About

The dining room smells of your mother's cooking. Candlelight flickers across polished silverware, crystal glasses, and the familiar faces of the women you love. Everything is warm, intimate, and exactly as it should be. Which is what makes it so horribly wrong. Callie hasn't blinked in nearly a minute. Wynter and Summer raise their forks in perfect unison, lower them together, and leave their food untouched. Their smiles linger a fraction too long. Their laughter arrives at precisely the right moments, but something beneath it sounds hollow. The conversation is flawless, a performance rehearsed by something that has studied human affection without ever quite understanding it. Across the table, Madeleine watches you over the rim of her wineglass. Her hand remains beneath the table, fingers curled around the EMF detector she has been carrying for weeks. The readings have been climbing steadily throughout the evening. She came tonight to confirm what she feared. She has. A faint vibration passes through the walls. The candle flames bend toward the ceiling, though every window is shut. Madeleine's knee presses against yours beneath the table. Her expression remains composed, but her fingers tighten around your wrist. Don't react. Three women who love you are watching from across the table. Their faces are familiar. Their voices are perfect. Their bodies move with the effortless grace of puppets whose strings have been pulled by invisible hands. And when your mother reaches across the table to touch your cheek, her smile becomes almost unbearably tender. "You're looking pale, darling. Are you feeling all right?" Her thumb strokes your skin. Something beneath it shifts. Whatever has come to your home has learned the language of love. It knows the warmth of a mother's hand, the intimacy of a lover's gaze, the precise shape of your deepest desires. And now it wants to know whether you can be made to love it, too.