“I don’t know, Edgar,” says the woman—Hannah. “It appears to be a girl.”
“How odd . . .”
The door swings wider, and as the light spills over Olivia’s face, the woman’s eyes go wide.
“No . . .” she says softly, an answer to a question she didn’t voice. Then, “How did you get here?”
Olivia offers up her uncle’s letter. The woman’s eyes dart over the envelope, then the contents within. And even in the thin hall light, she can see the last of the color go out of the woman’s face. “I don’t understand.” She turns the paper over, searching for more.
“What is it?” presses Edgar, but Hannah only shakes her head, her gaze returning to Olivia, and though Olivia has always been good at reading faces, she cannot make sense of what she sees. Confusion. Concern. And something else.
The woman opens her mouth, a question forming on her lips, but then her eyes narrow, not on Olivia, but the yard behind her.
“You best come in,” she says. “Out of the dark.”
Olivia looks back over her shoulder. The sunset has bled away, the night deepening around them. She is not afraid of the dark—has never been, but the man and woman seem unnerved by it. Hannah opens the door wide, revealing a well-lit foyer, a massive staircase, a maze of a house.
“Hurry up,” she says.
It is hardly the welcome she expected, but Olivia gathers her suitcase and steps inside, and the door swings shut behind her, walling off the night.
The master of the house is not alone.
He has three shadows, one short, one thin, one broad, and they watch as he rises from his chair, falling silently behind as shadows do.
There is a space between the second and the third, and a keen observer might guess that once, perhaps, there had been four. Perhaps, but now there are only three, and they follow their master as he makes his way through the house that is and is not empty.
There are dead things watching from the corners. Things that once were human. They bow their ghoulish heads and shrink back as the master and his shadows pass, making themselves small in the hollows of the house. Now and then, one glances up and glares, eyes sharp. Now and then, one remembers how they came to be in there in the dark.
The master drags his nails against the wall and hums, the sound carrying like a draft. There are other noises—the wind outside whispers through the tattered curtains, and a piece of plaster cracks and crumbles free, and the whole place seems to groan and tilt and sink—but the ghouls are silent, and the shadows cannot speak, so his is the only voice that carries through the house.
Part Two
The House
Chapter Five
Olivia has never been in such a house.
The foyer arches like the bones of some great beast, and lamps fill the space with soft yellow light, and she looks around, marveling at everything she sees: the grand staircase, the high ceilings and ornate floors. Her eyes skip from painting to pattern, wallpaper to rug to glass to door as Hannah ushers her out of the foyer and down the hall into a sitting room, two chairs and a sofa arranged before the fire. Olivia scans the room, searching the edges of her sight, but there are no teeth, no eyes, no signs of ghouls. She looks to Hannah and Edgar, expecting one of them to fetch her uncle, but they just stand in the doorway, trading quick, hushed words as if she cannot hear.
“Just read it,” says Hannah, pressing the letter into his hands.
“It makes no sense.”
“Did Arthur even know . . .”
“He would have said something. . . .”
Edgar frowns. “She looks just like—”
“Grace.”
There is an ache in the way Hannah says the name, and in that moment she knows—she knows—that the G on the front of her mother’s journal, the one worn to nothing by her fingertips, stood not for Georgina, or Genevieve, or Gabrielle, but Grace. Relief pours through her. They knew her mother. Perhaps they know what happened to her.
“Olivia,” says Edgar, as if testing out the name. “Where did you come from?”
She gestures at the envelope, the address scrawled across its front. Merilance School for Independent Girls.
Hannah frowns, not at the letter but at her. “Have you lost your voice?”
Anger spikes through her. No, she signs, the gestures sharp, deliberate. I didn’t lose it.
The retort is only for herself, of course. She knows they will not understand.
Or so she thinks, until Edgar answers. “I’m sorry.” He signs as he says it, and she spins toward him, spirits lifting. It has been so long since she could speak with someone, and her fingers are already flying through the air.
But he holds up his hands. “Slow down,” he pleads, signing the words. “I’m very rusty.”
She nods and tries again, shaping the first question carefully. Where is my uncle?
Edgar translates, and Hannah’s brow furrows. “When did you receive this letter?”
Olivia signs. Today.
Edgar shakes his head. “That’s not possible,” he says. “Arthur has been—”
Just then, footsteps sound in the hall.
“Hannah?” calls a voice, and moments later a boy strides in, studying a pair of gardening gloves. He is older than Olivia by several years, nearly a man, tall and sapling thin, with tawny hair. “I think the thorns are getting sharper,” he says. “There’s another tear here, near the thumb and—”
He looks up at last and sees her standing by the fire.
“Who are you?” he demands, the softness melting from his voice.
“Matthew,” says Hannah. “This is Olivia.” A moment’s pause, and then, “Your cousin.”
Uncle. Niece. And now, a cousin. All her life, Olivia has dreamed of family, of waking up one day and learning she was not alone. Matthew does not take the news so well. He recoils from the words, as if struck. “That’s ridiculous. There are no more Priors.”
“Apparently there are,” says Edgar gently, as if her very existence is unfortunate.
“No.” Matthew shakes his head, as if he can banish the thought, and her. “No, now that Thom—I’m the last—”
“She is Grace’s,” says Hannah, and the idea snags inside Olivia, the thought that she could be somebody’s, even if they are not here.
“But the bloodline,” snarls Matthew. “My father said—Did you know?”
“No, of course not,” says Hannah, but spoken words are clumsy things, and Olivia catches the snag in her voice, the higher pitch. She’s lying. But Matthew hasn’t noticed. He isn’t listening.
“There must be some mistake,” he says. “What has she told you?”
I’m right here, thinks Olivia. Her hands form the words, but he’s treating her like a ghoul, something he can just ignore, so she reaches for the nearest breakable thing—a vase—and shoves it from the mantle.
It lands with a satisfying crash, shattering against the wooden floor, the sound loud enough to break Matthew from his rant. Then he rounds on her.
“You. Who are you really? Why did you come here?”
“She cannot speak,” says Edgar.