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With a dry chuckle, she shakes her head. “Act of God, you say. How ‘bout the devil himself? This bluff is cursed, I tell ya. Cursed. Every creature here bears the burden of it. I hope it won’t be you when all is said and done. You’re nineteen now, so I can’t very well be telling you what you can and can’t do anymore. But I’m strongly urging you to consider something else.”

There is nothing else, unless I want to work alongside my best friend, Kelsey, at Barnaby’s Baubles on the boardwalk, selling overpriced trinkets to the few tourists we get. Or better yet, slopping out bowls of chowder and beers at The Shoal with Aunt Midge.

“I’m taking this job.” The money is enough to clear some of her debts, get caught up on the mortgage, and save up for a car to get the hell out of this place, eventually. “I’ll be fine. Look, I get it, okay? You’re just watching out for me.” As she’s done since the night my mom left me on her doorstep and bailed on parenthood. “But this is it. All those times we talked about me getting out of here? It’s not happening with my music. Or working at some tourist trap in town.”

“It could, if you gave it a chan--”

“It won’t. It takes money to make money, remember? You told me that.”

“You don’t have to listen to everything I say, kid. You know that, right?” The glance she shoots back at me holds a smile that actually touches her eyes this time. “Sometimes, I’m fulla shit.”

“More than sometimes, I’d say.”

With a slap on my shoulder, she snorts. “Smartass.”

A few more miles up the road, the fog breaks, and the forest opens to a clearing. A black wrought iron gate, with Blackthorne Manor etched into the metal at either side of an unwelcoming skull with white stones for sockets, greets us at the entrance. Standing off to the side of the driveway is a silver box with a black button, and Aunt Midge reaches through the window to press it. Seconds later, the gate opens onto a long narrow driveway flanked by more trees, and the path widens to an expansive neglected lawn ahead.

The occasional shrubs and bushes that dot the unkempt landscape must’ve once been trimmed into shapes, given their odd contortions that now simply make them look old and tired. In the center of a circular drive stands a dried-up cement fountain, and the figure of a woman whose single arm reaches up toward the sky, her other arm broken at the elbow.

“Place looks downright abandoned,” Aunt Midge says, slowing the car to a stop.

Gaze shifting to the front entrance, I stare up the stone staircase, which is guarded by menacing gargoyles at either side, toward an enormous turret situated beside the most elaborate wooden doors I’ve ever seen in my life. Carved in thick cherry timber, they match the topiary boxes that house small, wilting shrubs.

I’ve never actually laid eyes on a castle in person. Only in books and on the internet. Blackthorne seems far too elaborate for this town, as if I’ve slipped into some medieval time bubble.

The doors open up, and a man in a crisp suit, with gray hair and spectacles, fills the gap. Given the stories I have heard, it doesn’t seem likely that he’s the master of the house, particularly as he doesn’t wear the scars said to mar Lucian Blackthorne’s face. The very scars that earned him the devil moniker.

The Devil of Bonesalt. My new boss.

What fodder that’ll make when Aunt Midge begins her shift this evening at The Shoal.

We exit the vehicle, and I follow aunt Midge up the staircase, my eyes drinking in the forlorn beauty of this place. I don’t know why it speaks to some part of me, but where Aunt Midge looks like a cat who just got the shit scared out of it, with her shoulders bunched and her jaw clenched, I find the place oddly intriguing. Peaceful, really. Almost like a graveyard.

Movement draws my eyes to a window three stories up the turret, where I can just make out the shadowy figure of someone standing there. The surrounding darkness conceals much of the face, but the discernible parts are big and imposing. Definitely masculine. If I had to guess, I’m staring up at Lucian Blackthorne.

Or one of his rumored bodyguards.

It’s amazing how many stories surround a single man.

“Isadora Quinn?” The older gentleman standing in the doorway tips his chin up in a regal sort of way that’d make half the men back in town laugh if they were standing here.

“That’s her.” Aunt Midge hikes a thumb in my direction. “I’m her aunt. Just makin’ sure everything is kosher before I drop her off.”

His face crinkles into a frown as his eyes appraise me, prompting me to look down at the outfit I’ve chosen to wear for my first day. Ripped up jeans tucked into rubber fishing mucks, and the only T-shirt I own that doesn’t have a coffee or ketchup stain. Imagining the way I look through his eyes, with my long ink black hair, the tattoo visible on my right forearm that reads Invulnerable in bold, cursive print, and the dark eyeliner that Aunt Midge likens to Alice Cooper’s just to tease me, has me thinking casual dress holds a vastly different meaning here. The guy probably thinks I’m another local punk. Oddly enough, dressing this way keeps me out of trouble. Keeps others away. In high school, I was called Goth Girl and considered most likely to shoot up the place.

Couldn’t be farther from the truth. While my classmates partied on the weekends and wreaked havoc, I stayed home reading books and listening to Chopin.

I’m polite to a degree, when others are polite to me, and defiant when I have to be.

“You said it was casual dress, right?”

“I suppose we all have a subjective interpretation of the word. Very well. Come on, Isadora.”

“Isa, or Izzy, is fine.”

He steps aside, ushering us through the doors that stand at least twice my height. A large brass knocker in the shape of a lion makes me wonder if it’s ever actually been used, and I stare up at the intricate carvings that decorate an otherwise benign doorframe while passing through the threshold.

“I’m Mr. Rand, Master Blackthorne’s assistant,” the man says from behind. “We spoke on the phone.”