As for the sinkholes that had begun in town earlier this year—that had happened before, too. Only once, and that back in the 1810s, but sinkholes were almost unheard of in this part of the United States. (Verlaine had researched this for the Lightning Rod, which was way more on top of the issue than the Guardian—not that anyone paid attention.)

The part that got to Verlaine was all the news about animals. She had a tender heart for animals—not just her beloved cat, Smuckers, but all of them, alpacas to zebras. Since age eleven she’d been a vegetarian. So her eyes blurred with tears every time she read about a mass death of crows, all of them found twitching and dying in a heap of feathers on the street. Or foals born with three heads, a bizarre genetic event that apparently happened in Captive’s Sound once every twenty years, like clockwork. Or a dog found without its head on the steps of City Hall. Who could do that to a dog?

A witch, apparently. Not like Nadia. The other kind of witch, the one behind whatever was going on here.

“I can’t believe we don’t know about more of this,” Mateo said after they’d all been at it for more than an hour. “I mean, they actually thought a ‘freak wave’ could pick up a whaling ship and just drop it in the middle of town? Even back in the 1700s, you’d figure they knew better than that.”

“They probably did,” Nadia said absently. “But what were they supposed to report? The truth?”

“Well, yeah.” Verlaine took journalism seriously, even if everyone else thought it was just tabloid stuff and spin. There was a place in the world for people who told the unvarnished truth. At least, she hoped so.

“The part that weirds me out is the rain of toads,” Nadia said.

At last, a question Verlaine could answer. “Oh, that’s actually not magic. Not even weird. Sometimes tornadoes pick them up, and they get dropped down through a rain cloud somewhere else.”

Nadia shook her head. “It rained toads inside. In several of the houses on the Hill. All of a sudden, plop, toads rained from the ceiling.”

“Ew.” Okay, Verlaine decided, that was definitely not tornado-related.

Mateo cut in, “What about the Cabot house? Did it happen there?”

Suddenly Nadia looked embarrassed—as though she’d like to sink into the ground to hide. Verlaine was very familiar with this feeling. “No. It didn’t. But they—well, they said there were questions about whether a Cabot was involved. Some people suspected a prank by the ‘eccentric’ Millicent Cabot—”

“My great-great-grandmother.” Mateo leaned back in the creaky wooden chair, shutting his eyes too tightly, like someone with a headache. “She lasted for decades, crazy as hell—at least, according to Grandma. Most of us burn out after only a few years of the visions. Millicent ran mad for almost thirty years, until finally one day she—well, she hung herself from the rafters in the attic.” He tried to smile, but it was an odd expression, tense and tight. “Another reason I really never want to live in that house.”