FOXGLOVE MANOR SAT UPON THE EDGE OF A WEATHERWORN CLIFFSIDE.

No one who saw the sloping porch or shattered windows would call it a “proud” estate, nor was it the warm and welcoming seaside manor that Signa had once envisioned establishing a proper life in. As it stood, Foxglove was as dreary a gray as the skies behind it and the thrashing water below, and was shielded by overgrown ferns and dampened jasmine that clawed its way up the towering structure.

Signa had felt the land’s bitter chill before she’d even stepped out of the carriage, Gundry looping circles at her muddied heels. Elaine followed, clutching her bonnet tight as the wind gnashed against them. Her small face was pinched as she watched the storm circle like a starved predator, waiting to strike.

This close to the cliff’s edge, Signa couldn’t help but wonder whether such a storm might whisk them away and toss their bodies into the fervent sea. She peered down at the scuttling crabs that huddled on jagged rocks covered with sea-foam and frowned, for such curiosity did nothing to ease her troubled mind. She would have of course preferred for the home to have been readied and staffed prior to her arrival so that Foxglove at least wouldn’t look as precarious as it felt, but they’d have to make do. She and Elaine had come with only their belongings and enough supplies to get settled, which was fortunate. Considering the storm poised to strike at any moment, there was no saying when they’d be able to head into town.

Still, Foxglove couldn’t all be doom and gloom. Signa’s parents had lived here once, after all, and were rumored to have hosted dozens of extravagant soirees during their years. Perhaps the gloom was rare, then. Or,

better yet, perhaps there was beauty in the midst of the gloom, and she needed only to squint to find it. She tried—very hard, in fact—until her temples pulsed and her eyes grew sore.

“It has potential.” Signa tried to sound hopeful, more for herself than for Elaine, who looked very much like a woman who regretted every decision she’d made in the past twenty-four hours. If the tiny white parasol she clutched was any indication, Elaine had been thoroughly ready to leave the dreariness of Thorn Grove behind in favor of seaside living. Seeing her dread, Signa almost felt guilty for asking the woman to accompany her.

Almost.

“All it needs is a little elbow grease,” Signa pressed on, determined not to let the woman turn back while she had the chance.

Elaine took one look at the slate-gray stones and exhaled. “I’m afraid I haven’t got that many elbows, miss.”

Only Gundry seemed to favor the estate. His paws were caked with mud and bits of grass, and his tail wagged as he sniffed at the heels of the carriage driver who clambered from his post, pressing one hand over his cap to keep the wind from snatching it as he carried the last of the luggage into the manor and then toddled back out. Signa had never seen someone in such haste, more eager to leave than even the horses, which were stomping and huffing their disapproval as the driver rushed back to his seat. He gave Signa no opportunity to invite him inside until the storm passed but instead snapped the reins and hurried off down the path.

A crow cawed down at them from the manor’s tallest spire, and Elaine whispered a prayer.

Signa couldn’t blame her. “I’ll put an ad in the paper,” she decided aloud, turning toward Elaine with the widest smile she could manage. “I’m certain we’ll have a full staff to assist us in no time.”

Elaine made a low noise in the back of her throat that was likely meant to be agreement but sounded more akin to agony. “Aye, miss.”

Signa decided that if Elaine stuck around, the woman could have whatever position in the house she’d like. It wasn’t as though there would be any shortage of them. Foxglove appeared every bit as large as Thorn Grove, though it was both taller and narrower, with towering gray spires she was certain the town probably found cheery and not at all unsettling. And while she hadn’t gotten close enough to see what condition they were in

beneath all the thriving greenery, there were stables, too, which would require a groom and stablemen once she gathered some horses. It was going to be more work than she ever imagined.

“We should hurry inside,” Elaine said, following Signa’s gaze. “We’ll be caught in the rain if we wait any longer.”

She was right, though Signa knew it was the cold clawing its way into her bones that Elaine truly wanted to get away from. While Signa had grown accustomed to such a chill, even her mortal body had its limits, and eventually there was no choice but to freeze or cross the last few steps into her new home.

Foxglove was where she was meant to make a new life for herself. One where she would live without the Hawthornes, Death, or anyone she loved. She tried not to let such bleak thoughts plague her mind and sought instead to think of all the possibilities waiting for her as she carefully stepped over broken shards of glass and into the manor.

Signa was glad to find that, aside from the dust, it wasn’t nearly as dreary as it appeared on the outside. It was, however… unique.

The entryway itself was a long stretch of space lined with portraits that had been meticulously hung, the space between each one measured with the utmost precision. Yet they were not nearly as colorful or precise as the portraits Signa was used to. The angles were sharp and unrefined, and the artist had a tendency to exaggerate features like the whites of eyes, the reediness or fullness of a body, or a smile so wide it was unnerving.

Aside from an ashy table decorated with an odd vase holding flowers that had long since wilted, ready to crack apart at the tenderest touch, not everything felt quite so macabre. Entirely out of sync with the art, Foxglove’s walls were all bright shades that almost tricked Signa into believing it truly was the cheerful seaside retreat she’d imagined—buttery yellows, delicate blues, and wallpaper adorned with imagery of birds. From the elegant carvings around the ceilings to the plush rugs she walked across, every detail had been lovely prior to the soot and grime that now coated them.

The climate was far from dry, and yet after twenty years of abandonment there was little to show for that. The porch was sloped, and several windows had been destroyed by vines and ivy that crawled their way in through broken glass. But there was nothing that couldn’t be remedied.

Signa’s pace was little more than a snail’s crawl as she made her way into a sage-green parlor with the most exquisite tea set on the table. There were trays inlaid with gold, ruined by tacky outlines of whatever had once been ready to serve but had long since been stolen away by ants. Signa’s skin crawled as she approached, not daring to touch this moment that felt stilled by time.

“Are you all right, miss?” Elaine’s voice was shaky, and for her benefit Signa nodded.

“I am.” She had trouble with her voice as she looked from the dusty marble busts to the rich leather sofa. She tried to imagine what this room might have looked like twenty years before, when her parents had been alive. There was still a deep imprint upon one of the cushions—had her father sat there? Had her mother, Rima Farrow, preferred the couch, or the beautiful green armchair across from it? Had they taken their tea here at this table?

How wonderful it would have been for Signa to have a single memory of her parents existing in this space. As it was, she had only remnants of what they’d left behind.

She turned toward more portraits that hung ready for her inspection, a few of them dispersed throughout the parlor. They all appeared to be done by the same hand, though it was a portrait of two women that drew Signa’s eye. She recognized her mother immediately, with her dark hair that had been painted in fast, messy strokes, and severe eyes that were the same shape as Signa’s. Beside her stood a young woman with thick ringlets the color of gingerbread. She was softer than Rima, a ghost of a smile playing upon rosy lips that were puckered like a heart. She had her arm draped around Rima’s waist, pulling her in close for the portrait.

There was so much about her family that she still wanted to know, and yet walking these halls felt like she herself was a ghost infiltrating the memories of a stranger. It was impossible to take a single step without questioning whether her mother had decorated the room she stood in or if her father had ended his nights in here as Elijah so often did in his parlor. Letting her thoughts wander, Signa absently pressed a finger to the portrait, trailing it over the glazed paint. She stopped cold, however, when the lips of the woman standing beside Rima drooped into a frown.

Signa swallowed her gasp as she yanked her hand back, not wanting to

alarm Elaine. It had only taken a second for the tip of her finger to go numb from the chill that shot through her spine like the crack of electricity.

There was a spirit watching them. And now it knew Signa could see it. Wonderful.

“You’ll have a room to yourself in the servants’ quarters,” Signa told Elaine, tucking her numbed finger into the folds of her coat and offering her most practiced smile. “Feel free to pick out whichever you’d like and get yourself settled.”

Elaine had never moved so swiftly as when she bent to grab hold of her luggage. She nodded and hurried to find said quarters, casting furtive glances over her shoulder as if she expected someone to try to snatch her from behind.

Signa waited until Elaine was down the hall before she set her palm atop Gundry’s head with a sigh. “Let’s find ourselves a room of our own, shall we?” And perhaps a spirit, too, while they were at it.

She gathered her belongings and turned her attention to the stairs. They were far more standard than the ones at Thorn Grove, the banister a hefty mahogany wood. A small chunk seemed to have broken off, the wood around it stained dark. The farther into the home she ventured, the slower her steps became as anxiety crept into her bones.

She was trying to have a good outlook, truly. She was trying to stay positive. But now that she was alone for the first time all day, the nerves were settling in.

What if she opened her nursery by accident? Or worse, her parents’ suite? Signa’s mind warred with itself—half of it wanting nothing more than to find that suite and gather all the information she could about her parents’ lives, while the other half warned that their belongings should remain untouched. What if there were things in there that her parents wouldn’t have wanted her to find? What if there was something that made her view them differently than the pristine parents she’d finely crafted in her mind? Not to mention that there was a spirit somewhere nearby. She could feel eyes against her skin, raising goose bumps along the back of her neck. What if it was malicious, as Lillian had once been?

Gundry ran ahead of her, and while Signa had imagined that he might look at least a little menacing while hunting spirits, his lolling tongue hung sideways out of his mouth as he circled back every few minutes as if to say

that their path was clear. Signa caught glimpses of a sudden light beneath the door of a room she passed, and flickers of the telltale pale blue of a spirit blinking in and out of the far corner of her vision. Whoever it was, Gundry seemed unconcerned. And if he wasn’t worried, Signa told herself not to be, either. She was a reaper, after all.

It took several minutes of pacing the halls before Signa gathered her courage to try one of the doors. Fortunately, the first suite she came across had clearly been meant for a guest. It was so wonderfully plain that the moment Signa was inside, the unshakable itch in her bones and the roiling in her stomach settled. The tension in her shoulders eased as she dropped her luggage to the floor.

She decided that the first thing she should do was clean. Elaine didn’t deserve to do such an arduous task alone, and the chore would help get her mind off things. And so Signa stripped the bed of its sheets—they might have been white once, though she couldn’t tell through all the dust layered onto them. And that was as far as she got before all the dust made her think back to living with her aunt Magda, and how miserable she’d been before Thorn Grove. From there, it didn’t take long until the dam of swelling emotion she’d been repressing since leaving finally burst open, reminding her once again just how alone she was.

Her stomach tight and her chest trembling, Signa kicked the bedding so that the dirty side lay flat on the floor and sank onto it. After sneezing several times from the dust, Gundry padded to her side to lie beside her, resting his chin on her leg with a gentle lick. Signa curled her fingers in his fur, tears coming hot and fast.

“It’s just you and me, boy.” She sank low enough to rest her head against Gundry’s back and burrowed her face into his neck. He was one of the few slivers of normalcy left in her life, and he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—the thought was so ridiculous that she almost laughed, clutching him tighter until there came a crash of thunder outside the window.

Gundry burst to all fours, hackles raised as his fangs bared. Signa followed his pointed ears to an old vanity near the window, tense and holding her breath. Its mirror was hazy from dirt, but not so hazy that Signa couldn’t see the billowing hem of a dress, there one moment and gone the next. Panic surged in her throat, but seconds later she saw the likely cause: not a spirit but a tiny gap in the windowsill that was causing the curtains to

billow with the sharp wind. She hurried to shut the window before drawing back to Gundry’s side.

“It’s all right,” she whispered as she brought the other side of the blankets over them like a cocoon. She had to say it a few more times, scratching him behind the ears before he wound his body protectively around hers. “We’re going to be fine. This is our home now, and I won’t let anything hurt us.”

They fell into silence, and though Gundry’s breathing soon deepened with sleep, every creaking floorboard and gust of wind kept Signa wide awake. For a while she debated forgoing sleep entirely, but Foxglove was her home now, and she refused to let anyone or anything make her fearful of it.

And so she tucked into Gundry, shut her eyes, and forced sleep to claim her.