Chapter 1

Kate

"Disappeared?" Georgia Appleby snorts at me, pointing with a pocketknife in my direction. She was using it to peel an apple, but the menacing glint of the blade emphasizes her next point. "That man is stone-cold dead. How many people have disappeared in the Witchwoods in the last seventy years? Four dozen? You think they're all just missing?"

"I think," I begin, sitting on the edge of some wooden scaffolding, a paintbrush in hand, "that if all those missing people were dead, there'd be some bodies. Blood. Shell casings. Something."

Georgia returns to peeling her apple, her little sisters seated at a table at the edge of the yard, selling lemonade. The sun is bright today even if we're catching a cool sea breeze. The air smells like brine, like the lemons and sugar in the glass at my elbow, like the acrylic latex paint on my brush.

I'm in the process of painting Georgia's parents' Victorian home, located on a quiet corner in our sleepy fog-kissed town of redwood trees and endless rocky coasts. Gull Feathers is the name of this particular white paint, my personal recommendation for the primary trim color.

"Want to know what I think?" Fernanda asks, leaning forward, elbows on her knees. She's rocking a hoodie with her alma mater emblazoned over the front—blue, white, and gold for the University of San Diego. Beside her sits Tacy in Cal Poly Humboldt colors. Georgia is a UC Santa Cruz girl herself.

Me? I stayed in our hometown and developed my brand of blue-collar artistry: Victorian exteriors. Detail repair. A knack for negotiating with the historical society.

"You're going to tell us what you think whether we like it or not," Tacy mumbles, gaze fixed on her phone. Her boyfriend is supposed to be here any minute to pick her up, so she's not really listening. "Get on with it. And stop calling it the Witchwoods. McKay Community Forest is the name. Adding to the hysteria doesn't help."

"How am I adding to the hysteria?" Georgia blurts, leaning forward. Apparently, only I care what Fernanda thinks. The other two are more interested in bickering with each other. "Everyone calls it the Witchwoods. If you don't like it, go door-to-door and ask the whole county to stop. Better yet, Miss Criminal Justice Degree, why don't you figure out why so many people have gone missing over a local legend? Hmm? If you don't like the hysteria, solve the mystery. I say there's a serial killer on the loose."

"A serial killer who's been killing since the first documented case in 1955? A serial killer who ignores hikers and mountain bikers, who only kills people who attempt to touch the Witch's Tree?" Tacy is pissed now, enough to finally look up from her phone. "Does that make any sense?"

"I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but are you okay?" Georgia pauses at a sharp look from Tacy. But only for a second. "Boy trouble? Period cramps?"

Sometimes it's a good idea to interrupt a tense conversation.

I finish off my lemonade, tuck the glass in the pocket of my overalls, and use the pulley system that I rigged up to swing down to the deck. My work boots hit the wood with a thump, drawing the attention of the other girls.

"My grandma put her hand in the Witch's Tree once," I remind them, squatting down beside my backpack and withdrawing my wallet. Damn, I wanted another lemonade. Unfortunately, Georgia's sisters are charging five bucks a glass. Inflation and all that.

I've only got a pair of crinkled ones. Oh well. They take Paypal and Venmo, too. Highway robbery it may be, but I'm thirsty and always down to support the girls' athletic program at the junior high.

"I was going to say natural disaster —like a sinkhole or something," Fernanda mumbles, and I smile at her as I stand up, tugging the yellow bandanna off my hair to swab the sweat from my forehead. Detail work is exhausting when you're as picky as I am about getting everything right. "Or drowning. Cougars. Bears."

"It's not a natural disaster," I insist, tucking the bandanna into one of my many pockets. It's got banana slugs on it, an ode to the yellow critters that thrive in the Pacific Northwest. I've got one tattooed on my right ankle. "The Witchwoods are not populated by serial killers either. People disappear ," I reiterate, giving Georgia a look, "because it works. The legend is true."

"Alright, I'm done with this conversation," Tacy mumbles, shoving up to her feet. "Katelynn, you're supposed to be the rational one." She lifts her brows at me as her boyfriend's ratty old van pulls up to the curb. He honks the old VW bus a few times in greeting and then hops out to buy a lemonade.

Changes his mind after the girls tell him the price. I chuckle as Tacy jogs down the front walk, lined with rhododendrons bigger than I am. In pink and red and purple and white. Summer has hit Humboldt County hard, and I'm loving every minute of it.

"The legend does not work," Georgia argues with a sniff, standing up and adjusting her blue sweatshirt. She tosses long dark hair over one shoulder. "I've done it before—on a full moon night. You should know: you were there."

"You guys did the Witchwoods legend without me?" Fernanda asks, gaping as she stands up, pink hair in a pixie cut. "When? How?"

"Senior year of high school." I clomp down the front steps of the deck as Tacy gives her boyfriend a dollar so that he'll have enough to buy an overpriced lemonade. "But it was a full moon night, that's why I let her do it." I glance over my shoulder to see my friends looking at me in confusion.

Legend has it that if you hike into the McKay Community Forest on a full moon night, stick your hand in the hole on the old Witch's Tree—the stump of an old-growth redwood that's big enough to park a car inside of—you'll be taken to the Witchwoods, a world that's neither here nor there. Something in-between. Something magical.

The legend is wrong.

There's no magic on a moonlit night, but on a moon less one.

"My grandma crossed over, but it wasn't on a full moon," I state firmly, turning away as Georgia gapes at me and Fernanda blinks in confusion. I'm not going to tell them that a new moon night, like tonight, is the key to the magic or else Georgia will try to drag us all out to the woods.

It's my birthday tonight. It's a new moon. I'm doing this by myself.

Well, with my dog. Flick gets up from his spot in the grass and trots along beside me, bushy tail wagging to celebrate his master's return to solid ground. I tug my copper braid over one shoulder and readjust my hair tie before it comes loose.

"Kate, you get your ass back here and tell me what you know!" Georgia yells, but I ignore her, pausing by the lemonade stand as Tacy and her boyfriend take off in a spurt of fumes and a sputtering engine. The back of the VW bus is so plastered with stickers that the window is obscured.

"Give me a pink lemonade this time, girls," I say, scanning the QR code on the table and sending over the money. I drop my phone in the pocket of my paint-splattered denim, jostling brushes as I look up at the early 1900s masterpiece of a house that I've been paid to repaint.

A Victorian house has character, detail. It can't be sprayed one color. It's an art form, finding the right scheme, whether historically accurate or just aesthetically pleasing. It's a political trick to get the historical society to agree. That's what I do.

Six to ten colors, end colors on an inside corner, darkest colors on the bottom. Foggy Bay is the pale blue that I used for the scalloped siding details. Sea-and-Forest is a muted navy with green undertones that I used on the dot accents on the entry gable. Sandy Bottom is for columns and corbels.

Witchwood is the green that I used on the architectural details like the circles, flower shapes, finials, scrolls, and handrails. The paint is locally made, only available here in Eureka.

I smile as I pass over my original lemonade glass for a refill.

"You're not considering going out there tonight, are you?" Georgia whispers, slinking up to stand beside me. "Is that why you didn't want to go out for your birthday?"

"I'll be working here until late," I remind her, which is true. I want my business to thrive. I want to make a living doing something with my hands, something that incorporates as many of my passions as possible. Humboldt County. Historic homes. Paint and color. Woodworking. "And I know that your mom said she didn't mind if I left early, but I want to prove myself to her and everybody else."

Georgia sighs and shakes her head, stealing a glass and filling it with lemonade as her sisters shriek and yell thief so loudly that their mother comes running out onto the porch.

"Fine. But if you don't show up for breakfast tomorrow, I'll send the police into the woods to look for you."

I laugh, but I'm not worried.

My grandma traveled to the Witchwoods and made it back because she followed the rules.

No talking. If you talk, you're lost to the woods.

That's how I know that all of those missing people have disappeared for good.