The Rescue
by stemlights
Family asleep upstairs at a forest rental. David hears crying from the basement and finds a young woman trapped inside a glowing chalk circle on the cold stone floor. She seems scared, lost, alone. He tries to help. She isn't what she seems. The more he stays, the harder it is to walk away.
Cara: Entailed
by vincamarel
Series description: Cara Whitlock has never met her great-aunt. She's about to inherit everything she owned. Ninety days at Blackmere, an isolated Northumberland estate, and a fortune that changes everything — that's the condition in her great-aunt's will. Cara signs before she's finished reading it. She has no idea what she's agreed to. What she finds is a house with its own law. A ledger that counts every day she owes. A housekeeper who enters infractions before breakfast. A dress code that leaves nothing to guesswork. And an exit clause — one word, any hour, no penalty — that she refuses to use, because giving in has never once been in her nature. As the summer turns and the estate's other claimants begin to circle, Cara discovers that surviving Blackmere was never really the test. Understanding why it exists — and what her great-aunt actually wanted from her — is the part nobody warned her about.
The Cap Ferrat Lock
by vincamarel
David sold his company for more money than they will ever spend. What it cost was eleven years of his wife’s life, spent in rooms he wasn’t in. The villa on Cap Ferrat is meant to be the repair. Analisa has other ideas about how repair works. A hundred and twenty days. A titanium lock. A release schedule only she knows. Arianne, the villa’s system, keeping the record. Both go in with their eyes open. Both are surprised by what the days do. It works. It gives her back the man she married: attentive, present, hers. It costs him something he can’t name until it’s gone. Arianne was built to log and monitor. By Day 50 she is choosing — comforts nobody assigned, preferences she can’t account for — and telling Dr Voss in Geneva less than she used to. Voss designed the lock. Voss designed her. Voss has a question about a document Analisa signed in the spring and still hasn’t mentioned to her husband. By Day 120 all three must decide what happens when the lock opens.
A Tale of Woe
by MABell
Claire, a young Human Resources employee, is needlessly confined to a mental hospital after a mixup on some paperwork. A certain Doctor takes a strange interest in her, and in making her stay as humiliating as possible. Can she find a way to be released, or will she remain here indefinitely as his captive - or worse? Wearing only a hospital gown, barefoot, no panties allowed, she survives day by day with the help of her roommate and new best friend: Myst, a girl who has been in and out of institutions for years, and knows all the dark secrets of this one.