Every neighborhood has that one house.
Emma came to flip it. Renovate, sell, and move on to the next.
A clean job. A fresh start. But the main bedroom stays frigid, and every night at the same hour the air thickens with woodsmoke and sweetness.
Something is here with her. It is patient, and attentive, and it has been hungry a very long time.
She should run. She knows the shape of that thought the way she knows her own name.
But every night, she lies awake in the dark and waits.
For the heaviness in the air and the honeyed words that make leaving feel like something she only imagined wanting.
It has waited so long. And when it finally takes her, she won’t want to be saved.
