Excerpt: Locked Away

The dark clouds hung heavily in the sky over the old, worn-down mansion on the top of the hill. They seemed to be telling the people of Hunterdon to turn back, that the mansion was not a place that they were meant to go. Not that they would ever want to go; the McKinterly Mansion was shrouded in mystery.
The first question, of course, was why there was always a storm on the first day school started in Hunterdon. No matter how early or late the session began, the entire town would become as dark as night and as cold as winter. One day, a while back, there had even been a violent snowstorm that threatened to strand the new students in their classrooms. It had been late August, then.
Next came the fact that, if you stayed up late enough the night before the storm, you would see a succession of strange girls make their way up the hill and into the mansion. They were always around the age of fifteen, clothed in dark coats, and very serious looking. Some of them seemed to have walked the entire trip, all the way from wherever they came from, which, from the look of it, was very far.
And they would never come out after that. No one ever saw these girls in the mall, or playing in the park. No matter how long they waited, no one ever saw them go home for the summer, either. The same girls would come back the next year, however, so at least they weren’t being eaten.
It was true that only a few people in the world knew the secrets of the mansion, or even wanted to know, and one of those people was Andromeda Larson, who had quite a few mysteries surrounding herself, as well. There were only a few things about her that even her closest friends knew: she had just turned fifteen, her favorite color was purple, and her hair was navy, for some strange reason.