Charlie nodded and gathered his soccer bag. Lucky was whining and circling at the front door. “Take it easy, bud,” Charlie said, clipping on the leash.

  They stepped outside into a blast of snow and wind and started up the hill. Lucky yanked on the leash and soon they were running. Nana’s house was a good ten-minute walk from the bookstore, but they got there in five.

  As soon as they turned onto her street, he saw a burst of blue light at the end of the block, right in front of her house. Then a bright white flash⁠—

  Bang!

  The streetlight near Nana’s house exploded.

  Everything went dark.

  Charlie rushed toward the house. Lucky wrenched the leash out of his hand, racing ahead and leaping over Nana’s front hedge.

  “Lucky, wait!” Charlie shouted, sprinting after him.

  He froze in horror. Someone was lying near the steps to the house.

  A crumpled body in the snow.

  Nana.

  Chapter 2

  Winter Stone

  Charlie rushed to her side and dropped to his knees. Her face was pale, her eyes closed. She couldn’t be⁠—

  “Nana,” he choked out. Lucky lay down in the snow and gently licked her face.

  Slowly Nana’s eyes opened. “Charlie . . . you’re here. And Lucky . . . good boy.”

  “What happened?”

  Nana lifted a shaky arm. “I . . . don’t remember. I thumped my head.”

  “Lie still, Nana.” Charlie whipped off his jacket and tucked it around her, brushing away as much of the snow as he could.

  “Where’s Winston?” asked Nana. “I hear him.”

  Charlie glanced up at the house. Nana’s living-room light was on, and he could see Winston up on the couch, yowling at the window, looking like a furry fireball under the lamp.

  “He’s inside the house, don’t worry. I’m calling an ambulance.” Charlie pulled out his phone and punched 9-1-1, hurriedly giving his location to the dispatcher.

  “Charlie, take the Winter Stone.”

  “The what?”

  Nana tugged at a silver chain she was wearing around her neck, pulling it over her head and holding it out for him. Dangling from the end of the chain was a large, pale blue gemstone he’d never seen before, shimmering in the dark like a star.

  “Our family heirloom,” Nana whispered. “Put it on under your clothes. . . . Keep it out of sight.”

  “Wait, Nana, what is this?”

  “A secret,” she said, her voice low. “I wanted to tell you tonight . . . you need to wear the Winter Stone now.”

  The 9-1-1 dispatcher was speaking in his ear, asking about Nana’s condition. “Yes, she’s awake and talking to me,” he told the dispatcher.

  He turned his attention back to Nana. “You want me to wear this?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Keep it hidden.”

  “Um, okay, Nana.” With one hand he looped the silver chain over his head, slipping the pale blue stone under his hoodie and shirt. It felt cool and smooth against his skin.

  “Malcolm is here,” Nana said suddenly. “He’s looking for it.”

  Charlie peered down at her pale face. “Who’s Malcolm?” He felt a shiver of unease. “Someone looking for your stone?”

  Nana shook her head, her eyes closing again. “No . . . the silver wolf . . .” She drifted off.

  Silver wolf? What was she talking about? Charlie took Nana’s hand and patted it. “Stay awake, Nana.”

  “Get my keys . . . from the garden,” she murmured, giving his hand a tiny squeeze. “The star . . . in the attic . . .”

  Where was the ambulance? Nana was delirious. At least the wind had stopped. Just light snow falling now.

  Charlie patted Nana’s hand again, but she didn’t respond. Lucky rested his head on her chest and whined.

  Behind him Charlie heard sirens. A fire truck made its way up the snowy street, red lights flashing. It stopped in front of the house and the emergency medical team ran to meet him. They took Nana’s vital signs and began to bombard him with questions.

  “What happened?”

  I don’t know.

  “Has she been lying here long?”

  I’m not sure.

  They couldn’t answer his question either.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  An ambulance arrived behind the fire truck. As the medical team readied a stretcher, Nana’s eyes flickered open. Charlie bent down.

  “Get the keys,” Nana whispered to him, “before he comes back.”

  “Wait⁠—”

  But they were lifting the stretcher and carrying Nana to the ambulance.

  “I need to go with her!” he said, alarmed. Lucky whined at his side.

  The team conferred as Charlie pleaded and finally the ambulance driver waved Charlie and Lucky into his front passenger seat. As they drove away, Charlie saw the firefighters gaze up at the exploded streetlight above their heads. Beyond them, in Nana’s front window, Winston was still on his hind legs, paws pressed against the glass.

  I’ll come back, Charlie silently promised the cat.

  He pulled out his phone to call his dad and tell him what had happened. It was the middle of dinner prep at Winter & Woods, the restaurant named after his parents⁠—Arielle Winter and Alex Woods. His dad sounded worried and promised Charlie he’d leave for the hospital right away.

  Charlie called Mr. Tanaka next. “I’m in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and Lucky’s here, too,” he told him.

  Mr. Tanaka sounded just as worried as his dad and told Charlie to keep Lucky with him. “Right,” Charlie said as the hospital loomed up in front of them.

  “Keep Lucky by your side,” Mr. Tanaka repeated.

  When the ambulance reached the emergency room, Charlie was sent to the hospital’s main entrance, where he was told to wait for his parents to arrive. “It’s just my dad,” Charlie mumbled, but he headed for the sliding glass doors of the entrance. Inside the lobby, Charlie was stopped by a nurse at the front desk who told him he could wait with Lucky outside. No dogs allowed.

  Charlie took Lucky back through the sliding doors to wait near the hospital’s circular driveway. Lucky lay down next to a potted plant and put his head between his paws.

  Charlie paced back and forth. His dad was taking forever.

  At last his phone buzzed. Bad traffic, his dad texted. Almost there.

  I’m at front entrance, he wrote back.

  Suddenly, something swooped from the sky and flew by Charlie’s head, startling him so much he almost dropped his phone.

  Lucky jumped to his feet and barked. Charlie grabbed the leash before Lucky tried to bolt after what looked like a giant crow circling above their heads. “Lucky, sit!” He watched the bird fly low across the street and then upward, disappearing into the dark sky.

  Lucky went on barking and wouldn’t stop. The people standing nearby turned their heads. Charlie spotted his dad’s car pulling onto the circular drive and he walked to meet him, keeping an eye out for the strange black bird.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll know more tomorrow,” his dad said as they stood on the front steps of Zach’s house. “Nana’s pretty tough. She’ll be okay.”

  Charlie nodded. After a long wait at the hospital, the doctors told them Nana had suffered a serious concussion. She was still under sedation, no visitors allowed yet. Charlie was spending the night at Zach’s while his dad went back to the restaurant to close up. They’d already returned Lucky to Mr. Tanaka, who’d said the same thing his dad kept repeating⁠—Nana was strong.

  His dad gave Charlie’s shoulder a squeeze. “I promise to let you know if the doctors give me an update. Get a good night’s sleep and don’t stay up too late with Zach.” He rang the Parkers’ doorbell and almost instantly Zach and his parents opened the door.

  “Sorry to hear about your grandma, Charlie,” Zach’s dad said while Zach’s mom gave him a big bear hug.

  “I’m sure she’s going to be fine,” Mrs. Parker whispered in his ear. Then she straightened up. “Zacharias, don’t you have something in the oven?”

  “I got it,” Zach said, waving her off. His mom raised an eyebrow but turned back to Charlie’s dad. The parents put their heads together, their voices dropping.

  Zach pulled Charlie away from the parental huddle and headed down the hall. “I’m really sorry about your grandma. I’ve got something to cheer you up.”

  Charlie sniffed the air hopefully as he followed Zach into the Parkers’ bright kitchen. He was starving. “Cinnamon buns?”

  “Nope. Palmiers. They’re French.”

  “Of course they are,” Charlie said, rolling his eyes. Zach had spent the summer in France with his parents while they were on sabbatical from the university. Now Zach was obsessed with all things French, even switching his allegiance to France’s national soccer team. He was insanely good at picking up languages and was already fluent in Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and Swahili. Lately he’d been finding ways to drop French words into every conversation.

  Zach pulled a baking pan from the oven and slid it onto a cooling rack with a wave of his arm. “Et voilà!”

  Neatly arranged on the pan were two rows of golden-brown pastries glistening with a glaze of sugar, just like the ones from their neighborhood bakery.

  “Wow, you made these?” Charlie said. “I thought they were called elephant ears.”

  “In France, they’re called palmiers, because they look like palm leaves,” Zach said. “Americans call them elephant ears.”

  “You’re an American,” Charlie said, picking up a plate from a stack on the counter.

  “By way of Martinique, where my grandma lives. You know, the Caribbean island? Martinique is still part of France, therefore I’m a hundred percent Black and a teeny bit French. Just a soupçon,” Zach said, pinching his fingers a half inch. “My grandma talks trash about the French, says they’re colonialist white oppressors, but she came with us to Paris last summer because she loves to eat. Like me.” He grabbed a spatula and flipped a pile of palmiers onto Charlie’s plate. “Bon appétit!”

  Charlie stuffed a warm pastry into his mouth, the cinnamon sugar melting on his tongue. “Mmm, this is good.” He felt a rush of relief to be eating and joking around with Zach, as if nothing terrible had happened in the last few hours.

  “C’est délicieux!” Zach agreed.

  After polishing off most of the pan they wandered downstairs to Zach’s basement room. They were about to crawl into bed when Charlie remembered what Nana had said about keeping the Winter Stone hidden.

  Too late.

  “Whoa, dude, what is that?” Zach exclaimed, catching sight of the sparkling blue gemstone on its silver chain.

  Charlie hesitated. But it was hard to keep things from Zach and the story spilled out⁠—the exploding streetlight, the shock of finding Nana lying in the snow, and the secret family heirloom she’d handed over to him, apparently for safekeeping. He stopped short of describing Nana’s whispers about someone named Malcolm, a star in the attic, and a silver wolf gone missing. It was just too weird.

  Zach flopped down on one of the twin beds. “So how come you have this awesome family jewel that no one knows about?” He put his eyeglasses on the night table and switched off the light.

  “I’ve no idea.” Charlie glanced down at the large blue gem, glinting even with the lights off. Why had Nana told him to keep it hidden?

  Within minutes Zach was snoring but Charlie was too restless to sleep. He should have gotten Nana’s keys from the garden, like she’d told him. Because that was another strange thing. Nana kept a spare house key under a flowerpot, but last summer she’d shown him something else⁠—a hiding spot for her whole key chain, in a far corner of her garden. “Just for emergencies,” she’d said in her mysterious way. “Now only you and Winston know the secret place when I need to hide all my keys.” As if a cat would care about a set of keys.

  He sat up with a bolt. Winston. He’d forgotten to feed him.

  Charlie’s phone buzzed on the floor near his pile of clothes, and he picked it up. It was Skye. What was she doing up so late?

  Heard ur at Zach’s house. Asleep?

  Yeah sleeptexting u, Charlie typed.

  Sorry about Nana Did u feed Winston his dinner??

  How did Skye always know exactly what he was thinking? She’d been doing that for as long as he could remember.

  Gonna do tmrw, he typed.

  Poor kitty no dinner!!!

  Charlie tried to think of a good answer.

  He’s 20 pounds, dieting good for him.

  Ur horrible! I’m going over there.

  Don’t be insane.

  His phone was ringing now.

  “How could you forget to feed Winston?” Skye said loudly when he answered.

  “Shhh, you’re gonna wake up your family!” Charlie warned.

  “I’m not at my house,” said Skye. “I’m outside the basement door!”

  “Wait, you’re outside Nana’s basement?” Charlie said.

  “No⁠—Zach’s basement! Let me in! It’s freezing out here!”

  Charlie hung up and grabbed his hoodie, pulling it over his head. He shook Zach’s arm. “Skye is here. Outside.”

  Zach blinked and reached for his glasses. “Huh⁠—here? What’s she doing?”

  “Being crazy like always.”

  Charlie yanked Zach out of his bed, and they stumbled across the basement past the giant Jay-Z poster near the back entrance. Zach slid the dead bolt and opened the door. A blast of cold air swirled in.

  Skye was on the back steps, arms crossed.

  “Are you two zombies going to just stand there or are you going to let me in?”

  Chapter 3

  A Night Visit

  Skye marched through the basement door before they could answer.

  “Don’t tell me I woke you up,” she said, pulling back the hood of her sweatshirt and shaking loose her tangle of red hair. She was dressed head to foot in black, except for her pink Nike high-tops.

  “Shhh, don’t talk so loud!” Charlie whispered. It figured Skye had shown up because she felt sorry for Winston. There wasn’t an animal anywhere she didn’t want to save from extinction or personally adopt⁠—panda bears, polar bears, wild horses, wild tigers, stray cats, you name it. Her bedroom walls were plastered with their images, her ceiling decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars in the shape of a winged stallion.

  “Your parents let you come over here?” Zach asked.

  “They don’t know I’m out of the house. I climbed out my window,” Skye said, eyeing Charlie. “The branches reach my roof, you know.”

  Charlie shook his head. He and Skye had been climbing the oak tree that stood between their two houses for years. In the daytime. When you could see your handholds.

  “You’re crazy,” he told her. But she was right, Winston needed to be fed, and more importantly, he needed to get Nana’s keys. It made him uneasy to think someone else might want to find them.

  “All right, let’s give Winston a late-night snack,” he said.

  “Wait, we’re feeding your grandma’s cat now?” Zach exclaimed.

  “Her house is just around the corner, it won’t take long.” Charlie didn’t bother to add that Skye would never leave them alone until they agreed. She was the most stubborn person on the planet.

  He and Zach pulled on their sneakers and followed Skye out the basement door. “If my parents find out we snuck out of the house, I’ll be grounded till I die,” Zach muttered as they crept down the street, checking every few steps to make sure they hadn’t been spotted.

  When they reached Nana’s house, Charlie took Skye’s flashlight and led them along a winding path to the gardens in the back. Nana’s property was large and filled with trees and bushes and even a grape arbor. Deep inside a hedge near the back, he found Nana’s silver key ring hanging on its hidden branch.

  “Why’d your grandma put her keys way back here?” Zach asked as Charlie untangled himself and shook a few leaves from his head.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, not wanting to say what he was really thinking. Nana was hiding something. What did she mean by a star in the attic?

  They made their way back to the front porch of the three-story house. “Shine the light here,” Charlie told Skye as he examined the keys on the ring. Several of them had unusual shapes, hardly looking like keys at all. He spotted one that looked like the front-door key and gave it a try.

  A shrieking yowl erupted from the other side of the door.

  “Um, is your grandma’s house haunted?” asked Zach, taking a step back.

  “That’s just Winston,” Charlie said, fumbling to turn the key in the lock.

  “Kitty, we’re here!” Skye called out in a singsong voice. Winston thumped his paws against the door over and over until Charlie finally opened it. Skye dropped to her knees and Winston launched himself into her outstretched arms.

  “Poor kitty, you must be starving.” She clutched the cat and staggered to her feet. “Let’s get you some dinner!”

  She grabbed her flashlight from Charlie and marched off to the kitchen.

  “Go keep Skye company,” he told Zach. “I need to check on a few things upstairs.” From the kitchen he could hear Skye giggling and what sounded like Winston pushing his ceramic bowl back and forth across the floor.

  “Let’s not stay here too long,” Zach said with a yawn, strolling down the hall to join Skye.

  The house was cold and dark, with only the lamp by the front window turned on. Charlie made his way through the living room until he found the light switch at the stairs leading to the second floor. He went up the stairs and peered down the long hallway. At the end stood the door to the attic.

 

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