Where, for the first time since before the funeral, the witch was not on the porch.

The house was dark. Not a single light was on. The windows that weren’t broken shone black, blank in the light of the waning crescent moon. Even the spirals on the house seemed darker than usual.

Wunder wasn’t running anymore. His breath came in shuddering gasps as he crept over to the house and then up the stairs to the porch. For so long, this place had seemed so wondrous to him—magical, sacred, otherworldly. It was the place where he had begun to believe, truly believe in miracles.

And now here he was, climbing the splintered, spiraled stairs of the DoorWay House in the dead of night. Here he was, with the stone of his heart cracking and splitting, then stilling and hardening. Here he was, having buried a sister and spoken with a witch. Here he was, having stolen and lied and spent hour after hour in a cemetery where the dead seemed gone, gone forever. Here he was, having learned the pure loves and deep sorrows of Branch Hill, having questioned the truths of life and death, having connected the dots of hundreds of souls.

And what did he believe now?

He didn’t know, he didn’t know.

But here he was.

At the door, he hesitated for a moment. Then he turned the doorknob.

Caw! A bird’s cry sounded over the noise of roaring wind and thrashing branches and rushing dead leaves. Caw!

Wunder stepped over the threshold and into the waiting pitch-black of the DoorWay House.

The vacillations of his heart only intensified inside the house. It made Wunder want to wrap his arms around himself, to try to hold himself together, but he couldn’t. He needed his hands, because there was no light. He moved forward with cautious shuffles, arms outstretched, the floor-to-ceiling spirals that usually sent him reeling hidden in the blackness.

He knew, only from memory, when the hallway ended. A few steps later, his hand hit something hard, and a noise, discordant and growling, sounded out. He spun toward the door before he realized what it was—the piano in the parlor. He put his hands out again. He kept on, farther and farther into the darkness.

In the dining room, he held on to the wooden table, letting it guide him to the doorway at its end. And it was there that he finally saw the light, just a pinprick at first.

Then a glow.

Then a radiating halo.

And in the center of it, the face of the witch.

Chapter 43

The witch was sitting at the table in the kitchen, a candle in front of her. In the flickering light, her hair looked gray. Her face looked crumpled and sunken, like a mummy’s, like a corpse’s.

“You have come,” she said in her faraway, low voice.

“I’m here,” Wunder said. His voice was high and quavering. Now that he was here, he was afraid of what might happen. Now that he was here, he wished he hadn’t come.