My room looked over the cliff and a tiny rock-strewn beach at the foot of it. To the right, I could see the turret, which at this angle tilted alarmingly toward the ocean. The paint was peeling off the window frames, and the plaster on my walls was water-stained and dark. Despite the glowing hardwood floors, the Haunted Mansion–style furniture and curtains and portraits everywhere, and the general over-the-top size of the place, it was obvious the manor house was slowly decaying like everything else on the island. A blast of wind hit the window, and the glass rattled like loose teeth.
Mrs. MacLeod dropped my suitcase on top of the faded quilt covering my new bed and snapped it open before I could stop her, pulling out my clothes and tossing them into dresser drawers. “Don’t get any ideas about going down to the shore,” she said. “Those stairs aren’t safe, and you’ll be at the bottom with your neck broken before you can say boo.”
She lifted out my mother’s tarot deck, stashed under my clothes. The cards were wrapped in a blue velvet square she’d found at a thrift shop, but the deck itself had been with Mom since before I was born. “What’s this, then?” Mrs. MacLeod asked.
I snatched it from her and shoved it into my nightstand. “None of your business.”
We locked eyes, and I found hers to be pale and smooth as pebbles, without any warmth at all. “You’re at Bloodgood Manor now, miss,” she said after a moment. “I think you’ll find everything is my business.”
She shoved my suitcase under the bed and pointed down the stairs. “Your uncle is waiting in the solarium. Put on something presentable and come down.”
“This is as presentable as I get,” I said, smoothing my hands over my damp jeans and my mom’s old Nirvana shirt, one of the few things she’d owned I’d held on to. What could I say, I couldn’t afford to throw out perfectly good clothes. “I must have left my party dress in my other bag.”
Mrs. MacLeod narrowed her eyes. “It’s fortunate you’re not my child,” she said.
I peeled off my wet, salty jacket and dumped it in the middle of the pin-straight quilt, water soaking it in a jagged circle. I looked at Mrs. MacLeod, daring her to keep talking. She stared at the jacket like she wished she could burn it, but she didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to—I’d learned what I wanted to know. If I pushed her, she wasn’t going to react with anything worse than snapping and glaring.
I picked up the jacket and hung it on the hook on the back of my door. “Let’s meet the long-lost uncle,” I said perkily.
Mrs. MacLeod grunted and led me downstairs without another word, into a room with a wall of windows and droopy, half-dead potted plants sitting everywhere. Aside from some rusty iron chairs and a little rolling cart, I was alone. I turned to ask Mrs. MacLeod where my uncle was, but she’d vanished. Probably in a puff of smoke like the witch she was.
I pushed through the plants to the windows, which looked over the sea, into the roiling water and fog beyond. Rain started and streaked the glass, blurring out everything except my reflection. The wind cut around the corner of the house, howling and whining under the eaves.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I jumped higher than I’d admit to, feeling like I’d bitten into an electrified wire. A second reflection appeared next to mine, and I turned to see a skinny man in a tweed suit smiling at me. I shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess.”
“You really do look like her,” my uncle said. “Myra, I mean.” He picked a teapot off the little cart and held it up. “Tea?”
“I’m good.” I stayed by the window. I could feel the chill coming off the glass. I really needed to find some long underwear or something if I was going to be staying on Darkhaven.
“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” Simon said. “But I’m so very relieved that you’re home, Ivy. You have no idea.”
He poured two cups anyway, and I sighed. Guess I had to get used to being ignored.
“Do you like your room?” he said. “I asked Veronica to put you in the best guest suite. Where is Veronica, anyway?”
It took me a second to realize he was talking about Mrs. MacLeod. I wouldn’t have pegged old hatchet face for a Veronica. “Off polishing her broomstick, I think,” I said.
Simon surprised me by laughing. He sounded like a seal. “Veronica is a dear woman, really,” he said. “She just takes a bit of getting used to. But your room—you’re comfortable? You feel at home?”
Never in a million years would I think of this rock pile as home. Not even if I was in the best guest suite instead of the glorified closet Spiteful McHagface had stuck me in. “It’s fine,” I said. “Listen, I’m really beat, so I think I’m just going to go hang out up there for a while.”
All the plants were making me claustrophobic, never mind that I didn’t want to be anywhere near my uncle. It probably wasn’t his fault the first sixteen years of my life had been so crappy, but I wasn’t used to being around family. “Family” was a weird way to think of Simon, anyway. If my mother had told me flat out he was a creeper, I would have felt less uncomfortable. It was the complete lack of information up until this moment—the fact that she’d never told me more than she’d had a brother and his name was Simon—that unsettled me. Simon was a void I couldn’t read yet, and I hated that. I relied on information to keep me ahead of other people, have the advantage. Simon was a black box, and that made him dangerous.
“I heard you were the one who found her.”
That stopped me in my tracks. I opened my mouth, to answer him or scream, I’m not sure. Simon’s expression gave me pause. It wasn’t pinched or critical or angry. He didn’t even look sad. He looked defeated.
Simon took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, Ivy. I truly am. No one should have to see that, least of all a child.”
“Yeah, well.” I sat down on one of the little wire chairs, my legs inexplicably heavy. “That was far from the only crappy thing she did to me, Uncle Simon. I wasn’t all that surprised.” I didn’t say anything else, especially about the incident when I was eight. I barely knew Simon, I didn’t know how he’d react, and if I was being honest, I didn’t want anyone to know about that. Not because I was embarrassed, but because there was a part of me that wondered, even now. Had she been right about me? Had she seen something in me that was just bad?
I wasn’t normal, that much was for sure, and Simon would eventually figure that out. No point in spilling all of Mom’s dark secrets and speeding up the process.
Simon sat down across from me and nudged the teacup in my direction. I sighed and took a sip. It was terrible, bitter and black on my tongue, but drinking it made me a little warmer, so I forced myself to down the entire cup.
“I can’t say I’m surprised either, insensitive as that sounds,” he said. “Deep down, I think I always knew Myra was destined to die young.”
Finally, something we agreed on.
Simon put his glasses back on. “If you go exploring, please stay out of the turret and the east wing. This place is old, and it’s not safe to wander around up there.”
“That’s it?” I said. “You’re not going to spout a bunch of rules or try to make me like you by giving me presents?”
Simon’s mouth lifted on one side. It was weird but sort of endearing, like a robot learning how to smile. “Would that work?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve had about ten ‘new dads,’ so I know all the tricks. I’m unbribable.”
“Myra never lost her penchant for hurting everyone she comes in contact with, then,” he said, corners of his mouth turning down.
“She was damaged,” I said. I didn’t know why I suddenly had the impulse to defend Mom. Simon was only voicing stuff I’d thought for years. Maybe it was just that—his saying it out loud made it harsh, too real. After all, part of the “everyone” she’d damaged was me.
“You deal with your issues when a child is involved,” Simon replied. “You don’t pass them on.”
I stayed quiet. I wasn’t starting a fight five minutes after meeting the guy.
“You only have the one suitcase?” he asked as I pushed back my chair. “No boxes or trunks or family pets?”
“We moved too much for pets,” I said. “No money for anything worth boxing up and taking with us.”
“Okay then,” Simon said. “Welcome home, Ivy.”
I forced myself not to flinch. My last name might be Bloodgood, same as the brass sign bolted to the outside of the manor house, but this would never be my home, and Simon would learn quickly that I wasn’t the kind of person he wanted as family. Sooner or later I’d cross some line that normal people knew to steer clear of, Simon would decide I was too much trouble, and I’d be gone. Even if he was the first person to treat me like a human being in quite a while, I was doing this for both of us. For my move to San Francisco as soon as I was old enough, and for sparing him the trouble of trying to “save” me when he couldn’t do a damn thing. I tried to believe that as I climbed back to my room.