Curious, Olivia took a couple of steps into the gallery . . .

. . . and froze when the feverish rush of energy swept through her. She fell into the dreamstate. The words came out of her mouth in the eerie voice she was learning to hate.

“When the time comes you will know how to go through the mirror.”

Harlan spun around, pinning her in the glare of his flashlight.

“Olivia. Get out. Now.”

He lunged forward, clearly intending to propel her back through the stairwell doorway, but it was too late. She heard the sound of gears whirring deep within the basement walls. A heavy door slammed shut behind her.

Just as it had in the nightmare she had remembered earlier that day.

Run.

But this wasn’t a dream and there was nowhere to run.

She broke free of the trance and whirled to face the door. The beam of her flashlight flared on the polished sheet of heavy-gauge steel that now sealed the stairwell doorway.

Harlan came to a stop beside her.

“This is not good,” he said quietly.

“No shit.”

She crossed her arms very tightly around her waist in an attempt to control the shivers that were coursing through her.

“Are you all right?” Harlan asked.

She glared.

“Right,” he said. “Sorry I asked. Let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”

He went past her and flattened one hand on the vault-like door for a long moment. Slowly he moved his fingers, exploring every inch of the heavy steel plate.

When he turned around, his expression told her all she needed to know.

“There’s probably a hidden escape mechanism on this side but it’s not going to be easy to locate,” he said.

“Why would Sefton have made it difficult to escape from his own safe room?”

“I don’t think Sefton designed this room as a safe room. He intended it as a trap for intruders. The safe room, assuming he had one, is somewhere else.”

Another shiver went through her, but this one was different. The chill wasn’t an aftereffect of the dreamstate experience. It was caused by the raw fear of being locked inside a darkened room with only a couple of flashlights.

“I suppose Sefton’s plan was to imprison the thieves and then phone the police,” she said.

“I doubt he planned to call the cops.”

She did not like the sound of that. It dawned on her that Harlan’s flashlight was now focused on the wall behind her. Senses spiking, she turned to see what he was looking at.

Light flashed in a mirror on the opposite side of the gallery. At first she thought it was a reflection of her flashlight, or maybe Harlan’s. But there was something off about it. Flashlight beams did not pulse in aurora-like waves. The color of the radiation was wrong, too. It was a strange shade of chartreuse that was growing steadily deeper and more intense.