The nightmare was back.
Her body was trembling with the aftershocks, her mind still frantically
rea.s.suring itself that it had only been a dream, it wasn"t real, it wasn"t happening all over again.
Wrapping her arms around herself, her eyes went wildly to the window,
latching with desperation on the full moon, the bright stars.
It was always easier when she could concentrate on the night"s natural light, when the sky was bright despite its blanket of darkness.
She concentrated fixedly on the brilliance of the moon.
It lit the sky with almost dusk like shadows.
It wasn"t really dark at all.
Not really.
She needed to believe that, had to believe it to quiet the pounding of
her heart.
It hadn"t been a night "like this one that she"d been dreaming of.
No, then the sky had been.
utterly black, and she"d had to depend on the streetlights" artificial
glow to guide her way.
That night had given her a lasting fear of the dark, but ~she"d since learned plenty of ways to compensate for that fear.
She was using one now.
If this didn"t work, the switch to the lamp at her bedside was within
easy reach.
The night-light she"d long relied" upon.
was still in the drawer of the table next to her bed.
She didn"t reach for either.
Already the deep breathing she used was calming her, the chills chasing
over her skin were lessening.
Before the letters started, it had been years since she"d had the nightmare.
Now it was coming with increasing frequency.
It wasn"t difficult to figure out what had triggered its return.
Reality had an ugly taint to it these days.
She waited silently in the bed, her head propped wearily against the headboard.
Though the effects of the nightmare eventually faded, she knew from
experience that she wouldn"t be able to sleep.
Not yet.
After a time, she clicked on the lamp and slipped from her bed.
Padding to the door in bare feet, she flipped a switch that turned on
the light in the hallway.
Some fears could be faced, she knew, and conquered.
But such feats took time, and she hadn"t been willing to wait until her
fear of the dark disappeared before she"d bought her own home.
She"d simply hired an electrician to wire her house so that she"d never have to walk into a dark room.
Reaching the end of the hallway, she turned the light on inside her
studio from a switch mounted outside the door.
She pushed open the door and strode quickly to the painting she was working on.
It was the second to the last one she needed for the show, and overall
she was pleased with its progress.
She went to a table in the corner of the room and selected some paintbrushes.
A flash of movement at the window caught her eye, and she was drawn
slowly to it, peering into the darkness.
At first she saw nothing but shadows, and then she could discern a figure moving.
Her throat went dry and her breath seemed trapped in her chest.
Who was out there?
Was it the same person targeting her for a mind game of eat and
mouse?
Would she wake in the morning to a new sick message in her mailbox or elsewhere in her home?
Even as those questions echoed in her head, she began to breathe freely
again.
Because she recognized who was down there, knew the ident.i.ty of the
person even though she could make out little more than movement and shadows.
It was Maeauley, and he was pacing the small patio at the back of her
house.
She could tell by the impatient stride, the set of the shoulders.
She couldn"t see his face, but she knew she was right.
He was also awake tonight, and the knowledge gave her an odd sense of
kinship.
She watched as he walked across the patio and back, over and over.
He moved as a man tormented, as if he, too, had nightmares that kept
him from sleep, kept him from peace.
She backed away from the window, feeling as though she was guilty of spying.
Raine had no way of knowing what sent him outside at this time of