Cordelia felt a growing eagerness, as if she were going to meet a beloved friend she hadn’t seen in a very long time. The feeling seemed misplaced inside her, bouncing around unattached and unfounded.
At some point, Arkin turned off the interstate onto a two-lane road that wound through the rash of trees like an unspooled ribbon. Cloaked in deep green foliage, it seemed a far cry from the usual New England scenery of rolling pastures and autumn colors, sailboats and rocky coastlines. Cordelia had never beenstirred by all that early Americana and Puritan history, the primitive aesthetic—bushels of apples and butter churns—but this plucked at her heart like a lute even as it set her teeth to grinding. Shadows were the defining characteristic here, stretching from tree to tree like jagged holes ripped in the fabric of the landscape, blackening the road ahead and making it hard to discern. Boughs dripped over the pavement like withered arms, some so low she thought they’d surely scrape the roof right off the sedan. And mist seeped from the ground, lingering between twisted roots and coursing over the road in cloudy streams.
She caught herself wishing she’d paid better attention to the drive. It would be helpful to know how to retrace their steps out of here. But she supposed that’s what Google Maps was for. And Arkin, should they need him.
It was along this lonely, winding stretch of pavement that she first began to hear it—a kind of distant song, like white noise building in the back of her mind. She thought maybe a stiff wind had set the leaves of the trees rustling against one another, but the branches outside her window were still, and Eustace didn’t seem to notice anything. Though she’d grown used to the whispers over the years, this was different. More like a chorus rising that she couldn’t quite make out. She leaned toward the glass of her window and closed her eyes, losing herself in the pull of it until Arkin turned the radio back on, flipping to an AM talk station, and the chatter of broadcasters drowned it out.
At an indefinable signal, the Mercedes began to slow and turned onto a crushed-pebble drive between a pair of wildly overgrown bridal wreath shrubs spewing clusters of white blooms. Cordelia felt her heart rate pick up, and her knees began to bounce.
They wound their way up the snaking drive, the landscape taking a decided turn toward the cultivated, with dogwood trees set into green inlets among crab apples and hawthorns, whilemaples, birch, and oaks fought for their patch of sky. More of the bridal wreaths could be seen, along with rhododendron, aster, and burning bush in its dull summer green. But everything had an untamed air, as if the gardener had vacated decades ago.
Cordelia was eyeballing what she thought might be an enormous lilac out of bloom when Eustace ribbed her with an elbow. She turned to look out her sister’s window, the drive having curved sharply to the left, where the uppermost peaks of a black-shingled roof crowned in ornamental iron cresting were rising from the foliage like a Gothic castle.
“Holy Mother of Christ,” Cordelia muttered as the car broke into the sun and continued around a wall of tightly packed Japanese cedars, allowing the house to finally come into view. A coil of chills broke across her skin, dimpling it in goose bumps and causing every hair on her body to stand at attention.
“You’re drooling on me,” Eustace complained, but Cordelia ignored her. She couldn’t take her eyes off the structure. Three imposing stories stacked upon one another in a frenzy of eaves and turrets, scrollwork and dormers. A combination of dark-red brick, graying stone, and chocolate-painted siding, the house sprouted from the gardens around it like a wild briar, tangled and untamed, refusing to come to heel. Darkened windows dozed under sinister spires; Gothic arches and angles crossed like hexes. A jewelry box of confidences, it nestled among the spread of jade and tourmaline greens like a sparkling, gingerbread topaz—a giant, sleeping bat tucked into itself, just waiting for night to fall. A dominating tower with a fourth-story set of windows stared down at them in distaste, and Cordelia felt suddenly underdressed. As if she should have come in cocktail attire, or a vintage gown with jet beads and high collar.
It was a true Victorian manor. ButVictorianfelt like an understatement in this case.
Arkin brought the car to a stop before the wide front porch that wrapped around one turreted corner like a sash made of spindles. Cordelia leaned back and met her sister’s eyes. Eustace whistled long and low as Cordelia opened her door and climbed out. She moved around the car so that nothing would be between her and the house, looking up to where the tower pierced the sun, bleeding golden light.
Her heart fumbled its rhythm in her chest. She waited for the whisper to come, wondering—almost fearing—what the house would have to say, but it was mute as it loomed over her. She found it hard to imagine her mother growing up here. Even harder that she had kept it a secret.
“I trust you had a pleasant drive,” a smooth, deep voice spoke from the porch.
Cordelia dropped her eyes to a man with silver hair and a dark suit who stood waiting between two columns at the top of the porch stairs.
“Welcome to Bone Hill,” he said cordially.
Her sister rushed past her with an outstretched hand. “You must be Mr. Togers,” she greeted, clasping his hand and giving it a hearty shake.
“Bennett, please,” he replied. “And you are Eustace Bone?”
“The one and only,” she declared with her usual flair.
Cordelia could not match her sister’s enthusiastic introduction, because she could scarcely tear her eyes from the house.
“And you must be Cordelia,” Bennett said.
She forced herself up the steps. Bennett looked to be somewhere in his late sixties or seventies. This close, she could see that his pewter hair was thinning on top, revealing a liver-spotted scalp, and that his cheeks had a slight wobble where they’d fallen over the decades, sinking in the middle to dark pits. His eyes sat over them proudly, though, a steely glint shining in them likea reptile’s. He reminded her of a cross between a butler in an old movie and a moray eel. She wasn’t sure if he would kiss her hand or bite it. “I’m sorry. This is all just a bit surprising.”
“I take it Magdalena never disclosed the family’s position to you?” he replied with an uncanny familiarity, as if he didn’t simply knowoftheir mother, but knew her personally.
It had been ages since Cordelia had heard her mother referred to that way. She’d always insisted onMaggie.“No,” Cordelia said, squaring her shoulders. “Not exactly.”
“Not at all,” Eustace clarified.
“Well, then we have much to discuss,” Bennett told them. “Unfortunately, I cannot stay to go over it all with you just now. But I will hand over the main key and encourage you to make yourselves at home. The house dates back to the Victorian era, fashioned in the Gothic Revival style. The architect remains a mystery, but some say it may be the famous Alexander Jackson Davis. At any rate, I’m sure you’ll find it in working order, if not entirely up-to-date. And, hopefully, quite comfortable.”
“Wait,” Cordelia interrupted. “You’re leaving?”
Bennett smiled graciously. “I assure you I will be back in the morning, and we can discuss whatever questions or concerns you have then. In the meantime, I wish you a most agreeable evening.”
At that, he trotted down the steps between them, pausing only to place a large, brass skeleton key in Eustace’s hand. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and turned. “Do watch out for the bats,” he said merrily.
“Bats?” Cordelia frowned. Was he serious?
“They’re not dangerous,” he insisted. “But they are protected. I’m afraid killing them is out of the question.” With that he hopped into the back of the waiting car and rode away, with Arkin at the wheel.
