All Hallows’ Menagerie

Iris Kane works nights at an all-night pharmacy in Camden, and she has never slept well in the dark. So when a kind, silver-haired regular stops to chat at two in the morning, she thinks nothing of it.

She wakes in a silver room with someone else’s eyes.

For more than a century the Ashcombe family has quietly collected people: the unseen, the ones nobody comes looking for. They are remade into living exhibits, given a seal’s skin, a tiger’s tail or a hare’s ears, then shown every Halloween to masked buyers in a candlelit house in Hampstead. Iris is Dr. Julian Ashcombe’s masterpiece: an owl that truly sees in the dark.

Behind the bolted doors are others. Kit is a frightened boy who hears everything. Lila draws portraits on napkins. Tobias has given up hope. And through a wall, Daniel taps out messages to her in code. On All Hallows’ Night the candles will be lit and the bidding will begin.

But the collectors forgot one thing. In the dark, the owl sees everything.