Closing the other window by the dining area, which was just an extension of the living room, she paused again, enjoying the cessation of jagged cricket legs.

She was just about to go back to bed when a high, piercing scream cut through the closed windows as if they were made of onionskin paper.

Kate reflexively flinched, hunching her shoulders as if something had flown into the house and was circling around her head.

She tottered into one of the dining room chairs, heart doing a madman’s samba.

What could have made such a noise?

It sounded as if it had come from both outside and within the cottage, like it was everywhere at once, the blaring of Revelation’s trumpets.

Kate’s back flared and her knees turned to water. She had to pull the chair out from under the table and sit before she fell down. The fiery sensation went all the way to the top of her head. She grabbed at her hair, expecting it to come away in clumps from having been burned from her scalp.

Hands shaking, she looked over at Andrew, who was still snoring.

How could he sleep through that? It sounded like someone was being killed.

I have to get my phone.

She saw it across the room, the divide stretching out before her like taffy.

I have to wake Andrew up and call the police. Whoever made that noise is hurt, if not dead by now.

Kate sat and listened for it to come again, knowing if it did, she might pee herself. Taking slow, steady breaths, she concentrated on expelling the heat within her body outward with each exhalation. She pictured Ryker beside her, his hand on her shoulder, encouraging her. After a minute or so, she started to feel more in control of herself.

There was another screech, but this one not as loud, not nearly as close. It sounded as if whatever had made it was heading away from the cottage.

And it was most definitely not in the cottage.

She should have been relieved at that, but she wasn’t.

Buttons looked up at her, breath huffing from his open mouth, as if nothing had happened. Andrew rolled over on the bed, still very much asleep.

Did I imagine that?

It was so, so loud. Buttons barks at cats when they meow by our windows at home. He didn’t even react.

Andrew might have been sleeping off a day and night of drinking, but even that wouldn’t explain how he could not even stir after that first scream. She could still hear it, reverberating in her brain, an echo from the cauldron room in hell.

What disturbed her most was her inability to figure out if it was a person or an animal. Something about it made her think it was both. But that was impossible.