“Lucas said you were—”

“That boy,” he said, Lucas’s name apparently jolting him back into the moment. “It is imperative that you forbid him or any more of his ilk from entering the premises again.”

“Lucas came here to help. And if he knows something about what’s going on here, then I don’t see why—”

“Because!” he said, rising from the bench. “Bringing him here is akin to striking a match in a cellar full of powder kegs!”

I twisted to peer after him as he strode away, back toward the fireplace. He stopped there, a pillar of darkness in the gloom. But . . . there was light inside him, too. I’d felt it just now. When he’d talked about the music . . .

Pushing off from the bench, I started in his direction, stopping just short of him.

“Erik,” I said when he failed to say anything else, “I . . . I want to help you.”

And I did. Because if there was one thing I understood about him, it was the pain.

He glanced over his shoulder at me, his expression grave. “There is perhaps nothing you could have said to frighten me more.”

We stood apart like that for a long time. Like both of us had too much left that we wanted to say but no way of articulating it.

“The reason he is not to return,” Erik said at last as he again approached me, “is because I cannot guarantee it will not be the last thing he does.” He lifted his hand, his knuckles drifting close to my cheek. “Not when things are as they are. Not when I can scarcely protect you.”

Just when he would have touched me, the dream ended, and I started awake. And as I found myself back in my bed, my thick coverlet fortifying me against the creeping cold, I stole a groggy glance at my bedside clock.

Its face read 12:45. Which meant I’d been asleep for less than an hour.

My eyes then trailed past the clock to where I’d placed my mom’s angel figure. Where I’d replaced it.

Two days ago, before my first dream with Erik, I’d come into my room to find it had been moved.

At the time, I’d blamed it on my dad. Charlie wasn’t tall enough to reach my dresser. Now, though, I could only question that assumption. Because Dad never came into my room. And even if he did, he never moved my stuff.

These occurrences. The dreams. The graves. The stories. They could only really wind me up if I let them.

I rolled onto my back again, and as I gazed at the twin fissures crisscrossing the plaster of the ceiling, my mind returned to Erik and the vision I’d just left. One I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling had ended . . . because he’d made it.

EIGHTEEN

Zedok

I rose from my chair as I opened my eyes, simultaneously casting their glow upon the hearth.