Shadow Wrack. Kim Thompson
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Cover
Dedication
To Lizzie,
who fills my days with magic
Cast of Characters
Willa Fuller — Twelve years old. This “ordinary” girl was faced with some pretty extraordinary events one summer and rose to the challenge. Clever, brave, and responsible … but also hesitant, anxious, and afraid. She wishes more than anything that her family could just get along.
Mirabel (a.k.a. Belle) — Cranky old dame in a wheelchair who loves the ocean. Spends a lot of time in the bathtub. Her secret: under that lap blanket is a mermaid tail. Long ago she assumed human form to marry a handsome fisherman. She had a child but was dissatisfied with life on land and left them both, returning to the ocean. Now she seems mostly land-bound; she still has a tail but no longer has the ability to breathe underwater.
Grandpa — Willa’s grandfather who singlehandedly raised Willa’s mother. Still a rather handsome fisherman. Gentle and forgiving. Doesn’t like to dredge up the past.
Baz — Elderly and enigmatic, rather short and stout. Loves to take cat naps. Used to be the cook at Eldritch Manor but now doesn’t have much to do. Her secret: she’s part cat, but which part … she’s not telling.
Horace — A bookish and mild-mannered old gentleman. Very old. Very, very old. As in old enough to remember ancient Egypt, because he was there. His secret: he is really an androsphinx, which means he is half lion. Occasionally changes into a lion, but not often. Starting to lose his memory a little.
Mab — Queen of the fairies. Keeper of dreams, mistress of enchantments, Mab is a dainty spitfire. Her secret: swears like a sailor. Loves pulling pranks. Do not get on her bad side. Since making peace with the tree nymphs in the backyard, she once again has subjects to boss around, which she thoroughly enjoys.
Robert — Irascible old fellow with a quick temper and a love for fine brandy. His secret is not so secret: he is a centaur, human from the waist up, with the body and legs of a horse. Cannot change shape, which makes it pretty difficult for him to blend into a crowd.
Tengu — Small in stature but a martial arts master. Always cheerful and remarkably free of ill will, considering he loves nothing more than a good fight. Has an unhealthy obsession with weaponry.
Miss Trang — This stern, middle-aged lady in the sensible shoes with no sense of humour is the caretaker-manager of Eldritch Manor. Her secret: she is also a dragon in her spare time. Often leaves town for unknown reasons, placing Willa in charge of the Eldritch oldsters.
The Phoenix — Descendent of an ancient line, she is the daughter of Fadiyah, the bird who went up in flames to save Willa but ignited Eldritch Manor in the process. The young bird has got a few issues.
Mr. and Mrs. Hacker — Live next door to the ruins of Eldritch Manor. Snoopy, gossipy, critical, sniping … in short, extremely annoying. Pretty much everything about Eldritch Manor and its inhabitants causes them irritation and intense curiosity.
Prologue
The House
In a small seaside town, on a quiet street next to a park, there lies the smoking ruin of a house. Before it went down in a blaze of glory, the house was one you might walk past a hundred times and never really look at. It was old and rambling, with a sagging front porch and a neglected lawn. The inhabitants were similarly tired, ancient, and sagging ladies and gents who moved slowly and grumbled about everything under the cold, watchful eye of Miss Trang.
This was the house that somehow caught the eye and imagination of twelve-year-old Willa Fuller. This was the house where she first saw a brownie — and by brownie I mean one of the Little People, not a wee girl hawking cookies door to door. This was the house where Willa got her first-ever real job, as a housekeeper, and found out that the residents had some rather spectacular secrets.
This was the house where she met fairy, centaur, androsphinx, mermaid, and even a dinosaur. This was the house where surprises lurked around every corner, and dark, mysterious things began to happen. This was the house that Miss Trang departed from, leaving Willa in charge.
This was the house where black spots grew like mildew.
This was the house that finally burst open at the seams, letting in horrible creatures from “the other side”: cats with human faces, swarms of spiders, mobs of butcher birds, and the great, black, sightless worm with the gaping mouth and infinite gullet.
This was the house where the battle occurred, and where Miss Trang turned into a dragon.
This was the house that caught fire from a phoenix flame and was utterly destroyed, though the inhabitants escaped.
The sign is still there, though the house is not, and the sign says: “Eldritch Manor.”
Chapter One
In which Willa has to deal with a feuding family, furious fairies, and a surly centaur
Never battle the forces of darkness a week before school starts. It’s very distracting. Willa learned this lesson the hard way. One Wednesday she barely escaped a giant evil worm, aided by a dragon and a dinosaur, when an exploding phoenix set the whole place on fire. Five days later, the biggest challenge in her life was remembering her locker combination.
The summer had turned her whole world upside down. Her regular twelve-year-old life seemed unreal, and the mermaid, centaur, and fairies that she now called her friends seemed totally normal. The upside was that after facing the big worm, gym class just didn’t fill her with dread like it used to. The downside? She couldn’t talk to anybody about her recent adventures. Her mom and dad knew parts of it, but they didn’t want to hear any more. She certainly couldn’t tell her friends at school, she had promised Miss Trang she wouldn’t, and they wouldn’t have believed any of it anyway.
The strangest thing about her summer was how she felt now that it was over. You’d think that having survived something like that, plus finding your long-lost grandmother, would make you happy and relieved and just plain grateful to be alive. But Willa didn’t feel any of those things. She felt like she had more problems than ever before. She was anxious, jumpy, depressed, and even … truth be told … a little angry.
A sudden sploosh startled Willa awake. She was sitting in the hallway leaning against the bathroom door. Inside she could hear water slopping out of the tub. Down the hall there was a squawk as the bird in the living room woke up. Every morning her dad tried to tiptoe out the front door to go to work, and every morning the bird woke up and squawked at him. In the kitchen a kettle whistled. That meant her mom was up. She would be out the door as quickly as possible, to avoid Belle.
Willa thumped her head against the bathroom door. “Belle! Will … you … hurry … up?” Silence within and then another sploosh and cheerful humming. Willa sighed. Her mermaid-grandma was in the bathtub, making her late for school. Again. Just another chapter in my ridiculous life, she reflected. Her family was scattered all over, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, only she couldn’t put them together to form the picture she wanted. And when she tried to talk to them about it, she got exactly nowhere.
“So.” Willa dangled her legs over the side of the dock, staring down at the water as the sound of waves washed over her. “Belle is my grandmother, isn’t she?” She glanced at Grandpa. He was loading supplies onto his fishing boat and paused, balancing a large cooler on the railing.
“Yes.