. Zoe walked after them, wanting to get as far away from this house as possible. But Karstan stopped her at the doorway.

“I can’t stay,” she told him. “You don’t know what I saw. I should have just watched, from outside the circle.”

“We don’t allow watchers. You’re either in or you’re out. C’mon, Zo. Got something to show you.”

He tugged her by the hand back toward the dining room.

“I’m not going back in there.”

“It’s okay. There’s something you need to see.”

“I’ve seen enough. I don’t know what the hell happened or why I saw what I did. But I don’t ever want to see that again.”

“I know exactly what you saw.”

“How could you?”

In response, he just grinned. Something in that grin gave her the confidence to relax and go with him, but she still turned back to look and check that the front door was still open. If she needed to run, she wanted to be able to get out quick. She no longer cared what Karstan thought of her.

When they reached the dining room, he stepped ahead.

“Look.” He took a remote control from his pocket and clicked a button. A projector flashed images onto the mirror opposite. An image of an old man with sorrowful, reddened eyes. Karstan clicked his remote again. A woman with a hood almost covering her eyes stood there weeping.

“What?” Zoe gaped at Karstan.

He shrugged, replacing the remote in his pocket. “Think of it as a bit like a 4D movie. Ever been to one of those?”

Zoe nodded.

“Well, it’s just like that. But this is the ghost edition. What you saw today is one of the tricks of the trade.”

“You did that? You made that woman appear?”

“Yeah.”

“My God, do you have any idea how much that freaked me out?” She seriously wanted to punch him. Hard.

He clicked the off button on the remote. “Zoe, you came to a séance. What did you expect? A bake sale?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I expected. Not that. That was so damned real.”

“It’s supposed to look real. How else am I going to fool people?”

“But . . . no one else saw the woman. Just me . . . .”

“The mirrors in this room need to be viewed straight on to see the projection. You were the only one in a straight line to that particular mirror. If I’d enabled the projection to appear in one of the other mirrors, you wouldn’t have seen it.”

“Wow, that’s insane. So believable. No wonder these people get sucked in.”

He shrugged, ruffling his perfect combed hair, as though signalling a return from Karstan the professional ghost whisperer to the Karstan as he really was.

“But why choose me? Why didn’t you choose someone else?”

“Thought I was helping out. You’re writing a thesis. I gave you the experience of a séance. I didn’t realize it would freak you out that much. I guess I’m just used to it as this stuff is my life.”

She crossed her arms, hugging them against her ribs. “But the experience was fake. How can I include that in my essay?”

“Everything’s fake. People believe what they want to believe.”

“Don’t get all existential on me.”

“Are you going to tell me there’s no time in your life where you fooled yourself into believing something that wasn’t true?”

Zoe shot him a searching glance, wondering if he was referring to the words she’d written about Darien North. But his expression showed nothing.

“I . . . heard her. She told me to come with her. How is that possible? I mean, how is it that I heard her and no one else did?”

“Did you really hear her? Or did your mind manufacture something to match what you were seeing?”

“No. I heard her.”

“I’ve had people think she was saying all kinds of different things. It’s all in the mind, Zo. I’m guessing you think you’re immune to the power of suggestion, just because you’re a psych student.”

“No, I don’t think that at all.” She thought about the change in the color of the wallpaper at the Wilmont house and the strange man in the wheat field. “But anyway, do people actually come here to see random dead people? Don’t people want to contact people that they know who’ve died? Isn’t that what this is supposed to be about?”

“Partly. But my job is meant to be to help spirits cross to the other side. People are happy just assisting spirits in doing that. I guess they think they’re good Samaritans. Sometimes, when a person is worried they’re being haunted by someone, we find a photo of the dead person and use that in our projections. I Photoshop the photos to make them look different from the original and then animate them a little. And sometimes I show that projection to someone who doesn’t even know the dead person. And I have them describe what they’re seeing. It freaks everyone out.”

“You’re a man of many talents,” Zoe said dryly.

“You haven’t seen all of my talents.” He gave a slow smile that made Zoe’s legs turn to butter.

“Well, thanks for showing me the projections. You could’ve just let me believe this whole thing was real. I mean, this whole show is built upon it being genuine. But you’re trusting me with its secrets.”

His eyes looked a deep blue in this light. “I know I can trust you, Zo. Hey, I’ve got one more thing to show you.”

A thought slipped into Zoe’s mind of seeing Karstan’s chest, without his shirt. But that wasn’t what he meant, and she kicked herself for thinking that.

“I don’t think I want to see any more of this house, if that’s what you want to show me,” she said.

“This is special. It’s one of my favorite parts of Bleath.”

“Well, I guess I would rather wait and see if the rain stops. That road was hell in this weather.”

“It’s pretty bad out there. And what I’m going to show you isn’t any more tricks, I promise.”

“Okay.” She nodded.

He took her hand as he led her to the end of the hall and to a staircase.

They ascended to the second level and then kept going to a third level.

He unlocked a metal door and then a second door. It was obvious that guests to the Boreades house were not allowed to freely wander up here.

Zoe gasped as she stepped inside—the space was huge but mostly empty, except for a twisting, tower-like structure that ran up through the floor and pierced the ceiling. Made of a dark metal, coils snaked around the body. A shining metal orb rotated near the top. It looked hundreds of years old, and modern, and alien, all at the same time.

Tearing her eyes away, she glanced around the rest of the room.

Four massive stained-glass windows dominated each of the four walls, their colors saturating the air. She imagined the colors would look even more spectacular on a sunny day. Each image was a slightly different depiction of a griffin. The pupils of each griffin’s eyes were made of clear glass.

Vintage telescopes stood positioned at the eye of every griffin.

Zoe turned to Karstan in awe. Colors from the stained glass patchworked his face.

“What is it?” She listened to the vague hum emitting from the tower.

“It powers the town,” he told her.

“That powers the town?”

“Yeah. Amazing, right? Bet you’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“You’re right about that. Is it safe to even be here in this room?”

“It’s safe. It runs straight down through the house and into the ground. It only sends current into special receptors in the houses around town. All wireless.”

“Karstan, there’s no such thing as wireless electricity.”

“Ever heard of lightning? Or solar power?”

“Okay, yeah. But they’re nothing like this. This . . . thing can’t be real.”

“Can’t it? Nikola Tesla developed wireless electricity in the 1890s. But it was never fully developed. There were others who discovered how to use the forces of the earth—electromagnetic forces—hundreds of years beforehand.”

Zoe stepped slowly around the tower. “I’m trying hard to believe you. But seriously, why would they stick this thing here, inside the Boreades house?”

He shrugged, following her. “You really want to know?”

“Yep, I really want to know.”

“Okay, well, the Boreades are the direct descendants of the people who designed the tower, centuries ago. The plans were lost for a long time. But then in the early 1700s, a girl named Zylphia Boreades came across some blueprints in an old family chest. They were pages copied from a couple of ancient books. The Boreades family attempted to build some of the plans. The designs were so advanced that some of the family members were denounced as witches, and they were murdered.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Yeah. And then when a man named Louis Montalban heard about it, he offered the family protection. He established a town nearby, where the Boreades could live in peace. He would fund the secret development of the inventions, away from prying eyes. And he would marry Zylphia. He only asked that his family line would always be the mayors of the town.”

She gasped, staring at the tower. “So, that’s how the Montalbans became the mayors of Bleath.”

He nodded. “That’s how. And the persecution of the Boreades is why the inventions had to be hidden away.”

“But all this time has gone by. Why hide it all away now?”

“You know how I said the pages that Zylphia Boreades found were copied from some ancient books? There were two books—the books of the Mirrored Tree. Those books are the legacy of the Boreades family, and rightfully theirs. Ever since the 1700s, they’ve been trying to find them. But they weren’t the only ones. The books were briefly in the hands of a French lord named Balthazar in the 1400s. Balthazar’s family have thrown all their resources at trying to find the books again, from way back then right up until now.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “That’s kind of cloak and dagger.”

“Hey, you wanted to know,” he said playfully. “I’m just telling you the history.”

Zoe wandered up to an ornate metal rod held in a bracket on the wall. Lifting it down, she studied it. A carved griffin’s head adorned one end of it. “What’s this?”

“That,” said Karstan, “looks exotic but it’s actually something pretty boring. It’s a spare lightning rod for the roof.”

He took the rod and placed it back on the bracket. “It’s old and I’m not supposed to be touching it. How about we look at something more interesting?” Crossing the room, he stepped up to the telescope facing the town and put his eye to it. “You can see the whole town through this.”

He swung the telescope toward Zoe. She walked over and viewed the sights through the lens. She could see the houses and the main street of town, with all its shuttered and closed stores.

Curious to see if she could find the Wilmont house, she stepped around to the telescope that pointed back toward the way in which she’d driven. Pivoting the telescope from side to side, all she could see were endless fields of wheat. Then, all of a sudden, it was there. The Wilmont House.

“The house I’m staying at is in a direct line from this house,” Zoe remarked. Now she knew why she’d seen a light high up in the hills from her bedroom window.

“Not surprising.” Karstan stepped up behind her. “The person who built the Wilmont house was the daughter of the owner of the Boreades house. He bought her the land.”

“He really wanted a bird’s eye view of everyone, didn’t he?” Zoe looked back at Karstan.

“Maybe he just wanted to see the stars in all directions.”

“Maybe.”

“I stay here at night sometimes. I’ve seen falling stars through the telescope. And I watch the lights of town. It’s beautiful. If you want, you can stay here with me one night.” He spoke the words casually, but he watched her face as though he were looking for clues. Did he want her to say yes?

“No way,” she answered. “It would creep me out just being in this house at night, let alone the attic.”

“I’ve grown up around stuff that creeps people out. Nothing gets to me. I forget that it gets to other people.”

“I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve been freaked a few times since I’ve been here in Bleath.”

“Well, if you get spooked and I’m not there, call me. Even if it’s the middle of the night.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

He straightened. “Oh yeah? You might need me, huh?”

“Uh, just kidding. I can get rid of ghosts that try to spook me.” She didn’t know if she was kidding. But she couldn’t tell Karstan that.

He feigned disappointment. “Well if you ever see a spook that’s bigger and badder than you, be sure to call me. I’ll be there in two seconds.”

His expression changed, as though it was switching places with the sure-of-himself Karstan to a far more serious man.

“Okay. I will.” Her voice had softened involuntarily. He had her in the palm of his hand right now, and that was the last place she wanted to be.

She wished she could go back about five steps, to when they first entered the top level. No, she wished she could go back a bit further than that, to when she had the idea to go find Karstan and watch him conduct this séance. She’d be feeling a lot more centered if she hadn’t seen the séance. Even after seeing its smoke and mirrors, the experience stayed with her, almost like an invisible scarf had wrapped its way around her throat. She couldn’t explain how she felt to Karstan, and he wouldn’t understand anyway. But at least, now that she’d seen this side of Karstan, especially when she’d witnessed what he went through before a seance, she understood him so much more.

Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, you’re not supposed to be here understanding the town hottie. You’re supposed to be here understanding the town itself.

Karstan nudged her arm. “You’re deep in thought. Thinking about a certain, uh, ghost whisperer?”

“You’ve got tickets on yourself.”

“So, you’re only going to think about me at midnight when your windows are rattling and ghosts are dragging chains downstairs? Then you’ll call me, and say, Karstan, come and make it all go away.”

He made her smile, in spite of her trying to keep a straight face. “Isn’t that what ghost whisperers are for?”

“Well, not all spirits want to cross over. Ghost whisperers can’t do much about the ones that want to stay.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“Will it make you call me if I do?”

She shook her head, smiling.

“Well, I have to say,” he continued, “I won’t drop everything for just anyone. She has to be pretty special for me to come on the run with my spiritual services.”

He leaned toward her.

This time, she wanted him to kiss her.

He touched his lips to hers. Her eyes closed. She felt like she were dissolving at the warm, firm pressure of his flesh against her flesh.

He kissed her cheek, near her ear. “I’d better stop. You’re just too enticing.”

Enticing. No boy had ever described her that way before. She didn’t know if she wanted him to stop. She recalled his words: We’re on Bleath time. Maybe on Bleath time, some things sped up and some things slowed down. Right now, if felt as though time had slowed but her heart was galloping.

Whatever happened next, happened.

He traced the outline of her mouth with his fingertip. “The rain just eased. Might be a good time for you to make tracks.”

She sighed silently. “Are you coming?”

“No, I’ll stay here a while.”

“You sure? Don’t you find this place a bit depressing?”

“I had a couple of drinks before. And other stuff. I shouldn’t drive for at least another hour.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“I’ll be fine. I do this every week. If the rain stops altogether, maybe I’ll go out and work on the gardens. They’re looking bad. Dad would be on my case if he saw how they’re looking lately.”

“Okay. See you tonight.”

“I’ll be there with bells on.”

Zoe made her way down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. Her heels sounded hollow in the hallway. She kept her face away from the dining room. No way am I going to look at any of those mirrors. Okay, so Karstan turned the projector off. But I don’t care. So not looking.

She ran across the grass outside to her car. Karstan’s shadow cut a lonely, solitary image up there through the griffin window. When she saw him tonight, she’d try to convince him again that he could make a new start somewhere else. Somewhere near where she lived would be nice—really, really nice—but anywhere would be better than this.

She slid into the driver’s seat of her car. Her hand brushed the wooden hippie beads that were hanging over her rear-vision mirror. Her eyes focused on the beads for a moment then refocused far beyond the windscreen of the car. A figure stood on the back edge of the Boreades property, at the point where it fell away into a sharp, vertical drop, looking toward the town. A woman in a long, brown dress. Her hair gathered up in a loose bun.

Zoe didn’t remember her from the séance. And hadn’t everyone gone home, anyway? Rain drizzled around her, but she didn’t seem bothered by it at all. The woman walked slowly and steadily down the hill. The hill was so steep a person would be nuts to try to walk it.

Who was she?

You can’t exactly run after her and demand to know who she is and what she’s doing, Zoe told herself. The woman seemed calm enough and not in any distress. It wasn’t any of Zoe’s business. It was time to go.

She wheeled the car around and began the drive down the hill from the Boreades house.

12.

THERE WERE FOUR PLACES OPEN on a Friday night in Bleath. Two restaurants, one cinema, and one carnival. That wasn’t counting any séances or readings, but those weren’t official as far as Zoe knew—she hadn’t seen any nightly spirit whispering listed in any of the Bleath brochures or noticeboards. To find out about nightly spiritual events, it seemed that people either had to be a resident of Bleath or ask the right people.

Karstan confirmed all this on the way to the restaurant with Zoe.

“Why keep it a secret?” she asked. “Wouldn’t they make more money if they listed those events?”

She turned to look at him.

He looked so good tonight. He wore a white T-shirt under a casual jacket, the waves of his hair falling to one side. Moonlight fell upon the planes of his face, making him seem very different from the Karstan she’d known during the daytime—far more somber and unknowable.

“They’re not events, Zoe. A lot of people here actually believe in this stuff, and they hold readings when the time’s right, not to a schedule.”

“What about your parents? Do they believe? They seemed to, when they spoke about the medium thing at dinner Monday night.”

“My parents are interested in maintaining the history of the town,” he told her, his tone slightly stiff. “They see it as their job to keep the legacy alive. The mayors of this town have always conducted séances. And the Montalbans have always been the mayors.”

“Seriously? They’ve always been the mayors?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“So that means . . . you are going to be mayor, too?”

He nodded in a brusque way, turning the wheel to park the car outside a dimly lit restaurant.

“What if a mayor has no sons?”

A hint of a smirk formed on his lips. “You’re being a bit sexist, aren’t you? We’ve had female mayors in the past. The title doesn’t automatically go to a son either. It goes to a daughter if she’s better suited.”

“Okay, I just got schooled. I just thought if it was a tradition going back a long way, they would have stuck with a line of men. Glad they didn’t though.” She smiled, wanting to lighten up the conversation. “So, should I start calling you Lord Montalban?”

He pondered this in a pretend way, stroking his chin. “Yes, Miss Cosgrove. Yes, you should. Especially should you wish to kiss me. Then you should curtsy and say, may I have a kiss, Lord Montalban?”

“What makes you think I’m going to want to kiss you?” she teased.

A slow smile eased across his face. “Oh, you will.”

Zoe almost blushed. She really did want to. Right now, actually. Instead, she covered up her embarrassment with a laugh. “We’ll see.”

“Okay, in the meantime, let’s go eat. My stomach’s trying to eat itself.”

Together, they stepped through the metal, arched doors of Castell’s Fine Dining—the name engraved in metal above the door. Inside, dozens of candles burned on candelabras, forming the only light. An elderly woman stood on a small corner stage, crooning a slow jazz song, her voice low and husky. She didn’t look like most old ladies Zoe had known—her hair was styled in a slick red bob, and she was dressed in a vintage pilot’s outfit, including knee-high black boots.

The tables were full of customers. Zoe recognized quite a few of the visitors who’d streamed through the toy store over the past couple of days. Most people were wearing boots. Zoe, too, was in boots, after Karstan had instructed her to do so. She wondered if it was a tradition at the restaurant and was about to ask Karstan, but he was already speaking to a waiter. The waiter showed them to a table that was next to a nine-foot-high aquarium filled with seahorses, the aquarium vintage-style, with round, wrought-iron viewing windows.

The watery movement from the aquarium reflected in Karstan’s eyes. “What are you in the mood for?”

You, Zoe thought.

“Um . . . seafood?” She glanced guiltily at the seahorses.

Karstan caught the look and laughed. “Seafood it is.”

She looked through the restaurant menu. Buying dinner was going to cost everything she’d made at the toy store so far, but she’d insisted on going halves with Karstan. Her parents had loaned her a thousand dollars for expenses on the trip, so she wasn’t going to be left broke.

The waiter returned to take their order, telling Zoe that a bottle of wine was on the house as it was her first time in Bleath. Zoe suspected that the free wine had more to do with Karstan than with her virgin visitor status. The waiter placed the bottle of white wine on the table and poured them each a glass.

Karstan seemed a little distracted as he sipped his wine.

“How did things go at the Boreades house?” Zoe asked. “Get any gardening done?”

He smiled, but the smile was rueful. “Nope. Just hung out and felt sorry for myself.”

“I’m sorry you spent your afternoon like that.”

“Not as sorry as I bet you were after turning up at the séance.”

“I survived it.”

The woman in the vintage pilot’s outfit began singing a mournful song about love and loss and wishing wells. Zoe was reminded of Karstan parking out near the well yesterday morning. She decided to work her way up to asking him why he was there. Asking straight out would sound like an accusation.

“Hey,” Zoe said, “we’re even now. You read my diary. I watched you conduct a séance.”

“Yeah, guess so.”

They clinked their wine glasses lightly together.

“Now, that we’re even, don’t ever sneak up on me like that again,” she joked.

He grinned. “I wasn’t sneaking. I came to the door.”

“Well, you parked all the way near the well. I didn’t hear you coming.” There. She hadn’t asked him about it, exactly. But she’d mentioned it.

“I hadn’t finished checking on things around the Wilmont property. Could be old rusted pitchforks lying around in the grass. And the well’s dangerous. It had a cover, but I think it rusted away a long time ago.”

Zoe’s fingers tightened on the stem of the glass when she remembered the bout of paranoia she’d had when she’d looked into the well. “I’m told someone died in that well. Is that true?”

“Who told you that?”

“Someone in town. A customer in the toy shop.” She didn’t want to say it was Prudence. Thinking about it now, it seemed kind of silly to Zoe to believe something a twelve-year-old girl had told her.

“It’s almost true, but not as dramatic. The old lady that used to live there died near the well. Heart attack. Peony Wilmont.”

“That’s sad she died like that. Poor Bluebell.”

“Yeah.”

Zoe looked past the diners to the small, boxed windows. The drizzle had completely stopped.

*

Mist was settling in as Karstan drove up the hills to the carnival, but the rain was still holding tight inside the clouds. Dinner had been wonderful—expensive but wonderful. Zoe was sure that any food would taste good in Karstan’s company though.

They reached the summit of the hills. He parked the pickup under a tree, next to a line of cars. There was no proper place to park.

People trod across a dark paddock to the spinning and flashing lights ahead. Zoe’s boot sunk into mud as she stepped out of the pickup, the ground giving off the smell of wet hay and earth. She understood now why Karstan had asked her to wear boots, and why everyone else was wearing them.

She and Karstan walked behind a bunch of families, his hand catching hers. Holding hands felt like a natural extension of the night so far, but still, Zoe felt an electric buzz zip through her that felt both warm and dangerous.

Throbbing music intensified as they stepped through the entrance to the carnival. No tinny, historical carnival music here—the beat was loud and modern. Girls clung to boyfriends, and children rushed from ride to ride, their cheeks flushed with cold and excitement.

The air was punched with a heady mix of popcorn, cotton candy, and the dank smell from the surrounding fields. Zoe could almost feel her hair bouncing from its controlled style back to its frizz due to the moisture all around.

“C’mon.” Karstan tugged her toward a rollercoaster.

She wasn’t the biggest fan of insanely high and fast rides, but this one looked tame in comparison. And there was no long line that she had to stand in for ages, just for the privilege of being scared witless.

Karstan strode straight up and into one of the rollercoaster’s cars. He held out a hand to her.

“Don’t I need a ticket?” she said dubiously. “You told me before that locals were free, but I’m not a local.”

“Friends of locals don’t have to pay.”

“No wonder this place makes no money.” Taking his hand, she jumped in beside him.

“Money isn’t everything,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

She glanced at him, not knowing what to answer. He seemed to forever be catching her off guard.

The carriage chugged to the top. Zoe felt every one of those chugs.

They make these things take so long to reach the top, she thought, because it makes the peak appear to be so much higher and harder to reach than it actually is. And then just when you feel relief that you made it up there, you get plunged into a descent so steep it feels like the carriage has derailed and is totally out of control.

The thought entered her mind that she also felt that way now about Karstan. Maybe because she could sense her feelings for him growing, and she knew she’d have to prepare herself for the sharp fall when it came time to leave Bleath.

Karstan leaned back as though he was sitting in a comfy armchair. At peace with himself and the world. She needed to be more like that. Live in the moment. No looking back. No worrying about the future.

The carriage paused at the highest point.

She could see all of Bleath from here. Even farther than she could see from the Boreades house. It was beautiful with the lights cascading down over the hills.

As she stared out, the pin points of lights blurred. She had the strangest feeling she were upside-down, with Bleath becoming the night sky and stars, and the stars becoming Bleath’s lights. It was like when she looked down the well and had the sensation that dark clouds were pushing up from the depths.

The carriage roared away. Her body felt like it was being flung through air, a sharp breeze chilling the film of perspiration on her skin. She lost all perspective on which way was up or down.

She was falling, falling, falling . . . .

Only she didn’t know whether she was falling to earth or to the sky.

She screamed before she realized she was screaming. The carriage continued on its terrifying path.

Finally, it shuddered to a stop.

She was here, on firm ground, on the ride with Karstan.

Not falling.

Breathing in shallow pants, she tried to collect herself.

He squeezed her shoulder. “You nearly blew my eardrums out.”

She glanced down at his hand on her left shoulder. When had he put his arm around her?

“That almighty yell wasn’t serious . . . was it?” he asked in concern. “I tried talking to you when we were up there, but you zoned out. Are you okay? You’re not looking too good.”

For a moment, she sat numbly. Then she shook her head. “I always scream on rollercoasters. Sorry about your ears.”

He gave an uncertain grin. “A bit of fair warning next time, hey? I can bring ear plugs.”

Lifting the bar, he helped her up and out of the car. He didn’t let go of her hand, even after they were strolling in the fairground again.

She raised her eyes to the blanket of misty darkness above. What was wrong with her? Was she developing some kind of weird phobia about heights and depths?

Tegan jumped in front of Zoe, holding onto a big stuffed toy and a bulky-looking guy. “Ooh, Zoe, it’s you! And Karstan! You two look so sweet together. I wanna take a picture.”

Tegan snapped a photo with her phone.

“You know Tegan?” Karstan asked Zoe.

Zoe nodded. “She did my hair today.”

Tegan gestured toward the man beside her. “Zoe, this is my guy, Mitch.”

“Hi,” he said. “Tegan told me ‘bout you. How’re you liking Bleath so far?”

“It’s certainly different.” Zoe nodded. “It’s been fun.”

“Has Karstan taken you out on his lake, yet?” said Mitch. “He likes taking his ladies out on a rowboat there.”

A hostile look passed between Karstan and Mitch.

“Give it a rest, Mitch,” Karstan told him. “It’s not my lake. And I don’t have any ladies.”

Mitch shrugged, his shoulder muscles rippling through his tight shirt. “Well, see you around town, Zoe.”

“Sure thing,” said Zoe as Tegan made an apologetic smile.

Tegan waved at someone she apparently knew and dragged Mitch away with her.

Zoe shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “That was kind of awkward.”

“I went to school with Mitch. We never got along. He thinks that because I’m the mayor’s son, I get everything handed to me on a plate.”

“Why did he call the lake yours?” Zoe questioned.

“Remember I told you my family pioneered this town, way back when? They called the lake, Lake Montalban. Doesn’t make it ours though. Or mine. It belongs to the town.”

“Okay. Well, you’ll have to show it to me. I’d like to see it.” A small smile flittered on her lips. “That’s if you’re not busy taking your ladies there all week.”

“I’ll see if I can shuffle my schedule around and make room for one more.” His face creased in a wink.

Zoe went to give him a playful push then noticed the stallholders in the stalls behind Karstan. Every one of them was staring her way. She angled her head the opposite way. Again the stallholders were staring. They quickly busied themselves with their customers, pretending they hadn’t been looking. She spun back again, frowning.

Karstan nudged her arm. “What’s up?”

“The people running the stalls. They’re watching us.”

“That’s what you get for being new here. You’re a novelty in Bleath.”

“Half the people here tonight would have to be tourists. How am I a novelty?”

He flashed a grin. “Because you’ve got stand-out looks.”

“Very smooth,” said Zoe dryly. “I’m not buying it.”

“Well, that and the fact you’re with the mayor’s son.”

“So, you’re like, what, a celebrity around here or something?”

“People here are into tradition, especially the old hands at the carnival. The Montalbans are kind of the face of Bleath. So, any girl by my side is seen as a potential Mrs. Montalban.”

Zoe, surprised by his answer, felt a blush warming her cheeks. She wished she hadn’t asked the question. “Just like British royalty . . . .”

“Yeah, a tiny bit like that.” He sounded embarrassed, and she didn’t blame him. He couldn’t do anything about the history of the Montalbans in Bleath.

Zoe noticed then that a large group of people were surrounding them, all of them around the same age as Zoe and Karstan. A few of the boys either slapped hands with Karstan or did the grip-type handshake. Zoe relaxed. These people were Karstan’s friends. Not his enemies.

“Going to the house tonight?” a boy with long black hair asked Karstan.

“Yeah. You?” Karstan raised his eyebrows in a casual way that told Zoe he knew this boy well.

“Playing a set or two,” he told Karstan.

“Love your hair,” one of the girls told Zoe. “Wish mine would grow that long.” She toyed with the baby-fine ends of her white-blonde hair that had barely grown past her shoulders.

Before Zoe could answer, Karstan grabbed Zoe’s hand. “Everyone, this is Zoe. She’s going to be around town for a while.”

The group said hey in unison.

Zoe smiled widely, unused to having so many eyes on her at the same time.

“See ya all later.” Karstan clapped hands with the black-haired guy before tugging Zoe away.

“Zo,” he said quietly near her ear, “how about we get somewhere a bit quieter?”

“I’d like that.”

He headed toward the big top at the far end of the carnival.

“That is going to be quieter?” she asked.

“You’ll see.”

She didn’t know what she was expecting to see in there. This wasn’t a circus, so maybe performing animals and clowns were out.

As soon as they stepped inside the thick, red-and-white striped tarpaulin, a hush closed around her. The bright lights and laughter and popcorn scents of the carnival were snatched away. It was dark in here, with an oily incense saturating the air.

Candles inside glass lanterns provided dim lighting at the front of two dozen or so small tents—the tents arranged in a large circle. Faded lettering above the entrances of the tents bore various versions along the same theme: psychic readings, spirit journeys, astral travels, clairvoyant, tarot readings.

Carnival patrons respectfully stepped in and out of the tents. There were no children in here that Zoe could see. Some of the psychics sat outside their tents on stools.

Her eyes adjusted to the lighting. She could see now that the ground was composed of a massive, completely round slab of marble, like a sundial the size of a football field. The tents were arranged around the outer edge. Curious, she ascended the steps that were cut into the outside of the marble. There were seven doughnut-shaped circles leading into the center, where the winged statue of a griffin stood. The griffin held some kind of metal rod in its claws. The dais and the griffin statue had to have been designed by the same person who made the griffin images at the Boreades house.

She turned around, giving Karstan a questioning glance.

He had his hands in his pockets, and she could barely see his face. “This is called Psychics’ Circle. The land up in these parts used to belong to the Boreades family. Sebastian Boreades had the circle built back in the seventeen hundreds.”

“Why? I mean, why put this big chunk of marble up here?”

“I don’t know why, exactly, other than this being the highest point in Bleath. Maybe the old guy was just an eccentric.” He took her hand, leading her toward a tent with a sign that said, Readings, and in smaller lettering underneath, Citrine Littlewoods.

“Littlewoods?” Zoe questioned. “Is she a relative of the toy store owner?”

“Yeah. Pearl Littlewoods is one of a set of triplets. This is another one of them.”

“Okay, wow. Triplets. Pearl didn’t tell me.”

Before they could walk to the tent, a woman stopped them by calling out. Dark-skinned and silver-haired, she was perched on a high stool, a mass of beaded chains around her neck. “Seeking the truth, Karstan Montalban?” She raised sparse eyebrows.

“I’m seeking a taste of Bleath life for my friend, Zoe, Madame Olivia.”

“Then where are you going? You know the rules. She must choose for herself where she enters.”

“She’s writing up a college paper. Thought I’d send her into one of the most flamboyant of the psychics.”

“No matter. She must choose.” Madame Olivia eyed Zoe. “Zoe my dear, which tent caught your eye as you walked this path?”

“Oh, I’m not sure,” Zoe answered. She was beginning to wonder if Psychics’ Circle was the real business of the carnival.

“Yes, you are.” Madame Olivia made a sweeping gesture with her arm, which held as many bracelets as her neck held necklaces. “All you need answer is which tent you noticed first?”

“I guess I saw that one.” She pointed to the tent that bore the title, Psychic and Hypnotist, Phineas Fulcrum.

The muscles beneath Karstan’s eyes tensed. “The guy’s a drunk. And he relies on shock value to make himself sound important. It’s a wonder he’s allowed to stay on here, the amount of complaints we’ve had about him.”

Madame Olivia’s expression grew serene in contrast to Karstan’s. “Regardless of how you feel about Phineas, he is the one chosen by young Zoe. You said she wanted the Bleath experience. Then you cannot toss aside our traditions.”

“There’s a lot of Bleath traditions I’d like to toss aside.” Karstan spoke quickly and decisively.

Olivia remained composed, but Zoe sensed her bristling underneath. “You can bring about changes when you’re mayor, but until then, you must stay your hand.”

“As if the current mayor has any power to change Bleath,” Karstan said in a low, controlled voice. “And when I’m the mayor, Bleath would swallow me whole if I tried changing anything. Like a python.”

“This town is what it is,” Madame Olivia told him. “And might I remind you, it was your family that planted the seed.”

His fingers tightened around Zoe’s. “Think we might just forget this whole idea. Sometimes this town drives me around the twist.”

Zoe raked her teeth over her bottom lip. She was curious now to experience this part of Bleath life. She knew Karstan was just trying to protect her, but maybe, weeks later when she was writing up the thesis, she’d be kicking herself for not grabbing all the opportunities that she could.

“I’ll just go in to see Phineas,” Zoe said, giving a close-lipped smile. “Okay? I don’t mind sticking with the traditions.”

Karstan looked surprised, but he nodded, exhaling. “I’ll be waiting right out here.” He thumbed her fingers before he let them go. “And be careful. Like I said, he likes to shock. If he tells you your mother’s about to die or something, just ignore it. Promise?”

Zoe stared at him for a moment, unsure of how she’d cope if Phineas were to tell her something like that. Even if she didn’t believe it, would a lingering doubt remain? But she’d said she was going to do this, and she might as well just get it over with.

Zoe felt all eyes on her as she stepped toward the tent. Whoever Phineas Fulcrum was—strange name—he was inside, unaware of the debate that had just occurred out here.

She knew Karstan was standing there stewing behind her. This town didn’t make things easy for him. As much as he had celebrity status, it was obvious he was surrounded by a thick wall of resentment.

She entered the tent. A man wearing a purplish, velvet coat with broad lapels stared at her—his eyes deep and intense, dark-blonde hair to his shoulders. He looked like he could be in his thirties, but he had a thin, bony face that made it impossible to tell. He could be younger than that or older. A small table stood in front of him, hiding the rest of his bizarre jacket. The tent had a high ceiling, decorated with brightly colored veils. The space was only large enough for ten people, at best, to stand in.

“I . . . came for a reading, or something. I’m Zoe.” She suddenly realized she didn’t actually know what she was coming in here for. For her fortune to be told was her best guess.

Wordlessly, he indicated toward a painted wood stool then linked his fingers together on the table.

He remained silent for a moment, and Zoe was unsure whether she was meant to ask for a certain psychic service.

When he finally spoke, his voice sounded a lot more normal than Zoe had anticipated.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re expecting, but I tell things straight. I don’t go in for any theatrics or cheap tricks. Expect to leave this tent a little different from how you were when you enteredt person in town who'n psychic service or if he was readin.”

Unlike Karstan and his fake séances, Zoe thought. This guy is trying to make a point. He knows I’m with Karstan, and he knows what Karstan does for a living.

“That’s fine,” she told him. “I came to this town wanting to understand the real Bleath. So here I am in Psychics’ Circle. I don’t want anyone putting on a show for me. I’m doing research here, on the children and their paracosms.”

“Paracosms?”

“The imaginary worlds created by these children.”

“What makes you believe they are imaginary?” His voice snapped like a spring-loaded lid.

“I believe the worlds are very real to the children.”

He sat back slightly, a frown indenting his forehead. “But why is understanding Bleath important in understanding the children, if that’s what you’re here for?”

Zoe dug her hands into her pockets, feeling defensive. He was the first person in town who’d questioned her like this. The others had welcomed her. “You’re right about one thing. This psychic reading is not what I expected at all.”

“Apologies. I feel protective of the children you’re speaking of. They’re all very fragile, even if no one realizes it yet.”

His description of the children piqued her interest. Maybe he knew some background information that could help her. “Why do you think they’re fragile?”

“That is not something I can go into at the moment.”

“Would somewhere else be more appropriate?”

He studied her face as though undecided, staring directly until she almost felt uncomfortable. Zoe thought again how intense this guy was.

“Sunday. The tea rooms on Blyth Street. Three in the afternoon.”

“I’ll be there.” In her mind, she repeated the time and place he’d told her. His tense demeanour left her guessing that he wouldn’t be impressed if she had to ask for the information again later.

He rubbed his eyes as though they were dry and tired, blinking several times afterward. “The reading has now commenced.”

Zoe made a mental note of how important he made that sound.

“What I need from you is your concentration,” he continued. “If I ask a question, I need you to picture your answer in your mind. Can you do that?”

She nodded.

“Who are the important people in your life? Who has affected your life the most? Take your time. Think of them all.”

“My parents, my brother . . . my cousins, my favorite aunt and uncle . . . my friends . . . one of the professors at school.”

“Can you see them?”

“Yes.”

“Picture them all together, like they’re assembling for a photo. I want you to picture each person as they were the very last time you saw them. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“I sense an image you’re running away from. Perhaps that of a woman. Was there a tragedy among your family or friends?”

She felt a punch to her stomach. “A long time ago.” Zoe hated giving that information to a stranger.

“And the last time you saw her—was it traumatic?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Very well. I won’t push a customer in a direction they don’t wish to go.”

Zoe felt something tightening inside her until she couldn’t bear it. She’d been eight back then. And she hadn’t spoken of that time with anyone. Not in any real way. Every time she had started to talk, someone had hurried to quieten her and stop her from remembering.

“She was my aunt.” Zoe’s words hung in the air.

He leaned forward on the desk. “Someone hurt her, didn’t they?”

She nodded, swallowing hard. “I was the first one to see her. I was with my mom, going to visit my Aunt Margo for her birthday. She . . . was on the floor. There was blood. And she—”

“Had been murdered,” he finished in a gentle tone.

“Yes. Stabbed several times.” Her voice trailed away.

Phineas studied her face. “You’re not telling me everything.”

“I’m not about to describe her injuries.”

“No, before that. You said you were the first person in the room. I’m sensing that you saw something no one else did.”

“No, there was nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

She had the sense that the outside world had disappeared. All that existed was Phineas and herself and these four walls.

“I don’t remember—”

“There was someone in the room, wasn’t there? Someone other than your aunt.”

“What?” Her skin went cold.

“I see an open window and someone standing near it,” Phineas said in a measured voice.

“There was no one else.”

“Sometimes, we don’t want to think that those close to us are capable of doing wrong.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice croaked, thickening with the pain and memories of that time.

“It just means that sometimes people are so close to you that you don’t see them.”

“That doesn’t make sense. The people closest to you are the ones you know best.”

“I want you to hold your hand in front of your face.”

Zoe obeyed, her fingers trembling.

“Can you see the life lines in your palm?”

“Yes.”

“Now bring your hand in closer.”

Her eyes unfocused and refocused.

“Closer,” he commanded. “Can you still see the lines?”

“No. Too fuzzy.”

“Do you understand now? You can’t clearly see people and things that are very close to you.”

She let her hand drop. “This means nothing.”

“Over the next few days, if you allow yourself, the memory might come back to you. Then you’ll know.”

“If you can see this person, why can’t you tell me?”

“I don’t see them. All I see is a shadow. And even if I could, your personal feelings toward a person color how you see them. What I receive in my mind is some physical composite that might not reflect reality.” He paused briefly. “All I have done is to help you refocus your mind.”

Zoe’s mind was stinging. Why had this reading become all about her aunt?

Had this whole thing been one of the shock-value stunts that Karstan had said Phineas liked to pull? Had he really sensed those things about her aunt, or had he expertly drawn the information from her?

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. Despite my reputation, I do care about the effect my readings have on people.”

“I’m not upset.” Her voice betrayed her. “Look, I’m just . . . not convinced. Almost everyone has suffered a tragedy of some kind? How do I know it isn’t a trick?”

“You’re one of the most resistant people who’s ever been in this tent,” he told her. “But then, I guess, you didn’t come to me for a reading. You came for a caricature. Someone you could write up about in your research findings. A couple of clever lines that subtly dismiss what I do.”

“I admit to being a skeptic. But I’ve tried my best to be open since I arrived in town. I guess I didn’t count on having to be open about my personal stuff.”

“You’re here in my tent. Wanting to experience a reading. What is the point of you being here if you refuse to allow me to read you?”

“I take your point. It’s just . . . Karstan warned me that you do this. That you shock people.”

His expression immediately clouded. “I’ve noticed you about town with Karstan. Listen to me. What you see of Karstan is not who he is.” He hesitated. “I’ve lived in Bleath for three years now, but there are still things about this town I don’t understand. I’m not privy to everything. The others don’t trust me. But there’s something gathering. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. But I don’t like the fact that Karstan has attached himself to you.”

Zoe stood. “This is too strange for me.”

He gave a single nod. “I understand.” He touched his fingers to his forehead. “I’m feeling pretty drained myself. Going to call it a night. Trust me, I wasn’t using theatrics when I spoke about your aunt. Or when I said I sense something gathering. It’s crushing me.”

“Maybe psychic reading isn’t the right job for you.” Zoe bit her lip after she said that. It had slipped out before she realized what she was saying.

“You’ve been in town five minutes,” he said coldly. “And you think you know enough to tell me that?”

“It was wrong of me to blurt that out.”

“I accept your apology, on account of your skepticism and your youth.”

She hesitated before answering. “Thank you.”

“I understand if you no longer wish to meet with me. But if you do, I wouldn’t mention our upcoming meeting to Karstan. And Zoe, remember your hand—when it gets too close to your eyes, you lose focus.”

When she exited the tent, Karstan was deep in conversation with an elderly woman who could only be Citrine Littlewoods. Dressed in an all-black sarong and with her silver hair pulled back in a tight bun, she didn’t have the same style as her triplet sister, Pearl Littlewoods. But her features were unmistakeably like Pearl’s.

Noticing Zoe’s eyes on her, Citrine smiled and nodded at Zoe.

Karstan strode up and took Zoe’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Wordlessly, they walked back into the throng of carnival goers outside. Karstan stopped at a stall to buy two cotton candies, and he handed her one.

“Hope Fulcrum didn’t get too weird on you,” Karstan said, breaking the silence.

“He is weird. Full stop.”

“We should have marched him out of town long ago.”

“What’s his story?”

“As far as I’ve heard, he grew up on a farm in Canada but he ran away when he was fourteen. He ended up in Mexico—Tijuana I think. He worked as a magician at kids’ birthday parties and did a bit of hypnotism on the side. Finally, he got busted trying to hypnotize people to hand over their life savings and put him in their wills—that kind of thing. And then he hot-tailed it here.”

“Oh my God. Has he done anything like that in Bleath?”

“We’re keeping a close eye on him. As soon as we hear of him swindling someone, he’s out. So far, he’s been flying under the radar.”

“Isn’t the whole thing a bit of a swindle anyway? I mean, I wouldn’t go back for another reading with him.”

“Did he say anything to upset you?”

“Not really. He kept trying to dig into my past.” She shrugged, hiding the shiver that crawled up her arms.

He made a low sound under his breath. “People want to know about their future, not their past. That’s exactly what I mean. He’s meant to be a damned psychic, not a psychotherapist.”

“People do like talking about themselves though. Maybe that’s how he makes his money. Anyway, thanks for taking me down to the circle. It was certainly a different experience.”

She sensed there was more about Phineas that even Karstan didn’t know. Something darker.

“Cool.” Karstan tore off a chunk of cotton candy and ate it. “Are you ready to experience the biggest attraction of the carnival?”

She blinked, swallowing a piece of cotton candy before it melted in her mouth. “There’s something else?”

“Yeah.” He pointed straight down the hill, at the Boreades house.

“What? What happens there?”

“You’ll see.”

“I can’t go back there.”

“It’ll be okay. I promise.”

He had her hand and he was taking her with him before she could protest. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the Boreades house at night. The Boreades house in the day had been bad enough. But he seemed certain that whatever was happening at that house tonight, she needed to see it.

Karstan led her along a thin but well-worn track, with stone steps covered in moss and grass except for the outer edges. The outline of the griffin shone softly from the top level of the house. There were dim lights emitting from the windows on the two lower levels also. People must have already been inside.

She seriously did not want to attend another séance, and Karstan knew that. He squeezed her hand lightly as he turned to give her a grin, as though to reassure her. But he still wasn’t giving anything away.

As they drew closer, she heard music. Not the thumping beat of the carnival, but a slower and deeper tune. She couldn’t quite describe it. It was something like trance music, except this seemed to catch her up and not let go.

Karstan knocked on the front door. Three quick taps, then four quick taps, then two slow taps. Then he waited.

The same guy answered the door that Zoe had seen at the carnival earlier—the one with the long dark hair. He was just wearing jeans—no shirt or shoes. A broad smile cracked his face. “You made it.”

Zoe remembered then. He was the guy that had asked Karstan if he was going to the house later. She just hadn’t connected that conversation to being about the Boreades house. She’d just thought that meant they were going to someone’s parents’ house to jam. But nothing was as ordinary as that in Bleath.

“Zoe, this is Anthony,” said Karstan.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hope you enjoy Friday night, Bleath style.” Anthony grinned. “Better get back to the band. The music’s lost its edge without me.”

Zoe walked with Karstan and headed along the long hallway. In every room along the way, people around her own age—eighteen to twenty-five—were lounging on chairs and drinking from metal goblets. As she’d thought before, at the end of the hallway stood a ballroom. There were maybe sixty kids here, dancing.

The girl with the white-blonde hair that Zoe had seen at the carnival wrapped her arms around Anthony and kissed his temple. “Hi again. I’m Sorcha.”

“Hi Sorcha,” replied Zoe, giving a small wave.

Anthony seated himself on a low stool, while Sorcha moved to stand beside him. At first, Zoe thought he’d forgotten about the band, but then he swivelled the stool around to a drum kit that sat behind him, flicking his long hair over his shoulder. Most of the band members were sitting similarly on plush chairs, a couple of them playing wind instruments Zoe had never seen before. Another one of the band members sat at a grand piano, producing incredible sounds from the keys. Anthony began thrashing away at the drums, sweat glistening on his shirtless body.

Behind Anthony, a row of metal-framed arched mirrors were fixed to the wall, reflecting the people jumping around the ballroom.

“The music’s incredible,” Zoe told Karstan.

“Three of the band members are hypnotists in training,” Karstan said. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard, right?”

She nodded, listening.

“Dance?” Karstan didn’t wait for her answer before he tugged her into the middle of the dance floor.

For a moment, she glanced down at her boots, thinking she’d never danced in anything so clunky before. But then she looked around the room. Everyone was wearing them, the thumping of their heels on the floorboards in tune with the drums, seeming to form part of the music itself and giving it a raw, wild energy.

Some of Karstan’s friends whom she’d briefly met earlier looked over and waved.

She waved back, feeling herself becoming swept up in the energy of the room. Karstan moved close to Zoe as he danced with her. The music was hypnotic—she could almost feel it coursing inside her veins, injecting her with its heavy rhythm and mood. The next minute, she wanted to be here forever, with Karstan. She was a world away from college and from Darien. Nothing bad could touch her in this moment.

Karstan bent his head down to her ear. “You look amazing,” he told her in a low voice.

The effect of his lips brushing her ear was electric. She was quite sure he could have said anything at all and it would have had the same effect. The Karstan of tonight, of now, was different again. So many different sides to him. When he moved his face around to kiss her, it wasn’t the sweet, almost apologetic kiss he’d given her in the wheat field. His kiss this time was definite and sure.

When it ended, he pulled her close. She rested her face on his shoulder, looking straight ahead but her eyes unfocused. Intense waves of heat moved through her. Bodies jumped up and down in time to the pounding music, reflected in the row of mirrors on the far wall. Only one person wasn’t moving—a woman in a long brown dress. Zoe could only see her in the mirror. She had her back to Zoe in the reflection. The woman had to be standing dead-still among the party-goers, facing Zoe in a direct line.

Frowning, Zoe searched the crowd for her.

But every person was full of life and movement, either dancing or playing an instrument. There was no woman standing still and straight. No woman in a brown dress.

Every muscle in Zoe’s back pulled tight as she watched the woman twist at the waist and turn her face around. The woman’s cold eyes stared directly at Zoe, singling her out. Zoe had seen her before. In the mirror at the séance.

The woman looked so real. But she wasn’t. Zoe knew she wasn’t.

Zoe gripped Karstan’s arms. “I think someone’s playing around with your projector.”

When she pointed at the mirror, the woman was gone.

Karstan looked and then turned back to Zoe. “What’s going on?”

“I saw the woman. From the séance. She was right there—third mirror from the left.”

He looked more than a little confused. “The projectors only work on the dining room mirrors.”

“I saw her.”

“You must have seen someone else. One of the girls here.”

“No, it was her. Are you sure about the projectors?”

“Yes. The other mirrors have a special coating which enables the projectors to work.” He inclined his head. “It was the kiss, right? It freaked you out.” There was a hint of humor in his voice, as though he was trying to reassure her that everything was okay.

“No.” She softened her voice. “No, it wasn’t . . . that.”

“I’d like to do that again, but I’m guessing this is the total wrong time.” He drew up his mouth into a tight smile, a look of regret in his eyes.

“I’m sorry. But I—”

“It’s all right. Maybe I should have known better than to bring you here again. I’ll take you home.”

“Are you sure? All your friends are here tonight.”

“I can see them anytime. And this”—he waved his hands around—“happens every Friday night. No big deal.”

Zoe nodded. Seeing the woman again had left her feeling fragile and shattered inside. Even if it wasn’t real, it felt real. The séance must have had a big impact on her psyche. In terms of her research, she knew she should be interested in that, but right now, all she wanted to do was to get away. Away from the woman and her ice-cold stare.

13.

ZOE FLINCHED AFTER KARSTAN SWITCHED on the light just inside the front door of the Wilmont house. Something was different.

She moved through the living room ahead of Karstan. What was it?

The walls.

The walls were different. Not just the color. The stripes had become a swirly, floral, art deco pattern. The swirly floral patterns were kind of in lines. But they weren’t stripes. And they weren’t blue. They were lilac. Very definitely lilac.

Is it time to admit to myself? I’m going crazy. Not just a post-breakup depression, but some kind of psychosis.

No, it’s not psychosis. I’m seeing them because I’m somewhere new and I’m alone and everyone around me believes in stuff like this. I never thought I’d be susceptible to things like this, but I am. I used to think people were making things up when they swore they’d seen ghosts, but now I know better. You really can see them.

Karstan didn’t seem to notice anything. He swung himself into a plush armchair. “Why don’t you come and sit, Zo? There’s enough room for two.”

She didn’t want to refuse. He’d been so patient with her. He didn’t know about the turmoil happening inside her mind.

Crossing the room, she wriggled in beside him. He felt warm and solid and safe. “I want to say thank you for everything tonight. It was an amazing experience.”

She could still feel dance music pumping through her veins. And she could still feel Karstan’s kiss on her lips.

He touched her hair, brushing it back from her cheekbone with his index finger. “I just wish it could have ended better for you.”

“It was nothing. Guess I’ve just been a bit jumpy. Bleath has been a big culture shock.”

He leaned his head back on the chair. “Yeah, I underestimate how different Bleath is to other places. I’m feeling a bit tired out myself. First time I’ve been to the carnival and Friday night dance party in months.”

“Really?”

He turned his head toward her, the edges of his mouth flicking into a grin. “I’ve had no one to go there with. But tonight, with you, it was fun.”

He spoke with such easy confidence. She felt herself shifting into his mood.

She needed to do something to help herself.

“Maybe being this far out of town is just not working for a city girl like me,” she said. “I’m getting too jumpy. I might rent a hotel room in town.”

“They’re likely to be fully booked. Sorry.” He grimaced. “They cut the wheat at the start of winter, and there’s an outdoor festival that goes with it. And that’s just two days away.”

She bent her head to hide her disappointment. “A festival? Maybe that’s the gathering of darkness that Phineas told me he sensed was coming up,” she said wryly.

He shot her a strange look. “Phineas told you what?”

She shrugged, smiling.

“What else did he tell you?”

She thought about her Aunt Margo. But she didn’t want to, couldn’t, get into that again right now. “Not much. We kind of had a disagreement.”

“What about?”

“Well, he told me he felt crushed by the pressure of being a psychic, I said that if it was bothering him so much, maybe he’d chosen the wrong career.”

Karstan stared for a moment then slapped his knee and roared with laughter. “I would have loved to see that. You’re exactly what we need in this place. Some new people to blow all the old windbags away. People take themselves far too seriously here.” He grew serious. “Wish you were staying. Permanently I mean.”

“I can’t stay here. But it would be nice if you lived where I did.” She glanced up at him. “Ignore that. I know you can’t leave Bleath.”

“Let’s enjoy every second while you’re still here then.” His voice went uncharacteristically quiet. He was usually upbeat, trying to make her smile. But not now. She wished she hadn’t brought up the topic.

“Hey,” she said. “Want some coffee or anything? I know I need a coffee.”

“Yeah, I’d be down for one.” He lazily held out a hand for her to help him up.

Laughing, she tugged him from the chair.

They walked to the kitchen, and she switched the light on.

She took a sharp intake of air at the sight of a vase of fresh-cut flowers in a crystal vase on the table.

She whirled around to Karstan. “Are they from you?”

“Is what from me?”

“The flowers?”

“I don’t see—”

“Right there on the table.” How could he miss seeing them?

“Zoe, there’s no flowers on the table.”

Marching over, she leaned across to pluck a rose from the vase. A thorn pricked deep into her thumb. A bright drop of blood fell onto the worn surface of the table. She watched as it immediately soaked in and disappeared completely. Instinctively, she grasped her thumb, not allowing any more droplets to fall.

Karstan stepped behind her. “What happened?”

“The rose pricked me.”

“Zoe . . . .” he said helplessly.

“It did.” But when she tried to grasp the vase, there was nothing there. Nothing but air.

“Need a band aid?” Karstan asked her. “You must have touched a splinter on the table or something.”

“No . . . it’s okay.” She rubbed a finger over where her blood had been on the wood. The wood was dry as a bone.

Did I imagine the blood? No, Karstan saw it too.

All the wood here is old, she told herself. Old, porous wood. The insane sense came to her that the wood in this house seemed thirsty.

“Karstan,” she said, “I can’t stay here any longer. Not in this house. If I can’t stay anywhere else in town, I’m going home. What else can I do?”

He ran his hands through his hair, sighing heavily. “I wish I could do something to help. Hurts watching you go through this. You could come and stay at my house, if you want. There’s a heap of empty bedrooms.”

“I can’t impose like that. I’ll just . . . come back and stay in town when I’m feeling stronger. My research can wait.” Abruptly, she walked over to put the kettle on to boil, and she busied herself setting out cups and sugar.

She glanced upward. The wallpaper—it had changed here, too, the stripes becoming floral patterns. And the clock on the wall—it was different. The simple, square clock had become an ornate cuckoo clock.

Whoever had placed the flowers on the table had also replaced the clock. Maybe it was well-meaning, but right now, it seemed damned creepy.

“You okay, Zo?”

She realized she was standing there like a statue with her fingers clutching the cup handles. Nodding, she waited for the water to boil, wondering if she was ever going to be okay again.

With the coffee made, she set the cups on the table and sat beside Karstan, keeping her gaze away from the vase of flowers. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the night ahead. What if she woke up completely insane, not even knowing who she was? The thought terrified her.

“Karstan,” she said quietly. “Would you stay?”

He drank down the last of his coffee. “I’ll stay. If you like, I’ll check all the rooms before you head upstairs, just to put your mind at ease.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Zoe was Karstan’s shadow as he checked the laundry and the powder room, but when he headed down to the basement, Zoe stayed at the top of the stairs. She hated basements. She lived in an apartment, where all the rooms were on the one level. No dark dingy spaces. Everything bright and painted in fresh Caribbean colors.

“All good,” Karstan called. He bounded up the concrete steps. “Upstairs next.”

The house had grown noticeably colder since they’d first walked in here tonight. She shivered as they crossed the living room floor. Karstan walked ahead, to the upstairs staircase. She followed him.

In the darkness, she couldn’t see the holes in the stair runner where the carpet had worn thin. It looked in perfect condition. The stairs didn’t even seem to creak as much tonight.

Zoe had the strangest sense that she was changing alongside the house. With every floorboard being replaced, with every change of color, her fear and resolve grew—each of these at war with the other. She didn’t know which would win out.

She looked past Karstan’s tall frame to the gloom at the top of the stairway.

There was a reflection up there—Karstan’s reflection. But there hadn’t been any mirror there before. She sucked in a breath as she peered around his torso. A mirror—exactly the same as ones from the Boreades house—hung on the wall. “God . . . .”

He stopped and twisted around. “What is it?”

“That mirror shouldn’t be there.”

“Where?”

“Right in front of you.”

He wheeled around. “Zoe . . . there’s no mirror.”

“I can see you in it.” Swallowing back her fear, she marched up the stairs and pointed to it. “That mirror.”

But as she stared at it, the reflection of the man walking up the stairs behind her was not Karstan. The strange man wore brown trousers and a loose white shirt, his fair hair tousled around his face. His handsome face was angered. He held a knife in his fist.

She spun around. Karstan was gone. Gasping, she twisted back to the mirror. In the mirror’s reflection, someone was walking up the stairs—Karstan.

Karstan stepped straight out of the mirror’s reflection.

In front of her.

“No!” she screamed.

He grabbed her shoulders. “Zoe, please. What’s wrong?”

Running forward, she felt for the framed mirror. But the wall was flat beneath her hands. Karstan was right. There was no mirror. She looked around and around her—down the stairs and the hallway. There was no other man.

Sinking to the floor on her hands and knees, she watched her reflection in the mirror—the mirror that didn’t exist. Karstan crouched down to her, his arms moving around her tightly. “I don’t know what to do. Tell me what’s happening with you. Please?” He sounded lost.

“It’s this house. It’s sending me crazy.”

“I shouldn’t have let you see Phineas tonight. He’s not for novices.”

“This whole thing started before tonight. I can’t blame him.”

“You’ve seen a mirror here before?”

“No, just . . . things. Even people.”

“It could still be Fulcrum’s work. He’s a skilled hypnotist. The fact that you chose his tent tonight at Psychics’ Circle makes me wonder if he made himself known to you before.”

“What do you mean, made himself known to me?”

“I mean that he might have tried to meet you and hypnotize you way before tonight.”

“I don’t understand. Why would he—?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t trust him. Who knows what that weasel is up to?”

“But I haven’t seen him before.” She frowned then, remembering the odd man who’d been hanging around inside the toy store. Phineas and that man were around the same height and build. She’d only once caught a glimpse of his face, when the morning light had streaked through the store window and had shown his profile.

“Oh God,” she said. “I have seen him. Every day. He comes into the toy store but never buys anything. He wears a fedora pulled down low, but it’s him. I’m sure of it now.”

Karstan made a low, angry sound under his breath. “Hell.”

“Do you really think someone’s capable of doing that? Hypnotizing me to see these things?”

“Yes. I’ve seen people under hypnosis before. My friend Anthony is a hypnotist, too. It’s crazy what they can make people believe.”

“But why would Phineas do this to me?”

“I can’t be sure. But maybe he’s protecting his business. The psychics here are competing against each other—the ones who don’t have a reputation as being good that is. The good ones don’t even need to compete. But Phineas is at the bottom of the heap. Maybe he’s trying to use you to make himself look good.”

“Well, if that’s true, then his plan backfired. Because I wasn’t impressed by his reading.”

“You know what? I’d lay bets he knew you were coming to town, and he’s been busy looking up stuff about you. I bet he knows a lot of stuff.”

Zoe thought again about her Aunt Margo. It would have been easy enough to look up Zoe and find newspaper articles about her aunt and what had happened.

“That’s just creepy. No, worse than creepy.” Zoe drew her jacket around herself, feeling raw and exposed. Could it be true about Phineas? Had he found out all about her before she even stepped foot in town? Had he gotten into her mind without her being any the wiser? There was no reason for him to be in the toy store every day.

“Even though he’s been in the store, I’ve never actually spoken to him before tonight,” she told Karstan.

“I don’t know all the tricks that the Bleath hypnotists use. I’ve never studied it. But Anthony’s told me they don’t need to speak to you. They have other ways. They keep it all tight to their chests though.”

Anger rose inside her. “Phineas warned me about you. He should have been warning me about himself.”

“He what?”

“He didn’t say much. Just that you’re not . . . who you say you are.”

Karstan pulled himself to his feet, his movements quick and tense. “I’ll throw him out of town myself, I swear,” he exploded.

“I shouldn’t have repeated what he said.”

“He’s a coward. He doesn’t say that stuff to my face.” He glanced at her anxious expression and deliberately relaxed his shoulders, stooping to cradle her face between his hands. “And don’t feel sorry for telling me. I shouldn’t have spun out. You don’t need that right now.”

She stood. “I’d be angry, too.”

Letting his arms drop to his sides, he blew out a stream of air, as though trying to calm himself. “When Fulcrum first came to town, the position of running the Boreades house séance was open. My Aunt Miri used to run it, but she died that year. Phineas tried to get it, but my father gave it to me. I was nineteen then. I think it’s still burning his puny ass that a teenager got the séance gig and he didn’t.”

“You think he hates you for that?”

“I know it. I just didn’t know he was trying to damage my reputation the way that he is.”

Zoe felt her eyes moisten. “I had no idea what I was walking into when I first arrived in Bleath. It’s crazy that Phineas was trying to use me to hurt you, and to further his career.”

“He obviously doesn’t dare try doing it to my face. I’m steamed that he’s done this to you. You’ve been scared out of your mind and seeing all that crazy stuff.”

Zoe blinked away the tears forming in her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but can you undo whatever he did to me?”

He shook his head, drawing his mouth into a hard line. “I’m not a hypnotist. The best person to fix this would be Fulcrum himself. But he’s not going to admit to it. I know someone else I can take you to tomorrow. Citrine Littlewoods.”

“She can make all this go away? These visions?”

“I hope so. She’s damned good.”

“Okay.” She nodded, feeling broken. She’d never felt so unsure of herself, not even the day she’d found out Darien had cheated on her. Not even during the dark months after Aunt Margo died. This was different. She couldn’t even trust herself anymore.

“So, you’ll stay a bit longer? I don’t know how long this is going to take to fix.”

He was right. If she went home now, who could she go to with her story of hypnotism? Who would believe her and who could help her?

“Just a day or two,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “And hey, I won’t be leaving you alone here at night, no matter how long you decide to stay. Not for a second. I don’t know what Fulcrum’s got planned for you. Or what he’s done to you so far. But this is where it stops.”

Taking her hand, he took her with him as he went to check the other rooms.

“They’re locked,” Zoe told him as he rattled the first door.

“Okay, that makes it easy.” First he checked the bathroom, then walking into her bedroom, he checked inside the wardrobe and around the room. The cat was perched on the corner chair, blinking at the sudden intrusion.

“Is anything here different?” Karstan asked Zoe.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, good.” He marched over to the chair. “Shoo, Bluebell. Go chase a mouse or something.” Reluctantly, she jumped down and strutted indignantly across the floorboards and out of the room.

He closed the door and went to sit on the chair. “Hmmm, comfortable enough.”

“You can’t sleep in a chair all night,” Zoe told him.

“Watch me.”

“No, that’s not fair. Sleep here, on the bed.”

He put his hands up in a surrender gesture. “Okay. Settled. But you have to promise to keep your hands off me.” He gave a small, quick smile.

She laughed. “Okay, I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

“Unless you’re cold and need a hug. I give good hugs.”

“I’ll remember that.” She took her pajamas from under the pillow and walked down to the bathroom to get changed. She would rather have gotten dressed right there in the room in front of Karstan, to avoid being alone. Except that it would have been awkward.

At least she didn’t have to pass by the mirror to get to the bathroom. The mirror that wasn’t really there.

She changed quickly and returned to the bedroom. If anything was different in the bathroom, she didn’t want to see it. Not tonight.

Karstan was already lying on the bed, on top of the covers, his arms behind his head. “Nice PJs.”

“They were a present from Mom.” The pajamas were very pink and covered in fluffy clouds. The kind of pajamas you’d buy a ten-year-old girl.

She slipped under the covers before he could see that there were tiny bluebirds flying among those clouds. “Hey, you’re not going to sleep like that, are you? You’ll get cold.”

“I didn’t wanna just jump in.”

“It’s okay. I’ll hold to my promise of keeping my hands off you,” she said lightly.

“Pinky promise?” He winked.

“Yep.”

He slid off his socks and jeans, and moved in beside her. “Goodnight, Miss Cosgrove.”

“Night. Thank you.” She hesitated for a moment then kissed him.

“Hey, first time you kissed me. Does that mean you actually like me?” he teased.

“I guess it does.”

In the lamplight, he was gorgeous, his blue eyes deep and dark and his mouth so damned kissable. She wanted to kiss him again, but his expression became serious and he drew her head onto his shoulder. “You’ve only been in town a few days, and already you’ve seen some of the worst of it firsthand.”

“I’ve also seen some of the best.” She tried to hold fast to that thought. This day had been like a heavy weight, a ship’s anchor, pulling her under.

“I’m glad at least some of it’s been good.” His voice began to sound heavy, and he yawned.

She put an arm around his chest and moved close against his body, needing to touch him, to be sure of who he was. She committed his scent to memory, so that she’d know it anywhere: a spicy, woody scent of aftershave and the slight musk of sweat. This was Karstan—the real Karstan—and she desperately needed to cling onto things that were real.

He made a sleepy sound under his breath, his breathing settling into a slow rhythm.

14.

ZOE WOKE UP ALONE IN the bed. But the smell of eggs and coffee wafted in the air.

Karstan was still here.

Relieved, she swung her legs out of the bed. She didn’t want to be here by herself, even now when the yellowish morning sun had made the night flee.

She headed straight for the bathroom, exhaling a long breath when she saw that the bathroom looked exactly the same. The tiles and the mirror—even the crack in the mirror—were all what she remembered.

She took hesitant steps to the mirror, nausea rising in her stomach as the image flashed through her mind of the strange man and of Karstan stepping straight through the mirror at the top of the stairs. But the bathroom mirror was really there. Because she’d seen it since the first day she’d come to the Wilmont house. She stopped in front of her reflection, gazing at wide, fearful eyes and skeins of black hair draped over brown shoulders.

Stepping into the shower, she was immediately soothed, the almost baptismal cleansing of hot water on skin. She paused as she reached for the soap, hearing Karstan’s voice calling along the hall.

He knocked at the door of the bathroom. “Zo, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she called back.

“I’ve got breakfast ready downstairs.”

She heard his boots treading away. If last night had gone differently, she pondered—if there’d been no flowers and no mirror—would they have ended up making love? Might he have been comfortable to walk in while she was showering or even be showering with her? They had slept together, but it had just been that—sleeping. Was that part of Phineas’s plan? To keep her and Karstan at arm’s length?

She suddenly tilted her chin. She spotted someone through the bathroom window, out in the fields. A man. He was hacking at the wheat—with a scythe, his strikes desperate and furious.

Karstan had said they’d be cutting down the wheat soon, but surely they had threshing machines and didn’t do it the traditional way. Why was he almost attacking the wheat? And why was he doing that here, on the property of the Wilmont house?

She patted herself dry and wrapped herself in a towel. Back in her room, she dressed in a short brown corduroy dress, white sweater, tights, and white boots. She’d last worn this outfit when she’d joined Darien and his family for a picnic.

No, don’t think about Darien. Not today. Not any day.

She peered out at the man again. He lifted the blade to inspect it then walked off into a shed. The low slant of the morning light temporarily lit up the inside of the building. The man sharpened the scythe, his blonde hair damp with sweat.

Zoe gasped. It was the same man she thought she’d seen in the shed before. The same man who she’d seen walking up the stairs.

Phineas had put these visions in her mind. But why?

She rushed along the hallway and down the stairs, ignoring the flash on the mirror’s surface that she saw from her side vision. Today, she’d go and see Citrine with Karstan, and hope like crazy that Citrine could do something.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Karstan was getting breakfast ready, his shirt hanging loosely on his shoulders. He wore a cap she hadn’t seen him wear before.

The vase of flowers still sat on the kitchen table. They looked every bit like they were truly there. Unable to resist, she stepped over to touch a rose. Again, her fingers waved straight through thin air.

Karstan stepped behind her. “What’s the matter, miss?”

Zoe stiffened. It wasn’t Karstan’s voice. It was a different, deeper voice.

She whirled around.

The man with the shirt and cap was not Karstan.

Her throat dried and swelled as she stumbled back against the table. The man was older—mid-twenties at least—with intense dark eyes and fair hair: the man who had the scythe just a minute ago.

“Who are you?”

The man drew his eyebrows together in confusion. “What? It’s me.”

“Tell me your name!” She practically screamed the words out.

“Karstan. I’m Karstan.”

“No. You’re not.”

He raced across the floor and caught her arm as she made a run for the back door. “Zoe, it’s me. I promise you.”

Held fast, she breathed in the scent of him. Musky, spicy, woody. He was telling the truth.

When she turned and saw his face, it was Karstan’s. “It’s you.”

He hugged her, holding her as gently as someone would hold something made of thin glass. “So hard watching you go through this. I made a phone call earlier, to Citrine. She’s shuffled appointments around so that she can see you at eight this morning. Which is in about forty minutes’ time. Is that okay?”

“Yes. God. I’ll be there.”

“Good. Now park yourself at the table. I didn’t go to all that trouble for you not to eat it.”

He gave a half a grin and served up breakfast for them both. She was sure it must be the same kind of omelette as he’d made before, but she could barely taste it this morning. Her throat remained dry, and her stomach still felt upside-down.

She lowered her eyes as she finished the eggs. “You’re looking at me like I’m some kind of carnival freak show. Aren’t you?”

“No.” He swallowed, drumming the fingers of one hand lightly on the table. “If you must know, I’m thinking how hard it was to be next to you last night and not take things further.”

Heat travelled from her chest up to her jawline. “I’m sorry things went haywire with me last night. I’m sorry that things are still haywire.”

“You can’t help it.”

“I’m sure it’s the worst date you’ve ever been on.”

“So you think of it as a date?”

“Wasn’t it?” She felt awkward now.

“I wasn’t sure if you just saw it as more fodder for your research. It was a date for me. Definitely not the worst one. Not even close. Zoe, you don’t know what effect you’ve had on me since you’ve been here.”

She shook her head. “A pain-in-the-ass type of effect? You’ve been bailing my ass out of trouble the whole time.”

He broke into a smile that Zoe couldn’t help but stare at. Karstan Montalban was even more striking when he smiled, the edges of his mouth flicking upward. “I’m just glad we figured out the source of the problem. You should take the whole day off. No toy store. No college work. Just you and me.”

“I’d feel bad letting Pearl down.”

“Well, then I’ll work alongside you at the store, and keep an eye on you. And keep an eye out for Phineas.”

“You can’t—”

“I can. Anyway, Zoe, it’s time to go.”

*

Citrine Littlewoods lived in a small cottage at the far end of Bleath. The cottage was dwarfed by the soaring pine forest that stood directly behind it. Zoe hadn’t been out this way before. The landscape was both pretty and wild. She felt a world away from everything, even from Bleath itself.

Citrine grew neatly ordered rows of lavender, wildflowers, and herbs around her house. No wheat fields here.

Zoe walked with Karstan along a pathway made of stones. They noticed a figure bent over a strawberry patch, pulling out weeds. Citrine—today dressed in a deep-green sarong—raised her head. “There you are. Can I get you some peppermint tea?”

“No thanks, Citrine. We’ve just had coffee.” Stepping over, Karstan yanked out a big, strong-looking weed.

“Coffee will make your young minds spin like pinwheels. Better stick to tea,” she admonished him. Again, her hair was pulled back from her face.

“This is beautiful,” said Zoe, gesturing with both hands at the gardens.

“It is,” she replied, “but it takes a lot of elbow grease. And knee grease. And backbone grease. Still, you can spend every day sitting, and still hurt yourself. Like poor Pearl and her foot.” She dusted dirt from her hands. “Come on inside.”

They followed her the rest of the way along the path and into the cottage. The interior was as pretty as the outside, everything made of burnished wood, with accents of copper and homemade furnishings. Rows of shelving held small glass jars of dried herbs. The air smelled of tea and bread and peppery things. Citrine had them sit at the kitchen table while she washed her hands at the sink.

“Karstan has told me about your problem, Zoe,” Citrine said, patting her hands dry on a tea towel. “But I want you to tell me in your own words. Sometimes, when we’re under hypnosis, it can be difficult to describe what’s really going on with us.”

Zoe breathed deeply, a little startled that Citrine had begun talking about Zoe’s hypnotism already. She’d expected some rambling chat first. The cottage gave every appearance of being somewhere that people would sit and talk about the weather and the seasons and baking. But Citrine’s tone was focused, and she was all business.

“I’ve just . . . been seeing strange things,” Zoe answered. “The first night in Bleath, I thought I saw . . . ghostly people in the wheat field. And since then, I’ve been imagining the Wilmont house changing. The décor, the walls, a mirror appearing at the top of the stairs . . . .”

“You didn’t tell me about the ghosts,” said Karstan quietly. He glanced at Citrine.

“I know,” Zoe told him. “It just felt so childish.”

“Never think that,” said Citrine sharply. “The things you see have meaning, and you mustn’t dismiss them.”

“But if it’s all just hypnosis, then do they really have any meaning?” She almost had the feeling that she was in a classroom and Citrine was a teacher frustrated by a slow-learning student.

Citrine came to sit at the table. Her movements were faster and more assured than Pearl’s, even accounting for Pearl’s sore foot. “Hypnosis suggests things to your mind, but no two people will be hypnotized in exactly the same way. Different people will see different things. Whoever did this to you intended it to have dire effects.”

“Karstan thinks it’s Phineas Fulcrum.”

“Well,” Citrine said in a considered voice, “I’m not going to jump to any conclusions myself. It would be a pretty impressive feat for Mr. Fulcrum to achieve, in any case.”

Karstan shook his head, pulling his mouth into a hard line. “His psychic abilities might be thin on the ground, but I’ve seen him in action with his hypnotism. He’s good.”

“Yes,” Citrine agreed. “He is a talented hypnotist. I’ll give him that. But still, it is very difficult to have a person sustain the kind of visions that Zoe has been seeing.”

A spiral of anxiety reached upward from Zoe’s stomach to her chest, making her aware of her heart beat. She was sure that at any minute, Citrine was going to diagnose her as plain old crazy.

“Is there a way of getting me unhypnotized?” Zoe blurted.

Citrine exchanged looks with Karstan then smoothed back silver hair that didn’t have a single strand out of place. “That’s a tall order, Zoe. It can be done, but firstly, you have to guard yourself against the attack.”

“How do I do that?”

“I’ll take you through some exercises, to strengthen your defences. And then we will begin the process of taking you back to the point where you first entered this town.”

“Like a reset button?” Zoe wanted to laugh hysterically at the thought.

“You could say that,” Citrine said, her voice calm and grave.

Zoe let her eyelids close. “I’m ready.”

15.

ZOE AND KARSTAN STEPPED OUT into the buzz of a Bleath day in fall.

People milled in the town square, brochures in their hands and thrill in their eyes. Bleath was a town of futures—futures being told, futures being dreamed.

Maples showered Zoe with red and gold leaves as she entered the main street, seeming ceremonial. Zoe couldn’t describe exactly how she felt after her meeting with Citrine—she only knew that she felt different. There was no longer a jumble of thoughts and fears tumbling around each other in her mind.

She and Karstan had barely stepped into the toy store when Zoe spotted the man with the fedora. Phineas Fulcrum. She recalled Karstan’s volatile reaction last night when she’d told him about Phineas’s warning. Her first thought was to ask Phineas to leave, without Karstan seeing him.

But it was already too late.

Karstan made a derisive, hostile sound under his breath. The next second he was rushing down the aisle toward Phineas. Phineas glanced up with a look of surprise the second before Karstan punched him so hard on his jaw that Zoe could hear the thwack. Phineas crashed against a display of wooden tarot cards, sending the cards scattering across the polished parquetry floor.

“Oh dear!” Mrs. Littlewoods hobbled along the aisle. “What’s happening?” She positioned her glasses to take a better look. “Karstan! And Phineas! What on earth?”

Phineas picked himself up, pulling the fedora back onto his head and tucking in his scarf. Gingerly touching his jaw, he shot a dark look at Karstan. “Do you make a habit out of attacking people? How stupid of me—of course you do.”

“You had that coming.” Karstan angled his head back to Pearl. “I’ll fix the shelves and pay for the damage. I just had some business to take care of with Mr. Fulcrum here.”

“Well, take it out of the store,” she admonished. “Both of you. Are you all right, Phineas? Can I get you something?”

“I’ll be fine,” Phineas told her stiffly.

“So sorry, Mrs. Littlewoods.” Zoe ran along the aisle and picked up the glass from a pile of trinket boxes that had smashed on the ground. The glass was thick and had broken into large shards. When she was sure she had all of it, she deposited the pieces in the trash can behind the counter. A small red gash ran along the back of her hand—not deep enough to need any attention.

There was only a scattering of customers in the store so far—all of them staring at Karstan and Phineas with shocked expressions—but soon the store would be full. Now that Karstan had hit Phineas, there were things that needed to be said. Pearl was right. They had to take this outside.

“Phineas, I have to talk with you.” Zoe winced as she noticed the angry-looking bruise starting to spread on the side of his face.

“In that case, maybe you should have called off your attack-dog boyfriend first.” Pulling up the collar of his coat, he began walking away.

“I’m not done.” Karstan smoothed back hair that had fallen across his face.

Phineas’s eyebrows hooked into a questioning expression. “You think I’m going to hang around for you to lay another one on me?”

“Can we all just go outside, please?” Zoe eyed the two men.

Phineas looked like he was about to say something but then changed his mind. He strode from the store and out into the street.

Karstan was right behind him. Shooting an apologetic look at Pearl, Zoe followed them.

Phineas walked beneath the scattered shade of a half-bare maple tree and stopped there.

Karstan wasted no time, jumping in front of him. “What did you do to Zoe?” he demanded.

Phineas nursed his jaw, opening and closing it, as though measuring the level of pain. “Gave her a reading. You have a problem with that?” He shot a confused, irate look at Zoe.

“Phineas—” she started, unsure how to proceed.

“Someone’s been practicing hypnotism on Zoe,” Karstan broke in. “You know the rules about that.”

Phineas’s face grew cold and hard. “What makes you think it’s me?”

“Okay, answer me this,” Karstan pressed. “Why have you been showing up in the toy store every morning? Why you and why the toy store?”

“None of your business.” Phineas’s voice had a note of finality to it.

“I thought as much. You stay away from Zoe. If I catch you near her again, I’ll do more than land a punch on your face.”

“You stay away from me, or I’ll be calling the police.” Phineas turned and headed in the opposite direction, zigzagging through the crowd.

It was later, when Zoe’s shift at the toy store was almost over that she realized that Phineas hadn’t even tried to deny he’d been hypnotizing her. Not in any way that mattered.

16.

A HIGH, EXCITED VOICE SHOOK Zoe from her thoughts.

A woman with golden-brown skin dashed up to Zoe at the counter.

“Mom!” Zoe cried. “What are you—?”

Two people popped out from behind Zoe’s mother. Zoe’s dad and her brother, Ryan.

“Thought we’d drive up and surprise you.” Her father’s face crinkled in a radial pattern at the sides, his familiar smile playing beneath his moustache.

“And I got dragged along.” Ryan picked up a wooden puzzle box and studied it, his skin the same deep tan color as Zoe’s and his eyes a similar pale brown. He’d turned seventeen this year and had grown even more like a beanstalk.

“Wow, I’m blown away you three came all this way,” Zoe said.

“Well, we know you’re busy with your study and everything,” Mom explained, “but we thought you might have some free time on Saturday. So here we are.” She glanced around the store. “The toys are exquisite. Makes me sorry you and Ryan aren’t little again so I can buy you some of these.”

Ryan grimaced, always embarrassed when Mom reminisced about his early years. “Can we go eat now?”

“You only work until twelve, is that right, Zoe?” asked Mom. “I hoped we could all have lunch together?”

Zoe glanced at the other end of the counter, where Karstan leaned with an amused look on his face. As he’d promised, he’d stayed with Zoe the whole two hours.

Mom caught the glance and looked at Zoe with a question in her eyes.

“Mom, Dad, Ryan,” said Zoe, “this is Karstan. A friend of mine.”

“Hi Karstan,” Mom said. “Do you work here with Zoe?”

Smiling, Karstan shook his head. “No, I’m just here to keep your daughter company.”

Zoe noticed Dad sizing Karstan up now. Was it that obvious he was a little more than just a friend?

Ryan looked on, his mouth twitching into a gleeful grin as he watched his sister squirming.

“Go,” Karstan told Zoe. “Go have lunch with your family. I’ll finish things up here. After that, I’ll go trail bike riding with Anthony.”

“Are you sure?” Zoe asked him.

“Yep,” he said. “And I’ll see you later on.”

Zoe felt both parents’ eyes on her now. Karstan was sounding exactly like a boyfriend. Ryan raised his eyebrows at Zoe in a mock shocked expression.

“Okay, great. Thank you.” Ignoring Ryan’s fixed stare, she picked up her handbag from beneath the counter.

Karstan stepped behind the cash register as she moved out. “You should head up into the hills. Nice day for a picnic there.” He gave a slow, wide smile.

“Good idea,” Zoe told him.

Karstan’s gaze lingered on her as she began to step away.

Mom grabbed Zoe lightly on the elbow as they walked from the store. “My goodness, Zo, he’s one good-looking boy.”

“He’s really nice, Mom,” she replied.

“He seemed very interested in you.” Dad furrowed the skin between his eyebrows into a tight diamond shape that Zoe knew so well. It meant that what Dad was thinking went much deeper than his words.

She saved herself from answering that by pointing across the road to the only salad bar in town.

“Is everyone happy with chicken and salad?” said Zoe brightly, attempting to change the subject. “Or would you like something else?”

“That would be perfect, honey,” Mom told her.

*

Zoe drove her car up into the hills, with her family following. She hated to admit it, but right now, she felt protected. With her parents here, she could be a kid again.

She parked near the willow tree where she’d met up with Karstan the day he’d shown her around town. It was funny, she mused, how in less than a week, how she’d come to associate so many places around Bleath with Karstan.

Her dad parked his SUV under the shade of the willow, and the four of them made their way to a spot that overlooked the town. Ten or so other families were dotted around the grassy slopes.

Zoe and Ryan spread out the picnic rug—the same tartan rug that had been tucked away in the back of every car Zoe’s parents had owned since Zoe was a child. Mom was sentimental about stuff like that—it was important to her that there were threads of continuity. Zoe remembered picnics on that rug when she was ten and Ryan was a chubby, sticky-faced five-year-old rolling around in the grass. Aunt Margo was there in those days, with her raspberry coconut cupcakes that crumbled like sand when you tried to eat them, which no one ever had the heart to tell her. Aunt Margo wasn’t a cake eater herself.

Zoe was glad Mom hadn’t changed the rug.

Mom and Dad laid out the food, Ryan wasting no time in digging in.

“Hey, leave some for the rest of us,” Dad protested.

Spooning salad onto her plate, Mom glanced up at Zoe. “So, tell me everything. What’s been happening?”

Zoe’s lips parted, ready to speak, but she knew how little of the last few days she could actually tell Mom. Zoe decided to tell her about the only thing that was safe to tell—the interviews. “It’s a lovely little town. So . . . different. I’ve talked with two of the kids I came here to see so far. It’s been amazing. There’s a young boy, Lincoln, who’s constructed a world of ice and fantastical creatures. And a little nine-year-old girl, Duckie, who escapes to a circus from the 1920s. She’s taught herself to do all kinds of stunts, and she actually talks like she’s from that era.”

“Gosh.” Mom blinked. “It’s going to be a fascinating read when you have it all together.”

Zoe didn’t know if she would ever want her mom to read it. Not if she included all the stuff about the terror she’d felt in the Wilmont house and how she’d been hypnotized by a jealous psychic.

Mom touched her arm. “That boy, Karstan, he seemed to not want to let you go.”

“He’s been looking out for me because I’m new and alone here in Bleath. He’s shown me the sights, and he even took me to the town carnival last night.” Zoe pointed in the direction of the distant rollercoaster. She was not going to mention the dance party and the ghostly woman in the mirror.

“You two looked good standing there together.” Mom’s eyes softened, and Zoe knew she was trying to say, see, Zoe, Darien’s not the only boy in the world.

Zoe tried to picture Karstan and herself together, and she couldn’t. She’d been carefully telling herself that was never going to happen from day one. “Well, I can’t take him with me. Anyway, I’ll be leaving soon. I’ve got almost everything I need to put this thesis together. Besides, I’m missing home.”

“Really?” Mom’s eyes lit up.

“Yes, really.”

“I’m missing you like crazy.” Mom put an arm around Zoe and tugged her close.

“Miss you, too. Can’t wait until I’m home.” Zoe couldn’t keep the honesty out of her voice. She’d jump in her parents’ car and go home with them, right now, if she could. But she couldn’t do that. She needed to be sure that whatever Phineas had done to her was undone. Earlier, she’d rung the parents of the other four kids she was planning on seeing, and she’d cancelled. She needed to concentrate on getting herself better, and then she’d be leaving. One of the interviewees was a lot older than the rest. Chase Jamieson was nineteen. His age had made Zoe wonder just how long these kids could wander in their dream worlds.

It was four o’clock when Zoe was folding up the picnic rug with Ryan. Already, afternoon shadows were deepening in the town and fields below.

Ryan gave her an uncharacteristically shy smile. “Wish me luck, sis. I’m swimming in the finals tomorrow.”

“Oh, wow, you got into the finals?” Zoe exclaimed. Ryan had been on the school swim team for the past three years. He could swim like the proverbial fish, and he loved the water.

She did something she hadn’t done since she and Ryan were kids. She hugged him.

“Congratulations. You worked hard and you deserve it,” she told him.

He looked surprised and automatically went into an ewww-girl’s-germs squirm, but then he grinned broadly. “Thanks.”

Mom watched them both, inclining her head as she pulled her lips into a fond smile—an expression that reminded Zoe so much of Aunt Margo.

Unbidden, Zoe’s last memory of her aunt crowded into her mind.

Aunt Margo, lying on the floor on her side, blood staining her white shirt and pink jeans. Her eyes closed, like she was sleeping. But she wasn’t sleeping. The curtains rippling at either side of an open window. And someone, at the window. Someone who stared at Zoe with a glazed, terrifying look in his eyes.

Chills tapped along her spine.

She knew who it was.

Someone she’d known her whole life.

In her mind, she saw the broad back and trousered leg as he disappeared out onto the ledge outside.

In the panic and horror of the moments after Zoe’s mom entered the room, things blurred. She remembered her mother screaming, and her then two-year-old brother on her hip. And Ryan bawling in response. And then sirens and police and people and her father rushing home from his job. And adults silencing Zoe, telling her to shut out the sight she’d seen, urging her to remember Aunt Margo as she’d been in life.

“Mom, can we go for a little walk?” Zoe asked.

A questioning look rose in her eyes at the sudden change in Zoe’s tone. “Of course, honey.”

They stepped to the edge of the hill, looking out on the town.

“Mom, I hate to bring this up. It’s about Aunt Margo.”

Zoe’s mom stiffened reflexively. “Okay.”

“I don’t remember—who lived in the apartment next to her, on the right?”

She frowned at the unexpected question. “On the right? It was empty.”

“So, no one lived there at the time Aunt Margo was . . .  At the time she died?”

She shook her head. “No. It was being painted and recarpeted. A lot of the apartments on that floor were being refurbished.”

“I’m sorry for the questions, Mom. But I need to know. Were the painters there when it happened?”

“No, not in that apartment. They hadn’t been working there that day. Honey, has that day been playing on your mind? The police investigated all the painters that had been working in the other apartments, and fingerprinted them all, along with many others. They thought it was an opportunistic crime, but they didn’t find evidence that pointed to anyone in specific.”

It was obvious her mom knew every intricate detail of that day. Zoe could imagine her going over every fact, trying to discover who her sister’s killer was.

“So, there were fingerprints left behind?” Zoe asked.

“Yes, there were fingerprints. I’m not sure where this is headed, sweetie. I know that you were so young, and traumatized by what happened. I wish we had more clues. It’s been almost fourteen years since we lost her, and we still don’t know. I think we’ll never know.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“Mom, forgive me. I know.”

“What did you say?” Her voice turned fragile and tight.

“You remember I was the first one to enter the apartment? You were juggling Ryan and the presents for Aunt Margo?”

“Yes.”

“I saw a man. I think I must have been in shock, after seeing Aunt Margo, because I didn’t tell. And afterwards, everyone told me to forget: Don’t talk about it. And I forgot what I saw. Until now.”

Zoe’s mother stared at her in open astonishment, a slight tremble in her lower lip. “But no one could have gotten past without me seeing them.”

“He climbed through the window,” Zoe said. “You know there’s nowhere to go from there but down. But there’s a ledge. I saw him go right. And if there was an open window close by, he could have got back into the building that way.”

“The painters would have known which windows were open . . . .”

“It wasn’t any of them. Mom, the man was Dad’s business partner. Bud Hanslow.”

“No,” she whispered. “Surely, no . . . .” She shook her head in slow, disbelieving motions. “It was a long time ago, Zoe. You were just a child. You must be mistaken. It couldn’t be him. Your father works with him every day. He’s a family man. We have him and Joanie over to dinner all the time. I’ve never had a reason to suspect Bud.”

“I’m sorry.” Zoe reached for her mother’s hand. “He’s the man I saw.”

Realization pulled Zoe’s mom’s face taut. “Margo did tell me once that Bud made a pass at her. But that was a year before Margo was killed. It was at an office party. I just assumed he got a little drunk and stupid. Oh God, she only worked at your father’s company for six months. I thought she left because she got a better job offer. But could she have left because of Bud? She did seem fragile during those months.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “It would have been so like Margo not to say anything. She wouldn’t have wanted to hurt your father’s business. He was only just getting it started then, together with Bud.”

Zoe drew her lips in. “Maybe Bud couldn’t stand being rejected by Aunt Margo. I remember her. She was beautiful. What if he planned this?”

She looked directly at Zoe, raw pain evident in her eyes. “But the apartment building had footage of everyone coming and going that day in the foyer. Bud Hanslow wasn’t one of them.”

“What if he pretended to be one of the painters? What if he dressed like one of them? Maybe he even hid in the apartment next door overnight. When he left, all the cameras would show is one of the painters leaving.”

She nodded then. “That’s possible. My God, Zoe, you poor thing, to have seen all that you did. How did you remember this now?”

“I saw a psychic here. For research purposes. But he jogged my memory of that day.”

Mom’s cheeks shone wetly, and she held onto Zoe in a hug, as though if she didn’t, she’d no longer be able to stand.

Zoe’s father stepped up to them.

As they both turned to him, his face dropped at seeing their expressions. Zoe’s mother gently explained to him all that Zoe had said—the intensity of the anger rising in his eyes frightening Zoe. She’d never seen that look in her father’s eyes before. She could tell that Bud Hanslow wouldn’t be safe if he were here right now.

“I’ll be home in two days or so,” Zoe promised. “And we’ll sort this out. For Aunt Margo. The fingerprints alone will show that it was him. But I’ll stand up in court and testify.”

When Ryan bounded across to ask what was going on, Mom told him, too.

Together, the four of them stood looking down on the fall colors of Bleath. If there was one thing this town had given Zoe, it was the identity of Aunt Margo’s killer, something she never could have expected.

Zoe stayed on the hill as her family drove away, almost feeling like a child that had been left behind on a family trip. The memory of when she was eight had come back to her so viscerally, it was hard to move back into her adult body. But she had to make herself strong now, and wait to see if what Citrine had done was going to work. And then she could go home.

17.

A GREEN VAN PULLED UP abruptly beside the verge, near the old willow tree. A family piled out. A couple with their young children.

Zoe recognized them as the Kane family as they walked closer—Lincoln and his parents and sisters. Were they heading here for a picnic? They didn’t seem to have any baskets or food with them, and besides, didn’t they have acres of property of their own for picnics?

Zoe realized they were headed in her direction. The entire family bunched together as they walked, as though to ward off attack from the outside. Mrs. Kane held her arms crossed over her stomach, looking physically sick.

Darren Kane took a few steps ahead of his family and reached Zoe just as she was pulling herself to her feet. “Hello, Miss Cosgrove.”

“Mr. Kane, hi.”

“Noticed you here and thought we’d stop and show you something,” he said.

“Sure.” Zoe looked past him, to Jenny Kane, who was shuffling her son forward as though he was some kind of exhibit. She sensed that something was very wrong. It wasn’t one of Lincoln’s sculptures or anything that she was about to be shown.

“Linc, show Zoe your hands,” urged Jenny.

Lincoln begrudgingly took his hands from his pockets and held them out.

There were dry, yellowish patches on his skin.

“What is this?” Zoe ran a finger over a patch on his thumb.

“We’re just back from the doctor’s.” Jenny’s thin features pinched tight. “She said she’s only seen this on people suffering frostbite.”

Zoe raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Frostbite? But—”

“I know.” Jenny shook her head. “She was asking a lot of odd questions. I think she was trying to frame us as being people who would force their child to hold his hands in the freezer box. You saw his hands three days ago. There was none of this.”

Zoe tried to think back. She hadn’t really paid attention to his hands on the day she spoke to him. But surely she would have noticed the patches.

“We’re not child abusers.” Jenny’s voice compressed to a whisper. “I don’t know why his hands are like this. I don’t know why we’re losing him to his pretend world. I don’t know why he stopped talking to us. I don’t know . . . .”

Jenny’s husband stepped close to her, but the gesture didn’t seem supportive so much as intrusive. Zoe couldn’t explain the feeling that she got from him apart from the sense that he was trying to ensure his wife didn’t say too much.

“How did this happen, Lincoln?” Zoe asked gently.

Lincoln stared back with unblinking round eyes.

One of his sisters—the eldest girl—answered. “It was the cold. I touched him when he came back from the cold place. In the wheat.”

“In the wheat field?” asked Zoe.

“Yes.” She nodded vigorously.

Zoe tried to remember her name. Jenny had pointed out her three daughters when Zoe visited the Kane family. They were Kate, Amy, and Sophie—eldest to youngest.

“Where exactly in the field is the cold place, Kate?” said Zoe.

“I don’t know,” Kate answered. “I’ve never seen it. I just know Linc goes there.”

Lincoln’s expression remained unchanged.

Zoe expelled a stream of air, her fist lightly touching her lower lip. She raised her eyes to Mr. and Mrs. Kane. “I wish I could tell you what’s happening here. But I’m out of my depth.”

Jenny squeezed her son’s shoulders, as though to reassure herself that he was still standing there, real and solid. “They’ll take him away from us if this happens again. But I don’t know how to stop it from happening again.”

Glancing down from the hills into the town, Zoe watched the ripples of light on the distant wheat crops. “Can you keep him out of the fields?”

Darren Kane shrugged. “That’s where they all play. The kids of Bleath.”

Zoe sucked her lips in, trying to stop herself from speaking the words she knew she didn’t have the right to speak. She had no qualifications to be giving advice. But then she said the words anyway. “Then go live somewhere else, far away from Bleath.”

A tremor raced through Zoe’s chest, and she held her breath as she waited for his answer, wondering if she was letting her own experiences here in Bleath color her view about Lincoln. This town just felt so unsafe.

“It would be damned hard for us to pick up and shift our family.” Drawing himself up straight, Darren crossed his arms.

“I know,” said Zoe, “but I’m worried about Lincoln.”

Jenny Kane toyed with her wedding ring, tugging it like it was an annoyance on her finger. “But wouldn’t Linc just be the same anywhere? You don’t need a field of wheat to invent a fantasy world.”

“No, but maybe a change of scenery will help Lincoln remember the boy he used to be,” Zoe told them.

Jenny’s mouth set into an unusually determined line. “Maybe I just needed someone else to say it. This town has been bad news for all of us. I’m leaving, one way or another.”

Darren scowled. “We’re heading back home. Now.”

Jenny shot Zoe an intense, pleading look as she began herding her children back toward the car.

“I thought maybe you could help,” Darren told Zoe, his face reddened with anger. “But instead, you’re coming up with suggestions that won’t help anyone. You’re just as bad as the damned doctor. No one can help us. We’re on our own.”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he strode across the picnic grounds, overtaking his wife and children.

*

Zoe drove along the quietened Main Street of mid-afternoon. Many of the stores had closed. In the square, only the church and library still seemed to be open.

She stopped the car for a moment. Without Karstan, she didn’t want to venture back to the Wilmont house. And she had no idea how long it would be before he returned.

If she was going to be here for another two days or so, she might as well continue her work. She had some internet research she’d been intending to do, and Karstan had told her the library was the only reliable place in town where the internet worked. An image of Lincoln Kane’s hands entered her mind. He needed help. Maybe she could find out some things. About Phineas Fulcrum. About Melody Holmes, the young girl who had disappeared. Maybe even about the Wilmont house. If part of the reason that Phineas had hypnotized her to see illusions at the Wilmont house was because he didn’t want her there, maybe she needed to know why.

Continuing on, she parked the car behind the Bleath Library.

She stepped along an avenue of purple Jacarandas trees where the branches threaded together across the path to form a roof. So many Jacaranda flowers had fallen that they’d formed a floor, too. The library ahead was a large stone structure—not as ancient and forbidding as the church looked—but still old and secretive-looking and full of alcoves. A place to get lost in.

Inside, the library had shelves rising far above her head, and two mezzanine levels above the bottom floor, the air saturated with furniture polish and the slight musty smell of old books.

Having no idea which way to head, she decided to explore.

To the right, an enormous tapestry hung on the wall, inside a protective glass case. It looked old. Centuries-old. At the top center of the tapestry was some kind of emblem: a griffin and a serpent locked in mortal combat. Beneath the emblem were a series of what seemed to be earths, all slightly overlapping each other.

“It’s quite a thing of beauty, isn’t it?” came a voice behind her.

Zoe turned to see a man with small, flat eyes and a pursed mouth. He wore the same dark blue vest as the other librarians she’d noticed here so far.

“It was commissioned in the sixteen hundreds, in France,” he continued.

“What is it meant to be?” Zoe asked him.

“Griffins were guardians of gold stores in Greek legend. Serpents were the griffin’s enemy. Griffins are in the family crest of one of the founding families of Bleath. And the earths are a depiction of the realms.”

Zoe pictured the griffin emblems of the Boreades house, knowing which family he meant. “Realms?”

“You could call them multiple earths. In multiple universes. The idea of multi-universes is an old belief here in this town.”

“Multiple universes seems kind of an advanced belief for back then.” Zoe wrinkled her brow at him.

“Well, perhaps they had access to knowledge that scientists today don’t even possess,” he told her in a superior tone. “There are many earths exactly the same as ours and many earths that differ greatly. That is a tightly held belief in Bleath. We are very proud of our history and ancestry here.”

“Are school children taught this?” She eyed him with interest, thinking of the high number of children with paracosms in this town and what might have triggered those fantasy worlds.

“They don’t need to be taught it, specifically. It’s part of the fabric of this town. Just like this tapestry.” He gave a smile at his pun that lacked any warmth or humor. “My name is Mr. Dovewright. If I can offer you any assistance, do let me know.”

“Oh,” she said, “I was told there were internet booths here?”

“Yes. If you continue and around the corner to the left, you’ll see our section for internet research.”

“Thank you.”

As she headed around the corner, she saw a scattering of people sitting in front of computer screens, wooden partitions on either side of them. A few heads turned her way. She made her way through stacked piles of books and aisles to the computers and seated herself in front of an empty computer booth. She was glad that no one could see what she was about to research—she didn’t want anyone looking over her shoulder right now.

She set her bag down on the desk and began typing: Phineas Fulcrum.

No results came up for him. No website, no social media profiles, no listings for his services. Nothing. She’d have to find out his real name and search for that instead.

Next, she tapped in Melody Holmes. A picture of a young, slightly plump girl came up on Google images. Melody was cute with her auburn fringe and round cheeks and the hurry-up-and-take-the-photo smile on her face.

Zoe clicked on the image link. The image linked through to a news article about Melody’s disappearance:

Melody Holmes, aged 10, vanished while playing with a friend in a crop field in Bleath yesterday, between three and four in the afternoon. Her friend, aged 8, was unable to give any clue as to what happened to Melody. Police are urging the public to come forward if they have any information that could assist them in this case. Melody was wearing a yellow dress and white shoes, with a white cardigan.

Zoe twisted her mouth wryly, knowing that Duckie would have insisted to the police that Melody vanished enroute to the Fiveash circus—the circus that Duckie had named as the one she visits.

On a whim, Zoe typed in Fiveash circus. To her surprise, a full page of Google entries appeared. Zoe began reading. The Fiveash circus had been a real circus, starting up in the late 1800s and ending after a disastrous train derailment in 1920. An entire circus family was killed, save for the owner and a few others.

She took down notes on Melody and the Fiveash circus.

Zoe hesitated for a moment before searching her next subject: the Wilmont house. Were there things about that house she was better off not knowing?

She straightened in her chair, readying herself. She’d come here to find out all she could, and that’s what she was going to do.

She typed in, Wilmont, Bleath.

Immediately, she found background information. A man named Harry Wilmont had married a twenty-year-old woman named Elspeth in 1923, and they’d built the Wilmont house. There was a single picture of them both in front of the Wilmont house. Elspeth was sitting on a wicker chair, holding a newborn baby, while Harry stood beside her with a hand on her shoulder. Harry’s deeper complexion contrasted against Elspeth’s pale skin. She and Harry had a daughter that they called Peony. Harry died just a year after he married, in an accident at the local mill. He was twenty-two when he died. The same age as me, Zoe thought.

Elspeth Wilmont, unable to deal with her husband’s death, left three-month-old Peony in a basket on the doorstep of her childhood home—the Boreades house—and she fled Bleath.

Zoe kept reading down the page. Elspeth’s ancestors had moved to Bleath in the 1700s and started up a mill on the river, eventually building an opulent house up in the hills. The family surname was Boreades.

Boreades. Elspeth had been one of the Boreades family.

Had Elspeth been an only child? Zoe kept looking until she found a picture of Elspeth as a child. She’d had an older brother named Rohan and a younger sister named Morwen. Rohan, aged fourteen in the photograph, was tall and sandy haired. Elspeth, aged twelve, had dark hair and soft, round eyes. Morwen, aged eleven, had thick hair of a much lighter color than her sister’s though not as fair as her brother’s, her eyes penetrating. Morwen towered above her older sister.

Rohan later went missing in action in war. He returned unexpectedly, years later, the day after Elspeth left town. He was twenty-three. He took a fall on the basement stairs at his sister Elspeth’s house and died of head injuries.

Zoe sucked in a deep breath. Rohan had died at the Wilmont house.

The article went on to say that Morwen died of a lightning strike the same day.

Sitting back, Zoe paused her reading for a moment. The Boreades family had been beset by so much tragedy. Having been at both the Wilmont and Boreades houses made it all seem so much more vivid.

She went on to read more.

Elspeth’s father raised the baby, Peony, at the Boreades house, after Elspeth left her there. Peony moved to the Wilmont house when she was eighteen and apparently lived alone the rest of her life.

Zoe realized then that the lady who had died and left the cat Bluebell behind must have been Peony Wilmont. She would have been very old when she passed away.

Curious, Zoe looked up Peony Wilmont. The search engine results were sparse, but she’d expected that. People of that era weren’t usually active online. Zoe found a few fairly recent photos of her, four of those photos at art galleries. It seemed she was an artist and made her living from art sales. Peony had painted the pictures hanging on the walls in Wilmont house.

Zoe paused on a photo taken on the Wilmont property. Peony, with silver hair up in a loose bun, stood among wildflowers near the well, a large cat in her arms. In the background, a man was fixing something on the well. A newspaper article accompanied the photo. It said that a local Bleath Samaritan had been helping an elderly citizen with handyman jobs around her house and yard. Peony had been worried about her cat, Bluebell, falling into the well, and she wanted it covered. A wooden lid was being bolted onto the well.

Zoe smiled as she looked at the cat again. Bluebell looked smug and content in her owner’s arms.

Clicking on the photograph, Zoe brought it up full size. She rubbed her arms against the prickles that suddenly ran along them. The man bolting a lid onto the well was Phineas Fulcrum.

Something was very wrong about that picture.

Did Phineas have his own reasons for wanting the well covered up? He might have put the idea of protecting Bluebell into old Mrs. Wilmont’s mind. But why? Why would he want the well covered?

She recalled Prudence telling her she thought that someone had drowned in the well.

A thud started in Zoe’s chest as she checked the date of the newspaper article. April last year. That was a week after Melody Holmes went missing.

Was Melody at the bottom of that well? And did Phineas put her body there?

Rising, she felt as if a weight were perched between her shoulder blades.

She’d intended on researching some Bleath background, but she hadn’t intended getting involved in anything.

But she couldn’t leave Bleath without knowing if Melody was in the well.

Zoe needed to find out.

Now.

18.

ZOE PLUCKED A NOTE THAT was taped to the front door of the Wilmont house: Came by to see you but you weren’t home yet. Call me. Karstan.

Instinctively, her hand reached for her bag, where her phone was. She desperately wanted to ask him to come here now so that she didn’t have to look in the well alone. But she knew Karstan, and if Karstan even had a hint of what she now suspected, Phineas would not be safe. And if a terrible crime had happened, the police needed to deal with it. Not Karstan. Aunt Margo was about to get justice, and Melody deserved justice, too.

She turned and walked in the direction of the well.

The wheat swayed in every direction, as though brushed by many hands. She could no longer see it as beautiful. The wheat hid secrets.

Zoe frowned, catching sight of a zigzagging movement through the wheat. It was moving too fast and too erratically to be the breeze. It had to be a person.

She couldn’t inspect the well while someone was watching. And whoever it was, what were they doing so close to the Wilmont property?

She ran into the field, determined to find the person. She kept losing sight of the bending path of wheat and then finding it again. Until the wheat grew still. Which meant the person in the field was still, too.

Did the person know she was running after them?

Was he or she waiting for her?

She took stiff steps toward the last movement of the wheat that she’d seen.

Readying herself, she walked into a small clearing.

A girl sat on a neat circle of compressed wheat. Prudence.

Prudence was opening up her sketchpad, her long dark hair brushing the page.

When the girl raised her head, she didn’t seem surprised to see Zoe. “You’re wearing a dress today,” she remarked.

Zoe, taken aback, looked down at her outfit.

Prudence began sketching. “Are you trying to look nice in case the mayor’s son comes around again today?”

Zoe realized that Prudence must have been in the field watching sometimes when Karstan visited her. “My mother gave me this dress.”

Prudence pulled her mouth in, making broad strokes across the page with her pencil.

Could Prudence be jealous? Did she have a crush on Karstan? She was just a kid, but she was a girl. Zoe remembered having crushes on male school teachers when she was young.

“Well, I won’t be here long,” Zoe offered, “so I won’t be seeing Karstan for much longer.”

“When my sister got a boyfriend,” Prudence replied without looking up, “she didn’t listen to me anymore. She listened to him. And then she disappeared.”

Zoe exhaled softly. So that was what this was about: Prudence’s fear of an older girl vanishing once she started showing interest in a boy.

She sat down beside Prudence. “Karstan isn’t my boyfriend. But I’m really so very sorry about what happened to your sister.”

Prudence rested her small chin on her knees. She wore dungarees and a green T-shirt today, her hair plaited. She looked much younger than she had the other day.

Zoe thought about the well and the fact that Prudence could follow her back and see whatever Zoe might dredge up. The well would have to wait. But she might be able to find out a few things from Prudence.

Pulling a wheat stem toward her and toying with it, Zoe chewed on her lip, deciding how best to start the conversation.

“This is a nice quiet spot,” Zoe began.

“I like it here. I can shut out the town.”

“You don’t like Bleath?” Zoe said carefully.

“It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m meant to be here. But I need quiet places to think.”

“What do you think about?”

“What I need to do.” Her words were matter-of-fact.

“What do you need to do?”

“I can’t tell you.” She raised her eyes to Zoe for a brief moment, the clear, deep blue color reminding Zoe of the river she and Ryan used to swim at when they were kids.

“That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

Prudence went silent.

Zoe chose to change the subject. “Can I ask you something?”

The girl shrugged, making quick but sure marks on her art book. “Sure.”

“Do you remember telling me you thought someone drowned in the well on the Wilmont property? Did someone tell you that?”

“No. I just . . . think it.”

“Okay. Who do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. In my mind, I can just hear the splash and I can feel the struggle.”

Zoe closed her eyes for a moment. Was that how little Melody died? Alive and struggling for air? She couldn’t bear to think on it anymore.

“Prudence, are there any adults that come to the wheat fields a lot?”

“Lots of people come here.”

“Okay then, what about a person you wouldn’t expect, because they don’t live near the fields?” She tried to keep the question as casual as possible.

“Phineas comes here.”

Zoe’s breath caught fast, and she had to steady herself before speaking again. “He does?”

“Yeah. He comes in and wanders.”

“Does he ever speak to you?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh, I’m just trying to gain a clearer picture of this town. The wheat fields almost seem to be the real center of town, not Main Street. So, what does he say to you—Phineas?”

“He asks about my sister and my visions. He’s a friend.”

“A friend? Isn’t it a little odd that an adult would be your friend?”

Prudence stopped drawing and began picking at a frayed thread along the seam of her cotton gym shoes. “Would it be strange if you and I became friends?”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Zoe paused, hoping she hadn’t gone too far with her questioning. “I’d like to be your friend.” She bent her head over Prudence’s sketch. “What are you drawing today?”

“The wind.”

“Oh?”

“People think the wind is just air. But it isn’t. It contains the material of everyone who ever lived. Atoms never die. But more than that. Lost spirits float in the air. We can’t see them, but they’re there.”

Zoe remembered what her research told her, that children who create paracosms are often extremely intelligent. She eyed the picture that Prudence offered to her. It reminded her a little of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The drawing had that kind of mood and emotion. The wheat and the wind seemed to become one, swirling together, with ghostly shapes melting into swirls.

“You can see spirits?” Zoe asked.

“Yes. They’re not scary.” She eyed Zoe directly. “Not usually.”

“That’s a very special ability. I don’t know anyone who can see spirits.”

“It’s not special in Bleath. The boy who lives near me sees them, too. Chase.”

Zoe guessed who Prudence was referring to. Chase Jamieson was the nineteen-year-old that had been on her list. She’d cancelled seeing him and the other kids on her list, but Prudence both worried and intrigued her.

“I’d like to know more, about what you see,” Zoe said. “But I’d probably have to ask your parents if that’s okay first. And of course, it would have to be okay with you.”

She shrugged and then grew serious, her blue eyes seeming far too grim for her childlike face and braids. “I don’t mind. Except that it’s dangerous for you to know what I know.”

“I’m a big girl. I think I can manage the dangers.”

“You have to know what the dangers are before you can say that.” She pointed in the opposite direction to the Wilmont house. “We live straight across the field. My mom’s there. Dad’s away working. I’m going to finish my drawing.”

“Thank you. I’ll go see if your mom has time to talk to me right now.” Zoe stood and dusted away the bits of wheat that had stuck to her clothing, and made her way through the field. Hopefully, when she returned, Prudence would be gone, and she could check the well.

Zoe could see the top half of the house ahead—another Queen Anne Victorian. A picture of the woman she’d find inside it formed in her mind. Prudence’s mother would be a timid person, full of fears and maybe a bit superstitious, still deep in grief and unable to bring any sense of hope to her remaining daughter. That profile would fit the kind of mother that had enabled the kind of fears and superstitions that Prudence had.

As soon as Prudence’s mother answered Zoe’s knock on the front door, Zoe knew her profiling was all wrong. The woman standing in front of her had a strength in her eyes and face and in the way she held herself. This wasn’t someone who crumbled easily. Even her physical appearance was different from what Zoe had imagined. Prudence’s mom looked Latino, unlike Prudence.

She showed Zoe to the kitchen table, where she served her a cup of tea and piece of sultana cake. Zoe explained the subject of her thesis and that she’d like to include Prudence.

Prudence’s mother studied Zoe with grave eyes that reminded Zoe of Prudence’s, even though they were a deep brown. “She would have to remain anonymous. I can’t have any more attention brought upon my daughter’s head.”

“Of course, Mrs—?”

“Call me Iona.”

“I’d keep her name private, Iona. I can give a made-up name in the thesis.” Zoe nodded. “But you’d agree to me interviewing her? She really is a fascinating and bright young girl.”

“Yes, she is. She’s quite unlike any other.”

“You said that Prudence has attracted attention? Is that here or . . . ?”

“Prudence has been sought by people since she was a small child. She has certain abilities that people will pay any amount of money to obtain. My husband and I were always worried Prudence would be abducted. We never anticipated losing our eldest daughter instead.”

“I heard about Prudence’s sister. How devastating for your family.”

“Yes. It’s been that.” Her eyes strayed to a photo above the mantelpiece, a family photo of two girls and their parents, the elder girl with her mother’s coloring—olive-skinned and brown-eyed, and Prudence with the blue eyes and fair complexion of her father.

Iona raised her eyes to the same photograph then turned sharply to Zoe. “Our family has been through so much. If I even get so much as a hint that you’re seeking to use Prudence for her abilities, I won’t allow you to talk to her again or use any of the information she gives you.”

Zoe breathed deeply. “I have no interest in doing that. To be honest, I don’t really know what abilities she has.”

“I’m sorry, I just”—Iona shook her head, squeezing her eyes tight for a moment—“want to protect my little girl.”

“Of course. Maybe if I know more, I’ll know what to avoid when I interview her?”

“True. And look, I don’t mean to be harsh. I’m a psychologist myself. I know research is important, and I’m impressed you’ve come all this way to study the children here.”

“You’re a psychologist?”

She nodded. “I moved to Australia when I was offered a great opportunity, running a youth crisis center. It was my dream position. But the whole thing turned into the worst nightmare possible when my eldest vanished.”

“What happened, exactly? If you don’t mind telling me. I guess that as it happened in Australia, I didn’t hear about it.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. My daughter vanished the first month we were there, along with a boy she’d met. They went on a day hike in the mountains. When I look back now, it seems to me they were on a mission, and that it wasn’t just a little walk in the woods. But I’ll never know what that mission was. The police think the two of them must have tumbled from the edge of a cliff somewhere. The forests in that part of Australia are huge and dense. It’s just . . . .” Removing her glasses, she pressed two fingers across the bridge of her nose, her eyes moistening. “It’s just impossible to accept. I know that rationally, she’s not coming back. But part of me will never accept that she’s really gone. She was just fourteen years old.”

She cried softly for a few moments. “I’m sorry. It’s all still too raw.”

“No, please. Don’t be sorry.” Zoe knew she was still a long, long way from being able to help people undergoing this kind of deep psychological pain. She suddenly felt like a baby, knowing nothing at all.

“And now I’ll tell you about Prudence,” Iona said, regaining composure. “Prudence appears to have the ability to predict the future. As shocking as that sounds. I admit that she changed how I feel about psychic ability. I used to dismiss it out of hand. But not anymore. Her predictions are uncanny. When she started school at age five, she caused an enormous stir straight away. She was telling teachers that their parents were soon to die or diagnosing their pregnancies—when the teacher didn’t know herself yet. Word spread fast. We had to move her to a different school. But it kept happening. Prudence would try to fit in and keep her predictions to herself. But things would slip out unintentionally. She’d tell a school friend she didn’t think it was a good idea to hold her party on the day a runaway truck was set to crash through her yard.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Things like that.”

“Oh God. That’s . . . incredible. Come to think of it, I did read about a little girl with a special talent as a medium years ago. But then I stopped hearing anything.”

Iona nodded. “Because we ended up moving to Australia, that’s why you didn’t hear anything more about her. Getting Prudence away to where no one knew of her was a big part of the decision to move there. We moved back to America again because of her mental state after her sister disappeared. We held out for a year, in which we searched every single day. But then we had scare after scare, in which we’d discover Prudence missing from her bed. And we’d find her running up the road to the mountains. In the middle of the night. She was determined to find her sister. We were terrified we’d lose her, too.”

“I understand why you had to move. Can I ask why you decided on Bleath?”

“That’s easy. Bleath is known for its history of producing psychics and mediums. This seemed like a place that Prudence could finally fit in, a place where she wouldn’t stand out. People are protective of the psychics here.”

“Have things been okay since you’ve been here?”

“At first, yes. But lately, I’ve been worried. Prudence has let it slip that she thinks this town has a connection to the disappearance of her sister.”

“Wow, that’s intense.”

“Yes. I feel like I can’t put a foot right. But I’m glad you’re here. You’re just so . . . normal. I haven’t found a lot of normal here in Bleath. I hope that comes across as I intended it.”

Zoe gave a brief laugh. “I’m glad I’m normal.” She bit her lip then, thinking. “Has Prudence ever had a prediction about her own family?”

All light left Iona’s eyes. “She predicted the day my mother was going to die. And when we moved to Australia, she predicted that her sister was going to vanish.”

Swallowing a gasp, Zoe felt tiny spikes run along the back of her neck. “She predicted that?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me for asking . . . but have the police tried looking wherever Prudence thinks her sister is?”

She nodded. “Yes, that’s been tried. But Prudence kept insisting that her visions weren’t working when she had people with her. She needed to be alone. So, we tried pretending we’d let her go by herself. The police secretly attached a tracking device to her backpack, and they followed along at a distance. But she knew. Prudence was only eleven then, but she knew. She always knows. She tried to send the police away. Of course, the police didn’t believe in her abilities in the first place. They were just out of options at that point.”

“She told me she needs to figure out where her sister is.”

Iona studied her hands, twisting her fingers and making them go white. “She’ll never stop looking for her, even if it’s only in her mind. Prudence will never be free.”

19.

ZOE SAW KARSTAN’S PICKUP AS soon as she emerged from the field. Karstan was leaning against it with his arms folded. He had a trail bike roped and tied on the back of his truck.

Prudence was gone from her secret drawing spot. Zoe glanced at the well briefly. She couldn’t go and look now.

Zoe crossed the grounds toward Karstan. “Hi, how long have you been here?”

“Long enough to start missing you. What were you doing?”

“Talking to Prudence and then her mom.”

“Ah.” He tilted his chin up. “I had an idea. Let’s get you out of the Wilmont house for a night. I know a place, only it has no electricity and it’s kind of just a room.”

Zoe couldn’t help but grin at Karstan’s suddenly apologetic face. “You think I can’t do without electricity?”

“Well, y’know, you being a city girl . . . .”

“I’ve been camping a ton of times.”

“Oh yeah? Well, then you might survive a night at the cabin.”

“Where is it?” She asked the question knowing that she didn’t mind where it was. Anywhere away from the Wilmont house sounded good.

“It’s toward the forest where we went to see Citrine. Anthony and me and a few of the gang built it years ago. When we were around seventeen. It’s pretty basic. But it’s waterproof and it has a few beds. I thought about it today because Anthony and I rode past it on our trail bikes. Anthony and his girlfriend are going to stay there, too, tonight.”

Zoe thought. She had her makeup case in her handbag, although she didn’t care too much who saw her without her face made up. All she needed was a change of clothing. “Cool. I just need clothes.”

“Want me to run upstairs and grab your suitcase? I noticed you hadn’t unpacked yet when I stayed over. You lazy thing.”

“Yeah, okay. Let’s do it.” She dug in her pocket and handed him the key.

*

As they drove away in Karstan’s pickup, she looked back over her shoulder at the distant well. Tomorrow, as soon as she was back at the Wilmont house, she was going to find out what lay at the well’s bottom.

The cabin was located in the pine forest, a few hundred feet in. It was rough, as Karstan had warned her, but it looked solid. No one had tried to make it look pretty. No flowers growing around it. No window boxes or paint. But it didn’t need any of that. Zoe could imagine a tribe of teenage kids roaring up here on trail bikes to stay overnight. For a moment, she wished she’d known Karstan back then and had been part of his life.

Her feet crunched on the pine needles as she walked to the cabin, rolling her suitcase behind her. Two trail bikes were already parked around the side. Karstan rode up on the bike he’d hauled off the back of the pickup.

Karstan opened the door of the cabin. Anthony and Sorcha were lying on one of the beds, listening to music. Sorcha’s blonde hair and Anthony’s black hair were as tangled together as their limbs.

“Hey,” Anthony and Sorcha cried in unison.

Sorcha’s eyes opened wide as she noticed the suitcase Zoe was bringing in. “How long you guys staying for.”

“Just one night.” Karstan walked in behind, grinning broadly.

“You don’t travel light, do you?” Anthony stretched his long arms.

“Zoe’s had a few weird experiences in the Wilmont house,” Karstan explained. “So, I didn’t even want her to go back in there today. I grabbed her suitcase for her.” He stashed the suitcase under the table.

“Ooh, what kind of weird experiences?” said Sorcha, crawling onto her stomach and propping her chin up on her hands. “Ghosts? Tell us everything.”

“Just me freaking out and being stupid,” Zoe answered.

Sorcha looked disappointed. “We gotta get Anthony to tell some ghost stories later. He tells the best.”

Zoe gave a smile that she hoped wasn’t too grim. She’d rather skip the ghost stories.

The interior was just as Karstan described. Super simple and all just one big room. Four double beds and one small refrigerator.

“Zo,” said Karstan, “you been out on a trail bike before?”

“Uh, no,” she replied.

Karstan and Anthony exchanged smirks.

“Well, it’s about time,” said Karstan. “Let’s go before the light does.”

Before Zoe could protest, she was led back out of the cabin and onto the back of Karstan’s trail bike. Karstan tore off into the forest. Zoe shrieked—it seemed they were going to hit every tree until at the last second, he steered left or right. Anthony and Sorcha rode off after them, on their own bikes.

The woods echoed with the sound of engines. Sun glinted red and gold on the tree trunks.

It wasn’t until Zoe closed her eyes that she began to enjoy the feeling of speed and the wind rushing around her.

*

Karstan speared a piece of bread with a stick and handed it to Zoe. Taking it, she held the bread over the fire.

The four of them ate a dinner of beans on toast, sitting outside on logs, the warm glow of a fire licking their hands and faces.

Sorcha poked at the fire with a stick, sending embers spiraling upward. “Are you going to come back and visit us, Zoe? I mean, after you leave Bleath?”

Zoe tried to conceal her surprise at the question. “I’d like to.”

“Cool.” Sorcha hugged her knees. “You can come here to the cabin and hang with us again.”

“Sure. And if Karstan has a girlfriend by then, I’ll just elbow her out of the way,” said Zoe.

Karstan shot her a sideways glance, munching on his toast and beans. “Oh, is that because you want to be the one who’s beside me?” He winked and nudged her arm with his.

A smile spread across Zoe’s face, tinged with sadness. It wasn’t likely she was ever coming back to Bleath. “Maybe.”

After they finished their dinner, Karstan, Sorcha, and Anthony pulled out guitars from inside the cabin and began strumming.

Tonight was the best night she’d had since arriving in Bleath, Zoe reflected. A night where she didn’t feel haunted.

Later, Karstan and Anthony packed the fireplace inside the cabin with wood, and they all crashed out warm in the beds. Zoe snuggled close to Karstan. When he’d first asked her if she wanted to stay in the cabin, she’d wondered if tonight might be the night they made love. But with Anthony and Sorcha staying here too, a long kiss goodnight was all Zoe and Karstan had shared.

20.

LITTLEWOODS’ TINY TREASURES WAS SO busy on Sunday morning that Pearl Littlewoods had to serve customers alongside Zoe.

Outside in the street, preparations for the Spirit of the Harvest festival were in full swing. Already, it was Zoe’s last day in the toy store. She was going to miss working here and seeing everything that was happening in town.

Earlier that morning, Zoe had gone straight from the forest cabin to the toy store—with a quick stop to pick up her car from the Wilmont house. Karstan was working two séances today, and Zoe wouldn’t be seeing him again until five in the night. She hadn’t spotted Phineas Fulcrum in the toy store at all today. Not that she’d expected to.

“You’ve been an enormous help to me,” Pearl told Zoe as she restocked a shelf of wooden dolls, her eyes warm and lively behind pink-rimmed glasses. “My foot has had a speedy recovery thanks to you.”

“I’ve loved every minute.” Zoe lifted another box of dolls over and crouched to open it. “It’s made me feel part of Bleath while I’ve been here.”

Zoe raised her head to look at Pearl. A ray of sunlight shone through the store window and turned Pearl’s hair into a halo, her features in shadow. “Once you’ve come to Bleath, part of you will always remain.”

Pearl handed a protesting Zoe a bonus of fifty dollars as she paid her for the day, telling her she was worth her weight in gold.

Tegan and the other two hairdressers—Reynold and Yvonne—burst into the store, their arms linked together and tall, silly hats on their heads.

“Come to the festival with us, Zoe!” Tegan produced a fourth hat from behind her back and presented it to Zoe.

“I can’t refuse an invitation like that.” Laughing, Zoe fitted the hat onto her head.

They headed out into the street. It seemed that the whole town had gathered on either side of the street, small children on top of their father’s shoulders.

Marching bands paraded before large, colourful floats: floats of fishing boats riding wooden waves, floats of real horses and farm animals, floats of people made of wheat, and lastly, a float of the harvest king and queen.

It wasn’t the biggest festival that Zoe had been to by any means, but it was fun. Still, she had to leave Tegan and the others behind after half an hour—there were things she was compelled to do.

She felt her mind shift into another gear as she drove out of the town center. She was headed back to the Wilmont house. And this time, she was going to haul up the contents of the Wilmont well. And whatever she found, she needed to deal with what came afterward.

*

She parked the car on the gravel outside the house. When she stared up at the weather-beaten façade of the house that Harry and Elspeth Wilmont built, she couldn’t help but see it as an enemy. It was battling her for her mind.

No, Phineas was battling her. It wasn’t the house.

Sliding her hands deep into her jeans pockets, she pushed back her shoulders and stepped into the tool shed. She grabbed a pair of shears and went to test them on the dead, woody rose bush growing outside the shed. They were too blunt to make much more than a few marks. Returning to the shed, she looked upward at the crescent-shaped blade of the scythe. It didn’t look quite so rusty as most of the other tools. She lifted it down from its hook on the wall. When she tried swinging it at the rose bush, the brittle plant material shattered in pieces.

Clutching the scythe, she made her way through the tall grass toward the well.

Don’t look into the well, she told herself as a precaution. Just wind up the bucket.

She almost sensed the ivy vines bristling as she approached, the vines holding themselves tight around the well.

Looking over her shoulder, she checked that no one was watching.

The wheat was still and silent in the field. No breeze ruffled the yellow leaves from the Japanese maples.

Raising the scythe, she chopped into the thick ivy. The vines were twisted in and around the well’s chains, and they weren’t going to give up their hold easily.

Sweat pricked her underarms. It was taking longer than she’d anticipated to cut the vines loose. Their knotted, gnarled arms had almost become stone and wood—and more than that, protectors of the well.

She cried out as she cut through the last of the vines, sawing at them with the curve of the blade until they fell away: a cry of triumph and exhaustion.

Now that the vines were gone, it was time to pull up the bucket.

The well’s handle refused to budge. She was going to have to haul the bucket without it.

She felt all breath leave her lungs as she climbed up and knelt on the round, stone wall of the well.

Don’t look down, she reminded herself.

But she could sense the dark depths below her and the chill air rising.

Grasping the chains, she yanked them up.

She wound the chains around the metal bar that ended in the useless handle. Continuing, she kept pulling up the chains and winding them onto the bar. The chains grew increasingly rusted as she brought them up from the well’s interior. She prayed the links didn’t snap.

A piece of material was wound through the links on the next wind. A lilac-colored hair ribbon. Her stomach turned.

She kept winding.

Below, what must be the bucket knocked against the well’s walls, a low booming sound. The bucket was close. Wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm, Zoe forced herself to continue.

A pitted and rusted metal bucket swung loose of the well, rotted plant matter and black water streaming down its sides.

Zoe’s heart punched its way into her throat as she let her gaze fall downward.

Bones. A skeleton. Small. Curled up.

The chains holding the bucket screeched suddenly. The handle began spinning wildly, the bucket plunging back into the darkness.

Zoe screamed as she lost her balance.

She fell doubled up at the waist. Into the dark well.

Flailing, she grabbed hold of the chain. But the chain sped downward, taking her with it. Until it stopped with a shudder, the metal bucket sending up reverberations from far below that tore through Zoe’s mind. If she didn’t get out of here, that was where she would end up. At the bottom of the well.

The chain cut into her fingers as she tried to gain a foothold on the slippery internal wall of the well. She angled her head upward to the round patch of sunlight. The top of the well was so far away.

Panic flashed through her. It would be hours before Karstan came, and even when he did, he wouldn’t come anywhere near the well.

A sound came from deep in the well now. A scratching sound.

Coming closer.

A whimper started in Zoe’s chest that she couldn’t stop.

Whatever was making the scratching sound wanted to hurt her. She was sure of it. She gasped in the dark, moist air, her every shallow, terrified breath loud in her ears.

Zoe’s mind screamed at her: Get out!

Yelling with the effort, she reached up and gripped the chain above her head.

Her mind went blank. There was nothing except escape. If she didn’t get out of here, she was certain that she was going to die. She made desperate grabs for the chain, hauling herself up. As the wall grew drier, she could press her feet against the stone and take some of the weight from her exhausted arms.

The scratching echoed below her.

Zoe’s muscles trembled with the strain of pulling her weight.

Sunlight splashed over her face as she grasped the top of the well.

The scratching noise was rushing now. Rushing up to her.

She dragged herself up and over the edge, her body tumbling onto the ivy on the ground.

Horrifying images and sounds crashed through her mind.

Melody Holmes was in the well.

And something else.

Something else was in the well.

No, how could there be anything down there? It was Phineas. All Phineas. The place he least wanted her to look in was the well, and that was the place he would have hypnotized her to fear the most.

Still, she shot to her feet and loped toward the house.

She ran into the house and up the stairs.

A dark shadow flashed past the mirror’s surface.

I don’t see you, Zoe told herself.

She locked herself in the bathroom. Her hands were bleeding and covered in slime and dark moisture. Her T-shirt and jeans were covered in the same.

It wasn’t until she was in the shower she remembered her suitcase was downstairs, just inside the front door. Karstan had put it there this morning. It didn’t matter about privacy—she was alone in the house—but right now, she felt vulnerable, almost as if she was without her skin. Just a bundle of exposed nerves.

She drenched her hair and body, scrubbing away the grime and sludge.

But even the warmth of the water couldn’t calm the tremors that ran along her limbs. She could still feel the terror of being trapped and smell the dankness and rot. She could see the bones, white and tucked into a ball, as though Melody had curled up to comfort herself as she died.

Wrapping herself in a towel after the shower, Zoe padded down the stairs.

Her legs weakened as she reached the end of the stairway, and she sank, sitting herself down on the bottom stair. She gathered the damp towel around her, her hair clinging in long wet strands on her shoulders and arms.

Swallowing, she allowed herself to look around.

The house was the same as she’d last seen it. It was still changed, but no more changed than before. It was as though whatever Citrine had done had frozen the changes. She wasn’t cured, totally. She was in some type of limbo.

The answer to making her completely better lay with Phineas. And if he was charged with Melody’s murder, he wasn’t going to tell her what he’d done to her mind. And Citrine had said that without knowing that, the trance couldn’t completely be undone.

But she needed to get justice for Melody before she left town. Would there be any evidence to link Phineas with her murder? Her little body had already turned to bones. Zoe remembered news stories where police couldn’t find out the identity of a killer because the skeleton of the murdered person left no clues.

Zoe had nothing—no evidence. She tried to imagine herself telling the police that Phineas had hypnotized her into thinking the house was changing and haunted by dark beings, so that she’d leave the Wilmont house. She couldn’t begin to imagine telling them that.

She needed more.

Much more.

She needed to see Phineas and confront him.

She thought back to the appointment he’d originally made with her: Sunday. The tea rooms on Blyth Street. Three in the afternoon.

If she left now, she might make it. Although, Zoe guessed that after what she and Karstan had accused him of, and after Karstan punching him, Phineas would be certain she wouldn’t be coming.

Well, she was going to surprise him.

This time, she’d be ready. She wouldn’t let him crawl inside her mind.

At the top end of the stairs came a low, tearing noise. The sound of a long scratch along wood. Holding her breath, she twisted around to scan the stairs. In the ever-present gloom on the top landing, she could see nothing.

Nothing except a tall shadow that flitted through the mirror.

You’re not really there, whatever you are.

But she wasn’t staying to see what happened next.

Not a second longer.

Her fingers fumbled as she unbuckled and opened her suitcase. She grabbed underwear, jeans, and a T-shirt, and threw them on. As she rushed out the front door, she pulled on her boots and jacket.

She roared away in her car so fast that she almost skidded and slammed into the fence. Stopping for a moment, she calmed herself.

You can do this. Just like with Aunt Margo, you can make things right.

21.

ZOE DROVE TO THE WEST of town, to Blyth Street.

Blyth ended up being a short, narrow street where a set of low-slung, quaint buildings stood, roses climbing around the doorways and windows. Poppy-filled flowerpots completed the picture.

A small wooden sign, easily missed, simply said Tea Rooms. Zoe guessed that this place didn’t need to advertise itself. Like every other business in Bleath, there were ready customers.

She parked down a laneway. If Karstan should happen to drive past, she didn’t want him recognizing her car. She wouldn’t be able to make Karstan understand why she had to come here.

Zoe opened the first of three doors and stepped inside.

People glanced toward her from their seats. She was conscious of her wet hair and the scrapes and bruises on her hands, but she could do nothing about those things. After a moment, the people turned back to each other, as if there was no further entertainment value to be gained from looking at her.

She stood in a large space where customers sipped tea, trays of tiny cakes and scones on wheeled carts between the tables. The smells of coffee, tea, and cakes were a sharp contrast to the crisp fall air outside. Heavy, mahogany wood lined the walls and floors and even the ceilings, the walls punctuated with bright crocheted wall-hangings. Paisley cushions decorated the chairs. Kitchen cabinets along the walls gave a homely feel, most of the paint peeled away, mismatched plates stacked high on their shelves.

Small rooms led directly off the main area, most of their doors closed. One of the doors opened, and a man stepped away and out of the tea rooms, his gaze distant. A woman in a beaded outfit stood holding the door of the room he’d just left. Instantly, Zoe realized that the tea rooms were not here for tea and cakes. Were the tea rooms a daytime version of Psychics’ Circle? Phineas had said he was working here, but she guessed he wasn’t serving food and drinks, as she’d originally thought.

She noticed the time on a multi-colored cuckoo clock—five past three.

An older woman bustled toward Zoe, dressed in a fur coat that looked a little matted, her dress a pleated chiffon and her eyes bright beneath chunky red-rimmed glasses. “Hello my dear. Welcome, welcome. Have you an appointment? I’m afraid we’re all booked up.”

The woman was both welcoming her and shooing her back out the door, Zoe reflected.

“Yes. I mean I did. I’m a little late. Just a few minutes.”

“You had an appointment? Who with?” She fluffed her dyed red hair with one hand and studied an open appointment book with the other.

“Mr. Fulcrum,” Zoe answered.

“Ah. Well, he’s very busy. If you’re late, you might have to rebook. Or, if he can still fit you in, you might have to wait a while. You can sit at a table while I make enquiries, if you wish.” She paused. “I’m Ruby Littlewoods by the way, and you are?”

“Zoe. Zoe Cosgrove.” Zoe eyed her with sudden interest. “You’re one of the Littlewoods triplets?”

Ruby glanced back over the top of her glasses. “Yes, I am that.”

“I’ve met Pearl and Citrine. You’re all so different.”

“We don’t speak with each other very much I’m afraid. We’ve grown apart over the years. And I was the one born on the other side of midnight. That does change things.”

She spoke as though Zoe should know what change that would be. Zoe was about to answer when Ruby spoke again.

“Well, Miss Cosgrove, coffee, tea, and cakes are all free for people waiting for appointments. You may help yourself.”

Zoe seated herself at a nearby table while Ruby hurried away at the same pace that she had approached her. She was too tense to eat, but a coffee sounded good. Sipping a freshly brewed coffee, she watched Ruby as she teetered across the room in high heels to lightly knock on the last door on the left. Zoe wondered if Ruby owned the tea rooms or if she was just an employee who took the bookings. It was impossible to tell. The way she was dressed certainly fitted with the décor here. Shabby chic. Ruby’s eccentric look could go either way—wealthy person who didn’t care and wore what she wanted or a good-natured lady who’d been employed by the tea rooms for many years and had merged with the fabric of it.

Zoe didn’t have long to sit and ponder. The door opened a crack, and Ruby Littlewoods was soon deep in conversation with whoever was on the other side. As Ruby stepped back, Zoe saw that Phineas was the person who occupied that room.

He waved her over, but his gesture was hesitant. Zoe stood and crossed the room, ignoring all the gawking faces.

Phineas’s expression was confused as he ushered her inside. He closed the door behind her and offered her a seat on a daybed heaped with colorful cushions.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” he said as she perched on the edge of the daybed.

“I have some things I need to talk with you about,” she said, conscious that Phineas was going to react badly to what she had to say, regardless of how she put it.

“Does Karstan know you’re here?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Because if he does, you can leave now. I was trying to help you, and this is what I got for my trouble.” He touched his bruised jaw, wincing.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know Karstan was going to do that.”

“You look a bit the worse for wear yourself.” He indicated toward her hands.

“I fell and scraped them,” she lied. She glanced around the room. “What is this place?”

The room bore the same bohemian décor as the area outside. A patchwork of framed photographs hung on the wall behind Phineas—of Phineas at various places he must have traveled to, of a couple of children Zoe didn’t recognize, and a small picture of Phineas in a top hat and magician’s outfit. Zoe remembered Karstan telling her that Phineas had worked as a magician at one point in his career.

“You don’t know?” Phineas said nonchalantly. “People come here to see hypnotists. That’s what the tea rooms are. The clients want to give up smoking or drinking, or putting too much food into their mouths. Sometimes to forget a past lover. That kind of thing.”

“Hypnotists?” Zoe gasped. “You made an appointment to see me at a place where you practice hypnotism?”

“I considered it to be the safest place.”

“The safest place for what?”

“Never mind. You’re here now.” He sighed heavily, tapping his fingers together. “Anyway, what on earth were you and Karstan accusing me of? What makes you think I’ve been hypnotizing you?”

“You didn’t deny it last Friday,” she accused, folding her arms. Her body had grown cold. She hadn’t stopped to dry herself properly after the shower. And the experience of the bones and the well was still sending icy prickles deep into her flesh.

“I wasn’t going to enter into a discussion with a crazy person who punched me in the face before he even said a word,” he told her. “Again, why do you think I’ve been hypnotizing you?” His eyebrows and his voice rose in synchronization at the end of his words.

“Because someone has,” she answered. “I’ve been seeing things I shouldn’t be seeing.  And you are the one who’s been in the toy store every day since I started working there. And my visions grew worse after that reading with you that night at Psychics’ Circle.”

“Is there a law against my visiting the toy store?”

“No. But there’s no reason for a grown man to visit a toy store every day without buying a single thing.”

“So, in other words, you think my reason for being there is because of you? And you think that somehow, I’ve been able to force you to see visions?”

“Yes.” Her voice didn’t come out as certain as she intended it to.

He coughed derisively. “I’m flattered you think the person giving you those visions is me.”

“It would take a pretty skilled hypnotist,” Zoe said.

He stretched his long arms out and then lounged at an angle in the chair. “You can drop the sweet talk. I’m skilled, yes, but not that devious.”

She lowered her eyes. Had she really believed she could march in here and get this guy to confess?

His expression changed, growing grim. “Look, Zoe, I’m not doing anything to you.”

She chewed her lip, watching his face, not knowing him well enough to understand when he was concealing the truth or not. “That’s not true. Every day, I see changes in the Wilmont house. The walls, the colors—and now there’s a mirror. None of it’s real. You’re making me see it.”

She expected him to bluster and deny it, but instead, he dropped his hands on his desk and leaned forward. “You’re seeing things there at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Any . . . people? Have you seen any people?”

“You would know that,” she snapped. “You gave me those visions.”

“Zoe, I know you’ve got it into your head that I’m responsible, and I don’t know if I can change your mind on that. From the look on your face when I asked you if you’ve seen people, I can tell that you have. Have you considered just packing up and leaving Bleath?”

“Why do you want me to leave Bleath?” she said as evenly as she could manage, struggling not to accuse him outright.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he replied with a note of confusion. “I’m just concerned for you.”

“Is there something about the Wilmont property you don’t want anyone to know?” she persisted. “I know that you’ve been there and that you knew Peony Wilmont.” She held her breath.

He looked unsettled but quickly regained composure, straightening in his chair. “Just what are you trying to say here? Yes, I knew Peony. She was a friend. There were things there at that house that she was battling. But she was strong. Stronger than most people could ever be.”

“I’m strong, too,” she said in a determined tone. “I’m not leaving the Wilmont house until I have some answers.”

“If you stay there, maybe you’ll get the answers you’re seeking. But maybe by then, you’ll wish you hadn’t stayed.” His voice quietened.

This wasn’t going as she hoped. She hadn’t been able to get him to crow about hypnotizing her, nor had he been impressed when she flattered his abilities. Nor was he admitting to anything. She needed to change the conversation and try to draw him out another way.

“I’m just trying to understand what’s been happening to me,” she told him.

“Well, maybe if you stopped jumping to wild assumptions, you’d get somewhere.”

“Forgive me,” she said. “When you start seeing what I have, you get jumpy.”

“Well, I’ll say straight out that I’m certainly not strong enough as a hypnotist to cause the effects you’ve been experiencing. Could it be someone else in town?”

“Is there anyone in town that good?” she countered.

“I’m not sure, to be honest. Each of the hypnotists pretty much keeps their methods under wraps. But we could sit here and discuss this all afternoon and essentially get nowhere.”

It was obvious he wasn’t going to say more. Zoe decided to lead him into talking about Melody. “Then maybe we should talk about the children, as we were originally going to.”

He touched a finger to his temple and ran it slowly down his thin face. “The trouble is, I’m no longer sure if you’re safe to discuss that subject with.”

“I’ll keep anything you say in confidence.” Zoe knew she couldn’t keep that promise.

“In confidence? You wanted information for your thesis, did you not?”

“Well, yes, but, I won’t be using your name.”

“I need a drink,” he said abruptly. Turning around, he lifted a metal bucket from a tray of spirits and small glasses. “Want a whiskey?”

Zoe shook her head, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. “No thanks.”

He poured himself a shot and drank it down quickly. She guessed it was something he did often throughout the day. She remembered Karstan calling him a drunk.

Phineas set the glass down on the desk. “Why are you really here?” he said flatly.

She decided to give him half of the truth. “I’m worried about the paracosm children.”

“Me, too. But why would you, an outsider to the town, care about this so much?”

“Because I’ve met them and talked to them, and I’m worried. That’s why,” she told him.

He seemed to accept that. But she had the feeling they were starting to circle each other.

“I don’t want any more kids to go missing,” he told her.

“Like Melody Holmes.” She kept her eyes on his face, watching for any change.

“Yes, like Melody. And . . . Jeremy.”

“Jeremy?” She frowned, thrown off-guard. “I haven’t—”

“Oh, you haven’t heard? I’m not surprised. Jeremy Barrington disappeared the year before Melody. But there are no missing children posters for either child up around town. No one talks about them.”

Zoe thought back to how she’d heard about Melody. It was Duckie MacGregor.

“Who is Jeremy?” she asked. “And how—?”

“I was with Jeremy the day he vanished,” Phineas said, the usual intense glare of his eyes softening. “He was running through the wheat fields with a kite I’d made him, up toward the hills. It was a windy winter’s day—cloudless and cold. I lost sight of him. Next, I saw the kite just sailing away. Jeremy had somehow lost hold of it. I went to find him, to tell him not to worry, I’d make him another. But he wasn’t there. He was nowhere. I thought he must have become upset and run home. But of course, when I checked with his mother, he wasn’t at home either.”

Zoe felt as though invisible vines were growing up from the floor and tangling around her. Another missing child.

“What was your connection to Jeremy?” Zoe asked, a tremble in her throat.

“He was a lonely kid. Didn’t seem to have any friends. I used to take him fishing and things like that.”

“His parents were okay with that?”

“To be honest, neither of them seemed to care much where he was or what he was doing. He was just eleven, running around by himself everywhere and getting into trouble.”

“Melody Holmes vanished in the fields too, didn’t she?” Zoe said stiffly.

“Yes, apparently so.”

“You weren’t there that day?”

He looked at her oddly. “I’m not the common denominator here, Zoe.”

“I didn’t say you were. I just—”

“Let me put it bluntly. I didn’t hurt those children.”

She pressed her lips together to stop from blurting out what she knew about Melody. But the horror raised its ugly head inside her, and she couldn’t stop herself.

“I found Melody.” Her words rushed out then hung in the air, drawing all the oxygen from the room.

She watched the muscles in his face draw tight.

“What did you say?” he said finally.

“I found her. She’s in the well. At the Wilmont house.” Her shoulders tensed, waiting.

His words were cold and harsh. “You stupid girl. What have you done?”

“I looked. In the well. I saw the bones.” The room seemed to have grown warm, and she could barely breathe. “Melody’s bones.”

He was silent for a time, a glint hardening in his eyes. “Those are not Melody’s bones.”

“Then . . . who?”

“Those are the remains of Peony’s mother.”

“Elspeth Wilmont? But—”

He raised an eyebrow. “I see you’ve been researching the house and its occupants. Yes, it’s Elspeth.”

Zoe shook her head, her mouth feeling almost too dry to talk. “It can’t be Elspeth. The skeleton was far too small.”

He stared at her. “Have you seen a picture of Elspeth?”

“Yes, a couple.”

“Was she standing?”

“Uh, yes. The one with her brother and sister.”

“How old was she?”

“Twelve, I think.”

“Well, you don’t seem to know that Elspeth Wilmont didn’t grow much taller. She was quite a sickly sort of child.” Bending his head, he pulled out a drawer from his desk. He handed her a sepia photograph of Elspeth and her sister, Morwen, when they must have both been in their late teens. Elspeth was tiny, not even reaching the shoulder of her younger sister. She looked barely four feet tall. Her hair was caught up in a ribbon—the same kind of ribbon Zoe had seen tangled in the well’s chain.

“How do you know it’s Elspeth in the well?” Zoe’s voice was faint as she gave the picture back.

“Because Peony told me so.”

“I don’t understand. If Peony knew that her mother was down there, why didn’t she tell the police?  Why didn’t someone get Elspeth out of there and give her a proper burial?”

“Peony found her mother’s bones not long before she died. And a few days before that, Peony had found a diary of her mother’s, in an old treasure box. It was written when Elspeth was a child. I told you that Elspeth was sickly? Well, she wrote in her diary that if she died of her illnesses, she didn’t want to be buried under six feet of dirt. She wanted to be in a quiet place where she wouldn’t be disturbed, where she could still see the sky and birds and feel the rain. Peony thought that the well had all those things.”

“That’s really sad that she had to think about death when she was just a kid.”

“Yes. A kid shouldn’t have to think about things like that.” Zoe frowned, thinking about the article she’d read about Elspeth, in which she’d run off and left her baby after the death of her husband. But instead, Elspeth had somehow ended up in the well.

“Wasn’t Elspeth supposed to have left town?” Zoe asked.

“Elspeth never left town, obviously. Someone murdered her and covered their tracks well.”

“Who was it?”

“Peony wasn’t sure. I was trying to help her research the past, but it was proving very difficult.”

Zoe eyed him with a wary glance. He could be fabricating everything he was telling her.

“In the article I read about you and Peony,” she said, “you were nailing a cover over the well. Why?”

“There were thrill seekers coming in from other towns for a while there—so-called ghost hunters. Peony worried they’d either find her mother’s remains or fall into the well themselves. She asked me to make a cover—something that let the daylight through but still made it secure. How did you manage to remove it? I had it bolted on.”

Phineas had an answer for everything. Was it all too neat, Zoe wondered?

“There was no cover,” she replied.

“Hmmm, perhaps the ghost hunters have been back.”

Zoe couldn’t keep her hands from trembling as she closed them tightly into fists on her lap. “I fell down into that well. This morning. Maybe a quarter of the way. Just after I found the bones. And when I was down there, I heard . . . scratching. It felt like . . . something wanted to hurt me.”

She couldn’t believe that she was sitting here relating all this to Phineas.

His mouth dropped open. “You fell in? You’re one very lucky person to have gotten out again. And now I’m going to ask you a question. Do you believe that it was an accident?”

“Of course. What else could it have been?”

A flicker of a frown crossed his forehead. “I’m not sure. But I know one thing. You shouldn’t disturb old things and places when you’re not well prepared for what you might unleash.”

“I don’t believe in the paranormal, Mr. Fulcrum.”

“You don’t need to, for that world to take an interest in you.” He leaned forward, his eyes intent on her.

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“Aren’t you already afraid?”

She chose not to answer.

“I have a thought for you. What if all of your imaginings are in fact . . . a paracosm?”

“That’s not possible. It’s not a paracosm if someone else is suggesting the imaginary world to you.”

“How do you know for certain your visions are being suggested to you by someone else? How do you know that you’re being hypnotized at all?”

Even though she slowly shook her head, threads of doubt picked loose in her mind. Was it possible she wasn’t actually under hypnosis? Could she have begun to step into a paracosm soon after she’d arrived in Bleath?

“I’m not prepared to call it a paracosm,” said Zoe carefully. The whole idea of her being hypnotized had suddenly started to give way, but she didn’t want to admit that to Phineas. Not yet. There was too much about him that she didn’t understand. And too much about her own ghostly apparitions that she didn’t understand.

“Why not?” he asked. “Your visions have all the hallmarks.” He hesitated, touching the bruise on his jaw. “Which is potentially worse than someone hypnotizing you. I don’t consider the fantasy worlds imagined here in Bleath to be benign.”

“You think the children’s paracosms are dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“First, tell me why I should tell you my thoughts on this?”

“Because I don’t want the kids to be in any danger, that’s why.”

He stared toward the ceiling, as though considering her words. “I have long thought that the children are not developing the fantasies on their own. Rather, they’re being led to them.”

“By who?”

“That’s what I’m not sure of. This sounds totally irrational, but I sense that it’s something to do with the fields. The wheat fields. Thinking about it keeps me awake at night. I’ve wondered if it’s some strange kind of radiation coming from the fields themselves.”

“But how would radiation produce the rich fantasies of these kids? The fantasy worlds of Ava MacGregor and Lincoln Kane seem whole and complete. Not just some random patchwork of illusions.”

“I haven’t had the chance to talk with Ava or Lincoln,” he said in a regretful tone. “Parents haven’t exactly trusted me to talk with their children after the vanishing of Jeremy and Melody.”

“You talk to Prudence.” The words slipped from Zoe’s tongue.

“True.” His brow creased. He looked as though he was about to say one thing but then said another. “You’ve spoken to her about me?”

“Not intentionally,” Zoe said, hoping he didn’t sense the lie. “I had a conversation with her, in the wheat field yesterday.”

“Prudence is very special. She’s far more gifted than I’ll ever be in psychic ability.”

“I’m guessing you must know about her missing sister?”

“Yes. And I’ve no doubt that Prudence is the only one who can find her.”

Zoe stifled a gasp. “Really? I’m a little concerned now that you’ve been encouraging Prudence to believe that.”

He threaded his fingers together on the desk, his expression vaguely frustrated. “I don’t encourage her to believe anything.”

“She needs to move on. And live her life.”

“Miss Cosgrove, maybe it would help if I told you a little of my former life. I’m not sure what you think of me, but I don’t make a habit of going about whispering odd things in children’s ears. I enjoy spending time with them. I’m also worried about the children here in Bleath. I lost my own children, some years back, and I don’t want any harm to come to the children here.”

Zoe stared at him. “You . . . lost your children?”

“Yes. Not as in them vanishing though. It was a car accident. My wife and children were traveling along an icy road one night when my wife lost control of the car. The car rolled down an embankment. All three died.”

“God. I’m so sorry.”

He nodded an acknowledgement. “It’s been ten years. My children, a boy and a girl, were only six and three at the time. The death of my family was the switch that brought me into the psychic world. I couldn’t bear the agony of not having them in my life anymore. I planned to kill myself. In desperation, I sought the services of a hypnotist, as a last-ditch effort to change my mind. I didn’t seek to forget my family, just to lessen the pain. But what happened was extraordinary. When the hypnotist took me into the trance, I found that I could . . . speak to my daughter.”

“You could actually speak to her?”

“Yes. The hypnotic state released the barriers I had with the spirit world.”

“Did your reaction surprise the hypnotist?”

“Yes. In the worst way. She told me she couldn’t see me anymore. She said that her treatment was making my issue worse, and she tried to refund my money. She thought I was going mad—talking to myself and imagining things. She couldn’t understand that she’d given me the most wonderful gift.”

Zoe watched his shoulders lift and sag in a silent sigh.

“But without her,” he continued, “I couldn’t take myself into that hypnotic state of mind. So off I went to study hypnosis. I worked as a hypnotist after that. Then I heard about Bleath and thought I could expand my knowledge in the spirit world there.”

“And what have you found, in Bleath?”

His skin furrowed in ridges between his eyebrows, his expression lost for a moment. “Much more than I anticipated, that’s for certain.”

When he settled back in his chair, she knew their discussion was over.

“I have an appointment coming up in five minutes’ time,” he told her. “And I need to mentally prepare. This is going to be a difficult session, as the client in question is dying and wants to find peace in her last months on this earth.”

Zoe stood. “I understand.”

“Come back at any time. I’m here most days. I live here—in the boarding house attached to The Tea Rooms. Or if I’m not here, Ruby Littlewoods can tell you how to find me.”

“Thank you.” She wanted to say more and ask more but it would have to wait. Phineas had peeled away the things she’d been sure of and discarded them. This meeting hadn’t produced anything that she’d expected.

Elspeth was in the well and Melody was still missing, and maybe, just maybe, Zoe was in the middle of her own paracosm.

As she left The Tea Rooms, there was one thing on her mind.

To find Elspeth’s diary.

22.

ZOE DROVE STRAIGHT TO THE library.

Before she began the search for Elspeth’s diary, she needed to write down what she’d learned today, and she wanted to be sure she didn’t lose any of it. The library was the only place with decent internet. She could send her research through via the online cloud to safe storage.

*

Sitting at the same library booth as before, she plugged her USB drive into the library computer and browsed through to her research folders. She typed up everything she had found out about Elspeth, about her possible mistake in thinking she’d been hypnotized, and about the likelihood of her own paracosm.

She looked over her shoulder, feeling eyes on her. One of the librarians—Mr. Dovewright—was staring her way, but he quickly turned his head and busied himself with a tall stack of books. She’d sensed a strangeness in his eyes before he turned away.

Zoe hurried to finish and send the files through to her online storage. She replaced the USB drive securely in her bag. At least now, even if her USB was somehow stolen from her, her files were safe. The conversations she’d had with others in Bleath were too private to risk them being seen by others. And if she were being honest with herself, she felt as though she’d attracted far too much attention so far in Bleath. The feeling that she was being watched followed her everywhere. The people here were obviously protective of their own and protective of the web of psychics and spirit whispers and hypnotists who lived here. She was more than just a stranger. She was a stranger who intended putting them under a microscope.

She headed back to the Wilmont house. It was the last place she wanted to go, but she was curious now to see if she could find the diary.  So far, almost every illusion she’d experienced had happened in or close to this house. And she needed to know why.

*

Keeping her head down, she ran up the stairs to her bedroom.

She wondered if what Phineas had called the treasure box would be here in Peony’s room. So far, the only box she’d seen that fitted that description was the child’s trinket box. She didn’t want to even look at that box again, and besides, it was empty.

Zoe combed the room—inside the drawers and inside the wardrobe—but found only things that must have belonged to Peony. Old lady things.

Stretching out on the bed, she conceded defeat. If the diary was in one of the other rooms, she’d have to either pick the locks or break them. She had little idea of how to pick a lock, so she’d have to do the latter.

Her eyes came to rest on the scratched lettering on the wooden beam above her.

As you sow, so shall the crow fly.

It occurred to Zoe then that only the person who slept in this bed would ever see that engraving. Karstan’s mother had told her that it had belonged to Peony’s mother—which meant Elspeth. Did that mean Elspeth had written it? The writing was childlike. If it was Elspeth, why had she mixed up two sayings, and why was it important enough to write them down?

The only place I’ve seen both crops and crows is on the box that’s under the bed, Zoe thought.

Slipping off the bed, Zoe bent to her knees and dragged out the box once more. She examined the farm carvings, picking the box up. The bottom of the box felt heavier than the rest. Her fingers were hesitant as she unlocked and opened it. As always, it was empty. She pushed on the bottom floor of the box, but it didn’t give way.

Closing the lid, she moved the box around in her hands, studying it closely. The depictions of the farm were not actually carved into the wood, but made separately and fitted to the box. The parts moved at Zoe’s touch, moving up and over each other on grooves.

She knew what this was now. A puzzle box. She’d seen boxes somewhat similar at Littlewoods’ Tiny Treasures. She just needed to figure it out.

The images of the seeds and the wheat and the sun and the harvest and the raincloud were out of order. She tried to rearrange them in clockwise order on the sides of the box, only it wasn’t clear in which order they should go. She left the crow at the start—it didn’t seem to fit anywhere.

Nothing opened. She didn’t know whether something was supposed to, or whether the puzzle pieces were just a distraction. She tried moving the crow along the top groove that ran all the way around the box. The crow kept bumping into puzzle pieces.

As the crow flies, Zoe mused. Then it became clear to her. She needed to fix the pieces so that the crow could fly in a straight line. She moved the pieces into a seeds, sun, wheat, raincloud, and harvest order—then moved the crow all the way around the box in a line, unimpeded.

A flat drawer slid from the bottom of the box. A lilac-hued book sat inside the drawer, alongside two ribbons, hat pins, and dried flowers.

I found your diary, Elspeth, Zoe whispered. I hope that’s okay.

Zoe lifted the book out and went to sit on the bed.

The first entries were dated 1917. When Elspeth would have been age fifteen. Bending her head, she began reading:

February 8, 1917

From my heart:

Even in Bleath, the Boreades family is seen as strange. I know we’re talked about in the village. They whisper and stare.

I’m scared that they’re right to think we’re strange. Daddy spends a lot of time up in the attic, spying on the village with his telescope, through the eyes of the griffins. And Morwen and I know too much. We’re not like other girls.

I like staying here at home more and more. I beg Mama not to send me to school. Most of the time, I’m too sick to attend school anyway.

I hate knowing things. I don’t want to be like this. But I can’t help it.

Daddy says I’m more gifted than Morwen. He shuffles me in sometimes when he does his séances. And I have to perform like a circus seal.

I don’t like telling people bad stuff that’s going to happen to them. I don’t like seeing all those bad things in my head. It makes me feel terrible and my head starts spinning and I wish that I were anyone except for myself.

May 15, 1917

From my heart:

Morwen begged Daddy to let her sit in at a séance and try to contact the spirit world. But Daddy said her abilities are too erratic and not as strong as mine. After Daddy left the attic, she tried to push me down the attic stairs.

She told me she’s going to grow up to become the best psychic Bleath ever had.

That’s the last thing I want to be, but she won’t believe me.

May 16, 1917

From my heart:

Mayor Sebastian Montalban came to our house today. I overheard him and Daddy arguing. The mayor says that Daddy is taking things too far and that Bleath will be discovered for what it is. And then there will be a witch hunt on a scale of which the world has never seen.

I’m frightened by what the mayor said. But Daddy wasn’t frightened at all. He told the mayor to get off his property.

What did Daddy mean? What is Bleath, really?

July 2, 1917

From my heart:

Rohan told me his secret combination to the lock that opens the gate to his old treehouse.

He’s never told anyone else the combination. He says if I need to get away by myself, that I can go there. He’s sixteen now, and hasn’t been to his treehouse in years.

I like being in the treehouse with all Rohan’s boyhood things, his treasures. I found his puzzle box and I’m going to take it to put my diary in and keep it safe.

November 20, 1917

From my heart:

Morwen turned fourteen today. She told me she made a birthday wish: that she would grow and grow while I shrink and wither away.

She said her wish was already coming true. Because I am a whole year older than her but my head only reaches her shoulder. I don’t know why she says such horrible things.

Mama took her and me to Littlewoods toy store so that Morwen could pick out a present for herself. Morwen chose a wooden doll that she says looks like me. Mama thought that was sweet. But she didn’t catch the look on Morwen’s face when we were walking from the toy store.

November 29, 1917

From my heart:

Glad to be home. I was in the hospital for two whole weeks with scarlet fever. Five days ago, the doctor told my parents I wasn’t going to last out the night. Father Moretti came to my hospital bed to say the last rites. The doctors had to turn out all the lights because they were burning my eyes. I hated being there in the dark for so long.

When Mama brought Morwen, Morwen kept cradling her doll in the darkness and whispering to it and stroking its hair. Strange that she should love a doll so much that looks like I do. Morwen stood at the foot of my bed, rocking the doll and telling it to go to sleep forever.

A short time later, I spiked a high fever and went into a delirium. When Mama and Morwen rushed away to fetch the nurses, I heard a scratching noise under my bed. I thought it was the devil with his clawed hands coming to drag me down into hell. The room was dark and I was so scared.

When Mama came back, she came by herself.

Morwen never left the room. She’d only pretended to. She was hiding under my bed.

But no one saw her.

March 6, 1918

From my heart:

The most terrible thing has happened. Rohan’s gone off to the war. He’s just turned seventeen and he’s far too young. Daddy demanded that they turn the ship around and bring Rohan back. But they can’t. They won’t. Daddy sent his own ship to catch up on the war ship, but the government said he’s compromising the war effort and they turned his ship back before it got very far. Daddy’s furious.

I can’t bear the thought that Rohan has to go away to fight. He’s my favorite person in the whole world.

June 14, 1918

From my heart:

I was sitting in the kitchen when a knock came at the front door. A man brought a telegram to the door and Mama almost fainted when she read it.

The telegram said that Rohan is missing in action.

July 01, 1918

From my heart:

I’m coming down with influenza again but I don’t want to tell Mama. She cries all the time about Rohan. I need to be strong for her.

I don’t tell Mama about Morwen either. When Morwen is mean, I pretend we’ve just been playing games. But we’re not playing games.

This morning, she told me that Bluebell chased a mouse down in the basement. I went down there to get her but I couldn’t find her. Then the basement door slammed shut. I heard scratching and I thought it was Bluebell. But it wasn’t, because then I heard her meowing at the basement door. I was screaming.

Then Morwen jumped out at me laughing. She scratched my face and ran up the stairs. When Mama came to see what the noise was about, I told her it was just a game and that it was Bluebell that scratched me.

Zoe snapped the diary shut.

A dread sensation crawled up her left arm. Pushing her sleeve up, she examined her arm. The cat scratches had faded, but they were still there—long and sharp. She’d been scratched by a cat before, when she was ten. She remembered that the scratches had been thin and needle-like, exactly like a cat’s claws. But the scratches on Zoe’s arm were not like that. These were wider, flatter, the marks beginning in rounded shapes.

Like the scratches of human fingernails.

Zoe hadn’t actually seen Bluebell scratch her. The cat had jumped from the box, and she’d been scratched.

But it hadn’t been Bluebell that scratched her.

No, it wasn’t Bluebell.

Then she heard it again.

The scratching sound. The grating noise of fingernails on wood.

Somewhere outside the room.

Morwen.

The woman she’d seen in the mirror at the Boreades house was Morwen Boreades.

And Morwen was here.

Now.

Zoe raced out to the stair landing.

Zoe’s hair fanned out as she whipped around to look over her shoulder. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

In the mirror’s surface, she saw someone at the bottom of the stairs, coming up toward her.

A dark-haired woman in a long dress.

The temperature of the air itself seemed to plunge. Zoe’s mind spun in erratic patterns. She told herself to run, but her legs refused to function.

The woman drew closer.

She was close enough now that even in the dim light, Zoe could see her features. Her face was thin and elongated, with chalky skin drawn over sharp, prominent cheekbones. Two sweeps of dark hair curved from either side of a center part, caught up in a loose bun. It was her eyes that drew Zoe’s attention—pale, almost colorless eyes that were fixed on Zoe. The eyes had the intensity of a predator’s.

As she neared the landing, the woman stopped. She raked the fingernails of her right hand along the bannister, a small smile playing at the edges of her lips.

A patch of sweat formed on the back of Zoe’s neck.

She was alone in this house. Karstan wasn’t here this time.

She thought she was strong enough to face this.

She was wrong.

“You get away from me.” Zoe forced words through her teeth.

Speaking gave Zoe the courage to turn her head and look.

The stairs were empty.

There was no one there.

Her body slackened in relief.

As she took a step toward the staircase, hands clamped down on her shoulders from behind. Zoe screamed as she looked down at the fingers that were clutching her. Long women’s fingers, with a heavy ring on the middle finger that carried the image of a griffin.

Zoe twisted herself around. Morwen’s arms were reaching out from inside the mirror.

As hard as Zoe struggled, she couldn’t free herself.

She was dragged toward the dark, glassy mirror’s surface.

23.

WHEN ZOE SCREAMED AGAIN, IT sounded to her like the shattering of a thousand mirrors, all distant and unseen.

All was dark.

She was staring into the disorienting depths like those of the well. Like the blackness and stars and the feeling of falling through space of the carnival ride.

There was only one thing she knew.

Morwen had lost her grip.

Zoe needed to get away while she had a chance.

Before Morwen found her again.

She began running. In complete darkness and chilling cold.

She tumbled, tumbled, tumbled.

A crushing pain coursed through her bones.

Keep going.

On hands and knees now, she forced herself to keep moving.

Don’t stop.

She could smell earth. Coppery earth and leaves wet with the dew of night.

Don’t stop.

The darkness went gray.

Rising, she stumbled forward.

Things brushed her arms and legs and face. Soft things. Things that bore the husky scent of wheat. Was she in the wheat fields?

Strong arms wrestled her to the ground.

“No. Leave me alone,” she cried out.

A hand clamped down over her mouth. “I can’t do what you want, miss,” came a deep voice. A male voice.

With effort, she rolled herself around and stared into a face that was just visible in the deep mist.

The face of the same man she’d seen in her kitchen. The same man she’d seen cutting wheat and sharpening the scythe in the tool shed.

“I saw you running from the house. She’ll hurt you if she finds you,” he told her in a low voice. “Promise not to make a sound if I take my hand away?”

Zoe nodded, terrified.

“Who are you?” he asked her, letting his hand drop away.

“I’m Zoe.”

“What were you doing in my sister’s house?”

Zoe stared at his face. Blonde hair fell to his shoulders, surrounding a handsome face. “You’re Rohan Boreades,” she whispered.

“Yes. You know me?”

“I only saw a photo of you when you were a boy.”

“I’ve just come back home. I was held prisoner for a long time, even after the war ended.”

The terrible thought came to Zoe that this man might be an illusion and she might really be alone in this field. Reaching out, she touched his face and hair. His lips parted, and his brow creased in confusion.

“I think I understand,” he said after a moment. “Pity. Such a beauty yet simple of mind. It explains the boy’s farm clothing you wear. Don’t worry, miss. I’ll take care of you until we get you home.”

“I’m not simple of—”

“Shhh, she’ll hear you.”

“Who is she?”

“My sister. Morwen.” His voice was dark and certain. He took her hand. “Let’s go now. But you must stay low and remain quiet. Can you do that?”

Zoe decided she had to stay with Rohan. Whether he was real or whether he was an illusion of her own mind, he was her best bet.

Together, they reached the other side of the wheat belt.

He turned to her. “Which way do I take you?”

Zoe closed her eyes for a moment. “Which year is this?”

“You’re very confused. It’s 1924.”

“Then I can’t get home from here.” Zoe’s voice trembled. “I’ll just stay with you.”

His fingers tightened on hers. “You can’t. I have things I must do.”

“Why did you think Morwen would hurt me?”

His brow drew down above penetrating dark eyes. “Because she’s not right of mind. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m searching for someone.”

Zoe drew a deep breath. “Can I ask who you’re searching for?”

“My other sister, Elspeth. She vanished from town yesterday, leaving her young baby behind. But I don’t believe she left town of her own accord. Are you a friend of hers?”

“Yes, I’m a friend,” said Zoe quickly. “I’m looking for Elspeth, too.”

But if Elspeth was missing, then she was already dead. Zoe didn’t know how to tell Rohan that.

Suddenly, it was clear to Zoe that Morwen had killed Elspeth. Of course it was Morwen. It had been Morwen all along, haunting the house and trying to keep Zoe from discovering her sister’s bones in the well.

Zoe’s heart began pounding in her chest. If this was a paracosm, then paracosms were real. They took you into places and worlds that were real. And if paracosms were real, then the world of spirits was real.

“I’m sorry, miss. I’m going to have to ask you to go. It’s too dangerous for you here. Please go back to your home.” Letting go of her hand, he turned and quickly weaved through the wheat, disappearing into the mist.

She tried to follow him. Her desperation grew sharper as she ran in every direction.

Her only way back to her own world was through the mirror. But Morwen ‘s ghost had taken her through that. How would she manage to travel through glass and a solid wall on her own?

Ignoring Rohan’s warning, she headed back toward the house.

Something blocked her way immediately ahead. A threshing machine that looked as though it had broken down and been left here in the middle of the field.

A small, almost transparent circle wavered in the air just in front of the threshing machine. Fog poured into the circle. She stepped closer, touching the circle.

The scents of wheat and dew vanished, replaced by the musty odor of aged wood. She felt around her. The surface was hard. Floorboards.

She raised her head. And saw her own eyes—large and white—staring back at her in the mirror.

A whimpering noise came from deep in her throat as she crawled away from the mirror. Beyond its reach.

She remembered Duckie MacGregor telling her about the Path. Had she just passed through a Path?

Loping down the stairs, she headed out to her car, stopping only to take her suitcase. She threw the suitcase in and then slid into the driver’s seat. The front door to the Wilmont house swung idly to and fro on its hinges. She was never going to pass through that door again.

She’d made a decision: she was going to leave Bleath.

Moving her jacket and T-shirt collar aside, she stared down at where Morwen had held her. Dark bruises marked her skin.

Paracosms could hurt you.

Maybe even kill you.

Definitely kill you.

Before she left town, she needed to make sure that Duckie and Lincoln and Prudence were safe.

Heavy black clouds moved in above, seeming to speed across the sky in time-stop motion. She glanced at the clock. The time was a quarter past three. Hours had passed while she’d been in the field with Rohan. Morning had turned to afternoon. It would be dark in less than two hours.

She wanted to be out of Bleath before sunset. She’d drive to Duckie’s house first and then Lincoln’s. She’d leave Prudence until last—she needed to return that way to exit Bleath. Then she’d wait near the exit road for Karstan. He was coming at five. Just on twilight. And she’d say goodbye.

Stewart MacGregor looked different when he answered the door. Last time, Duckie’s father had looked every inch the businessman. Today, he looked as if he’d slept in his clothes, gray stubble peppered around his jaw.

“You came to see Duckie?” He raised his eyebrows slightly, his mouth downturned in a defeated gesture.

“I came to see you.” She dug her hands into her pockets, trying to find the right words. “Mr. MacGregor, you need to get your daughter away from here. I have new information about Duckie’s fantasy world. You have to get her out of town. Permanently.”

He stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Where would I take her? My business is here in Bleath.”

“What about her mother? Could she take her?”

His face crumpled like old paper. “Liana? I’ve just found out that my wife has been having an affair. For years.”

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, too. All this time, I believed her. Every time she said she had to go away—for her career—I trusted her words. My wife’s a medium. She goes away on cruise ships and does readings for the passengers. For months at a time. Well, seems one of the male psychics she travels with is a lot more than just a business partner.”

As he shook his head, his shoulders trembled. He gave a rueful laugh. “If I were a psychic myself, maybe I would have known that.”

Zoe realized that he wasn’t ready to listen to her. She’d have to meet him where he was at and try to get through to him that way. She decided to relate her own experience. “When I first came here, Stewart, I’d just found out my boyfriend cheated on me. But that’s nothing compared to what you’ve just been through.”

He studied her face, as if he were ready to talk to her rather than just at her—for the first time since he’d opened the door to her.

“Well, that just sucks. Pretty girl like you. What was he thinking?”

She smiled. “I don’t know. But it hurt like crazy. It still hurts.”

“One day, sweetheart, he’ll regret it. Maybe one day my wife will, too. But I’m not holding my breath.”

Zoe exhaled, preparing herself to again try to get Mr. MacGregor to take Ava away. “Is it possible that Liana could take Duckie, even on the cruise ship? They have day care for children on board, don’t they?”

“Well, yeah. They do. You know what? I might just do that. I’ve been trying to be a good dad to Duckie. But it’s been a struggle. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I’m trying to run the business, and I know I’m not giving Duckie the time she needs. Maybe it’s time for her mother to pick up the slack and remember that she has a daughter.”

This time, there was an underlying certainty and anger to his voice. But his eyes clouded. “But you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on here. What’s the issue with Duckie’s circus?”

“It’s not just Duckie. It’s Lincoln Kane. And it’s . . . me. We’re all experiencing fantasy worlds. And we’re getting hurt. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know how.” Pressing her lips tightly together, she drew up her sleeve to show the scratches then moved aside her collar to show the bruises.

“You expect me to believe—”

“Lincoln has frostbite on his hands. His fantasy world is in the snow. And have you seen your daughter’s bruises?”

“Now hang on a minute. There’s no bruises on Duckie. What are you trying to insinuate?”

“Please, Mr. MacGregor. I know it’s not you. I know that. Of course you don’t know she has bruises—because you didn’t make those bruises.”

“I’m going to bring her to the door right now and show you that she’s fine.” He craned his head back inside, toward the top of the staircase. “Duckie! Can you come here a minute?”

Duckie appeared on the top landing, skipping as she made her way down the steps. Zoe half-expected her to do flips all the way across the floor, but she didn’t. She walked over, her eyes growing guarded when she saw that it was Zoe at the door.

“Sweetheart,” said Mr. MacGregor, “Zoe here is worried you have bruises. Now, I know she’s mistaken. You don’t have any bruises. Apart from the odd scrape on your knees.”

Sucking her mouth in completely, she shook her head.

“See?” said Mr. MacGregor.

“Can we see your wrists?” Zoe asked Duckie gently.

“I already told you I don’t have any,” she insisted.

“Well, I’m not going to go away until we’re sure of that.” Zoe straightened and raised her eyebrows, trying to look as determined as her words.

Duckie chewed the insides of her gum for a moment then seemed to realize she’d been ambushed. Shrugging awkwardly, she pushed up the sleeves of her cardigan. Purplish bruises, the size and shape of a man’s hands, still marked her pale skin.

Mr. MacGregor gasped in a low tone. “I swear that wasn’t—”

“We know it wasn’t you,” Zoe cut in.

He grasped his daughter’s shoulders. “Who did this to you? Tell me now. I’ll kill whoever hurt you.”

She wriggled away. “They didn’t hurt me. I already told Zoe that. They were just catching me on the trapeze. I made a mistake and the guy had to make a sudden grab. Damn near saved my life.”

Zoe noted that Duckie still spoke like a much older person—like a girl who hung around adults at a carnival and had no friends her own age.

He glanced up at Zoe, his expression heavy with fear and confusion. “What’s going on here? What am I to believe?” His gaze shifted back to his daughter. “Go back and play, sweetheart.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” said Zoe as Duckie walked away. Duckie shot Zoe a hurt look of betrayal as she ascended the stairs. Zoe was torn between wanting to go and talk to her and what she had to do next. She didn’t have time to waste.

“I don’t know what this is about,” said Mr. MacGregor in a voice that was hushed enough so that Duckie didn’t overhear, “but I’m going to do what we just talked about and send her to her mother. Liana’s ship is docked in the Maldives at the moment. I won’t tell Duckie until we’re at the airport, because otherwise, I’d never get her to come with me.”

Zoe felt her body sink a little with relief. “That sounds perfect.”

“While she’s away, I’m going to find out who did that to my Duckie, mark my words. With all due respect, Zoe, bruises don’t jump onto a person out of thin air.”

“I understand. Just keep her safe.” Saying a quick goodbye, Zoe hurried along the path and back to her car.

24.

ZOE DROVE AWAY AND UP into the hills.

The Kanes’ house was dark as she approached it. It was still half an hour until dark. Perhaps they conserved their electricity for as long as they could. Mrs. Kane had said that money was tight.

Or maybe they’d taken her advice and left town. But somehow, she knew they hadn’t. She tapped on the door, feeling a thread of apprehension weave through her spine to the small of her back.

Mrs. Kane came to the door. “Lincoln’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“We planned to leave Bleath today.  Go and live on my sister’s farm in Maine for a while, until we get ourselves together. But Linc got away from us. Darren and Kate are out looking. I have to stay here with the young ones—they’d only get lost taking them into the fields at night.”

“I’ll go help look,” Zoe said immediately.

Dark crescents sat underneath her eyes, her lips and cheeks puffy from crying. “He’s never been gone this long before. He’d always be back way before dinner. He was afraid to be taken away from his world. That’s what it is.”

Zoe gulped a breath of air, guilt piercing her mind. She’d been the one to tell the Kanes to leave Bleath. But she hadn’t understood enough to give that advice. She hadn’t understood how real the worlds were and she hadn’t understood how much Lincoln needed his world. Lincoln needed to be taken away in the same way that Mr. MacGregor was planning on taking Duckie away—without Lincoln knowing he wasn’t coming back.

She grasped Mrs. Kane’s arms. “I’ll do my best to find him.” Her flesh felt bony beneath the cardigan. For a moment, Zoe saw her and her husband as Lincoln probably saw them. Pale, drained beings who seemed to just exist rather than live.

Mrs. Kane shot her a sad look that held no hope. Zoe realized that Lincoln’s mother doubted her son was coming back this time.

Zipping up her jacket, Zoe raced to the fields. The light was going fast. The truth was, she didn’t expect to find him any more than Mrs. Kane expected him to be found.

She crashed straight into the line of wheat. “Lincoln! Lincoln!”

She heard other voices, a short distance away, calling him. A man’s voice and a young girl. Zoe ran in their direction.

Mr. Kane stepped through the wheat in strides that were large but had lost any power. He stared at Zoe as if he’d never seen her before. Zoe understood why. She was not who he was looking for. She was a stranger who’d appeared at a time when all his focus was on a member of his own family. If she didn’t have information about Lincoln, then she was in the way.

Lincoln’s sister ran up alongside her father, out of breath, her white-blonde hair skewed damply across her forehead. Zoe guessed she’d been trying to keep up with her father, sensing his anxiety growing as the deep shadows of night stole through the wheat.

“I came to help look.” She stuck her hands into her jacket to warm them, suddenly feeling useless. What could she do that he hadn’t already done? He would have searched everywhere that he could. She had no flashlight with her, and it would soon be too dark to even look. In any case, his face bore that same haunted look that his wife’s did—he thought Lincoln was no longer here to be found.

“We were leaving today.” His voice was hoarse, with a wavering edge of confusion.

“I know,” Zoe said softly. “We’ll find him.”

Kate raked the hair from her face with both hands. “No we won’t. He said he didn’t want to go to any new town. He said he had to stay in his ice world this time.”

A scattering of pins and needles rushed through the back of Zoe’s knees, and her legs went weak. “He said that?”

The child opened her eyes wide as an answer, showing Zoe the fear she felt inside.

“Kate,” said Zoe, softening her voice. “Can you show me the place where your brother goes to the other world? The exact place?”

“It’s of no use,” her father cut in. “That’s the first place we went to. He isn’t there.”

“If it’s okay, I want to see it.”

Kate raised her eyes to her father, as if to check that it was okay, before looking directly at Zoe again. “The spot is in line with our house. If you walk until you can see the weather rooster on our roof straight in front of you, and then go back a few steps, that’s it.”

“How many steps back?” Zoe asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe about six. That’s just the place that I always used to see him walking out of. I wanted to go there too, to see the ice. I’ve never seen ice. But he wouldn’t let me. He said it’s too dangerous.”

She clamped her mouth shut then, seeming to be scared her father would be angry that she wanted to go to Lincoln’s world, too.

“There is no ice world.” Mr. Kane’s words punched the air. “It’s a fantasy. We should never have allowed him to spend his days making those ridiculous models and speaking in that way that he did. There must be someone in the hills who’s taking him in, someone who’s feeding his fantasy. There’s weird sorts who live around here. Strange beliefs.”

“Wouldn’t this be a matter for the police, in that case?” For a moment, Zoe’s mind had switched back to the world outside Bleath. The world where a missing child would spark a huge police hunt. The sudden thought that someone in Bleath might be keeping Lincoln horrified her.

“The police?” His eyes were dark beneath raised, hooked eyebrows. “I called them the first time Lincoln went missing. And the second. And the time after that. They ended up telling us that if we can’t keep our own kid from going MIA, then that’s our problem.”

Kate wrapped her arms in tightly underneath her woollen poncho as if she were trying to stop herself from butting into an adult conversation, a conversation she knew had gone down the wrong track.

Mr. Kane and Zoe looked over at her as she was shaking her head to herself.

“No one took Lincoln,” said Kate quietly. “He comes and goes in the wheat.”

Zoe shot a grim glance at Kate.  “I’m going to check it out.”

Giving her a curt nod, Mr. Kane continued on. “Kate, we’re going for a walk around the hills. I’ve had enough of this damned field.”

Kate turned her head to Zoe as she stepped away with her father, a pleading look on her small face.

Zoe walked in the opposite direction, feeling the encroaching darkness like a leaden weight. She didn’t want to be out here alone in the night. A chill breeze swept across the heads of wheat, brushing her cheeks and forehead. Birds cawed and wheeled on the way through the sky, back to wherever home was among the distant trees.

The Kane house was on her right. She could see the weather vane spinning to and fro atop the roof, black against the hills behind it. She paced herself, walking just far enough so that she had the rooster in her line of sight. She stepped backwards then. Six steps. Keeping them small to match a child’s.

What now? She was about to call out Lincoln’s name, but decided to remain quiet. Lincoln didn’t want to be found. Calling him could make things worse.

An image came to her. After Rohan had vanished from the wheat field, she’d seen something. A kind of silvery, wavering circle in front of her face. Like a puff of cigarette smoke blown from someone’s mouth. She wouldn’t have noticed it but for the mist. The mist had been softly pouring into the circle, like it was concave. Could that silvery thing be at the entrance to all of the worlds? Were they the Paths?

Zoe’s teeth set hard together as she watched the Kane house being swallowed up by darkness, feeble lights the only indication that anyone was inside.

She twisted herself around, forcing herself to face the sight of the endless acres of wheat again. If there was a Path here, would she even see it?

Her breath condensed and grew whitish with the dropping temperature. She watched as her stream of breath seemed to bend, as though it were being drawn into something. She caught the barest glimmer of a concave circle near the heads of wheat. This was the same as the circle she had seen near the threshing machine. Raising her hand, she touched the circle. Her fingers disappeared.

This was it.

The entry to Lincoln’s secret world.

In her mind, she tried to summon the courage to go forward. She felt like a child looking out at the night from her bedroom window, terrified by the vastness and strangeness of it.

Her stomach tightened around her next breath. She was going to follow Lincoln.

She pushed both arms into the small, smoke-like circle. The circle widened and lengthened, accepting her. It closed around her, and everything went black.

For a moment, she was overcome with terror. Was she even still on the earth?

Don’t think, she told herself. Look for the gray.

She walked down a corridor of darkness. A sheet of air swept under her feet, pulling her into the void. Panic raced along her limbs as she struggled to find the ground again. Then she knew. There was no longer anything solid around her. She was pulled forward, her half-thoughts and half-screams spinning away from her.

The space around her lightened.

She’d found the gray.

Her feet found solid ground.

She kept walking. The temperature dropped with her every step.

Ahead, ice glistened luminously under a night sky.

Oh God, I’m in Lincoln’s ice world. I’m really here.

But it didn’t look like any winter landscape she’d ever seen. Long cylinders—seven feet or more in diameter—twisted through and around each other, sparkling in the moonlight. It was then that she realized the scene looked the same as Lincoln’s clay model. The cylinders looked like giant sloughed snake skins that had frozen solid.

Blisteringly icy wind blasted across a frozen lake, sounding like demons. No. The sounds were something other than the wind, distant but blood-chilling. A primeval instinct urged her to run. There were predators out there. She needed to run or be consumed.

Then she saw them. Pitch-dark serpentine shadows. Terrifyingly tall. They floated toward her like malevolent spirits across the lake.

Her intestines turned to water.

From the periphery of her vision, she caught sight of a figure balled up and almost buried beneath a drift of snow. A child.

Racing to the figure, she dropped to her knees and clawed the snow away.

The child’s eyelids were closed and bluish, his face marble-like.

Lincoln.

“Lincoln,” she called desperately as she freed his limbs from the weight of the snow. Please be alive.

Turning her head, she watched the shadows advance, sensing their dark hunger.

Dragging Lincoln’s ice-cold body up into her arms, she fled—stumbling in the snow drifts and gasping air so chilled it felt like knives piercing her throat.

25.

JENNY KANE PLACED A SECOND blanket around Lincoln as he sipped warm milk in front of the fire. The orange glow from the flames gave some artificial warmth and color to Lincoln’s pale skin.

Amy and Sophie gathered on the floor at his feet as though he were an object of worship.

Jenny’s eyes were dazed, the rims of them still red and swollen. “I can’t believe he’s really here.” She turned to look at Zoe. “Are you quite sure you found him in the field?”

“Yes, I’m certain,” Zoe answered.

Jenny gave a defeated shake of her head. Zoe guessed that Jenny couldn’t decide what was worse—that some maniac had been regularly kidnapping her son and keeping him in some kind of freezer, or that her son had been journeying to a fantasy world that was actually real. Either possibility could destroy someone’s mind. Right now, Zoe was just barely holding onto threads of sanity herself.

Reaching beneath the blanket, Jenny held her son’s hand. “He’s like ice. I’ll go make some warm milk for him.”

Jenny jumped to her feet and headed for the kitchen almost too quickly, as if Lincoln were now alien to her. As if she needed to get away from him. Amy and Sophie ran after their mother. Zoe wondered if Lincoln had become too strange for them, too.

Zoe raised her eyes to the clock on the wall. Time had stood still since she had been in the ice world.

Lincoln stared fixedly into the flames.

“Lincoln,” Zoe started, waiting until the girls were out of the room, “you almost died. What’s in that world of yours that’s worth dying for?”

He shifted his face slightly toward her. He was listening. That was something.

“What are those things?” Zoe persisted. “Those shadows?”

“Nightmares.” His voice was raw and hoarse, but he didn’t sound afraid.

Relieved that he’d spoken, Zoe continued. She needed to find out as much as she could before his family returned. “How are they nightmares?”

“I dreamed them. Until they grew too big for my dreams.”

“What happens when things get too big for your dreams?”

“You have to go to the world of your dreams, where everything’s big enough to hold it all.”

Rising, she knelt on the ground beside him and grasped his arm. “You know that I went into your world. I felt the icy cold. I saw the monsters. I found you in the snow. But people can’t go into other people’s dreams. How is it that I was able to go into yours?”

“Because things dreamed in the field become real. And once they become real, anyone can go there.” His voice held a faraway quality. “I built a good world, Zoe. Did you like it?”

“It terrified me.”

He looked vaguely pleased with that, his lips pulling into an almost-smile.

“Lincoln,” Zoe pressed, “people don’t come out of dreams frozen.”

For the first time, he faced her squarely. He looked so young with his fair, downy eyebrows and eyelashes and clear white eyes. “I told you. Dreams become real in the field.”

“What is the field? Why do people dream there?”

“The field is an energy. It gives and it takes.”

Zoe kept a gasp buried in her chest. He’d just called the field a type of energy. They were no longer talking about a wheat field. “How does the field do that?”

“I don’t know. The field makes it possible. That’s all I know.”

She checked behind her that Jenny and the girls were still out of the room, then returned her attention to the boy. “You said the monsters were nightmares. Can they hurt people?”

“Of course they can hurt people,” he told her calmly, a hint of pride in his voice. “I created the world the way it is. If I made it of ice and monsters, then it’s my own fault.”

“And would they hurt you, too? Is that what you were doing, hiding from the monsters under the snow?”

His forehead crinkled derisively. “They won’t hurt me. And besides, you can’t hide from them. They’re blind, but they can hear your breathing.”

She was still holding his arm, and she couldn’t help her fingers tightening on his flesh. Desperately, she needed to know the answer to her next question. “Then why were you under the snow?”

The shield he normally kept between himself and others returned and made his face go blank, and Zoe worried for a moment that he’d refuse to answer her. Had she pushed too far? She hadn’t thought he’d speak to her at all, yet he’d already told her so much about his world.

Please, please, Lincoln, don’t go back into your mind. Let me help you.

He twisted his hands inside the sleeves of his jumper and drew his knees up on the chair, making himself look smaller and even younger. For what seemed like forever, he stared at the fire and was silent.

She sensed that she shouldn’t ask again. He would either choose to answer, or not. But pushing him would make him close himself up. Releasing her hold on his arm, she moved back and gave him space.

A look came over his face that Zoe couldn’t quite understand. It seemed almost regretful. What did he regret?

“I was hiding,” he said finally. “But not from the shadows.”

“Then who were you hiding from?”

He seemed to hesitate before answering. “The Magician.”

With a chill racing down her spine, she remembered that Duckie had mentioned a magician. But Duckie’s world was a circus, and circuses had magicians. What was a magician doing in Lincoln’s world of ice and monsters?

“Who is The Magician?”

“A friend,” he said simply.

“But why were you hiding from a friend?”

“He doesn’t want me to stay in the ice world. He doesn’t want me to cross over.”

Did that mean The Magician was a real friend? “What does crossing over mean? Does it mean staying in the ice world?”

He nodded. “I want to stay there. But I keep getting returned. I can never manage to stay in my ice world very long.  But the shadows told me how to stay. They told me the next time there’s a blizzard, I just need to lie down on the ice. And there’s almost always a blizzard in the ice world.”

Zoe took in a shuddering breath of air, moving back in horror. “They told you that you need to die to stay there, didn’t they?” She whispered the words, almost speaking them to herself.

He heard her, but he didn’t react. If anything, his expression grew serene.

“What if,” she said cautiously, “the shadows lied to you? What if the ice world isn’t your dream? What if it was real before you even knew about it?” She didn’t know what the truth was. But she’d sensed the malice of the shadows, and now she knew they’d convinced Lincoln that death was the way to remain in the other world.

Lincoln shook his head and then rested his chin on his knee. “I designed it. I built it. It belongs to me.” He spoke something in the strange language he’d spoken when she’d first met him—the language of the shadows. It almost sounded like static.

“Lincoln, why would you need to die to stay in your own world? That doesn’t sound like you’re the one in control. What if they wanted you to die because they’re just . . . bad.”

“No, they’re not bad,” he responded, speaking normally again. “They’re mine.”

Zoe knew she had to stop herself from saying more. She was insulting creatures that Lincoln believed he had created. She was growing sure that he hadn’t created them, but she had to keep that to herself.

“Tell me about The Magician. He didn’t want you to die? Does that mean he cares about you more than the shadows do?”

A scowl crossed his face. “He doesn’t care about me. Not more than my dad does. He just doesn’t want me to stay forever in the ice world because he wants me to bring him someone.”

“Who does he want you to bring?” The words slipped out on a breath.

“A girl named Prudence.”

Zoe tried to speak, but the words held fast inside her. The Magician wanted Prudence.

Duckie’s words flashed to the forefront of her mind “But Melody wasn’t someone I should have been bringing through to my world, anyway. Too much of a scaredy-pants. I should have brought a different girl.” At the time, Zoe had thought Duckie meant that she should have brought with her a girl who wouldn’t get scared. But now she wasn’t so sure. Had Duckie been talking about Prudence? And had The Magician asked Duckie to bring Prudence to him?

Zoe needed Lincoln to tell her why The Magician wanted Prudence.

But the front door swung open and Lincoln’s father and sister stood there, gaping as they saw Lincoln sitting under the blanket.

Lincoln and his father exchanged a look that Zoe found hard to decipher. Darren strode inside, Kate following and staring at her brother with tears brimming in her eyes.

When Lincoln turned his head away to gaze at the fire again, he did so stiffly, as if he were suddenly held in a vice. Mr. Kane slung his coat on a hook near the door, his shoulder blades rising and tensing beneath his checked shirt. Wordlessly, he crossed the room to sit on the sofa beside his son. Shaking his head, he stared down at his boots.

Zoe watched them both, father and son.

Suddenly, Zoe guessed something. Lincoln had sought escape in the ice world. And perhaps the protection of the most frightening creatures imaginable. Maybe Lincoln wanted protection from his father. And maybe protection for his mother, too. The bruise on Jenny Kane’s neck hadn’t happened the way she said it had.

Jenny walked in with a plate of milk and cookies. Darren jumped up and took the plate to Lincoln, as if glad of having something to do that didn’t require him to speak.

“I’d better go,” said Zoe. Her conversation with Lincoln was over. “Goodbye Lincoln. I’m glad we had a chance to talk.”

“What did you talk about with my son?” demanded Mr. Kane, breaking his silence. “And where did you find him?”

Zoe wasn’t about to tell him either of those things.

“He was hiding,” she told him.

Without giving Darren time to ask another question, she stood. “I have to go now.”

Jenny Kane walked her to the door.

“Thank you.” Jenny clutched Zoe’s arm.

Zoe gave her a close-lipped smile. “You’re still going to Maine, right?”

Jenny lowered her voice so that she was out of earshot of the others. “Yes. I couldn’t believe it when Darren agreed to this. I know he’s sorry . . . about a lot of things. We’re going to make a fresh start.”

“Good,” Zoe told her. “And I’m glad you’ll be staying with family for a while.” She eyed Jenny’s worn face intently. “Don’t let Lincoln out of your sight until you’re safely away from here. Not tonight, not for one minute. If you do, you’re in danger of losing him forever.”

“Not for one minute,” Jenny repeated, her lips drawing tight into a determined line.

*

The wind stalked and pounced through the wheat as she drove down the dark roads of the hills.

She had one more stop before leaving town.

She had to tell Iona to get Prudence out of Bleath, too. Even more so now. Iona needed to know that a stranger named The Magician was trying to get hold of her daughter.

Who was he?

In her mind, Zoe saw Phineas Fulcrum in the photograph on his wall—Phineas in the cape and top hat of a magician. He used to be a magician.

Pinpricks of panic ran along the back of her neck and over her scalp.

The Magician that Duckie and Lincoln had spoken of couldn’t be Phineas, could it? He had her believing that he cared about the children that were becoming lost to their fantasy worlds. Surely he wasn’t the one leading the kids straight into those worlds? Was he?

She thought again about Prudence and how Phineas was the one who kept seeking her out.

Zoe swung the car into a hard right. For the second time today, she was going to confront Phineas Fulcrum.

Heading into town, she parked her car on Blyth Street. She didn’t need to hide her car this time. A single streetlamp gave a yellow glow to the street, but most of it was steeped in darkness.

She stepped against the swirls of dry leaves being swept up by gusts of wind. The door was locked as she tried turning the handle. She rapped on the heavy wood. Inside, she heard the sharp clip of footsteps.

Ruby Littlewoods’s face appeared as the door opened halfway. She peered out, a frown making a deep indent on her forehead. “It’s lovely you’ve come to visit us, but we’re not open. Please do come back tomorrow.”

Zoe shook her head. “I need to talk with Phineas.”

She pulled a large scarf tight around her shoulders. “Again? Well, it will have to wait. Mr. Fulcrum has gone out of town for a couple of days. He said he had something urgent to attend to.”

“Out of town? But this can’t wait. Does he have a business card? A phone number I can contact him on?”

“My dear, the hypnotists here do not have business cards. Cards are not needed. And Mr. Fulcrum didn’t leave a number. He never does.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“I’m afraid not.” Her eyes grew strange behind the streetlamp reflection in her glasses. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Can I offer any assistance?” She touched Zoe’s arm.

“I—no. I’m fine. Thank you. Phineas told me you’d know of his whereabouts, that’s all.”

“Yes, that’s generally true. But this time, I’m afraid our Mr. Fulcrum is being a bit secretive. But do let me help—”

“No, there’s nothing you can help me with.” Zoe left quickly, unsettled by Ruby’s sudden interest in her. Did she know more about Phineas’s whereabouts than she was telling? If Phineas was really The Magician, did she know?

*

A gale howled across the fields as Zoe rushed down the driveway of Prudence’s house. She knocked urgently on the door.

Prudence’s mother looked out, gasping as she saw Zoe. “Oh gosh, at first I thought it was the wind tossing things around outside. Come in, before you get blown away.”

Zoe stepped inside. Prudence, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, turned her head and waved.

Giving a wave back, Zoe raised her eyes to Iona. “Could I talk with you a moment?”

“Yes, of course. Is something wrong?” Iona replied in a low voice.

“I hope not.”

Iona looked worried as she showed Zoe though to the kitchen. The pungent smell of freshly brewed coffee overtook the scents of burning wood. “Can I get you a drink? Tea or coffee?”

“A coffee would be wonderful.” Coffee would help keep her awake on the long trip home.

Iona poured two coffees and brought them to the table, then went to fetch milk and sugar.

“Thank you,” Zoe said gratefully.

Iona sat almost gingerly on the chair, looking expectantly at Zoe.

Zoe sipped the hot liquid. “I’m leaving Bleath tonight. But I couldn’t leave without clearing some things up first.”

“You’re leaving? Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not a nice night to be heading out of town. Are you sure you can’t stay on until the morning?”

“I like driving at night. It’s calming,” Zoe told her. She didn’t add that getting away from Bleath itself was the thing that was going to be the most calming. “The first thing I wanted to talk to you about is something that Lincoln Kane told me. I was at his house just a short time ago. Do you know of him?”

“Lincoln—yes. His family live up in the hills. As far as I understand, he doesn’t talk to anyone. He has a language he invented himself?”

“That’s true. But he does talk when he wants to. He’s one of the kids I’ve been studying here in Bleath. He has a fantasy world of ice and monsters. Tonight, he went missing. In the wheat field next to his home. I found him—I won’t explain how right now. But he said something that I need to tell you. He said that a man in his world wants . . . Prudence. A man named The Magician.”

Zoe couldn’t tell her what she really knew about Lincoln’s fantasy world. She wouldn’t be believed, and that wouldn’t help Prudence.

Iona set her cup down flatly on the table, vaguely confused. “Lincoln has a fantasy world, and he wants my daughter to join him?”

Zoe nodded, pulling her lower lip through her teeth. “I’m worried that The Magician is a real person. Maybe someone in town. Duckie MacGregor, a little girl who lives in town with her father, also spoke of a magician. She said it was The Magician who showed her the way into her fantasy world. Duckie tried to bring a girl into her fantasy world with her. That girl was Melody Holmes.”

Iona’s hand reached over her mouth. “I know about Melody. She disappeared not long after we moved here.”

“Duckie said she should have brought a different girl. I’m not sure, but she could have been talking about—”

Iona’s eyes grew afraid. “Prudence,” she finished. “Duckie has repeatedly asked my daughter over to play with her. We see her and her father in town quite often, buying groceries and things. She’s been very insistent, but Prudence keeps declining the offer. I guessed it was because Prudence feels too old for a playdate with her.”

Zoe squeezed her eyelids closed for a moment. They were feeling raw from the cold and wind, especially the icy windstorm in Lincoln’s world. “Has Prudence ever mentioned someone called The Magician?”

The muscles in Iona’s forehead drew in tight. “Not as far as I can remember. Perhaps we need to ask Prudence.”

Zoe nodded. “I think we should.”

Iona called her daughter to the kitchen. Prudence wandered in holding a notebook, her cheeks bright from the fire.

“Prue, honey,” said Iona, “Zoe has just been talking to me about someone who might live in our town, but she isn’t sure. Do you know a man known as The Magician?”

The change that came over Prudence’s face was immediate. She toyed with the end of one of her braids. “I don’t know him. But I’ve seen him.”

Iona rose from her chair, slowly, as though she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her. “He’s a real person? Who? Who is he?”

Prudence’s small, fine features crumpled. “I don’t want to tell you any more. Don’t ask me. Once you see him, it’s too late. He’ll never let you go.”

A cry came from deep within Iona’s chest.

Standing, Zoe took a step toward Prudence. “Does he have another name?”

“He hasn’t told me if he does,” said Prudence, shooting her mother a fearful glance.

“Can you tell me what he looks like?” Zoe urged.

“No. He’s tall and I think maybe his hair is a light color, but his face is always in darkness.”

Iona ran to her daughter, grasping her arms. “What does he say to you?”

“He tells me he can help me find my sister,” Prudence told her mother.

“Okay. Listen,” said Iona. “You need to tell me how we can get hold of this guy. Tomorrow, your father and I will be having a word with him. Then we’ll be talking with the police.”

Prudence bowed her head. “Don’t seek him out. Please. Once you see him, you’re his forever.”

Iona relaxed her voice. “Please, honey, this man has made you believe things that aren’t true. You are not his. Just tell me how—”

“You can’t find him,” Prudence burst out. “He can only find you. He’s doesn’t live in this world.”

Tears tracked down Iona’s cheeks. “This isn’t the time, Prudence. It’s not the time to talk about that other world of yours. This person might be someone who can hurt you—in real life.”

Prudence broke free of her mother’s hold. “You don’t understand. The other world is real.”

Zoe stepped up to them both, deep in thought. Was it possible that Phineas was entering paracosms and trying to pull children into them? And where was he right now?

Silence grew around the three of them. A forest of silence, with branches as gnarled and twisted as the branches on the barren trees standing guard at the entry to Bleath.

Zoe shook her head firmly. “No, it’s not too late. I’m leaving Bleath. Now. And you and your mom should leave, too. Duckie and Lincoln are leaving tomorrow.”

“I’ll make plans,” Iona said. “My husband will be home soon. We’ll pack and get out of town first thing in the morning. When we’re sure Prudence is safe, we’ll start figuring out the rest and what we need to do.”

Leaning forward, Iona grabbed Zoe in a hug. “Thank you. With all we’ve been through, we couldn’t bear the loss of another daughter.” She pulled Prudence into the embrace. “Everything will be okay, for all of us. It has to be.”

They stayed together in a tight cluster, while the wind rattled the century-old doors and windows.

26.

ZOE SAT IN HER CAR at the outside end of her driveway. Far away from the Wilmont house. Light rain blew on the wind. Zoe prayed that it didn’t grow heavier. She hated driving in the rain. On the other side of the fence, black ripples of wheat moved under the crazed orchestral direction of the wind.

She thought about Elspeth’s bones at the bottom of the well and about Melody Holmes. She was soothed by the thought of Prudence and Lincoln and Duckie being away from here by this time tomorrow. When she got home, she’d try to contact the parents of the other kids with paracosms, and warn them.

The display on her car’s clock had the time at 4.53 p.m. At five o’clock, Karstan would be coming. She pictured his surprised, hurt eyes when she had to tell him she was leaving. An emptiness sat at the pit of her stomach. She should have known better than to let herself get close to him. From the start, she and Karstan were never going to be together.

A flash of white caught her attention. She turned her head, scanning the field.

Through an aisle in the wheat field, a girl came running. Her dress white and her hair flying in dark lengths around her face and shoulders.

Prudence, her face pale and terrified.

“No, no, no,” a voice screamed inside Zoe’s mind. “Why would she come out here alone?”

Flinging the car door open, Zoe climbed the fence and raced into the field. She needed to get to her before anyone else did. Before The Magician did.

“Prudence!” she cried out.

But the girl kept running.

Zoe gave chase, deeper and deeper into the field. “Please, let me help you!”

As Zoe rounded yet another aisle of wheat, she found Prudence stopped dead up ahead. Prudence stood with her back to Zoe, moonlight outlining her hair and bare shoulders.

Just barely, the sound of Prudence’s voice drifted over the wail of the wind. She was singing:

When The Magician comes for you

Better lock your doors

Better say your prayers

The life you have

Is no longer yours

He’ll catch you, catch you

Unawares

The muscles along Zoe’s spine clenched tight and rigid.

That was not Prudence’s voice.

The girl turned, her features changing as though they were made of clay. She still had the body shape and hair of Prudence, but her face became sharp and her eyes needling pits of darkness. Her small mouth curled into a smile, and she tilted her chin up and stared behind Zoe.

A tremble raced through Zoe’s limbs as she turned to look back.

From the field all around her, dark figures rose.

Dozens of them.

The same figures she’d seen on her first night at the Wilmont house.

Real. Not reflections. Not imaginings.

With their arms at their sides and their heads down, they floated vertically, just above the heads of wheat.

A man came walking, from the opposite direction to where the strange girl stood.

He wore a top hat on his head that the wind didn’t snatch away. His pale hair hung around his upturned collar, but not a strand of it was ruffled. Only his overcoat fluttered, like the wings of a bird of prey.

The Magician.

“Come with me now,” he said.

Zoe shook her head, unable to speak.

He inclined his head, as though he didn’t understand her reason for being afraid. He extended a hand to her.

Was he Phineas? His face was in darkness. She couldn’t tell. She tried to peer at his face. Gasping, she felt herself becoming almost mesmerized by him. The earth seemed to tilt, rushing around on its axis.

Forcing herself to turn away from him, she sprinted into the field.

She crashed straight through the wheat, losing sight of where she was headed—the wheat almost two feet taller than her. A light blinked in the distance, at a great height. The Boreades house. If she kept running this way, she’d end up back at Prudence’s house. She’d be bringing The Magician straight to Prudence.

She couldn’t do that.

Zoe’s breaths pulled through her lungs in long gasps as she whirled around and headed in the direction of the Wilmont house. She had to get back to her car and drive the hell out of here.

She burst from the edge of the field in the direct line of the well. The road was just behind the well. Just a few feet and she’d be there.

Zoe raced through the tall grasses. A figure moved out from the other side of the well. A woman in a long dress. Morwen Boreades.

Morwen stood rigidly, her arms at her sides and her hands clenched.

The headlights of a car lit up the road. A car parked behind Zoe’s—Karstan’s pickup.

Zoe’s heart thumped against her chest wall as Karstan jumped the fence.

Karstan stopped to cup his hands around his mouth. “Zoe! Where are you?”

Slowly turning her head, Morwen watched him. Bending, she picked up something from beside the well. Moonlight glinted on the crescent-shaped object she now held in her hands.

The scythe.

No, no, no. Why did I leave it there?

“Karstan, watch out,” Zoe screamed. “She’ll kill you!”

Karstan stared in horror as he saw Morwen.

Raising the scythe, Morwen threw it. It spun through the air—at terrifying speed—before striking Karstan. Bile shot from Zoe’s stomach to her throat as the blade sliced straight through him.

He collapsed to the ground.

A scream rose inside Zoe, but everything in her body constricted and she made no sound.

It was then she noticed The Magician watching it all, at the edge of the wheat field, his arms crossed and overcoat rippling in the wind.

There was nowhere for her to go.

No one here to help her.

Adrenaline fired through her body. She was going to die, too. She couldn’t stop them from killing her. But she wasn’t going to stand there and let them come to her.

Her legs burned as she raced in the direction of her car.

She drew close enough to Morwen to see the satisfied expression on her face—it wasn’t a smile, but a cold, smug twisting of her features.

A cry wrung loose from Zoe’s chest, but she kept running. She wouldn’t stop.

Among the tall grass ahead, a figure was lying prone. Karstan.

He groaned softly, twisting his head to the side.

Alive. He was still alive.

Zoe slowed, preparing herself for what she would see, and dropped to her knees beside him.

But no deep, ugly gash marked Karstan’s torso or limbs.

His eyelids squeezed and opened. “Zoe . . . you have to get out of here.” Trying to sit, he clutched his head. “That thing hit like a truck.”

Tears spilled from Zoe’s eyes. He’d been hit by the scythe’s handle but not the blade. In her mind, she replayed the sight of the blade as it had spun toward him. The scythe had flashed as it struck him, and she’d imagined the worst.

She jerked her head back over her shoulder. Morwen steadily approached. “She’s coming!”

Karstan struggled to his feet, Zoe with her arms under him helping him up—both of them slipping on the dew-laden grass.

“Run!” Karstan roared.

The two of them rushed to the fence and leaped onto it. As they glanced behind, they watched Morwen pick up the scythe again. They dropped to the other side of the fence. The scythe whizzed past their heads, slamming into the front window of Zoe’s car, glass spraying so far that Zoe felt tiny shards of glass prick her skin.

Grabbing her hand, Karstan sprinted with her to his pickup.

“Get in!” he yelled.

Morwen continued to advance as Karstan started the ignition. The tires screeched in the gravel as he sped the pickup away.

Pressing her back hard against the seat, Zoe looked back.

Morwen was standing still now in the windswept grass, her arms stiff and by her side again.

As Karstan went to drive the car back into town, Zoe gripped his arm. “Please,” she whispered, “get me away from Bleath.”

“Leave town?”

“Yes.” Her teeth set together.

He skidded the car around and drove onto the exit road, shooting a quick glance at her. Beads of sweat—or dew from the grass he’d been lying in—glistened on his face. “I was going to take you to my parents’ house.”

She shook her head in desperation. “No. I need to get out of here.” She kept watching as they left Morwen farther and farther behind. “Are you okay to drive? Because I’ll drive.”

“I’m okay.”

“You sure?” She realized she was still clutching his arm. Releasing her hold, she softly touched his face. “She almost killed you.”

“I’m tougher than that.” He gave a half-smile but then his face tightened again as he concentrated on the road. The wheels bounced across small branches that had been blown onto the road by the wind, twigs hitting the windscreen.

“I know who she is. Morwen Boreades.”

“Hell.”

“She’s the one I saw that night at the dance party. And the one in the mirror at the Wilmont house.”

“I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

“You didn’t know. You didn’t see what I was seeing.” She turned to look back through the small glass panel behind her. All she saw now were black branches twisting together in an archway across the road. “Karstan, there were more of them. Tonight. Out in the field.”

He lost control of the car for a split second as he faced her, his face opening in shock. “More?” Quickly, he corrected the car and kept driving.

“Yes. I thought I saw Prudence running in the wheat field. I got out of my car and followed her. It wasn’t Prudence.” She took a shuddering breath that reached all the way to the pit of her stomach. “And then I was surrounded. By spirits.”

He shook his head slowly. “Now I know.”

“What do you know?”

“The ghosts of this town are real.”

She went to answer, but at that moment, the howling wind completely died, as if a switch had been flicked on a radio. An eerie silence fell, thick and syrupy. Zoe felt like she could drown in it.

From the corners of her eyes, she thought she could see figures hanging from the trees. People hanging from nooses. Just as she had when she first drove into town.

“Don’t look,” she told herself. “And don’t look back. Another few minutes and you’ll be out of Bleath. On the highway. On your way home.”

Ahead, a mist rolled in—fine and steam-like at first, then gathering and becoming opaque. Karstan slowed the car as long fingers of mist began wrapping around the pickup. She could hear his every breath.

“Too damned quiet,” he said, switching on the fog lights.

“I can’t stand it.” She tugged her jacket tightly around her body, trying to close out the silence.

We’ll drive through this and get out on the other side, she thought. We have to.

“How about I be your radio until we can pick up reception?” Karstan hummed “Smoke on the Water,” tapping with one hand on the steering wheel.

Fog blanketed the air around them. Zoe only just made out the shape of the sign she’d seen on her way into Bleath.

They were out of Bleath.

Closing her eyes, she relaxed a little into the deep timbre of Karstan’s voice.

He stopped humming suddenly, as if remembering something. “Zoe, why were you parked out on the road? I didn’t get a chance to ask you that yet.”

She exhaled softly. “I was waiting for you. To say goodbye.”

He winced, his brow pulling into a deep furrow. “You were already planning to leave?”

“Trust me, I would have loved to stay and spend some more time with you. But I realized something.”

Karstan glanced at her then turned back to the road. “What?”

“I no longer think I was hypnotized. I think I was heading into a paracosm. Of my own.”

“A paracosm?”

“Yes. This morning, the woman—Morwen Boreades—she pulled me straight into it. I know you’re going to find that impossible to believe. But it explains the way the house was constantly changing.”

“That happened this morning?” He expelled a stream of air. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“When I came out of the other world, it was already close to night.”

“Did she hurt you?” He looked her way, searching her face.

“She didn’t hurt me, but—” Zoe gasped suddenly as she peered through the mist ahead, catching sight of something large lying across the road. “Watch out!”

A low, panicked sound came from Karstan’s throat as he jammed his foot down on the brake, almost sending the car sideways. Zoe’s head hit the window as the car smacked straight into the fallen tree.

Black smoke poured from beneath the mangled hood of the car, mingling with the fog.

Switching off the engine, Karstan jumped out. Zoe clutched her head, collecting herself before following him out of the car. Her head felt wrong, but she was conscious. She was okay. And they were past the town limits of Bleath.

Her knees sank when she saw the crumpled exterior of the pickup, the front right wheel bent inward.

Karstan was leaning against the hood with both hands, his head bent low, shaking it in disbelief. “I didn’t see it.”

Zoe wrapped her arms around him from behind. “It’s not your fault. It’s this damned . . . fog.” She stared all around. The fog had grown impossibly thicker, like the air itself had become a monochrome gray.

“Going to try to fix the wheel.” He turned around in her arms to face her, touching her temples.

Zoe saw her own blood on his fingers.

“I never wanted you to get hurt,” he said.

She gave him a wincing smile. “Of course you didn’t.” Her gaze traveled back to the damaged front end of the car. “Karstan, you can’t fix this.”

“Maybe enough to get back to my house and borrow my parents’ car.”

“No,” she said quickly. “I’m not going back. I’m going to keep going. The highway is just a few minutes away.”

“Zoe . . . .” His eyes were pale in the moonlit mist.

“Yes?”

His expression was hesitant. Then his arm swung forward, and he took her hand. “I’m coming with you.”

They ran into the night, keeping to the road.

The silence became like a swarm of bees in Zoe’s mind. A swarm she couldn’t hear but only sense: the intensity of it, a gathering.

She tugged Karstan along. He was slowing, his movements sluggish. She guessed that the impact of the scythe handle and then the car accident had affected him.

The hill should be coming up. She remembered a hill. Where was it?

She tried to see through the fog.

Dark shapes punctuated the mist before them.

People.

Karstan didn’t stop.

Didn’t he see them?

“Karstan—”

Before she could turn to see his face, a figure walked out, a little ahead of the others. She held a doll in her arms, crooning to it. An elderly woman.

Blood drained from Zoe’s face and limbs.

27.

PEARL LITTLEWOODS HELD THE DOLL up slightly, stepping forward. “Isn’t she beautiful? So unique. I haven’t made a doll quite like this one before. This is the one I’ve been working on all week. The customers will love her when I put her out on display.”

The doll, carved from wood and painted, had light-brown skin and long hair that fell in kinks. She wore a replica of the poncho, shorts, and boots Zoe had worn on the first day she’d worked at the toy store.

“Mrs. Littlewoods, what’s going on?” Zoe’s voice strained and cracked, ending in a whisper.

People moved out behind Pearl. People that Zoe had seen or spoken to since arriving in town: Citrine Littlewoods. Lorna from the pie store. Mr. Dovewright from the library. Stall holders from the carnival. The people from the Boreades house dance party. Anthony and Sorcha.

They all stared at her with vaguely expectant expressions.

Tremors ran the length of Zoe’s back.

She twisted her head to look at Karstan. His face was blank.

With a gasp she wrenched her hand away from him. “You knew,” she breathed.

The muscles in his face tensed, a slight tic under his right eye. “Zoe, this is Bleath. The real Bleath. I’m sorry.”

“How could you do this?” Her voice crushed like old, brittle paper. “You only pretended the scythe hit you. Didn’t you? You’ve been pretending all along . . . .”

“I didn’t want you hurt, I swear,” he told her. “But I can’t change the way things are.”

A cry wrung from deep inside her. They were going to hurt her.

She stumbled backwards. Away.

But there was no away.

Behind her stood Bleath.

In front of her stood the people of the town.

To either side, a forest of spirits.

28.

THE BIG TOP WAS GONE from the carnival on the hill, every stall closed and shuttered tight. Far below, mist concealed the town. The people of Bleath gathered around the massive marble disk that Zoe had thought looked like a sundial, the image of a griffin faintly glowing in the moonlight.

Zoe was forced to stand in the center of the circle.

“Let me go. Just . . . let me go.” Even as she spoke the words, Zoe knew they were words without hope.

Falco Montalban took his wife’s arm in his. “Our town runs on tradition, Miss Cosgrove. We have a long tradition of the finest soothsayers and mystics. But there is a price to be paid. Bleath requires the energy of the departed. We tether their spirits to the town. And through them, we see.”

“Why do you need me?” Her body trembled, her voice barely sounding like her own.

“Each year, after the harvest, we gather a new spirit,” said Mr. Montalban in a matter-of-fact voice.

Zoe’s mind recoiled from the mayor’s words.

Her gaze moved to Pearl Littlewoods. Pearl was smoothing out the clothing of the doll she held, admiring her handiwork.

Pearl looked up as she sensed Zoe’s eyes on her. “It isn’t an easy thing to keep a spirit on the earth, Zoe. Spirits ache to leave. And so we begin the process of keeping them here. First, we carve a doll in the person’s likeness. Then we add things. Oh, all kinds of things from the person to make the doll complete. Most importantly, the person needs to be in the close vicinity of the doll every day for five days.”

“That’s the reason I went to work in your toy store? So you could make this voodoo doll of me?” Zoe cried.

“It’s not a voodoo doll, dear,” Pearl told her. “These dolls are made nowhere other than in Bleath. They’re very, very special.”

A young red-haired woman stepped close to Pearl, stroking the doll’s locks. Tegan smiled at Zoe. “Thank you for so willingly allowing me to cut your hair. It made it easier for Pearl to complete the doll.”

Zoe eyed the doll in horror. She pictured all the dolls on the display shelves at the toy store. With dread rising in the pit of her stomach, she realized what they were: the likenesses of people that had been murdered here in Bleath. Scenes flashed in her mind—of Tegan offering to do her hair, of Pearl snipping a loose thread from her poncho, of the blood she’d left behind on the shattered glass in the toy store. All along, they’d been using pieces of her.

Zoe sought out Karstan’s face in the crowd. She found him standing alone, staring out at the town below.

“You took me to the toy store,” she accused Karstan. “On purpose. Everything you did, from the second I met you, was for this. You knew exactly what was going to happen to me.”

He turned to her, a look of resignation on his face. “This is my world. This is how things are here. If things were different, I would have wished you could have come to live in Bleath and we could have been together.”

Karstan’s father shot him an odd glance.

Anger burned hot inside her. “I would never have wanted to spend even a minute with you, if I’d known who you really were.” Her eyes felt raw, but she refused to cry. She would not cry in front of Karstan. In front of these people. “Why me? Why am I the one . . . to die?”

Karstan stared back at her in silence then bowed his head.

“You came to us,” the mayor told her. “And you came alone. You came to us just before the harvest. Your spirit is the spirit of the young—vibrant and strong. Each year, it is my task to decide who becomes the Spirit of the Harvest. I decided on you from the first conversation you had with me over the phone.”

“My parents will never stop looking for me.” Zoe leveled her gaze at him, trying to shut out the fear that threatened to turn her mind inside out.

“But they won’t look for you here,” the mayor said, “because your car won’t be found here. In fact, your car won’t be found anywhere near Bleath.”

A ball of pain formed in Zoe’s chest. She couldn’t bear to think of what her family was about to undergo, and right at the time they’d found out about Aunt Margo’s killer.

“What am I to become?” she demanded. “One of those ghosts floating out there in the wheat field?”

The mayor’s expression darkened. “You saw ghosts in the field?”

Zoe stared back at him, not understanding why he seemed so startled.

“Those foul creatures do not belong to Bleath,” the mayor said, turning to look at the town. “They’re trying to use the energy here for themselves.”

“How can you call others foul?” Zoe lifted her chin. “When you are monsters.”

“We are not monsters.” The mayor’s voice carried an injured tone. “We have our traditions, just like every civilization that has walked the earth.”

A look of alarm crossed Diana Montalban’s face, but then she seemed to collect herself, straightening and giving Zoe a tight smile. “How many were there, in the field?”

“Many,” Zoe replied, staring at her directly. “Dozens and dozens. Morwen Boreades and The Magician and many more.”

Diana Montalban seemed to shrink back a little.

A worry line indented the mayor’s forehead. “Morwen Boreades is one of our own. She sacrificed herself for our cause a long time ago. There were two sacrifices that year, with Morwen being the only willing one. That was a particularly strong year for Bleath. As for The Magician and the others, they are our enemies. But it doesn’t matter that they’ve shown themselves to you.” He patted his wife’s arm. “They are weak spirits, existing only in the gray, in the nothingness. For them, the only way back is through us, and we will never allow them passage.”

Zoe watched the fog moving across the town below, suffocating it. “How could I see those spirits and how could The Magician speak to me, if they exist in a kind of nothingness?”

“The only reason you’ve been able to see them is that they’ve been draining your energy,” the mayor answered, his voice sounding less and less assured. “You see, you’re already half in this world and half in the spirit world. Thanks to the fine work of Pearl Littlewoods in preparing the doll. Morwen Boreades also assisted in pulling you into the spirit world. But you being in both worlds makes your energy accessible to the spirits—those things in the field.”

“I am already half dead?” Her voice sounded numb to her ears, without light. She remembered then the sensation that the clouds had become the ground—when she’d peered into the well and taken the roller-coaster ride. She’d been journeying into the spirit world, without knowing.

She jerked her head around to the mayor. “Who are they—the spirits in the field?”

“They are—were—part of an old family line,” said the mayor. “The family’s ancestral castle was built in the 1400s by Lord Balthazar. His family line has been racing against the Boreades family to find a particular set of books. The books of the Mirrored Tree. Five years ago, the castle suffered a disastrous event, killing all of them and crushing their spirits into wretched beings. They are unable to properly return to any world, not even to haunt it.”

“Any world?” Zoe stared at him in confusion. His words made no sense.

The librarian—Mr. Dovewright—cleared his throat. “Don’t you remember the tapestry, young Zoe? There are countless other earths, in countless other universes. Some exactly like this one. Some frighteningly different. Lord Balthazar and his castle procured the first book of the Mirrored Tree and discovered the way to access a small number of these earths. They were able to create pathways from the different worlds to this earth. Many times, they came here to Bleath, to check for themselves whether we had the second book and were hiding it.”

“The Paths they used,” breathed Zoe. “Where are they?”

The librarian pitted the skin between his angled eyebrows in a frown. “The Paths were destroyed when the castle was destroyed. Why would you want to know this?”

Zoe shook her head, as though the question hadn’t been important. They didn’t know about the Paths in the field. She wouldn’t tell them. She’d take that knowledge with her to the grave.

Diana glanced at her husband. “Falco, we should begin the ceremony.”

Zoe eyed the people standing in a tight circle around her. There was no clue, no sign as to what was going to happen to her. Tremors coursed in waves through her body.

Karstan was determinedly looking away.

He doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t want to watch what they’re going to do to me. Because he’s seen it before and he knows what I’m going to go through.

Hatred began to blister her mind. She understood now what Karstan was doing at the séances he held. He wasn’t using tricks. His séances were very, very real. But instead of helping spirits to pass onto the next life, his job was to keep them tethered to Bleath. During the séance she attended, he’d set things up so that she called the spirit world to her—and in doing so, called Morwen.

A picture of her family pushed into her mind then—as she’d last seen them, standing with her in the picnic grounds, the afternoon sun on their shoulders, the four of them holding each other. Whatever came next, she intended keeping that image solid in her mind.

To the end.

29.

ZOE INHALED A QUICK BREATH that was iced with fear.  On the dais, the seven O-shaped circles spun around, forming new interlocking images. Only the center circle, where she stood, remained unmoving.

A cylinder of thick glass shot up from the perimeter of the inner circle, encasing her.

The townspeople joined hands.

“We, the people of Bleath,” spoke the mayor, “give this girl to the veil of night, to pass over into boundless ethers. She is destined to take a new form, that of one of our dielectric antennae. Eternally tethered to us, may her etheric energy give us the power to see ever farther. We pledge to continue to guard the secrets of our town and guard our glorious mission to recover our true legacy.” He paused. “Spirit of the Harvest, bring us the yield we seek.”

The entire circle of people repeated his last words: Spirit of the Harvest, bring us the yield we seek. They turned and tilted their heads upward then, toward the Boreades house.

A corona of blue light appeared directly above the house.

The tower caused that, thought Zoe. Her legs began shaking uncontrollably. She knew. She knew exactly what was going to happen next.

I’m a receptor. They’re going to electrocute me.

A mass of long, bright-blue sparks crackled through the air. Light illuminated the griffin windows of the house. Blue light crawled up the glass cylinder and crawled inside. Zoe watched her arms and legs glow.

Pain drove through her entire body.

Please, let it be quick.

But it wasn’t quick.

A ghostly figure moved in slow, deliberate steps from over the steep hill to the dais. Morwen Boreades.

Zoe felt herself being called to her, being summoned. The more she resisted, the more the crushing pain surged through her limbs and torso.

A smile flickered on Morwen’s face. She was winning.

Zoe gasped as the electric current suddenly left her body. Doubling over, she panted. She watched the electric sparks arced toward the ground, outside the dais. Screams and panicked shouts filled the air. The townspeople backed away—some falling to the ground, their limbs jolting.

Zoe’s legs numbed and fell from under her. She felt her body crash against the glass.

She willed the cylinder to break. Instead, it slid back into the dais. She fell to the marble floor, her face against the cold, tomblike surface.

Slipping into unconsciousness, she watched the hissing and popping display of electricity that pummelled the earth. She realized then that the wet ground surrounding the dais had become electrified.

In the distance, she saw him. The Magician. Floating above the edge of the drop-off, watching.

In the periphery of her vision to the right, a figure moved. But he didn’t move like the rest. He wasn’t writhing or fleeing. He moved slowly, deliberately.

She moved her head. Like The Magician, he wore dark clothing, the barest of silvery moonlight shining on his shoulder-length pale hair.

But he wasn’t The Magician. He was Phineas.

Phineas was not The Magician.

Then he was gone again. Her head felt so, so heavy. Her thoughts pitching about in heavy waves.

She needed to get up, move. She couldn’t force her limbs to move.

Her mind went to static.

30.

ZOE WOKE IN A STRANGE place.

A small room, with furniture clumsily crafted from small branches, and old, vintage toys and posters.

A man bent his face over hers.

She struggled to sit, staring into his face, taking in his thin features, the tangle of fair hair.

“Phineas,” she breathed.

“Yes, it’s me. Almost too late, too.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re in the treehouse that Peony Wilmont’s uncle built, when he was a teenager. She told me his secret combination to open the door.”

“Rohan?”

“Yes.”

Zoe mentally calculated. They were on the grounds of the Boreades house. Panic ground through her. “We’re not safe here.”

“No, we’re not. But for the moment, they’ve all gone. None of them remembered Rohan’s old treehouse.” He helped her onto a rickety chair. “I’m going to give you a minute to recover, but that’s all I can give you. You’re too faint to run right now. Because once we start, you’ve got to run hard. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “How did I—?”

A brief smile hooked the left side of his mouth. “I created a spectacular show, didn’t I? Much better than any old run-of-the-mill magician.”

“You electrified the ground.”

“I did. But I was able to get you out. Those are mica stepping stones leading from the dais. They don’t conduct electricity very well.”

“God. You did all that for me?”

“Yes. But what I should have done was to get you out of Bleath before it got this far. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know what they had planned. I’ve never been invited to their Spirit of the Harvest ceremony. Now I know why.”

She grasped his arm. “Thank you.” Her mouth and throat felt dry. Parts of her body still felt numb, and her head throbbed. “How did you even do what you did?”

“The ground was already damp from the rain, but I made sure it was extra wet—way before the ceremony. I used one of the lightning rods from the Boreades house to draw the electricity away, sending it across the ground instead.” He spoke quickly, turning his head to look through the tiny window behind him.

“You knew that would work?”

He shook his head. “No, but I was desperate. I found out about Bleath too late. I’ve been trying to find out for years. Only a select group are invited to the ceremony they hold on the hill. They guard the road and fields and stop any prying eyes from seeing what they’re doing. It’s a pretty inaccessible place unless you come here by car, via the road.”

“How did you manage to make your way up here this time?”

“I have a few magician’s tricks up my sleeve. And I’ve been working on this for a long time. I made a rubber face mask of one of the guys who were supposed to be here tonight. Bud Elliot met with an unfortunate incident tonight though. Locked himself in his barn.”

“That was you?”

“Yep. It’s been a busy night.”

She drew her mouth in. “You were right about Karstan all along.”

“I just wish I could have said it in a way that didn’t make you hate me. When I saw Karstan’s sudden interest in you, alarm bells rang.”

A thread of bitterness pulled tight in Zoe’s chest. “Because you knew he wouldn’t have wanted to hang out with me in any other circumstance.”

“That’s not it. He’s just not a good person.” His forehead crinkled. “Zoe, can you stand?”

Zoe eyed him with doubt as she pulled herself to her feet. “I’m not sure.” Her body swayed involuntarily. “Where are we going to go?”

He caught her shoulders before she collapsed, sitting her back down. “I want to lie to you and say we can get out of Bleath. But the truth is, we can’t. Ruby will help hide us until I can figure something out.”

She shook her head, her stomach tightening. “Ruby Littlewoods? No. Both Pearl and Citrine were at the ceremony. She’s their sister. One of them.”

“Ruby’s their sister, but she’s not like them. You have to trust me. She and Peony Wilmont and myself had been secretly meeting and trying to find out what’s really happening here in Bleath. Up until Peony died, that is.”

Zoe held her head as a wave of pain passed through it. “I hope you’re sure. Did you see the doll her sister Pearl made of me?”

“Yes. I saw it.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, picturing Phineas in the toy store. “Oh God, that’s why you were in Littlewoods every day. You knew something was going on there, didn’t you?”

He bowed his head. “I was watching Pearl and trying to find clues in the store. When you started working there, I thought it was a blessing, because I could look without Pearl’s eyes on me. Pearl’s display dolls interested me. Without her watching me, I could take photos. I’d been trying to find out the significance of the dolls. That’s why I was away—trying to research missing persons that looked like those figurines. As you know, you can’t research anything in Bleath. They monitor everything that passes through the internet at the library.”

Zoe inhaled abruptly. All of her research that she’d sent from the library computers had been monitored. Maybe none of it at all had reached its destination. Of course it hadn’t. Bleath wanted to ensure that there would be no connection to their town when Zoe was reported missing by her family.

Phineas stood. “We’ll be discovered if we’re here too long. I’m going to head out and scout for a clear path. The worst thing is that all the wheat has been cleared. We can’t easily hide. And they’ll know you can’t have got far.”

She nodded, though she didn’t want to be left alone.

“Lock the door after me,” he warned, shooting her one last anxious glance before exiting the treehouse.

Again, Zoe tried to stand. This time, she was better. Stronger. She walked in a circle around the room, testing her legs. Her feet felt like a combination of numb and pins and needles. She persisted, forcing her body to move.

When Phineas returned, she’d be ready.

A rustling noise to her left made her whirl around.

A face stared back at her through the window. The window was too small for someone to climb through, but it had no glass, no shutters. The figure moved closer, and she saw Karstan’s features.

“Zoe . . . .” His eyes were dark and imploring.

“Get away from me.” Hate and fear raked through her voice, making it stringy and low.

“None of this is my fault.”

“Please, just go. Don’t tell anyone where I am. Do that one thing for me.”

“Let me help you.” He sounded like the Karstan she knew, the Karstan who’d shown her Bleath and let her see inside him. No, she’d never truly seen inside him.

“How did you find me?”

“I saw you passed out on the dais. When next I saw you gone, I knew someone helped you. But one person carrying another can’t make a lot of distance.” He drummed his fingers on the windowsill. “I used to climb this tree when I was a kid. None of the other kids were allowed here on the Boreades property. Just me.”

“No one helped me,” she said quickly. “I woke up enough to crawl from the dais.”

She would not tell Karstan about Phineas’s involvement, no matter what. Phineas had risked his own life for years to find out the truth about Bleath. And now he’d saved hers.

His voice changed. “Not likely. And how would you even know the treehouse was here?”

“I found a diary belonging to Elspeth Boreades.”

“Someone diverted the current. Someone was helping you.” He tilted his head questioningly.

“I know nothing about that,” she told him. “All I know is that I woke up and there were sparks flying everywhere.”

“Just . . . come out of there. This isn’t helping you.”

“Not helping me? You want to be the one to bring me back, don’t you? Prove your worth as a future mayor.”

His hesitation in answering sent chills raining down her back.

“Zoe, I meant what I said when I said I wished we could have been together. I loved being with you in a way that I never have with another girl. Maybe I even . . . loved you.”

She faced him squarely. “You just used the word loved in the past tense.”

He hung both hands on the upper window frame, exhaling deeply. “I’m sorry, Zoe. You need to believe that. But no one ever gets away from a harvest ceremony alive.”

Crying out, she backed away from him. Any second now, he’d either be calling the others or finding a way in.

He was right. She had no chance of escape.

But she wasn’t going to wait for him to come and get her.

Her hand gripped a cold metal object behind her back. A door handle.

Bursting through the door, she found herself on a small, crude balcony. She climbed the balcony and raced along a branch.

In the dark, she couldn’t find the way down. The tree was old and massive—branches spreading out wide, thick with damp leaves.

Karstan crashed through a clear space between the branches. Zoe kept running and balancing around the tree, her feet slipping. She couldn’t see him now through the dense foliage. But this was a game she couldn’t win.

She twisted her head around desperately. The branch next to her swept downward, almost to the ground. She jumped across and ran downward. Her foot shot out from under her, and she fell the last couple of feet. Leaves flurried around her. She was lying in a ditch, between the raised, exposed roots of the tree.

Karstan rushed past above, calling her name. Wriggling beneath a tree root, she buried herself in the earthy-smelling leaves.

He dropped down hard near her.

Her heart thudded as she listened to his footsteps.

Any second, I’m going to feel his hand grabbing me, pulling me out. Taking me back to the dais.

She heard him kick into a tree root, cursing.

He ran—one way and then another. He didn’t know where she was.

Zoe waited until she heard nothing.

She brushed away leaves from her face. She had to go now. He’d only bring back others, and they’d find her. Crawling out, she cautiously pulled herself to her feet.

Karstan stood with his hand against the tree trunk. “I knew you were here . . . somewhere.”

She faced him, eyeing the bluish moonlight on his cold features. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He exhaled between his teeth, bowing his head slightly. “But Zoe, you can’t trust me. I can’t even . . . trust myself.”

A dark figure stepped up behind Karstan. Phineas.

As Karstan spun around, Phineas hit him hard in the temple. Karstan collapsed to the ground.

“You finally admitted it,” Phineas said, staring down at Karstan.

Phineas raised his eyes to Zoe, his expression anguished. “We’re out of time. Some of them are coming this way. I’ll lead them off.”

“You’ve risked your life enough.” She shook her head.

“I can go fast. You can’t. Go! And hide well. Remember, these people are psychic. Hide where they’ll least expect.”

Phineas left before she could speak again.

Karstan was groaning under his breath.

She ran—in the direction of the closed carnival and the dais. Phineas had said to go where they wouldn’t think she’d go. The arcing display of light was gone, but still she stayed well clear of the ground surrounding the dais. She stole along the locked and closed stalls. Where could she hide? Inside a stall? The carnival wouldn’t run again until Friday.

Turning, she looked down into the hills, where the farmlands lay. The Kanes’ property wasn’t far from here. At least, not as far as the main part of town. But she couldn’t go to Lincoln’s house. The Montalbans knew that she knew of the Kane property and had been there. They were sure to look for her there.

A terrible idea formed in her mind.

The place that she could go where they’d never find her was Lincoln’s ice world. Could she go there and find refuge? Lincoln said the shadows were blind. Could she hide in one of the frozen sloughed skins?

Shouts carried through the air.

She ran.

*

The Kane house stood shrouded in black mist. Zoe couldn’t see a single hint of light. She prayed that meant they’d already gone. They’d been packed and ready to leave. All they had to do was go.

For a moment, she bent low and gathered her breath. Running the hills to the Kane house had exhausted almost every reserve she had.

She made her way across the bare field, until the side of the house was directly in front of her.

Black fog floated like low clouds around the house, refusing to allow her to see the location of the weathervane. As if it were working in collusion with the people of Bleath.

Voices rang out from the top of the hill, the glow of flashlights crisscrossing the ground.

She crouched to the ground, desperation whirring inside her mind.

I don’t want to die.

They were close now. At the foot of the Kanes’ driveway. Running. Relentless. Determined to have their prize. She sensed their crazed need.

Falco Montalban’s voice echoed close: You six, search the house. The rest search the field. Hurry!

They hadn’t spotted her yet. But she was an animal in a trap. Knowing that each shallow breath it gasped could be its last.

A thought flashed though her mind. Earlier, she’d watched her condensed breath pour into the Path. But for that to work, she’d needed to be right next to the Path. But now, with mist all around, she could watch it instead for signs that the Path was close.

Shutting out the approach of the dark figures in the field, she concentrated on the mist.

There it was. The circle of silvery light so faint she could barely see it. Rising, she touched the circle. The light expanded.

She stepped though.

This time, she ran through the gray, praying to enter a day at the other end. Not a night.

But the gray gave way to a darkness illuminated by the largest moon she’d ever seen.

She stepped into a snowstorm, the chill sweeping through her body and into her bones.

There was no sight or sound of the shadows. Bending her head, she trudged through the snow toward one of the enormous, cylindrical skins. If the skin didn’t offer enough protection from the weather, she’d freeze to death.

A man strolled through the blizzard, unconcerned by the cold or snow, his cape blowing back but his top hat barely shifting.

The Magician.

He walked directly up to her. She saw his face for the first time. He was younger than she expected—no older than herself. His eyes were blue and his face strangely compelling, almost beautiful.

He bowed his head slightly. “You could have come to me when I asked the first time. And saved yourself the bother of running from the horde.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Quite simply, I want Prudence. And I want you to bring her to me.”

“She’s just a young girl.”

“She’s the most brilliant clairvoyant of her time. Falco Montalban would love to use her talents of clairvoyance, but her mother shields her fiercely.”

“Is she what all of this is about?” cried Zoe, the storm raging around them. “The reason that you’ve lured children into those worlds?”

“I’ve caused no harm. These children wanted escape.”

“What about Melody Holmes? And Jeremy Barrington?”

“I’m not responsible for where every child on the earths chooses to wander.”

“Where are they?”

“In all honesty, I don’t know where they are. When you enter a Path, you must have a destination in mind. If you do not, then you are lost.” He drew his mouth into a thin line. “The denizens of Bleath have chosen a destination for you, I see. You are doomed to remain in this town forever.”

She didn’t answer. Her face burned and her limbs trembled—she wouldn’t survive this searing cold for long. But that was infinitely preferable to allowing Bleath to have her.

“I can offer you your life. You will be free to return to your family. I ask one small thing of you. Bring Prudence to me. She won’t be harmed, I assure you. There’s a Path next to her home, in front of the pear tree. Prudence knows of the Path’s existence. She just hasn’t chosen to take it yet.”

“Prudence has already left Bleath.”

“Not quite. The unfortunate fog last night delayed her family’s plans. I need you to stop her before she leaves.”

Thoughts wheeled though Zoe’s mind. If The Magician could take her to Prudence’s house, she’d be close to the Bleath exit.

“And dear Zoe, don’t think about running away,” he said as though reading her thoughts, leaning in toward her. “The woods of Bleath are teeming with vengeful spirits—the Boreades ancestors that were murdered in the witch hunts of the 1700s. They hung them on the trees here, did you know? You never had a chance of leaving, from the moment you entered Bleath.”

Zoe gasped, realizing that the people she’d seen hanging from the branches had been real.

A plan grew in her mind. A desperate plan. She nodded slowly.

A gleam appeared in his eyes, tempered by a cautious frown. “You’ll do this?”

“Yes. But Morwen Boreades will find me if I go back to that part of Bleath. She’s there in the Wilmont house. Yesterday, she pulled me into another world.”

He shook his head, a grin forming at the side of his mouth. “She’s not powerful enough to do that. Her spirit is trapped in this world. She can only take you into the gray void. You must have taken yourself the rest of the way, wherever it was that you ended up. In any case, you don’t have to concern yourself. I’ll be inside the gray void, near the pear tree. I won’t allow Morwen to stop you.”

“Okay.” She forced herself to meet his intense gaze but didn’t trust herself to speak again.

“Go then. I’ll send you where you need to go.”

Her legs felt like ice as she turned and ran the other way.

The gray lightened and grew golden.

She walked out into a sunrise.

It was Monday. An entire week had passed since she first drove into Bleath.

The Japanese maples on either side of the driveway leading to Prudence’s house had shaken all their leaves to the ground. A pear tree stood at the top, the branches cut in a rounded shape, heavy with green pears.

Zoe headed along the driveway.

An SUV sat near the house, its doors open. Iona and her husband packed bags and boxes into the back of it. Prudence stood staring upward, watching a flock of birds wheel in the sky, lost in her own world.

Iona turned as Zoe reached her, her eyes opening wide. “Zoe, you didn’t leave?”

“Car trouble. A branch fell in that wild gale last night and broke my windscreen.”

Iona looked closely at Zoe’s face. “Are you all right? Were you in the car when it happened? You don’t look good.”

Zoe realized her face must be reddened and wan from the ice world. “No, I wasn’t in the car. I’m fine. I have . . . flu.”

“You poor thing. That was a crazy wind last night. And then the damned fog. I’m glad you weren’t driving through that. I was worried for you. And then someone got lost out there—an elderly lady with Alzheimer’s, the mayor told us. It seemed like the whole town was out searching for her.”

“Yes, I heard them. Have they been around this morning, too?”

“No, I haven’t seen anyone. Look, you come with us right now. We have room. We’ll make room.”

A man walked up to Iona, slipping his arm around her.

“Zoe, this is Andy.” Iona indicated toward her husband.

“Iona’s told me about you.” His complexion was fair, like Prudence’s, his eyes earnest. “We want you to come with us. As Iona said, we’ll shift out some of our stuff to make room. It’s just stuff. You need to get away from here as much as we do.”

Zoe managed a smile. “My parents are coming,” she lied. “They’ll be here any minute.”

“We’ll wait with you until they’re here,” Iona told her firmly.

“No. You need to get Prudence out as soon as possible. I’ll be fine.” Zoe stared at each of them in turn. “I’d better go wait near the road.”

“We’ll be in touch with you,” Iona went to hug her.

Zoe stepped back. “I’m feeling pretty sick. I’m sorry.”

Iona nodded. “Stay safe, okay?”

“I will.”

Prudence, hearing a car door slam, was distracted from her bird watching. As soon as she noticed Zoe, she ran to her.

Zoe waved and began walking back, toward the pear tree, knowing Prudence would walk alongside her.

Prudence’s eyes were round and serious, the morning sun touching her delicate features. “I know you’re not leaving here.”

“I’ll be okay. Go quickly,” Zoe urged. “And don’t look back. The Magician thinks I’m bringing you to him. But he can’t touch you if you don’t go to him.”

Prudence nodded, and her blue eyes grew wet. “I’m scared for you.”

“Don’t be scared.”

Zoe walked with Prudence to the end of the driveway. They grew close to the pear tree.

Behind them, Prudence’s father slowly drove the SUV then stopped next to them.

“Go,” whispered Zoe.

Prudence ran and jumped in the car.

Zoe watched as the SUV moved off, Prudence and her family waving to her, their faces worried.

Then they were gone.

Breaking into a run, she headed for the field.

All the wheat near the Wilmont house had already been harvested, leaving the old threshing machine in clear view.

She rushed toward it.

Just a few minutes and she’d be through to the other world. Another earth, exactly like her own, but decades in the past. She’d still be in Bleath, but there was nowhere else left. And something else compelled her. There was something about to happen in that other world that she could try to stop.

She glanced up at the window of the bedroom she’d stayed in. A figure stood in the room, staring at her.

Morwen Boreades.

Morwen touched her fingers to the window. The glass shattered. Every window in the house followed, exploding into shards that flew across the field.

Zoe leaped to the ground, flattening herself.

When she raised her head, Morwen had her arms out, as though gathering something invisible.

Thousands of tiny pieces of wheat lifted into the air—the wheat left behind by the threshing machines. They swarmed in the air like insects.

Panic knitted itself into a hard ball in Zoe’s stomach. She wouldn’t be able to find the Path in this. The wheat could even blind her.

Morwen looked down on Zoe with a knowing smile. Zoe knew then that Morwen understood what Zoe was planning and she was trying to stop her.

Covering her eyes, Zoe blundered forward. Until her hands touched the body of the thresher. She grasped the metal wheel in the midsection of the thresher. The Path—it was near this wheel.

She cupped her face, opening her eyes and searching.

The morning light was far too intense to see the Path. She watched the direction of the wheat particles as they swirled and were pulled in, just a few inches to the right. She touched the center of the swirl.

She felt herself pulled inward. Instead of slamming into the thresher, she found herself in a gray void. She was inside the Path.

Running through the gray, she found herself in a night.

The wheat fields, damp with lightly misting rain, hadn’t been harvested here.

Morwen was alive here, somewhere. And Zoe had no idea where to find Rohan.

A shout echoed through the night, coming from the Wilmont house. A man’s voice. She couldn’t tell if it was Rohan’s.

Bending low, she threaded through the field.

Outside the house, a woman was kneeling in the garden. She was digging in the dirt, burying things. Burying the things that Zoe had seen in the Wilmont garden of the other world. Clothing and personal items. And a strange doll, upside down in a glass container full of water.

A small baby was lying in a wicker basket, asleep. Zoe knew instantly who the baby was. Peony.

Zoe watched Rohan stomp past from behind the shed, his face dark with rage. “Morwen! I know what you’ve done. I know. I found her in the well. She was our sister. Damn you to hell! Where are you?”

He stopped as he spotted her in the garden. He ran to her. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing with Elspeth’s things?”

Grabbing the baby from the basket, she quickly stood. Keeping the baby in front of her as a kind of barrier, she eyed him in shock. “When did you get back from the war? I thought--“

“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?”

“No, I always hoped--“ She pulled her mouth tightly inward. “Why were you talking about Elspeth being in the well? She ran off and abandoned her baby. And I’ve been left with her.”

“She didn’t run away,” Rohan replied, his tone seething. “I found Elspeth’s diary in my treehouse. Seems that was the only place she could keep it secret. Her last entry was written only a week ago. She said she was terrified of you. That you’d shown her a doll submerged in water and told her she was going to drown any day now. I know why you’re burying her things--trying to make it look like she ran away and took a bag of her belongings with her.” Marching across to Morwen, he took the baby from her arms. “Leave Elspeth’s child alone.”

Shrieking, Morwen pushed him back and raced into the house.

Rohan stormed after her.

Zoe followed him, concealing herself as she watched him lay the baby carefully on the sofa.

“Where are you?” Rohan called, walking to the stairs. “You’re not going to get away with this!”

Footsteps sounded along the hall toward the basement. The slam of the basement door echoed through the house. Turning, Rohan followed the sound.

Running down the hall, he kicked open the door to the basement.

Zoe followed a short way, then drew back into a doorframe. She flinched as a figure swept past. Morwen, silent but sure, stepped toward her brother. In her hand, she clutched a metal rod. The griffin lightning rod.

Zoe stared at the rod. In the other world, Morwen had used the rod to kill herself. There had been two sacrifices that year. One willing. And one unwilling. If Morwen already had the rod in this world, then she was about to sacrifice herself---right now. The sacrifice was the thing that Zoe had wanted to stop from happening. But how?

And before she killed herself, Morwen was going to kill Rohan.

At the edge of the basement stairs, Rohan had his back to Morwen, fumbling for a light switch, cursing to himself. Standing behind Rohan, Morwen raised the lightning rod high, holding it in both hands.

“Rohan!” Zoe screamed.

He spun around, confusion turning to anger as he saw Morwen. He grabbed her wrist. “So, you’d kill me, too?”

Rohan looked past Morwen, searching for Zoe, finding her as she moved out into the hallway. “You came back! I told you not to do that, miss.”

“She’s planning on sacrificing herself.” Zoe barely recognized her own voice—gasping and razor-thin. “To stop Elspeth’s spirit from leaving.”

Morwen twisted her head and shoulders around to face Zoe. Her eyes were glacially cold as she let the rod drop from her hand and clatter on the wooden floor. “Who are you?”

“A friend of Elspeth’s.” Zoe stared back at her, trying not to show the terror she felt at looking into Morwen’s gaze.

Morwen looked momentarily confused but then her face grew hard again. “Please leave. This is family business. Nothing to do with you.”

“I won’t leave,” Zoe told her. “I know what you’re going to do and I’m going to stop you.”

Morwen bent her head, seeming to be considering her options. Her whole body relaxed forward into a half-faint, making Rohan catch her.

Morwen hung from her torso as though no longer able to hold herself up, her thick hair shaking loose of its clips. “It was the war,” she said in a low, crushed voice. “You were gone so long, Rohan. And then we were told you were dead. Mama couldn’t take it. And neither could Elspeth and I. After the telegram about you, and then after Mama’s funeral, both of us went crazy with grief. It seemed like we were all doomed. Then Elspeth became just so depressed after the birth of Peony. She hated being a mother. In the state I was in, I wanted to save Elspeth from any further torment. I didn’t mean to do what I did . . . .”

A conflicted expression flickered across Rohan’s face, sorrow deepening in his eyes. Zoe watched his fingers flex and soften their grip on Morwen.

“No!” Zoe kept her gaze fixed on Morwen as she shook her head. “Rohan, she meant everything.”

“Let me go,” cried Morwen, ignoring Zoe. “Let me leave Bleath. That’s all I want.”

“That’s not what she wants.” Zoe spoke her words even as she watched Rohan release his sister.

Morwen lifted her head. Needles of ice pierced Zoe’s spine as she saw the dark intent on Morwen’s face.

Snatching up the lightning rod, Morwen fled like the remorseful sister she was pretending to be.

Rohan shot a shaken but guarded look at Zoe. “You don’t understand. We’re family. Whether she means to kill herself or get out of this godforsaken town, it’s in God’s hands.”

“Watch where she goes.” Zoe urged. “She’ll head for the field. Follow her and you’ll know what I’m saying is true.”

Rohan stared at her as though he couldn’t comprehend Zoe’s words. But he raced with her through the house to the outside.

Morwen, standing with her back to them, just before the edge of the field, took out the rod from inside her coat and held it high.

Rohan roared out, “Morwen!” as a series of thin blue lines crackled and sped toward her from the griffin tower at the Boreades house, far in the distance.

The lightning threw Morwen to the ground, her limbs jerking. A deep blue glow enveloped her entire body, her mouth opening wide in pain. But a cold satisfaction remained in her eyes until they grew opaque and glazed.

Zoe stared, transfixed, at Morwen’s still body—the fate intended for herself by the people of Bleath. “It’s too late now,” Zoe whispered. “She did what she wanted to do.”

She turned as Rohan’s scattered breaths rose in intensity beside her, his eyes wild as he gazed at the lifeless shape on the ground. “You deceived me, you demon. I’ll never call you my sister again.” He grasped Zoe’s arm. “But it’s not too late. Not yet. There’s something I remembered my father telling me. The light cannot work if the person is buried before the light leaves them.”

Zoe breathed a single word: “How?”

“If we don’t touch her with our hands, we can do this. Go! Grab an oar from the boat. I’ll get the shovel.”

Zoe ran.

Rohan struck the earth with the shovel again and again, sending dirt flying into the air. Zoe brought the oar and gave it to him.

“The light’s leaving her!” she gasped.

Rohan’s face mixed with grief and hate as he levered his sister into the hole he’d dug. Wet, coppery scents of the night and rain-misted wheat mingled with a lingering, burnt smell of electricity. He began shovelling earth back in. Dirt sprayed over Morwen’s pale face.

Dropping to her knees, Zoe clawed at the disturbed earth, rushing to bury the body—until only a hand was still exposed, moonlight glinting dully on the heavy metal ring.

A low cry expelled from deep within Zoe’s chest as she pitched the last of the dirt onto the body.

Only then did she allow herself to stop and breathe, raising her head.

The Wilmont house stood in a straight line from her, fifty feet or so away, its Queen Anne Victorian lines and nooks bathed in bluish light. The house was straighter, newer.

She’d arrived in town just a week ago. She couldn’t have guessed then how a house could change—reinventing itself day by day. And she couldn’t have guessed what she would be prepared to do to survive.

Pulling herself to her feet, she wiped clods of mud on her jeans, eyeing her handiwork below.

The burial was done.

Rohan turned and bowed his head for a moment. Zoe guessed it wasn’t out of respect but the shock of burying a member of his own family, despite all she’d done.

When Zoe stepped beside him, he nodded numbly. “Time for us to go,” he said. “The mayor and his people will know that the sacrifice happened. And they’ll be coming.”

“Where?” Zoe breathed. “Where can we go?”

“Far away from this godforsaken town.”

“But the ghosts in the forest  . . . .”

His jaw tensed, and he shook his head. “Those ghosts were my blood. They won’t harm us.”

*

Moonlit clouds drifted overhead as they raced together, reaching the main road. Zoe ran until her lungs were raw and her breath gone. Rohan ran alongside her, the baby securely in his arms.

They were miles away from Bleath now.

Stopping, she held her sides, inhaling the pure, dark air.

A single vehicle rumbled along the wide road.

Zoe watched it pass by in frozen awe--it was some kind of vintage touring car. 1920s era, she guessed. But it wasn’t some relic from the past. The car was new. This was the past.

She watched the moon though the trees--a different moon than the one she’d always seen--yet the same. She was sure she had never seen so many stars in the night sky. Had the sky she’d known always held so many constellations?

A cold feeling washed through her. Everyone she knew, wasn’t here in this world. Her family, her friends, her college--they were all out of reach. Even her grandparents hadn’t been born yet. She hadn’t died, but this was a kind of death.

“I understand now.” Rohan’s words broke into her thoughts. “You’re not from this earth, are you?”

She turned to him. “No. The world I’m from is over ninety years in the future. Ninety years . . . .” Her throat tightened on the last thing she said.

Rohan’s hand closed around hers, his warmth penetrating the layers of her skin. “If it helps at all, the world out there is strange to me, too. All I’ve seen of the world is Bleath and the battlefields. And I have barely any family left. My mother and sisters are gone. There’s just my father and Elspeth’s baby. And I don’t get along with my father.”

His voice was kind, soothing her.

The baby stirred, whimpering,

“She wants her mother,” Rohan said darkly,

“I’m glad you’re going to take care of her. In my world, it was your father who raised her. But from what I was told by a friend of mine who knew her--Phineas--she couldn’t wait to get away from him.

He swallowed, eyeing her intently. “I didn’t take Peony and raise her myself in your world? What was I--?”

“You were found in the basement of the Wilmont House. . . .”

“Morwen succeeded in murdering me, didn’t she?” he muttered under his breath.

Zoe hesitated for a moment. “Yes.”

“As long as I’m alive, I’ll not allow Elspeth’s child to be left in their hands. She wouldn’t have wanted that. I need to get us three to somewhere safe.”

She stared at his face, bleached pale by the moonlight. “Morwen’s ghost will know where I am. She might try to find me, and I’ll be putting you and Peony in danger. You need to take Peony and go. Go far away.”

“No. I don’t know why or how you got here, but I give you my promise that I won’t leave your side. Once we’re safe, I’ll tell you everything I know and you can tell me everything you know, and together we’ll figure out what we need to do.”

She gave a hesitant nod.

Rohan lifted his chin, looking past her. Another car pottered toward them. Stepping onto the road, Rohan stopped the vehicle. After having a few words with the driver, he angled his head back to Zoe. “Come on, he said he can take us to the next town.”

The driver--an elderly man wearing a hat--frowned at her clothing briefly before smiling and nodding at her. “Your husband just told me what happened. Your car stolen by thieves. Disgraceful! I hope the baby is feeling better, poor little thing.”

“Yes, it was a terrible shock,” answered Zoe automatically. It was only when she was seated in the car that she realized what Rohan must have told the man.  He must have said that the baby was sick and that she and Rohan had stopped their car and taken the baby out for some fresh air. And then thieves had happened along and stolen the car.

Rohan jumped into the front seat with the baby, turning to shoot Zoe a quick grin. Zoe slid in beside Rohan. She hoped that the man’s car didn’t actually make the baby sick. As the man drive off, the car bumped perilously along the road. Heavy scents of polished leather and cigars rose from the interior.

Zoe closed her eyes, trying to keep her thoughts from spinning away. She and Rohan were safe. And they were traveling faster than they would have on foot.

But she couldn’t quell the ball of panic in her stomach. With every mile, she was farther away from the only place where she could return home. If she went back—even if the townspeople didn’t find her—either Morwen or The Magician would. There was no going back.

The baby started to fuss. Rohan tried to soothe her, then handed her to Zoe. She understood why—she was supposed to be the mother, after all. Awkwardly, Zoe put the baby against her shoulder. The baby curled up and seemed to return to sleep.

The lights of the next town blinked through the pine trees in the distance. Zoe judged it would be a good hour before they got there. She settled in with the baby, exhaustion moving in slow, ragged waves through her body. Rohan tugged her against him, giving her somewhere to rest.

Zoe had arrived in Bleath to stay at the house of an elderly lady named Peony. And now she was leaving that house with the infant that Peony had once been.

She’d left Bleath behind, but not the same way she’d entered it.

END

TO YOU

Thanks for reading PARACOSM and I hope you enjoyed it!

When coming up with the concept for this book, I loved the thought of the town of Bleath, with all of its strange characters and intrigue and darkness.

The characters in PARACOSM will appear in future books. Each new book will have a new main character. Zoe Cosgrove might appear again in a future book, but not as a main character.

BLEATH: THE HAUNTINGS will be a series of standalone novels. They will all connect with my other series: THE DARK CAROUSEL.

While PARACOSM is not a sequel to THE DARK CAROUSEL, there is a storyline that continues directly from the last chapter of THE DARK CAROUSEL books (Book 4).

For more info. Please go here: http://anyaallyn.com/project/bleath-the-hauntings/

I’d love to know your thoughts after reading PARACOSM and other readers would too! Please leave a review at Amazon or wherever you choose.

ANYA ALLYN

I live by the beach with my partner and four children, about an hour away from the Sydney (Australia) rush. I have previously worked as a Features' Editor for Fairfax Media (Australia) and in promotions.
http://anyaallyn.com

Book News

CREDITS

Cover image credits:

Fotalia

MindSqueeZe

Wyldraven

First readers

I have a group of readers who read my work before it goes out into the world, who give me very valuable feedback.

Endless thanks to Brenda Telford, Kira Mattox, Katie Boettcher and Linda Gonzales.

THE DARK CAROUSEL series

THE DARK CAROUSEL is a series of four books, in the genre of: Young Adult Gothic Thriller.  There is a storyline in PARACOSM that follows directly on from the last chapter of the last book of this series (MUSIC BOX).

The books are: Dollhouse, Paper Dolls, Marionette and Music Box.

DOLLHOUSE

“Something happens when you read this. You will be changed . . . It’s. Just. That. Amazing.”

Nancy Holder NYTimes best –selling author. Her books include the Buffy The Vampire Slayer novelizations.

“With the horror and otherworldliness of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and the gothic romance of A Great and Terrible Beauty, Dollhouse is a tantalizing start to the new young adult series, The Dark Carousel.”

Dollhouse was released in May 2014 by Paper Lantern Lit (Lauren Oliver and Lexa Hillyer)

LAKE EPHEMERAL

A standalone Sci Fi Thriller

Find this book at AMAZON

The isolated, tropical valley of Lake Ephemeral should have been a paradise.

Instead, it's hiding a dark secret. The children who live there are the unknowing subjects of scientific experiments.

Seraphin is first brought to the valley as an orphan. She's told she was kidnapped from the valley when she was five and now she's being returned. But Seraphin has no memory of Lake Ephemeral.

Seraphin matures from a child to age seventeen at the lake, increasingly drawn to wild boy Kite--one of the five other children. When she overhears the scientists talking about the mysterious transformation that the children are about to undergo, she's desperate to find out what it is. But first, she'll need to escape the high, electric fences of Lake Ephemeral.