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She hadn’t successfully hidden her shock. The man had shown up to the last three Retail Space Design dinners with a different woman. It wasn’t as if he had struggled to find someone to accompany him. His dates’ duties seemed to include laughing at his jokes, holding champagne flutes between perfectly manicured fingers, and worshipping his every footstep.

She pictured herself in that role and snorted.

He sent a long, slow gaze down her body and up again. She felt it like a brand. “Do you own any outfits that don’t make you look like you never miss a Wall Street Journal?”

Self-consciously, she’d fingered the buttons on her blazer. “I like this suit.”

He took a deliberate step closer, causing her face to grow warm. “I didn’t say I didn’t like the suit.” His suggestive murmur and the way he brushed her fingers aside to touch a button on her jacket drew her in. She found herself staring at his mouth, evaluating the shape of his lips, and calculating how far she’d have to rise on her toes to press her lips to his.

Not far.

She had come to her senses, albeit a bit late, and jerked away from him before she did something she would regret. He’d backed off instantly. His eyes had shuttered and his smug grin had locked into place, leaving her to wonder if she’d imagined the moment of mutual lust.

“When I win,” he’d said, “you have to wear a cocktail dress.”

“I do own a cocktail dress, you know.”

“A short one.”

“It’s short. I have great legs.”

His eyes slid down her body. “And no panties.”

“Marcus!” She crossed her arms but felt her face heat at the suggestion. Felt all of her heat at the suggestion.

“It’s Hawaii,” he said through a laugh. “If you expect me to toss my trip into this bet, you have to up the ante on your side.”

While she waited for her Uber, she’d tried to figure out why he would ask her to be his date to a dinner he likely already had a date for. He had to be messing with her. She’d shot down his advances before. Maybe this was his way of trying to make her back out of the bet. No chance. She would not let Hawaii go over a case of missing underpants.

“Fine,” she shot back. She opened the door to the SUV that had pulled to the curb. “No panties. But you can’t touch me below the shoulders.”

Tingles covered her body at the slow spread of his smile. He lowered his mouth to her ear to say, “Honey, you have no idea what I’m capable of above the shoulders.”

It was that thought that had followed her home. And into bed.

The next morning she plodded into work with the mother of all hangovers. Not to miss a chance to tip the scales, Marcus had made sure to try and psych her out as often as possible.

He had stopped by her office, holding onto the doorframe with one hand and gripping a crowbar in the other. “Hope the cops don’t catch you. B and Es include fines and jail time.” If she hadn’t had a jackhammer thundering away inside her skull, she might have looked up his claim to find out if it were true. Instead, she’d held out a hand and accepted the length of iron.

Then, this morning, while sipping her second cup of coffee, an email notice had flickered at the bottom of her computer screen.

Thought you might like to know who you’re up against tonight. Happy Friday the 13th! M.

She’d opened the attachment and then wished she hadn’t. A scanned newspaper article, so old the edges of the periodical were torn and faded, boasted the header: Woman Falls to Death. Police Rule Suicide.

Lily read through the article about Essie Mae Epson, which was fairly tame compared to the rich urban legend about her. Lily had heard Essie had murdered her husband before taking her own life, but that could have been a rumor…

That’s all they are. Rumors.

Now, standing outside of Willow Mansion, the world looked and felt utterly normal. The birds chirped, the leaves rustled in the breeze, and cars and semis rumbled down the highway in the distance. Friday the thirteenth or not, she was standing in warm sunlight and breathing air infused with the scent of fall. The big, scary mansion wasn’t so scary anymore. It was sad. Neglected.

But that didn’t keep “The Legend of Essie Mae” from looping her brain like a stock car in a race. Though she had no proof that a woman named Essie had actually lived in this house. She didn’t even have proof that the article about Essie’s suicide was real. For all Lily knew, it had been the work of Photoshop or AI. Marcus was a designer, after all. She wouldn’t put it past him to stack the deck in his favor.

Regardless, she had this. She might have chickened out at age fourteen, but she was an adult. She had experience and intelligence. She could look at the house as a structure. A structure that was an eyesore, and certainly not haunted.

Keeping her toes lined up with the threshold, she poked her chin into the house. Boarded-up windows lined the other side of the murky living room. Dust motes danced in the streams of sunlight eking their way through the gaps of the boards. To the right stood what appeared to be a treacherous staircase. The steps were warped, the railing missing every other spindle. With one final steadying breath, she hoisted her supplies in her arms, steeled her spine, and stepped inside.

The pungent aroma of waterlogged floorboards hit her first. The light filtering through showed no more than the gloomy outline of a leaf-strewn floor and a decaying stone fireplace.