The Blackwood estate looks exactly like the kind of place where I'd die alone and nobody would notice.

Perfect. Right on brand.

I park my decade-old Civic in the circular driveway, which is generous, because it's mostly weeds and crumbling stone, and stare at the house that just became my problem.

Three stories of Victorian gothic nightmare. Peeling paint the color of old bones. Windows that watch like empty eyes. A wraparound porch that's missing at least four boards, possibly more.

My great-aunt Millicent, technically a step-relation on my grandmother's side, left me this place in her will. Along with $500,000, payable only if I live here for one full year.

One year. In a house that looks like it eats its residents.

But here's the thing: I'm broke. Fired from my copywriting job two months ago. Evicted last week. Currently living on ramen and spite. Half a million dollars would change everything.

I can survive a creepy house for a year.

"Here goes nothing," I mutter, grabbing my single suitcase from the backseat.

The front door creaks when I push it open, of course it does, and I step into a foyer that smells like dust and old money. Portraits line the walls. Blackwoods through the generations, all of them looking vaguely disappointed in my existence.

Join the club.

I explore. The parlor is frozen in time, furniture draped in white sheets like corpses at a wake. The kitchen has an ancient stove that might actually work if I sacrifice a small animal. The dining room could seat twenty, assuming anyone wanted to eat here.

And then I find the library.

It's the only room that feels alive. Bookshelves covering every wall, floor to rafter, stuffed with leather-bound volumes. A massive fireplace. Wing chairs positioned for reading. Dust motes dancing in the afternoon light.

There's a man sitting in one of the chairs.

I freeze.

He's wearing a suit, old-fashioned, 1950s style. Dark hair swept back. Sharp features. Handsome, in that classic Hollywood way. And he's reading a book like this is perfectly normal.

"Who the hell are you?"

He looks up.

His face did something complicated. Surprise cracked through first, then something rawer beneath it.

"You can see me." His voice cracks. Actually cracks, like he hasn't spoken in years. "You can actually see me."

"Of course I can see you. You're sitting in my library."

"No." He stands. He's tall, over six feet, and moves with a strange grace, like he's not quite touching the ground. "No, you don't understand. No one has seen me in seventy years."

I grabbed the doorframe. Held on.

"Seventy years?"

"Since 1954." He takes a step toward me. "Since the night I died."

I should run. I should absolutely, definitely run.

Instead, I say: "Prove it."

He reaches for the book he was reading. His hand passes through it. Through the leather cover, through the pages, through the table beneath.

"I can't touch anything living," he says quietly. "Can't leave this house. Can't be seen by anyone. Until you."

My knees give out. I slide down the doorframe until I'm sitting on the floor, staring up at a ghost who looked like he'd been waiting so long he'd forgotten what for.

"I'm Autumn," I hear myself say. "Autumn Chen."

"James Blackwood." He attempts a smile. It's rusty, like a skill he's forgotten. "Welcome to my home."

"Your home?"

"It was. Before someone murdered me in this very room."

The afternoon light shifts. Shadows lengthen. And I realize, with a certainty that settles into my bones:

This year was going to cost me something I couldn't calculate yet.