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LAKE SUPERIOR WAS AN ENIGMA to Shea. It had been ever since she was a young girl of nine running barefoot on its shores, skipping over driftwood and water-smoothed rocks, dodging blistering cold waves that threatened to bite her toes with frost.

Sunshine shed the torrents from the night before. Shea stepped onto the front stoop of the lighthouse. With a mug of coffee in hand, her flannel pajama pants pressed against her legs as the morning breeze soothed her skin. Such a stark difference from the tempestuous violence of the night before. The lake was mostly calm now, and a soft whoosh-whoosh could be heard as little waves caressed the shoreline. An innocence had returned this morning, one that belied the lake’s underlying unpredictable temperament.

Shea had wrangled her dark spiral curls back with a headband and only taken time to slip on a fleece sweater over her nightshirt. In the early light, Annabel’s Lighthouse didn’t scream terror or poltergeists. It didn’t have the haunted allure written about in travel magazines and old Upper Peninsula history books. Instead, it too was much like the lake. Gentle and charming in its quiet way, and not even much of a lighthouse if one wanted to argue.

“Oregon lighthouses have more aesthetic interest.”

That had been the legitimate argument of her publisher when she’d raised the idea of writing her next compilation of true-life historical hauntings centered around a lighthouse. He wanted her to pursue one on the West Coast.

“They’re taller. Prettier. More ... lighthousey.”

Pat Franz, her acquisitions editor, had a strange ability to create his own words, which seemed odd considering he was an editor. In the end, Shea was able to convince Pat that Annabel’s Lighthouse would stand up to the Pacific Northwest ones because of its history. Annabel. The strange occurrences surrounding it. The fact that it had sat abandoned for a decade before finally being entered into the National Register of Historic Places and sold in the 1980s to a private owner.

“Morning.”

The sound of Holt’s voice as he rounded the corner of the lighthouse startled Shea. She yelped, splashing coffee from her mug onto the step.

Her host and the current owner of the lighthouse looked to be around her age, rugged yet clean-shaven with red tints in his blond hair, a square jawline, broad shoulders, a Roman god of a man...

Shea cleared her throat—and her thoughts.

She was staring.

“Morning,” she answered back with a shameful belatedness that was more than evident.

“You survived last night’s storm.” It was an observation, and Holt draped his arms over the iron railing that edged the walk from the lighthouse to the lawn. There was an easygoing air about him, gentle, his smile warm and inviting.

“I did.” Shea gathered her wits about her and shoved away the inappropriate attraction. Taking a sip of her coffee helped to settle her nerves, and she felt her middle-school-girl self slip away and be replaced by her authorly self who was accustomed to interactions with strangers, all in the name of research. “It was a doozy, though.”

Holt laughed. “That it was. Not the worst, though there were a few branches down across the road this morning, and they lost electricity in town for a bit.” He turned to look out over the lake that stretched to the horizon. “So you write books, huh?”

Shea nodded even though he wasn’t looking at her. “I write about the historical tales and legends that surround different sites across the country.”

Holt swiveled and squinted in thought. “Did you write that book on the ghost stories connected with that old house in Wisconsin?”

“Foster Hill?” Shea couldn’t help but smile in the realization he was familiar with it. “I did. That was a fascinating story to write. A bit lighter on the ghosts, but so much family ancestry and tragedy. When I met with the current owner, Kaine Prescott, talking to her and touring the old place was like stepping into a time machine.”

Holt nodded, seemingly satisfied that he’d pegged her and her books. “Edna Carraway is a lifetime native here. You’ll want to meet up with her. She has lots of tales about the goings-on around the Porcupine Mountains. She knows the stories handed down by the Ojibwe people too. Some of her family married into the tribe over a century ago. She’s a walking history book for Silvertown and the Porkies.”

Shea couldn’t help the spark of intrigue that lit her soul. This is what she loved about writing books and gathering old tales—true ones or otherwise. These were the stories that would die someday if they weren’t passed along.

“The indigenous people are fantastic at preserving their ancestral legacies,” Shea observed.

Holt nodded in agreement. “You seem familiar with the area.”

Shea smiled as she readjusted her hold on her coffee mug and leaned back against the side of the house. “I used to come to the U.P. with my family when I was a kid. When I got...” She bit off her words and rephrased them. “Lately it’s been tough getting to this area. Travel has been ... tricky.”

A frown creased the region between Holt’s eyes. “But aren’t you a writer who writes about places all over the country?”

Shea managed a nervous laugh. “Funny, huh?” It was all she was going to offer him for a response. Holt’s question made sense. It was the same issue Shea struggled with. Her husband Pete’s resistant expression flashed across her mind. He liked staying put and preferred she do the same. He hated to travel by air. Trains and buses weren’t any better—too many people. Shea knew he’d be happy as a hermit and thought he wanted her to share his opinion. Some of her friends argued that he was a bit controlling and she needed to just do her thing. Shea wasn’t sure. Pete’s personality wasn’t domineering, he just didn’t like her being away. Or so he said.

So it was always tense when Shea left him to travel for her books. No one understood her situation, it seemed—even herself at times. She pictured the glower on his face every time she pulled out of the driveway for a trip away, recalled the silence from his phone while she was gone, his aloof greeting when she returned home. So Shea had made it a habit not to travel unless it was necessary for her work. That was another reason she’d chosen Annabel’s Lighthouse. She’d played on the shores of Lake Superior as a child. Dreamed here, imagined here, and fell in love with the lore and legend of the place, the untapped wildness. But she hadn’t been back since she’d graduated from college and married Pete, her sweetheart who, at the time, seemed to be her answer to life’s dreams.

Shortsighted twenty-two-year-old that she was.

Shea squashed her thoughts. No. She’d come here to reflect on who she was without Pete. Not that she would ever leave him for good... Well, that had crossed her mind, if she was being honest. Pete was like having a roommate who split expenses. Romance had dissipated eons ago. Thank God they’d never had kids—she’d never wanted them—but Pete? Who knew. He was barely able to deviate from his daily menu routine of Raisin Bran in the morning, a ham sandwich for lunch, and a hamburger for supper. If she never ate another hamburger, it’d be too soon.

“What brings you to the lighthouse this morning?” Shea shoved aside her thoughts and focused on the steady cadence of waves washing up onshore. A steady cadence of blessed predictability—until a storm blew in.

Holt slid his arms from over the railing and turned toward the lake. “Just wanted to make sure everything was in one piece after the storm.” He glanced at Shea as he thumbed over his shoulder toward the wilderness road and expanse behind them. “I live about a half mile that way. I have a cabin in the woods. I don’t mean to butt in, but some of my property is part of an old silver mine from back in the day.”

Shea frowned, clutching her coffee that was fast cooling in the morning air. “I thought this area was known for copper.”

Holt dipped his head. “True. But there was a brief boom of silver in the late nineteenth century. Silvertown was pretty much a ghost town after the silver dried up.”

“Makes sense.” Shea took a sip of her lukewarm coffee. “Silvertown doesn’t seem much more than a highway between a strip of small businesses.”

“The town?” Holt’s chuckle was deep. “If you can call Silvertown a town . We’ve got one little dive bar, a small grocery store, and a gas pump.”

Shea nodded. “Mining towns go from boom to bust rather quickly in the course of history.”

“That they do.” Holt’s expression shadowed for a moment, and Shea wondered why something from so long ago would bother him.

“So you own the old mining property?” she ventured.

Holt motioned for her to join him on the lawn. Shea glanced at her feet and decided the moccasin slippers with rubber soles would suffice for now. The yard was less squishy than she’d imagined after the amount of rain from the night before. As she joined Holt at the end of the short walkway, she made a mental note to research the geology of the area. A lighthouse would be built on firm ground.

He led her across the lawn, past a grove of evergreens. His voice was a soothing rumble, and it matched the cadence of the waves as they approached the embankment.

“As you know,” Holt explained, “the lake stretches north to Canada.” He extended his arm toward the horizon, where blue water met blue sky.

Shea noted with a little surprise that the so-called cliff the lighthouse stood on was actually not that high but more of an outcropping. A well-worn trail led down to the shore, which was littered with driftwood, weeds, and debris that had washed up during the storm.

“This whole region is the Porcupine Mountains, but go about twelve miles that way”—Holt pointed eastward—“and you’ll enter the state park.” He did an about-face, and Shea followed suit, both now taking in the lighthouse with its arched windows set into the brickwork. “That way leads to the forest where the mining took place.” Holt tipped his head in the opposite direction. “To the west is Silvertown, a few rentals and the like in the form of cabins or small houses. You can still find remnants of the mining era hidden in the woods and scattered among private properties. Back in its heyday, there were plans to make Silvertown into a port for the shipping of ore.” Holt shifted his attention back to Annabel’s Lighthouse. “That’s what made her so important in the late nineteenth century. Lots of hopes and dreams died here. This place—as beautiful as it is—is also a wasteland.”

Holt’s tourism spiel ended, and Shea took an absent sip of her now cold coffee. She assessed the area, filing it all away in her mind along with Holt’s information. Some of it she already knew, but she’d not been aware of the intent to make Silvertown a port. That would’ve potentially changed the area’s future tremendously.

“Do you know why the port never materialized? I mean, was it because the silver wasn’t sustainable?”

Holt rolled his lips together in thought before giving a nonchalant shrug. “What’s been told and what actually happened is still up for debate.”

Her curiosity was piqued by Holt’s vague answer. “What’s been told?”

Holt shot her a sideways glance. “Like you just pointed out, there wasn’t enough silver. The place went bust.”

“But there was copper. Why didn’t they just adapt? This entire region is known for that, so it obviously would have been an option, right?”

“Sure, but Ontonagon is just west of here. That village was already established in the copper industry, and it has its own harbor.”

“Suppose the silver mining had prospered, why wouldn’t they have used Ontonagon to ship out the silver too?” Shea was growing confused. “Based on your argument that Ontonagon was an established port, why would they need a separate one here in Silvertown just for silver?”

Holt laughed. “Well, there’s the rub. Like I said, there’s what’s been told and what actually happened. Intrigue, betrayal, greed, murder—Silvertown has it all.” He gave a sweep of his hand up the length of the lighthouse. “And Annabel’s Lighthouse has seen it all, long before the silver boom of the 1870s. The one thing you’ll learn really fast, Shea Radclyffe, is that this land is harsh, and it holds its secrets with ferocity.” He winked, then grew more somber. “Don’t get too close. It may bite you.”