Chapter one :moving in
By the time they hit mile two hundred, the truck's suspension had given out, and Ava Bennett was sure she'd be feeling every pothole down to her spine by morning. Probably worth it. Three hundred miles was the distance she needed between herself and the wreckage she had left behind.
The Ashwood Hollow didn't announce itself. One second she was tooling through nothing and the next the trees just closed in. Old growth, the kind that seemed to have opinions about you. The rent was dirt cheap and the job offer was legit, which in Ava's experience usually meant there was a catch that no one had mentioned yet.
She got out of the car, standing there a beat too long, popping her spine. Something stirred out beyond the edge of the trees. Not wind, she knew wind. This was heavier. And it raised the hair on her arms before her brain could talk her down with the word deer. She stood there too long staring at the trees as if they might answer her.
“You look at those woods like they owe you money.”
Ava leapt. The woman next door stood leaning on the porch rail, arms crossed, watching her with an amused look that made Ava aware of the coffee stain on her shirt. “Six hour drive will do that,” she said. “After enough highway, everything looks cursed.”
“It usually is out here,” the woman said, coming down the steps, hand out. “Elena. My brother and I live next door.”
“Ava,” she said, taking the offered hand. “And yes, apparently. Whether the house wants me or not.” She gestured toward the porch behind her, one shutter hanging by a single nail, as if it had quietly given up some time in the nineties and nobody had noticed since.
Elena laughed at that, but not for long. Her eyes darted toward the tree line, quick and involuntary, gone before Ava could tell if she'd imagined it. “Welcome to the Hollow,” Elena said. “One free tip. Don't go into those woods after dark.”
“Bears?” Ava said.
“Sure,” Elena said, her mouth doing something not quite a smile. “We'll take bears.”
A door opened down the line of the porch before Ava could push any further. A man came out. He was tall and dark-haired, and walked like a man who had taught himself not to make a noise. He didn't look Ava in the eye. He looked at the trees like they had said something to him, something he alone could hear.
“Micah,” Elena said. There was an edge to her voice now, a warning in a single word. “We have a new neighbour.”
Then he turned. For one unguarded second, before his face fell and closed like a door, Ava would have sworn his eyes weren't brown at all.
They were golden and bright and strange, reflecting the last of the daylight in a way that made her stomach drop before her mind could come up with a logical excuse.
It was just a trick of the light, she said to herself. Nothing more.
