In the Shadows Read online

  were shaping up nicely.

  A girl’s voice above them let out a muffled curse, followed by

  a thump overhead that made them all jump. Charles looked up

  but couldn’t see anything through the leafy green filter of the ivy.

  “Minnie Johnson, you get down here right this instant,” Cora

  hissed, hands on her hips.

  The trellis roof above them shook, and then a face hung upside

  down from atop the arched exit to the garden. “Boys!” Minnie

  gasped, her upside-down smile brighter than the veranda lamps

  casting golden highlights on her dark curls. Her head disappeared.

  The trellis shook again, like the girl was crawling across the top of

  it. Then there was a falling sound and a scream. Thom stood and

  rushed toward the veranda’s exit, but the scream was cut short by

  a laugh.

  Arthur melted free of the shadows, Minnie caught in his arms.

  Charles had forgotten about him, hadn’t even noticed him follow

  them out. Or had he gone a different way? Arthur set Minnie

  down on the ground, then leaned against the arch just out of reach

  of the lamplight.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Minnie asked, and Charles

  was delighted to note that Thom was no longer playing Beethoven.

  Even his fingers had been stunned into silence when presented

  with not one but two beautiful girls, both of whom belonged to

  them this summer thanks to Charles.

  Charles was an excellent brother when he set his mind to it.

  Cora spoke first. “This is Charles, and this is Thomas. They’re

  boarding here for the summer, which you would know if you’d

  helped with supper service like you were supposed to.”

  Minnie’s mouth set in an embarrassed frown as she deliber-

  ately lifted her eyebrows, not looking at the strange new boys

  Cora had just scolded her in front of. “Shouldn’t you be clean-

  ing?” she asked her sister. “Surely there’s some lonely corner left to

  sweep.”

  Cora folded her arms crossly. “No. We’re ... I’m not ...

  our job this summer is to keep Thomas and Charles company.”

  Before Minnie could utter whatever delightful thing was about

  to leave her mouth, Cora snapped, “Where are your shoes?”

  “Put very carefully away so you can’t scold me for leaving them

  out. Now,” she said, clapping her hands together, eyes dancing,

  “who is ready for an adventure?”

  Thom leaned back with a sigh. “What with the travel and all,

  we ought to —”

  “Go on the most daring adventure you can think of,” Charles

  interrupted. “Otherwise we’ll miss New York too much. What do

  you have that New York doesn’t?”

  A worried crease between her brows, Cora bit her lip thought-

  fully. “There are the caves at the beach —”

  “As old as time, and haunted!” Minnie declared.

  Cora scowled but continued as though she hadn’t been inter-

  rupted. “— which are a very short walk. We can visit the lighthouse

  tomorrow, if you’d like, and the church is —”

  “No one cares about the church!” Minnie cried, a pleased and

  sly cast to her eyes as she watched Cora’s reaction to her reaction.

  “They can see a church anywhere.” She turned to the brothers.

  “Let me ask you this: How many witches did you have in New

  York City?”

  Charles matched Minnie’s grin, noting Cora’s dismay but too

  caught up in the magnetism of Minnie’s dark, glittering eyes to

  care. If Cora was an engine keeping everything running, Minnie

  was both steering wheel and gas pedal. He was very curious to see

  where she’d drive them.

  “I have yet to meet a single witch in our great metropolis,”

  he said.

  “Then we have you beat.” Minnie skipped off the steps and

  into the night, beckoning them to follow with her mocking laugh.

  “Come on, come on!”

  To the witch! Charles thought, giddy with the thrill of doing

  something besides dying. Arthur held out his arm to Cora, who

  took it, casting a worried glance back toward the house.

  As he and Thom stepped into the night, Charles felt an odd

  weight on the back of his neck and looked up. In one of the

  second-story windows, a figure stood, silhouetted in black, impos-

  sible to identify. Watching them.

  Charles rubbed his shoulder against his ear, trying to shake off

  a sudden chill. But it wouldn’t leave.

  Late March, 1902

  five

  M

  INIE SPUN AND TWIRLED, THE DIRT ROAD STILL

  WARM UNDERFOOT. It wasn’t the height of tourist sea-

  son yet, and the town still felt like it belonged only to

  her at night.

  She knew it like no one else did. She divined all its secrets, and

  gave it even more. It was a land woven together by stories, threaded

  through with magic. Lately no one saw the magic but her, and it

  broke her heart.

  But tonight! Tonight she had two new boys, and her Arthur.

  She’d even managed to get Cora out.

  In Minnie’s darkest moods, which struck like storms from the

  sea, brutal and overpowering and then gone without a trace, she

  hated her father for dying. Her father’s death had killed the sister

  she knew, and replaced fun, dazzling, brave Cora with a soft and

  prim version of their mother.

  Minnie had a mother. She wanted her Cora again.

  A small worm of guilt wriggled through her stomach. She

  knew it wasn’t right to force Cora to come along with them to spy

  on the witch. Minnie knew how terrified Cora had been that day,

  knew that she still woke with nightmares.

  But curse that witch, Minnie hated who her sister had

  become. Maybe another trip would finally convince her that their

  father’s heart attack had nothing to do with Cora climbing that

  wretched tree.

  Maybe, as Minnie sometimes suspected, the witch had sto-

  len part of her sister’s soul through the small cut at the back of

  Cora’s head.

  In which case Minnie would simply have to steal it back.

  “Are you twins?” one of the brothers asked. Thomas. He was

  taller, but Charles was handsomer, with a sort of tragic romance to

  his face, and Minnie fancied him immediately for it. She fancied

  nearly everyone, though, and never let it bother her to distraction.

  There was only one person her heart held close, but it was a secret,

  and a dangerous one to nourish.

  She glanced at Cora on Arthur’s arm and burned with jealousy.

  Best to focus on the boys she could be certain she was not

  related to. It would hurt far less.

  “We’re eleven months apart,” Cora answered.

  “Irish twins, then. And Arthur is your . . . ?” Charles said, let-

  ting the sentence end to form a question.

  “Our mysterious relative,” Minnie cut in joyfully, glad to have

  an excuse to talk about him and try to get a reaction. Maybe, for

  once, Arthur would actually answer.

  “Bite your tongue!” Cora gasped. “He is not related to us! He

  is a friend of the family.”

  “Oh, they’d hear th
e speculation eventually. Is it any kinder to

  whisper it behind his back? Arthur doesn’t mind, do you?”

  “I am the least interesting mystery in town,” he offered.

  Minnie waved dismissively, disappointed as always by Arthur’s

  deflection. Weaving her hand through Charles’s elbow, she con-

  tinued. “Arthur has been with us a year now, and we’re very

  tired of his mystery and ever so glad to have some boarders

  who aren’t too old to have any adventures left. Why are you here?”

  She trained her big brown eyes on Charles, willing him to say

  something interesting. Gypsies or gangsters or sinister family

  secrets — she would take anything that would give her an excuse

  to romanticize him further. Though if he were actually dying, as

  she had overheard while hiding in the pantry this afternoon, that

  was romantic enough for her needs. Nearly as good as one of her

  Gothic novels!

  Charles shrugged, grinning pleasantly. “We’re here to take

  the air.”

  “And where, pray tell, are you going to take it?” Arthur mur-

  mured, giving a suspicious glare at Minnie’s and Charles’s linked

  arms. This filled Minnie with a spark of hope she tried to stifle.

  “And how,” she said, ignoring Arthur’s glare by walking even

  closer to Charles, “does one transport air once it’s been taken? I

  should think your luggage quite full of clothes.”

  Cora tugged on the lock that always fell down over her fore-

  head. Sometimes Minnie found herself brushing her own forehead

  as though Cora were a distorted mirror. “Please pay them no

  mind,” Cora said to Charles. “They can never end until one of

  them has said something so silly the other cannot beat it.” She was

  all jangling nerves, spooking any time a bird called, watching the

  familiar lanes as if at any moment something would jump out at

  them. It gave Minnie both a triumphant thrill and a pang of con-

  science to see how scared she was.

  Charles was not going to be left out of the fun, though. “Air is

  best transported in lungs, which is why I brought Thom with me.

  He’s going to store the extra I can’t fit. My father likes to get his

  money’s worth.”

  “He certainly does . . . ,” Thomas muttered. He was neither

  scared nor excited, and watched Charles like he feared his brother

  would drop dead at any moment. Minnie didn’t care for Thomas.

  He was decidedly too much like the new Cora.

  Cora’s hand went to her apron pocket, worrying a stone worn

  smooth these last two years. The line between her brows deepened

  as she let go of Arthur’s arm and looked back toward the boarding-

  house, now out of view. “We were given specific instruction to be

  very careful of Charles’s health.”

  Charles gallantly took her now-free hand and put it on his

  other arm. “That’s easy, then. I’ve left my health upstairs in a

  trunk where it can’t possibly come to any harm.”

  Arthur eyed the action as warily as he had with Minnie, which

  was a disappointment. He was always watching Cora, their mother,

  and Minnie. She sometimes caught him lurking about, prowling

  around the boardinghouse at night. She’d been secretly catching

  him at it since the day he arrived. Arthur was a mystery, her very

  own mystery, both the best and worst part of every day.

  His eyes were like the ocean. Sometimes they were blue, some-

  times they were green, and sometimes they were so dark they were

  no color at all. Minnie always tried to guess what color they would

  be at a given moment; she was almost never right.

  He was forever trying not to be seen, but she saw him.

  She wound a circular path, cutting through backyards and

  private property, tramping across the town as though she owned it,

  which, at night, she did. In the daylight, order ruled, fences stood,

  how-do-you-do’s and polite nods were the recipe. But at night,

  darkness rendered everything still and hush and secret. Minnie

  was a curator of secrets.

  Finally they came round a bend in the lane and their destina-

  tion appeared. A two-storied house, steep-roofed and turreted,

  stood sentinel on top of a small hill. Around it, scarred through

  with the two dirt lines of the lane, the yard dropped into a sea of

  night-black trees. Much as she feared it, like all the other children

  who grew up here, she also loved the house, and sometimes day-

  dreamed it was hers.

  The group had never agreed what they were expecting to find

  once they got here, but it certainly wasn’t this much light dripping

  from the windows on the first story.

  “So, about this witch,” Thomas said, fingers tapping on his

  leg. “What’s the story there?”

  “Why don’t you tell them, Cora?” Minnie’s voice dripped with

  syrup, all false sweetness.

  “Shut up,” Cora snapped. It was the most spirit Minnie had

  seen from her in ages, and only proved to Minnie that this whole

  excursion was a grand idea.

  “She never leaves,” Minnie whispered as they crept up the hill,

  Charles and Thomas next to her, Arthur drifting back with Cora.

  “She’s lived here for as long as anyone can remember, though no

  one has ever actually spoken with her. No one . . . except Cora.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see Arthur whispering intently in

  Cora’s ear, both of them yards behind now and out of hearing

  range. Minnie wanted to win over Thomas as much as she had

  Charles, even if he was stuffy. So she only felt mildly wicked as she

  fed them an exaggerated horror even she didn’t believe. “The witch

  nearly killed my sister, and she sent her familiars out that night to

  steal the rest of Cora’s soul. But familiars are blind, and when they

  got to our house, they took my father’s soul instead.”

  Charles looked delighted by the tale, and Minnie scowled. It

  was not the reaction she had been hoping for. She opened her

  mouth to try something scarier, but another set of sounds inter-

  rupted the air. They all stopped, holding their breath to listen.

  “Is that — that’s ragtime!” Thomas said, stopping in

  amazement.

  “ ‘Maple Leaf Rag’! She must have a phonograph!” Charles

  said. “You thought no one would have one here. Apparently Min-

  nie and Cora’s reclusive witch has excellent taste in music.”

  As one, the three in the lead moved toward the nearest lit win-

  dow, slinking low to the ground beneath the sill. Cora and Arthur

  followed.

  “I get first peek,” Minnie whispered.

  “Guest rules.” Charles grinned at her. “I should get first.”

  “I don’t want to look at all. You may have my turns,” Cora

  said, leaning her shoulder against the wood siding of the house

  and staring out into the night. Her breathing was even, but

  Minnie could see that she was trembling.

  Thomas shrugged. “All at once. Just don’t stick your head up

  any higher than you need to. Cora, keep your eyes peeled for

  familiar spirits or bats or whatever it is witches employ to guard

&n
bsp; against Peeping Charleses.”

  Minnie trembled, too, with either excitement or fear, which

  were so often indistinguishable until afterward when she knew the

  result of the event. Flanked by Arthur and Thomas, she raised her

  eyes past the sill to peer into the witch’s home.

  A woman, slender as a willow tree and wearing not much more

  than her slip, danced madly across the room, throwing her body to

  the beats of Joplin’s ragtime, her floor-length braid whipping like

  a living thing. Her eyes were closed, and, though the room blazed

  with lamps, Minnie couldn’t say exactly what color her hair was,

  or even what she looked like. The witch was all wild movement

  and snaking hair.

  “What’s going on?” Cora whispered.

  “She’s dancing. Have a look.” Arthur shifted over to give Cora

  room, nearly knocking everyone else down. After some glares and

  hisses, there was just enough room for Cora to see, too.

  “She dances like you,” Charles said, punching Thomas lightly

  on the back.

  Minnie hoped this was weird and funny enough that perhaps

  Cora would forget to be careful and frightened all the time now.

  The song neared the end and, out of place with the rest of her

  mad choreography, the witch climbed up onto a ladder propped

  against the wall, balance precarious as she lifted her arms to the

  ceiling beams and laughed. Even through the glass, her cackle was

  a mad thing, twisted discordant notes, rising above the sound of

  the music. She shook violently, and Minnie realized she may have

  been sobbing. She felt suddenly shamed to be witness to this, and

  her eyes fixed on the witch’s pale, slender feet, toes curled around

  a rung. Minnie’s gaze followed the twining length up to where the

  witch’s braid was wrapped around her neck.

  Not her braid, she realized.

  “No!” Minnie screamed as the woman jumped off the ladder

  and snapped at the end of the rope.

  In the Périgord Noir,

  France, 1915

  six

  A

  HIGH, KEENING SCREAM, MORE ANIMAL THAN HUMAN,