"Leni! Leni, there's a bidet in the powder room," she said, clutching my arm like she'd discovered electricity. "A bidet. In a powder room. Can you imagine?"

I could imagine. I could imagine a lot of things, actually, because there was something translucent stuck to the ceiling of the foyer and nobody was looking at it. Nobody. Not my mother, not the movers hauling her seven suitcases up the grand staircase, not the housekeeper who'd introduced herself as Petra and had the dead-eyed warmth of someone who'd worked for billionaires long enough to stop having opinions.

I looked at the ceiling thing. It looked back. Two milky, gelatinous eyes blinked at me from a body that resembled a jellyfish that had been left in the sun and then given a grudge.

"Mom."

"Hmm?"

"There's something on the ceiling."

She glanced up. Squinted. Looked back at me with the serene confidence of a woman who had chosen happiness and was going to keep choosing it no matter what. "That's a chandelier, sweetheart."

"Not the chandelier. The thing next to the chandelier."

"There's nothing next to the chandelier." She patted my cheek. "You're stressed from the drive. Go find your room. It's the third floor, east wing, Conrad said it has a reading nook."

She floated away toward the kitchen, where her new husband was making espresso with the calm precision of a man who had been doing things for a very, very long time.

Conrad Ashworth. Billionaire. Widower. Dressed to impress. My mother had met him at a farmers' market, which was either the most romantic thing I'd ever heard or the most suspicious, because what billionaire buys his own heirloom tomatoes? He was handsome in that alarming way where you couldn't find the flaw. Tall. Silver threaded through dark hair. The kind of face that made you trust him immediately, which should have been the first red flag. My mother had been divorced three times and she deserved nice things. I wanted this to work.

The ceiling thing dripped.

A glob of something clear and viscous landed on the marble floor two feet from my shoes. I stared at it. The thing on the ceiling stared at me with what I could only describe as mild curiosity.

No one else saw it.

Cool. Great. I was hallucinating in my stepfather's mansion on move-in day.

"Leni, honey, please rest. Petra will show you your room."

Petra did. And the reading nook? Totally real. The bed was the size of a small country.

I kicked off my shoes, sat on the mattress, pulled out my phone, and stared at it. The way you do when your brain needs a minute to process that your life has changed and you're not sure yet whether it changed in the good direction.

Something squelched. Under the bed.

I got on my hands and knees. Lowered my head to the floor.

Two translucent eyes stared back at me. This one was smaller, about the size of a cantaloupe, sitting on my Nike Air Max. Its gelatinous body pulsed once, slowly, like a heartbeat.

It was on my shoe. My good shoe.

I grabbed the other Nike. Brought it down hard.

It popped. That's the only word. One second it was there, and the next second it burst like a water balloon filled with warm snot. The sound was a heavy, wet snap.

I stared at my hand and forearm, now coated in the remains of whatever that thing had been.

I screamed. Not a horror-movie scream, more of an involuntary "WHAT THE FUCK" that I couldn't take back because the bedroom door was open and the hallway carried sound like a cathedral.

Footsteps. Fast, but not hurried.

Ryn Ashworth appeared in my doorway.

I hadn't gotten a good look at him during move-in. Tall, dark hair, Conrad's bone structure but younger and sharper. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, looking at me kneeling on the floor with slime on my arm and a shoe raised like a weapon.

"Your technique is terrible," he said. "You're going to dislocate your shoulder."

"There was a thing under my bed."

"I know."

"I killed it with a shoe."

"You did." He tilted his head. Half an inch. Like I was a problem he hadn't anticipated. "Impressive aim. Terrible follow-through."

I stood up. Slime dripped from my elbow. "What was that thing?"

"A pest."

"That tells me nothing."

"It's the answer you're getting." He looked at the slime on my arm, my floor, the shoe in my hand. "Clean up before your mother sees."

"She can't see them." I said it before I'd fully processed it, but the evidence clicked: the chandelier, the movers stepping through residue. None of them reacted. "Can she?"

His face didn't move much, but his vibe did.

"No," he said. "She can't."

"But I can."

"Apparently."

I waited for more. He gave me nothing. Just stood there, taking up too much of the doorway, watching me with an expression that managed to be simultaneously bored and completely focused.

"I'm going to tell her," I said.

"Tell her what? That you see translucent creatures no one else can see? On your first day in a new house? While she's the happiest she's been in years?" He said it without cruelty. Just facts, arranged in the worst possible order. "She'll think you're having a breakdown."

He was right. That's exactly what she'd think. And that was the one thing I couldn't let happen.

"Fine." I dropped the shoe. "Then you explain."

"Not here."

"Here seems great."

"Your mother is coming up the stairs."

I listened. He was right. The click of her sandals on marble.

He pushed off the doorframe. Stepped toward me. Then another step. The space between us disappeared and I became aware of three things in rapid succession: he was taller than I'd thought, he smelled like burnt sugar and something ancient that I couldn't name and didn't want to, and my hand was still covered in slime.

"Kitchen," he said. His voice was lower, not a whisper, just private. "Midnight. We need to talk."

His breath grazed my temple. I swallowed. Twice.

"About the slime creatures," I said.

"About everything."

My mother's voice floated up the stairwell. "Leni? Honey? Conrad made tiramisu!"

He stepped back. I could still feel where he'd been standing, the air there warmer than it should have been, carrying that burnt sugar scent like a stain.

"Clean up," he said, and left.

I went to the bathroom. Washed my hands for a long time. Looked at myself in the mirror, flushed and slime-covered and confused in my stepfather's mansion that had seventeen bathrooms and a pest problem and a stepbrother who smelled like something I'm already getting addicted to.

"Tiramisu," I said to my reflection. "Just go eat tiramisu."

I went downstairs. The tiramisu was perfect, because of course it was. Diana kissed Conrad's cheek and said "Isn't this wonderful?" and he looked at her like she'd invented sunlight.

Under the dining table, something squelched.

I ate faster. Mascarpone, espresso, cocoa, the small clean burn of the rum, swallowed in three bites that did nothing to settle the static under my ribs. Across the table, Conrad asked me about the drive up. I answered. Diana refilled my coffee without asking. Normal sounds, normal cutlery, normal questions, in a house where something on the ceiling had stared back at me and a man I was apparently going to call my stepbrother had told me to lie to my mother about it.

I waited until Diana stood up to clear plates. Then I tipped sideways in my chair, just enough, just to look.

Two milky eyes. Under the table. Six inches from my foot.

It blinked at me. Slowly. Like it was getting comfortable.

I straightened up. Picked up my fork. Put it down. Picked it up again. Diana drifted back, humming. Conrad asked if I wanted seconds.

"Please," I said, and the thing under the table shifted closer.

Midnight, I thought. Kitchen. Whatever this was, it was about to have words with me.