Doyle’s home was the opposite of my uncle’s in every way except that they were both crumbling—the Ramsey house rambled away into wings and additions, paint rotting and peeling at the edges, gingerbread trim covered with withered wisteria vines creeping over every flat surface. It was low and comfortable, nestled into the landscape rather than jutting out of it. Two trucks that had at least thirty years on me were up on blocks in the front yard, and I heard music blaring from a red barn beyond the house.
“Come on in,” Doyle said as we stepped into a front hall made of dark wood and plaster, with more holes than the roof of the trailer my mother and I had rented in Missoula. “And if you’re a vampire, I’ve just totally screwed myself, haven’t I?”
“Yup,” I said. “Consider your blood drunk.”
Doyle accepted his windbreaker back, and took my jacket besides, leading me into a kitchen lined in yellow-flowered wallpaper and full of the smell of fresh bread. He inhaled and made a growling sound in the back of his throat.
“Sorry,” he said when I raised an eyebrow. “Skipped breakfast.”
So you could spy on me? I kept that to myself and stood with my hands shoved in my jeans pockets, listening to the plastic cat clock on the wall tick, until Doyle realized I wasn’t going to fill the silence to be polite.
“I’ll grab you a towel and run your coat through the dryer,” Doyle said. “Sit tight.”
I wandered around the kitchen while he was gone. The shelves were groaning under canned jams and fruits, mismatched plates, and novelty mugs decorated with slogans like MAINE: VACATIONLAND and WICKED GOOD LOBSTAH. Beyond the Ramseys’ barn, the land sloped up sharply to a hilltop, where a blackened brick chimney and the remains of a wall glowered over the rest of the property.
“Old homestead,” Doyle said, handing me a blue towel with frayed edges. I mopped the rain out of my hair. I was probably going to look like a bag lady when it dried, but I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, least of all him.
“Believe it or not, we used to live in the lap of luxury,” he said. “That place was even bigger than Bloodgood Manor.”
“What happened?” I said.
“The usual,” Doyle said. “Big fire in 1801. No money to rebuild, so they knocked together this heap and called it a day.” He pulled a pitcher of iced tea from the fridge and offered me a glass.
I shook my head. “It is way too freezing for that. Is it always this cold?”
“It’s Maine, sweetheart,” Doyle said. “We’re all a little cold-blooded up here.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart,” I said. “Has that ‘let me help you get warm’ line worked for you on any girl, ever?”
Doyle drained the glass and set it in the old porcelain sink, reaching past me to do it. “It’s working on you right now and you know it.”
“On second thought,” I said, tossing the now-damp towel back at him. “Maybe I will walk home.”
“Suit yourself,” Doyle said, still smiling. “I’m just trying to be a good host.”
I snorted. Who did Doyle think he was kidding with this crap? “You know, Simon and his creepy housekeeper aren’t your biggest fans.” I briefly considered that maybe Simon had this rule for a reason, and I’d just gotten so used to ignoring anything adults told me to do I’d walked myself into trouble. I brushed the thought away, though. I had way too much experience keeping myself out of bad situations to get taken in by some backwoods Ted Bundy.
Doyle didn’t offer a smile or a crack in response to what I’d said, like I expected. He just got closer to me, filling my nose with that piney scent all over again. “I could say some things about your uncle too, Ivy. Things you probably wouldn’t like.”
“What happened to him being an ‘okay guy’?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“I was being polite,” Doyle said. “Because I thought you were too. Now I don’t care so much.”
“You know, it’s been fun meeting the local weirdo and all, but I really do need to go home now.” I knocked his arm away from me and pushed into him, forcing him to move.
Doyle just looked at me with a line between his black eyebrows, like I’d started speaking a foreign language all of a sudden. “Shit,” he said at last. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” I threw up my hands. “Are you going to give me a ride home or not?”
“I mean, you came onto our land, and you came to my house,” Doyle said. “I thought Simon told you, or you found out on your own. . . .” He shook his head, and when he looked at me again his eyes were shadowed, full of ink where they’d been full of flame a moment before, when he’d been close to me. “It’s my fault, probably. I shouldn’t have invited you over here, or followed you in the woods. But I figured if you’d come to our side of the island you didn’t care. . . .”
“I’m confused,” I said. I got the table between us, just in case I’d miscalculated and he was some kind of handsome, square-jawed, tea-drinking serial killer. “What is it that I supposedly know and don’t care about?”
“About your family,” he said. “About the Ramseys and Bloodgoods, about the murders that happened in the 1940s. About how all the Bloodgoods are cursed.”