Page 88 of Tessa and Nash

Tessa steps inside first, because of course she does. I follow, and the house swallows us.

Cold air lives in here. Something deeper than winter cold. The kind that settles in a place that isn’t lived in but hasn’t been abandoned either.

I flick a switch. The lights still work. Someone’s been paying the electric bill. I really think Thomas must be here all the time, but I don’t mention that to Tessa. She’s wound up enough.

The entryway is narrow, hardwood floors scuffed but clean, dust settled in the corners as if it’s been allowed to exist but not to take over. There’s a coat rack with two empty hooks. A faded rug. A table with a bowl on it that probably held keys once and now holds nothing.

The house smells of old paper and cedar.

Tessa shuts the door behind us, and the sound is too final.

I clear my throat. “Okay. Ground rules.”

Tessa turns to me, brows lifting. “Ground rules.”

“Yeah,” I say. “No splitting up. No whispering ‘did you hear that?’ in the dark. And if a doll blinks⁠—”

“If you talk about hauntings one more time,” she cuts in, “I will leave you here and tell the town you got lost in a closet.”

I blink. “I’m just trying to keep us alive.”

“We’re not dying in a Long House,” she says, then adds under her breath, “unless my uncle catches us here.”

I watch her face, the set of her jaw, the way her eyes keep flicking toward the hallway. She almost expects Thomas Long to step out of a wall with a legal document and a smile.

“This place freaks you out.”

Her gaze snaps to mine. “It does not.”

It absolutely does.

“Tessa,” I say, softer. “It’s okay if it does.”

Her expression shifts. I’ve stepped too close to a line she didn’t draw but lives behind anyway. She looks away first, which is answer enough.

“We’re here to find something,” she says, brisk, businesslike. “So we look.”

“Right,” I agree, even though my chest feels tight.

We move into the house.

The living room is to the right. It’s arranged as if someone froze time mid-century and forgot to thaw it. Couch with straight arms. A coffee table with a stack of old magazines neatly aligned. A fireplace with a cold, empty grate. A framed photograph on the mantel. Black and white, a ranch scene, a man in a hat, a woman with a stern face, kids lined up.

I step closer, squinting.

“Is that⁠—”

“Don’t touch it,” Tessa says automatically.

I stop, hands up. “I wasn’t going to.”

She eyes me, waiting for me to lie.

I glance at the photo again. The man’s face is half in shadow, but the shape of his jaw makes my stomach twist.

McCoy? Long? Both?

The house is quiet enough that our footsteps sound rude.