She turned into the dining room where a long table covered by a runner and candelabra gleamed in the semidark. A built-in hutch in deep mahogany filled a wall, and an arched doorway led to a kitchen that had been roped off. Kristi stepped over the velvet barrier and, reaching into her purse, pulled out her keys and the minuscule penlight on the ring. The beam was small but intense and helped her find her way. She looked around the antiquated room that still housed a wood-burning stove along with a newer gas range. A butter churn stood in one corner and the back door led to a huge porch. Kristi stared out the window but didn’t open the door for fear some alarm might go off.

She listened hard, hoping to hear some noise, but the house was deathly quiet. No sound of air movement. No hum of a refrigerator or tick of a clock. All she could hear were the faint sounds of her own heartbeat and footsteps, the latter muffled by her running shoes.

So where had the blonde gone?

Was she meeting someone?

Was this where she worked?

A place of refuge?

Outside, night had fallen, darkness caressing the windows, the few pools of light cast by the well-placed lamps giving off no warmth. The house felt cold and still, devoid of warmth.

As if it has no soul.

Oh, God, please, she silently chastised herself. Now she was starting to fall into the trap of everything she’d been reading from Shakespeare’s bloody tragedies that her biker of a teacher, Dr. Emmerson, had assigned. Those plays with their guilt and ghosts were bad enough, but then there were the bloodlusting creatures in Grotto’s class. She thought about Grotto, tall, dark, handsome, and brooding, with eyes that seemed to see into a person’s mind.

All an act, she reminded herself. Theatrics.

She continued on, past the pantry door and another that was locked, leading, she supposed, to a cupboard or a set of stairs that accessed the basement. She eased around the back side of the staircase, past a wall laden with hooks for coats, to the front of the house again without making a sound. Once again she was at the foot of the darkened, roped-off staircase. She stared upward into the gloom. No lights burning up there.

Did she dare?

She hesitated, then mentally called herself a wimp. The blonde—Marnie, that was her name—was somewhere inside.

Quickly, before she changed her mind, she stepped over the fading velvet rope and started up the wide staircase. She made little noise as a faded floral runner muffled her steps, her tiny bluish penlight beam guiding her.

At the landing, the dark figure of a man stood in the corner.

Oh, God!

She gasped, her fingers reaching into her bag for her mace.