Where Fear Remembers You (The Desire Collection #7)

Chapter 1

The gravel of the long driveway had given way to a narrow, moss-choked path, my suitcase wheels catching on every root.

Black Hollow Manor didn’t loom. It waited.

A hulk of dark stone and leaded glass windows that watched me approach with a kind of indifferent hunger.

My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs.

Anxiety wasn’t a feeling anymore; it was a frequency, a constant, staticky hum in my bones.

The debt was a real number on a spreadsheet back in my shitty apartment, but here, it felt like a physical weight, a cold stone in my gut.

This was my last-ditch play: house-sitting for a reclusive family’s estate no one else would touch.

The pay was enough to clear the last of the medical bills.

All I had to do was survive it. The massive oak door was unlocked.

It swung inward on silent hinges, exhaling a breath of cool, dusty air that smelled of old paper and damp stone.

I stepped inside, the heavy door thudding shut behind me, sealing me into a profound silence that somehow made the hum in my head louder.

The foyer was a cathedral of shadows. A grand staircase swept upwards into darkness.

Portraits of severe-looking ancestors lined the walls, their eyes seeming to track my every fumbling step.

My breathing sounded too loud, too ragged.

I dropped my suitcase by a worn velvet settee, my palms slick with sweat.

This was a mistake. A colossal, life-altering mistake.

I forced myself to move, my sneakers whispering on the marble floor.

The silence was oppressive, a thick blanket smothering sound.

I passed a closed door, then another. My pulse was a frantic flutter in my throat.

I needed a window, a sign of the outside world, something to tether me.

I turned a corner into a narrower hallway, wood-paneled and lined with sconces that held dead light bulbs.

At the end was a solid wall of dark oak, carved with intricate, swirling patterns that seemed to move if I stared too long.

The air grew colder. The hum in my bones escalated to a sharp buzz, a scream only I could hear.

I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady my breathing, but a wave of pure, undiluted panic washed over me.

I couldn’t be here. I couldn’t. The wall shimmered.

It wasn’t a trick of the light. The solid oak rippled like water, the carvings dissolving into a vortex of shadow.

Where the wall had been, a corridor stretched into impossible darkness.

Cold air, smelling of earth and old incense, flowed from it.

My feet were moving before my brain could protest, drawn toward that unnatural opening.

The corridor was short, ending in what looked like another dead end—a floor-to-ceiling mirror veiled by a sheet of black silk.

The fabric stirred in the cold draft as if touched by an unseen hand, one corner slipping down.

The mirror did not reflect the dark hall behind me.

It showed a room. A vast library, all rich mahogany and ladders reaching towards a vaulted ceiling lost in gloom.

A fire crackled in a massive hearth, casting the only light.

And he was there. A man stood before the fire, his back to the mirror, his form tall and lean, dressed in simple, dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

He was turning, as if he’d heard me. As his profile came into view, I tried to fix his features in my mind—the sharp line of his jaw, the dark sweep of his hair—but they slid away the instant I grasped them.

It was like trying to hold smoke. His face was impossible, a beautiful, shifting dream I couldn’t keep.

Then he turned fully, and he looked directly at me.

Through the mirror. Into me. His lips moved.

The sound didn’t come from the corridor.

It didn’t come from the library in the mirror.

It bloomed inside my skull, a calm, resonant baritone that cut through the static buzz in my bones like a scalpel. “Anna.”

My name. He said my name. For one terrifying, perfect second, the noise stopped.

The anxiety vanished. There was only the deep, quiet resonance of his voice and a shocking, unwanted sense of recognition.

Of being seen. The silence was more frightening than the hum.

I stumbled back, my shoulder hitting the now-solid oak paneling of the normal hallway.

The corridor was gone. The mirror was just a dusty old mirror on a wall.

A choked sob escaped my throat. I ran. I didn’t stop until I found a door that opened, a bedroom that felt marginally safer than the predatory silence of the manor’s heart.

I slammed the door shut, twisting the old-fashioned key in the lock until it groaned.

My back slid down the wood until I sat on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, gasping for air.

The room was still. A four-poster bed, a heavy armoire, a single candle in a tarnished holder on the nightstand.

Then the walls began to whisper. It wasn’t voices, not exactly.

It was the echo of my own fears, the ones I’d buried under spreadsheets and payment plans.

The whisper of a cardiac monitor flatlining.

The rustle of final demand notices. The soft, incessant murmur of my own mind telling me I wasn’t strong enough, I’d never be enough.

The candle on the nightstand flickered, though there was no draft.

The lock clicked home with a final, heavy thud.

I pressed my forehead against the cool wood, the rough grain imprinting itself on my skin.

Safe. This is safe. The room behind me was quiet.

Ordinary. A bed with a faded quilt, a dark armoire against one wall, a single window shrouded by thick curtains.

A tarnished silver candle holder sat on a dresser, a stub of white wax topped by a steady, still flame.

I forced myself to stand, my legs trembling.

The whispers from the walls had faded, leaving only the frantic drumbeat of my own heart.

I needed normal. I needed something my hands could understand.

I walked to the dresser, my fingers automatically tracing a grid of squares across its dusty surface.

The candle flame didn’t flicker. It burned perfectly upright, a tiny, motionless spear of light.

I stared at it, my breathing slowing to match its unnatural stillness.

Maybe this was the eye of the storm. A pocket of calm in this insane house.

I leaned closer, drawn to the pure, simple light.

The flame wasn’t yellow. As I watched, its core deepened to a blue so pale it was almost white.

Within that blue, shapes began to form. Not shapes.

A memory. The scent hit me first—damp earth, crushed leaves, the coppery tang of blood.

I was eight years old. I’d climbed the oak tree in Mrs. Henderson’s backyard, higher than I’d ever dared, chasing a stupid, sun-yellow butterfly.

The branch gave way with a sound like a pistol crack.

The fall wasn’t silent. It was full of the tearing of my favorite sundress, the whump of the air being driven from my lungs, the sharp, bright snap from my wrist. But the sound that lived in my bones, the one that rose from the candle flame now, was the silence after.

Lying in that pile of mulch and rotting apples, utterly alone, knowing no one had seen me fall.

The pure, abandoned panic that I would die there, unnoticed.

That my small life would just… stop. The candle showed it all.

The dappled light through the leaves, the jagged white bone pressing against the skin of my forearm, the slow spread of crimson on yellow gingham.

I felt the sticky wetness of the mulch, smelled the sweet rot of the apples.

I felt the scream trapped in my throat, a solid, suffocating thing.

Then, the flame snapped back to a normal, dancing yellow.

The memory vanished, leaving me gripping the edge of the dresser, my knuckles white.

My mouth was dry, coated with the phantom taste of blood and decay.

The walls began to breathe. It was a soft, sighing sound, like fabric moving in a slow breeze.

The wallpaper, a faded floral print, seemed to pulse gently.

And the whispers returned. Not the generic fears of debt and failure.

These were specific, crystalline, and entirely mine.

You let go of the branch, the wall beside the bed murmured, its voice the rustle of dry leaves.

You chose to fall. No one came, sighed the wall near the window, with the sound of distant traffic.

You knew they wouldn’t. I backed away from the dresser, from the treacherous candle.

My heel caught on the edge of the rug, and I stumbled, landing hard on the floor.

The impact jarred my teeth. I scrambled backward until my spine hit the bed frame.

“Stop,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “Please.”