Excerpt

Flickering light from the fireplace threw scary shadows around the room, and Jay paused at the door to the library. Cold seeped into his bare feet from the stone floor, but still he didn't move.

"Come in," called his uncle's voice from inside.

Holding back a shudder, Jay stepped over the threshold and into the warm room. A cup of cider with a cinnamon stick rested on the table next to a squashy orange chair pulled up in front of the fire and his uncle sat on the other side of the good rosewood table that his mother said came from the old country. His uncle sipped an amber liquid that didn't look like cider at all. The room smelled like burnt logs and burnt pumpkin.

"You're supposed to put the top on at an angle." Jay crossed the room to where a jack o' lantern leered from the window still. He lifted off the pumpkin's lid. The light orange bottom was sooty and he balanced it at an angle atop the carved pumpkin. "Mom taught me."

Beyond the window, moonlight illuminated the empty yard. Wind curled past. Dead leaves rustled and the branches of the maple tree scraped against the windowpane like claws.

He jumped back and now all he saw was his own frightened face reflected in the glass. He looked like a scared child, when he was already nine.

"You look cold," said his uncle. "There's a nice spot for you here by the fire."

Jay sat and held his cold feet out toward the heat. He watched the flames from between his toes. They danced and spat as they ate at the birch logs.

"The membrane between our world and the world beyond is especially thin tonight," said his uncle, his mother's brother.

"Mom says you're full of nonsense and scary stories." But his mother was out at a party with his father and they'd left him home with his uncle after he'd finished trick or treating. The candy in his room called to him and he thought about getting up and leaving.

"You're old enough to hear about our family's curse and our triumph," said his uncle.

"Curse?" Jay lifted up the cider and took a small sip. It burnt his tongue and he set it back down. He took out the cinnamon stick and sucked on it. The taste was almost too sharp, but he decided he liked it.

"Violence follows us." His uncle drained his glass and poured himself more from the whisky decanter. The decanter was square and heavy and it clunked when he sat it down on the table.

The cider in his cup quivered. "Is this nonsense or scary stories?"

"It's all true." His uncle lifted up a lantern from near his feet. He held it up and it swung by a hoop.

Jay hadn't ever seen this lantern before. It was made of a black metal that formed a cage around the ball of glass in the middle. A golden flame burned inside. "It looks old, like something from a museum."

"It's been in our family for a long time." When his uncle sat it on the table between them, firelight reflected off the surface and Jay couldn't see inside anymore. "It tells our family's past and our future, but it never lets you see your own lifetime. Look closer."

Jay leaned in, teeth clenched around the cinnamon stick, and stared at the glass. At first he saw only the flames. Then tiny sparks whirled and he was skimming over a countryside he'd never seen before, one with old timey buildings and smoke curling out of every chimney…