Page 5

I let out a slow breath, my heart hammering in my chest.

Somewhere in the distance, a midnight bell tolled, low and hollow. The shadows fell away, dissolving back into the night, but I kept my eyes shut. Because for just a second—a tiny, sliver-thin second—there was still hope.

Hope that when I opened my eyes, I wouldn’t be standing here alone.

Hope that this would finally be the year my mate had summoned me.

I cracked an eye open.

And just like that, hope died its annual death.

Because standing in front of me wasn’t my beautiful mate, waiting with open arms, an apologetic smile, and an explanation. Standing in front of me was a haunted cabin, as promised.

Bramble Cabin, in all its gloomy, isolated, horror-movie glory, sat nestled in a copse of gnarled trees, their branches twisted like skeletal fingers against the sky. Behind it, the dark lake glimmered, eerily silent.

I inhaled deeply, steadying myself before letting my eyes drift back to my home for the next couple of weeks.

Oddly enough, on second look, it didn’t seem quite as menacing.

The silvery moonlight softened its edges, clinging to the wooden beams, bouncing off the windowpanes in quick, flashing bursts.

The scent of woodsmoke wrapped around me, curling in the crisp night air.

Wait...

... Woodsmoke?

I narrowed my eyes at the thin tendrils of smoke billowing out of the chimney. I hadn’t even set foot inside yet, so who had gotten a head start on making the place cozy?

Right... Nameless entity. Tortured soul.

Yippee .

And then, as if on cue, a flash of something moved from the upstairs window.

Cool it, Devlin. It was probably just the reflection of a bird in the sky , I told myself. Except it’s nighttime, and there were no birds...

Narrowing my eyes, I let my gaze slide from window to window, scanning for another glimpse of movement.

Nothing.

All was silent in the little haunted cabin.

I exhaled, shaking off the tension. It’s just a house, Devlin. A little spooky, but still just a house.

I took a step forward, and that was when I saw it—a haunting figure, glaring out at me from one of the downstairs windows.

My skin prickled, shadows beginning to pool at the tips of my fingers, when I realized it was literally a bedsheet ghost peering out at me with its hollow, cutout eyes.

Relief flooded me. It was a prank. I bet I’d get there to find the owner had hired some clown to creep around the place.

It wasn’t even a decent costume. How the fuck this place was marketed as “The World’s Most Haunted House” was beyond me.

If I’d paid for the vacation myself, I’d be asking for my money back.

The creep in the sheet raised his arm toward the windowpane, slow and deliberate. I snorted a laugh at how pathetic the attempt to scare me was.

But the hand didn’t stop.

And in the blink of an eye, the sheet-ghost was no longer in the house.

It had materialized onto the porch, floating eerily, and without some bozo’s feet poking out from under it.

It raised its little arms, and it would have looked cartoon-like if all the shutters and doors hadn’t started rattling violently.

Yeah... Fuck this. I’d rather be miserable back in the Shadow Realm than miserable and scared in a haunted house.

The shadows pooled around me, wrapping me in their familiar inky embrace. A heartbeat later, I felt them release me, the comforting weight peeling away as I re-entered reality. I opened my eyes and felt a cold, sinking confusion crash over me.

I was still at the fucking haunted house .

Still facing the same creepy, sheet-clad ghost, which now tilted its hollow-eyed head in curiosity.

I swallowed hard, shoving the unease down. I tried again, summoning the shadows, willing them to swallow me whole and take me back to the Shadow Realm where I belonged. Darkness curled around me. But when I opened my eyes again, I was exactly where I’d started.

Panic pricked in the tips of my fingers.

I had traveled between realms my entire life, slipping in and out of the Shadow Realm as effortlessly as breathing.

So why the hell couldn’t I leave?

I reached out with my senses, testing the air around me.

Peony-scented magic lingered on the cabin, clinging to the ghost like a memory.

The air around me was heady with the scent of crushed leaves, layered with something richer, deeper—a desperate ache for someone lost and never coming back.

Twined through it was something fainter, laced through the air itself—peppery confusion, raw and unsettled.

I exhaled slowly. At least my ability to sense emotions and desires was still intact.

Good. That meant my incubus magic was working.

So, I summoned the darkness once more, reaching for the tether that would pull me back to the realm where I belonged. I felt the shadows pulse and shift...

... nothing .

A cold, suffocating weight pressed against my ribs, wrapping around my chest like a vise.

I was trapped.

For the first time in my existence, I couldn’t leave.

Aside from the usual sigil traps and containment spells, there were very few things in this world that could prevent an incubus demon from zapping themselves back to their own realm.

Headless Hollow was a monster-exclusive town.

Maybe there was some kind of a spell on it that would stop my ability to go back to my realm?

A sharp chill crept down my spine as my mind supplied another reason an incubus wouldn’t be able to return to their realm.

If they had met their mate.

The crunch of footsteps against the leaf-littered ground sent another jolt of tension through me. My breath hitched as I turned toward the movement, every muscle in my body coiling with anticipation.

My eyes locked onto a pair of cloudy azure irises, framed by coarse white brows, and I let out a long, slow exhale.

Unless my fated mate was a seventy-year-old man with a wiry beard and bad posture—which I prayed to Hecate wasn’t true—then I hadn’t been summoned. Which meant I was stuck in this realm for some other reason.

“Howdy, neighbor,” my not-mate greeted, his voice weak but enthusiastic.

He was short and frail, wrapped in a moth-eaten knitted cardigan that barely concealed a stained button-up shirt.

His crumpled trousers hung loosely on him, and his threadbare slippers scuffed against the dirt as he shuffled forward.

In each hand, he held a trash bag, which he set down at the end of an inconspicuous lane I hadn’t noticed before.

I reached out with my senses, searching for the telltale signs of his emotions. Wrapping around the man was the thick and cloying scent of desire for someone lost.

“You staying in the haunted house?” the stranger asked, tilting his head toward the cabin. His eyes flashed red in the moonlight—a flicker, brief but unmistakable—and I knew immediately what he was. A basilisk.

I’d only met a handful of basilisks on my travels. They were covetous by nature, noble in their own way, but not the kind of creatures you would want to make direct eye contact with if you got on their bad side.

“It would appear so,” I said evenly, flicking a glance toward the cabin. The ghost had vanished from the porch, now lurking upstairs, its hollow eyes peering down at us with silent scrutiny, as if deciding how much of a problem I was going to be.

“Frightened, son? You wouldn’t be the first.” The basilisk let out a gravelly chuckle. “I thought an incubus would be made of tougher stuff.”

A prickle of defensiveness flickered over my skin, my shoulders tensing instinctively.

“I don’t usually get the chance to tell the tourists this,” he said, his red-tinged gaze flicking toward the cabin, “but there’s a trick with that house.”

“A trick?” I echoed, skepticism lacing my voice.

“Yeah,” the basilisk murmured, the humor in his tone laced with an undercurrent I couldn’t quite place my finger on. “A trick. You just need to compliment it.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to assess if he was pulling my leg or genuinely suggesting that I should flirt with the ghost.

“Tell it the curtains look nice,” he said with an echo of a laugh. “Or that it’s done a fine job keeping the place clean. It likes that.” He exhaled softly, shaking his head. “Do that, and it’ll be like putty in your hands.”

I studied him carefully. “And how do you know this?” More importantly, why was he telling me?

The basilisk shrugged as if he didn’t quite understand why he was helping me out either.

“I knew the family who owned the house. Tragic, what happened to them.” His lips—at least, what I could see of them beneath his wiry beard—curled into a sad, almost bitter smile.

“And their daughter...” He hesitated for a moment.

“She didn’t deserve what happened to her. ”

The basilisk let out a long breath, shaking his head. “I don’t usually get the chance to make small talk with the guests staying here, so take my advice— compliment the house .”

I paused, then slowly nodded. “Um. Thank you.”

“Anyway.” He gestured toward the lane. “I’m just in the cabin down there if you need anything. If you do survive the night”—he grinned, but there was no real humor in it—“you can call in and visit me and my wife. Speaking of which, I really ought to get back to her.”

The way he said “her” had something twisting in my gut. His wife. The one whose presence lingered in the air, laced with the sharp, peppery sting of confusion, raw and unsettled, like a memory struggling to hold its shape.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“Good luck!” The basilisk chuckled, the sound low and husky, reverberating through the trees long after he had vanished into the darkness.

I took a steadying breath, forcing my shoulders to relax as I turned toward the cabin. The moment I stepped forward, the shutters began to rattle in warning. Feeling incredibly foolish, I cleared my throat and hesitantly took the old basilisk’s advice.