“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.” A corner of Bennett’s mouth lifted. “You know what’s crazy,” he said after a minute. “I feel like I’ve known you. You know there are some people you meet and you just feel this instant … connection?”

Every nerve in Morgan’s body twinged. “Déjà vu?” she suggested.

“Yeah, kind of. There’s just … this voice in my head that insists I’ve seen you before. I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy.”

“Or maybe we were snails together in another life.”

Bennett laughed. “Could be.” His eyes glittered as he scanned her from her combat boots to her stocking cap. She wondered what he was thinking, but then, she really didn’t have to wonder. Ever since the knee brush at the bar, the near kiss under the mistletoe, and not to mention the expensive new camera, Bennett Reynolds had made his intentions quite clear.

Just don’t fuck him, and you’ll be fine.

She bit her lip and stole a side-eyed glance at Bennett as he drove. There was no doubt in her mind he’d been looking forward to getting her alone and seeing what she was made of. And if Morgan was being honest with herself, she was, too.

It was only 4:00 P.M. when Bennett’s Porsche wound whisper-quiet down snaking, curling roads, and yet, the sky had darkened to the color of a bruise. The stars startled her. Morgan tilted her head, staring out her window at the millions of pinpricks. She’d never seen so many stars. Although perhaps she had when she’d come up here with Clive and Ava. Not that she would remember. Until the film roll she’d developed in Hudson’s basement four days ago, her life had always begun at the house on Winslow Street. Just her and Bern and the strangers who came to bargain their souls for a piece of hers.

Now she had none. Not a shred, or a molecule, or the most infinitesimal atom of one. It was how she could do the things she did. Or used to do.

“Here we are,” announced Bennett. He slowed before a grove of snow-laden pines. “Your home for the weekend.”

Home? She couldn’t see anything. But then his headlights shone on a gate—these people liked their gates—and a snowcapped rock stamped with The Reynolds Family, est. 1992. Bennett pressed a remote clipped to his visor and the gate swung aside like an arm beckoning them forward. The driveway wended through skeletons of birch and ash and cedar boughs. It might have been longer than their driveway in Black Harbor, though it was tough to gauge in unfamiliar territory. And in the dark.

“Is this where you take me to kill me?” Morgan asked, in jest of course, but a little curious. No one would ever find her in this sleepy, secluded town, if it could even be called as much.

She detected a shadow of a smile on Bennett’s face, and then he explained: “Believe it or not, this used to be a happening place. Some of these streets are all overgrown now.”