The house had belonged to a coven of witches who spoke to nature—local legends and sisters, their mythos remembered in ghost stories and eco-crusades. Fitch's grandfather had found the house on one of his walkabouts, bought it, and then promptly died there. Fitch's parents had hit a rut in their supersonic, vitamin shake, goat-yoga-loving lives and last week decided all three of them were packing up their things and moving into the new family business.

A museum.

A mausoleum, Fitch thought.

The house hadn't been touched since his grandfather's death, and during the end of his life, his grandfather hadn't had much time to touch the house himself.

Walls had caved in, stairs had rotted, mold made camp in every corner and the furniture smelled of leaves and night dew. Instead of carpets there were pine needles. Instead of a driveway there was dirt. Instead of perfectly combed suburbia, there were curious squirrels and fluttering shadows. Standing on the crumbling front steps, Fitch caught the eye of an owl, yellow and intent and piercingly intelligent and definitely awake when it shouldn't have been.

His parents clattered cheerfully inside, exclaiming about the salon and the big windows and the "quaint woodsy-ness" of the kitchen and how in tune it all felt. Fitch felt as out of tune as he could get. His friends were gone, his room was gone, his dog ran away last week, and his parents had shoved a town history book in his backpack, like a little research might make him feel better.

It was the beginning of the end of his life.

Or the start of a bad book.

Kid moves to new town. Meets a group of misfit weirdos. Awakens an ancient evil and learns the power of friendship.

Fitch already had his own weirdos. And the ancient evil that awakened was his parents' ennui.

Being a teen sucked.

"Fitch, come inside and take a look. You've got to feel the vibes in this place," his mother called through the open door.

The owl watching him hooted and took off, a single feather cutting air between the trees. Fitch closed the door behind him, scuffing his feet on the prickly mat. Inside was full of pictures and brick, both in odd places. Places that looked fine until closer inspection, when you realized that one mottled brick was sticking too far out and that one picture was somehow positioned in an area it couldn't physically fit.

His parents had their yoga mats out already, grinning at him from ear to ear beneath peeling wallpaper and between chewed-on walls. Dozens of pictures looked down as his parents looked up. Austere photos of women in black and white, done up in intricate dresses beaded with acorns and seed pearls, long tangled hair braided with leaves.

The sisters, Fitch thought. His parents' new obsession. Fitch's new nemeses. There would always be something his parents found more interesting than him. An average kid doing average things couldn't shake their artistic, grassroots, vintage fervor. But he was used to being a footnote in his own life. What he wasn't used to was being copied and pasted into another book entirely.

Fitch shrugged at his mom's excitement and turned his back on his dad's triangle pose. He shuffled up a crooked set of stairs and found a window about halfway up the building that peered out at the woods, a hillside covered in violets, the dirt track winding back to town, the sun setting on the first chapter of fresh misery.

The stairs continued up and then they continued up some more to what was presumably the attic. But the door at the top was locked. It had the sort of pretentious keyhole that would only fit a pretentious key. Fitch leaned over and squinted one eye into the space.

One of the sisters stared back and Fitch nearly fell back down the stairs before steadying himself and looking again. This one was different. In color. So vividly, so wholly had the photographer captured the life of this woman that for a second, Fitch could almost see her breathing. She looked angry. But she also looked sad.

It summed up Fitch pretty well.

Beneath the picture was a hook. On the hook was a key. Exactly the sort of pretentious key that would fit in the lock. Except it was on the other side. Fitch frowned and rattled the knob. It turned a quarter inch and set in its heels. What was the point of locking a key inside a room? Didn't look like there was much in there besides the painting. A cramped sort of space probably right under the back eaves.

But really, the better question was how did someone lock the key to the room inside the room without the key?

Unless there was another.