Her car was in the public garage off Essex, and she hurried to it. It wasn’t a long drive down Broad and out to her cottage, but it did involve avoiding crowds of jaywalking tourists.
Parking, she studied her “cottage in the woods.” Technically, it was an old house, but it did have the white-walled, thatched-roof look of a cottage, and she was surrounded by a small forest of trees. When she had the fire going and smoke was drifting out of the chimney, it did look as if she lived in a home that belonged in a fairy tale.
As she opened the door and stepped in, Devin found herself smiling. Poe immediately let out a loud squawk. Unlike Poe’s raven, this bird didn’t say “nevermore.” He only squawked. But he liked to sit on his perch and watch her. Sometimes—though he was nowhere near as attached to her as he had been to Aunt Mina—he would even sit on her shoulder. She didn’t mind; Aunt Mina had trained him. He kept his droppings discreetly deposited in his cage onto newspaper that was easy to replace.
“Hey, buddy,” she said, putting down her packages and walking over to the bird. She stroked his head through the bars the way he liked. “Got your birdseed. All is well.”
His cage was near the mantel, so she set the bag of birdseed on top while she fed him. When she was finished, she stepped back and smiled, thinking that it was time to make some changes. But it was hard. She’d spent so much of her childhood here in the cottage. Her parents had traveled frequently for work, and since Devin had loved Aunt Mina and her aunt had loved her, it had made sense for her to stay here.
She’d loved how different Aunt Mina was from her own parents and everybody else’s—that she collected unusual and beautiful things. Once, in school, Brent Corbin had told her that if she’d just add a few more wacky family members she could join the cast of The Addams Family.
That was okay. She’d grown up with love, both here in Auntie Mina’s cottage and in the house her parents had owned—and still owned, actually—an old Victorian near the wharf and the House of the Seven Gables. It had been rented out for years now, and it was completely different from the way she remembered it. While the cottage...
Despite the years, little had changed here.
Devin opened the box holding her beautiful new silver medallion and hung it around the neck of a marble bust of Madame Tussaud that sat on a pedestal near the fireplace. The bust had been made from a life mask of the tiny woman who had created so many wax images, including death masks of some of the victims of the guillotine. Aunt Mina had loved the woman because she had been so talented—and such a survivor. The pentagram suited her marble neck.
“Guess I should get to work, huh?” Devin asked the bird.
He was too busy eating to reply.
She booted up the computer. The world seemed silent. Too silent. She turned on iTunes and set the music to play randomly.
For long minutes she actually concentrated.
Then she heard the crying.
It was soft and heart-wrenching—so soft, she wasn’t sure at first that she was really hearing anything at all. Next she thought it might have been part of the song that was playing.
But then a Bon Jovi hit came on, and she knew there was no soft sobbing in that hard-hitting rock song.
She muted the volume and listened. She was certain she heard it again. Very strange, since her nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away.
She walked to the door and opened it—and thought she saw a woman in white disappearing into the trees.
“Hello?” she called out. “Can I help you?”
There was no answer. The leaves rustled as the breeze picked up, nothing more.
“Please, do you need help?” She stepped out onto the stone path that led from her house to the road.
No answer.
Because no one was out there, she told herself.
She turned and looked back at the bird. Poe was still playing with his seed, unconcerned.
And of course, the idea that there was anyone out there had almost certainly come from the fact that she’d spent half her childhood, her most impressionable years, growing up with Aunt Mina. Not that her aunt had been crazy—unless being delightfully full of fun and life could be called crazy. But Aunt Mina had been forever telling stories—stories about leprechauns and banshees and forest folk, and the arguments that went on between the tooth fairy and Santa’s elves.
Devin walked back in the house, trying to forget the sound of sobbing and give her attention back to Auntie Pim and the Belligerent Gnome.
It was wonderful that her books had sold out, she thought.