Masters Of Midnight: Erotic Tales Of The Vampire

by Michael Thomas Ford, Sean Wolfe, Jeff Mann, William J. Mann

Genres: Anthologies; LGBT Gay

Synopsis

They are the ultimate forbidden pleasure--ruthless in their eroticism, tender in their devotions, and utterly irresistible in their dangerous temptations. Spend the night with four mysterious men whose kiss is more than deadly, it's forever. . . Masters Of Midnight His Hunger, by William J. Mann It's a work obligation that leads Jeremy Horne to the reclusive Maine estate of eccentric Bartholomew Coates. Now, Jeremy finds himself the man's prisoner, the victim of erotic dreams where handsome men ravage his body and Bartholomew grows younger and more irresistible with each drop of Jeremy's blood. . . Sting, by Michael Thomas Ford After his lover's sudden death, librarian Ben Hodges seeks refuge in a sleepy Ozarks town. But his summer of healing turns to intrigue when he encounters soft-spoken beekeeper Titus Durham, a man whose hidden obsession will change Ben's life forever. . . Bradon's Bite, by Sean Wolfe With his wavy black hair and turquoise eyes, Bradon Lugo can have any man he wants--but what he wants in return is more than any lover would dream of giving. And what blond, innocent Kirk Courey offers is too tempting for Bradon to resist. . .a chance at the love of a thousand lifetimes. . . Devoured, by Jeff Mann By night, Derek Maclaine loses himself in New York's leather bar underground, trying to forget the brutal murder of his lover in Scotland, centuries ago. But now, danger threatens his new lover, and this time, Derek will have his revenge. . . Answer the call of the night in these four erotic tales of the vampire, where each invitation to pleasure leaves you hungry for more. . .

Release date: June 1, 2003

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

At times I feel as if I’m visiting some foreign country, like Slovakia or Romania—one of those Eastern European countries where the women huddle under shawls while making the Sign of the Cross and the men bluster about things that go bump in the night. I mean, one guy actually went pale—all the blood drained right out of his face, Minter!—when I asked him for directions to Cravenwood.

It’s really so bizarre. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m only in Maine, that Boston is just a couple hours away, that just south of here lies Ogunquit—the place where we spent our most wonderful honeymoon. I force myself to remember that these are American citizens and this the 21st century—even if they talk as if their mouths are filled with cloves of garlic and they act as if I’m heading to Castle Dracula itself.

Oh, man, I’m beat. It’s been a long day. Right now I’m curled up on my twin bed in Motel 6 ready to crash. There’s not much else to do in this little seaside burg. Beautiful scenery, but not a bar or a club—gay or otherwise—anywhere nearby. The TV doesn’t even get HBO! But as I promised you, sweets, I will write you every step of the way, especially since my cell phone zonked out just north of Kittery. What is it about small towns and cellular towers?

And the place I’m heading for doesn’t even have electricity!

Maybe you’re right. Maybe all this will turn out fine. It just might make a great article, after all. Do you think for the Globe’s Sunday magazine? “Local Writer Seeks the Truth of his Father’s Disappearance.” Plus, it’s got all of the elements that editors orgasm over. Boy grows up abandoned by father, fucked up by his unsolved disappearing act. Boy goes off in search of Dad in some forlorn outpost, trying to fill that empty hole in his soul left by his wayward father. I’ll pile on the pathos—editors love that.

I can just hear you telling me to be serious. So I admit that I haven’t been all that focused on my career. That’s one of the things I love about you, Minter: how ambitious you are. How professional. I wish I could be more like you. I just haven’t found the passion for anything the way you have. You love being a photographer. You’re so committed to it. I wish I had your discipline.

Maybe writing this piece will do it for me. It’s really the only thing that’s gotten me interested since that idea I had to market those combination cell phone/car vacuums. But this is even better. It’s the personal angle to it, I guess. I admit that my father’s disappearance had an impact on me. It wasn’t so bad that he left my mother when I was only five for some bimbo. What was worse was that he then had to go and move off to some godforsaken fishing village on the coast of Maine and then get caught up into whatever cult it was that swallowed him up. Of course, that gives the story one more juicy angle. Editors love stories about cults. I only wish I knew what this one—

Sorry. I’m back. I thought I heard someone at the door. But no one was there. Except—okay, so maybe all the weird looks from the locals have made me just the teensiest bit jumpy. But I saw something weird out there. A handprint on the outside of my door, Minter! In mud.

At least, I think it’s mud.

Okay, enough for tonight. I’m going to sleep now. I’ll keep writing in this journal as I go along. It will help me put the story together, plus you can read it to help give me advice. And I like writing it to you, Minter. This is the first time we’ve been apart for so long, and—well, maybe I sound like a goofy romantic fool, but I’m going to crunch up my pillow next to me and imagine it’s you. Good night, babe.

“Uh, hello, my name is Jeremy Horne and I’m looking for the Cravenwood mansion.”

He was a fisherman. All leathery face and black grimy hands, big bushy eyebrows and white hair growing in tufts out of his ears. He gave me the once-over and said, “Get on with ya.”

“Excuse me?”

“I suppose yuah one of them repawters from Bahston.”

I had to admit I was.

“Thought ya wuh done with us yeahs ago. It’s quiet up heah now. It’s all ovah, all that nonsense. Why are you heah to staht things up agin?”

Now, Minter, I had no idea what he was talking about. Part of the problem, I’ll admit, was that Maine accent of his, which I doubt I’m doing justice in my attempts at transliteration. But what “all that nonsense” was certainly raised my suspicions—I mean, you just don’t say things like that to a reporter and expect him to go away—so I held my ground. “All that nonsense” was precisely why I was there, and if I was going to prove my worth as a journalist then I had better push harder.

“Well,” I tried explaining, “what I’m here for is to find out what happened to my father. He lived here for a while in the late 1960s. He ran an antique shop. Maybe you knew him. Phillip—”

“I don’t remembuh no one from back then,” the fisherman said. “Cravensport has been destroyed. Wiped out. All on account of all that craziness the Craven family got inta. They useta run the fishing fleets heah but then they let ’em all go to hell. Which is where I ’spect all of them Cravens have gone too!”

“Are they all dead? Everyone in the family?”

“All but the crazy Mr. Bartholomew. Lives over theah in that fallin’ down rat trap he calls home, with not even electricity or indoor plumbin’. And he’s not talkin’ to no one.”

Now, you know, Minter, that I was prepared for this. Remember that call I made to the retired sheriff of Cravensport? He had told me all about this Mr. Bartholomew Craven—how he lived in an 18thcentury manor that had never been hooked up to any modern conveniences. So I couldn’t call Mr. Craven to let him know I was coming, because there wasn’t a phone. I couldn’t fax him or e-mail him either. Best I could try, the sheriff said, was writing him, in care of Cravenwood.

I have no idea whether or not Bartholomew Craven ever received my letter. I wonder if it’s come back to me since I’ve been away. I expect you’d leave a message for me on my voice mail if it did. I’ll check at a pay phone in the village later.

Anyway, old Jonah Salt wasn’t going to be of any more help so I thanked him and headed back to my car. I didn’t need directions to the place, I discovered: as soon as I rounded the bend in the road, what’s looming down at me from the top of a craggy hill but Cravenwood. It had to be the place. I doubted this little village had more than one gargantuan old house, boarded up and gloomy, with bats hanging from its eaves. I’m not kidding, Minter. Bats. Like the frigging Addams Family or something.

So I drove up the long winding driveway that led to the old place. Of course, at the top, there was a rusted old iron gate, padlocked and with a sign: NO TRESPASSING. So I got out of my car and went up to the gate, taking hold and peering through the bars. And I swear—this is no lie, babe—just then it started to thunder. Up until then it had been a clear day, but suddenly the sky went black and it started to pour. Huge lightning and monstrous thunder. It will make for a great lead to my story, don’t you think?

“Why’s that?” I asked her. “The Maine coastline up here is so beautiful.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But there’s not much here to do. So many people have moved away. I keep trying to get the town to promote tourism as a replacement for the depressed fishing industry. But, well . . . they’re not very interested.”

“Is it because of—well, what happened with the Craven family?”

She looked at me. She’s an interesting lady, Mrs. Haskell. You’d like her, Minter. She’s the kind of woman you’d like to photograph. I can see you doing a whole show just of her. She must be fiftysomething, but she’s still really beautiful. Auburn hair touched with gray. And in her eyes there’s a certain gentleness, but strength too, and a lot of wisdom. She’s seen a lot with those eyes, I could tell.

Anyway, she sat down with me after I told her about my father. She knew him, Minter! Not well, but she remembered him. How he came to town and opened that antique shop with his wife. “She was very beautiful,” Mrs. Haskell said of my father’s wife. “She turned many heads in town.”

I thought of how much my mother had hated Dad’s wife. Megan—that was the wife’s name—had disappeared, too. Mom always blamed Megan for stealing my dad, but what I resented most about her was the fact that it was probably her idea to head up here to Maine, and if they hadn’t done that, my father would probably still be around today.

“It was a bad time for all of us in this town,” Mrs. Haskell told me. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“I just want to know what happened to him,” I told her. “I’ve wanted to know all my life.”

She smiled at me with sympathy. “I can understand your feelings. But some things—some things are better left as mysteries. Do you ever think that the pain of discovery might be even worse than the pain of the unknown?”

“No,” I told her definitively. “I’d rather know. Not knowing is hell.”

“In most cases, I’d agree with you.”

“What happened in this town thirty years ago?” I asked her forcefully, leaning across the table. I suddenly began telling her everything my early investigations had uncovered. You know all about it, Minter. I’ve shared all the grisly details with you. A series of unsolved murders—one in this very inn. Men with their bodies mangled, women with their throats slit. And my father, in the midst of what the sheriff would only call “some kind of cult,” disappearing forever one dark and foggy night.

Mrs. Haskell’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I know about all that,” she said. “I lived through it.”

“What was the cult?”

“It wasn’t a cult.”

“Then what was it?”

“Go back to Boston,” she said.

It was the same admonition all of the locals had been telling me ever since I’d arrived. But Mrs. Haskell said it kindly, and she reached over to take my hand in hers.

I told her I was going nowhere, not until I finally had some answers. “I want to talk to Mr. Bartholomew Craven,” I said. “That’s why I came up here. Everything points to that family and to that house.”

She didn’t deny my charges. She offered only an observation. “People are terrified of him.”

“With reason?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He is sad and lonely. That’s all. An old man who has lived beyond his time. Everyone he loved is gone.”

“But he was apparently involved in this cult, or whatever it was that sucked my father in and brought about his disappearance.”

She said nothing. How much more she knew, I couldn’t tell. All she repeated was, “He’s a sad and lonely old man.”

“What was it?” I asked. “What happened here? What were so many of the townspeople involved in? If not a cult, what? The deaths that happened here in town—were they part of some kind of ritualistic sacrifice?”

“It was all so long ago. Why bring it all up? It won’t bring your father back.”

“The police have given up trying to solve these murders and disappearances from thirty years ago. My father. His wife. And so many others.” I flipped open my notebook and began reading the names I’d collected. “Paul Patrick, his body ripped apart. Mr. Bain, the former innkeeper of this very establishment, found mutilated in an upper room. Donna Landers, her throat torn open and left to die in the woods. A policeman, Kenneth Davenport, with his head crushed and every bone in his body broken. And Margaret Everly—she disappeared for weeks, only to be discovered with her memory gone and half the blood drained out of her body.”

Well, you should have seen Mrs. Haskell react to that, Minter. Her hand flew up to her neck and she gripped it tightly, as if from some old, half-forgotten habit. It looked as if she were covering something there. Her face grew ashen and she said she had things to do, that she couldn’t talk to me anymore, that I really should take her advice and drop the whole matter. Then she hurried away.

Leaving the inn as the rain began to let up, I asked one of the waitresses Mrs. Haskell’s first name. You guessed it, Minter. Margaret.

She was part of it, too. I bet everyone in town over a certain age was part of it. Whether they want to remember it or not. That’s why they don’t want me nosing around. They don’t want me to discover their culpability.

It’s only made me more determined to get to the truth. So I drove up to Cravenwood again, and tried to find some way past the gate. It was impossible. The rain threatened to kick up again, so I decided to put it off until tomorrow. I’m back in my room now and feel pretty sleepy. So I’ll just bid you a fond good night, sweets. I’ll call you tomorrow. I hope you and Ralph are cuddling up a storm. Just tell him to keep his snout off my pillow. And no drooling! I miss you both!

So this is what happened. I woke up because I thought I heard a noise. It sounded like a dog. In my half-sleep I thought it was Ralph and I tried telling him to calm down. But this growling sound only got louder, and for a half-instant I thought I was home and Ralph had detected an intruder. I sat up, put the light on, and realized I was at the inn. The growling stopped, so I got up, took a pee, and put on the television just to remind myself I was still in the 21st century. I watched ten minutes of an I Love Lucy rerun—the one where they’re in the shack by the railroad tracks and the vibrations keep moving Lucy and Ricky’s bed. It made me laugh so I felt better and turned the light off again.

Now here’s what’s so weird, Minter. I don’t think I fell back asleep. Of course I must have, for what happened next couldn’t have been real. I heard the growling again. I sat up in the dark, and at the foot of my bed were these two red eyes. I shouted out, fumbling for the lamp, which, of course, I knocked over onto the floor. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window and pulled open the curtains. There, in the moonlight that suddenly filled the room, I saw a wolf—not a dog, Minter, but a wolf—a huge creature, with big red eyes. I screamed. The thing leapt up onto my bed, and on the floor I saw a dead man in a pool of blood. I know it was blood—it was so real, Minter. The moonlight was reflecting off it.

But then there came banging at my door. Someone was shouting to me, asking if I was okay, but I couldn’t answer. I just kept my eyes glued on the creature that was salivating on my bed. Finally the door opened—a security guard with a passkey—and the wall switch was thrown on, bringing light to the room. There was no wolf on my bed, no dead man on the floor, no blood.

I felt quite embarrassed, as you can imagine, Minter. But now, sitting here writing this, I find I can’t get back in that bed. I can’t switch off the lights. I feel certain this is the very same room Mr. Bain was killed in all those years ago. I keep telling myself it was a dream, a stupid hallucination brought about by all these crazy superstitious villagers. But I don’t know, Minter. I just can’t wait for the sun to come up.

It was so good to hear your voice this morning. Did I wake you up? You said no, but I wonder. I hope your shoot goes okay today. Drag queens can be impossible. I wonder how many retakes they’ll demand? And of course, they’ll want you to fix up their boobs with PhotoShop. You sounded kind of frazzled when I spoke to you so I didn’t go into too many details about my dream or about all the weirdness up here. You’ll learn all about it when you read this journal.

More and more I’m convinced you’re right, though. This will make a great personal interest piece. If not for the Globe then for some place else. I can just see the magazine art directors loving it—I mean, here I am on a rocky coastline with some gothic mansion reputed to be haunted looming above me. Hey—you ought to do the photography for it! Maybe I’ll suggest it when I talk to you tonight and you can join me this weekend. I’d love to have you up here with me. Everything’s better when we’re together. You could bring Ralph, too. The inn accepts pets.

This could be the direction I’ve been looking for, Minter. I admit I’ve been kind of a wanderer all my life. I never could decide on what kind of a career I wanted. I’ve tried lots of different things—some things that I’ve never even told you about. Like I tried working as a publicist for a ballet company a few years ago. I’d never even been to the ballet. Then I got my real estate license. I showed six thousand houses but sold none. I hated it. So I became a traffic reporter at a radio station.

But it always came back to writing. I know I never went to journalism school the way you went to photography school, Minter, but I think this is what I want to do. Write stories. In college my best grades were always in English, and I was editor of my high school newspaper. Working at the radio station I used to watch the news reporters type up the stories they’d read on the air. It was so inspiring to me. That’s what I want to do: tell really interesting stories.

So I’m not going to leave here until I’ve gotten to the truth of this old town’s mystery. As much to give my life some direction as to learn about my father. Maybe the two things are tied up together. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been kind of aimless. You’ve changed me, sweets. You’ve given me a direction and I’m going to show you what I can do.

I’ve determined that the only way past that NO TRESPASSING gate is to come up from the cliff side. Cravenwood stands on a huge expanse right at the top of the cliff, overlooking the ocean. I can approach from behind, and maybe find the old man lurking around somewhere. He apparently doesn’t live at the main house, which is all boarded up anyway. That much I learned from the lady at the post office this morning. He lives in a smaller house on the estate, deep in the woods. The post office lady told me he picked up his mail irregularly—no mailman could make the trek all the way up that hill, she said—but that his box was currently empty. So I’m assuming he got my letter. What good that will do, I’m not sure. But at least he’s hopefully expecting me.

So wish me luck, babe. I’m going to find a path among the rocks and scale the side of the cliff. Good thing we took that mountain climbing class last fall in Colorado. This isn’t nearly as steep or as tall, but it’s still a little daunting. You’d be so proud of how butch I’m being.

Okay, here I go. Keep your cool with the drag queens, Minter. I love you!

So I made it up the cliff without too many problems. If I looked down and saw the drop below me, my knees went a little weak, but I managed okay. Only once did I slip, but there were a lot of tree limbs and brush growing out the sides of the cliff that I was able to easily steady myself. I’d say it took about twenty minutes to scale the side. Not bad, huh?

It was probably about ten-fifteen, ten-thirty. I headed toward Cravenwood, which from this side looked less creepy and more simply run down, battered by decades of sea wind and salt air. Most of the windows were boarded over, except for the ones highest in the tower. It looks like a Newport mansion, only completely run down. It’s too bad, because it’s a fabulous house.

I have to admit my first thought was about my father. I wondered if he’d ever been in that house, if it was here that whatever happened to him happened. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, in fact. I felt his presence—as if he were nearby—oh, I don’t know. It was odd. Hard to describe.

I know I haven’t talked to you about my father much, Minter, except to say that I’ve long been obsessed in finding out what happened to him. Truth is, I hardly remember him. I remember a few little things— nice things, like going to the zoo and riding in the way-back part of his bumpy old station wagon. And sharing our birthmarks—you know that little purple splotch on my chest that looks kind of like a dragonfly? Well, my dad had one, too, in just about the same place as I do, and I remember feeling pretty special because it was something we shared.

But Dad apparently had other special people in his life. He began having an affair with Megan when I was just four or five. I guess that’s where he’d go when he didn’t come home at night. It was a rotten thing to do to a little kid, abandoning me like he did—but my mother (as you know all too well) is not an easy woman to live with. I remember once how she threw a frying pan at him. While she was frying eggs in it! Maybe that’s when she found out about the affair. I don’t know.

My dad was kind of a wanderer like me. It was in his blood, I suppose, the same way it’s always been for me. He jumped from job to job, too. Starting an antique shop in Maine was just the sort of thing he’d do. And he’d probably have left it, too, eventually—if whatever happened to him hadn’t happened.

Mr. Craven said that my father was a good man. That meant a lot for me to hear. I mean—

Okay, so I’m getting ahead of myself. Yes, I met Mr. Bartholomew Craven. And really, Minter, he’s really such a nice old guy. Mrs. Haskell was right. He’s just lonely. He was thrilled when he realized I’d actually come to see him—and he’s asked me to stay the night! I think it’ll be kind of fun, what with there being no modern conveniences. I have to pee in a bucket in an outhouse, Minter! You’d be freaking out not having running water! I told Mr. Craven about you—I think he might be gay—at least he didn’t flinch when I described you as my lover. I told him about the time we went camping and you insisted on bringing a battery-powered hair dryer with you. He got a good laugh out of that one.

Not that it started out so pleasantly, though. Let me back up. There I was, wandering around the boarded-up mansion, when I got the distinct sensation that someone was watching me. You know how that is. You feel eyes on the back of your head and you keep turning around quickly, looking behind you. A wind had kicked up, and there on top of the cliffs, with the salty air sharp in my nostrils, I sensed I was not alone.

I heard a twig snap behind me. I glanced off toward the woods and saw a figure there, a tall, hulking figure of a man. It disappeared into the trees so quickly that I immediately convinced myself it had been an illusion, a play of the morning sun against the leaves. I tried to forget it, but thoughts of my dream returned, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me.

I looked up. I could make out nothing in the windows of the tower. I snuck around to the courtyard and peered through slats in the boards that covered the windows into a large, empty parlor. There was no sign of life, no evidence of anyone who might live in such a foreboding place.

That’s when the hands gripped me by the shoulders from behind.

“Hey!” I shouted, struggling to turn around. But the grip was unbelievable, holding me firmly in place. I smelled something rancid. Whoever held me had the foulest breath I’d ever encountered. It grunted as I continued to try to twist out of its hold. Finally I slipped free, turning to face it.

It was a man, but barely so—surely the creature that had been lurking in the woods. He was tall, with a wide shoulder span, but he was slumped over, as if his back had been broken and never correctly healed. His face was mangled, with deep purple scars. There was only a left eye, his right socket grotesquely empty. His nose was crushed into pulpy folds of flesh, and his mouth was twisted and off-center. His hair was black and uncombed, and his clothes were equally as dark, torn and soiled. Looking up at him, I couldn’t speak.

“Leave me alone,” I finally said. “I didn’t mean to trespass. I’m just looking for Mr. Craven. He’s expecting me.”

The man-thing growled. He studied me with his beady one eye, tilting his misshapen head as he did so. He grunted again, then pointed in the direction of the woods.

“Look, like I said, if I’m trespassing, I’m sorry. I just didn’t know how to get up here to see Mr. Craven. He has no telephone—”

The beast made another sound in his throat, more insistent this time, pointing again toward the woods.

He was a deaf-mute, I suddenly realized. He was reading my lips and trying to tell me something.

“Is he there? In the woods?”

The deaf-mute made a rough sound of affirmation.

I thought this very strange, you can be sure of that. No way was I wandering into the woods with some hulk who’d nearly split my collarbone in half. But then he withdrew an envelope from his shirt pocket. It was brittle and flaking. On its face was written my name, Jeremy Horne, in a spidery handwriting of an earlier time. I opened it and unfolded the old yellowed parchment inside.

I looked up into the beastly face hovering over me. “I—I could come back later,” I suggested, “if he’s busy—”

Hare made a ferocious sound, gripping my upper arm. He pointed again, but not toward the woods this time. Rather, he was directing my attention to an automobile parked on the side of the house. It was an old black model, some kind of ancient Ford, vintage 1935. I surmised quickly that what Hare was trying to tell me was that wherever Mr. Craven lived, I’d need to get there by car, and that I could make the trip either now or never. I swallowed, telling myself that all this simply added great color to my eventual story. Mr. Craven had said not to fear Hare.

But should I be fearing Mr. Craven?

I followed Hare to the car. He opened the back door for me and I slid inside. The interior was perfectly restored, with gleaming new leather. Odd that I should think of my father again in such a moment, but maybe not. My father had loved cars, and one of my few memories is of him restoring an old Mustang. He would’ve loved this car.

Hare walked back around and slipped in behind the wheel. As he started the ignition, I glanced at my watch. It was only a little after eleven o’clock; I was facing the prospect of twiddling my thumbs for practically the entire day as I waited for Mr. Craven to finish up with his writing project. Oh, well, maybe I could snoop around the place, pick up some clues as to what happened here thirty years ago, what sort of cult they were all a part of. That was, if Hare wasn’t constantly breathing his rancid breath down my neck.

Turns out, he didn’t hang around long at all. We drove through the woods for about half a mile, finally stopping at a much older house than the boarded-up mansion. This one looked Georgian, with broken columns lining a cracked portico. The house was in terrible disrepair, with the surrounding trees having grown nearly through it. Ivy obscured most of the windows and the branch of a large oak had imbedded itself into the roof. Hare unlocked the front door with a rusty old-fashioned key and gestured for me to enter. I did so, looking around at the dark, cobwebbed interior. Then Hare closed the door behind me and disappeared.

“Hare?” I called—ridiculously, of course, since he was deaf. I tried the knob of the door. It was locked. He had locked me inside the house!

I panicked, Minter. Can you blame me? I began to beat on the door with my fists, convinced I’d been tricked, that I was about to suffer the same fate as my father, whatever that had been. I turned and ran to an inner door, finding it was locked as well. I ran to the top of a flight of stairs, only to find my way barred there by another secured door. A door with a grated window leading into the basement was likewise bolted. I was confined to the small parlor, and in the dusty darkness I could hear the rustling of bat wings.

“The window,” I said to myself. A large picture window, crosshatched with panes of old lead-plated glass, looked out into the woods. Ivy crept up much of it, but I could still see freedom beyond. I would smash the glass, I would break free—.

But I couldn’t, Minter! Try as hard as I might, I couldn’t even scratch the glass. Might it have been that the panes of wood that held the glass in place were too resilient? Or might there be something—something unexplainable—that made the glass unbreakable?

I flopped down into a frayed armchair, out of breath. I’m pretty strong, Minter. You know that. I work out at the gym four times a week. But I was useless against that old glass and wood. Useless!

I looked back down at Mr. Craven’s letter. I had kept it in the pocket of my jacket. He asked me to wait for him until sunset. I could do nothing but trust him, to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But he’d sure as hell have some explaining to do when I saw him! I mean, you don’t just lock your guests in! What if there was a fire? What if I got sick and needed medical attention? What if I had to take a pee?

Which, I suddenly realized, I did. And not a bathroom anywhere.

I tried to distract myself. Maybe there was something in this room I could discover about my father’s disappearance. Whatever nastiness he’d gotten involved with concerned the Cravens. That much the old sheriff had been sure of. “We could never pin anything on them,” he’d told me. “But all the mysterious things that happened in town, all the deaths, had some link back to that family.”

I stood up from the filthy old chair and walked over to the bookcase built into th