Something filled the doorway. Blocked it. Something dark. Almost absent. Like Death in his blackest hooded cloak. Claws jutted like razors from the dark. Fangs glinted white and red, as if fire flickered on them. In them. Childish whiskers above the fangs—almost comical... The claws snapped though. The fangs gnashed. The whiskers swelled.
Leb thought he’d figured it out.
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Had it going his way.
After all, he was a Guardian of La Mirada Island.
He’d helped crack the infamous ghost treasure mystery. Put a murderous old woman in jail. Corralled a renegade jar of “pure evil.” Saved the island. Been appointed Senior Custodian of its liveliest attraction—the graveyard—at eleven years old.
He could handle tonight’s little monster.
A rowboat.
The monster had other ideas.
In the sequel to At a Wall on an Island, we pick up with the inhabitants of La Mirada island six months after the infamous “ghost treasure mystery” that put the little island on the map. As we move from winter into summer, just as things begin to seem right with the world again (despite the island’s new notoriety) people start getting attacked and killed by a mysterious fiend described by the few witnesses as a hulking someone wearing a werewolf or cat mask.
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When the graveyard finally gets a commemorative plaque for General Cornwallis, Leb leads a ceremony at the spot where they buried the cat on Castle Island. The attendees of the ceremony include Leb, Elspeth, Luther, Cecil, Caper, Henry, the La Mirada Witch and her “warlock” brother. (They invited others, including Mrs. Prattle, Elspeth’s grandmother, and Chief Murphree, who bowed out, and Durry who refused to get in Cecil’s crate, still.) Somehow, the ceremony unleashes a relentless, wrathful beast that takes retributive action against anyone who threatens any of the ceremony participants. Did the La Mirada Witch conjure something? The Warlock, angry and disturbed by the recent violence in their home? Ferman? Some other power?
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Whatever happened, it's on them to stop it.
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