Take better control this time, she told herself. It’s your dream.
Light shone in through the castle’s stained glass windows as she imagined herself on the landing of the staircase. She detected movement and voices below her, but Kate didn’t want to look. Right now, she wanted the castle to belong only to her. She wanted—no, needed—to feel its walls, to take it all in as if it were a part of her.
The air by the staircase felt slightly cool against her skin.
I’m there, she thought. I’m back in Shadow Wood.
She couldn’t be two places at once, but that’s precisely what a lucid dream felt like. The hallway was just the same as it had been earlier and the night before that. So much to see. So much to explore.
It’s just memories of a previous dream, she thought.
But not if she didn’t want it to be. Let it happen, she told herself. Just go with it.
Kate climbed the stairs one by one, letting the feel of the stone railing beneath her hand convince her that all this was real. The stone was worn smooth, probably by the hands of so many who had climbed these same stairs, sliding their hands along just as she was doing now.
She found herself standing in the hallway of the third floor. The passageway appeared as empty as the second floor had been. Still, the hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Someone was here, watching her. Declan. It must be him! She moved onward, her heart thundering wildly. The feeling was stronger now; he was right down the hall, waiting like before. He must have known she’d return.
If she saw him again, what would she do? Ask about the gargoyles, or just ask him to let her wander the castle in peace? She passed a few rooms and wondered what it’d be like to be a guest here—just for a little while.
Halfway down the hall, a vision flashed in her head. Kate stopped and leaned against the wall, gasping. Gargoyles. Lots of them.
Not again! Not like last time.
Control it, concentrate on controlling the dream.
Through the gargoyle’s eyes, she saw the outside of the castle. Her view switched from one gargoyle’s to another’s. They were perched on ledges, under cornices, on overhangs, atop pillars. More sat on tombstones and gates. They were everywhere. What did it mean?
Faster and faster the images whirled through her head. It was if they were all trying to communicate with her at once, each forcing out the other for a turn. They didn’t communicate with words, but with emotions. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
Please, no. Not another vision like the one with the two boys.
For a brief second, she saw a darkened road outside the castle’s front gates. Next, Kate saw a stone patio with small flowers stretching upward to meet the moonlight. Another flash of light, and she was looking down at the treetops as she glided over them. A gargoyle. She was seeing through another gargoyle’s eyes.
But this wasn’t like the other dream. The gargoyle didn’t seem tense or angry. It was simply showing her the grounds. It was as though the gargoyles were welcoming her this time.
The moonlight cast a winged creature’s shadow on the ground in a clearing. Wolves ran in a pack, their silver-gray coats glistening. Another bright flash. Now she sat perched atop the castle, looking down along the ledges where two other gargoyles squawked and flapped their wings.
The images continued to play through her mind. There were wings and stone eyes of varying shapes and sizes—some weatherworn and some well preserved. Some might have recently been added. Marble, stone, granite, cement. She wiped at her eyes with both hands, pushing against the lids. Whether they were happy or not, Kate wasn’t thrilled to see them.
“Stop it!” she cried. She opened her eyes, expecting to see the fading light against the walls of her empty bedroom.
But she was still there in Shadow Wood, the hallway still as dark and deserted as it had been before. Not a sound from around the corner or from any of the rooms behind the solid wood doors lining the passageway. This was beginning to scare her. But what choice did she have?
“None,” whispered a small voice—one she recognized as her own. “You want this. It scares you, and yet you want it. You always did like a challenge.” Shadow Wood was a challenge unlike any other.
Kate pressed on.
As she passed two closed doors on her left, she glanced back to make sure no one had opened them to peer out at her. The hallway remained empty. The doors remained closed. Whoever watched her wasn’t behind them.
She heard the sound of fluttering wings from the window at the end of the hall. She knew the source—a gargoyle. One that wasn’t trying to invade her mind. She strained to see, pressing her face against the glass. But if one had been there, it had vanished.
Below her, moonlight shone brightly on the open field. A lone howl broke the silence. Soon a chorus of howls filled the night. People walked out onto a silvery moonlit path.
She blinked—hard.
The people were naked. That couldn’t be right. She wiped the condensation from her breath off the glass to see better.
There they were, men and women, the moonlight reflecting off their bare skin.
No way.
What kind of dream was this turning into? Heather had put the idea in her head at lunch, and her subconscious was running wild with it.
What were they doing? Some sort of ritual? They didn’t seem to be taking much notice of their nudity. It was also a bit chilly to be outside in the buff. She blinked once more, making sure she really was seeing this.
She watched in amazement as the group made their way toward the edge of the woods before vanishing into the dense forest.
Then the wolves came out of the woods. They raced to greet another small group of naked people who dropped to all fours as they reached the edge of the path. And then the people morphed into wolves. She grimaced, yet she didn’t look away. It was like a horror movie where you didn’t want to see what happened next, yet all you could do was cover part of your face and keep watching.
When the next group reached the edge of the woods, they crouched down on all fours and lifted their heads toward the moon. Pale skin turned dark as fur covered their bodies and tails emerged. Faces elongated into snouts; limbs changed to legs and paws. Each creature shook, like a dog after a bath, and then raced around, nipping at the other wolves’ heels in play. Some licked at the hands of the people near them before darting off into the woods.
No. It couldn’t be. She’d been acting in paranormal movies for too long.
Four years? Is that what she considered long? She couldn’t deny that she had enjoyed every minute of pretending to be in a world like this.
She shook her head again. Live gargoyles, people changing into animals. It was all getting too weird. Stress. It was all the stress. A psychiatrist would have a field day with her right now. A doctor would tell her that she was substituting fantasy for real life as a means of dealing with too much work, too little sleep, a painful breakup, stress over a budding career.
She staggered away from the window and leaned against a doorframe, trying to calm down, to relax. This was nothing more than a small anxiety attack, some kind of sensory overload. In a few minutes the fog in her brain would vanish, and she’d be thinking clearly again. She’d wake up.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Something fluttered outside the window again. She could hear it—the reverberating pulse of massive wings. A long, pitch-dark shadow stretched down the moonlit hall. Fear clutched at her, but curiosity won out again—she had to see. Kate turned to the window. The face of a griffin stared at her with cold stone eyes. It cocked its birdlike head from side to side, and then it gently tapped on the glass. The gargoyle let out a loud shriek as it lost its balance; it flew from the ledge, wings beating the air.
Startled, Kate stepped backward and nearly collided with a tall, dark, and half-dressed man standing in the corridor.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kate
“What the hell?” the man cried as
he backed away. He wore navy sweat pants, a surprised look, and nothing more.
Kate jumped. She hadn’t heard the door open behind her, and he’d given her as much of a scare as she’d apparently given him. The commotion on the ledge and the shriek from the gargoyle had probably brought him into the hall in a hurry.
Her eyes made their way down to where his sweat pants hung on his hips. Heather was right—she needed to get out more.
His gaze danced between her and the window. She knew the gargoyle hadn’t returned—yet. If she’d startled him, she could only imagine his reaction if he’d seen the creature taking flight from the ledge.
“Sorry,” Kate managed to say. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Me? Oh, I—” He made an attempt to flatten his tousled hair. It wasn’t cooperating. “You surprised me. A little.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the room behind him. “I was sleeping and I heard . . .”
“That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting you, either.”
Total understatement there.
He took another step backward. “This is some sort of joke, right?”
She whirled around toward the window, ready for whoever, or whatever, might be there, but the end of the hallway was as empty as the ledge outside. No more gargoyles.
“Don’t do that!” she said as she turned to face him.
He leaned against the doorframe to his room. “I’ll be damned.”
Kate glanced around again, though she was well aware that he was looking at her and nothing else. For no real reason, her heart skipped a beat. Realizing she was barefoot, wearing jeans and a camisole, she folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head, trying to give off an illusion of composure.
Which totally wasn’t working.
He was checking her out. Most times she ignored men who did this—especially when they were so blatant about it. But part of her found his mischievous smile cute and kind of sexy. And he wasn’t checking her out the way most men did. He wasn’t undressing her. Just staring at her in naïve curiosity or something like it.
She narrowed her eyes. “Earth to—well, Earth to whoever you are.”
His laugh came out soft and infectious, and despite knowing she was the object of his amusement, she couldn’t resist smiling a little.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
He shook his head a couple times. “Oh, this is good. Really good.” He ran his hands over the wall and down around the wide doorframe, searching for something.
Kate frowned. “What are you doing?”
He gently lifted pictures away from their resting spots on the wall and peered behind them.
“Looking for the projector.”
“What? Don’t do that! You’ll break something!”
“It’s got to be here somewhere.” Absorbed in his search, he walked past her, nearly brushing against her as he parted the curtains from the window. Kate caught a hint of a clean-scented, woodsy aftershave.
“Projector? For what?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“You,” he repeated. He repositioned a tall and delicate china vase on a nearby table, running his hands down the sides of it.
“Careful with that!”
“Gig’s up, gentlemen!” he called out as he scanned the walls once more. He turned to face her and rubbed his chin. He nodded as if coming to some new revelation.
“I believed them. They actually had me. But this? I’m sort of disappointed. It’s a bit over the top.”
Kate blinked a few times. “Disappointed? Who and what are you talking about? What’s over the top?”
“No, not what you think,” he said as he continued his search. “You’re supposed to be a ghost. Except you’re not. I have to hand it to them. Von Hiller said you were beautiful, but I didn’t expect them to use a celebrity look-alike. You’re a bad choice for a ghost. The only thing you could scare off is the competition.”
Her face felt hot. She straightened her camisole. He thought she was a celebrity impersonator? Of herself? And a ghost? She was starting to feel like a modern day Alice in Wonderland. Still, there was something so adorable and innocent about him . . .
Now this was a dream!
He stood on the balls of his feet, stretching and running his fingers along the top of the doorframe, clearly still scanning for the elusive camera. “He said he would help my writer’s block. He claimed the castle was haunted. Almost had me. But then he went and hired a celebrity impersonator for this smoke and mirror trick and went just a little too far for the whole suspension of disbelief rule. On the other hand, if you’re going to make it obvious, then why not pick someone like you.”
Like her? He eyed her again, and she felt a blush coming on. “I don’t know who he is, but I’m not a ghost.”
“Fine. I’ll play along. Wouldn’t want you to feel bad. You’re a pretty good actress.” He grinned. “What have we here? A blushing ghost?” he said as he rocked back on his heels. “This just keeps getting better.”
Kate pinched herself, and it hurt. Lucid dreams weren’t supposed to hurt, were they? His grin made her feel giddy. She took another look at those playful brown eyes, his boyish yet rugged looks, exposed and well-muscled chest, broad shoulders . . .
For the love of all things holy, she told herself, stop staring at him!
Her heart kept doing cartwheels, and not because he was handsome and half naked. It was something else, charisma or magnetism of some sort.
It was Heather’s doing. She had to go and mention menus and tasting and . . .
And this was clearly going to be one of those fantasies, whether she liked it or not. “Seriously. Do I look like a ghost?”
He stifled a laugh. “You have seen yourself lately, right?”
Kate looked down—and through herself. True, she was less spectral than her last visit, but still, well . . . Damn it! She was not a ghost and certainly not someone’s idea of a practical joke.
She marched up to him, and before she could think, she pressed her hand to his chest. “Can a ghost do this, Writer Boy?”
His chest was warm where her hand touched. And firm. Nope. A ghost’s hand would have gone straight through. Their eyes met, and Kate’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t believe she’d done that.
“Um, I’m dreaming. Sort of. I’m here, but I’m not really here,” Kate tried to explain. She wasn’t making sense, but then, nothing about these dreams made a lot of sense.
He looked down at her hand and smiled. “I hate to break it to you, but unless you’re sleepwalking, this isn’t a dream. How did they do this? I can see through you, but I also feel your hand. Nice touch, by the way.”
Her eyes darted back to her hand, still resting against his chest. Sheepishly she removed it and hoped that he wouldn’t notice how embarrassed she was. Her cheeks felt like fire.
“And no, I suppose ghosts can’t do that. You know. What you just did there.” His voice was soft, almost seductive. He flashed a lopsided and devilish smile again, and his eyes made another sweep from her face to her feet. “But if they can, I’ve been missing out. My name is Ian, by the way.”
Kate did her best to not stare at his chest where her hand had just been. “Nice to meet you, Ian.”
“Why the look-alike?” he asked. “You’re not the Kate Mercer.”
Kate sighed inwardly. Couldn’t she even have a dream without someone knowing her name? “Let me guess. You’re a fan?”
Ian shrugged. “Sure, I suppose. I mean, she’s clearly talented, and she’s incredibly beautiful. So, as celebrities go, I guess you could say I like her.”
He hadn’t responded the way she expected. “Huh. Interesting.”
“What?”
“You don’t sound convinced about the fan part.”
Ian laughed. “Fan sounds so stalkerish, don’t you think? Besides, having never met the real Kate Mercer, I don’t know a thing about her. What she’s like and all. It’s hard to be a fan of someone you don’t
really know. I do know she’s the lead in the Dark Fall trilogy. I saw the first one. Good movie. Except that the book was better.”
“The book was better?” She nearly laughed. Not because she felt insulted, but because Ian was so direct.
“The book is always better than the movie.”
This time she couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “Okay, I agree. The book is always better. But . . . Kate . . . I look a lot like her?”
“No. Not at all. I think Kate Mercer looks a lot like you.”
Wow. This guy really was a writer.
He leaned against the wall. “Let’s keep playing. My first encounter with a ghost. Say it isn’t so.”
He still didn’t believe her. “You’re not listening! I’m NOT a ghost! I mean, I’m not supposed to be one! I thought we went over that.”
He threw her another look that said, Uh-huh, right.
Kate hesitated for a minute, trying to come up with an explanation that didn’t sound crazy. She didn’t think he’d believe that she just happened to will herself partway across the world in her sleep, only to haunt a far-off castle. No, some simple explanation was in order. She needed some other simple explanation.
“I don’t know why I look like this. It only happens when I’m here.”
Great, she thought. Now that explained everything.
He frowned. “You only look like an actress when you’re here, or you’re only transparent when you’re here?”
“I’m only like this when I’m here. I look like Kate Mercer all the time. So what can I do to prove I’m not a real ghost? Name it.”
He raised a fisted hand to cover his mouth. His eyes were bright with the laughter he fought to contain. He gave her a contemplative nod. It was precisely the kind of nod people gave when they thought someone was crazy. “You could always try the same move again.”
They both burst into light laughter, hers mostly from embarrassment.
“Okay,” Kate finally relented, “I guess I do look a little . . . apparitional, don’t I? Truce? We’re both right in some way?” She couldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t believe her story either. She thought about asking if he’d seen the people outside, but decided against it. What she wouldn’t give for a rock to crawl under right about now.
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