Chapter One

Bella

The next person who tells me how great it must be to have five older brothers is going to feel my fist in his or her face. Because, believe me, being the youngest child—and the only one without a penis—in a big Italian Catholic family from Chicago, I can personally attest to the fact that it bites.

I would have been better off being left as a baby on the doorstep of some nunnery in the mountains of Austria. At least I might have had a little action from a cute shepherd passing by with his herd once I grew up.

I'm definitely hotter than a sheep.

Bella Swan, that's me, the hotter-than-a-sheep girl. Yes, before you ask, I'm one of those Swans—the big family who owns that great pizza joint on Taylor Avenue. If you haven't heard of it, I'm sure you've at least heard of my brothers. Either because of the way they plowed across the football field at St. Raphael's or the way they plowed through every girl at St. Raphael's. Most of my friends included.

And yes, before you ask the next question, I have a dirty mind and a big mouth and I don't take much crap off anybody.

My brothers, however, still haven't gotten that through their thick skulls. They've been ordering me around, trying to control who I talk to, where I go, what I do and who I do, for my entire life. Tried being the key word there.

Wish I could say they'd failed completely. Unfortunately for me—and my sex life—they succeeded in keeping me about as celibate as a twenty-five-year-old grad student can be.

Oh, sure, I've snuck in a few affairs, but there aren't many men I meet who don't know—or know of —my family. And I swear, the big jerks are like bloodhounds. Because the minute I do find some guy who is mercifully ignorant about the thousand pounds of male aggression acting as the defensive line on my virtue, one of them finds out and scares the crap out of him.

I kid you not, when I started ninth grade, they put out the word that if their sister didn't graduate a virgin, they would ban every person from my high school from ever having another slice of my pop's famous deep dish pizza. Anyone from Chicago knows that's about as dire a threat as you can make.

Can you believe it worked? They had all my friends making sure my legs stayed shut, and their friends, too. Which really sucked since a lot of those guys were really hot. I ask you, what is the point of having older brothers if you don't even have the benefit of having a built-in supply of potential boyfriends?

Thank God I'd spent a college semester in an exchange program at New York University, where I'd met Eric. And Tyler. Then…umm…Mike. Man, had that guy had staying power, especially in comparison to the other twenty- and twenty-one-year-olds I dated.

I'd probably been thought of as the easiest exchange student NYU had ever known, but I knew I was potentially cramming a lifetime full of sex into those three months. Damned if I wasn't going to make the most of them.

Of course, from what I've learned about sex since that time, I know I didn't scratch the surface of what can be done. Big sigh, there.

No, I didn't learn about it firsthand. But having come home a sex maniac, then being forced to peek longingly over my big brothers' shoulders at any nice piece of male ass—never getting any of it—had left me a little frustrated. Frustrated enough to take things into my own hands. Literally. And since my imagination only went so far—pretty much meat and potatoes on the sex scale, me being the potatoes—I'd had to do some research.

I like research. I'm good at it. Good enough that I'm doing it to pay the bills while I finish my masters degree in journalism.

Solving puzzles and sticking my nose into other people's stories was something I'd excelled at since I was little and used to spy on my brothers and their girlfriends. What can I say? I love to know things. Not to exploit secrets—and I never resorted to blackmail. Well, okay, once in a while when Mark or Nick decapitated one of my stuffed toys or tied my Barbies to the tracks of their Lionel train set, I might have used my knowledge to my own advantage. Like, you know, to get them thunked in the head with a soup ladle by our mother. But not often.

Most of the time, I didn't even do anything with the things I figured out. I just like the process of following steps through to reach a conclusion. Seeing if the things I thought had happened really had happened.

For someone like me—who's been told I have a wild imagination—getting to that conclusion could be one heck of a ride. My oldest brother, Emmett, once commented that if I found a dollar on the pavement, I'd concoct an entire bank robbery scenario about the thieves who'd dropped it, rather than picking the damn thing up and buying a bunch of tooth-rotting candy like any normal kid would.

I guess he was right. Instead of the big picture, I sometimes tend to see the gargantuan one.

So having a little glimpse of sex, you can bet I'd built up in my mind just how good it could be. Hence my research into the subject. I was very thorough. Lord help me if Mama goes over to my apartment to "help" me while I'm out of town and decides to clean out my closet. If she sees my stash of sex toys and erotica, she's going to have a heart attack and think I'm a sex fiend.

I'm not. I'm just frustrated. If you hadn't been touched intimately by anyone other than the dressmaker who fitted you for your latest bridesmaid gown for the past few years, wouldn't you be?

Bridesmaid gowns. Getting quite a collection of those, I tell you. While I'm on the subject, does anyone in the world know why those things always look like fifties prom dresses worn by somebody named Peggy Sue or Bobbie Jean? Is there a law or something that says they have to be butt ugly?

Okay, back to the intimate touching. You should know, the dress-fitting thing wasn't as naughty as it sounds. The dressmaker was one of my sisters-in-law. And the only private part of my body she touched was my bra strap as she measured my chest size.

What was it? Mind your own business. That's a sore subject.

So anyway, yeah, take it from me, it's not easy bobbing around in a sea of testosterone just trying to keep your head above water. I've somehow managed it for twenty-five years now, but I realized a couple of months ago that if I didn't get away for a little while, I'd drown.

I probably could have gotten a job at the bottom rung of a paper after I graduated from college two years ago. But something held me back. Maybe the realization that I wasn't through learning. So after saving up money by working in the family pizzeria for a year, I went back to school and fell right back into the routine of losing myself in intricate stories that I—and only I—could decipher.

The family doesn't get me. Pop thought that when I worked at the restaurant, it meant I'd stay there full-time, which would have suited him fine. And Mama just wants me married and pregnant.

Uh…no. Not happening. Not anytime soon, at least.

That's why I decided long ago to get the hell out of Chicago for some much needed mental relaxation and, hopefully, physical stimulation. So I accepted my psychology professor's offer to become his research assistant for an out-of-town assignment. Which is why I'm in my little car—purchased with my own money, thank you very much; otherwise, I'd be driving a yacht-sized Cadillac bought by my father—chugging up a Pennsylvania mountain toward some place called Seaton House.

And that is why I'm about ready to pee my pants.

Because, to be perfectly honest, the first time I saw the pictures of that place, I was scared to death. I felt this weird chill run down my spine. I even caught myself turning into my Grandma Angelina, instinctively making the sign of the cross just like she did whenever one of her grandchildren made the mistake of cussing in front of her. Or criticizing Tony Bennett.

I never knew a building could look so menacing. Sounds melodramatic, I know, but it's true.

When I went on to read exactly what had happened in the mansion, which had been transformed into a hotel sometime in the 1930's, the chill had spread from my spine to every inch of my body. With its murderous history, Seaton House would have been terrifying, even if it had looked like Granny's frigging cottage in the woods. No vivid imagination required when it came to this place—its real history was quite dramatic enough.

"It's just a building," I whispered, needing to hear something over and above the wicked crash of thunder and the hammering of rain on the roof of the car.

I didn't grab the radio dial, however, and not only because the reception had fizzled out when I'd started slowly climbing up this mountain. I also didn't need the distraction.

For some reason that made me think of how I used to laugh at the way my dad would automatically reach out to turn the radio down when driving in a thunderstorm. Like he was saying, "Shh, I can't see with all that noise." Never got that.

Now I do. I needed every ounce of concentration to focus on the unexpected curves and the washed-out shoulders—guess they never heard of yellow hazard signs around here. If a deer decided to do a rain dance on the road in front of me, I'd be toast. I could easily picture my pretty little car and my pretty little self flying off the edge of a cliff and landing in the river about a thousand miles below.

"It's okay," I whispered again, "almost there, almost there."

After nine hours in the car, I damn well should be almost there. That useless Internet map I'd dug up had predicted six or seven hours on the road. Of course, it couldn't have predicted the wicked storm that had been dumping water by the trailer load on my windshield since I hit the Pennsylvania line. Or the mountain that seemed to go straight up at a ninety-degree angle.

Or the vision of hell waiting for me at the top of that mountain, which was probably why my foot had been much more on the feather side of the scale than the lead one with every additional foot of altitude.

"Don't be a chicken," I told myself, thinking of how utterly humiliating it would be if Mark or Nick—the twins, who were the next up from me in family hierarchy—found out I was scared of some old house. Just because it looked like something out of a Wes Craven movie. Well, that and because a convicted serial killer—James Kilpatrick—had lived there in the 1930s. Turning his mansion into an exclusive hotel, he and his business partner had been very successful. But it hadn't been enough for Kilpatrick, who'd gotten his real kicks out of kidnapping and murdering unsuspecting victims from the town below.

It was a wonder the hotel run by the infamous murderer hadn't been torched by an angry mob when its owner's crimes had been discovered. From what I'd learned, his partner—who'd bought out the killer's widow and taken over Seaton House after Kilpatrick had been tried and executed—had hired armed guards to watch the place for the first few years after the crimes.

Good thing, because if it had been destroyed, I wouldn't have this job. My professor was paying me to get information for his book on lesser-known serial killers, ones who'd somehow flown under the radar of most of the history texts. And Kilpatrick was included.

The money had sounded great. The idea of getting out of Chicago until the end of the month was even better. Though, honestly, I was glad I'd be going home on Halloween day. I sure couldn't see spending that night in Seaton House.

Actually, I couldn't see spending any night there. I'd never pictured myself chugging up this mountain scared out of my mind well after dark on a stormy night. I'd hoped to arrive here on a nice, sunny fall afternoon so I could pretend everything was okey-dokey. Why had I thought this research assistant thing was a good idea again?

I didn't have time to wonder because suddenly, as if my car had driven into another dimension, I rounded a curve and saw the huge, hulking shape of the hotel directly in front of me.

"Holy shit," I muttered, immediately reaching for my chest, where my heart was pounding like crazy.

Braking hard and throwing the car into Park, I sat there at the edge of the driveway. I peered through the rain-splashed windshield at the dark, enormous building crouched against the stormy night sky. And gulped.

Seaton House was three stories tall, a fifteen-thousand-square-foot stone mansion constructed in the gothic style. I'd easily been able to track the place back to the Seaton in question, a robber baron who'd built it in 1902 after a visit to Europe. The man had apparently had a thing for the great cathedrals there because when he'd built his American palace, he'd demanded flying buttresses reminiscent of the basilicas of Italy and gargoyles that looked like they'd crawled off the corners of Notre Dame.

Those spiky spires had looked threatening in pictures taken during the day. By night, awash with lightning, they looked capable of supporting the heads of Henry VIII's murdered wives.

"Enough," I snapped out loud, trying to stop myself from going down that imaginative path. "Just look."

So I did. I sat there and I looked, letting my visual impressions mesh with what I already knew about Seaton House.

First impressions are usually the best ones, and, after a few moments, I realized what Ireally thought about the hotel. It was mysterious.

Not terrifying.

My heart stopped thudding and my hands stopped shaking. Now, confronted with the actual place, my irrational fears began to quiet and this became just another building. A business establishment with fading white lines striping its parking lot, with a sign pointing to a delivery entrance, and another toward the scenic overlook.

Just an old house turned hotel.

I wanted to sigh in relief. I settled for easing the car back into Drive and creeping closer, studying the place all the while.

Obviously, the millionaire who'd built it had had delusions of grandeur. The presentation of the house—its location near the edge of a cliff, as if taunting everyone below to look up and not tremble—said as much about its builder as its dramatic design. From his broad, two-hundred-foot verandah, he could have looked out over everything he surveyed and felt like a king.

His delusions hadn't been enough to save him a few decades later. He'd supposedly taken a swan dive off his own cliff in 1929 after losing all his money in the stock market crash.

That's when Kilpatrick had stepped in. He'd been an Italian immigrant—supposedly a minor prince. And right away he'd become known for the interest he showed in the pretty young women living in the town at the foot of his mountain. A number of whom had disappeared during his time in residence.

"Kilpatrick," I murmured, instantly picturing the one grainy black-and-white photograph I'd seen of the man. Dark and handsome with a boyish face, thick black hair and deep-set, soulful brown eyes. He'd looked anything but ruthless. In fact, if I disregarded his long, handlebar mustache, I'd have to describe him as a total Hottie McHotHot. How any young girl from Trouble would have been able to resist him if he'd quirked a finger in her direction, I had no idea.

That was probably why he'd been able to get away with it for so long. The man had been charming and handsome, a prince. He'd been sought after by every single woman in town even though he was married. And when he'd brought in a partner and transformed his palace into a public hotel—providing jobs for a lot of the destitute people in the town below—he'd become a savior.

Who'd have suspected he was behind the disappearance of a slew of chambermaids and shop girls during the depression?

Kilpatrick was, obviously, the one I'd come here to learn more about, at Professor Tyler's request. Having been accused and convicted of killing fifteen women—and suspected of more—the man was surprisingly unknown. Never mentioned in the annals of the most horrible murderers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Tyler wanted to know why. And it wasn't just my ambitions in research journalism that made me want to know why, too. I was, to put it bluntly, fascinated and wanted to learn more.

Curiosity. It killed the cat. But hopefully not the girl.

Okay. Cool. I was ready for this. I felt calm and collected. Kilpatrick was long gone—electrocuted and buried. Everything would be fine.

Even as I told myself I was ready for my stay in hotel hell, I couldn't help noticing—and worrying about—how empty the place looked. It was dark but for a few downstairs windows. There were no lights at all on the upper floors, except for a faint flicker in the very highest window on the north side.

Hey, maybe the guests were just the early-to-bed types. Which might be good…after nine hours in the car, my hair had to be a straggly mess. My makeup had washed off my face in warm beige streaks during my last gas-up because the old station hadn't had an awning. So privacy was a good thing. Hopefully I could just check in, escape to my room, get a good night's sleep, then tomorrow morning meet up with Aro Denton, the current owner of Seaton House.

That was the plan, anyway.

So, taking a deep breath and reaching for my small overnight bag—which I'd thought to leave on the passenger seat rather than in the trunk with my bigger suitcase—I opened the door.

And immediately got drenched. The rain washed down and flooded me as soon as I stuck my head outside. "To hell with it," I muttered as I hopped out, my black leather boots immediately sucking up a few gallons of water from a puddle like a baby diaper sucks up…well, you know.

Not pausing to lock the car, I dashed toward the front of the hotel. Skidding and sliding on the watery gravel, I kept my head down to protect my face from the stinging pellets of freezing cold rain, and literally took the porch steps two at a time. I leapt up onto the verandah, immediately grateful for the shelter of its roof. Shaking out my wet hair, I groaned, imagining how I must look now, with thick, dark curls plastered to my cheeks and sticking to my eyelashes.

Even Kilpatrick himself wouldn't want me now.

While standing up on the verandah, I glanced out toward my car in the parking lot, reaching for my keychain so I could remotely lock it. My brothers were such worrywarts that they'd installed this superfancy antitheft system on it, with all the bells and whistles. Sometimes I considered trying to make the thing stand on its back tires and dance like Herbie the Love Bug.

But as I clicked the lock button and saw the headlights flash in response, I suddenly made a really strange realization. One I should have made as soon as I arrived.

My pretty yellow PT Cruiser was sitting completely alone out there in the parking lot. There wasn't another other car in sight. Not anywhere.

Perfect. I was the only guest. Just call me Janet Leigh and yell for Norman Bates because this was exactly how her night started out, wasn't it?

"You're being an idiot," I mumbled as I swept my wet hair back, straightened my shoulders and strode across the veranda to the front door. The striding wasn't terribly effective since a cup of water squirted out of my boots with every step, but I did the best I could, just in case anyone was watching from the closest window.

Grasping the knob, I twisted it…and realized it was locked. Strange. I'd never heard of a public hotel that locked its doors when guests were expected. Especially since it was only 9:00 p.m.

Sighing, I lifted my hand and grabbed the ornate brass door-knocker. I somehow couldn't muster up any surprise that the thing had a weird-looking gargoyle head. Cracking it hard against the door, I waited. And waited. And waited some more.

"Come on, it's fucking cold out here," I muttered as I knocked again.

More waiting.

Really getting annoyed, I lifted that sucker with both hands and slammed it hard against the brass plate, whacking it a few times just like I used to whack my brothers in the head with a Ping-Pong paddle when they were picking on me.

This time, somebody answered. I'd been lining up to take another swing, and the door opened so fast—thrown back almost violently—that I fell forward into the place. Stumbling over my own wet, slippery boots, I skidded, dropping my overnight bag on the slick tiles inside in the process.

I didn't hit the floor. But I still landed against something hard. Something really hard. And big. And warm.

Something that smelled downright sinful—musky, spicy and male.

My fingers clenched reflexively as I realized I'd fallen right into the arms of a strange man, whose big, delicious-smelling form was the only thing keeping me upright.

A normal person would pull away and start stammering apologies, right?

I closed my eyes and remained where I was.

How could I not? He was warmth personified and I was freezing. And he smelled…oh, God, amazing . That hot scent filled my head until I felt as though I were drawing in his essence with every breath I inhaled.

"Mmm," I groaned, opening my eyes again. Though the light was dim and shadowy, I could easily make out the powerful ropy muscles of his neck. I could even see the pulse in his throat, which was an inch from my mouth.

My fingers were clenched in the soft white fabric of his loosely buttoned shirt, which didn't do much to cover his firm chest.

Put your hands in the air and step away from the hot dude.

But I couldn't make myself do it. I couldn't move backward. I couldn't even look up. Because as soon as I did—as soon as I saw confusion or amusement on this stranger's face—this surreal, intoxicating moment would end. Mystery solved, secrets revealed.

He'd be just another guy with a laugh and a leer. Or bad teeth and a hooked nose. So with one quick, appreciative glance at his strong, square jaw, outlined by a layer of dark stubble, I looked down instead.

The stranger's button-up shirt was open almost to his middle, revealing a swirl of dark, wiry hair and ripples of flexing muscle. Just below his collarbone, I saw the puckered edge of a raw, fresh-looking scar that disappeared beneath his shirt. For some crazy reason, I wanted to lift my hand and scrape my fingers across it. To soothe away the redness. To shiver as I wondered how he'd gotten it.

Bella, wake up!

No. Not yet. I didn't want to.

My wet, jean-covered legs were almost entwined with his and even through the soaked fabric, and his own dark pants, I could feel the powerful warmth of his thighs. Our position was almost sexual, with one of his limbs caught between mine, so I couldn't muster up any surprise when my body reacted in a typical way.

The shakiness in my thighs now had nothing to do with my stumble or my wet boots. A warm current of want drifted through me, making my nipples pucker hard against my thin sweater. And lower I felt a flow of moisture between my legs as my sex swelled against the seam of my jeans.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice low and thick. He almost combined the words you and all, his soft drawl giving a tiny hint that he was from the South.

I thought about his question. Was I all right? No. Not at all. I was ravenous and hot, even while wet and freezing. I was aroused over a complete stranger whose face I hadn't yet seen and was wrapped around him in the shadows while the rain still pounded outside and a strong October wind blew through the open front door.

"Still with me here?" the voice said, sounding a tiny bit amused.

That hint of amusement finally pierced through the hazy cloud of sensual awareness that had been filling my head. Blinking rapidly, I cleared my throat and slowly—carefully—pulled away. I regretted the loss of his warmth the moment an inch of cool evening air separated our bodies.

"I'm okay," I managed to whisper.

Then I looked up and saw his face. And my heart stopped.

In the shadowy light spilling into the foyer from a nearby room, I could just make out the thin scar marring the perfection of his forehead. My breath catching in my lungs, I realized his hair was jet-black. Just like James Kilpatrick's. His eyes…also nearly black. Also like Kilpatrick's.

He looked angry. He looked forbidding. And he looked like a fucking serial killer.

I was definitely not okay.

"Oh, my God," I whispered, already backing toward the door.

Shaking my head—doubting my senses—I quickly chose the storm over the ghosts in this place. When my heels hit the threshold, they kept right on going. Onto the slick wooden planks of the porch. Farther. Farther.

He followed, those intense dark eyes narrowing as he slowly stepped toward me, like some kind of graceful-but-deadly cat stalking its prey.

Graceful. Deadly.

Yes. That pretty well summed him up. Because though my brain told me it was impossible—that I didn't believe in ghosts—I couldn't stop the fear rushing through every inch of me. Did I say I had an imagination that worked overtime in some situations? Well, right now, it was deserving of triple pay.

"Don't come any closer," I whispered.

"Who are you?" he asked, all traces of amusement gone. "What do you want?"

Just to not be slaughtered by a murderous ghost or a reincarnated serial killer. That's all I wanted. To make it back to my car and put the pedal to the metal and race down the mountain like the hounds of hell were after me.

Not hounds, I quickly clarified. Hound . Just one terrifying, murderous creature.

Named James Kilpatrick.

Thank you for taking time out of your glorious day to read my ramblings, I hope you leave a review!