Chapter One
Now
“YOU HAD ONE JOB,” SAYS AVA, PACING the cottage in her pink sweater. “All you had to do was look the part, and stay in this cottage, and keep your mouth shut.”
He stands and hurries over to pick up the pages. “You know, this really isn’t bad,” he says, scanning the first page. “Millie changed the she’s to I’s—what’s that called again? First person?—which is a departure, I know, but it does give the final scenes some urgency, and—”
Ava snatches the pages from his hand. “You’re not the editor, Holden. You’re just pretending to be one.”
“Hey, I’m doing you guys a favor! I’m pretty sure this”—he gestures at the dilapidated cottage—“isn’t in my job description.”
“And yet you jumped at the chance.”
“Yeah, well,” he says, crossing his arms, “maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
“I swear to god—” Ava shakes her head. “It must be nice. Knowing you can just pull some Bartleby the Scrivener shit and say I’d rather not, and be sure that everything will still turn out all right because the whole world is tilted in your favor instead of stacked against you.”
Holden throws up his hands. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t ask to be—”
“Don’t,” snaps Ava. “Just—don’t.”
She sucks in a breath. “No,” she mutters, backing away. “No, you are not about to make me raise my voice.” She heads for the cottage door. “If you come up to that house again, you’re fired.”
Holden laughs, realizing only as the sound leaves his mouth that it was probably the wrong one. His boss stops in her tracks and turns, one eyebrow cocked.
Holden shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Sorry—it’s just—you can’t fire me,” he says, and he was at least seventy percent sure that was true until he said it. Pivot, warns a voice in his head, so he musters a smile. “Look, it’s only a few more months.”
He might as well have thrown open all the windows and doors and let the night air come rushing in, because the temperature plummets by several degrees as his boss narrows her eyes. “Excuse me?”
He should lie, he knows he should, but she’s being really mean, and he’s already one foot in, and his mom used to say that at that point, you might as well jump. “My uncle said that if I stuck it out a year, he’d promote me.”
“Promote you? To what?”
He feels like it’s a trick question, or a trap, but he answers anyway. “Senior editor.”
Ava blinks sharply, as if someone’s blown dust in her eyes. Her mouth opens and closes more than once before she finally shakes her head and mutters, “Unbelievable. Some people really do say the quiet part out loud.” Holden considers asking what she means, but she seems to be talking to herself.
“Unbelievable,” she says again, turning her back on him and marching toward the door, and he knows he should just let her go, but he’s not quite clear where things stand.
“Um, so should I . . .”
“Just stay here,” she orders, “and try not to ruin everything.”
She slams the door in her wake, so hard that Holden’s head starts to ache all over again.
For a moment he just stands there, frustrated and a little hurt, and then something inside him comes unstuck.
“Screw this,” he announces, heading for the narrow stairs. He doesn’t have to put up with this kind of treatment. He went to Yale. He deserves a job with an office, and a chair, and a door with his name printed in neat capitals. He’ll talk to Uncle Ellis as soon as he gets back.
Up in the bedroom, he collects his things.
He packed several outfits, one for each day, just in case he had a reason to go up to the castle, and then, of course, a nice suit for the final morning; he had this idea of wearing it when he announced the winner, assuming Ava had chosen by then—and, if not, at least to open the safe.
Now he shoves the clothes unceremoniously into his bag.
“Screw this,” he says again, punctuating the silence every few moments so he won’t forget he’s mad. He changes back into the clothes he wore the first day for the announcement ceremony (as he likes to think of it) and adds the pajamas, robe, and slippers to the bag before putting on his shoes.
He bends over to collect a pair of socks—yellow, with small purple umbrellas—and his glasses slide off for the third or fourth time.
Instead of picking them up, he stomps on them, hard.
And it would have been pretty satisfying if the glass had shattered, but it turns out the lenses must be some kind of plexi, because they just pop out, the plastic frame buckling under his shoe, sides jutting up like the mangled legs of a shiny black bug.
Holden frowns, and then kicks the sad mess across the bedroom floor.
Because he knows, okay? He knows he didn’t get this job on his own merit, just like he didn’t get into Yale on grades alone, not when his father’s name is on the law school, just like his uncle’s is on the publisher.
He knows, but it’s not his fault they don’t want him to struggle.
Not his fault they keep opening these doors.
He’d be a fool not to walk through them.
He feels bad, of course, that Ava had to work so hard to get where she is.
But if she would just give him a chance . . .
Holden sniffs as he zips up his bag and trudges back downstairs.
And he’s no longer muttering to himself, which is why he hears the noise.
Somewhere beyond the house, a scratching sound, like footsteps on the gravel trail. His spirits lift, because it’s probably Ava, come to say sorry, to admit she’s been too hard on him, that she knows he’s trying, and they’re in this together.
He adjusts the bag on his shoulder and opens the door, ready to forgive her.
But Ava isn’t there.
“Hello?” he calls out, the wind making his voice sound thin and frightened, even though he’s not.
No one answers. Holden frowns.
“Hello? Ava?”
He can’t see beyond the light of the doorway, which only reaches five or six feet before ending in a wall of black and—
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
The sound of boots on the gravel walk. Holden’s always loved when writers do that, the simple efficiency of sounds in place of long description, but now it sends a shiver down his spine because his eyes, which have always been sharp, are beginning to adjust, and there’s a man trudging toward him.
Holden Merriweather has never believed in ghosts.
He may be gullible, but he doesn’t have a whole lot of imagination.
Plenty of guys tried to haze him back at Yale, make him go down into the crypts, and it was fine because all he ever found down there were cobwebs.
But he once heard someone say that it’s hard to believe in ghosts until you meet one, and then it’s pretty easy.
So when the figure in the dark comes stomping up the path, when it grazes the edge of the cottage’s light, and Holden finds himself looking at Arthur Fletch, in his famous trench coat and wide-brimmed hat, he becomes a believer.
Holden feels his knees go a little weak. But then he remembers that ghosts aren’t flesh and blood; they’re not there, in the technical sense. The figure stops, and Holden steps forward, out of the doorway.
“You can’t hurt me!” he calls to the spirit in the dark. “You aren’t real.”
And he’s feeling pretty smug about that until the wind whips the blood-red hat from the specter’s head and it tumbles up the path toward Holden, coming to a rest against his shoes with a weight that’s undeniably real.
Holden looks up again and sees a flurry of gray hair caught in the wind, twisting like wet weeds across the dead man’s face.
“Screw this,” he says, right as the wind changes direction with a sucking force and the door slams shut behind him, knocking him off balance.
He spins, clawing at the door, but it’s jammed, somehow it’s jammed, and Holden can hear the boots crunching again, the dead man moving almost certainly toward him, but when he spins around, there’s no one there.
And somehow, that’s worse.
“Screw this, screw this, screw this,” pants Holden, taking off into the near-perfect dark, away from the castle and the cottage and the ghost.
The bag bounces on his shoulder, and his nice shoes sink into mud and wild grass as he angles himself across the green toward the steep stone steps that run from the clifftop down to the dock and the yacht.
Holden runs, harder than he has in years. He stumbles more than once, the ground unsteady and pitted with rocks, before nearly pitching headfirst down the stone steps.
Somehow he makes it to the dock before he loses his balance and trips, skinning one knee on the weather-warped wood.
The tide is up, high enough it’s splashing up over the dock with every swell, ice-cold water soaking into his pant legs as he stumbles toward The Royalty Check, which sits bobbing in its berth at the end of the short dock.
He hauls himself up, over the side, onto the yacht, heart pounding and head sore as he drops his bag, throws off the anchor, and hurries for the wheelhouse.
Because Holden Merriweather may not be a great actor, or even a great editor, but he knows how to sail a yacht.
Admittedly, it’s been a few years, but he can see the mainland from here, small lights twinkling along the coastline in the distance. How hard can it be?
Harder than he thought. He was hoping the key would just be there, jutting out of the ignition.
But it’s not. He groans, bracing himself against the control panel.
Blood drips onto the glass. The cut on his head must have opened again.
He touches his temple and watches the drop of blood as it slides down the console and onto the mat.
The mat, which is decorated with a pen, and one of Fletch’s slogans.
Starting is the hardest part.
Something tugs in his gut—a hunch—and he kneels and pulls back the mat. There, in a little groove, is the key.
Holden shoves back to his feet, breathless and dizzy but victorious as he slides the key in the ignition and turns.
The yacht sputters but doesn’t start.
“No, no, no,” he pleads, turning the key again, and again, and at last The Royalty Check comes to life, and Holden thrusts both hands into the air and lets out a victory whoop.
He throws the boat into gear, and it lurches forward.
He guns the engine, spins the wheel, and flings himself and the yacht onto the dark water, putting the island and its angry ghosts firmly in his wake.