Her alarm kicked it off with its insistent buzzing at seven-thirty. It only got worse from there. Someone had stuffed cotton in her mouth overnight and put weights on all her limbs. They’d also shoved a hot poker into her brain. Nothing else accounted for how much her head hurt.

Madeleine pried her eyes open. The room spun for a moment. Was she still drunk? She’d knocked back enough whisky that she could believe it. How could she have been so careless?

Never again. Madeleine wasn’t touching so much as a bottle of cough syrup from now on. No more alcohol. Except, she supposed, Communion wine.

Her stomach revolved at the thought, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Nothing came up, though.

Nothing except the sudden memory of last night.

Her eyes opened wide, which hurt too. The beach. The rocks. The night. The horse.

“Dream,” she croaked around a thick tongue. “Just a dream.”

She sat up. Her bottom ached. Lord in heaven, she hadn’t even taken off her shoes last night. She still wore her jacket, which…

Which had a rip in the right shoulder. A patch of fabric had been torn clean off. Madeleine stared at it.

Teeth had torn it off. Enormous, sharp teeth.

And her shoes were damp because she’d walked backward into the ocean. Her rear end hurt because she’d fallen down on it on a stony beach with a huge horse looming over her.

Some time passed in which she couldn’t move, speak, or think. Shock numbed her body. Only one word kept circling through her thoughts like a hamster on a wheel.

Real. Real. Real.

She lowered her head into her shaking hands. Okay. She could make this make sense, somehow. Spiritual sense. Many Church scholars argued for the existence of ghosts and apparitions. Beneficent souls could return from the dead to visit as part of God’s ordered universe…

Animals weren’t supposed to have souls…

And now that she was thinking about it, that horse had been corporeal. Ghosts were supposed to be ghostly. The horse had bumped her with its head. Its hooves had made noise as it walked next to her on the sidewalk and then taken off at a gallop.

Madeleine looked at the hole in her jacket again. Yes. It had been extremely corporeal.

A…demon? She’d never spent a lot of time thinking about those. It seemed better to focus on God’s bounty. She’d been put on earth to help others, not perform exorcisms. But what else could that wicked-looking, long-toothed, flame-eyed creature have been?

Something new, a voice whispered inside her. Open your eyes. Wake up.

Madeleine had just woken up a few moments ago. It had been a painful experience. She wasn’t ready to do it again. But she was starting to think she had no choice.