However, he was incapable of heeding that warning voice that whispered from a place deeper than the mere subconscious, from the marrowed cavities of his bones and from the iron-rich cells of his blood, where a thousand generations of human experience had inlaid instinct. For ten years, he had lived with the mystery of Emily Carlino’s fate. Answers—however strange they might be—seemed at last within his reach. He could no more retreat than he could undo the error of his ways that resulted in Emily being alone on that night ten years previously. Instinct be damned. Whatever peril might lie ahead, he had earned it and the understanding that might come with it.

The key fit the lock. The deadbolt turned. He opened the back door to the house.

| 41 |

The kitchen appliances weren’t of the most recent vintage, yet everything looked as though it had been installed only yesterday. The limestone floor appeared spotless, the polished granite counters as timeless as the planet from which they had been quarried.

The contents of the cabinets, the refrigerator, and the pantry were as ordered and aligned as if they had been stocked by a robot that, by sight alone, could measure precisely to a sixteenth of an inch. The dishwasher and trash compacter were empty.

Evidently there had been a recent power outage. The digital clocks—on the double ovens, on the microwave—were blinking zeros.

In the adjacent breakfast room stood a table with four chairs and a sideboard. Three large, spectacular light-filled nature paintings were in the style of Albert Bierstadt.

This was the room where, eighteen months earlier, Richard Mathers had broken a window to gain entrance—and a short while later supposedly had broken the same window to escape. He claimed that all the furniture had been removed between his arrival and departure. The table was a heavy disc of pine on a solid central plinth, the captain’s chairs substantial, the sideboard eight feet long. The room could not have been quickly or silently emptied.

The laundry room, the casual family room, the formal dining room, the living room, the large study, the closets, the half bath—nothing on the ground floor seemed in any way odd or suspicious, nor suggested supernatural presences.

Everywhere were exquisite stained-glass lamps of which Tiffany would have been proud. Three walls of the study were lined with books, nearly all science fiction—Bradbury, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Dick, Zelazny, Delaney, Scalzi, Gibson—and the entire fourth wall featured a backlighted stained-glass triptych of flowering trees framing a view of golden meadows beyond, obviously crafted by Nanette Corley.

The residence was immaculate, which indicated nothing more sinister than someone who had an ingrained habit of cleanliness.