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I do, however, sit on the edge and soak my feet in the warmth of the water to balance the chill on my arms.

“Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be here.” He smirks, innuendo dripping from his tone.

It reminds me of just how close we’d come to more the other night after the club, just how much I wanted it, too.

Ever since the office earlier, the white gown trailing by, and the distinct feeling that someone or something was watching me, I can’t shake the gnawing shiver trying to curl through my bones.

“You’ve lived here a long time, right? Like… before?” I ask him.

He had been swimming away, but at my question, he turned back around. “Yes. Well, most of it. Ma mére took up an advert in the paper for the job of housekeeper when I was around five.”

Living here at five must have been a nightmare.

“So, you know a lot of stuff about the house?” I add, sipping my coffee.

His eyes narrow before he controls the reaction. “Sure. I don’t know everything, but I’m sure this house is centuries old. However, I do know some things. Why do you ask?”

“I came across an article, and I was wondering if you knew the girl who was in it. Her name was Lenore?” I watch him like a hawk, homing in on how the crow’s feet at either side of his eyes wince just the slightest, and how his gaze darts away from mine for a fraction of a second, as if searching the universe for an answer.

“I knew Lenore, yes. What are you playing at?” His defensiveness only makes me more curious.

I shrug. “Nothing. I just found a local newspaper article that mentioned her as if she were missing and said this estate had something to do with it. Or the people within, rather.”

His scowl, which he’d been trying to control, deepens. “The locals are a superstitious bunch of twats, and you shouldn’t be listening to them.”

My eyes dart around the poolhouse, even scanning the glass solarium surrounding it. The creeping feeling of being watched is back, needling up my neck like a spider’s web.

I shiver, trying to make it let go.

Elias is glaring at me, his eyes seeming to assess my every movement as I have been his. “Earlier, when you seemed… offput, did you see something in the hall?”

I clear my throat and set my coffee down on the stone edge of the pool. “What? No. I just thought I did. There was nothing.”

“What did you think you saw?”

His pressing only hammers my heart louder in my ears. “Nothing, Elias. Let it go. This place is just big, and it plays tricks on you.”

“Oh, it plays tricks on you, alright.” He swims closer, me locked in his sights.

“What’s that mean?” I ask.

“Nope.” He shakes his head. “You don’t share; neither do I.”

His wet hands splay on my rolled-up sweatpants, the water bleeding into the fabric and spreading.

“I can’t share. I don’t trust myself here. I don’t trust my mind,” I admit.

“I know the feeling.”

“Do you? Because you seem right at home here. Like you belong to this estate as much as it does to you.”

His hands grip my thighs tighter as he drifts between them, his eyes traveling around the room as he sighs. “This place becomes a part of you, whether you want it to or not—all its secrets, all its trauma, all its past. But in return, it takes on all of yours, too. It’s a mutual exchange.”

He makes it sound as if the house is alive, which the others have done time and time again.

“What is this place?” I ask as he stands on the floor of the shallow pool, his wet lips coming close to mine.

“Hell.”