2

“The soul is eternal, journeying from one state of being to the next.”

Beyond and Further Still, Sofia Brewer

The road wound through and around the minor sloping hills of southwestern Ohio. Mags’s car, an older model she’d bought used from her dad’s cousin, took the turns about as well as could be expected—a bit haltingly. The steering wheel shook in her grip, as if the car were having second thoughts about driving to a castle everyone knew to be haunted.

Stop, Mags thought. It’s just the power steering going out. She struggled through another turn, the muscles in her biceps straining against the pull. Well, car, you can just die when we get there. Sofia’s assistant had assured her at their last interview that a fancy-ass rich person’s car with a driver came along with the nanny job. They’d take Mags wherever she needed to go with the kid.

The kid.

Mags didn’t hate children. It was just that everything about them made her teeth hurt. They were screechy, spasmodic little things, and none of their behavior fell into neat, predictable patterns—which was the only thing Mags’s brain truly craved. Patterns and, well, silence. Suddenly, her best friend’s misgivings didn’t seem so uncalled for.

As secluded and rundown as the roads were in this part of the state, they were familiar to Mags. She’d grown up not far from the estate where she’d be working this summer. She rolled down her window as she entered the woods. The smell of pine and moss mixed with the dotted white blossoms of climbing hydrangea. The woods, dark but never in a threatening way, had been home to many of her and Hawthorne’s early childhood adventures. They’d spent hours out there, alone except for their dog, Utah. Utah’s nose and sense of direction had been the only things that had gotten them home on more than one occasion.

It wasn’t until Hawthorne’s freshman year of high school that the siblings stopped playing in the woods together. By then, Hawthorne preferred the company of his friends to a twelve-year-old Mags and an aging boxer dog. But none of those so-called friends came to their family’s aid when Hawthorne had gone missing his senior year. No, they’d gone silent instead.

But now she had an opportunity to get close with a famous psychic, someone who pulled the curtain back and glimpsed life beyond. If anyone could tell Mags what happened to Hawthorne, it would be this woman. So she’d deal with entertaining a kid for eight hours a day. She’d give up the carefully patterned, silent portions of her life for the chaos of someone else’s childhood. And she’d do it at the notorious Fault Hill Castle.

As she exited the forest, the dark spires of Fault Hill Castle appeared. The castle had sat vacant, falling into disrepair in the 1950s, until some historical committee or another took it on as a project in the late ‘70s. Throughout Mags’s childhood, it had been used by the community to host seasonal craft fairs and a haunted house on Halloween. But a more macabre reputation shadowed the castle’s distant past.

In the 1800s, Fault Hill had functioned as a boarding school for young delinquent boys. Yet no one ever saw the children once they went in. It was as if the castle just chewed them up and swallowed. Few townsfolk cared—they were “troublemakers” after all. When the headmistress was found dead by a truckdriver delivering food and supplies, the time of the castle functioning as a school came to an end. Nobody had lived there since—until now.

Mags put her blinker on and turned onto the gravel drive. Rocks popped and turned under her tires as she pulled to a stop in front of a large iron gate. A rusty padlock and chain hung uselessly near the latch, and Mags looked around for some kind of clue as to what to do. There was no intercom, no guard. Finally, she opened her car door and stepped toward the gate. Examining the simple latch, Mags lifted it and pushed the heavy iron door open. The hinges let out a great groan—a warning, she imagined, and quickly pushed the stupid thought aside. This was exactly what she’d wanted; an old creaking gate wasn’t going to stop her.

Mags got back into her car and drove the paved switchbacks that wound up Fault Hill. In the heat of the day, the pungent smell of newly laid asphalt wafted through Mags’s open window. The architectural splendor of the castle came into full view. The red brick building boasted many floors and towered over the sloping hillside. The spires seen from a distance as black and sharp were even more so close up. Mags counted five of them, wondering which ones would be living spaces and which ones, if any, had been left alone.

Mags had yet to speak to the famous psychic or the child she’d be managing for the next three months, so she’d expected to meet Sofia Brewer upon arrival. But at the castle entrance, in tight jeans and a staggering set of heels, stood Kendra Tims, Sofia’s assistant. She wore a pink satin camisole under a light cardigan. Her collar and shoulder bones looked like steel rods propping up a living, breathing doll.

“Magnolia! You made it!” Kendra moved from her perch near the doorway to the front steps. “And almost on time!” she added.

Mags waved, noting the creased wrinkle of Kendra’s brow and frantic energy. She rolled up her window, turned off the engine, and checked her phone. It was three minutes past the agreed-upon meeting time. Mags shot Stacy a quick text: Made it! But seconds later, she received an error message in return: Emergency Calls Only.

Shit, no service.

Mags opened the driver-side door to greet Kendra, who was still making her way, precariously in those heels, down the steps of the castle. But before Mags could even issue a hello, Kendra’s ankle turned grotesquely. The small woman crumpled and fell. Her head smacked the stone steps with a sickening thud. Kendra’s body went limp, a marionette whose strings had just been cut, as she toppled down the remaining steps.

“Oh my god!” Mags ran over and crouched next to Kendra at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you okay?” Yet Mags wasn’t sure how to help Kendra. Move her? What if she had a neck or spine injury? Kendra had fallen and rolled—she surveyed the steps, logging the smudges of crimson on the brick—a good ten feet. Kendra’s long blond hair, streaked red with blood, covered her face, preventing Mags from surveying damage. Hell, she wasn’t even sure if the woman had survived. Mags took a breath, swallowing back a gagging sensation, and pinched strands of Kendra’s blood-matted hair in her fingers. She peeled back the wet hair, ignoring how the red stained her own hands.

“Kendra?” Mags whispered her name like a prayer. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead on my first day. She reached for Kendra’s arm, and her flesh felt warm to the touch—a good sign.

And like a gust of wind, Kendra lurched and screamed, “Fuck!” The cursed howl drew itself out, twisting and winding its way across the grounds—a lament. She fell silent and stared at the horizon, drips of deep scarlet pulsing steadily from a gash on her forehead.

“Okay, okay,” Mags reassured herself more than Kendra. “You’re awake. Do you think you can walk?”

Kendra blinked several times. She touched her fingers to her head, and they came away slicked with blood.

“It’s not that bad,” Mags rambled, lying. “Head injuries are just like that. They bleed a lot. Let me see what I’ve got in my—”

“Leave her.” A smoky, velvet voice Mags recognized from television came from the castle entrance. Mags looked up, and at the top of the steps stood Sofia Brewer.

Her presence alone commanded Mags to get to her feet instantly. “Ms. Brewer,” she stammered, “I-I don’t know what happened.” But of course, she did know. What she’d witnessed, Kendra’s fall, unfolded like a stop-motion film in her mind’s eye: the wobbling pinprick of a heel; the sickening snap and crunch as her ankle turned; the smack of Kendra’s forehead on brick. Mags fought back a wave of nausea.

“I’ve warned her many times about her . . . heels. My man will take care of it.” Sofia turned to go back into the house, then stopped and added, “Well, come on, then.”

“We’re just gonna leave . . .” But the words died in Mags’s mouth. This was her boss, the person with all the power. She looked down at Kendra, who still hadn’t really registered Mags’s presence since the fall. It’s fine. Just a cut and a sprained ankle. Of course Sofia has someone who can take Kendra to a hospital and get her fixed up. What could Mags even do? She rifled through her bag and pulled out a pack of tissues.

“Here,” she said, handing them to the injured woman. At least this time, Kendra met her gaze. She took the packet and pulled some out, then dabbed at her forehead.

“I-I’m sorry. I have to . . .” This felt so wrong. Leaving someone hurt out here, alone? But Sofia Brewer had just given an order. Mags shouldered her bag and stepped away from Kendra.

“Wait,” Kendra murmured, trying to pull something from her pocket. “Take this with you.”

“Oh no—you shouldn’t—you’re hurt. Just be still. Someone’s coming to take you to a doctor.”

Kendra snorted, though the effort of it caused a grimace. “You’re going . . .” But she didn’t finish the thought. Instead, she pulled an antique compact from her jean pocket. The tarnished metal, still warm from being tucked away, fit perfectly into Mags’s palm. The slight heft of the object felt good in her hand. She examined the lid: a creamy teal enamel with the design of a blossoming flower in the middle done in mother of pearl. Automatically, she opened the clasp and found the mirror still intact, although a collection of dark black spots ringed the edge, along with an old puff, stained beige. Mags closed the compact—click.

“The girl needs that,” Kendra stated, craning her neck toward Mags. Her face was a mess of smudged makeup and trickling red. A false eyelash had come loose in the wet gore, and Kendra looked even more doll-like with one grotesque blinking eye. “Don’t let the bitch break you.”

Mags couldn’t think of a reply that made much sense. Why would Kendra say such a thing? Surely she was just out of it, concussed even, from her fall. That had to be it.

“Uh, okay then. Thanks, I guess!” She held up the compact, then dropped it into her purse. Making her way up the castle steps, she looked back at Kendra, wondering what she’d meant, but the woman only stared toward the horizon, waiting for help.