Behind Closed Doors

Prologue

The dream never changed. Her father's sailboat was drifting slowly away from the shore. The clouds were growing darker. Gusts of wind whipped the dark water into a white-capped froth that sloshed up over her feet. Dread lay in her belly, as heavy as a cold stone. She watched the boat drift farther and farther. Lightning flashed. Thunder.

Then she was standing with her father in front of a tall black marble obelisk. His arm was around her shoulders, and his handsome face was pale and grim. He pointed to the obelisk. She realized that it was a tombstone.

A jolt of fear reverberated through her. It was his tombstone.

She leaned closer to read his name and the dates of his birth and death. The grooves in the marble seemed wet and dark. More than wet, they were dripping with dark liquid. It oozed out and snaked down the pale surface of the marble in long, tangled crimson rivulets. Blood.

Horrified, she looked back up at her father, but he was nolonger her father. He had become her Uncle Victor, his cold eyes an electric silver gray, his teeth white and oddly sharp looking. And his heavy, muscular arm was around her shoulders, tightening until she thought her lungs would burst.

She woke up gasping for breath, a scream trapped in her aching throat, and stared wild-eyed into the dark. Trying to breathe, trying to make her hammering heart calm down.

Wondering how long it would take for the dream to drive her mad.