Carter shivered beside her in his pajamas, and the fog rose up clumsily and took the rough shape of the man in the old-fashioned coat, stronger, more solid than ever before, his face a blur with holes for eyes.

He leaned forward and his face became sharper, grinning at them, blocking the door.

“No!” Andie said, scrambling onto the bed in front of Carter.

“Get out,” Carter whispered to her. “He comes for me. Get out.”

“No.” She knelt on the bed between the thing and Carter, facing it down over the foot of the bed. “Go away. You can’t have him.”

The thing moved closer, losing definition as it moved, re-forming into the man as it came closer, giving her vertigo again.

Andie scooted back against Carter, spreading out her arms to shield him. “No. This kid is off limits. Go haunt somebody your own age, you pervert. No.”

The thing arched over them, and Andie felt the cold in her bones, and then something went sailing over her shoulder and another and another, and she realized that Carter was throwing lit candles, the old singed carpet igniting again, flames shooting up. She swung her arm through the thing, tearing through its definition yelling, “This kid is mine!” her arm searing with cold. She grabbed Carter by the back of his pajama collar and dragged him around the icy mist that was re-forming above the flames, through the door and the halls to the nursery where she slammed the door behind them both.

She shoved the boy in front of the fireplace. “You stay here.”

Then she grabbed the small fire extinguisher from the mantel and ran back down the gallery and into Carter’s bedroom, terrified that the flames would have ignited the bed by now, but the fire was out and the room was empty and cold, cold beyond anything natural, so she slammed the door and ran back to the nursery.

Carter was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering.

“Oh, baby.” She sank down next to him on the hearth and pulled him into her arms. “I’m so sorry. I should have been there.”

He was rigid in her arms, unyielding the way Alice used to be, but Carter didn’t scream, he just endured.

“I’ll take care of it,” Andie told him, holding him tightly. “I’ll get rid of them. I’ll get you out of here-”

“What’s wrong?” Alice said, from her bed, sitting up, groggy with sleep.

“There was a ghost in Carter’s room,” Andie said.

Alice slid off the bed. “Is he okay? Was it Peter?”

“Peter,” Andie said, thinking, Fucking hallucination, my ass.

“The ghost who wants the house,” Carter said.

“Why didn’t you keep your fireplace lit?” Andie said. He was still so cold in her arms, and she rocked him a little bit, just because she was so guilt-stricken about leaving him to handle his ghost alone.

“It doesn’t work,” Carter said.

“Jesus Christ,” Andie said, thinking, Why didn’t you tell me?, thinking, Crumb knew that fireplace didn’t work and still put him in there, thinking, I let him down so badly. “I’m so sorry, Carter, I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything,” he said, still stiff in her arms.

“That’s why I’m sorry.”

He pulled away from her, and she let go, almost in tears because she’d done so badly by him.

“I’m okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

She nodded. “We’ll move your stuff in from your room later. You’re never going back there.”

“I’m okay,” he said again, that flat look back in his eyes.

She grabbed his arms, as if she could shake some response into him. “Carter, it’s going to be different, I swear. I’m going to get you out of here. I know Miss J killed May because she was trying to take you away-”

“That wasn’t why,” Carter said.

Andie waited.

He swallowed and then he started to talk and it was as if once he started, he couldn’t stop. “Alice was screaming in the hall by the bathroom because we’d been alone all night while Aunt May was out, and Alice was scared. Aunt May came home and went up on the tower and yelled at her friends, and then she came down and said, ‘Shut up, Alice,’ but Alice couldn’t stop crying. Aunt May put on her prom dress and swished around and said, ‘See, Alice? See how pretty?’ but Alice couldn’t stop, and Aunt May was drunk, and I tried to get Alice to stop, but she couldn’t, and Aunt May slapped her…”

He took a deep shuddering breath, his eyes bleak, and Andie thought, Fucking May.

“I grabbed Alice, and Aunt May said she was sorry. She said she was just so lonely, she talked about some guy who wouldn’t pay attention to her. She said she was doing a good job, but he wouldn’t come back, he wouldn’t love her, and I didn’t care.” His voice hardened. “She’d slapped Alice.”

“Right,” Andie said. “You were right.”

“Then she started to cry and went out into the gallery, and Alice followed her, crying, telling her not to cry, and I heard them both scream.” He swallowed hard. “When I got out there, Alice was by the gallery rail, screaming, and the railing was broken, and Aunt May was… down in the hall.” He looked sick for a minute. “I looked over the edge and she was all… Her neck was wrong and there was blood… under her head. A lot of it. Alice said it was Miss J, that Miss J had come up out of the carpet, but then Crumb came out and saw me. She told me to shut Alice up and to keep my mouth shut and go back to bed.”

Andie put her arm around him again and pulled him close, and this time he leaned against her. “Crumb’s gone, your uncle North threw her out of the house this afternoon. And you’re not alone anymore. I’m here, I know there are ghosts, and I’m not leaving you. You never have to go through that again.”

He looked at her with eyes as flat as ever, a twelve-year-old who’d seen too much. “The police said Aunt May fell into the moat, but Crumb dragged her body there and then washed up the blood. After that, the nannies came.”

Andie nodded. “And that’s when Alice started to scream all the time.”

“She’s afraid somebody else will die. That’s why we get rid of the nannies. The ghosts aren’t going to kill Crumb, she’s been here forever. It’s the new people who try to change things…” He lifted his chin. “You should get out of here.”

“Not without you.”

“They’ll never let us go,” Carter said.

“The hell they won’t,” Andie said, and then North came in.

“I just threw Kelly O’Keefe and her cameraman into the storm,” he began and then he stopped. “What happened?”

“They’re not hallucinations, they’re ghosts,” Andie said.

“Andie,” he began, and she shook her head, slowly.

“Do not fuck with me on this one,” she said. “There are ghosts.”


Andie asked North to sit with the kids while she went to find Isolde, so he stayed, watching Alice fall back asleep and Carter stare into the fire.

Carter looked like Southie at twelve, the same flop of brown hair, the same blue eyes, the same gangly, growing-in-all-directions body. The difference was that Southie had laughed all the time when he was twelve. Carter looked like he’d never laughed in his life.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” North told him.

Carter nodded, evidently not surprised.

“But I believe something bad is going on here, and I believe you’ve been handling it on your own for too long.”

“Andie’s good,” Carter said, and then when North didn’t say anything, he added, “It’s been better with her here.”

“I’m here now, too.”

Carter nodded, not impressed.

North studied the boy’s face, the circles under his eyes, the exhaustion that wasn’t just from this night, the kind of tiredness that came from never letting down your guard. “My dad died when I was twelve.”

Carter gave him a “so what?” look.

“My mom had a hard time with it. She felt guilty about a lot of things. So I covered for her. I had to. I had a little brother, and he was really scared. But I got really tired of handling it.”

Carter nodded.

“And then about six months after my dad died, my uncle Merrill came back from this long trip he’d been on, and bought the house next door, and took over the family, and everything got better. Not back to normal because my dad was still dead, but… better. Because somebody had my back.”

Carter sat very still, and North remembered how it had been, how he’d just stared at his uncle when he’d finally said, “Sorry, boy, I let you down. I’ll take care of things now.” Even though Merrill had screwed up the firm, he’d taken damn good care of the family. You could forgive a lot if somebody was there to take care of things until you grew up.

“I’ve got your back now,” North said. “The ghost thing, I don’t believe in that. But you are not the only one taking care of your sister now. It’s not just Andie taking care of Alice and you. From now on, I’ll be here.”

“Here,” Carter said.

“I’ll stay here with you until I can get you out of here,” North said, having no idea how the hell he was going to do that and keep up with his cases. “And then you’ll come to Columbus and live with us. Your rooms are ready now. I’ll be there for you. I will be there for you as long as you need me. And I’m sorry as hell that I didn’t say this two years ago.”

“Wouldn’t have done any good,” Carter said. “We can’t leave.”

The boy sounded hopeless, not obstinate.

“Why?”

“People die when we try to leave.”

“Who?”

“My dad. Aunt May. The last governess almost. They want us here.”

“The ghosts?”

Carter nodded. “I know you think we’re crazy, but we see them. Andie does, too. I didn’t think she did, I thought she was just trying to make us feel better, but she yelled at Peter, she saw him. And she talks to Aunt May.”

“She thinks she does, anyway. Look, we can protect-”