Four of the orphans who were lured to Larkspur House have made it out of the shadow house alive, but Poppy, Dash, Azumi, and Dylan are still on the grounds of the estate and far from safety--and unless they solve the mystery of what it is that the house wants from them they may never escape.

Poppy Caldwell is an orphan who keeps seeing a figure standing behind her in the mirror at the group home where she lives, but she does not associate this ghost with the letter that mysteriously appears in her file, claiming to be from a long-lost aunt, and inviting her to Larkspur House--and she is just one of five children who find themselves gathered in this strange house with a deadly past, and apparently no intention of letting the children escape....

Since eighth-grader Gabriel Ashe moved into his grandmother's house he has been spending a lot of time playing in the woods with his new friend Seth. But the games Seth invents involve a child-eating monster called the Hunter, and Gabriel is not sure how much is imagination and how much is real.

Although twelve-year-old Cassidy Bean keeps a book of bad things, she did not expect her summer with the Tremont family in rural New Jersey to be one of them--but this year Ursula, a local hoarder, has died under mysterious circumstances, and Cassidy finds that there a great many bad and dangerous things hidden in her house, including, perhaps, her vengeful ghost.