Synopsis

The house is historic, some say haunted. It is also slated to be razed and replaced by condos, unless Hannah Smith can do something about it. She's been hired by a wealthy Palm Beach widow to prove that the house's seller didn't disclose everything he knew about the place when he unloaded it, including its role in a bloody Civil War skirmish (in which two of Hannah's own distant relations had had a part), and the suicides—or were they murders?—of two previous owners.

Hannah sees it as a win-win opportunity: She can stop the condo project while tracking her family history. She doesn't believe in ghosts, anyway. But some things are more dangerous than ghosts. Among them, as she will learn, perhaps fatally, is human obsession.

Chapter 1 Excerpt

In Florida, hundred-year-old houses have solid walls, so I guessed wrong when I heard my friend Birdy Tupplemeyer make a bleating noise downstairs. I figured she’d snuck a man into her room, which was unfair of me, even though Birdy admits to being free-minded when it comes to romance.

On windy October nights my imagination prefers love to spiders, I guess. That is my only excuse.

I was in a hammock on the second floor in what had once been a music room. Birdy, who lacks camping experience, had chosen a downstairs room for her air mattress because it was closer to the front door.

“I’d have to hang off the balcony to pee,” she had reasoned, which made sense even before the wind freshened and the moon rose. The house was abandoned; no electricity or water, and the spiral staircase was in bad shape. I myself, after too much tea by the fire, was debating whether to risk the balcony or those wobbly steps when, through the floor, I heard a thump, another thump, and then a mewling wail that reminded me of a cat that had found companionship.