CHAPTER ONE
Hayley Winters crept out of bed and checked all her doors and windows again. She'd been tossing and turning in her bed for hours but she just couldn't fall asleep.
Everything still felt so new and strange to her. She'd just moved to Wolves Hollow a week ago and she was still finding her way around.
The small town of Wolves Hollow was barely a dot on the map. It was surrounded by dense forest and rolling hills and had a very small population. People kept to themselves in this town, she noticed. They weren't unfriendly, but they weren't warm and welcoming either.
She'd been here only a week, but doubts, questions and—God forbid, regrets!—were beginning to surface in her mind. Nope, she would have no regrets whatsoever. Whatever happened, she wasn't going to regret purchasing this house, quitting her dead-end job, putting her past firmly behind her and moving here.
Hayley looked around her little house with pride. She was a homeowner, and no one was going to take her home away from her. She had a roof over her head and she wasn't going to depend on anyone. It had taken her two failed marriages to wise up. But wise up she did. She was never, ever going to let a man use her, lie to her and cheat on her again.
Blowing out a breath, Hayley padded across her small living room to the kitchen. This tiny one-bedroom house in Wolves Hollow was the cheapest on the market, and the only one she could afford with her limited funds after her divorce. It was in surprisingly good condition, and Hayley thought it was a steal. She had been so proud of herself. It seemed like it was the only good decision she'd made so far. One that she was sure she wouldn't regret.
But now, she wasn't so sure. She had driven out to Wolves Hollow to see the house before the purchase, and the small town had looked so peaceful and picturesque. She should have explored more and dug deeper. Wolves Hollow was a tiny town, and she realized now that she had only seen the nicer, safer, brighter part of the town.
At night, Wolves Hollow seemed to change from a bright, scenic, idyllic small town to a more menacing, sinister place. The darkness permeated every corner and the wind seemed to howl through the trees.
Hayley shook her head hard. This was her home now. And she would make a life for herself here.
She would have no doubts and no regrets. No sirree!
But there was just something about Wolves Hollow that she couldn't quite put her finger on. By day, it was a beautiful, picturesque, peaceful town. The people were quiet and polite. They weren't chatty and nosy and they tended to mind their own business. Which was fine. But...there just seemed to be something else that the town was hiding.
Pulling the sash of her robe tightly around her waist, Hayley shivered as she went to the kitchen and heated up some milk on the stove. As she stared at the moving shadows outside her kitchen window, Hayley gulped and stared stoically into the swirling darkness. She told herself that there was nothing out there, nothing but the wind and the trees. She simply refused to allow her imagination to run wild.
There weren't many houses on her street, and the houses were all spaced pretty far apart. She knew that an elderly woman lived alone in the house on her right. The house was almost completely hidden by the overgrown shrubs, thorny brambles and bushes in the garden. Hayley had seen a silver-haired woman in a billowing black cape hurrying out of the house one evening. Her neighbor appeared to have been doing some spring-cleaning and forgotten that she was still wielding her broomstick. But before Hayley could call out to her, the old woman had disappeared down the street with her big broomstick.
Hayley glanced over at her neighbor's messy, overgrown garden. The gnarled, twisting branches seemed to be moving silently in the darkness, casting misshapen shadows that slithered and shifted in the moonlight.
Hayley blinked and stared again. As if they knew that they were being watched, the towering, thorny plants stopped moving and stood perfectly still.
Hayley turned away and caught a movement at the corner of her eye. A vine was surreptitiously sliding over the fence, twisting its way towards her house.
When she gasped and pressed her nose to the window, the vine froze, its thorns and tiny leaves quivering ever so slightly in the still night air.
Hayley jumped when she heard a howl in the distance.
“T-that's just the wind,” she whispered to herself.
She heard the howl again. This time it sounded much nearer.
With a gulp, Hayley repeated in a stronger voice, “It's just the wind.”
It wasn't. But she was good at lying to herself.