“I’m not a stalker.” With this declaration, he shifted his weight to one Converse-clad foot, his big hands going to his tapered waist. My gaze lingered on his muscular, hair-dusted forearms, bare of the sleeves that he’d rolled to the elbows. Mm. Nice build, but . . . so, so no.

“Okay,” I said. “So let’s start there. If you’re not a stalker, then why have you been following me?”

“It’s not you,” he hurried to say. Probably because the librarian, Ms. Geary, had returned to her post behind the checkout counter, signaling that we were minutes from first bell. “I’m not interested in you. It’s . . . it’s your . . .”

“My what?” I prompted.

“It’s your house.”

I squinted at him, unconvinced. “My house? Is that some weird euphemism for—”

“No!”

We both glanced to Ms. Geary, who glared bullet holes into Hipster Glasses. Turning back to me, he lowered his voice again. “You live in Moldavia.”

“Romania?”

“No.” He held up a hand, like I was trying his patience. “That’s what the house is called. Was called. Before . . . just—it’s haunted. Like . . . really haunted.”

My glare dropped into a glower. One that dripped disdain. And skepticism.

“You’re following me around because you think my house is haunted.”

“I’m following you around because I know it is,” he said, those blues igniting with a strange hunger. “Surely I’m not the first one to tell you that.”

Technically speaking, I had to grant him that. Sure, Charlie had said she’d seen some creeper in the closet. But once I’d had her tucked in with me, the witching hour had come and gone with no more mention of monsters or ghouls in the walls. We’d both slept. Soundly.

And then there was the fact that I didn’t believe in ghosts. Or anything else that couldn’t be measured, documented, or, you know, proven.

“You are the first one to mention it, actually,” I semi-lied. “Because I haven’t told anybody yet which house I moved into.”

He went pale, the crimson hue draining from his face in an instant.

“I . . . I keep up with the house,” he stammered. “It’s been empty for years. And no one ever stays there for more than a few months.”

“Probably because it’s barely habitable,” I said.

“It came cheap, didn’t it?”

“We bought it ‘as is.’ Because it’s falling apart. That’s why we’re flipping it.”

I frowned. Why I was telling him this?

“Did you even check into the history before you bought the thing?” he asked, folding his arms.

“What is it that you want?” I folded my own arms, mimicking his pose. This must have made him uncomfortable—more uncomfortable—because he dropped his arms.

“I was just . . . curious,” he began. “I’ve never spoken to anyone who lived in that house before. I wanted to ask, I dunno, if you’d seen or experienced anything . . . abnormal.”

“You’re abnormal. Does that count?”