Chapter 6

  The city rose like a mirage of stone and steel.

  After miles of bare trees and snow-packed shoulders, Boston hit my senses like static. Horns. Sirens. Buildings that looked like they had opinions. The kind of place where every brick whispered, You’re not from here, are you?

  Richard maneuvered the Defender through traffic like it owed him something. His jaw was tight, one hand on the wheel, the other resting casually on the gearshift. The engine grumbled beneath us like it didn’t like cities either.

  Tudor was curled on my lap, pressed against my coat like a judgmental hot water bottle. He didn’t like the car. He liked strangers even less. Right now, his tail was flicking in slow warning, like he was deciding whether or not Boston deserved to exist.

  “Welcome to Mission Hill – you’ve got Fenway, Mass General, colleges and musuems,” Richard said, glancing sideways at me. “You’re very quiet.”

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  “Do you want me to narrate my culture shock?” I said. “Because I’m currently overwhelmed, vaguely carsick, and ninety percent sure that cab just ran a red light.”

  “That’s just Boston,” he said, without blinking. “They think stop signs are folklore.”

  We turned a corner. I saw it then—the glass curves of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Snow dusted the roofline. The upper windows looked shuttered. Private. Watching.

  I shivered. Richard noticed. “Cold?” “Haunted.”

  He didn’t laugh, but his mouth twitched. “That too.”

  He parked a block away, in a metered spot that looked questionably legal. I didn’t say anything. The last thing I needed was to play getaway driver while he tried to charm a Boston parking cop.

  As we got out, Tudor leapt gracefully from my lap to the sidewalk, landing without a sound. He sat there, tail twitching, glaring at the city like it had personally insulted his lineage.

  I couldn’t blame him.

  This wasn’t Vermont. This wasn’t safe.

  It was beautiful, though. And full of answers.

  I slung my bag over my shoulder. The journal was inside. Still warm. Still waiting. “Let’s check in first,” Richard said. “Then we’ll go to the museum.”

  I looked back at the Gardner—its red brick glowing faintly behind frost-laced iron gates— and felt something in my chest shift.

  Not quite fear. Not quite wonder.

  Just the strange sense that something very old had noticed I was here.

  Do you think Sadie is making a mistake?