Now Faye let out a shriek.

“You too, Faye,” the witch said. Faye shrieked again. “I haven’t had any visitors in this house yet. But I have wanted them.”

“Tea?” Wunder said. “Maybe. I guess. Sure. Sure, we can have some tea.”

As soon as the witch turned around, Faye leaned toward him.

“She knows our names!” she whispered. “Don’t eat or drink anything. That’s how witches capture unsuspecting children. And you never told me you’d seen the spirals spin too!”

The door swung open. The witch went inside. Faye grabbed Wunder’s hand, and Wunder didn’t try to stop her. They entered the house together.

As soon as Wunder crossed the threshold, it happened. The stone of his heart—the stone that had only barely warmed since his sister’s death—began to shiver. The stone of his heart began to shake.

Wunder wrapped the hand not holding Faye’s around the side of his chest. He held on tightly.

They were standing in a long dimly lit hall. There were doors on either side, doors with tarnished gold knobs and keyholes. Even here, inside the house, the wood was spiraled. The floors, the walls, the ceilings—every visible surface. It gave the place a jumbled-up look, a distorted look, so that Wunder felt like he might topple over if he moved too fast.

“There are not many DoorWay Trees left in the world,” the witch said. She moved gracefully down the hallway, far more easily than Wunder would have expected for someone her age. She seemed unaffected by the spirals. “And even fewer houses made of them. Houses, of course, are temporary places. But the trees—the trees can last forever. Very deep roots, very high branches.”

“Are they magical?” Faye asked. Her voice was shrill. “What do they do? Are you magical? What do you do?”

“Magical? I don’t know about magical.” The witch made a small noise in her throat that might have been a laugh. “But the trees are special. Yes, yes, yes, so special. All around the world, all throughout history, they have been there. There was one here once, in Branch Hill. But no more. There are fewer and fewer. Most of us have forgotten them.”

“I’ve never seen wood like this anywhere else,” Wunder said. He released his grip on himself long enough to brush his fingers against the spirals on the wall.

“The closest one is not close enough,” the witch replied. “I believe that every town should have a DoorWay Tree. But, of course, that is not up to me.”

“Who is it up to?” Faye asked. “The high priestess of your coven?”

The witch didn’t answer, but she made the maybe-laugh again.

The hallway opened onto a large parlor. Everything in the room was coated in a thick layer of dust. There was a black piano and a soot-blackened fireplace. The walls were covered in shelves, but the shelves were empty.

Wunder wanted to ask a thousand questions. He wanted to ask if anyone had ever lived there before and why the spirals spun. He wanted to ask why she was there and if her name was Milagros and if she had ordered the memorial stone. But his thoughts were coming so fast and his heart was shaking so violently that all he could manage to say was, “You just moved in?”