This was not her home. If the sea glass–colored mansion at the top of the bluff hadn’t tipped her off on her drive in, then the twelve-foot-tall gothic gate that swung inward to grant her entrance to the estate made damn sure she knew she wasn’t on her side of the tracks anymore. This was Reynolds country, she’d thought, following the cobblestone path that wended past topiaries draped in white lights and a pair of concrete tigers, their faces frozen in mid roar and thick necks wrapped in festive, Fair Isle scarves. Then, she’d parked her salty little Honda Civic next to a newly waxed Land Rover and felt more than a little inadequate.

The Reynolds family was enshrouded in wealth, status, and mystery; and Black Harbor’s entire eroding shoreline belonged to them. What remained of it, anyway. Over the past decade or more, Lake Michigan had eaten away the limestone as effectively as the city’s grim atmosphere gnawed on people’s morals. If they’d had morals to begin with. In her thirty-one years on this planet—most of them spent here in this frozen purgatory—Morgan had learned that some people were born purely and inherently evil. And Black Harbor was their breeding ground.

Morgan surveyed the snow-covered estate. Giant red bulbs hung from evergreen boughs, and three wreaths decorated the middle tier of a stone fountain. A lone lamppost wore a gold velvet bow and to her left, fairy lights twinkled as they wove through the crosshatched trellis that would work well for group photos. It was creeping up on two o’clock. The golden hour would be here soon, when the sun was low and its amber hues came alive to brush its subjects’ skin tones with a warm glow. She raised her camera, snapped a test shot, and returned her attention to the door. Her worries melted away. It was just her and the keyhole. She felt the autofocus lock into place and took a photo. She could add it to her collection—the one she’d started since inheriting the key—of all the doors and their corresponding keyholes into which it didn’t fit.

Not terribly unlike herself.

Pierced and gangly with a death stare that could intimidate a bull, Morgan didn’t really fit anywhere, either.

Except The Ruins. She’d fit there. And then it all burned down.

Morgan considered the keyhole again and sucked in a breath. This wasn’t home and yet, was it so wrong that she wished it was? That her childhood had been spent here, running free through an orchard and pushing siblings on a front porch swing; not curled up on the floor, left to lick her wounds like a dog and pray her door remained closed until morning.