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Three weeks later …

Monday, November 15, 1999

6:00 a.m.

A bearded man with a robust figure stood before Angela. He was stunning, with a smooth dark-tan complexion and long russet-brown hair that cascaded around his shoulders. Angela wanted to run her fingers through those silken locks. The smile beneath his handlebar mustache was subdued, his lips closed with a discreet lift at each corner, but his blue eyes twinkled with delight. His handsome face bore only one imperfection, a scar running down his right cheek.

“Give me thy hand,” he whispered, voice thick with desire, “thou beautiful and delicate form. I am a friend and come not to punish. Be of good courage. I am not wild, thou shalt sleep softly in my arms.” He swept her long hair off her shoulder and brushed his lips against her neck.

The alarm went off, waking Angela. She combed her red bangs from her dark eyes to look at the clock. A large black dog lay snuggled at the foot of the bed, Angela’s toes tucked under the animal’s belly. It whined, irritated by the noise.

Angela sighed and pressed the snooze button. “Easy, Shade.” She scratched the dog’s head to soothe her, then lowered her head onto the pillow and began to drift back to sleep.

“Rise and shine, honeybee,” a tender voice whispered.

Angela looked up with half-closed eyes. Her grandmother’s freckled pale-rosy face was smiling down at her, fern-green eyes gleaming and white hair done in a stylish pixie cut.

“I know,” Angela mumbled. “I’m getting up.” She snuggled back into the sheets.

“Fibber,” Fiona chuckled.

It dawned on Angela’s sleep-addled mind that her grandmother couldn’t be there—Fiona Thorne died seven years ago. Angela sat bolt upright, startling her dog. Fiona had vanished.

Angela rubbed the sleep from her eyes. This was not the first time she had seen her grandmother’s apparition, and although these periodic visitations unsettled her, Angela dismissed them as harmless dreams.

But sometimes her dreams weren’t just dreams. On occasion, they revealed things—presaged future events. Fiona was dead and could never be a part of Angela’s future. But what about the man with the scar? Who was he, and why did Angela dream of him? Was he some sort of herald, or a figment of her imagination?

Angela wanted a second opinion. She got out of bed and retrieved her cellphone from her bookbag. Her uncle knew about her dreams. In fact, he was the only person who knew of Angela’s peculiar aptitudes. He was out of town attending a weeklong art history conference. Angela called his hotel and dialed his room’s extension.

A warm voice with a Romanian-French accent answered. “Hello?”

“Uncle Corin, it’s me,” Angela said.

“Angéline, are you all right?” Corin asked.

“I’m fine.” Angela took a seat at her writing desk. “It’s just … I had a dream.”

Corin’s tone grew serious. “What did you dream?”

“Well, there was a man in front of me. He looked a bit like one of those Renaissance paintings of Christ, except he had a scar on his face.” Angela didn’t see the point of mentioning her grandmother. She had been dreaming of Fiona since the day she died, and Corin had long since concluded that those dreams were just Angela’s subconscious way of coping with the loss.

“What did this man do in your dream?”

“He said something to me.” Angela stood up and paced the room, trying to remember what the figure had said. “I think I heard it somewhere before. ‘Give me thy hand, thou beautiful and delicate form. I am a friend and come not to punish. Be of good courage. I am not wild—’”

“‘—thou shalt sleep softly in my arms,’” Corin finished for Angela. “You have heard it before, but in German. It’s from the second half of Death and the Maiden by Matthias Claudius. We listened to it once in a song composed by Franz Schubert. Those are the lines Death speaks when he comes to take the maiden.”

A few raindrops tapped the window near Angela’s desk. Sunrise wasn’t for another twenty minutes, and the sky was heavy with dark clouds. “That sounds ominous, I suppose, but it didn’t seem like the man in my dream was threatening me.”

“All the same, I want you to stay home until I get back,” Corin asserted.

“Stay home?” Angela blurted. “Uncle Corin, I have classes today.”

“Skip them. I’ll be on the next available flight.”

Angela had been so keen to share her dream that she didn’t even consider how Corin would react. Of course, he would worry, she thought, me calling him this early in the morning. Why was I even worked up over this vision in the first place? Then Angela remembered what happened at the end of her dream—remembered the man’s lips against her neck. Oh … oh God, tell me I didn’t just scare Uncle Corin over a stupid sex dream! “You don’t have to cut your trip short. It might just be a normal dream. Even if it’s not, the vision didn’t scare me. I felt safe, and I can usually sense if a dream is warning me of danger.”

Corin was silent for a moment. “Are you certain this dream isn’t a warning?”

“I’m sure,” Angela replied. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“No, no, I appreciate being kept informed. Even if this dream isn’t a portent, I feel I should come home.”

Angela sighed heavily. “No, I hate that I’m ruining your trip.”

“You’re not. This conference is painfully dull, and I miss you terribly.”

“Okay, but really, I can’t just skip classes.”

It was Corin’s turn to sigh. “Very well, but please go straight home as soon as your seminars are over.”

“I will, and Shade will watch out for me until you get back.” The dog lying on the bed looked up when she heard her name. Angela scratched Shade behind her ears.

“All right, I’ll be home this evening. I love you, Angela.”

“I love you, too, Uncle Corin. See you soon.”

“Au revoir.”

Angela hung up and tucked the cellphone in her bag, then went to make breakfast. She passed through the back hallway into the spacious living room and opened the maroon velvet curtains to let in the gray morning light. She loved the upscale apartment she shared with her uncle. The vintage furnishings and rustic chic aesthetic with hardwood floors, the grand ledgestone fireplace, the ebony timber frame walls with stucco infill—their home was like a scenic country lodge rather than a top-floor city apartment. Not that Angela disliked living in the city, but it was nice to escape the metropolitan cacophony each evening in this bucolic refuge.

In the kitchen, Angela turned on the television and listened to the morning news while pouring dog food for Shade. “Investigations continue after the body of eighteen-year-old Arnold Cline was discovered in the Briarthorne Bay last week,” a newswoman reported over a video clip of a dark river flowing out into the murky bay.

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