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  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Dawn Kurtagich

  Cover photography copyright © 2019 by Howard Huang. Cover design by Marcie Lawrence. Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Edition: June 2019

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  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kurtagich, Dawn, author.

  Title: Teeth in the mist / Dawn Kurtagich.

  Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. | Summary: Inspired by the legend of Faust and told in alternating timelines, sixteen-year-old Roan arrives at Mill House as a ward and discovers she is connected to an ancient evil secret, while, centuries later, seventeen-year-old Zoey explores the dwelling’s ruins and soon realizes she is not alone.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018029959| ISBN 9780316478472 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316478465 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316522540 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Witches—Fiction. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Horror stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K877 Te 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029959

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-47847-2 (hardcover), 978-0-316-47846-5 (ebook)

  E3-20190422-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART 1: Above the Mountain

  AD 977, Pant Tywyll: (TODAY, MEDDWYN)

  ~Dreams and Darkness~

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 1: HER EYES

  Chapter 2: A BIT OF GOODE

  Chapter 3: SERPENT AND FOX

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 4: LITTLE RABBIT

  Chapter 5: THE ESCAPE

  Chapter 6: HEY, DAD, MISS ME?

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 7: HELL IN BLUE

  Chapter 8: A SERVANT’S TALE

  Chapter 9: DR. MAUDLEY

  Chapter 10: NAKED

  Chapter 11: APPARITIONS

  PART 2: Upon the Mountain

  ~Midnight Summer~

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 12: MILL HOUSE

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 13: SECRETS OF THE FATHER

  Chapter 14: LOVE SPOON

  Chapter 15: HORNED GOD

  Chapter 16: FATHER, FRAIL

  Chapter 17: REVELATION, UNLOCKING, OPENING

  Chapter 18: COLD AS WAX

  Chapter 19: HOWL

  PART 3: With the Mountain

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 20: THE NOTEBOOK

  Chapter 21: UNDER SIDE

  Chapter 22: THE NOTE

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 23: RAGE

  Chapter 24: SOLACE

  Chapter 25: IN SICKNESS AND IN HELL

  Chapter 26: A ROTTEN GHOST

  PART 4: Upon the Mountain

  ~ Daylight Shadows ~

  Chapter 27: AIR, WATER, FIRE

  Chapter 28: A HISS, A SCREAM…

  PART 5: Within the Mountain

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 29: MY WORKING

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 30: AN OFFER

  Chapter 31: ADAM

  Chapter 32: A MEMORY IN BLUE

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 33: …AND I LIKED IT

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 34: THE DARK

  Chapter 35: HIDING FROM THE LIGHT

  PART 6: Beyond the Mountain

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 36: COME ONE, COME ALL

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 37: UPSIDE DOWN

  Chapter 38: AN ITCH

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 39: MORTAL

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 40: HIS SEED

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 41: SO…

  ROAN: 1851

  Chapter 42: FOSTOS

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 43: MY LULLABY

  ZOEY: NOW

  Chapter 44: HERMIONE

  ROAN: 1851

  ZOEY: NOW

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Photo Credits

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  PART 1

  Above the Mountain

  Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good will my soul do thy lord?

  —CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,

  DR. FAUSTUS

  AD 977, Pant Tywyll

  (TODAY, MEDDWYN)

  The monk hastens through the catacombs, past his brethren, who watch with inquisitive, yet chaste eyes. He is feverish, exultant. After twenty years of searching, he has found it at last.

  He stumbles at the entrance to his alcove, stripping off his cassock and hood until he stands bare in the shadows. It takes a moment to light the rush candles.

  He studies the pigeonholes, a number of which he carved with his own hands. They are the beds in which his scrolls rest. Their tanned scent is an old friend. It is an animal scent. Thick and putrid. This is his private collection. He is searching for the one he concealed twenty years earlier. Low down in the wall, it is hidden by his worktable.

  He retrieves it with reverence.

  It is old.

  Older than time, but strong.

  This one is not like others. Made from the skin, not of beast, but of man: flesh stitched together with spell-worked thread.

  He unfurls it, the unholy words sliced into the scroll like wounds, still raw, and then he bends to remove the stolen parchment from his cassock on the floor—torn from a book in the great library. He places it next to the scroll, which seems alive, humming with power.

  Yes, it seems to breathe. Yes.

  He sits at his workbench. His hands tremble. Twenty years… twenty long years. He has sacrificed his life, his youth, his family, and his faith, and at last the answer has come to him. He knows the symbols. He knows the words.

  It is an auspicious moment.

  Here it is, then. He has acquired the Devil’s Tongue.

  He closes his eyes. “Dimitte me.” Let me…

  And begins to chant.

  The candles glimmer and dance, rage, and then die. At once, the room is black; still like no room has ever been, nor will be for many years. It is a seeping gloom, which only grows thicker.

  The monk releases his breath—which would fog, could he see it—and listens.

  Torturously, the rocks rumble, growing louder. A demon stretching in his lair. Stones and sands fall from cracks in the walls.

  A
voice older than time is in the rocks.

  It is the rocks.

  The words quake in his core.

  WHO DARES SPEAK MY TONGUE?

  The monk replies and his words are no longer human.

  The little boy arrived without warning, brought in a carriage during the blackest part of the night. Out of the window and through the mists, she saw a tall man in a dark cloak cross the cobbled street, carrying a bundle into the house. Downstairs, the door opened. She heard a man’s voice murmur, and then Father’s reply.

  On tiny feet, she tiptoed down the hall, listening at the top of the stairs. And then the hooded figure looked up. She could not see any face in the dark space, but the little girl knew she had been caught.

  “Evelyn’s daughter,” her father said. “Her name is Roan Evelyn Eddington.”

  The hood turned back to her father. “Adam and Roan Evelyn.” And then there was a laugh. The kind that was not very happy at all, and that gave the little girl a horrible, churning feeling in her stomach. “Adam and Eve! What a perfect beginning.”

  The little girl crept closer, so she could see her father’s face below her through the slats of the banister. And though many have said that children do not see the things that grown men see, the little girl did see, with the wide-eyed clarity of all children, that—despite his smile—her father was very afraid.

  The man in the cloak turned, and she withdrew, all the way along the corridor and back into the safety of her bed with Isabel, her doll.

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  The strange cloaked man came closer down the corridor; she imagined a giant shadow creeping along the halls, and she tried to lie still, afraid he would come into her room—come for her. But he entered the room beside hers, and lay down a bundle upon the bed, the springs creaking slightly under the small weight. Then the man departed, his carriage pulled by two beastly horses, disappearing into the night. The man in black was gone.

  The little girl waited for the sound of the hooves to fade away, and then she crept slowly along the short corridor and into the room next door.

  The little boy rolled over and looked at her, his pale eyes wide with fear. Yet, when they rested on her face, they softened.

  She smiled.

  The little girl would never forget the summer the little boy came, brought in at night like a whisper in the dark. It was with him that she first discovered what would be thought of, years later, as a terrible burden, but which, very soon, she would consider to be…

  magic.

  Chapter 1

  HER EYES

  She is a ghost ship sailing the mud of the mountain.

  She is a specter parting the shrouding mists.

  She is a shadow upon a midnight river; she is the eye of the storm.

  In her hand, a heavy portmanteau. She drops it every few steps to catch her breath and pull her cloak closer about her face. Even her bonnet is black. She is searching for a dwelling that she is beginning to think might not be there after all.

  Though she is alone on the mountain, the solitary state being her preference, she looks around with a sense of unease. Like a trickster, the mountain is full of traps and twists, dotted with sharp slate rocks that protrude from the earth like jagged teeth, stretching skyward.

  Silly, she tells herself, for one to imagine the mountain could be hungry. And yet… she can sense something considering her, and there is appetite in that regard. She bares her own teeth in defiance. Something shifts in the earth beneath her feet, and she has the peculiar sensation of someone having passed her by, suddenly. But under the moonlight, she sees how very alone she is.

  She glances behind her, down the track, and can still see the moving black shape of the coach that brought her here. A trick of the mountain perhaps, but she can hear the angry hoofbeats of the horses and, she thinks, the carriage master’s mutterings—“Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl…” No doubt it is true. To come all this way because of a slip of paper.

  She pulls it from her pocket, unfolding it gently so as not to tear it. When first she found it, clutched in the hands of her dying father, it had been crisp and new. Now it falls like lace over her glove, threatening to disintegrate with one harsh touch. She knows the words by heart.

  DR. A. MAUDLEY

  MILL HOUSE

  MEDDWYN

  GWYNEDD

  WALES

  IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH, ROAN EVELYN EDDINGTON SHALL FALL UNDER THE GUARDIANSHIP OF DR. A. MAUDLEY OF MILL HOUSE UNTIL SHE HAS ACHIEVED THE AGE OF TWENTY-ONE YEARS.

  MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON HER SOUL.

  And beneath: two signatures. One of them is her father’s. The other, she supposes, belongs to this stranger, Dr. Maudley. She wonders, even now, whether she was right to take the note. Right to come all this way.

  But what choice did she have? Where else had she to go?

  She lifts her portmanteau once more and faces upward. Step by step, she climbs. The mountain stills—attentive—and she wonders at the utter silence. No birds, no breeze, nothing but the squelch, squelch, squelch of her boots in the mud. As though the world is holding its breath.

  Her focus is unbroken until she feels something pressing in, like someone suddenly standing too close. Breathing. Watching. It overwhelms her.

  She drops her bag. Raises her hands as if to defend herself, but instead of blocking a blow, her fingers begin to dance, drawing symbols or words or pictures in the air. All the while she is muttering beneath her breath, fighting off the thing pressing in.

  It is large. So very large.

  “Not today,” she growls, her voice throaty and deep. “Back with you!”

  Her fingers continue their dance, even as the presence retreats, and her skirts begin to smoke at the hem.

  She stops when she feels safe once more, wondering at the strange sensation she’d had of someone turning to look at her, enormous, like the regard of a titan. After a moment, she picks up her portmanteau and continues on. A sudden energy, like the retaliation of a naughty child, sends her portmanteau flying backward. The clasps click open, scattering clothing, undergarments, ink pots, quills, and journals into the mud.

  She ignores the delicates sinking into the mire, grabbing instead for the books, wiping them urgently on her skirt, heedless of the filth or the stains she is leaving behind.

  “Do not haunt me, Father,” she whispers, her gloves beyond saving. “I am paying the price. I have come here as you wished.”

  I am in exile, she reminds herself, staring at the barren earth, remembering the countless times her father had said, There is safety in isolation, Roan.

  Get up, she tells herself. Keep walking. Do not look back.

  At last, the sodden fabrics and stained books are back inside her portmanteau, pages pressed firmly together, like a lover’s kiss. She peers up from under her bonnet to examine the heavens above as a rumble of thunder stutters across the sky; the darkness deepens as the clouds blot out the full moon. Then the heavens break open and drench her.

  She takes a step… another… another. She is weighed down by the skirts, by the portmanteau, by a past whose burden she cannot bear. She does not see the figure watching her from within the heather and the slate rocks and the fog.

  I am in exile. Keep walking. Do not look back.

  Rapley Setters glimpses her on the track, standing on the mountain like a fey creature. She does not move, except to clean mud from the books in her hands with a grim expression, as seemingly solid as the mountain itself.

  He frowns.

  Why would a girl be walking up the mountain? There is nothing here except for Mill House. Surely she is not going there? She cannot be one of the three Dr. Maudley is expecting?

  She is too young.

  She is a girl.

  He watches her struggle to her feet, her ridiculously wide skirts weighed down by the mud. She stumbles, and he sees her irritation, sees her pull once, twice, three times at her luggage before it finally comes free.

  Sees the det
ermination in her posture.

  The thunder complains and she looks toward the sky, gazes in his direction, yet she doesn’t see him.

  Her eyes… they unsettle him.

  It quickly becomes apparent to Rapley that she has set herself an impossible task, and when the rains descend, dousing the landscape in curtains of white, and Rapley sees her kick her case with a growl, it brings a rare and unexpected half smile to his lips. Wild thing, he thinks.

  He stands, enjoying the familiar cold of the rain as it drenches his clothing, and walks toward her, using the mountain to camouflage his approach. As he watches, something catches her attention and she turns, then steps back, eyes wide in a suddenly pale face. A fallen slab of slate rock, like a shelf, lies not quite flat on the ground, and beneath: a dark, dry space, big enough to fit her. Does she intend to crawl below it to escape the rain?

  Fey, indeed.

  But no, she moves away from it. The rain waterfalls off her bonnet, curtaining her expression from him, but he knows that she is afraid. He has hunted in these mountains long enough to recognize instinctive fear.

  She backs away, one step at a time, her eyes never leaving that empty space. She moves gingerly, but then all at once; with a start and an indrawn breath, she turns and clambers up the mountain, her portmanteau forgotten. But where she has no doubt expected to find sheets of rain tumbling down upon the landscape, she finds instead: him.

  Her cry echoes through the rocks and through Rapley’s skin; she might have fallen if not for his two strong hands, which clamp down around her upper arms like claws. Surprised to find a woman’s arms beneath his palms, he lets go, pushes her away. Too hard. She stumbles, falls, landing in her wide skirts.

  She looks up at him and brings her hands to touch the places his have just been, the fabric of her jacket wrinkling beneath her small fingers. Her teeth are bared like a wolf’s.

  Yet despite that—or because of it—she is… striking. Too-pale skin, too-dark hair. Too-dark eyes. He does not look into them. Full, pink lips, now pulled back to expose too-white teeth.