Chapter 2

Hennessee House stuck out like a Victorian sore thumb trapped in suburbia.

It was three stories including the attic, painted dark brown with cream trim, and had a startling number of windows and a short but wide set of stairs that led up to the front door. Most of the cul-de-sac sidewalk framed the expansive front gate, which blocked the entrance to the half-circle driveway.

Up close it loomed much larger than Lucky thought it should. She’d known it was the biggest house on the block by far, but taking in its perfectly green grass, expertly trimmed hedges, and blooming red rose bushes felt strangely intimidating. A quickening in the pit of her stomach warned her to leave while simultaneously daring her to enter.

“Relax.” She made the command through gritted teeth, hands white-knuckling the steering wheel for dear life. Her sense of self-preservation was too damn strong. More than once she’d ended up fist-fighting it in abandoned mines and the like. Ignoring her gut often came at her own peril. But Hennessee House would be worth the risk. Eventually.

The truth was Lucky didn’t get into her graduate school of choice. Twice. It was small, exclusive, and the only accredited program specializing in parapsychology in the entire country. One school. One program. Zero slots.

To make her lifelong dream of legitimizing the supernatural come true, she’d been forced to take matters into her own hands. Two years of self-funded investigations—everything ranging from harmless interviews to dangerous overnight expeditions—making acquaintances, establishing trusted contacts, and getting her name out there within the community had all led to this moment.

Lucky had given up the security of her day job as a nanny to become…a reality TV actress. In her defense, it seemed like a great plan when she mapped it out in her journal.

Her phone chimed in the front pocket of her purse—a new number with the correct area code appeared on the screen.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Lucky?”

Melodic and smooth, the caller’s voice resonated with her like a tuning fork. She sat up straighter, immediately searching her memories for a match as she looked out the window. “Are you watching Hennessee House remotely?” she asked after spotting three of the many exterior cameras Xander promised.

“No?”

“Then how did you know I was here?”

He paused. “I didn’t.”

“So, you just happened to call me at the exact moment I pulled up?” Give or take ten panicked minutes. “Sure.”

“You’re there? Right now?”

“I am.” She glanced at Hennessee House’s front door, thoroughly committed to ignoring the resulting chill that ran through her. “Xander told me to expect a call from production with this area code. He’s an extremely surly man. Must be lovely to work with.”

“Haven’t had any issues so far.” He laughed. “I mostly work with Stephen.”

“Huh. This might sound odd, but why do I know your laugh? You sound so familiar. Who is this?”

He laughed again and she swore she felt something in her chest flutter.

“Well, my name’s Maverick.”

Lucky gasped softly, then whispered, “Phillips?”

He whispered back, “Yes.”

The phone slid clean out of her hand, bouncing off the seat and onto the floor. “Shit.” She leaned down, face smooshed against the wheel, still hush-swearing. Her fingertips brushed the sides and the stupid thing flipped over. She sat up quickly, pushing the seat back and picking the phone up just as Maverick said, “Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes! Hi! Hello! Sorry! I—um— Sorry!” She squeezed her eyes shut. Stop apologizing!

She thought she’d meet Maverick Phillips someday because they shared a production company now. But she didn’t think, not in a million haunted years, that he’d be the one to call.

He asked, “Is everything okay?”

Her heart hammered against her rib cage, temples pulsing with the start of an adrenaline headache. She squeezed her free hand into a fist until her knuckles hurt to get her splintered focus under control. If she could survive the hell week after listening to a “cursed” audio recording, talking to Maverick Phillips paled in comparison.

“Yes! Um.” She cleared her throat to get her pitch back from distressed territory. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“I have no choice other than to believe you, but you can tell me if it isn’t.”

“Walking and talking is truly an advanced skill for my clumsy ass. I tripped and dropped my phone. That’s all,” she lied, smooth as butter. If they were watching, he’d know she was lying and then she’d know he lied. “So, Maverick Phillips. Hi, I’ve seen your show. Which you obviously guessed by now. I don’t know why I told you that.”

She’d been following his career for years. His show Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was No Qualms Productions’ flagship project—a paranormal investigative series focused on interviews rather than spectacle. Its popularity had been what encouraged NQP to branch out and create The Caretaker in the first place.

He laughed again, this time soft and breathy. “I’m calling to introduce myself anyway and confirm you received the email with our production schedule.”

Our?!Lucky’s entire being froze from shock. The hell did he mean our?! Was he part of the crew assigned to The Caretaker? Yes, using Maverick to ensure some audience crossover made perfect sense, but they could’ve given her a heads-up about it. Rude.

He continued, “We didn’t get a reply.”

“I did get it. Yes, sorry. I’m the worst. I’ll read something and think I responded, but really, it’s been sitting there unsent the whole time—wow, you really didn’t need to know all that.”

What is wrong with me?!She wanted to rip her hair out. Could she stop making insipid comments for five seconds?

“Context is always helpful,” he said kindly. “Have you gone inside yet?”

“Not yet, no.”

He paused. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, totally. Trying to psych myself up, say a couple of prayers, you know, the usual,” she joked. “Not every day you get to meet a haunted house. I want to make a good first impression. Have you been here before?”

“Yes.”

“Right, yeah, I knew that. I’m caretaker number four. Of course, you’ve been here.” Her eyes nearly rolled back into her head because she was absolutely sick of herself. She planned to be earnest and endearing, not empty-headed! And of all the people to lose her shit around, why did it have to be him?

“Lucky?”

“Maverick?”

“Don’t be nervous. You’re going to be fine.”

“I’m not nervous,” she said and then added, “About the house.”

“Hennessee House is particular, but nothing ever happens the first night. It likes to take a day or so to assess you before deciding the best way to scare you off.”

“You think the house wants to scare me?”

“I think Hennessee likes to test people, and everyone keeps failing.”

“Good thing I’ve never failed anything in my life.”

“Oh, really?”

“Straight As since kindergarten. If I think of this as a massive practical exam, it’ll be a cakewalk.”

“Nothing will happen tonight but don’t underestimate Hennessee,” he said, sounding worried. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this now. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow. Stephen is convinced you’re exactly what the show’s been missing. Everyone in production is excited to meet you.”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Talking to him on the phone had scrambled her brain like eggs in a hot skillet. Meeting him might put her in an embarrassment-induced coma. She asked, “Just curious, how many people does production translate to?”

“Four including myself. Oh—plus an intern.” He laughed lightly. “We have a young but very talented intern on the team now.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “That sounds great.” Except it didn’t!

Reading five people in rapid succession had the potential to put her out of commission for half the morning. The first impressions had to go somewhere, so they formed a queue in her face. Her sinuses to be exact. They seemingly clustered there, clogging up her ducts like a backed-up sink while waiting to be filed away in her memory palace.

When she was younger, every doctor her parents had taken her to swore up and down she suffered from sinus headaches. Some had even upped the ante to chronic sinusitis. The medicine never worked, and no one had any real idea what was making her head hurt so badly she routinely blacked out. The doctors had done their best to give her family answers, but she didn’t have a medical condition. She had ESP and needed to learn how to live with it.

Lucky owed her life to Mr. Alm, her third-grade teacher. One day he led the class through an enrichment exercise called the method of loci—visualization techniques to help store and recall information. By high school Lucky had gotten so good at it, she’d created small, automated workers who retrieved, archived, and stored the first impressions for her. She didn’t have to think about anything except retrieval, which was as fast as any thought took. But reading too many people in a row still remained a tricky feat. She’d have to be careful.

“Great,” Maverick repeated. “Well, I’ll let you get on with your afternoon, then.”

Lucky got out of the car and hauled her suitcases up the stairs, one at a time. A green envelope with her name on it had been taped to the door. She pulled it off and held it in her hands. This was really it—her big break finally come to fruition.

She refused to build a platform by making videos of her reading “real” scary stories lifted from the internet or theorizing about “unexplainable” videos. Paranormal investigation shows had become a dime a dozen. While some were more earnest than clearly staged others, finding ghosts and hunting cryptids didn’t interest her.

Lucky’s heart belonged to the supernatural—the extraordinary side of reality shimmering right under the surface for humans. Growing up with ESP, extrasensory perception, all but sealed her passionate interest in it. She believed things like magic and miracles existed as such because science hadn’t caught up yet.

Of course, not everything needed to be explained. She respected faith and the solace it provided the human brain and soul. But a lot of things could be explained if someone worked hard enough.

Unfortunately, funding streams for supernatural researchers were bone-dry. The legitimate investors she managed to find rarely returned her emails because she lacked experience. They were usually millionaires-plus, searching for the key to eternal life, interested in harnessing mysticism to increase their power, seeking proof of the great beyond to begin securing their future over there. As outlandish (and self-serving) as they sounded, they were typically reasonable. They’d want to work with her once she proved herself.

Investigating a haunted house that had no known record of tragedy would be novel enough to get everyone’s attention. Something made this place different, and she planned to find out exactly what that was.

“Okay, Hennessee House,” she said. “Let’s do this.”