Wednesday Addams was supposed to return to Nevermore University for another semester in just a few weeks, but her mind had been elsewhere the entire summer. At twenty-three, she was no stranger to obsessions, but this one had consumed her every thought with a fever she refused to quell. Five foot one, hair parted neatly into two braids against her chest, bangs cutting across her pale forehead, and those deep, dark brown eyes that had stared down death more times than she cared to count. She had devoted herself to one pursuit: tracking down her favorite serial killer.

Her notebooks were filled with deductions and maps. She followed threads of evidence across states, each step tightening the noose she believed she was casting around the figure who had, in her mind, surpassed all others in brutality and artistry. The hunt was intoxicating, every fragment of bloodstained trail sharpening the fixation until it felt less like research and more like ritual devotion.

But obsession has a way of leading even the most careful hunter into snares.

When her eyes snapped open, she found herself bound tightly to a chair, wrists biting against coarse rope. A strip of cloth cut across her mouth, gagging her. The air was still, her chest rising with sharp restraint as she tested her bonds. Her head pounded with the echo of what had brought her here—chloroform? A blow to the back of the skull? It hardly mattered. She was awake now, and she was captured.

For the first time in years, a dark thrill curled in her stomach.

She lifted her head slowly, her bangs shadowing the narrowed gleam of her gaze. The rope pulled harshly at her arms when she shifted, the fibers digging against her skin. Across from her stretched a long table, silent, bare but for the weight of expectation. A handful of empty chairs framed its sides like spectators awaiting a macabre play.

And at the far end, she saw her.

Her favorite obsession. The woman she had been chasing. The one she admired more than she dared admit aloud. The serial killer who had inspired this entire summer of pursuit.