This was officially my worst nightmare. My vices were the small tastes of freedom I enjoyed every so often, and this woman who had unknowingly stumbled into a house of horrors was the biggest breath of fresh air I had tasted in decades. And her hair…God, it brought back memories. Memories better left buried.

In this house, you could either let your past haunt you, or you could forget you ever used to have a life outside these walls. A real life. I chose to do the latter. I couldn’t let this newcomer fuck up my streak. Now she was officially one of us, I would stay far, far away from her. Difficult to do, but not impossible. Downstairs, the woman was muttering to herself, cursing as she wandered into the dining room. I shook my head, wondering how the hell I could avoid her. Keep my sanity. The one good thing about this house had been the lack of women. Women hadn’t exactly been a good experience for me in my pre-house life.

“I thought the whole haunted house thing would’ve scared everyone off for at least another decade or two.” Luther’s gravelly whisper caught my attention. We tried to give each other as much distance as possible, so the fact he was willingly speaking to me was a surprise. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Fuck’s sake. She doesn’t look any older than Theo, and we all know how that went.”

I didn’t want to think about it. I shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll tell her what to do soon enough.”

Luther groaned. “Grow up. How many times do we have to go over this bullshit?”

I tightened my hands around the railing, ignoring Luther and listening to the young woman bang at the back door. She’d figure it out herself. We all had. Sure enough, footsteps stormed across the kitchen, back through the dining room. Would she be a crier? A screamer? I wasn’t sure which way she would go. From my vantage point on the landing, I watched as she tightened a tea towel around her fist, and I instantly knew what she meant to do. Damn. Why couldn’t she have been a crier?

“Do you want to deal with her?” I asked Luther.

He merely raised one dark brow and gestured towards our new roommate. “Please. Be my guest.”