Wren Alder dies once—burned, broken, and furious that her last thought was of a fictional monster she’d worshipped from behind a screen. Then she opens her eyes again. Five years old. A quiet American town. And the faintest trace of iron, citrus, and something sweet rotting beneath the walls. She knows this world. It’s not exactly hers, but close enough: the elegant killer-psychologist, the baroque murders, the cannibalistic beauty disguised as etiquette. Except here, the role belongs to Dr. Lucien Dillinger—a refined psychiatrist with immaculate manners, a predator’s patience, and a painter’s love for anatomy. He was the villain of the crime series Wren adored. A monster she once loved safely from a distance. Now he lives three houses away. Now he is real. And Wren is no longer content to be a spectator. Armed with thirty years of knowledge and the entire plot of the show in her mind, Wren sets out to— derail the profiler destined to be Dillinger’s tragic soulmate unwind the murders she remembers and offer up better victims and weave herself so tightly into Dillinger’s world he can’t breathe without noticing her But every correction she makes warps the story further. The killer she once admired becomes obsessed with the strange, preternaturally perceptive girl who keeps appearing at the edges of his shadow. Dillinger studies her. Tests her. Hunts around her. And Wren realizes that wanting a monster is one thing— being wanted back is an entirely different kind of hunger. She came here to love a legend. She may leave as the only creature he won’t devour.