Chapter 1

1

“I found another one,” Lark said, her voice low, even though we were deep enough into the forest next to her family’s property that we couldn’t see her house and far enough away from the closest adult that we could’ve had a shouting match and no one would come running.

“Another door?” I asked. It was interesting but not unusual. It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing we had to tell hushed secrets about. Doors popped up in Blight Harbor from time to time. In fact, for both me and Lark, it was the family business: Lark’s papa found them and my daddy covered them up for safety. Every now and again someone new to town—or someone with too much curiosity and not enough sense—got the notion to sneak through one of those doors to explore the world on the other side. I related an awful lot to those curious folks, but the problem was, most of them never made their way back to tell us what they’d discovered. Or what had discovered them.

“Yeah, but something else, too. You all need to see it so we can decide what to do.” Lark looked from me to Claret to Brigid, probably trying to size up our appetite for adventure that bright June morning.

“Are you going to get us in trouble?” Claret asked, pulling the collar of her cloak up around her pale jaw. It was a reasonable question to ask Lark. Claret was a lot of mostly wonderful things, but she could also be as levelheaded as an adult and sometimes had to be nudged into shenanigans. Not that we ever had to nudge her all that hard.

“No. Maybe.” Lark’s small size, her big eyes, and the freckles across her light brown face were a disguise. She looked innocent enough to fool most people, but she was always on the verge of finding mischief if she wasn’t already in the middle of making some.

“Lark McCreary, I’m not getting a punishment the first real day of summer,” I told her. Lark’s ideas had landed us all in hot water more than once (but they were usually enough fun to make the punishment a price we were willing to pay). Like that time we’d found a nest of little garter snakes and managed to get yarn leashes on them. We’d brought them home as pets, but it turned out snakes only wear leashes for as long as they want to and are pretty good at hiding in kitchens and sock drawers and beds and whatnot.

“Mae Von Rathe,” my most troublemaking friend said, “there won’t be a punishment if we don’t get caught. Are you girly girls coming or not?”

“I’m not a girly girl,” huffed Brigid, which made us laugh a little. With her raspberry-colored curls and skin like the pink inside of a seashell—not to mention her tendency to read books with lots of kissing and her refusal to wear anything but dresses even on days with no school or church—she was the girliest of us all.

“Fine,” Lark sighed. “Brigid isn’t girly and Mae isn’t a stick in the mud and Claret isn’t going to find a way to make everything feel like homework. Are you all happy? Can we go?”

“Where?” Claret asked. We were in the protective shade of the dense woods. I knew she’d avoid going out into the sun a little longer if she could.

Lark knew it too. “Halfway between here and Brigid’s, and a little deeper in the forest. Lots of shade.”

After pausing a moment, Claret agreed. “Fine.”

“Aren’t we going to the fort? I brought some new things for it,” said Brigid. Our fort was only a few yards away but so well hidden in the trees and brambles that it might as well have been invisible.

“After,” said Lark.

My friends all looked at me. I nodded, making the call.

“Let’s go, then,” Lark said.

We followed her as she made her own path through the woods.

As we walked, I wondered at how I always ended up casting the final vote. We’d all grown up together—friends for longer than I could remember—and it had always been that way. Why did the others look to me to make decisions? I wasn’t as strong or insightful as Claret. I wasn’t as well-read or fearless as Lark. And I wasn’t as beautiful or as kind as Brigid. It was almost remarkable how unremarkable I was. But somehow I always ended up deciding. It wasn’t a question I’d ever asked out loud. Maybe my friends hadn’t caught on to how ordinary I was, and I certainly didn’t want to hang a light over it, because I knew that was going to change. The world was full of adventures to have and discoveries to make, and in my head, I was already exploring it all—I just hadn’t done it yet.

I pushed those loud thoughts away and focused instead on our trek through the trees—something I always enjoyed no matter the reason. The deeper we got, the better the air smelled, cool and damp and earthy. That morning the woods smelled like adventure.

Brigid lifted the hem of her dress off the forest floor and Claret kept her hood down, not needing it in the safety of the thick limbs and leaves (it was direct sunlight that was a problem, owing to the vampire blood she’d inherited). In my boots and overalls, I didn’t have to worry about anything but stumbling over a tree root.

There were no clear paths where we were going, and the walking was slow, but there are worse ways to spend a summer morning than trampling through the forest. We’d spent our share of days doing just that.

At an especially thick clump of trees, Brigid started to ask how much farther we’d have to go, when Lark shushed her (which was unusual, because it was often Lark who needed shushing).

Claret looked at me from under raised eyebrows.

I shrugged. I had no idea what Lark had found or what she was getting us into or why we needed to be quiet about it.

We walked around the thick growth of trees, and there it was.

A new door had indeed opened up. It mostly looked like a regular hole in the ground, maybe seven feet across. What gave it away was that it was perfectly round, like it had been sliced out of the earth by a giant cookie cutter, and the emptiness that remained was pitch-black. Lark had explained that for folks like her papa, the doors tugged at a person like they had a string right in the center of their chest. Lark could feel it a little sometimes. I never did, no matter how much I wished I could. The door in the forest floor was bigger than any that had been found recently, at least the ones my daddy had told me about, and that was definitely enough to make it kind of interesting.

But there was more.

Secured to one of the giant pine trees a couple of yards from the hole was what I first took to be a bunch of rope. Someone had thrown a few leafy branches on top of the coil in a half-hearted attempt to hide it, probably not expecting anyone to come across the tangled heap.

When Lark stepped silently toward the pile and pulled up a handful to show us, I saw that it wasn’t exactly a rope, but a rope ladder. And a really long one, judging by the size of the pile on the ground.

Claret scanned the forest around us, and I knew she was looking and listening for any sign of company. It wasn’t just the sun that affected my friend—all her senses were a little better than the average person (who usually didn’t have even a tiny bit of vampire blood in their veins).

Brigid inched a little closer to my side, worry radiating from her.

I had eyes only for the door. Someone had found a new one. And instead of reporting it, they planned to use it. It was the only explanation for the rope ladder.

Jealousy ran through me like bright electricity. I wanted nothing more than to explore—to climb mountains and walk the bottom of the ocean and sail to both poles on wooden ships. And maybe even more than all that, I wanted to meet the ghosts of those who had died exploring those places. I wanted to learn all the languages I could and talk to those fallen adventurers, hear their stories and write them down so they’d no longer be lost to time. But all those dreams were miles and years away. There were plenty of ghosts to talk to in my own hometown (Blight Harbor was one of the most haunted towns in the nation, according to just about everyone). And there was plenty of exploring to be done right on the other side of Blight Harbor—a whole uncharted world. Only it was completely and totally off limits. To everyone. What I knew about the place beyond the doors was just from stories told and rumors spread to keep the curious away.

I stepped with careful feet to the edge of the hole.

Brigid hissed at me, but I waved her off.

I got down on my knees. I ran my hands around the inner edge of the chasm, smooth like polished stone, then reached down. My arm disappeared at the elbow into the black like it had been cut off. I didn’t dare reach farther for fear of toppling in. If that were to happen, chances were good I’d never find my way back out. Even I knew it was a bad idea to fall in unprepared and unarmed.

Anything could be on the other side.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t take a look.

I lowered myself to my stomach and gestured for Claret.

She nodded and joined me on the ground.

Claret grabbed both my legs at the ankles, and I pulled myself headfirst over the edge of the hole.

I bent at the waist, half of my body lowered into the dark.

Inside, it was black. Blacker than any moonless night or windowless room. There was the damp earth smell, stronger now, but also something else. Like roses, but sharper and more dangerous, a familiar smell that came with all the doors. The air wasn’t cool or warm or anything else. It just was. I couldn’t see anything in any direction as the hungry black swallowed my vision and pushed the summer light away. I was grateful for Claret’s strong grip on my legs as I reached down into the hole as far as I could, my fingertips grazing the glassy wall, feeling for the other side. It went farther than I could grasp. This wasn’t the first door I’d investigated, not by a long shot, but it was the deepest. I reached, stretching as far as my body would let me. My heart thrummed in my chest. I was so close to getting through to the place beyond the door—I could feel it, a gentle tug on my bones.

Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew what waited on the other side. Part of it, anyway: A landscape of black grass and purple sky with a big, dark sun hanging over it all. But that was just the start, just the stuff that was always there, according to folks who claimed to know. On the other side of the doors scattered around Blight Harbor was a world we’d only just begun to explore, and I was determined to be one of the first to really investigate it. To map it out and maybe even understand it. My pulse was pounding in my temples—partly because I’d been upside down for a while, but mostly because I was thrilled to be this close to adventure.

I lifted an arm and waved back toward Claret to lower me. For a few seconds nothing happened. I could almost see my friend’s face as she thought it through, deciding if it was a good idea. Then I felt her squeeze my ankles twice. She was telling me no.

Dang it.

Claret pulled, and I came up out of the hole and back onto solid ground. Even the dim light of the forest made me squint after the perfect black of the chasm. Stars danced in front of my eyes, but that was just because I’d been hanging wrong side up in the dark.

“It’s deep,” I told them softly. “Real deep.”

Claret glanced at Brigid (whose arms were crossed tight over her chest as she tried to chew a hole through her bottom lip), then whispered to me, “She’s nervous. And I might have heard someone. Far away, but still…”

“Could just be the boys roughhousing?” I asked loudly enough for Brigid to hear too.

Claret shook her head, and that was good enough for me.

“Let’s go.” Lark jerked her head back the way we came.

We started retracing our steps. Quieter now. And faster, too.

We didn’t need to talk about what we did next. We split up. We’d meet at the fort, but we’d each take a different route to get there. If any of the neighborhood boys had followed us, we’d make it as tough as we could for them to find our hideout.