Read Chapter 1: The Snowplow Arrives

The Subaru’s heater was wheezing out its last breaths of warm air, and the windshield wipers were losing a war against the relentless, horizontal snow. Maren Cole gripped the wheel, her knuckles white, as she peered through the swirling white chaos for the granite pillars the realtor’s email said marked the entrance. The GPS had given up an hour ago, its cheerful voice dissolving into static, leaving her to navigate by memory and pure, stubborn hope.

She’d been here once, at twelve, in a blurry summer of fireflies and lemonade. The drive had felt endless then, too, but for different reasons. Now, the world outside was a monochrome void, and the only thing real was the thrum of the engine and the cold that seeped through the car’s floorboards, biting at her ankles.

There. A flash of grey stone, half-buried in a drift. Maren yanked the wheel, and the car fishtailed before the tires found a purchase on the snow-packed drive. The headlights swept across a wall of pines, heavy with white, revealing a clearing and the shape that dominated it. The Roost. Her grandmother’s inn.

Even half-blind, with snow piling on its roof and icicles like jagged teeth hanging from the gutters, it was grand. A sprawling, three-story Victorian with a wraparound porch that looked like it was struggling to shrug off a heavy blanket. The windows were dark, hollow sockets in the face of the storm. It looked less like a welcoming home and more like a challenge.

Maren cut the engine. The silence that followed was immediate and profound, broken only by the wind’s low, mournful howl. She sat for a moment, her breath fogging the windshield, allowing herself one small, selfish moment of terror. *What the hell am I doing?*

The thought was followed by another: *What else was I supposed to do?*

This was it. The only thing her grandmother had left her besides a collection of chipped teacups and a memory of unconditional love. And she’d walked out on her life—the restaurant, the city, Daniel—with nothing but this address and a black eye from the last time she’d seen him. Not that she was counting. She grabbed her duffel bag and her heavy coat, shoving open the car door into a wall of cold air that stole the breath from her lungs.

The snow was up to her knees. She fought her way to the porch steps, each one a small, cold battle. The front door was a solid slab of oak, and her key, a heavy, old-fashioned brass thing, turned with a loud, metallic *clank* that was swallowed by the wind. She pushed, and the door swung inward into a darkness that was colder than the outside air.

Her phone’s flashlight, a weak beam, cast long, dancing shadows across a grand foyer. A sweeping staircase curved up into the black, and the dust covers on the furniture looked like ghosts waiting for a séance. The air smelled of dust, pine, and something faintly sweet, like dried lavender. She stamped the snow from her boots, her footsteps echoing unnaturally loud in the cavernous space.

She found a small, hand-written note taped to the front desk, the loops of the cursive oddly elegant.

*Maren—* *Cash is in the coffee tin under the desk for the oil, worst-case. But it’s got a full tank. Boiler’s a bastard, acts up in the cold. Check the circuit breaker first. If it’s the pilot light, holy water won’t help. You’ll need Jim. Jim’s number: 555-0167. Power flickers. Don’t climb the stairs in the dark. Ray’s got a key to the third floor. He’ll be by in a day or two to check on things.* *—Clem*

Maren read it twice, a small ‘hmph’ escaping her lips. No greeting, no welcome, just a troubleshooting guide. She tucked the note into her pocket, following its advice to the circuit breaker in a hallway off the kitchen. The kitchen itself was a massive, archaic space with a cast-iron stove that looked like it could double as a forge and a counter worn smooth by a century of use. She flipped the breakers, one by one, and was rewarded with a dull, clunking sound from the bowels of the house, followed by a symphony of hallway lights groaning to life. The light was a warm, dusty yellow, pushing back the immediate darkness but revealing just how much work loomed.

Then, she saw the other note, propped against an old-fashioned brass cash register. It was on heavy, cream-colored stock, the kind that feels expensive between your fingers. The handwriting was a tight, controlled script that was nearly unreadable.

*Reservation: J. Hale. Entire Third Floor. Six Months. 1 Nov – 30 Apr. Full payment received. Do not disturb. Do not enter. The stairs at the end of the hall are the only access. If you want to reach me, leave a note on the third-floor landing table. My needs are few. The space is not to be altered.*

There was a date on it, from three weeks ago, and a phone number with a New York area code. Maren stared at it, the cold in the room seeming to intensify. Six months. The entire third floor. Paid in full. It was the only reservation in a dusty, leather-bound ledger that looked like it hadn't been opened in a decade.

“Who on earth…?” she murmured to herself. Her grandmother had never mentioned a long-term guest. She’d never mentioned any of this, really. The headaches, the maintenance, the lunatics who paid for entire floors without so much as a phone call.

But grief hadn’t left a lot of room for estate planning discussions. She thought of her last conversation with her grandmother, her voice thin, carried over a crackling phone line. “It’s yours if you want it, chicken. I know you, and I know what you’re running from. A house can’t fix a broken heart, but it can give it a place to rest.”

Maren had laughed at the time, chalked it up to Delia’s folksy wisdom. Now, standing in the dead-cold foyer with a ghost of a guest upstairs, the wisdom felt a little too sharp. A muscle in her jaw ticked. She wasn’t running *to* this house; she was running *from* the wreckage of her life. There was a difference. She just hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

First things first. Warmth. She remembered Clem’s note: *Boiler’s a bastard*. She found the door to the basement, a low, rectangular portal under the stairs. The steps were narrow, the air thick with the smell of fuel oil and damp concrete. At the bottom, a huge, prehistoric-looking furnace hulked in the center of the space like a sleeping iron beast. A single, small pilot light window showed nothing but black.

“Okay, okay,” she said to the machine, her voice thin in the large space. She found the instructions on a metal plate riveted to the side. It was a 1980s model, a relic that probably predated her. She followed the steps on Clem’s note: *Check the circuit breaker. If it’s the pilot light…* She turned the dial to “Pilot,” pressed the little reset button, and held a lit match to the opening. A weak blue flame sputtered to life before dying out instantly, as if it were a spirit too exhausted to remain.

“Dammit!” she hissed, the match burning her fingers before she dropped it, the sizzle lost in the gloom.

She tried three more times. Each time, the same thing: a teasing promise of heat, then nothing. The thermocouple was shot. She was out of her depth. She needed Jim.

She stomped back upstairs, defeated, her toes numb. The phone call to Jim was brief, the voice on the other end rough, the kind of man who communicated in grunts. “It’s the thermocouple, most like,” he said at the end of her explanation. “Can’t get a part ‘til tomorrow noon. Storm’s supposed to break by then. You got a fireplace?”

She looked at the cavernous living room with its giant stone hearth. “Maybe,” she said, not seeing any wood.

“Check the woodshed round back. Might be some dry splits left, if the mice haven’t gnawed ‘em down to nothing. You’ll want a fire. It’s gonna get cold tonight. The kind of cold that gets into your bones.”

After he hung up, she stood in the kitchen, the world seeming to press in on her. She braced her hands on the edge of the old counter, forcing herself to take a deep, steadying breath. The air was cold, and it hurt to breathe.

She slid open a drawer, looking for a flashlight, but found a mess of old receipts, twine, and unsharpened pencils. The second drawer held a tangled nest of spare keys. She was about to slam it shut when her fingers closed around a cold piece of metal, different from the others. She pulled it out. It was a key, older than the others, with an ornate, circular bow. Engraved on it were faint numbers: 3B.

She looked at it, then down the hall, to the end, where Clem’s note had mentioned a separate staircase. The third floor. J. Hale’s dominion. A locked door stood at the top of it, a silent, solid barrier.

Maren looked from the key in her hand back to the reservation note in the pocket of her coat. The house was a puzzle, and she was beginning to suspect that the pieces didn’t quite fit. She didn’t need another mystery. She just needed to not freeze to death on her first night.

The wind rattled the old window panes, a sound like a demon’s fingernails on a chalkboard. She shoved the key 3B deep into her pocket, next to Clem’s note, and went in search of the woodshed.

She had to survive the night before she could start breaching locked doors. But as she passed the base of the main staircase, she noticed something on the third-floor landing. A shadow, deeper than the rest, seemed to shift for a fraction of a second before the wind moaned again and it was gone. She stood still, listening. Nothing but the storm.

Shaking off the feeling, she turned away. The house was old. Old houses made noises. And she was tired. But the image lingered—the dark shape of a man, standing perfectly still, watching her from the landing before disappearing into the blackness above.