The Grimlore Game

Chapter 1

Kit Devlin couldn’t wait to get to the funeral.

It wasn’t just that her aunt drove at a terrifying speed, weaving in and out of traffic like a needle through flesh. That would be enough to make any Devlin long for solid ground, not to mention instill a healthy fear of needles. But the funeral was, quite simply, the most interesting thing to happen in months.

Because Devlins didn’t have funerals.

No matter that one of them croaked on April 13th every three years like clockwork; in all her thirteen years of life, Kit had never been to a single Devlin memorial.

Not even her own parents’.

The invitation had shocked Kit as much as it had Aunt . . . what was her name again? Mildred? Matilda? Maleficent? No, that was an insult to dragons everywhere. But after bouncing from uncle to cousin to distant relative the last six months since the family curse claimed her father, Kit had given up on learning their names.

She had only been with Aunt Something or Another—­or Aunt SORA, as Kit had begun to think of her—­for a week, but it wouldn’t be long before she was passing Kit off to the next relative, along with words like unmanageable, morbid, and, worst of all, impolite.

Aunt Sora’s manicured fingers gave the wheel a hard jerk to the left, sending the luxury sports car at a dead sprint for the nearest exit. Kit swallowed a surge of nausea and adjusted her hold on Gregor, the tarantula curled up in her dress pocket. The silver death trap hit the roundabout at a steady forty miles per hour, only Aunt Sora’s unwavering determination keeping the car planted as it shot out the other side of the curve.

The Scottish countryside unfurled alongside them like a scroll in shades of green, the sky a foreboding October gray. Spots of white sheep broke up the rolling hills, the occasional farmhouse emerging from the heavy fog as they sped past. Mist beaded on the car’s windshield, the wipers steadfastly brushing it away. The endless loop of scrape, mist, repeat numbed Kit’s thoughts until, mercifully, the car turned onto a narrow, winding drive that forced even Aunt Sora to slow.

The woods thickened on either side of them, reaching overhead like long fingers beckoning them inward. Kit craned her neck for a better look as the road opened into a gravel parking lot fit for a manor home.

A series of unnecessarily expensive cars in canary yellow, electric blue, and, in one case, a sickening cherry red were lined up pinpoint neat on either side of the drive, leaving Kit to imagine they had all been parked in perfect synchronization. Aunt Sora maneuvered her vehicle alongside them and killed the engine.

Without the road to distract her aunt, the full weight of her disapproval returned to Kit’s outfit. Aunt Sora was less than fond of her dress not because it was black, but because of its flowing, witchy sleeves, column of metal fasteners, and spike-­studded belt.

“Well,” Aunt Sora said in a tight English accent, her blue eyes cutting. “I suppose you won’t look out of place for once.”

Kit glanced at the assortment of luxury vehicles currently doing their best impression of a handful of confetti and doubted that statement very much. She had met only a few Devlins since moving from the United States to the UK, but no one could ever accuse their sense of style of being drab. Even Sora was draped in a dress of deepest purple, a glittering set of diamonds dangling from her ears.

“Just remember what I told you,” Aunt Sora continued, checking her impeccable makeup in the car’s mirror and patting a blond hair back into place. “Stay quiet, don’t make a scene, and for the sake of all that is holy, smile once in a while, won’t you? It would make such a difference to that dour disposition of yours.”

She wasn’t the first relative to say something of that sort to Kit. The Devlins had criticized everything from her snarled, hip-­length black hair to the way she drank tea. They seemed to find great purpose in bemoaning how pretty, how lovely she would be if she would only wear the clothes they gave her and sit straighter and smile more and stop bringing spiders to the dinner table.

In response, Kit bared her teeth in her best approximation of a vampire’s grin, and Aunt Sora sighed. “Or perhaps not.”

They climbed from the car, the fresh air a relief to Kit’s queasy stomach. It was quiet this far into the woods, though they were only just outside of Edinburgh. It was as if the trees ate up all the sound, hoarding it deep in their bellies. It was the sort of place you could get lost in with only the woods for company, and Kit longed to explore it.

Her dad would have been among the branches already, beckoning her over to examine some strange plant or another that, when eaten, slowly poisoned you to death. Kit had always been more interested in what she found beneath the plants on their adventures, from earthworms to wood spiders to beetles. If it crept or crawled, Kit could name it.

It was on one such outing that they had discovered Gregor in the woods of Maine, where he most certainly did not belong. Realizing he was likely someone’s abandoned pet, they had taken him in, and he hadn’t strayed far since, despite Aunt Sora’s numerous attempts to “accidentally” step on him.

Kit longed for her father’s spontaneity, the way she never knew what each day would look like, save for the promise that it would always be an adventure. Contrary to what every adult had told her, Kit missed her father more every day.

“Christine?” Aunt Sora called. Kit withered at the sound of her full name. “It would not do to be late.”

Only her deepening well of curiosity led Kit to comply, her imagination running if not wild, then at least mildly wayward as she followed her aunt up the wide stone steps of the cathedral. They entered a small room, where a man in a suit accepted Aunt Sora’s fur coat from her and gestured them inward.

A set of great carved doors opened into a space resembling a church hall, if church halls were lined with floor-­to-­ceiling stained glass windows depicting gnarled oak trees and strange beasts with brilliant red eyes. Some of them were nearly recognizable, like the wolfish creature with red streaks through its fur. But others looked plucked from someone’s worst nightmare, from oversized reptiles with scorpion-­like tails to sinuous serpents with needle-­thin fangs.

The oddest thing about the cathedral, though, was not the faceless figures carved into the pews nor the damp scent of petrichor in the air, but the people inside it.

Kit had never seen so many Devlins in one place.

Dressed like royalty in gowns of peacock blue embroidered with gold thread and maroon suits of Italian silk, the Devlin clan milled about in pockets of murmurs and measuring glances cast over cold shoulders. Like a pack of wolves guarding their territory, they set their stances and dug in their pointed heels, clutching their crystal glasses of champagne like readied daggers.

Kit knew very little about her family tree. It had branched and curved and split so widely each generation that it could field a football team several times over, but she recognized a few clusters from past interactions. There were the Blackwoods, whose foothold in the fashion industry Aunt Sora envied, and beside them, the Graves, whom Kit remembered only because their solemn expressions always matched their name.

There were more, but that was where her knowledge ended, the sea of Devlins and their descendants blending together. The whole scene looked better fit for a fairy-­tale ball than a funeral, and as Kit had suspected, her black outfit was an inkblot on the otherwise colorful affair. Which was why she wasn’t the least bit surprised when every last pair of eyes fell upon her.

It wasn’t just her that drew their attention, but her story. That she had lost both her parents to the curse was nothing of note in a family marked by death. What really captivated them, unleashing a wave of whispers in her wake, was the sizable bank account that came with her. Without it, Kit didn’t think a single one of them would have bothered to look after her. Even so, her disquieting nature, ill manner, and morbid sense of fashion had driven more than one of them away.

Kit stared squarely back at every single pair of eyes, earning a series of small gasps and disapproving frowns. She knew only a few of them personally, relatives who had taken her in only to pass her along like an old pair of shoes, and she had no intention of making them feel comfortable.

“Don’t stare, Christine,” Aunt Sora hissed through her fake smile. “It’s rude.”

“I can pluck out their eyeballs instead?” Kit offered casually.

Aunt Sora’s smile turned rictus tight, her left eyelid twitching, and she feigned a high-­pitched laugh better suited to a cackling ghoul. “Oh, my dear, you do amuse me,” she said a little too loudly, drawing Kit against her side with one bony white arm. “Let’s find our seats. Oh, hello, William. Yes, so good to see you, Aurelia.”

Kit allowed herself to be guided through the swamp of Devlins toward the front of the hall, well aware that she was being paraded about as some sort of warped status symbol. Half her family might think her cursed (even more so than themselves) and the other half might resent her poor taste, but there was nothing a Devlin respected more than money, and her bank account was full of it.