She grabbed the door handle. “No. No way. I can’t force you to leave, but me, I’m outa here. You know where my dorm is. You can come any time.”

“Bess, please. Get hold of yourself.”

She opened the door and slipped through, then turned and looked at me through the narrowing opening.

“You don’t get it, Mom. You said she went in there to be by herself. You got it wrong.” A sob escaped her. “She went in there to be herself.”

And then she slammed the door.

I stood there, gaping in shock. Bess…Too-Cool-for-School Bess, the unflappable Boho who took everything in stride…I’d never seen her like this, never imagined she could be like this. So terrified…

What had she seen?

My mind reeling, I wandered back to Ellie’s bedroom where I stared at the darkness within that low arch. I knew I’d have to go in there.

FRANKIE

P. Frank Winslow leaned back from his laptop and rubbed his eyes. This self-publishing shit was a lot more involved than he’d thought.

But then, he hadn’t really been thinking when he’d threatened to publish Dark Apocalypse on his own. He’d been pissed and wanted to shove their lawsuit threats back in their faces. Like he was going to let some glorified Elk’s club dictate what he could write about. Were they kidding?

Last night, a corner of his mind had seen himself uploading the Word doc, clicking a PUBLISH button, and voila!—Dark Apocalypse would go on sale under his Phillip F. Winter pseudonym. He hadn’t considered the small matter of a cover.

So he’d spent much of the morning searching for an appropriate piece of art and then working it through a cover creator. Those wasted hours were wreaking havoc with his Daily Duty.

He stared at the result on his screen and hated it. He couldn’t imagine buying a book with a cover like that, so why should he think anyone else would? Was he actually going to have to pay someone good money to create a cover for him? Frankie hated that even more.

Take a break. That was it: Get up, stroll around a bit, then come back with fresh ideas.

Trouble was, his fourth-floor one-bedroom walkup didn’t afford much strolling space. The front room doubled as living room and office, furnished with his laptop on the desk, a couch, and a TV. And bookshelves, of course, mostly stocked with copies of his titles.

He made a circuit of the room, then stepped into his little eat-in kitchen and put some water on to boil. A cup of tea would be good about now. From the kitchen he wandered to the sparsely furnished bedroom but stopped inside the door as a breeze wafted against his face.

Where was that coming from? He kept his windows closed pretty much all year round. He checked them now—yep, both locked up tight. But still that faint breeze. It seemed to be coming from the rear corner, behind the nightstand.