Haunting Adeline

Lightning splits the sky and for one blinding second, Addie sees him—the man standing outside her window.

Lightning splits the sky and for one blinding second, Addie sees him—the man standing outside her window. Her heart stammers, her palms slick, her breath gone shallow. But alongside the terror lives something she refuses to name: a low heat that pools and lingers. She inherited Parsons Manor from her grandmother, a three-story Victorian perched on a cliff overlooking the Bay, haunted by the ghosts of five construction workers who died during its construction. The checkered floors always seem visible no matter how deep the shadows stretch. Every night, the figure returns. She tells herself she is afraid. She is. But she also finds herself standing at the window, barely dressed, silently challenging the shadow to come closer—so she can put a knife to his throat.

Against her mother's wishes, Addie moves into a haunted cliffside mansion

Twenty-six-year-old Addie—a successful romance novelist with crippling social anxiety—moves into the Gothic Victorian her late grandmother Nana left her. Parsons Manor perches on a cliffside, surrounded by dense woods and separated from civilization by a mile-long driveway. Vines crawl up the black siding, gargoyles stand sentinel on the roof, and the checkered floors carry decades of footsteps, some of which Addie swears still echo at night. Her mother Sarina calls the house worthless and tries to shame her into leaving, but Addie refuses. This is where she grew up alongside Nana, baking cookies and running with ghosts. The house is decaying—sagging porch, chipping paint, cobwebbed sconces—but Addie sees something worth preserving. She turns on the lights, sets the thermostat, and whispers to the dead air that she has come back.

A scarred stranger enters a bookstore and leaves with an obsession

Walking past a Seattle bookstore, Zade—a scarred hacker and vigilante—catches sight of a poster advertising a book signing. Cinnamon hair, freckled skin, smoky brown eyes. He walks inside as if pulled by a force he cannot resist, finds a spot in the back of the crowded event, and watches Addie fumble through social anxiety while charming every reader who approaches. He runs an underground organization called Z dedicated to dismantling human trafficking. He has never stalked anyone outside of his work. But standing in that bookstore, staring at a woman he has never spoken to, he decides with granite certainty that she will be his. Their eyes lock for one electric moment across the room—his mismatched, one near-black and one ice-white, bisected by a scar. Then he leaves before he does something irreversible.