were shaping up nicely.
A girl’s voice above them let out a muffled curse, followed by
a thump overhead that made them all jump. Charles looked up
but couldn’t see anything through the leafy green filter of the ivy.
“Minnie Johnson, you get down here right this instant,” Cora
hissed, hands on her hips.
The trellis roof above them shook, and then a face hung upside
down from atop the arched exit to the garden. “Boys!” Minnie
gasped, her upside-down smile brighter than the veranda lamps
casting golden highlights on her dark curls. Her head disappeared.
The trellis shook again, like the girl was crawling across the top of
it. Then there was a falling sound and a scream. Thom stood and
rushed toward the veranda’s exit, but the scream was cut short by
a laugh.
Arthur melted free of the shadows, Minnie caught in his arms.
Charles had forgotten about him, hadn’t even noticed him follow
them out. Or had he gone a different way? Arthur set Minnie
down on the ground, then leaned against the arch just out of reach
of the lamplight.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Minnie asked, and Charles
was delighted to note that Thom was no longer playing Beethoven.
Even his fingers had been stunned into silence when presented
with not one but two beautiful girls, both of whom belonged to
them this summer thanks to Charles.
Charles was an excellent brother when he set his mind to it.
Cora spoke first. “This is Charles, and this is Thomas. They’re
boarding here for the summer, which you would know if you’d
helped with supper service like you were supposed to.”
Minnie’s mouth set in an embarrassed frown as she deliber-
ately lifted her eyebrows, not looking at the strange new boys
Cora had just scolded her in front of. “Shouldn’t you be clean-
ing?” she asked her sister. “Surely there’s some lonely corner left to
sweep.”
Cora folded her arms crossly. “No. We’re ... I’m not ...
our job this summer is to keep Thomas and Charles company.”
Before Minnie could utter whatever delightful thing was about
to leave her mouth, Cora snapped, “Where are your shoes?”
“Put very carefully away so you can’t scold me for leaving them
out. Now,” she said, clapping her hands together, eyes dancing,
“who is ready for an adventure?”
Thom leaned back with a sigh. “What with the travel and all,
we ought to —”
“Go on the most daring adventure you can think of,” Charles
interrupted. “Otherwise we’ll miss New York too much. What do
you have that New York doesn’t?”
A worried crease between her brows, Cora bit her lip thought-
fully. “There are the caves at the beach —”
“As old as time, and haunted!” Minnie declared.
Cora scowled but continued as though she hadn’t been inter-
rupted. “— which are a very short walk. We can visit the lighthouse
tomorrow, if you’d like, and the church is —”
“No one cares about the church!” Minnie cried, a pleased and
sly cast to her eyes as she watched Cora’s reaction to her reaction.
“They can see a church anywhere.” She turned to the brothers.
“Let me ask you this: How many witches did you have in New
York City?”
Charles matched Minnie’s grin, noting Cora’s dismay but too
caught up in the magnetism of Minnie’s dark, glittering eyes to
care. If Cora was an engine keeping everything running, Minnie
was both steering wheel and gas pedal. He was very curious to see
where she’d drive them.
“I have yet to meet a single witch in our great metropolis,”
he said.
“Then we have you beat.” Minnie skipped off the steps and
into the night, beckoning them to follow with her mocking laugh.
“Come on, come on!”
To the witch! Charles thought, giddy with the thrill of doing
something besides dying. Arthur held out his arm to Cora, who
took it, casting a worried glance back toward the house.
As he and Thom stepped into the night, Charles felt an odd
weight on the back of his neck and looked up. In one of the
second-story windows, a figure stood, silhouetted in black, impos-
sible to identify. Watching them.
Charles rubbed his shoulder against his ear, trying to shake off
a sudden chill. But it wouldn’t leave.
Late March, 1902
five
M
INIE SPUN AND TWIRLED, THE DIRT ROAD STILL
WARM UNDERFOOT. It wasn’t the height of tourist sea-
son yet, and the town still felt like it belonged only to
her at night.
She knew it like no one else did. She divined all its secrets, and
gave it even more. It was a land woven together by stories, threaded
through with magic. Lately no one saw the magic but her, and it
broke her heart.
But tonight! Tonight she had two new boys, and her Arthur.
She’d even managed to get Cora out.
In Minnie’s darkest moods, which struck like storms from the
sea, brutal and overpowering and then gone without a trace, she
hated her father for dying. Her father’s death had killed the sister
she knew, and replaced fun, dazzling, brave Cora with a soft and
prim version of their mother.
Minnie had a mother. She wanted her Cora again.
A small worm of guilt wriggled through her stomach. She
knew it wasn’t right to force Cora to come along with them to spy
on the witch. Minnie knew how terrified Cora had been that day,
knew that she still woke with nightmares.
But curse that witch, Minnie hated who her sister had
become. Maybe another trip would finally convince her that their
father’s heart attack had nothing to do with Cora climbing that
wretched tree.
Maybe, as Minnie sometimes suspected, the witch had sto-
len part of her sister’s soul through the small cut at the back of
Cora’s head.
In which case Minnie would simply have to steal it back.
“Are you twins?” one of the brothers asked. Thomas. He was
taller, but Charles was handsomer, with a sort of tragic romance to
his face, and Minnie fancied him immediately for it. She fancied
nearly everyone, though, and never let it bother her to distraction.
There was only one person her heart held close, but it was a secret,
and a dangerous one to nourish.
She glanced at Cora on Arthur’s arm and burned with jealousy.
Best to focus on the boys she could be certain she was not
related to. It would hurt far less.
“We’re eleven months apart,” Cora answered.
“Irish twins, then. And Arthur is your . . . ?” Charles said, let-
ting the sentence end to form a question.
“Our mysterious relative,” Minnie cut in joyfully, glad to have
an excuse to talk about him and try to get a reaction. Maybe, for
once, Arthur would actually answer.
“Bite your tongue!” Cora gasped. “He is not related to us! He
is a friend of the family.”
“Oh, they’d hear th
e speculation eventually. Is it any kinder to
whisper it behind his back? Arthur doesn’t mind, do you?”
“I am the least interesting mystery in town,” he offered.
Minnie waved dismissively, disappointed as always by Arthur’s
deflection. Weaving her hand through Charles’s elbow, she con-
tinued. “Arthur has been with us a year now, and we’re very
tired of his mystery and ever so glad to have some boarders
who aren’t too old to have any adventures left. Why are you here?”
She trained her big brown eyes on Charles, willing him to say
something interesting. Gypsies or gangsters or sinister family
secrets — she would take anything that would give her an excuse
to romanticize him further. Though if he were actually dying, as
she had overheard while hiding in the pantry this afternoon, that
was romantic enough for her needs. Nearly as good as one of her
Gothic novels!
Charles shrugged, grinning pleasantly. “We’re here to take
the air.”
“And where, pray tell, are you going to take it?” Arthur mur-
mured, giving a suspicious glare at Minnie’s and Charles’s linked
arms. This filled Minnie with a spark of hope she tried to stifle.
“And how,” she said, ignoring Arthur’s glare by walking even
closer to Charles, “does one transport air once it’s been taken? I
should think your luggage quite full of clothes.”
Cora tugged on the lock that always fell down over her fore-
head. Sometimes Minnie found herself brushing her own forehead
as though Cora were a distorted mirror. “Please pay them no
mind,” Cora said to Charles. “They can never end until one of
them has said something so silly the other cannot beat it.” She was
all jangling nerves, spooking any time a bird called, watching the
familiar lanes as if at any moment something would jump out at
them. It gave Minnie both a triumphant thrill and a pang of con-
science to see how scared she was.
Charles was not going to be left out of the fun, though. “Air is
best transported in lungs, which is why I brought Thom with me.
He’s going to store the extra I can’t fit. My father likes to get his
money’s worth.”
“He certainly does . . . ,” Thomas muttered. He was neither
scared nor excited, and watched Charles like he feared his brother
would drop dead at any moment. Minnie didn’t care for Thomas.
He was decidedly too much like the new Cora.
Cora’s hand went to her apron pocket, worrying a stone worn
smooth these last two years. The line between her brows deepened
as she let go of Arthur’s arm and looked back toward the boarding-
house, now out of view. “We were given specific instruction to be
very careful of Charles’s health.”
Charles gallantly took her now-free hand and put it on his
other arm. “That’s easy, then. I’ve left my health upstairs in a
trunk where it can’t possibly come to any harm.”
Arthur eyed the action as warily as he had with Minnie, which
was a disappointment. He was always watching Cora, their mother,
and Minnie. She sometimes caught him lurking about, prowling
around the boardinghouse at night. She’d been secretly catching
him at it since the day he arrived. Arthur was a mystery, her very
own mystery, both the best and worst part of every day.
His eyes were like the ocean. Sometimes they were blue, some-
times they were green, and sometimes they were so dark they were
no color at all. Minnie always tried to guess what color they would
be at a given moment; she was almost never right.
He was forever trying not to be seen, but she saw him.
She wound a circular path, cutting through backyards and
private property, tramping across the town as though she owned it,
which, at night, she did. In the daylight, order ruled, fences stood,
how-do-you-do’s and polite nods were the recipe. But at night,
darkness rendered everything still and hush and secret. Minnie
was a curator of secrets.
Finally they came round a bend in the lane and their destina-
tion appeared. A two-storied house, steep-roofed and turreted,
stood sentinel on top of a small hill. Around it, scarred through
with the two dirt lines of the lane, the yard dropped into a sea of
night-black trees. Much as she feared it, like all the other children
who grew up here, she also loved the house, and sometimes day-
dreamed it was hers.
The group had never agreed what they were expecting to find
once they got here, but it certainly wasn’t this much light dripping
from the windows on the first story.
“So, about this witch,” Thomas said, fingers tapping on his
leg. “What’s the story there?”
“Why don’t you tell them, Cora?” Minnie’s voice dripped with
syrup, all false sweetness.
“Shut up,” Cora snapped. It was the most spirit Minnie had
seen from her in ages, and only proved to Minnie that this whole
excursion was a grand idea.
“She never leaves,” Minnie whispered as they crept up the hill,
Charles and Thomas next to her, Arthur drifting back with Cora.
“She’s lived here for as long as anyone can remember, though no
one has ever actually spoken with her. No one . . . except Cora.”
She glanced over her shoulder to see Arthur whispering intently in
Cora’s ear, both of them yards behind now and out of hearing
range. Minnie wanted to win over Thomas as much as she had
Charles, even if he was stuffy. So she only felt mildly wicked as she
fed them an exaggerated horror even she didn’t believe. “The witch
nearly killed my sister, and she sent her familiars out that night to
steal the rest of Cora’s soul. But familiars are blind, and when they
got to our house, they took my father’s soul instead.”
Charles looked delighted by the tale, and Minnie scowled. It
was not the reaction she had been hoping for. She opened her
mouth to try something scarier, but another set of sounds inter-
rupted the air. They all stopped, holding their breath to listen.
“Is that — that’s ragtime!” Thomas said, stopping in
amazement.
“ ‘Maple Leaf Rag’! She must have a phonograph!” Charles
said. “You thought no one would have one here. Apparently Min-
nie and Cora’s reclusive witch has excellent taste in music.”
As one, the three in the lead moved toward the nearest lit win-
dow, slinking low to the ground beneath the sill. Cora and Arthur
followed.
“I get first peek,” Minnie whispered.
“Guest rules.” Charles grinned at her. “I should get first.”
“I don’t want to look at all. You may have my turns,” Cora
said, leaning her shoulder against the wood siding of the house
and staring out into the night. Her breathing was even, but
Minnie could see that she was trembling.
Thomas shrugged. “All at once. Just don’t stick your head up
any higher than you need to. Cora, keep your eyes peeled for
familiar spirits or bats or whatever it is witches employ to guard
&n
bsp; against Peeping Charleses.”
Minnie trembled, too, with either excitement or fear, which
were so often indistinguishable until afterward when she knew the
result of the event. Flanked by Arthur and Thomas, she raised her
eyes past the sill to peer into the witch’s home.
A woman, slender as a willow tree and wearing not much more
than her slip, danced madly across the room, throwing her body to
the beats of Joplin’s ragtime, her floor-length braid whipping like
a living thing. Her eyes were closed, and, though the room blazed
with lamps, Minnie couldn’t say exactly what color her hair was,
or even what she looked like. The witch was all wild movement
and snaking hair.
“What’s going on?” Cora whispered.
“She’s dancing. Have a look.” Arthur shifted over to give Cora
room, nearly knocking everyone else down. After some glares and
hisses, there was just enough room for Cora to see, too.
“She dances like you,” Charles said, punching Thomas lightly
on the back.
Minnie hoped this was weird and funny enough that perhaps
Cora would forget to be careful and frightened all the time now.
The song neared the end and, out of place with the rest of her
mad choreography, the witch climbed up onto a ladder propped
against the wall, balance precarious as she lifted her arms to the
ceiling beams and laughed. Even through the glass, her cackle was
a mad thing, twisted discordant notes, rising above the sound of
the music. She shook violently, and Minnie realized she may have
been sobbing. She felt suddenly shamed to be witness to this, and
her eyes fixed on the witch’s pale, slender feet, toes curled around
a rung. Minnie’s gaze followed the twining length up to where the
witch’s braid was wrapped around her neck.
Not her braid, she realized.
“No!” Minnie screamed as the woman jumped off the ladder
and snapped at the end of the rope.
In the Périgord Noir,
France, 1915
six
A
HIGH, KEENING SCREAM, MORE ANIMAL THAN HUMAN,
In the Shadows Page 3