“I can put that in my pocket,” Ava said. She watched as Aunt Libbie reached the book, Mary’s book. She watched as she hesitated before picking it up.

  “This is what I was coming to talk to you about,” Aunt Libbie said. She was looking at the book, not at Ava.

  “I only took it from the stairwell,” Ava said. “I find all my books there.”

  “You took it?” Aunt Libbie asked. “Or did someone give it to you?”

  “Who would give it to me?” Ava asked in a sniff. “Everyone here acts like it’s an illuminated manuscript. I’ve already read most of it and she’s just a boastful girl convinced of her own genius. I think nothing at all of Mary MacLane.”

  “I see,” Aunt Libbie said, tucking the book beneath her arm. “I’m sure you won’t mind me taking it back, then? No point in your wasting more time with it.”

  Ava sensed the trick in this suggestion, but her arm was throbbing and she wouldn’t dwell on it for now. Together they worked to get her standing. Then walking. Slowly.

  Aunt Libbie was kicking apples from their path so the girl wouldn’t roller-skate upon one when Ava remembered. “Oh, my doll!” she said. “She fell with me and I can’t leave her. Would you look for her, Aunt Libbie?”

  “What does your doll look like, Ava?” Aunt Libbie asked as she turned around.

  “It’s the one I made with Addie,” Ava said. “The nesting doll. It took us so long to finish her.”

  Ava watched her aunt Libbie flinch at this answer.

  There were many mashed apples beneath Aunt Libbie’s feet as she bent low to look. Yellow jackets buzzed about them—not a swarm, but many. They seemed to prefer the most-rotten apples, the skin split, their inner flesh soupy and yellow like pus, and their coloring, especially the peels, which had deepened with their time in the sun, making them appear more like hunks of festering meat than apples.

  “I’m afraid I don’t see it,” she called to Ava. “What if I send Max back for it later? We’ll be sure to find it before it’s dark.”

  “I’d rather have it now, though,” Ava said. Her arm was really bothering her. Funny how quickly that had happened. It was hurting enough to make the rest of her weak with it. Maybe she would need the wheelbarrow ride after all.

  “I know, darling, but I . . .” Aunt Libbie started, but then she seemed to see something on the ground. She moved toward it.

  “Did you find her?” Ava called.

  Aunt Libbie reached for something in the grass. She did so carefully, gingerly. “I think so.” Her voice sounded strange. “You made this with Adelaide?”

  “Yes, when I arrived,” Ava said. “Addie said she wanted something for us to do together. I don’t really play with her—I’m too old for that. I just like to have her with me. She’s got so many versions of herself.”

  It seemed to Ava like her aunt Libbie wasn’t really looking at the doll, like she was avoiding looking at it, even as she now held it in her hand, even as she walked with it, the doll’s many selves clicking against each other as she went.

  “You did find her,” Ava said. “Thank you, Aunt Libbie. I don’t like to be without her.” She held out the hand of her noninjured arm.

  “You’ll have to be without her until we reach the house,” Aunt Libbie said.

  “But I can carry her fine,” Ava said, her empty hand still waiting to be filled.

  “You need to concentrate on carrying yourself,” Aunt Libbie said. She would not relinquish the doll. She now held both it and the book at her side. “Come. Let’s go now, slow as you need—you’re a little pale. While we walk you can tell me all the other things Addie taught you while I was away. It will help take your mind off your arm.”

  Ava knew this was another trick, but right now she didn’t care. She just wanted to get back to the house, where Addie would give her something good for her pain and maybe cookies or cake, too.

  There was nothing her aunt Libbie could do about it now, anyway. Addie already had her loyalty. And Addie would keep it.

  Providence

  Our three heroines were always going to wind up in Providence together, savvy Readers. I have to believe you saw this coming.

  I mean, here they’ve been, trapped for pages on one estate in the tiniest state, when just thirty-five miles to the north, Rhode Island’s capital city makes an industry out of its hauntings and its homegrown horror writers. Or at least one of them in particular.

  I’m talking, of course, about H. P. Lovecraft, who was born in Providence, raised in Providence, and spent most of his rather short life writing weird and horrific tales set in and around Providence. You can’t toss your crocheted Cthulhu* very far in that city without it hitting a building that Lovecraft once wrote about, lived in, or said something racist near.*

  So while Bo Dhillon might have come to Rhode Island expressly to exploit the terrors of Brookhants, he was delighted to use Noel’s band as an excuse to take a one-night detour in order to do his own kind of storytelling in the city where, for better or worse, America grew one of its most influential horror writers to date.* How could he resist the chance to make a little (onscreen) terror in the place where so many nightmares had been launched?

  He could not.

  And Harper, Merritt, and Audrey—wind rattled and bone numb from their convertible ride—knew this. As they stood waiting for Noel on a too-empty street, their noses dripping, they each, to a heroine, knew that something rank and wrong was right now scuttling about this city and waiting for its chance to get at them.

  Oh, they wouldn’t have each phrased it this way, Readers, but their collective knowledge ran deeper than any syntax. There would be trouble for them tonight in Providence.

  “I wish we’d stayed in the orchard,” Audrey said.

  “You wanted to leave.” This from Merritt.

  “Not the orchard,” Audrey said. “I only wanted to leave movie night.”

  “We’ll go back tomorrow,” Harper said.

  “We won’t,” Audrey said. “Not like we left it.”

  “You’re sure the car will be fine here?” Merritt asked for the second time to no answer.

  They were huddled together on a narrow sidewalk, the block crowded by looming redbrick factories turned lofts, the panes of their massive windows reflecting the wan streetlights. Near them a gingko tree seemed to have dumped all its leaves at once, and recently: the sidewalk beneath was a bright circle of yellow, as if someone had colored it in with a highlighter.

  “He’s coming down now,” Audrey said, reading a text on her phone.

  Harper pinched out the cigarette she’d been smoking and put it behind her ear as a group of laughing people pushed out the heavy door in front of them. The last one held it open. Our heroines went inside to find Noel just a few steps from the bottom of a wide set of concrete stairs. He looked like he hadn’t been awake for very long, wearing socks and Adidas slides, joggers and a too-tight blue T-shirt from his prep-school days, the logo peeling across its front.

  “The Plain Bad Heroine Society,” he said, grinning. “I’m right here where you are.”

  When Audrey hugged him, she nearly started crying into his shoulder. Even here in scuttling Providence, he was just so reliably, comfortingly Noel.

  He led them up the stairs to a loft lit by strung bulbs that made geometric shadows over faces and left corners dark like caves. There was art, in all forms, everywhere—murals and sculptures and mosaics—even hanging from the rafters. The crowd was too cool to make an obvious thing about Harper Harper walking among them, and yet her presence crackled around the space until it had touched all surfaces. Soon she was flanked by a chatty group of graduate students, craft beers in hand, who shared their theories about ghosts and curses and, of course, filmmaking.*

  Audrey scanned the space, still half expecting to find a B-roll crew, cameras up and on, hairy boom mics hovering. She hadn’t yet made a move that Bo hadn’t anticipated. Why should a stop in at this party be any different? (That she couldn’t see such a crew didn’t mean much where Bo was concerned.)

  “I wish I had more time,” Noel said. “I don’t even know where half the band is, and we’re supposed to be at the venue. Like now.”

  Merritt took this as her cue to let Audrey and Noel have a moment alone, and she headed toward a messy drinks table.

  “No, I know you have to go,” Audrey said. “I just wanted to see you before . . .” She let the unfinished part of that sentence do its work.

  “The terror unleashes?” Noel scooped a carrot into a jumbo plastic container of hummus.

  She nodded. “You don’t know what he’s got planned for tonight, do you? I mean, in specifics?”

  “No,” he said. “I wish I did. It’ll be something when we’re onstage, but I hope he at least waits until we’re a few songs in.” He shrugged and added, “Bo Dhillon’s nightmare circus.”

  “That’s where I live now.”

  “I know. You do look—” He stopped himself, chewed his carrot.

  “I do look what, Noel?”

  He swallowed. “You look tired. You look really tired, kid.” He peered closely at her face. “Unless that’s just makeup for effect?”

  “I wish. I don’t sleep anymore.”

  “Audrey, that’s not good.”

  “I know.” She couldn’t find the way to say it all so that he’d understand, not in a rush, not with him needing to leave. So instead she said: “In other news, I just had my first sort of threesome like two hours ago. Oh, and somebody’s probably inspecting that footage for picture quality as I stand here.”

  Noel stopped mid-chew, looked hard at her. “Wait, what? Are you being serious right now?”

  “I mean, we kept our clothes on. Most of them.” She couldn’t take the face he was giving her. It was too close to the face she would give herself if she was listening to this. “It’s fine, Noel.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re fine. You did this on camera?”

  “Maybe—I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time but it’s possible. It’s always possible there.”

  “OK,” he said, but like it wasn’t. “Are you OK?”

  “No—yes.”

  He’d gone from looking sleepy to looking pained. “Are you serious that you’ve not slept at all since you got out here? At all? You haven’t told me it’s been that bad.”

  “I have told you.”

  “Not that it’s been that bad,” he said again. “Not like you’re saying now. I just thought it was stupid-long hours and the work catching up to you.”

  She felt like he was missing the point. “I mean, I’ve slept some here and there.”

  “Audrey—”

  She was too tired to have this conversation, even though she’d thought she wanted it. “It’s not even that it’s all been bad,” she said. Trying to find the right words was like pawing through silt for them. “It’s been really good, too. But I honestly, and I know how this sounds, but it’s like we’re under a spell there. Or I am—between the place itself and Bo.”

  “What do you mean the place itself?”

  Now she was annoyed. “I mean what you think I mean.”

  He lowered his head and spoke slowly to her in a way that wasn’t condescending but lived in its neighborhood. “That it’s haunted?”

  “You’re not out there with us—you don’t know what it’s like with Bo tweaking every surface. I can’t keep ahold of what’s real. I literally don’t know what is and what isn’t.”

  “Yeah, that’s called sleep deprivation,” Noel said. “Fuck, Aud, you have to tell them this. Say it’s cracking you in ways you couldn’t have anticipated, and you can’t keep doing it.”

  “I tried,” she said. “Bo told me to use it.”

  “Then tell him again and tell Heather, too. And Gray—he should be telling them for you. Make them listen to you, it’s their job.”

  “I will,” she said. “I know.” She did not mean this. “You should go, you’re late.”

  “You have to tell them,” Noel said again as he hugged her. “It’s not worth it. Not if it’s making you question your reality.”

  “Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “No,” he said as he pulled away. “It’s not the point for you. That’s for the audience.”

  “Yeah,” she said and did not believe.

  They turned to look for his bandmates. One of them was on a couch next to Merritt, packing marijuana into a ceramic bowl that was sculpted and glazed to look like the folds of a vulva. When he finished packing, he performed basic party etiquette by passing first, in this case to Merritt, who now gestured to Audrey to come sit with them.

  But Audrey shook her head no, told Noel she loved him, and walked along a wall until she found a bathroom crowded with leggy houseplants: the hipster’s Orangerie. She went in, turned the lock, and was startled to see herself in the grimy mirror above the sink. Was it herself she saw, this sallow-cheeked Clara Broward imposter with circles under her eyes? Normcore Audrey Wells meets phantom? She sat almost crying, actually crying, almost crying on the edge of the dirty tub for a good while until someone who lived in the loft grew tired of waiting to use the only toilet and banged on the door, saying, “Can I please shit in my own bathroom, now?”

  When Audrey came out, the number of people at the party had more than doubled and she could no longer spot Merritt among them. She did see Harper leaning against a wall mural of James Baldwin dressed in a 1990s-era white-and-red Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls uniform.* Harper had her sweater sleeve rolled on one arm so that she could show off her yellow jacket tattoo to the willowy person in floral coveralls who was now hanging on her.

  Audrey’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She looked. It was Merritt. No message, only a link. She clicked it with dread. She knew it would send her back to the three of them on that blanket in the orchard: footage captured by some set crasher or even just by Bo’s instructions. She knew it.

  The link did lead to a video. But not to that one.

  Instead, it was of the side-of-the-wall screening of House Mother 2, with Caroline and Bo standing in the frame in front of the projection, smiling, their bodies washed in blue light and their shoulders and hair cluttered with snowflakes. It did look pretty magical, the internet commenters seemed to—for now—agree. And so good that Caroline Wells was cameoing in the movie as Audrey’s mom.

  And so good that it had snowed in Little Compton that night—the only place it had snowed in Rhode Island.

  Audrey felt someone move close behind her. She thought it was just a party shove, the space too full of people. But then that someone touched the small of her back and left their hand there. She turned. It was Merritt, who said, “What’s happening with you right now?”

  Audrey shook her head.

  “Tell me,” Merritt said. “You can say it.”

  Audrey shook her head again. “I can’t,” she said.

  Merritt thought Audrey looked, just now, like she had the whole queer collection of Brookhants ghosts about her: sitting on her shoulders, hanging off her back, curled like toddlers around her legs. “Let’s go back to Brookhants,” she said. “I’ll get Harper.”

  “I can’t do that to Noel.”

  “Really?” Merritt asked. “This is about Noel?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re here right now for Noel?” Merritt asked again.

  Audrey chose her words carefully. “Yes. He’s my best friend and he’s playing a show that Bo agreed to shoot for him. Plus Harper will get it trending. There’s already press there.”

  “Okeydokey,” Merritt said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I guess I’m talking about Noel’s big moment. We should go.” Merritt was all business as she went to find them a ride since she was no longer OK to drive.

  It took another half hour, but eventually someone named Danny drove Merritt and Audrey in Elaine’s car the not-all-that-many blocks over to Broadway, where the Columbus Theatre was, its old-fashioned marquee lit up with red letters: NEWPORTMANTEAU—SOLD OUT! (Merritt and Audrey weren’t sure who Harper ended up riding with. By the time they left the party they couldn’t find her.)

  Concertgoers spilled out the theater’s front doors and pooled onto its sidewalk. Scattered among them were camera crews from various press outlets or maybe hired by production. Audrey and Merritt were spotted immediately, and the camera lenses made a hall of mirrors around them as they entered the lobby. It was a theater from another time repurposed for this one: marble tiles and gilt moldings and a curved ceiling like in a European cathedral, a line of brass-and-glass chandeliers with fixtures shaped like angel’s trumpet flowers.

  And a stained red carpet, spongy as Brookhants terrace moss, beneath their feet.

  Their wrists were cuffed with yellow VIP bracelets as Noel texted to tell them to come backstage, and how, but the lobby was jammed with bodies and they had to pick their way through slowly.

  Audrey felt trapped in the crush of winter coats, the chatter and anticipation about them its own kind of buzzing. She worried she might faint and kept close to Merritt, who now said, unhappily, “Wasn’t enough to beat us over here, she already had time to find the bar.”

  “And a date,” Audrey said when she also saw what Merritt was seeing: Harper very comfortably chatting up someone in a black-and-gold dress.

  “What else?” Merritt said as she steered them in that direction.

  The person in the dress was Annie Meng. After cursory introductions, Harper explained that she had been in the area—in Boston, actually—and had decided to drop down for the night and probably come to the set tomorrow, too.

  “Well, and since I spent, like, three months making papier-mâché, I thought I should at least see how it got used,” Annie said. “It made me feel like a toddler working with Play-Doh. Turns out wasps don’t really consider my needs when they’re chewing up wood pulp for their nests.”

  “I don’t think they’ve used most of what you made yet,” Harper said. “It comes later.”