Cover

Also by Kalyn Josephson

The Storm Crow

The Crow Rider

Dedication

To my sister, Adriane, who taught me to value my heart

Chapter 1: Anna

Everything looks different in the dark.

By day, Ravenfall’s ballroom is all sparkling stained glass and high, arching ceilings—the perfect place to sit and sketch for hours. By night, my family’s inn becomes a minefield of laughing guests, friendly locals, and what I’m pretty sure is at least one werewolf over by the fruit punch, judging by the bite-sized pieces of raw steak he’s digging into.

The crowd would be fine, if it didn’t make not touching people impossible. Before I turned thirteen and got my psychometry powers—a fancy way of saying Congrats! You get visions of death now—I’d have been weaving through the crowd, chasing down our cat Max before he could prank a guest.

Now I’m hiding in a plant.

You’d think no one would wander over to a dark corner overhung with singing ivy—currently rustling out a tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and trying to wrap its crimson vines around my ankle—yet I’ve had to dodge a wayward guest three times already.

Granted, Ravenfall’s ballroom is full to bursting. It’s mid-October and the countdown to Samhain and my family’s biggest party of the year is well under way, even if half the people here don’t even know that Samhain is the Celtic origins of Halloween, or that it’s pronounced Sa-Win.

But in the town of Wick, Oregon, where magic is never far from your fingertips, Halloween is the biggest holiday of the year, and Ravenfall is the place to be. Our Samhain party at the end of October is the only time the house lets down its magical wards, letting in everyone from the local witches and mazzikim to the selkies that live in Hollowthorn Woods. Under glamour, of course. We like to give the out-of-towners something to talk about, not run screaming from.

The house went all out in celebration, decorating the two-story room’s white stone ceiling with a swirling galaxy of pastel pink and blue and yellow. Glittering mist gathers in the corners and spirals down in ribbons.

When the ivy starts playing with my hair (a curly hair “no freaking way”), I escape along the wall behind the buffet, where the house is trying to foist a slice of pumpkin cake with tiny orange icing stars on a baffled guest. I wonder how long he’ll spend looking for strings that aren’t there. The local magical folk know not to bother—the house can control the inanimate objects inside it, so long as it’s touched them before.

I’m halfway to my new hiding place behind the bar when I spot my twin sisters talking to Mr. and Mrs. Andrade beside the stairs to the second-floor balustrade. The couple runs the animal shelter in downtown Wick—you know, cats, dogs, the occasional pocket dragon for the more magically inclined. They’re laughing and smiling, Kara no doubt using her mind-reading abilities, and Rose using her empathy to entertain them. Locals in the know often try and hide their thoughts from Kara or emotions from Rose and see if they can guess them.

Jealousy pangs through me. I want nothing more than to be out there doing readings for guests or entertaining locals, but unlike the rest of my family, my psychometry powers are useless. When I touch someone who’s seen death, I get a vision of it through their eyes. And asking people, Hey, remember that time that person died? is not a fun party trick.

Mostly I’ve gotten used to the visions—blood and monsters come with the psychic family gig, especially in Wick—but sometimes I touch someone who’s seen a really bad death and I can’t get it out of my head for weeks. The nightmares keep me up, no matter how much lavender Gran slips under my pillow.

Which is why tonight I planned to stay firmly planted in the ivy corner, but my plans have a habit of unspooling like a ball of yarn in Max’s paws.

The twins spot me and detach from the Andrades, joining me along the wall.

“Taking the easy way out again, Anna?” Kara asks, always looking to get under my skin.

“Are you frightened?” In contrast, Rose is all willowy-soft voice and gentle concern. Of course, with her power to sense emotions, she can literally just look at me and know the answer to her question.

Five years older than me, they’re already tall, but in shimmering silver dresses and matching heels they’re practically skyscrapers. They share a knowing look that makes me want to introduce their nice dresses to the singing ivy. They’re as different as two fraternal twins can be, from their powers to their personalities, but they always know what the other is thinking. Of course, Kara cheats.

“You know I can’t go out there,” I grumble, shoving my hands into my dress pockets. Kara always says pockets on a dress are tacky—and a missed opportunity for a cute bag—but I never wear a dress without them. What if I found a handful of faerie dust by the wood? Am I supposed to carry a bag around everywhere?

“You doubt yourself too much.” Rose absently twists a red curl around a finger. “Don’t hide from your powers, Anna. Embrace them.”

“Like we do.” Kara nods at a passing man with a feral grin. “Take that guy for starters. He forgot to put on underwear tonight.”

“Oh,” Rose says softly. “He’s embarrassed.”

“And that woman’s a banshee.” Kara points across the room at a pale-faced woman following an elderly guest a little too closely. She gives me a sly look out of the corner of her eye. “Of course, if you’re too scared…”

I glower at her. “I am not.”

Kara tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I bet you can’t last a minute out on the dance floor.”

“Watch me!” And to prove it, I dart into the crowd.

Immediately, I swerve to avoid two dancing men in glittering vests, then duck under the arm of a woman making sloshing gestures with her pumpkin root beer as she talks. I make it to an open space in the middle and slow, looking for an escape. I proved my point; now I’m getting out of here before—

I gasp as a hand brushes mine. A chill shoots through me in a burst of power I’m still not used to. Everything turns hazy, and suddenly I’m reliving someone else’s memory. Compared to other visions my powers have given me, this one is strangely warped, as if looking up through muddy water.

I’m in someone’s motel room. A man stands at my side, but I focus on the one tied to the chair before me. His pale face is covered in bruises, but his gray eyes are resolute. He’s not giving me the information I need. At his feet lies the body of a white woman with bright red hair and empty green eyes staring up into nothing. She didn’t answer my questions either.

The man next to me nudges me aside, and I step away, bowing. His voice is the rush of autumn leaves, the air faint with the scent of pine. I can’t make out his words. He wraps his hand around the man’s neck. A golden light buds beneath his palm, flowing from the captive’s throat and up the veins in the man’s arms.

Then the motel room door opens.

A boy no more than fourteen stands just inside the doorway, another older teenager behind him. The younger boy drops his keycard with a gasp. The last of the light leaves the victim, and he slumps forward, dead.

Then I’m on the kid, tackling him to the ground. We wrestle. I nick his shoulder with a knife as he throws me off. There’s a terrible sound, and I roll over to see a knife in the other man’s ribs. The older teen pulls another blade out and sends it flying into the man’s shoulder as he flees through the window.

All at once, the cold recedes and I come back to myself at the party. I’m on the ground, breathing fast. Whoever I bumped into—whoever gave me that vision—is gone.

Rose and Kara help me to my feet with identical frowns.

“Something felt off about that man,” Rose says wonderingly.

“I couldn’t hear his thoughts.” Kara absently brushes some glitter stars off my dress. “Anna?”

But I barely hear them. I can’t get the look on the dead peoples’ faces out of my head.

“Anna?” Kara says more softly, but I only shake my head and pull away, fleeing from the party.

My pencil flashes across the page, trying to capture the look on the dead man’s face. I can never get the eyes right, the way they empty when someone dies, like a candle flame smothered by its own wax. I smudge his iris with my finger, making the color steelier, more ghostly.

“Still wrong,” I mutter. “He doesn’t need eyes, right? Who needs eyes?”

I toss the sketch pad past the cup of Earl Grey on the kitchen table. It goes sliding off the edge, but a chair shifts aside to catch it before it can hit the floor. I give the house a halfhearted thank-you wave before dropping my forehead onto the table. Usually drawing helps me deal with my visions, but there’s something about this one that won’t let go of me.

“It was terrible,” I say to Nora. “Like the time Max caught that faerie trying to poison the garden level terrible.”

The faerie had survived, but there’s still a spot in the garden where nothing will grow from all the blood.

“You were three. How do you remember that?” My mother doesn’t look up from the already spotless counters she’s wiping down.

The wood practically sparkles in the gold-red sunlight, but the house has been in a bad mood all day after straightening up from last night’s party, and nothing cheers it up more than clean countertops and a cup of Earl Grey. The house could do it itself, but it’d be kind of like massaging your own shoulders.

“I’m a sponge of death,” I mutter into the table.

She sighs, looking tired, and I wonder if a migraine kept her up last night. “Did you see anyone’s face, sponge?”

“No, the vision was weird and fuzzy.” I scratch the edge of one of the many sets of initials carved into the tabletop until the house scoots it out of my reach. I nearly tumble out of my seat, and I glower at the nearest wall until the house grudgingly slides it back. It’s not my fault the worn wood is scarred with knife marks.

Nora makes a sound of consideration. “That can happen when there’s strong magic nearby.”

“Whoever I bumped into didn’t even care about them dying,” I add with a shiver.

The man hadn’t died quickly. Death isn’t as they show it in the movies. Bullets don’t always kill instantly, and they don’t leave just enough time for last words. Death lingers, clinging like campfire smoke in your clothes, and all I want is to wash it out.

Nora stops cleaning, her big brown eyes settling on me. My older brother started the tradition of calling our mother by her first name. The twins and I picked it up from him, and now calling her Mom feels weird.

“I’m sorry, love,” she says. “I know how much these visions weigh on you, but you’ll get used to your powers in time. Just give them a chance.”

Ever since my ability showed up a few months ago on my thirteenth birthday, my parents have been trying to convince me how special it is, but I don’t see how. I can only tell people things they already know. What’s the point? I can’t read emotions like my sister Rose or sense auras and summon spirits like Aunt Elaine. Mine’s the only power in the whole family that’s useless.

I belong at the inn as much as a vampire belongs in the sun.

Nora rests a hand on her hip. “It’s terrible what happened to those people, but that vision could be ten years old.”

“Maybe I can help find who did it,” I say. “Point the police in the right direction.”

Nora frowns, and I wince. A lot of things bring out her serious face, but I’ve hit one of the biggest: talking about our powers to nonmagical folk. We don’t go to extremes to hide our abilities—this is Wick after all—but even here regular people believe in magic the way some kids believe in Santa Claus: halfway and for fun. If ole St. Nick really popped down their chimney, they’d call the police, which is why all the magical residents do their best to keep the truth under wraps.

Most of the people who come to Ravenfall come for our psychic name and services, but seeing and believing aren’t the same thing. A lot of guests leave sure it’s all a hoax, and those with an open mind aren’t looking to tell the world, unless they want to get the Squiggly Eye Treatment—you know, the thing where people squish their faces together and wiggle their eyebrows around when you say something weird like, I was talking to my dead grandpa the other night.

I get that a lot.

“You know we don’t get involved like that, Anna,” Nora says sternly. “If it gets back to us, people start asking questions we can’t answer, and that hasn’t ended well for our family in the past.”

“But I want to know what happened,” I argue. “I need to know.”

The wall behind me lets out a loud creak, as if the house is shifting its weight.

“See? The house agrees.” I jab a thumb at the wall. It really needs a new coat of periwinkle paint, but the house won’t allow it. Rose says it’s because it tickles.

“The house always agrees with you, honey. You’re the only one who has any time for it.”

The only reason I have more time is because no one visits Ravenfall for my powers. While Nora tells fortunes, the twins read people, and Aunt Elaine talks to spirits, I sweep the porch and chase the sprites out of the garden. All I want is for my powers to be useful, for me to belong.

It doesn’t help that I’ve always known that I’ll inherit the inn. Nora’s never said it, but who else? My older brother is studying to be a physics professor at MIT, intent on proving his powers through science, and the twins already have college scholarships, which just leaves me.

Plain, useless me.

I spin the mug of Earl Grey in circles as I replay the scene from last night over and over again in my head, looking for anything I might have missed. Who did I bump into? Why had they killed those poor people?

Glass shatters.

I jump, nearly knocking the mug off the table. Nora stares blankly at me. Glass shards the color of dried blood lay before her in a perfect crescent shape.

I sigh. That’d been one of my favorite cups. It’s not the first sacrificial victim of my family’s powers, though, and it won’t be the last. My uncle once set my favorite couch on fire, and Gran has a tendency to leave objects floating on the ceiling. Nora always goes zombie-eyed whenever she gets her visions, and anything she’s holding on to gets a gravity-induced reality check.

I love magic, but sometimes living with a family of psychics can be a real drag.

Nora blinks rapidly as the vision releases her. “Oh dear.”

“What did you see?”

“Blood,” she replies grimly. “And a new guest.”

A dustpan launches off the wall with a small broom, and she steps aside as the house sweeps up the glass.

“That’s so vague,” I groan. Sometimes Nora’s visions are as clear as a scrying crystal, but other times they’re just feelings or impressions. This one can mean anything. There’s not much I like about my powers, but at least my visions are way more specific.

She gives a What can you do? shrug and picks up the now-full dustpan. “How about this: I’ll look into what you saw so we can put your mind at ease. In the meantime, do me a favor and feed Max before the guest arrives. You know how he gets around blood.”

“Feeding Max is Kara’s job this week.”

Nora draws a deep, deliberate breath. As if I’m the difficult one. “Your sister has multiple guest readings today. She doesn’t have time for chores right now.”

Right. Because the rest of my family can entertain guests and make money with their abilities, and I can’t, so who better to do all the chores?

“I think I’ll be Cinderella for Samhain this year,” I say. “Or maybe a redheaded stepchild.”

She doesn’t laugh. “Come on, Anna. That isn’t fair. Is it really such a big deal to feed Max?”

Arguing with Nora is like asking a river to move out of your way, and this is an argument we’ve had too many times already. Though I can’t help hoping someday she’ll say, You’re right, Anna. Today you can meet with guests and Kara will do all the chores.

“Whatever.”

Ignoring Nora’s look of disproval, I leave through the side door onto the wide wraparound porch. The auburn wood is warm under my bare feet, the last bits of mist persisting in the late-afternoon light. The house lets out a long, settling sigh, all its mismatched architecture and uneven floors relaxing in the warm sun.

Someone’s already begun putting up decorations for Samhain. A fall wreath of tiny white pumpkins, brown autumn leaves, and sunflowers hangs on the white kitchen door, and faerie lights wind along the wrought-iron deck railing. Gran says they’re powered by real faerie dust. Crush one, and you’ll be granted a wish, but only something small, such as finding a lost sock or summoning a lump of sugar for your tea.

It doesn’t do chores, though—I’ve tried.

A few months ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about doing my chores. I love living at the inn; I even love working here with my family. But now that I have my powers, I want to do something more useful, to actually be a part of Ravenfall, not just another set of hands. But to do that, I have to somehow prove my powers can be useful.

Maybe I can help the boy who opened the motel room door. The fuzziness of the vision kept me from seeing his face, but if I can find out more about the people who died, maybe I can find the boy too. Then I can finally put my powers to use and help them, and Nora will see I can do more for the family than just chores.

A ball of light bobs past my head.

The wisp stops, bright as a glowing headlight, and circles around me once, before zipping off into Hollowthorn Woods.

I watch it go with a frown.

Ravenfall sits at a weak spot in the veil to the Otherworld, where spirits dwell. The veil grows thinner as the end of the month approaches, letting spirits and other creatures cross over into the human world, but I wouldn’t have expected to see wisps for another week.

I’ll have to ask Gran about it.

My hunt for Max takes much longer than I’d hoped. The house tries to help, the walls groaning in different spots to lead me to him. But Max enjoys aggravating the house, and by the time I get to where it’s sent me, he’s already gone.

Eventually I head to the kitchen for a raw steak. The meat is cold and slimy against my fingers, but I don’t mind it.

“I’m taking your food outside, Max,” I call.

An elderly couple stands just inside the doorway, blinking at me in alarm and clutching their suitcases.

“Don’t worry,” I reassure them. “Max only eats dead things.”

The man draws up, looking horrified, and I realize too late that didn’t actually sound as reassuring as it did in my head. Embarrassed, I skitter past them, trying not to overthink it. Seeing me walking down the hall with a bloody steak in my hand probably isn’t the strangest thing they’ve seen in Wick, and I long ago stopped trying to make friends with the guests. Or anyone, for that matter.

Who needs friends when I have the house and Max?

“If you don’t come get it, I’m going to eat it myself!” I step outside onto the porch.

Juices trickle down my hand. I hold the steak off to the side to keep it from getting on my clothes. My worn jeans are one stain away from mysteriously disappearing after a trip to the laundry, courtesy of Nora.

A black shape trots my way from the woods surrounding the house. Max is trying to make me think he’s been outside the whole time, but I know better.

The rumble of an engine fills the air as a cab comes up the driveway, momentarily distracting me from Max. It pulls in to the roundabout and stops at the base of the steps. The driver smiles and waves, but I’m more interested in the unfamiliar boy in the back seat. Is this Nora’s mysterious guest?

He climbs out, a small duffel bag in his hand.

The first thing I notice are his eyes. They’re an impossibly bright gray.

The second thing I notice is the blood.

Chapter 2: Colin

The first thing I notice is the house.

It’s huge. Mostly Gothic style, all pointed arches and stained-glass windows draped in ivy, but the rest is a random mix of Victorian turrets, craftsman columns, and medieval stonework—all the styles I recognize from flipping through housing magazines late at night when my family has already gone to bed.

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