The cemetery behind Plymouth’s old First Church smelled of salt wind and wet leaves. Charlie—eight years old, knees scabbed, pockets full of acorns—had slipped away from the school field trip. The other kids were inside the replica village learning how to churn butter. Charlie preferred the quiet company of headstones. He found the grave by tripping over it. The stone was thin, half-sunk, the lettering worn to whispers: HERE LYES YE BODY OF EZRA BLACKWOOD DIED NOV. 23, 1621 AGED 29 YRS ...

The locket arrived in a plain brown box, no return address, postmarked from a town whose name Eliza had never heard. Inside lay a silver oval no larger than a quail’s egg, its filigree blackened with age. When she pried it open, a single lock of auburn hair slid against her thumb like silk soaked in ice water. A note, written in violet ink, read only: Wear me if you dare to know.

The fog lay thick upon the moors of Eldridge Hollow that November eve, as though the very breath of the earth had frozen mid-sigh. In the crumbling manor of Blackhorn Hall, where ivy strangled the gargoyles and the clocks had long since surrendered their chimes, Miss Elizabeth Blackhorn sat alone by the hearth.