Direwood

by Catherine Yu

Genres: YA Horror; YA Paranormal; YA Romance; Horror

Synopsis

In this velvet-clad 1990s gothic horror, Aja encounters a charming vampire who wants to lure her into the woods—just like her missing sister.



No one ever pays attention to sixteen-year-old Aja until her perfect older sister Fiona goes missing. In the days leading up to Fiona's disappearance, Aja notices some extraordinary things: a strange fog rolling through their idyllic suburban town, a brief moment when the sky seems to rain blood, and a host of parasitic caterpillars burrowing their way through the trees. Aja's father, the neighbors, and even her ex-friend Mary all play down this strange string of occurrences, claiming there must be some natural explanation. It seems everyone is willing to keep living in denial until other teens start to go missing too.



Aja is horrified when she meets Padraic, the vampire responsible for all the strange occurrences. His hypnotic voice lures her to the window and tells her everything she's longed to hear—she's beautiful and special, and he wants nothing more than for Aja to come with him. Aja knows she shouldn't trust him, but she's barely able to resist his enthrallment. And following him into the woods may be the only way to find Fiona, so she agrees on one condition: He must let her leave alive if she is not wooed after one week. Though Aja plans to kill him before the week is out, Padraic has his own secrets as well.



In the misty woods, Aja finds that Padraic has made his nest with another vampire in a dilapidated church infested by blood-sucking butterflies. Within its walls, the vampires are waited on and entertained by other children they've enthralled, but there is no sign of Fiona. Before her bargain is up, Aja must find a way to turn her classmates against their captors, find her sister, and save them all—or be forced to join the very monsters she wants to destroy.

Release date: September 20, 2022

Publisher: Page Street Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

ONE

a picture-perfect birthday party

ON THE DAY OF MY sister’s seventeenth birthday, blood rain falls from the sky.

No one in my family listens when I point it out. In Michigan, the weather changes just about every ten minutes. And maybe I’m prone to slight exaggeration. But this time it’s real, I swear. Thin red rivers are running down white picket fences, and no one’s paying any attention.

On the other hand, my sister has no trouble getting noticed. Any day, any time. And unlike me, she does it so effortlessly.

I can hear Fiona upstairs, pacing back and forth. The Alt 97 radio station reverberates downstairs to me and Dad in the living room, maudlin and muffled. I don’t even need to see my sister to know what she’s doing at this very moment. Sifting through her bedroom closet, looking for the perfect babydoll dress for her party. Plaid, floral, pastel. I know she’ll go with something pretty and delicate, with just the right amount of edge to keep it from being saccharine. Today’s her special day, after all. Yet another moment for her to shine and be fawned over.

I’m wrapping up her present as hastily as I can—a black velvet choker with a dangling, sterling silver Fpendant that I picked up on clearance at the mall. Outside the living room window, I can see the whole town. Nearly identical houses, bordered by those familiar white fences, now dripping red. Automatically scheduled lawn sprinklers are going off despite the rain, clicking and hissing in rhythm, winding in their long circles. Songbirds twitter in the trees, mad and sweet. You can have a wonderful life here in Glen Hills, as long as you know how to play your part.

It’s August, and normally the sky would be blue and cloudless. But today there’s rain, and it’s not the rain I’m used to. It comes down rust-red over the town like old blood, the color of corrosion.

“A bad omen,” I mumble, sort of joking, sort of not, over the sound of The Cranberries’ morose guitar riffs filtering out from Fiona’s room. “Maybe we shouldn’t have the party outside, after all.”

“There’s an explanation for that. There always is,” Dad tells me calmly. Always the reasonable one. Awake by six, asleep by ten.

Dad lives for routine. He loves his work as a dentist—a job he’s had forever. A job he’s had since even before Mom left us. He wears button downs and khakis. He keeps the lawn pristine. Dad’s the very essence of Glen Hills, and so is my sister.

When it comes to this town, neither of them has ever had a hair out of line—especially not Fiona. They’ve always conformed to the rules, both the spoken and unspoken ones. Anything to fit in, I guess. Although with my sister, she somehow manages to stand out in the right way too. Fiona has a certain shine. Everyone knows that.

For all my life, I’ve had to hear about how great my sister is. She cooks, she bakes, she volunteers at the senior center. The perfect student and the perfect daughter. She even sews her own clothes. Even though we’re the only Chinese family in the whole neighborhood, she’s teaching herself Mandarin. Less than a year older than me and she’s got it all figured out. There’s nothing she can’t do, as far as Dad is concerned. She’s got the whole town convinced of it too.

I head to my own room, Fiona’s present tucked under my arm.

I throw her birthday gift under a pile of old laundry when I hear the knock at my door. My sister peeks in, her long dark hair carefully braided, the ends slightly curling. She’s a little damp from the shower, and smells like cucumber melon body wash. She’s gone with a white satin babydoll dress covered in tiny flowers. Classic Fiona.

“Here,” she says, nudging a bundle of soft cloth into my arms. I unfold it, and it’s basically the same dress she has on, but this one’s in light purple, with darker velvet trim along the scooped neckline. “You can wear it today.”

She wants us to match, but I’m sick of matching her. I’m tired of being the younger version of my sister, the worse version, always falling short by comparison. But because it’s her big day, I grit my teeth and smile.

“Thanks. By the way … don’t you think something’s off with the weather?”

We both look outside. The rain is definitely not clear, and even Fiona knows it. But she points to the old elm across the street from our house. The bark is reddish and flaking. The tree is unquestionably dying.

“Something’s eating the tree. A parasite, maybe,” she says. “The flaking dust has mixed in with the rain. It’s perfectly normal. There’s no need to be so dramatic, Aja.”

Something flares inside me. An ugly feeling that I push back as far as I can. “Aren’t you worried about your birthday, though?”

“It’ll clear up.” She smiles decisively. She doesn’t look worried whatsoever. “I know it will.”