Chapter 3 Caroline

Chapter 3

Caroline

When Caroline was agitated, she cleaned.

It was a habit she'd picked up in childhood, being left alone with her brothers, who seemed to leave a sticky film of spilled something on everything that they touched—even the two that were older than her. Things had been different then. Her father, Denny, had been the one running the Rose, with the cheerful confidence of someone who had never suffered a soul-shattering tragedy. And her mom had run knitting classes at fiber shop when she felt like it. The Wilted Rose had always provided enough of a living that Gert Wilton could decide when and how she would work. Then Caroline's brother, Chris, died, and Denny collapsed in on himself. Caroline had to move her cleaning habits to the Rose.

"She's panic-cleaning," Alice muttered out of the side of her mouth. "I've never seen her do this."

"Well, there was that time that she organized all the teas in my pantry by brand and then type. But that was when that antique dealer in Modesto shipped us a box full of—"

"Squirrels!" Alice chimed in.

Riley cleared her throat. "Yes, ‘squirrels.' The noise alone was enough to drive her to alphabetize."

"They weren't that bad," Alice insisted.

"They were carrying their own heads around the house, and those heads were yelling—in French—until we managed to bind them inside that creepy basket," Riley reminded her. "I felt really bad moving them to the previously unknown secret supervillain basement level so we wouldn't have to hear them. Also, what sort of person wants to buy an executioner's basket from the French Revolution? Can't really blame the squirrels for being emotionally attached to the last thing they saw before they were guillotined."

"We really need to do some sort of mass email to let your aunt's old contacts know to slow down the ‘squirrel donation' mailings," Alice said, sipping her coffee. From the corner of her eye, Caroline could see her trying not to grimace. Coffee served from the Rose's twenty-year-old coffee machine had a distinct bitter burned taste that the older locals appreciated. Alice was used to making her own coffee in her little single-serve coffeepot at Superior Antiques, which she cleaned and descaled religiously. Riley, however, had worked in so many weird office complexes over the years that she was immune to bad coffee.

"Shaddow House is the only safe place they know to send them," Riley said, shrugging. "It's more difficult than you would think to off-load squirrels from your home or business."

"You two know I can hear you, right?" Caroline said, turning to them. "And that means customers can probably hear you. Also, our rodent code word for ghosts probably isn't nearly as clever as we think it is."

Caroline waved a hand around the bar's wood-paneled interior, which was lit with an array of neon beer signs that coordinated with racks of taps from the beers served over the years. Particular attention was paid to classic Guinness ads, which had been a favorite of Caroline's great-uncle Louis.

In the afternoons, the Rose was definitely more of a restaurant than a bar, where a lunch crowd gathered when they couldn't find room at one the more tourist-oriented Main Square bistros. Over the years, Gert had mastered the art of dressing up canned soups and basic sandwiches with a few flashy ingredients so they could charge fourteen ninety-five for a tuna melt. Caroline didn't have the heart to tell people who praised her mother's chicken chowder that it was basically watered-down cream of celery with chopped rotisserie chicken and green onion chiffonade. She considered this an abuse of the Food Network's teachings. Sometimes, Caroline thought it was the pretense that exhausted her mother, pretending she was the woman who could handle it all.

"I concede your point," Riley noted. "But I think perhaps you're a little more stressed out by the return of a certain someone than our too-loud discussion of squirrel matters."

"It only makes people think we're a little off," Alice told Caroline. "People have thought I'm a little off for years. But I agree that it's the awkward interaction from last night that has you all atwitter."

"You mean Sally?" Caroline replied blithely.

"Yes, clearly, I mean Sally," Riley deadpanned.

"When does your contractor get here for your meeting?" Caroline asked pointedly. Riley only chuckled into her coffee.

"If you don't want to talk about Ben, we don't have to talk about him," Alice told Caroline. "But maybe it would help you process your emotions a little bit before you scrub the finish off of this very old bar."

Caroline glanced down at the scarred old oak bar top, shiny with steaming-hot water from Caroline's third wipe down of the morning. Caroline tossed her cleaning rag into the nearby bar sink.

"It's normal to be upset, seeing someone that used to mean a lot to you, after a long separation," Riley told her quietly.

"I'm not upset, exactly, it just brings up a lot of feelings that I thought were settled," Caroline said. "Ben and I were high school sweethearts, childhood sweethearts, really. And it was before…"

Before she'd accepted that her college plans were never going to happen, that she would spend her entire life on this tiny patch of land because…well, the Wiltons had never really understood why. They just called it "the curse." Any Wilton who stepped off the island for more than a day—exactly twenty-four hours—would suffer some violent, often humiliating death. The number of relatives Caroline had lost to being hit by a mainland taxi was just not mathematically feasible. Great-uncle Louis who hung all the Guinness posters in the bar? He'd died when Caroline was five, having left the island to finally see his beloved Tigers play. He managed to make it thirty whole hours before he missed the boarding ramp for the ferry, bumped his head, and drowned on the return trip. Caroline herself was almost hit by a campus bus when she'd dared to travel to Lansing for an admissions interview, ending her college aspirations very quickly.

"I realized we were never going to work long-term," Caroline said. "He was so smart, he actually graduated high school almost two years early, working at his own pace at the island school. He had all these scholarships… He had his big life plans, and I wanted him to have that. I wanted him to be happy, to have the whole world out there as an option. I tried to be all stoic and selfless about it, but yeah, it hurt that he was able to go out and live his life so easily. He came back those first few years, every holiday, but seeing each other was just too hard, you know? So, he stopped, and…I moved along to my casual but discreet dalliances with tourists."

It wasn't a pattern of behavior she was ashamed of, and it had helped her cope. She'd told Ben he needed to go away to school. But a tiny part of her that she didn't want to admit existed hoped that he would find a way not to leave her. On one hand, she couldn't blame Ben for abandoning her. It wasn't like there was a college on Starfall. On the other, knowing that he was out there in the world, living his life, it hurt. She'd avoided social media because she didn't want to see his life. She knew he'd gotten married young, had kids. Oh, the idea of seeing him happy was chilling to her, and that probably made her selfish; she was willing to accept that. And so, she'd replaced him with a series of men that didn't matter, because when she pushed them away, it didn't hurt.

"They're not nearly as discreet as you think they are," Caroline's mother told her as she passed by with a tray full of turkey melts—fancied up with sweet potato fries and a canned cheese sauce Gert doctored with five-spice powder and candied jalape?os.

Gert's creped arms bulged under the heavy burden. Her iron-gray hair was swept back from a face that was pale and drawn into tired lines. Dark circles stood out under her wide brown eyes. Thin lips that Gert had once carefully enhanced with carmine-red Elizabeth Arden lipstick were chapped and bitten.

Sadness and fear gripped Caroline's heart with twin fists. She had the most unsettling feeling that she was looking into her own future, working herself to the bone for a family that couldn't stir itself to recognize her effort. The inevitably of it all, the weight of it, seemed to chase Caroline through her dreams at night, leaving her more exhausted when she woke.

She shook off the useless woolgathering and ran around the bar after her mother. "Let me take that, Mom."

"No, no, I've got it," Gert sighed. Caroline could smell cigarette smoke on her breath, a sign that her mom was having a worse day than usual. "But if you could find time in your busy chatting schedule to go check on the fryer before the fries burn, I'd appreciate it."

Oof, score one for Mom in the Great Maternal Passive-Aggressive Comment Roundup, in which "Gert Wilton" was permanently inscribed on the Eternal and Universal Grand Champion Cup.

Feeling like a chastised teenager, Caroline shot Riley and Alice an apologetic look before she backed into the tiny kitchen, retrofitted for commercial service in the ancient building. The food smelled good, and the space would pass a health inspection, but Caroline cringed internally at the dingy cutting boards, crumby counters, and general disarray. She was grateful that the swinging kitchen doors kept her friends and customers from seeing the mess.

She watched the bubbling fryer as instructed, but also eyeballed the employee roster near the back door. As she suspected, her brother, Will—yes, really, Will Wilton—was scheduled to work the lunch shift that day, but simply hadn't shown up. After all, it was Tuesday, and Will couldn't be expected to sacrifice his Tuesday—or Wednesday or Thursday or most days ending in Y—to something as inconvenient as showing up to work. After all, his twin brother, Wally—yes, again, really—only showed up for every other shift on his own schedule. Why should Will have to do more than that?

"Thanks for not setting the place on fire, I suppose," Gert muttered as she carried the empty tray into the kitchen. "I heard you out there, talking about the Hoult boy."

"He's, like, forty," Caroline noted. "And a doctor. Hardly a boy."

"But, either way, out of your league," Gert told her. "He's got a job and two kids to take care of, and he doesn't need you and your ‘casual dalliances' making things messier for him."

"Thanks, Mom," Caroline said, smiling with a sweetness she didn't feel.

"I'm just saying, even if Ben is…comfortable…for you"—Gert said carefully as she dipped another basket of sweet potato fries into the bubbling oil—"you're not at a place in your life where you could be a good influence on those kids."

Hurt had her changing the subject. Caroline didn't need her mother's dissertation on what she was and wasn't capable of. And right now, she didn't know what to do in terms of Ben. Conversations with him seemed to derail themselves before they even started, and Ben seemed to be by turns uncomfortable around and suspicious of her. Did he really think she was going to just follow him around the island, waiting for the chance to talk to him? She wasn't some desperate stalker.

Or maybe she was. She did spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about someone who would never truly be part of her life again. It was pointless, and she didn't want to waste her life on pointless things. So, when her eye landed on a Harp tap on the far counter, she was happy to seize on the chance to change the subject.

"When did we decide to serve Harp?" Caroline asked.

Her mother jerked her shoulders. "The Harp distributor offered me a better deal."

"Wait, we're going to serve Harp instead of Guinness?" Caroline replied. Harp was a fine product, but they had some pretty hard-core Guinness drinkers in their clientele, and she doubted they would be very happy about switching brands. Hell, Guinness was a key part of the bar's décor, if it could be called that. "When did we decide to do that?"

Her mother sniffed. "Well, you know, maybe if you spent less time at Shaddow House with that Denton girl, you would know more about how we run things around here."

Caroline stared at her mother, mouth agape, as the older woman moved efficiently about the kitchen. Gert had no real room to complain, and Caroline knew that. Caroline still worked her shifts (plus extra) and did her job to the best of her ability, but the bar wasn't her whole life anymore. Did her mom resent that?

Gert hissed as the fryer oil popped and her hand got hit by a rather sizable splash. Caroline moved quickly toward the freezer to grab the medical ice pack they kept there for just such an occasion. She wrapped it against Gert's skin with a dish towel and took over the fryer. "Mom, you can't serve and do the paperwork for this week and cover the kitchen for Will. Why don't you just call him in?"

"Will has other things going on today, and if he needs help, we help. That's what family does for each other," Gert said.

"It's not like he's donating bone marrow, Mom. I'm pretty sure he's playing video games in his underwear," Caroline shot back.

Gert shook her head. "You don't know that."

Caroline pulled out her phone and checked Will's favorite social media app. She showed the screen to Gert, whose face registered disappointment as soon as she recognized Will's shirtless couch selfie.

"‘Just a chill day ahead, killing beers and shooting zombies,'" Caroline read aloud, her eyebrows arched. "‘Hashtag, Me Time.'"

"Your brother helps in his own way," Gert insisted. "You know how he is."

"Unreliable? Feckless?" Caroline suggested.

"That's not fair," Gert said, her cheeks flushing red. Caroline was grateful, she supposed, to have at least put some color on her face, even if it was from anger.

"You're right, he wouldn't be much more useful if he actually showed up for work," Caroline muttered. "Could you at least call Wally in?"

"Oh, I don't want to bother him," her mother said dismissively as she waved Caroline away from the fryer. "It's easier if I just do it myself. I can handle it."

Caroline knew better than to suggest her father come in. Denny had barely stepped out of the house since Chris died ten years before, another Wilton curse statistic. He'd just dropped the bar into Gert's hands and retreated into his easy chair.

"Mom, you're getting older," Caroline said.

"I beg your pardon?" her mother gasped, turning around and wielding her spatula like a sword. Caroline reminded herself that half of bravery was doing something stupid, and the other half was knowing it was stupid and doing it anyway.

"You're not going to be able to keep this pace up forever, and you'll have even less time if you keep pushing yourself like this," Caroline told her. "I can help you, but that help only goes so far because I stubbornly insist on having a life. Ask for help . From the boys ."

"The boys help in their own ways," Gert insisted.

"What ways exactly?" Caroline demanded. "Challenging your ability to improvise because they ditch work? Keeping the account books balanced by promptly cashing their checks?"

"Caroline, stop it," Gert hissed. "If you're so worried about me, you could help out more. You know how to work the griddle."

"Right, because that's obviously the more reasonable solution, so much better than asking your employees to, you know, be employed," Caroline shot back. "Would you at least consider hiring outside help who might actually show up for their shifts?"

"Someone outside the family?" Her mother scoffed. "Where are we supposed to get the money for that?"

"Well, we might be able to take in more money if customers know they have an above-average chance of getting their food," Caroline muttered, backing out of the kitchen. Her own cheeks flushed red when she saw the expressions on Alice and Riley's faces. While the other customers were blithely munching on their lunches, it was clear her friends had overheard everything.

"Sorry," Caroline muttered.

"I think we've both established that our own dysfunctional family backgrounds leave us uniquely qualified to understand," Alice replied quietly as Riley reached across the bar to squeeze Caroline's hand. Alice balanced it out, placing her hand on top of theirs. Instantly, Caroline felt settled as their magic wrapped around her own and soothed Caroline's nerves. She smiled at them and reluctantly pulled her hands from theirs before her mom could come out and see that particularly demonstrative waste of time.

"Where is that contractor to distract you from my mortification?" Caroline whispered, searching the bar for an unfamiliar face.

"Yeah, sorry to use your workplace as my conference room, but the fewer potential breaches of Shaddow House, the better," Riley replied.

"Eh, I've met Cole Bishop a few times, when he did the kitchen remodel for your Aunt Nora," Caroline said. "He's nice, easy on the eyes. Doesn't say much."

"It was before Natalie's time, so she can't help much there," Riley said.

"I still don't get how construction is going to work, letting a civilian in the house," Caroline noted.

Riley shrugged. "The ghosts have to choose to show themselves, for non-witches to see them. Plover has practice, keeping the other ghosts under control because of previous construction projects. As for Cole, Plover only said that he was ‘less annoying than Mr. Edison.' Unfortunately, he said that in front of Edison, which started a whole new thread of conversation, and I had to play mediator between my boyfriend and my British…squirrel father. And Cole has considerable experience working with historical buildings, which is its own construction specialty. Aunt Nora's journal describes Cole as ‘reliable and unremarkable,' which makes him invaluable."

"Which means he may be of use to me," Caroline said, pursing her lips and waggling her eyes with a speculative sass she didn't quite feel.

"Don't use my contractor to release your unresolved high school sweetheart tension," Riley gasped, though she was laughing. "I need him to stay on task."

"I may also need him to stay on task!" Caroline retorted.

"Seriously, I have to get some sort of project started, no matter what Plover says about it being ‘ill-timed and ill-advised,'" Riley replied. "There hasn't been any sort of construction in the house since Aunt Nora died. The spirits are getting…bold."

Caroline grimaced. When she was a kid, construction at Shaddow House never seemed to stop, but the locals didn't know that wasn't a demand by the mercurial (and fictional) owners, the Shaddow family—but an effort by the Dentons to keep the dead occupants confused.

"Creeping up near your bedroom?" Alice guessed.

"I woke up to that clown ghost standing in the hallway, staring at us while we slept, which is the last time I leave the bedroom door open," Riley said, pursing her lips. "Really, gotta figure out which object Jingles is attached to, because he has gotten too comfortable."

Caroline shuddered. While there were times Caroline envied Riley living in the legendary house, she liked knowing she could go back to her little cottage near her parents' family home, where sleeping didn't require special runes to keep her bedroom clown ghost–free. Heavy was the head that wore the crown of Steward of Shaddow House. It was a burden that Riley's mother had tried to spare her, keeping her away from Starfall until the previous year.

"So, your brothers didn't show up for work again?" Riley asked quietly as Caroline moved to pull refill pints for the table of four in the corner.

When Caroline returned from serving them, she said, "Mom refuses to force the boys into coming to work if they don't want to—which was a luxury I was never afforded. Instead, she runs us both into the ground because that's easier, I guess?"

"Are we talking misogynistic undertones to the family dynamic or is she just unable to physically force them off their couches?" Alice asked.

"Little bit of both maybe?" Caroline guessed. "Mom was harder on them when we were little, but then we lost Chris, and she just can't bear to do anything that will upset them. And I guess both boys sort of settled into taking the easy route. That was always their nature, and Mom just let them lean into it. But I was always able to sort of work through it. Mom can, too, so now I guess we're both supposed to."

"Chris passed a few years ago, right?" Riley asked.

Caroline swallowed heavily. It wasn't exactly a secret. Everybody on the island knew what happened. But even sharing magic, even knowing about Riley's unresolved feelings about losing her own mother, talking about Chris with someone Caroline cared about somehow made it real. It was something Caroline had to work up to. The loss was still simply too much.

"Passed is a very gentle way of saying my brother fell from a footbridge," Caroline said, squeezing Riley's hand. "He was in Grand Rapids, meeting a girl he'd been talking to online. Jenna. She's a sweetheart. We kept in touch…afterward. Chris was trying to be romantic, meeting her at the bridge, like something out of an old movie. But he slipped on the ice and somehow managed to fall right over the railing, into the water. It took days to find his body."

"Look, I know you don't really like talking about it, but is there an origin story for the curse?" Riley asked quietly. "Like you built the bar on land stolen from another Starfall family or one of you pissed off a fairy queen or something?"

"No," Caroline said, shaking her head. "And I'm not even sure ‘curse' is the right word for it. It was just a pattern that some auntie a few generations back put together. And the family just sort of accepted it, as more and more of us died off."

"Isn't that, in itself, sort of weird?" Alice suggested. "I mean, everything on Starfall has a story. The mailbox on Third Street has a little historical plaque on it because JFK dropped a postcard in it."

Riley's dark-gold brows winged up. "Really? That's kind of cool."

Alice nodded. "He and Jackie visited before he was elected. There was a big debate over whether the Duchess should be renamed ‘The Presidential Hotel.' The historical committee almost imploded. Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Oviette still don't talk over it."

"Why all the interest in my family…problem?" Caroline asked as her mother hefted a tray of sandwiches out of the kitchen and across the room to a table of Perkinses. The family ran several ferries in the tourist season, but when the lake was too, well, frozen for boat traffic, they spent their days overhauling boat engines.

Riley took a sip of her coffee, lowering her voice so it was barely audible to Caroline from behind the mug. "Well, I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the little old lady in purple, glaring at you from behind the jukebox?"

Caroline tried to be subtle when she turned, moving to pour Alice more coffee. There was indeed a lady in a very formal purple brocade dress, the sort of thing one saw in historical paintings from the late 1700s, early 1800s. The rich shiny material—a sort of robe that closed over a long, loose white gown—seemed like the kind of thing you would wear before bed. It barely moved when the ghost shuffled backward into the shadows of the basement entrance. The ghost seemed to be staring up, over the bar, where some of the family artifacts were arranged—old photos, a landscape of the island that had hung there since before her father could remember, framed newspaper articles, softball trophies.

Caroline had never seen this specific ghost in the Rose before she had magic, but she'd learned that was normal. Since her magical "awakening," Caroline spotted ghosts in places all over the island that she'd never suspected of being haunted. Magic simply changed one's perception. And it had been a while since the three of them had been in the Rose at the same time. Maybe the ghost sensed the three of them up here and decided to creep out and see for herself?

"Does it seem to you like there's something off about her?" Riley asked.

"Other than that fabric being so out of place here, I want to yell at her to stay still before she gets ketchup on her skirt?" Caroline asked dryly.

Caroline noticed her mother was standing less than five feet from the dead lady and didn't seem affected at all. So, Caroline supposed that the part of her that was recognized, chosen by Riley's magic, didn't come from Gert's side.

"No, it's as if she's trying to trick us," Alice said, her brow furrowing. "Hunching herself over, moving as if walking hurts. I don't think she's as old as she's making herself out to be."

"I think she's from a different era though," Caroline observed. "That part seems real. I don't think she's wearing a Halloween costume or anything."

"It's just something ‘not right,'" Riley said, shrugging. "But I mean, it is a dead person backlit by a neon moose beer sign, so… Oh, I think she heard that. Didn't like it."

The ghost glared at the three of them, which somehow seemed more sinister from the shadowy corner, and faded from sight.

"Well, that's not good," Caroline mused.

"At least she's not tossing beers across the room at us?" Riley suggested with a false brightness that sounded brittle.

"Don't give her ideas," Caroline told Riley.

Just then, the front door opened, and a gargantuan dark-haired man had to actually duck his head to walk through it. His piercing blue eyes scanned the room until they landed on Riley. He grinned, showing perfect, even white teeth through a beard lightly salted with silver. The cold spring wind cut through the room like a knife, making Eric Perkins yell, "Shut the door!"

"Oof," Caroline said. "I don't remember Cole looking that good last time he was here."

"I think that's your sexual frustration talking," Alice said.

"I will not be shamed," Caroline informed her as she went to the bar to fetch Cole a mug of coffee. She left Riley to her meeting and went about her lunchtime business. Every few minutes, she glanced up to the corner to see if the lady ghost returned. Caroline wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed when she didn't.

***

Later that night, Riley summoned Alice and Caroline to Shaddow House with the promise that she had "something cool" to show them.

Caroline was curious what it was, but she still wasn't sure if she wanted to go, and might not have if Riley hadn't promised her that Cole was long gone. The big man might have been attractive, but he'd annoyed Caroline by noting several "possible structural problems" with the bar, including a watermark on the ceiling that Caroline had never noticed before. In Michigan, a leaking ceiling was a major problem, particularly if it was winter. Ice jams, pestilence, and chaos were sure to follow.

She knew Cole was probably right; the building was a sort of Frankenstein's monster with an ancient foundation, plus additions made and torn down and remade over the years. It would shock her if there weren't plumbing issues, roof leaks, and an eventual implosion of the HVAC system. But honestly, Caroline didn't have the time or the patience to deal with a remodel. And adding one more straw to her mom's burden? Caroline wasn't going to do that.

She carefully walked up the icy steps to Shaddow House. As neither Riley nor Edison had grown up in the snowbound north, they hadn't quite mastered the art of salting. It made reaching their door an exercise in potential injuries.

Once she was safely on the sweeping front porch, she approached the door with its ornate bronze doorknob. She was careful not to put her thumb near the rounded depression on top of the lock, which was molded with an outline of a house with an S shape in the middle. When Riley unlocked the door for the first time, that insignia had extracted blood from her thumb before it would allow her inside the house—sealing a magical blood pact that bound Riley to Shaddow House for the rest of her life. Caroline hadn't trusted the door since—though she supposed a magical blood pact wouldn't make much difference for her.

Caroline had grown up looking up at Shaddow House like some sort of unapproachable museum, and now she practically had her own key. Occasionally, the door would even open to her without anyone touching it, like it did this evening.

Caroline paused, pursing her lips. "Still haven't figured out how you can do that."

The house wasn't supposed to be sentient, but it seemed to have…opinions. Caroline could feel them as she moved from room to room. Caroline was just glad that (as a member of Riley's coven) the house's opinion of her was positive. It was a bizarre new reality in her previously unremarkable life that she hadn't quite accepted yet.

"I'm here!" she called. Magic sang across her nerve endings as she crossed the threshold, sending a pleasant little hum up her spine. The inside of the house was a combination of a wizard's den and a kooky Victorian mansion. It was elegant and immaculately constructed of polished wood, burnished brass, and a rainbow of paint and enamel, but also chock-full of antiques from every era and weird touches like staircases that rose directly into ceilings and windows that opened to coat closets—little idiosyncrasies added to confuse the ghosts. There were so many details, it almost hurt the human eye to take it all in.

The Dentons had originally worked as mediums in London, helping people communicate with lost loved ones and evicting the more malicious specters to the next plane. The clients moved along untroubled, and the Dentons either stored the still-haunted items or sold the objects that were no longer attached. Over the years, those sales built into a considerable fortune, which the Dentons invested wisely. By the time they reached the New World, they'd also amassed a huge collection of haunted items they sought to store in a safe place. The family chose Starfall because of its energy, whether it was from ley lines or copper deposits under its surface, no one really knew. The Dentons just knew it felt right to build their home there.

Caroline knew the feeling. She'd felt at home in other buildings, but this was one of the few places she felt accepted . Riley and Alice didn't judge. They didn't make her feel guilty for every little missed gesture or failing to read someone's mind. They just wanted her to be OK.

Caroline grinned at Alice, who was curled on the end of the sofa in the cavernous but somehow cozy family room, sipping tea and reading one of Nora Denton's old journals. Riley's aunt had left them a treasure trove of magical education materials, as no member of either of their families had ever practiced magic—to their knowledge.

Caroline had been calling Alice's grandmother a witch for years, but under a different context.

In the last year, they'd learned as much as they could about the Dentons' magic system of charmed herbs and salt, combined with runes the family had created—drawn on the air with one's hands. (Riley was still disappointed that there was no wand involved.) So far, the laws of magic seemed like a complicated set of instructions that the three of them never saw in their entirety. She could see ghosts on her own and talk to them, but for any sort of spell work, Caroline needed Alice and Riley.

It seemed that each of them served a particular purpose within the group. Caroline's own magical gift seemed to focus on communication with ghosts, which sort of went along with her day job—bartending. People wanted to talk to her, tell her their problems, and when you were trying to figure out the unfinished business that was keeping a spirit bound to earth, that was an essential skill. Sometimes, they needed something simple, like a phone call allowing them to hear a beloved dog. Other ghosts required more. Riley seemed to specialize in finding that something more, not to mention moving haunted objects around without touching them. The "finding something more" made sense, given Riley's rich and colorful work history, which gave her a knack for interpreting subtle clues and solving intricate mysteries. The telekinesis bit was probably related to her being Denton witch by blood, rather than magical selection.

Alice's special gift hadn't become quite clear yet, but Caroline was sure they would figure it out. Alice was too competent in the other areas of her life to not have one.

A roaring fire burned merrily in the wide stone hearth. It still rattled Riley that she needed a fire in the spring. But even without the cold, it was expected when one of the house's ghosts was attached to a brass match cloche and enjoyed "making things cheery" for the girls. (A ghost child being the one to start fires was really not ideal.)

The unidentified "ceiling ghost" that oozed like an oily mass overhead (and occasionally dropped chandeliers on Kyle, the previously heretofore unknown nemeses)? Not as cheery. Even if that chandelier drop had ultimately been helpful and the ceiling ghost hadn't shown itself since, it creeped the three of them out, knowing that particular spirit was somewhere in the house, lurking. Neither Riley nor Edison had been able to find any mention of it in Nora's journals or "ceiling hauntings" in the house's massive library. So for now, they did what they had to do and kept their eyes up. Caroline was happy to do that in the library . A voracious reader, she still couldn't believe her luck, finding a treasure trove of obscure, beautiful books she could borrow any time she wanted—provided they weren't haunted.

Her life wasn't like other people's lives.

"Good evening, Miss," Plover greeted her from the foot of the stately hand-carved stairs, all translucent silver mist and gaunt features. Bowing at the waist in his dark pin-striped suit, as elegant as it was opaque, he smiled at her—well as close as Plover got to smiling.

"How's the new arrival?" Caroline asked, nodding to the cake stands, which she could see displayed on the kitchen counter through the open galley door.

"Quiet, contemplative," Plover said, with a note of approval in his voice. "I don't think Mrs. Fairlight was quite prepared for the reality of Shaddow House's interior. But as you know, newcomers are rarely prepared for it."

"Wait, you didn't put her next to Charlie's silver box, right?" Caroline asked, referring to the histrionic Regency-era gentleman attached to his murderous wife's silver service. "That's just mean."

"I did not," Plover said. "I thought it prudent to give her a few days to adjust before that particular trial by fire."

Caroline snorted. "How's Riley holding up?"

"Miss Riley is tired," he said. "She's overextending herself. Miss Alice is trying to help, but Miss Riley has the typical Denton stubbornness. She doesn't want to burden the two of you with the search for the remaining Welling locks."

Caroline frowned. The locks were ritual items that a rival magical family, the Wellings, had hidden in the footprint of Shaddow House after befriending the Dentons centuries before. The palm-sized copper pieces looked like industrial on-trend objets d'art —three loops attached together around empty space.

The Wellings claimed they wanted to help the Dentons in planning a "ghostly communication center" to assist people in contacting departed loved ones. But the Wellings secretly planned to use these locks combined with the location's energy to steal ghosts' wills, allowing the magic user to control them—most likely to murderous ends. The Dentons eventually uncovered the plot and drove the Wellings away, but the locks still remained hidden in the house like supernatural time bombs.

The Dentons had spent generations trying to find and remove the locks hidden throughout the house, to prevent the Wellings from taking them back. They'd only managed to find one before Riley arrived. Kyle had found two more with the help of information from the Wellings, which the coven promptly reclaimed after his death, along with another they found behind the fireplace—giving them a total of four locks. So, most winter nights were either spent reading the previous Dentons' journals or exploring the secret basement level that Plover had shown them—only accessible with a coin key Riley wore around her neck. So far, that had only revealed a spiraling cavern full of red metal doors and the increasingly scary-sounding spirits contained within. There was no secret drawer anywhere in the house labeled there's totally not an evil object hidden here .

Which would have been super helpful.

Plover was staring into the kitchen, where another ghost, Natalie, was chatting with Riley as she heated up Caroline's favorite cider with cinnamon sticks. In life, the smartly dressed brunette had been employed by a dating app designer, where she'd become so attached to the dry-erase board she'd used for team meetings that she'd stayed with it, even after she was struck by a food truck. Natalie was still an introvert who preferred to stay in the kitchen near her board, but it made Caroline feel better, knowing that Riley had someone her own age, living—so to speak—so close.

"Well, that's just stupid," Caroline murmured. "That's what we're here for, to share the burden."

"I told her so as well," Plover replied quietly. "Without calling her stupid, of course. I would never do that."

"Of course, you wouldn't," Caroline snorted, prompting Plover to quirk his lips. Plover was fervent in his devotion to the Dentons, though none of them knew whether that was the root cause or the result of his logic-defying romance with Riley's Aunt Nora. Riley still wasn't ready to ask questions about that, and Caroline didn't blame her. The mental images alone…

"So, on that note, Riley says you're not thrilled with the renovations she has planned. Is it because you're worried about Cole? Do I need to worry about Cole? Because he's tall enough that I'm going to have to recruit some people if we're going to take him out," Caroline said.

Plover held up his hands in a sort of calming gesture. "No, Mr. Bishop seems like a perfectly reasonable choice for the construction. It's just the project she has planned. I'm sure there are more worthy projects she could devote the Denton resources to—a memorial to her aunt, perhaps, or bolstering the Gothic folly her great-great-grandfather had in mind. This library renovation… It seems unnecessary."

"Because it's going to benefit Edison?" Caroline guessed.

"It just seems so indulgent," Plover sniffed. "He's only just ‘moved in,' and we don't know whether that's going to be a long-term situation. After all, he hasn't bothered to propose marriage to the lady of the house."

Caroline wished she could pat Plover on the shoulder, but he didn't really have one. Clearly, Plover was still adjusting to the idea of another man living in Shaddow House after so many years, sharing his territory, sharing Riley's attention. It would be sort of cute, if there weren't such high stakes involved.

"Engagement is a bit of a touchy subject for Edison, given what happened to his late fiancée," Caroline reminded Plover gently. "Right in front of him."

"In my time, it wouldn't have been acceptable for a man to simply move into a woman's home and make himself comfortable," Plover griped. "And for all his earlier helpfulness, I don't know if he's a fit partner for a Denton. I find him…wanting."

For Plover, there was no harsher criticism he was willing to voice. Ultimately, Caroline doubted it had anything to do with Edison himself. Ghosts just hated change. That was part of the reason for the constant, somewhat ill-planned construction projects. Stairways leading into the ceiling. Bricked-over closets. Windows opening onto solid walls. Ghosts were used to moving about the human world as they'd known it. Time moved differently for them, and when walls or even furniture were changed, they tended to focus on that rather than aiming their energy at nearby humans. Caroline had never heard of a ghost being so fully invested in human relationships, but Plover was sort of singular.

"What does Riley have to say to your objections?" Caroline asked.

"She says that if I quote ‘keep it up,' she'll ‘put in a Pilates studio, complete with a water feature and aerial-silks hanging from the ceiling.'"

"And you…don't want that?" Caroline guessed.

"No, I do not," Plover said, shaking his head. "A library is much preferred."

"Riley does have a way of ending an argument," Caroline replied.

Plover looked wistful for a moment. "Much like her aunt."

Having been trapped on Starfall Point for her entire life, Aunt Nora had chosen to move on to the afterlife immediately after her death. Plover, however, had unfinished business, wishing to see Shaddow House well-maintained and protected, so he stayed. The choices of both had always struck Caroline as particularly sad, but given her own situation, she couldn't say she would choose differently.

These maudlin thoughts were interrupted by Riley bustling into the parlor, steaming mug in hand. She bussed Caroline's cheek, casual affection Caroline was still adjusting to, but appreciated. Riley turned and made a rather grand gesture toward the three framed pieces she'd arranged on the mantel, next to Lilah's match cloche.

"I bought the etching, just like I promised," Riley said proudly. "And two more, just in case there was some sort of karmic imbalance for stealing the cake stands."

Alice frowned, adjusting her reading glasses on her nose. "Is this the ‘cool thing' you brought us over to see? Multiple pieces of bad art?"

Riley nodded. "I don't know if it's bad. I kind of like it. And when I asked Willard what was new, he didn't even bring up the pilfered glassware. I'm kind of wondering if he noticed it was gone. Isn't that great? We're off the hook."

"I'm just not sure this qualifies as a ‘fun surprise,'" Alice said.

Caroline nodded. "When I hear ‘fun surprise,' I expect there to be glitter or frosting involved. Balloons, at minimum."

"Next time I'll set more appropriate expectations," Riley said dryly as Caroline took her mug over to the mantel to study the framed sketches.

"I still think the placement of the door means something," Riley continued, nodding at the drawing of Shaddow House. "Doorways have a lot of magical significance. It's the transition point between two worlds, inside the home and out."

"If I was going to hide a mystical hoo-ha, that's where I would put it," Caroline said, tilting her head as she looked at the landscape sketch, placed next to Riley's clear favorite. It showed a cliff overlooking turbulent water. And one particular rock formation in the foreground caught her eye, five conical stones that had somehow formed a sort of tiara-shaped fence line close to the cliff.

"That looks like Vixen's Fall," Caroline said, picking up the framed piece.

Alice tilted her head back and forth, frowning thoughtfully. "I wouldn't know; I never had the nerve to go out there myself."

"Why not?" Riley asked.

"One of those things that circulate among the teenager types," Caroline said. "The story goes that a woman, a sneaky temptress out to show her ankles to any man willing to look, died…somehow at the cliff. There are several different versions of how it happened, depending on who you ask. She was pushed off. She fell off in some sort of rompy mishap. She jumped off, knowing that she would never have the heart of the man she wanted. The bottom line is that she was found dead in the water under what came to be called Vixen's Fall. And because she was an unrepentant ankle-barer—"

"I'm picking up on a certain editorial tone," Alice noted.

"Well, as you get older you realize that some of the cautionary stories you hear as a young person are aimed at keeping you—particularly female ‘you'—in your place," Caroline said, frowning. "Because of her supposedly wanton character, the woman in question wasn't buried in our little churchyard. No one really seems to know where she was buried. But the story goes that if you walk too close to the Fall on a full moon—and you're an unmarried young man or a married woman—the Vixen will reach up over the edge, grab you by the ankles, and pull you over."

"Good grief." Riley shuddered. "That's so creepy. And a weird set of stipulations."

"Well, obviously, we don't know anyone that's actually happened to," Caroline said. "It's probably one of those urban legends, ‘friend of a friend' story elements tacked on to a real event that morphed over time into an evil, ankle-grabbing demon lady."

"Who hates married women and unattached men," Riley noted.

"Why do I always walk into the room during these moments in conversation?" a deeper male voice asked behind them. Tall, dark-haired, and dapper, Edison Held stood in the foyer, looking concerned. Riley crossed the room and kissed him lightly, taking his coat and scarf.

"Nothing to worry about," she promised him. "Your ankles are safe."

"Of all the pieces for sale in Willard's antiques shop, your girlfriend chose a sketch of one of the more notorious haunted locations on Starfall," Caroline told Edison as he handed her a mystery novel she'd wanted to borrow from the public library. Close friendship with the head librarian had to have some privileges.

"Well, of course, she did," Edison replied.

"But rest assured, we are not going out to this spot to investigate an urban legend," Riley told him. "We have enough on our plate with the library renovation and the lock search and all the ghosts we are currently dealing with."

"Have we settled on the library renovation, Miss?" Plover asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Pilates studio, Plover," Riley reminded him.

Plover let out a put-upon sigh. "Yes, Miss."