Excerpt 1: Sole Possession

This is the story I've been rewriting! David's inherited from his late, estranged father the mansion in which he grew up. Andi's a contractor he's hired to help get the place ready for a quick sale.

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I know it’s going to be a hard job. But I’m not afraid of hard jobs.”

“You’re not afraid, huh?” he repeated, more softly now.

She had a feeling that was like the sound of a music-box playing in an abandoned room…a sense of danger and fascination. What it meant, she didn’t know.

No.” She met his green eyes. Not a good idea. Eyes like that could throw a woman right off her game. “I’d love to work on this house,” she said. “I mean, it’s a historic landmark.”

“It’s a hellhole,” he muttered.

“I knew it,” Andi breathed, not even meaning to speak.

His head snapped up to look at her. “What?”

She felt her face flame. Whatever David had meant, it had nothing to do with the feeling of alarm the house gave her…a feeling she knew meant absolutely nothing.

“I mean, it’s a mess, right?” she said. “But maybe you’ll like it a little better once I’m done with the woodwork.” She tried a diversionary tactic. “What kind of wood is under here, anyway?”

“What? Um, I don’t know. Mahogany?”

“House this age, it could just be pine.” It made her feel better to talk about the specifics of the job, about things she understood, solid and real. “Sometimes the rich people liked to have artists paint faux wood grain over pine, because that actually cost even more than putting in good wood.”

“You’re kidding.”

She felt herself grin. “You want me to see what’s under here? Cause if it’s pine, you don’t want it stained.” She picked at a rough part of the paint with her fingernail, where it was already flaking off.

“Here, will this help?” David held something out to her—a classic Swiss Army knife with a red handle.

“Yeah, perfect,” she said, taking it. “You’re like a Boy Scout. Prepared.”

He didn’t smile at her attempt at a joke.

She flicked the blade along the thick square bottom post of the stairwell, carefully flaking away chunks of paint. It took a minute to get through the layers and uncover a few square inches of bare wood. She peered at it, then knocked it with her index finger. “Ooh. It’s black walnut.”

He frowned. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah, it’s super hard, and it’s gorgeous. Or it’s going to be. Look at it.”

He came closer to do that. When Andi looked down at the raw wood again her breath caught for a moment.

She saw a face in the wood grain. An old man with hateful eyes sunk deep into their sockets. Eyebrows drawn together. An open grimace of a mouth. An image of unholy rage.

“Oh, my God,” she said. She closed her eyes to shut it out.

She heard his voice say, “What is it?”

He can’t see it, she told herself, opening her eyes, though not quite looking down. If he can’t see it, it isn’t there.

“Nothing,” she said. She felt terrified, but she had more than a little practice in hiding that. “It’s just really nice wood.”

She dared to look back at the patch of bare wood again.

Nothing. She stared, trying to make out the face she had seen before. All she saw was an ordinary wood grain pattern, a series of concentric ellipses.

She was losing her mind.

Again.

“Well,” said the man, “you do seem to know your stuff.”

“I do.” Everything’s fine, Andi told herself, nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine. With a supreme act of will, she put the strange image out of her head as she folded the pocket knife shut and handed it to him.

His hand touched hers for the briefest of moments as he took it from her, and that sent a powerful reaction through her body, completely disproportionate to such a casual contact. She thought of that thing people talked about, the butterfly effect, where a flutter of fragile wings could, in another part of the world, set off a tsunami.