Devon, England

March 1918

Gwendolyn Maham was aware she was dreaming. Nevertheless, the dark landscape of the moor was indelibly real and geographically accurate. From a grassy hill a few miles east of her home, she surveyed the breadth and depth of the rolling plain, her eyes lingering on a tor: a pile of granite stacked by elemental powers long before humans arrived in Devonshire. She did not need to touch the rocks to know their cold indifference. Downslope, the bog had a syrupy undertow. The night wind was a shiver; blowing fierce and raw from the North Atlantic, it passed effortlessly through her fluttering nightgown. It swept her frail body upward as carelessly as it might a dry leaf.

Concentrating, Gwen brought herself to a halt in the emptiness between the ground and clouds. She did not like the turn of events. This was a boundary place—neither earth nor firmament. It was a place with more than one nature and yet none of its own, like the line of the horizon or the middle of a crossroads—a place where the fabric of reality was unstable.

The air was thick with scents of rain and ozone. Distant thunder rumbled like an artillery exchange between the Allied and German Armies fighting for the blistered fields of France. Gwen imagined that a dark legion was crashing through a barrier. Then she was seized by an overpowering fear; the storm was coming from the east, against the wind, its front roiling like millions of shadows clambering over one another.

“Lord!”

The cry was involuntary. She had not called out to God since the dark night she entangled herself in attempted magic. She could see the jumbled peak of High Tor poking above the horizon. That was where she had estranged herself from Him.

No—their estrangement had begun before that. It had begun when He took Freddie from her. High Tor was a consequence, not the cause. It was His fault, not hers.

She felt His presence and wanted to hide.

I’m sending someone to you. Do as he says.

“But—”

But there was no time to ponder. She heard a cantering horse.

She was on the ground now, concealed in a ditch. A man wearing a British officer’s greatcoat and cap rode at her from the direction of the storm. When he looked to the sky, she followed his gaze.

Her heart stopped. A winged shadow flew westward toward the manor house in the distance. She could see the creature in spite of the near darkness because it was so very black against the gray-streaked clouds. Its feathers weren’t just charcoal-hued; they were voids into which light disappeared. It had the form of a cormorant—a vicious-looking cormorant with a preternaturally long body and wingspan. Only the bird’s eyes, glinting maroon fire, were clearly visible.

The cormorant quickly outdistanced the rider, who galloped past Gwen. She caught a glimpse of the man’s face and recognized her great-uncle Geoffrey.

She willed herself to the manor and found it all wrong. The house she knew was there, but its floors were fragmented and inserted piecemeal into medieval fortress walls and turrets. That was not unusual—her prophetic dreams often had fantastical as well as real elements. Or rather, they used to; she had not had such a dream since the episode on High Tor. She blinked until the fortress walls dissolved and the house was assembled correctly.

The real dwelling was imposing even without phantasmagorical battlements. The southern half of the sprawling great house, dating from the 1880s, was a splendid example of Neo-Renaissance architecture. And the three-hundred-year-old North Wing, though shuttered for half a century and suffering from neglect, was a large and ornate Elizabethan edifice. A visitor once said Maham House had “harmonious dissimilarity in an eclectic sort of way.”

Gwen stood on the roof of the Beacon Tower, searching the sky for the cormorant. Blue-gray light flickered within the sullen clouds. On impulse, she turned to her right and looked down through a third-story window.

Inside the bedroom slept a fifteen-year-old girl with pale yellow hair. Her eyes were tightly shut, her mouth a grimace. Gwen had never thought herself pretty. Now, after years of illness, her prominent cheekbones emphasized her gaunt appearance.

She sensed the cormorant’s approach. It swooped in a circle and glided over the North Wing before landing on a ledge of the East Tower. For a fraction of a second, it was something other than a bird—something with arms and teeth.

Gwen tried to scream Wake up! at herself in the bedroom, but her voice would not work. When she turned back to the cormorant, it was gazing directly into her dream eyes. It knew she could see it.