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She dreamed the old dream, the one that took her back to that fateful day at the orphanage.

“You need to push harder,” she says. “I can’t see the sign.”

She was six and a half years old and she was learning that people often needed directions and instructions. She was good at giving both—not that everyone appreciated her help.

She and Molly were alone in the walled garden, playing on the swings. It was a rare treat. Usually they had to share the swings and slides with the other girls, but for some reason Ms. Inskip had sent them outside on their own that afternoon.

Her name was Leona No Middle Initial No Last Name. Molly’s name was Molly No Middle Initial No Last Name. The Inskip School for Orphan Girls was the only world they had ever known, but they were sure of two things. One was that last names were important. The other was that there was a bigger, more exciting world beyond the school grounds waiting to be explored. They knew it was out there because the sign on the other side of the high walls offered proof.

“I’m pushing as hard as I can,” Molly says.

“Do it again. I can see part of the sign now.”

Her sister gives her another push. She soars higher. Now she can read the entire sign. Griffin Investigations. Want Answers? We’ll Get Them for You. Call Now. No Waiting.

There is a phone number. She and Molly have memorized it.

“Okay, I can see it,” she says.

She waits for her sister to demand her turn on the swings. There are rules. Once you can see the sign you have to let the other person have a turn. But Molly doesn’t say anything. That’s not right. Why isn’t Molly demanding her turn?

The swing slows down. She prepares to jump off and switch places. But when she looks back, she sees that Molly is no longer there…

A man’s voice slithers into the dream, changing the script…

“…You will be my Guardians. In exchange for your loyalty, I will give you power such as you have never known. Together we will establish a new civilization. Follow me into the glorious future…”

She came awake, aware that something or someone was tapping on the window. But that was impossible. Her room was on the second floor.

The voice came again…

“…The future I will give you is one in which all power will be in the hands of those whose paranormal senses have evolved to the next level. I will use the greatest secret of the Old World to endow you with talents beyond anything you have dreamed of…”

She sat up suddenly, her pulse pounding.

The rez-screen was on, illuminating the room in a cold blue light. A video featuring an all-too-familiar figure from history was playing. Vincent Lee Vance, dramatically handsome, charismatic, and endowed with the mesmerizing voice of a prophet, held forth to a silent, unseen audience.

Dressed in the black-and-khaki uniform of the rebellion, Vance commanded the stage. His dark, gleaming shoulder-length hair was brushed straight back in a style that emphasized his sharp bird-of-prey profile. There appeared to be a wall of solid rock in the background, but it was impossible to make out the rest of his surroundings because the lighting was strategically focused on him.

Historians had frequently pointed out that Vance had possessed a flair for the theatrical. Modern psychologists who had studied his rise and fall had concluded that he had the scary para-psych profile of a classic cult leader. There was no question but that his charisma was off the charts. Even in a grainy video it was hard to look away.

More tapping on the glass.

She scrambled out of bed and peeked through the curtains. Roxy was on the ledge. There was a small object clutched in two of her paws.

“Roxy.”

She opened the window. Foggy night air flowed into the room. Roxy chortled, fluffed out, and tumbled inside. Ignoring the rez-screen, she bounded up onto the foot of the bed and graciously held out an unpolished, untuned crystal.

A yellow crystal.

Dread iced Leona’s senses. She shut the window and went back to the bed to accept the crystal gift.

“Where have you been, or shouldn’t I ask?” she whispered.

A couple of sharp raps on the door jolted her. She checked the time. Nearly one in the morning. She glanced at Roxy, who appeared unconcerned about the late-night caller.

“So, probably not the ghost of Vincent Lee Vance, right?”

She crossed the room on bare feet and peered through the peephole. Oliver stood in the hall. He was not wearing his glasses. His hair was tousled from sleep. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and the trousers he’d had on earlier. He was wearing shoes but he had not bothered to tie the laces.

She yanked open the door. “Did your rez-screen come on a few minutes ago?”

“Yes,” he said.

The cold energy in his eyes was unnerving. No wonder he usually wore glasses, she thought.

He moved into the room and patted Roxy, who responded with a welcoming chortle. Leona closed the door and turned around. Oliver was studying the screen as if it were a mysterious artifact.

“Interesting,” he said.

She realized she was very glad to see him. His presence eased some of the tension inside her. She was not alone in this very weird town. Belatedly it occurred to her that she was in her ancient flannel pajamas. After her restless sleep she probably had bed head. It should not have mattered. But it did.

Not that Oliver was paying any attention to her. He was focused on the rez-screen.

“Did you turn it on?” Oliver asked.

“No.”

“I didn’t turn mine on, either.”

She opened her hand to show him the crystal. “Roxy had this when she returned a moment ago.”

Oliver’s eyes glittered. “Think we could get her to show us where she found it?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She glanced at the rez-screen. “I wonder if something went wrong at the local broadcasting station. A technical glitch, maybe. But how did they manage to rez the screens in our rooms?”

“Got a feeling this bit of unscheduled programming is designed to reinforce the rumor that Vance haunts the inn.”

“It’s not a ghost,” she pointed out. “It’s an old video clip from one of Vance’s recruitment rallies.”

“Yes, but you have to admit that playing it unexpectedly at one o’clock in the morning on a channel that went off the air hours ago makes for a dramatic presentation.”

She shivered. “Yes, it does.”

Footsteps and muffled, excited voices sounded out in the hall.

“I’m not getting a reading from that room,” a woman said. “Try the next one. Hurry. There’s no way to know how long the manifestation will last.”

“Give me a minute to adjust the gauge,” a man responded. “It’s set too low. We need more sensitivity.”

“That does it.” The woman’s voice quickened. “I’m picking up a cold spot in room two-oh-three. See if there’s anyone inside.”

“We’re about to get company,” Oliver said.

He ran his fingers through his hair and crossed the room. Leona was aware of a whisper of energy. By the time he reached the door, he had somehow camouflaged the specter-cat beneath the surface. Even without the aid of the black-framed glasses, he was once again Museum Guy.

He opened the door, startling the man on the other side, who had his hand raised to knock.

“Oh, sorry,” the man said, taking a quick step back. “Didn’t mean to alarm you.”

The woman moved to stand behind him. “We heard the rez-screen so we assumed whoever was in here would be awake.”

Leona recognized the couple as the two people who had checked into the inn earlier that evening while she and Oliver and Roxy had been eating pizza in the diner. They were no longer wearing their stylish country-casual attire. Instead, they were bundled up in bathrobes, slippers on their feet.

“We are awake,” Oliver grumbled. “Do either of you have any idea what is going on here?”

“As a matter of fact, we think we do,” the man said, waxing enthusiastic. “First, we should introduce ourselves. I’m Baxter Richey. This is Darla Price. We are paranormal investigators who specialize in hauntings and apparitions. We have a website, a podcast, and a video channel. The brand is Messages from the Other Side. Maybe you’ve heard of us?”

“No,” Oliver said. “Are you telling us you’re ghost hunters?”

“ Real ghosts,” Darla clarified quickly. “The supernatural kind. Spirits, phantoms, revenants. Not the Unstable Dissonance Energy Manifestations that appear in the Underworld.”

“You can’t be serious,” Oliver said. “No one believes in that sort of nonsense.”

“You’d be surprised,” Baxter said, very earnest now. “A lot of people prefer to keep an open mind when it comes to ghosts. They want to know the truth. That’s why Darla and I are in business.”

“We’ve checked out a number of properties rumored to be haunted,” Darla said, equally intense. “Most were dead ends, but we have identified a few genuine manifestations.” She tapped the device she held in her right hand. “We got a strong reading in my room a few minutes ago when the rez-screen suddenly came on.”

“We decided to walk the halls with the detector to see if we could pick up any more data,” Baxter added. “We’re getting a strong reading from this room. It’s very exciting. Would you mind if we came in and took a closer look?”

“Well—” Oliver said.

Alarm jolted through Leona. “ Yes. Yes, I would mind. I’m not exactly dressed to entertain guests. It’s after one in the morning. I’d like to get some sleep.”

“It would just take a few minutes,” Baxter assured her.

“No, absolutely not,” Leona said.

Darla’s eyes widened. “We understand. Totally. Sorry about the intrusion. Baxter and I will see you at breakfast tomorrow morning.”

“Sure,” Leona said. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind—”

“Okay, sorry to bother you,” Baxter said. He paused. “Take notes, would you? Jot down anything that strikes you about the energy around the rez-screen—or anywhere in your room, for that matter.”

“Right,” Leona said. “We’ll get right on that.”

“See you in the morning,” Oliver said.

Reluctantly, Baxter and Darla made their way down the hall. Oliver closed the door and turned around. The twitch at the corner of his mouth kicked in.

“So they are not honeymooners,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose. “It was a good theory.”

“…Follow me into the future…”

Distracted by Vance’s mesmeric voice, she focused on the rez-screen again. “Now what? We’re not going to be able to sleep as long as that video is playing.”

“In that case, maybe we should pay attention.”

Oliver walked back across the room and sat down on the end of the bed. He studied the rez-screen, once again in his focused, academic mode. She hesitated, not sure how to handle the situation. He was probably right. They needed information. But she was in her pajamas . She thought about putting on her jacket but that seemed somewhat ridiculous under the circumstances. She reminded herself that he had seen her in far less clothing.

“Okay,” she said finally.

She sat down beside him and started paying attention to the megalomaniac on the screen. Vance was holding up a palm-sized disc that dangled from a metal chain. There was a small crystal set into the pendant.

“…You will wear the symbol of your loyalty at all times…”

“He was very specific about the need for his followers to wear those pendants,” Oliver said in a thoughtful tone.

“Yes, he was.” She leaned back, braced her hands behind her, and contemplated the screen.

“According to the historians, the crystals were designed to resonate with the crystals of other followers,” Oliver continued. “It was how the true believers of the cult recognized each other.”

“The crystals in Vance’s pendants and the one we saw on the dead caterer were transparent. No color.” Leona touched the stone she wore beneath the top of her pajamas and then glanced at the crystal in Oliver’s hand. “Where do the yellow crystals fit into all this?”

“Good question.”

The rez-screen blinked off. The video winked out along with Vance’s hypnotic voice. Leona shivered.

“Thank goodness that’s over,” she said. “Maybe we can get some sleep.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized she probably wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep—and even if she did, the dream would be lying in wait for her.

“I don’t know about you,” Oliver said, “but I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”

She exhaled heavily. “Whew. Thanks. Now I can say the same thing without embarrassing myself. That reminds me, earlier I could have sworn I saw a figure in the fog watching our rooms.”

“I saw him, too.”

“Him?”

“I think so,” Oliver said. “But I didn’t get a good look.”

“Call me overimaginative, but I’ve got to tell you, this inn is getting creepier by the hour.”

His brows rose. “Says the woman who was held prisoner in the Underworld by a bunch of artifact pirates.”

“Yeah, well, between you and me, I may be suffering a little PTSD from that experience. But don’t tell my family, okay? They already think my professional and personal lives are a train wreck.”

“No surprise about the PTSD, given what you’ve been through.”

She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t just the kidnapping. There was also the little accident in the artifacts lab.”

“The one that scared the crap out of your ex?”

“That one.”

“Want to talk about it?” Oliver said, his voice absolutely neutral.

“It was sort of an explosion, but quite small, really.”

“What, exactly, exploded?”

“A little Alien mirror. Harmless. It’s not like I lost control or anything.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“No,” she said firmly. “At least, not seriously. My para-senses were singed a little and so were Matt’s, but we both fully recovered. For the record, I was just really pissed off. I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

“Didn’t think so.”

She raised her brows at that. “What makes you so sure?”

Oliver surprised her with a sharp, dangerous smile. “Because you would have been successful. You aren’t the half-measures type.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure how to take that, so she forged ahead. “I cornered him in the lab because I was furious. After I was rescued from the kidnappers, I found out he had been cheating on me with a grad student. That was bad enough.”

“You confronted him in the lab because of the grad student?”

“The reason I got him alone that day was because I had just discovered that he had used some of my work in a paper he had sent to the Journal of Para-Archaeology . He not only stole my research, he didn’t even bother to credit me in the paper.”

“Ah, the ultimate betrayal in the academic world,” Oliver said. “No wonder you were pissed.”

“Really, really pissed.”

“Did he know you could work artifact energy?”

“No. I never told anyone. I’m sure Drayton and Grant, the two people who were kidnapped with me, had their suspicions. We spent a lot of time in close quarters together and we were working around Glass House artifacts, some of which were very hot. But they kept quiet after we were rescued.”

“The three of you had developed a bond in captivity.”

“Yes. It’s not the sort of talent you advertise in the academic world. People worry that you could accidentally get them killed on a dig.”

“I know. I’m in the same line, remember?”

She flushed. This was getting awkward.

“I suppose now that you’re aware of my ability, you’re a little concerned that I might be a hazard,” she said stiffly. “I want to assure you that I—”

She broke off because there was a telltale twitch at the edge of Oliver’s lips. It transformed into a grin and then a raspy chuckle.

“I’ll bet you really did scare the hell out of Fullerton,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “But when he recovered from the shock, he was furious. He threatened to tell my boss and everyone else in the department. My career would have been ruined. I tried to keep him quiet.”

“How?”

“The old-fashioned way. Blackmail. I told him I would not go to the head of the department with the proof that he had plagiarized my work if he kept his mouth shut about what had happened in the lab.”

Oliver nodded. “MAD. Mutually assured destruction. Good plan.”

“I’m not proud of myself, but I was desperate.”

“Understandable.”

“Not that it worked,” she said. “The rumors started to circulate anyway. I should have known it would be impossible to keep the incident in the lab a secret. There were some char marks that were hard to explain away as a normal lab accident. Still, I think my career would have survived if it hadn’t been for the raid on the Society. That finished me at Hollister.”

“Are you going to go through with your threat to accuse Fullerton of stealing your work?”

She groaned. “No. Accusations like that get messy fast for both parties involved. I didn’t have any real proof. I was bluffing. And, as I said, I did singe Matt that day in the lab.”

“As revenge goes, that’s pretty pathetic.”

“I suppose, but you know what they say about revenge. Two graves and all that. Anyway, I’ve got bigger problems. I doubt I’ll ever work in the academic world again. My best option is to go private as a consultant. Most businesses doing work in the Underworld aren’t terribly picky when it comes to talent. Corporations and private firms are profit-driven. All they care about are results.”

“True. But going down that career path can be hazardous. There are a lot of shady operators working the ruins.”

“I know.” She gave him a steely smile. “I was kidnapped by some of those shady types.”

He winced. “I guess you don’t need any lectures on the dangers of running a small consulting business in the Underworld.” He paused. “You’ll miss the academic world, though, won’t you?”

“Yes. It’s the research and analysis that fascinates me. The sense of discovery. That’s the mission of the academic world. Corporations and entrepreneurs are focused on profit and staying ahead of the competition. Different goals. Different mindsets.”

“Your colleagues in the academic world sound like a tough crowd.”

“True. I did learn one valuable lesson, however.”

“What’s that?” Oliver asked.

“I need to keep my personal and professional lives separate.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I know.”

Oliver was silent for a moment. She assumed he was probably about to announce that it was time he went back to his own room. She didn’t want him to leave, she realized.

She tried to think of a logical reason for asking him to stay. But he spoke first and turned the night—and her world—upside down.

He looked at her, his dangerous eyes heating. “What would you say if I told you that I want to kiss you?”