Dreaming Darkly

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Okay,” I said out loud, because if there was something there I didn’t want to seem scared, “enough of this Red Riding Hood bullshit.”

  “So is this the part where you say, ‘My, what big teeth you have’?”

  I screamed, so loud and sharp that a flight of crows lifted from the pines, squawking in response. The boy from the rocks grinned at me from a few feet away, the skin around his near-black eyes crinkling.

  I hit him. With a closed fist, of course. I wasn’t a debutante. I didn’t slap openhanded. “You think that’s funny?” I yelled. “What kind of jackass are you, sneaking up on people?”

  “Whoa!” He held up a hand, putting the other to the blossoming red bruise on his jaw. “You’re the one who wandered onto my side of the island, girlie. I’m the one who should be pulling the angry-yet-still-smoking-hot bit.”

  “I’m not angry,” I snarled. “You’re just an ass.”

  “But you don’t deny I’m smoking hot?”

  I raised my fist again, but he caught it. His hand was rough against my tender knuckles, warmer than it had any right to be in this freezing, drizzly hellhole. “Take it easy,” he said. “I was joking.”

  Fury bubbled in my gut. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who’d made me hate him in thirty seconds flat, but this guy had won the prize. And he had the nerve to stand there, smirking at me from under his fall of black hair like I’d swoon at his feet any second.

  “Why don’t you go piss up a rope?” I finally blurted. Good job, Ivy, I thought. That definitely put him in his place in a way that didn’t, at all.

  I jerked my fist from his grasp as I turned to storm back to my side of the island, but he caught me again, swinging me around so we were pressed chest to chest. Up close he smelled good, a more intense version of the pines and the wet, dark earth all around us. Since I was human, I also had to admit that he wasn’t totally wrong—objectively, he was kind of hot. I tried to ignore that, though, in light of his being a smug douchebag.

  “Tell me your name,” he said. His voice rumbled against my rib cage.

  I sighed. “If I do, will you let go of me?”

  “I’ll let go of you either way,” he said. “I don’t look forward to getting kneed in the balls.”

  “Hey,” I said. “You’re marginally less stupid than you look.”

  He laughed and let go of my arm, smoothing down my jacket lapels and brushing off a few pine needles. “There. Good as new.”

  I stepped out of reach, swatting at him. “Free advice: I don’t like being touched.”

  “Well, I don’t like being punched in the face, but I’m dealing with it,” he said, starting to smile, then flinching when his bruised jaw muscle twinged.

  “You have a serious lack of boundaries, dude,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, holding up his hands, palms toward me. “You’re right, you don’t know me, and I shouldn’t have grabbed you. But to be fair, you did start it.”

  I looked back at the way I’d come, then at the boy again. Boy was probably the wrong word for somebody who stood about six foot three and was built like a small backhoe, but he seemed to be my age and acted about half it, so boy it was.

  “I’m jumpy,” I said. “And you scared the crap out of me.”

  I did feel sort of bad, as the bruise on his jaw got bigger and darker, so I sighed and dropped my defensive posture. “My name is Ivy.”

  He smile-flinched again, no doubt an evil scheme to blind me with his perfect teeth. “Ivy what?”

  “Ivy Bloodgood.”

  His grin dropped at that, replaced by a spark in his dark eyes that got my stomach flipping in a way no amount of grabbing my arm ever would. “So it’s true,” he said. “Simon did bring you back to the island.”

  “You know my uncle? Or about me, for that matter?” I felt my eyebrow go up. The boy returned my look.

  “News travels fast. Julia—the boat captain—told one of my cousins a few days back that Simon had a niece coming into town to stay on the island. And Simon is one of the only two people on the island besides my family so . . . yeah. Why wouldn’t I know him?”

  I shrugged. “You seem . . . I don’t know . . . alive? And interesting?”

  He laughed, rough and low. “Simon’s an okay guy. By Darkhaven standards, anyway.”

  I started to ask what he meant by that, but he stuck out his hand.

  “I’m Doyle. Doyle Ramsey.”

  “Can I ask you a question, Doyle?” I shook his hand in return, noticing again that his grip felt like it could crush rocks. He held my fingers gently, though, almost carefully, like I might break apart. I squeezed a little harder. The last thing I needed was some arrogant rich kid thinking I was fragile.

  “You can ask me anything,” he said, moving closer, definitely starting up the flirty crap again.

  I rolled my eyes hard, letting go of his fingers. “Dial it back, Twilight. I’m serious.”

  Doyle spread his hands. “I’m offended. I’m much hotter than a vampire covered in stripper glitter.” When I didn’t smile, he dropped the cutesy-banter tone. “You’re serious, okay. I am too—ask.” He never took his eyes off my face, and I finally looked over his shoulder, where one of the crows had landed on a branch once again.

  “Were you watching me from the rocks yesterday?” I said.

  He shrugged. “I hear there’s a girl my age coming in on the boat, I figured I better check it out.”

  “See, that’s the thing,” I said. “When I saw you out there, you said my name.”

  His grin never wavered. “How could I? You only just told me.”

  I pulled my soaked jacket tighter around me. “I’d better head back. I have no idea how far I walked.”

  “Nearly four miles,” he said. “That stream you crossed is the property line.”

  “Yeah, like I said . . .” I shivered, imagining picking my way back through the woods. “Better get going. It was made pretty clear I wasn’t supposed to be on your side of the island.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “It’ll take you an hour to get home, and my house is right over there. Come dry off and I’ll drive you back.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, and he cocked his head in return, hair falling in front of those dark eyes. He was still looking at me like he wanted to eat me, but he didn’t seem like an ax murderer, just a cocky high school boy, and those I could handle. I’d even dated a couple of them. Just because I didn’t let anyone in on my crappy home life didn’t mean I hid in my hair and rambled on about not being like other girls. I liked boys sometimes, and generally they liked me back. Doyle wasn’t the only one who could turn on the charm. Besides, Doyle sort of reminded me of PJ, if you gave PJ a haircut and six inches of height and made him really into something like lacrosse instead of punk music. “This wouldn’t be a ploy to get my clothes off, would it, Doyle?”

  He grinned again. “I wouldn’t be that obvious, Ivy.” He stripped off his jacket, which was made out of some water-resistant material, and draped it around my shoulders. “Come on.”

  I followed him, grateful to be warm for the first time since I’d gotten to the island. I couldn’t help looking back as we left the tree line, but the shadows had gone. The woods were just woods. They resembled the ones from my nightmare, the brook and the clearing and all, but they weren’t. I hadn’t been covered in blood. There was no dead guy lying among the pine boughs.

  That didn’t change the fact Doyle Ramsey was a liar, and a pretty bad one. He’d known who I was, from the moment he’d seen me on the rocks. When I’d told him my name just now, it hadn’t been new information for him. Why he was lying about it was anyone’s guess.

  Still, he was about to save me a long, wet walk in the gathering fog, and that was definitely worth ignoring what I hoped was just a white lie. I followed Doyle, leaving the forest behind.

  Chapter 5

  Doyle’s home was the opposite of my uncle’s in every way except that they were both crumbling—the Rams
ey house rambled away into wings and additions, paint rotting and peeling at the edges, gingerbread trim covered with withered wisteria vines creeping over every flat surface. It was low and comfortable, nestled into the landscape rather than jutting out of it. Two trucks that had at least thirty years on me were up on blocks in the front yard, and I heard music blaring from a red barn beyond the house.

  “Come on in,” Doyle said as we stepped into a front hall made of dark wood and plaster, with more holes than the roof of the trailer my mother and I had rented in Missoula. “And if you’re a vampire, I’ve just totally screwed myself, haven’t I?”

  “Yup,” I said. “Consider your blood drunk.”

  Doyle accepted his windbreaker back, and took my jacket besides, leading me into a kitchen lined in yellow-flowered wallpaper and full of the smell of fresh bread. He inhaled and made a growling sound in the back of his throat.

  “Sorry,” he said when I raised an eyebrow. “Skipped breakfast.”

  So you could spy on me? I kept that to myself and stood with my hands shoved in my jeans pockets, listening to the plastic cat clock on the wall tick, until Doyle realized I wasn’t going to fill the silence to be polite.

  “I’ll grab you a towel and run your coat through the dryer,” Doyle said. “Sit tight.”

  I wandered around the kitchen while he was gone. The shelves were groaning under canned jams and fruits, mismatched plates, and novelty mugs decorated with slogans like MAINE: VACATIONLAND and WICKED GOOD LOBSTAH. Beyond the Ramseys’ barn, the land sloped up sharply to a hilltop, where a blackened brick chimney and the remains of a wall glowered over the rest of the property.

  “Old homestead,” Doyle said, handing me a blue towel with frayed edges. I mopped the rain out of my hair. I was probably going to look like a bag lady when it dried, but I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, least of all him.

  “Believe it or not, we used to live in the lap of luxury,” he said. “That place was even bigger than Bloodgood Manor.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “The usual,” Doyle said. “Big fire in 1801. No money to rebuild, so they knocked together this heap and called it a day.” He pulled a pitcher of iced tea from the fridge and offered me a glass.

  I shook my head. “It is way too freezing for that. Is it always this cold?”

  “It’s Maine, sweetheart,” Doyle said. “We’re all a little cold-blooded up here.”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart,” I said. “Has that ‘let me help you get warm’ line worked for you on any girl, ever?”

  Doyle drained the glass and set it in the old porcelain sink, reaching past me to do it. “It’s working on you right now and you know it.”

  “On second thought,” I said, tossing the now-damp towel back at him. “Maybe I will walk home.”

  “Suit yourself,” Doyle said, still smiling. “I’m just trying to be a good host.”

  I snorted. Who did Doyle think he was kidding with this crap? “You know, Simon and his creepy housekeeper aren’t your biggest fans.” I briefly considered that maybe Simon had this rule for a reason, and I’d just gotten so used to ignoring anything adults told me to do I’d walked myself into trouble. I brushed the thought away, though. I had way too much experience keeping myself out of bad situations to get taken in by some backwoods Ted Bundy.

  Doyle didn’t offer a smile or a crack in response to what I’d said, like I expected. He just got closer to me, filling my nose with that piney scent all over again. “I could say some things about your uncle too, Ivy. Things you probably wouldn’t like.”

  “What happened to him being an ‘okay guy’?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “I was being polite,” Doyle said. “Because I thought you were too. Now I don’t care so much.”

  “You know, it’s been fun meeting the local weirdo and all, but I really do need to go home now.” I knocked his arm away from me and pushed into him, forcing him to move.

  Doyle just looked at me with a line between his black eyebrows, like I’d started speaking a foreign language all of a sudden. “Shit,” he said at last. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?” I threw up my hands. “Are you going to give me a ride home or not?”

  “I mean, you came onto our land, and you came to my house,” Doyle said. “I thought Simon told you, or you found out on your own. . . .” He shook his head, and when he looked at me again his eyes were shadowed, full of ink where they’d been full of flame a moment before, when he’d been close to me. “It’s my fault, probably. I shouldn’t have invited you over here, or followed you in the woods. But I figured if you’d come to our side of the island you didn’t care. . . .”

  “I’m confused,” I said. I got the table between us, just in case I’d miscalculated and he was some kind of handsome, square-jawed, tea-drinking serial killer. “What is it that I supposedly know and don’t care about?”

  “About your family,” he said. “About the Ramseys and Bloodgoods, about the murders that happened in the 1940s. About how all the Bloodgoods are cursed.”

  Chapter 6

  I don’t know what Doyle was expecting, but he looked surprised when I started laughing.

  “Okay,” I said. “I get it. Freak out the new girl. Consider me unsettled. Good work. Can we go?”

  “I’m totally serious, Ivy,” Doyle said. “Ask your uncle about the Bloodgood curse.” He gestured out the window. “Ask why we’re the only two families on this godforsaken rock.”

  “Because of a curse,” I said. I thought the stress of the week had gotten to me, because I couldn’t stop giggling. “Listen, my mom and I made a living off selling spooky crap to locals, and as spooky crap goes, this is amateur hour. Gold star, you tried, but I’m gonna go home now.” I walked to his front door and opened it. It felt good to be back in the real world, where you laughed at the people who believed in dumb stuff and, if you were Mom and I, took their money. The ten minutes or so I’d spent in Spookyville were more than enough for me.

  “I’m not joking,” Doyle said, following me.

  I laughed again. “You’re cute, but man are you weird, Doyle. I can find my own way home. See you at the next coven meeting, okay? And please, please consider befriending some normal people before you go completely off the rails. Get on Snapchat or something, at least.”

  He slammed the door, putting his body between me and the outside. “I’m not joking.”

  “And neither am I, so move!” I said, shoving him aside and opening the door.

  “I bet you’re only here because your mother died!”

  I stopped at that, swiveling my head to glare at him. He clearly didn’t recognize a warning when he saw it, because he barreled on.

  “She died violently, right? Well, so has everyone else in your line, as far back as either of our families can remember. You’re cursed, Ivy. You should get out of here before it’s too late for you.”

  “Two things,” I said. “First, don’t talk about my mother unless you want me to do a lot more than pop you in the jaw. Second, since it’s the twenty-first century and we stopped burning people at the stake a while ago, I don’t believe in curses.” He looked a little put out at that, but I ignored him and stormed down his driveway.

  “Wait!” he yelled. “Let me drive you back! It’s not safe out there!”

  “Safer than it is here!” I yelled back, and then didn’t look behind me again. Doyle didn’t chase me, and eventually, as I tromped down the muddy road, I came to the turn I recognized as leading up to the manor house.

  I was out of breath by the time I climbed the hill, and barely made it back up the trellis to my room before I collapsed on the braided rug. I was going to have to get in better shape if I wanted to keep sneaking around. Although from now on, I was definitely staying on the Bloodgood side of the property line.

  I was more jarred than I wanted to admit by what Doyle had said. Clearly he was either super far into the freak forest with this curse story or he w
as just trying to scare me, but it had worked on some level. Guessing my mother had died was a cheap cold-reading trick—one I’d learned when I was still mastering spelling my own name—but his insistence was what got to me. He looked like he really believed it.

  I made myself get up and stop thinking about Doyle. If I bought into this, Darkhaven would make me wacky too, and I’d barely been here a day. I was starving from my hike-slash-weirdo encounter, and I went downstairs to see if Simon had anything in his fridge worth raiding. At least that’s where I was headed until I heard voices coming from behind a closed door off the main hall.

  “And she didn’t have anything with her?”

  “Nothing.” Mrs. MacLeod’s brogue was loud and clear. “Just some tatty clothes and a pack of her insufferable mother’s tarot cards.”

  “Have a little respect,” Simon said. “Myra did just pass away.”

  Mrs. MacLeod gave one of her grunts. I heard a clink of crystal against glass, and Simon coughed a bit. “Is that your first one today, Veronica?”

  “And a hell of a day it’s been, Simon. Like I said, the only thing she has of Myra’s are those stupid cards. I went through her bag; I went through everything she came with. I didn’t miss something, if that’s your implication.”

  Now that was interesting. Definitely wouldn’t be leaving anything in my room I didn’t want Mrs. McSnoopy knowing about. If I’d had a more normal existence, I probably would have been pissed about the invasion of privacy, but not trusting people was second nature to Mom, and so it became that way for me. I’d have been more surprised if Veronica hadn’t searched my things.

  “She’s Myra’s child,” Simon said. “It has to be with her. Myra dying made her part of it. Even if she doesn’t know yet.”

  “And who’s to say the father doesn’t have it, for safekeeping?” Mrs. MacLeod sounded way too happy with herself. “Myra went and got herself a bastard, from who knows what kind of low-class hoodlum who’d likely do anything to get his hands on what Myra was set to inherit. Who’s to say he’s not sitting on the mainland waiting for his adorable little felon to call him over and slit our throats?”