Story (art and text) compilation copyright © 2014
by Jim Di Bartolo and Kiersten Brazier
Artwork copyright © 2014 by Jim Di Bartolo
Text copyright © 2014 by Kiersten Brazier
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-56145-7
First edition, May 2014
The text type was set in Adobe Garamond Pro.
Book design by Christopher Stengel
For Elena, Jonah, and Ezra —
my life, my joy, my three
little wonders.
And for Jim, for excelling at
ears (and everything else).
— KW
First and always to my wife,
Laini. My muse. Thank you for
all the happy. Until the stars
burn out, and then beyond . . .
but it still wouldn’t be enough.
To Clementine. Thanks for
the silly. May your life and joy
know no bounds.
To Jane, my dream-maker. And
Kiersten, a talent to behold.
— JD
one
T
HE WORLD SWAYED BENEATH CORA. She leaned her cheek
against the tree’s rough bark, overcome with a dizzy wash
of vertigo that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
She was in the witch’s tree.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled herself higher through the
branches. When her straw hat got in her way, she tossed it toward
the ground to wait beside her shoes, stockings, and garters. Once
she’d gone as far as she safely could, she wrapped an arm around the
trunk and leaned out, letting the sun play on her face between
the broad oak leaves. The smell of green overpowered the heavy
salt scent of the ocean, and she could just make out the cross from
the church and the distant top of the lighthouse.
Minnie and the O’Connell boys hovered at the bottom of the
hill, afraid to even set foot on the line that marked the witch’s
property. Cora was fifteen, far too old for climbing trees, but now
she had done something her sister never would. Their summer-
long series of dares had escalated to this, and Cora knew she’d
won. She waved a hand and crowed wildly, flush with her own
triumph.
In response, Minnie’s face went white with terror, and the
boys yelped and turned tail, fleeing into the woods.
Cora slowly turned her head. She’d come level with the second
story of the house, where a single round window looked out like a
dark eye.
The witch was standing behind it, staring right at her. Pale
face expressionless, she raised a hand and put it against the glass,
fingers splayed wide.
At that very same moment, a bird flung itself at Cora, a
cacophony of feathers and screeching. As she raised her hands to
protect her face, Cora’s feet lost their hold.
Before she realized she was falling, everything went black.
Cora awoke to blinding pain, contrasted by a cool hand at her
forehead.
A sweet voice hummed an off-key tune, and Cora peeled
her eyes open to see a dim, curtained room lit by pillared candles.
The walls were lined with stacks and stacks of books, so many that
she couldn’t make out the pattern on the wallpaper behind them.
She was lying on a stiff sofa. Next to her was a woman, hair
dark around her face but gradually lightening to blond at the end
of a braid draped across her knees with the sleek twist of a snake.
She wore merely a slip, no corset or stays or even drawers. A neck-
lace with a dark green beetle charm nestled in the sharp hollow of
her collarbone. The woman’s eyes drifted down and then locked
onto Cora’s. A heartbeat too late, Cora thought to squeeze them
shut again and play at being asleep. Sleep had been safe.
Once caught, Cora could not look away from the black depths
of the witch’s eyes. She was in the Witch of Barley Hill’s house. No
one — no one — had ever been inside.
The witch smiled, but it was disconnected, like her mouth and
eyes had forgotten how to speak to each other. “Hello, little bird.
You fell out of your nest.”
“I’m sorry,” Cora whispered. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“You don’t need me for that, do you?” The witch’s grin wid-
ened to reveal teeth that looked impossibly old and yellowed in her
unlined face. “People are very good at hurting themselves. I never
have to do a thing.” She held up her fingers, which were dark with
something.
Blood.
Screaming, Cora scrambled back along the sofa, falling heav-
ily to the floor and knocking over a stack of books in an avalanche
of dust and paper. As she lunged up and ran for the door, the
witch’s voice came soft but inescapable behind her.
“No need to fear death, my dear. It’s already at your door. Bet-
ter to be caught than to run forever.”
Cora’s sweat-slick hands fumbled, finally turning the door-
knob. She fled into the sunshine, the cold sorrow of the witch’s
voice clinging to her shoulders. Minnie, a knife clutched in her
hand, was already halfway up the walk.
“Go!” Cora yelled, and, arms wrapped around each other, they
stumbled back home, breathless and weeping with terror.
The next morning their father was dead.
Maine
End of Summer, 1900
two
T
HE CASE IN ARTHUR'S HAND HELD ALL THE EVIL IN THE
WORLD. He could almost feel darkness and death swirling
off it.
Walking from the train station to the Johnson Boarding
House took far less time than he had wanted it to. Once he finished
this, once he delivered what he had been given, he would have
nothing left. No one. Nowhere to go.
Maybe that was best. He was tired down to his bones,
exhausted and weary like a seventeen-year-old wearing an old
man’s body.
Arthur had scarcely dropped his hand from knocking when
the door was flung open and he was greeted by a woman, every-
thing about her soft and curled and warm. Her cheerful expression
died in the breath o
f time it took for Mrs. Johnson to realize
exactly who it was he reminded her of. She let out a whoosh of
breath, collapsing beneath it, suddenly diminished.
“You must be Arthur.” Her eyes searched his face as though
she could make him look like someone else. Anyone else.
He couldn’t blame her.
His own smile felt like a guilty lie on his face, tight and itchy as
a sunburn. “I am. I have a letter for you.” He dropped his case and
pulled the resealed letter out of his suit jacket pocket.
A letter for Mrs. Johnson, he thought. Accursed items for Mr.
Johnson. Nothing for me.
Mrs. Johnson took it, her palm sinking beneath the weight of
unread words. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Arthur wanted to go inside. He felt exposed, standing alone
on the porch. Maybe she wouldn’t let him in. He wouldn’t blame
her. Maybe if she let him in, he’d immediately slip out the back
He thought of his mother. Her pale, cold toes.
“Yes, she died last week.”
He was unprepared for Mrs. Johnson to wrap her arms around
him, trapping his arms at his sides and pulling him close. She
smelled like flour and brown sugar.
What mothers are supposed to smell like.
His had always smelled of smoke and fear. The latter was her
gift to him, his only inheritance. Her fear had chased her to the
end of a rope. Arthur kept his fear at an angle, tucked it around
himself. It was his friend, his constant companion.
Mrs. Johnson’s white cotton cap rested against his chin and
he didn’t know what to do, how to move, how to accept this.
He’d been uncomfortable in his body ever since he’d begun to
outgrow the adults around him. Being a small boy had been eas-
ier. Quicker. There’d been more places to slip through, more
places to hide. His mother had chided him for growing straight
and tall, so he’d cultivated a talent for making other people’s
eyes slide past him. But how could he be unnoticed while being
embraced?
Sniffling, Mrs. Johnson pulled back, keeping her hands on his
arms and looking up into his eyes. Her face rearranged itself into
a determined warmth. “Well, then. Come in. I’ll make something
for you to eat while I read this, and then we’ll get you settled.”
“Where is Mr. Johnson?” Arthur asked, nervously pulling on
his tie, trying to tuck it into his vest, though both were too small.
He wanted to leave. This town was beautiful, homes and a main
street idyllically curled around the bay like a sleeping cat. But
Arthur knew better. This was one of the bad places. One of the
worst. His mother’s voice whispered frantically in the back of his
head, telling him to run, run, run.
Mrs. Johnson’s expression deepened in its determination, more
an act of will than anything else. “Mr. Johnson’s been dead going
on a year now. Come in, dear.”
Arthur’s shoulders collapsed. The case at his feet had no home.
There was no one to pass it along to, no one left to inherit the curse
of knowledge that had orphaned him. He drifted inside, pulled in
the flour-wake of Mrs. Johnson’s path. He was not free of it, then.
And, even worse, now he had no path, nothing to keep him going,
no goal.
Everything hurt much, much more.
“Make yourself comfortable, dear. I won’t be a few minutes.”
Mrs. Johnson’s assured steps into the kitchen were a well-masked
retreat, and he wondered at how careful she was to hide what she
was really feeling. Was she trying to protect him?
Hopeless.
The room he was in had two sofas, light blue with lace doilies
on the arms, and a table between them. He didn’t want to sit. His
hand hovered over the case. He’d leave.
“. . . will not make excuses for you again! If you don’t do your
own chores, so help me, I’ll —”
Two teen girls, nearly mirror images of each other, stumbled
to a shocked stop after entering the room. Both gaped at him.
The taller of the two wore her dress with an apron pinned
precisely in front. Her face was round, her dark eyes solemn and
piercing over a button nose and full lips. Everything about her was
neat and marble, save a single curl that had escaped her cotton cap.
The shorter girl took nearly the same features and managed to
look wild and fey. Her cheeks were pink and flushed, her eyes
bright with mischief, her blouse untucked from her skirt. One
stocking bunched around the top of her scuffed black shoe. Her
hair, however, was perfectly pinned back beneath a blue ribbon.
“Who are you?” the shorter girl asked, chin tipped up and eyes
narrowed in consideration. Arthur felt as though he were being
read like a book, and wondered whether this girl would like his
story. It was not a story he particularly liked.
“Minnie!” the other girl hissed, before turning back to him.
“Hello. I’m Miss Johnson, and this is my sister.”
The door to the kitchen banged open, held by Mrs.
Johnson’s hip as she balanced a tray. Without being asked, the
taller girl rushed forward, taking the tea service. Minnie stayed
where she was, her eyes never leaving their increasingly delighted
“These are my daughters,” Mrs. Johnson said, setting a plate
of rolls and gravy on the low table in the middle of the room.
“Cora, my eldest, and Minnie.”
Cora smiled sweetly. Minnie went cross-eyed, then looked
smugly at Cora to see her reaction.
“Girls, this is Arthur. He’s family, and will be staying with
us now.”
Arthur didn’t know who was more shocked, the girls or him-
self. “I —” he started, but Mrs. Johnson shot him a look that
brooked no argument. He couldn’t correct her, not now. He’d slip
out tonight, into the darkness and shadows.
“Cora will show you the attic room when you’ve finished eat-
ing. We’re very glad you’re here. It will be nice to have a man in the
house again.” A tremor in her voice was the only indication that
anything was wrong. That, and the way she looked just to the side
of Arthur’s face as she spoke, never making full eye contact.
Wiping her hands on her apron, she nodded and went back
into the kitchen.
Minnie clapped her hands in delight. “Are you a cousin? I’ve
always wanted a handsome cousin!”
Arthur shook his head, noticing a framed photograph hanging
on the wall. “I don’t think I am.”
“A cousin, or handsome? Because you are certainly handsome,
even if you aren’t a cousin.” Minnie’s impish expression was
knocked away by Cora’s elbow digging into her ribs.
Wanting to escape Minnie’s energetic attention, Arthur
walked forward, looking at the sepia-captured face of the man
who was supposed to inherit his secrets. Out of his reach forever.
“I am sorry about your father’s death.”
“Did you know him?” Cora asked quietly.
“Yes.” Arthur’s voice matched her whisper. Mr. Johnson had
been the one constant of his childhood. Wherever they were, he
found them, brought food and money. He’d been the only thing
that ever felt safe, the only man his mother trusted after his father
disappeared.
Cora and Minnie shared a look heavy with questions and the
conclusions they were jumping to. Primly clearing her throat,
Cora asked, “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“So you were born before our parents got married,” Minnie
said, raising her eyebrows pointedly at Cora, as though demand-
ing Cora ask the question they both wanted answered.
Arthur opened his mouth to correct them, but the truth felt
too twisted. A part of him was deeply hurt by Mr. Johnson’s
absence when Arthur needed him most.
Let the girls think poorly of their father. I’m not staying, anyway.
Sensing that no explanation would be forthcoming, Cora
leaned forward to grab the case. “I’ll take your things up to your
room, then,” she said.
“No!” Arthur shouted, startling her so much that she dropped
the bag. “I’m sorry. It’s heavy, is all,” he added, gentle guilt filling
him. “You don’t have to do anything for me.”
“I don’t mind,” she assured him, with a genuine friendliness
that he was deeply unused to.
For a moment Arthur hated them, hated that they had never
known evil, had never had to hide.
But they’ve known loss, he reminded himself.
Mr. Johnson had left him, but he’d left his family, too. Alone
and unprotected in this deadly town.
He watched as Cora carefully picked up his case. Minnie
looked on, so innocent despite her attempt to look mischievous.
They have no idea.
And they have no one to protect them.
These words came to him in his own voice . . . but he could
hear Mr. Johnson’s safe haven of a voice underneath.
Protect them.
But that would mean staying.
For as long as it took.
That night, as the house lay sleeping, he slipped outside and into
the trees surrounding the cheerful yellow boardinghouse, color