She and Pru had found a tearoom, ordered a pot of Darjeeling and a tray of tiny sandwiches, and settled in to discuss their observations. Two hours later the hostess had requested that they leave because it was closing time. It was when they got to their feet and collected their handbags that the two talked about their dreams. Maggie explained she was eking out a living writing for the confession magazines while trying to write a full-length novel on the side. Pru had nodded in understanding and confided her own dream: I want to open a bookstore devoted to the literature of the paranormal.
Neither had yet realized her dream, but they were making progress financially, at least. They both had jobs that allowed them to put aside a little money for the future. They were on their own because neither of them could look for assistance from their families. The advice from their relatives was to focus on getting married.
Even if they had been inclined to marry, finding husbands would have been complicated, if not impossible. And they were not so inclined. Each of them had an excellent reason to avoid marriage, a reason rooted in that most powerful of all emotions—fear.
“Look at the time.” Pru jumped to her feet and slung the strap of her handbag over one shoulder. “I have to get back to the library. Let me know if your investigator solves the case with those phone calls.”
“I will,” Maggie promised.
Chapter 5
She delayed going to bed as long as possible because she knew the coatrack would show up in her dreams and she would have to deal with it. That was going to be a problem because she had so little context. All she knew about it was that it was standing in Sage’s office and that he and an unknown person had laid down the shadow energy. That didn’t give her much to work with.
She was good at ignoring most of the shadows she encountered in daily life. She’d had plenty of practice since her late teens, when her lucid dreaming abilities had blossomed. There had been no choice but to develop the skill and strength of will required to suppress her sensitivity to the energy left on objects that had been handled by people in the grip of some intense emotion.
It was all too easy to blunder into the shadows cast by seemingly innocuous objects—a fireplace poker, a clock, a letter opener. A coatrack. The trial-and-error process of learning how to control her dream world to some extent had been fraught. Early on there had been too many unfortunate occasions when things had gone wrong and she had awakened screaming. Her family had been deeply concerned. She had been whisked off to the offices of a series of psychiatrists and dream analysts.
When she was seventeen, two of the experts had diagnosed her as prone to attacks of hysteria and had recommended eight weeks in a private sanitarium to “calm her nerves.” She had learned a valuable lesson during her enforced stay inside the walls of Sweet Creek Manor: She had learned how to keep her mouth shut—most of the time.
These days she was careful to talk about her extreme dreams only with those who understood and accepted her unusual and disturbing ability. She had concluded she would probably always sleep alone. Marriage—a risk on so many levels—could prove catastrophic in her case. It had the potential to doom her to an asylum.
She poured a glass of wine and sipped it while she heated a can of cream of tomato soup and prepared a toasted cheese sandwich. She ate the simple meal at the kitchen table and made some notes for the novel. She did not want to forget the gun in Sam Sage’s desk. It would add an intriguing element to the story and to the character of the hero.
She washed the dishes in the kitchen sink and went upstairs to the room she used as an office. She had mailed the questions and answers for two weeks’ worth of columns to the editor that afternoon. Tonight she had time to devote to her writing.
She sat down at the desk and pulled out the legal pad. As she had explained to Pru, she knew now why the hero, Bennett North, felt wrong.
. . . The house looked as if it had been constructed from the scraps of a graveyard—bits and pieces of discarded headstones and abandoned crypts. The gray rock walls loomed over the dark mirror of Winter Lake.
The exterior of the mansion was bleak and intimidating, but it was the interior that chilled Grace to the bone. The high-ceilinged room was draped in perpetual shadow, a gloom that could not be chased off by the simple act of opening the heavy curtains.
Flames leaped from the logs piled on the vast stone hearth, but there was little warmth to be had from them. They clawed a path upward through the chimney, seemingly desperate to escape.
There was no escape for Grace. The position of confidential secretary she had been offered was her only hope. If she retreated to her aging Hudson and drove back down the twisted mountain road, she would be dining in a charity soup kitchen that night.
Her future hung on the reception she received from the master of the house, a man with the sculpted features of a fallen angel.
Bennett North rose from behind the expanse of a polished mahogany desk to greet her.
“Welcome to Winter Lake,” he said.
His voice resonated with the cool polish and unshakable self-confidence produced by old money and a lineage that stretched back to the Old World. He could have stepped out of the previous century.
Grace knew she was looking at a man who not only accepted but embraced the weight of the traditions and secrets placed on him by family, social status, and money. It was clear he was content to be trapped in the past. It was the source of his strength and his power . . .
No question about it, Bennett North was not only insufferable, he was boring. He was a man who was chained to the past, not one who was capable of carving out a new future for himself.
Maggie uncapped a fountain pen, drew lines through the description of Bennett North, and tried another approach.
. . . There was a sense of resolute determination about him that charged the atmosphere. His fierce will was reflected in his eyes. Bennett North had found himself in hell, but he would not be defeated by its forces . . .
She put down the pen, sat back, and read what she had written. Bennett was definitely on the way to becoming more interesting, and there was no problem figuring out who had inspired the new version. She wondered if Sam Sage would show up in her dreams.
Thoughts of Sage brought a sharp reminder of the coatrack. He really needed to get the thing out of his office.
She slipped the legal pad back into the drawer and got to her feet. She could usually lose herself in her writing, but that was not going to work tonight. The threatening letter and the coatrack demanded attention. She might as well go to bed and get the dreams over with. She knew they would hover on the edge of her thoughts, tugging at her, until she exorcised them.
Chapter 6
The dream . . .
. . . She walks through the empty white corridors of Sweet Creek Manor, opening the door of each room she passes. She does not know who or what she is searching for, but she will open doors until she finds a room with answers inside.
She opens a door and sees the old version of Bennett North. He gives her a confused, pleading look but he does not speak.
“I never found your voice,” she says. “You’re free to go. I don’t need you.”
She closes the door and opens another. This time she sees Sam Sage. He’s standing in the shadow cast by the coatrack.
“Are you afraid of me?” she asks.
“No, but we’re going to have problems.”
“Why?”
“I’m no hero,” he says.
“I’m the writer. I’ll decide.”
She closes the door and moves on to the next room. The extortion letter and a postcard are on the floor.
She knows in the way dreamers do that someone is hiding in the corner of the room, but she can’t see the person.
She also knows, as she usually does, that she is dreaming and that it is time to take control of the script.
She contemplates the extortion letter. Only some of the words are legible in this dreamscape.
Murder
Burning Cove
The Traveler
She turns away from the letter. There is nothing more to be learned from it in this dream. Experience has taught her that if she studies it any longer she will become anxious and frustrated. If she pushes too hard for comprehension she will awaken in a full-blown anxiety attack.
She examines the postcard. It is picture-side down. There is some writing on the back. She can discern two words.
Guilfoyle Method