The Final Residence Series

The house already knows what you want.

Kate Ellison's life fits in the backseat of a Honda Civic. Dead-end job, beige apartment, a string of men who looked at her body and never once asked what she was reading. When a letter from a law firm she's never heard of offers her a year in a sprawling New England estate — no rent, no obligations, no explanation — she signs the contract and drives north.

Ames has no last name, no phone, no history. He appears in the library reading her books, asks what she thinks about what she's read, and looks at her face when she talks. For a woman who has spent a decade being viewed and never seen, his attention is not seduction. It's oxygen.

The house provides everything she's never had. Her favorite coffee she didn't order. Wine she wouldn't buy herself. Books that appear on shelves the morning after she mentions wanting them. Fires that light themselves. A solarium full of plants that grow toward her when she sits among them.

But the mist comes at night. Under the door, through the walls, into her bed. And the distance between the tree line and the house is shorter every time she measures. And her best friend's texts are going unanswered. And the man with no pores and no heartbeat knows exactly how to touch her before she tells him what she needs.

She can leave. But will she?