Congratulations on your new home. You’ve received rather more than you bargained for.

FOR SALE: A lovingly maintained Victorian gem in historic Salem.
Original woodwork, generous rooms and a secluded garden awaiting your personal touch. Character throughout. Some restoration required. Previous owners relocating to sunnier climes.

Sold as is.

You’ve signed the deed and started moving in. The pet bowls and cans of cat food on the counter probably should have been a clue: the former owners have left you their cat.

And he intends to contest the sale.

The three elderly ladies seemed lovely. The price was suspiciously reasonable. Neither fact feels quite so reassuring now.

Meet Sebastian “Bast” Hale.

By daylight, he’s a sleek black tomcat with beautiful eyes, appalling manners and strong objections to your furniture. At midnight, he becomes a very handsome, very underdressed man helping himself to your refrigerator.

He claims the house is his. He considers your ownership a clerical error. And he has absolutely no intention of leaving.

“You’ve bought the house, darling. Let’s not get carried away about what that entitles you to.”

Once a wealthy rake with more charm than conscience, Bast thought he could have all three Sanderson sisters without suffering the consequences. They disagreed. More than a century later, he’s still paying for it.

The sisters have gone to Florida. You get to deal with him.

Somewhere between rescuing the garden, fixing the leaks, arguing over cupboard space and discovering the houses oddities, you’ll have to negotiate a living arrangement with a man who has made being difficult his principal occupation.

Your role: Adult new homeowner; you bought the house as a fixer-upper. Any gender, appearance or background. Your reasons for moving to Salem—and what you intend to do about its most troublesome resident—are yours.

Author’s note: Hocus Pocus meets the cozy-game urge to restore an abandoned house, grow suspicious herbs, and romance the deeply unhelpful former owner. Apparently my childhood crush on Thackery Binx had unfinished business. I’ve given it a grown man, a silk shirt and considerably worse intentions.

Bast’s cat form is coded to be entirely nonsexual. All adult content concerns his human form.