“Study break,” she says. “Want to join? I was thinking Mean Girls.”

One of the only movies Mom, Lily, and I all like. Why is Lily being so nice to me this morning? I don’t get it, but that’s one mystery that’s just going to have to wait.

“No thanks,” I say. “Boomer needs to go out.”

She looks the slightest bit disappointed as we leave. I think back to what she said when she was doing my makeup, about it being hard to make friends at her new school. Is that why she’s suddenly being nice again? Is she so desperate for company that she wants to hang out with me?

Once Boomer and I start walking, though, my thoughts quickly turn back to Gram, my mind running over what Fina and I found out this morning.

Gram was sick as a child. Maybe for years. And when she recovered, Madeline Mitchell was her best friend. Until something happened between them. Except, if they weren’t friends anymore, how did Madeline know about the journal in the sycamore hollow?

The journal! Madeline took it last night when she ran. Could she have returned it by now? Maybe she’s written another chapter of the story. Or maybe she saw who was spying on her in the woods last night. Maybe she’ll have written me a note explaining everything.

Boomer and I fly down through the meadows and into the Spinney. I tell myself not to get my hopes up. That Madeline probably hasn’t had time to write back yet. Or that she might be too angry about our stakeout to write again at all.

But when I come to a stop, breathless beside the sycamore tree, I see that the journal has indeed been returned to the hollow. And when I flip eagerly through the pages, I see a new chapter waits for me inside.

After Ivy had been alone for some time, she felt the sudden presence of someone nearby in the forest. Someone watching her.

Then she felt Shilling’s warm tongue against her frozen cheek. She opened her eyes to see the great wolf dog standing over her, feebly wagging his tail.

“Shilling,” she said, her voice hoarse with frost, “I told you to leave me here.”

But over his silver shoulder, she noticed something strange. Two trees that had not been there before. And the longer she looked, the surer she was that they were not trees at all but girls, just like she was—only with bark instead of skin, long spindly branches for arms, and hair made of willow branches. One of them held in her wooden hands a stone cup.

“Drink,” she said. “It will do you good.”