My attraction to the dream figure . . . Did his appearance mean I legit had the hots for this Lucas character? Like, without even realizing it with total waking-mind coherence?

I could totally admit Lucas was cute. But was the dream telling me I wasn’t letting myself admit just how attractive I thought he was? Or was the entire interaction with Erik just supposed to highlight how conflicted I felt about kind of being into someone who had also kind of been creeping on me?

Tired of Sigmund Freud–ing myself, I finally shoved the coffee away and stood.

It would be six soon, and Dad would be up and I wanted to make him and Charlie breakfast before we all dug into the day’s projects. Which meant I had an hour left to satisfy one curiosity, at least.

PRE-MORNING DARKNESS STILL swathed the estate by the time I got dressed and made it out the back door.

Flashlight in hand, I stepped down from the dry-rotted, wraparound porch and into the milky mist that enshrouded the grounds. Just down a short path, the metal frame of a gazebo-shaped conservatory poked through a tangle of bramble and brush.

While the intact panes of the glass house shone opaque in the starlight, the missing ones gaped black, making the thing look like some giant bug with too many open mouths and even more sightless, cataract-clouded eyes.

Though I had forgone exploring the property until now, I’d already inspected the conservatory, which had been just as overrun by plants on the inside as on the outside.

Of course, there’d also been evidence that the glass house had once been truly beautiful. An oasis of plants and peace.

Had the lady of the house hosted tea parties there? What sorts of plants had she grown?

Almost certainly, there had been roses. Victorians loved their roses, right?

Dad would raze the glass house for sure, but I couldn’t help wishing he would restore it. A functional conservatory wasn’t something that could drive up the home value enough to cover the cost of its restoration, though. Or counteract the fact that there were dead people buried thirty yards away.

My eyes slid to the shadowy line of the woods.

I wanted to believe simple curiosity led me to investigate the graves. But there was no denying my sudden interest in them had more to do with my dream.

I couldn’t bring myself to say that I was “scared.” Things were definitely odd here, though.

But accumulating weirdness aside, you couldn’t get much more concrete than graves. Graves had dates and names. Graves had facts.

Steeling myself, I trudged toward the thickest section of tall grass, the soles of my rubber Wellingtons tromping over leaves and twigs. So far, the heavy Maglite I’d brought hadn’t been a huge help, what with the mist deflecting the strong white beam, dispersing the light.

As I got closer, I veered in the direction of a set of oddly spaced trees. That was, they weren’t part of the forest. Thorn bushes huddled around their bases, while downed limbs and twigs tangled in the weeds.