I

Kelsey was dreaming.

It was an old dream, one of shadow and night. In the dream, she ran through layers of darkness. She could see neither the ground beneath her feet, nor the way before her. She heard only the harsh gasp of her own breath.

Her pursuer was silent. Yet even if she had not felt the heat of his breath on her heels, she would have known he was there. By the clenching of her gut, she would have known; by the raised hairs on the back of her neck and the dryness of her mouth, by the cold, silent scream knotted in her throat.

Faster. Faster.

For a moment, speed burst through the aching muscles of her legs, and she flew through the dark, wind lashing her face. Her eyes teared up from the wind, from relief. She was going to get away this time. And then—

Her foot struck uneven ground. Her ankle twisted, and white hot pain wrenched up through her leg, muscle ripping. She fell, knees hitting solid, unseen earth. Jagged stones sliced into the palms of her hands, outstretched to brace for the fall, and all the air rushed from her lungs.

Then he was there, the Pursuer, the Unknown. His breath gusted hotly across the nape of her neck. The scream in her throat loosed and cut through the air.

Except it wasn't a scream.

Kelsey jerked awake. Her heart pounded from the nightmare—when she saw the headlights glaring through the dark on the road ahead of her—right ahead of her—it bolted up into her throat. The oncoming vehicle's horn blared again.

"Christ!" She'd fallen asleep, fallen asleep driving—! Through the Civic's windshield, she saw the double yellow line dividing the road and knew she was driving right over the top of it. The other vehicle barreled toward her. Kelsey knew she had to move, but her foot felt heavy, as if it were weighted by lead blocks to the gas pedal, and she couldn't think—

Her teeth clicked together, and she jerked the wheel hard to the right, slamming her foot on the brake. The Civic swerved onto the shoulder of the narrow road, flying gravel pelting the metal undercarriage. The other vehicle, a white pickup truck, roared past, horn honking once more angrily.

The car skidded to a stop. Kelsey sat in the dark, surrounded by the white and orange glow of gas and speed gauges in the dashboard, the orange digital numbers of the clock glaring 9:43. Asleep at the wheel—Christ. She could have gotten herself killed, could have killed whoever was in that truck. Kids. A cold shiver ran down her back. There could have been kids.

With a strangled sigh, she raked her fingers through her short hair, pushing the dark strands off her suddenly chilled forehead. She could only have been out for a few seconds, but it had felt like much longer. And it wasn't even late, not late like she was used to.

She stared into the dark outside the car. She'd been hitting it too hard lately. Concerts until midnight or later, after-parties that stretched until dawn. A bump of coke (or two or three or four) to keep her awake until she had what she'd come for: the interview, the big story. But so what? It was the life of a struggling rock journalist, and God knew she should be used to it by now. But maybe being used to it was the problem. She wasn't a kid anymore, fresh out of college and star struck by the big name rock gods. She was twenty-nine, tired of living these hours, tired of paying rent on an apartment she barely saw. Sometimes she thought it would be nice to have a real home and someone to come home to—

"Oh, for—" Kelsey laughed aloud, ignoring the bitterness that echoed back in her ears. She was lost in the middle of nowhere. This was not to time to reflect on the fullness (emptiness) of her life.

She reached over to the glove compartment and pulled out the New Jersey/Pennsylvania road map she'd bought at a gas station in Manhattan before leaving. As she unfolded it, she glanced out the window, looking for any road signs, any distinguishing landmarks. In the beam of her headlights, all she saw was the two-lane blacktop winding between pine trees and roadside scrub.

She clicked on the overhead light and studied the map. She'd been on the same road since leaving the highway at the small town of Marshall's Creek. On the map, Chattaunee Ridge Road was a slender red ribbon snaking through the Pocono Mountains. The turn-off, which she'd marked earlier with a yellow highlighter, was an even smaller blue line. She wondered if she'd missed it. The red line of Chattaunee went on and on through the mountains; she could be driving for hours before she hit another main road.

She tossed the map onto the passenger seat, where it landed jumbled, and turned off the overhead light. She'd give it ten more minutes. If she hadn't come to the turn-off by then, she'd backtrack. She was already two hours late for the interview, thanks to construction and congested traffic at the Delaware Water Gap. If Gideon Summers was going to be angry with her, ten minutes more or less wouldn't improve his mood.

As she eased the car back onto the road, she turned the radio on, hoping the noise would keep her alert. At first she heard only the crackle of bad reception, her New York stations lost. After a few minutes of fiddling with the radio dial though, Johnny Cash's voice flooded the car with honey-whiskey smoothness.

"I fell in to a burning ring of fire. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher."

Almost immediately, as if it had been waiting there for her all along, Kelsey saw a gap in the trees, dark like the entrance to a cavern. No street sign marked the road, but a wooden plaque read: Chattaunee Park Road No. 7. She put her turn signal on, feeling foolish with the road stretching empty and dark in both directions, and turned. Less than a quarter of a mile later, she spotted the final turn, and eased the car onto a narrow trail that two cars could never have hoped to negotiate at the same time.

"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered, easing off the gas as gravel crunched under her tires. Spidery bushes with no leaves on their branches clawed at the sides of the car—at least the magazine was picking up the rental bill—and skeletal trees arched over the path, almost entirely blocking out the clouded night sky. Five gold records, but Gideon Summers might as well live in the Ozarks.

Kelsey kept the Civic at a creep, wary of the sharp twists. As she eased through one particularly tight turn, she glanced through the thinning trees to her left and caught a glimpse of a huge, flat lake. It looked slate gray in the night, the surface frozen over. Tiny, dark islands clustered far out in its center.

"And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire... the ring of fire."

She saw the driveway ahead, another darkened gap in the trees, gravel overgrown with dead winter grass. It was marked by a short post, the numbers 4981 burned into the wood.

Kelsey turned up the drive, turning off the radio and pressing a little harder on the gas to make it up the steep incline. After what was maybe a tenth of a mile, the trees opened up into a small clearing. In the center of the clearing stood a cabin with a peaked alpine roof and huge windows that faced the driveway and the lake. Smoke curled lazily up from a chimney she couldn’t see. It was a simple place, certainly quaint and nothing like Kelsey would have expected for a musician like Gideon Summers, but at once she felt a deep sense of nostalgia and longing. This was a place you could call home, and always feel a warm glow to call it that.

She parked the Civic beside a big green SUV. She climbed out, grabbing her canvas messenger bag and slamming the door, hesitating, then not bothering to lock up. Immediately, the December night air slipped around her like a chilled second skin, wind stinging her cheeks. She tugged her suede jacket closed and stood with her arms wrapped around her chest, facing the woods. The shadows were too deep for her to see past the line of hemlocks, but the forest was full of sounds. Oak boughs creaked, and fallen leaves stirred, crunching and crackling with the movements of tiny, unseen creatures. The air smelled heavy and damp like snow. She felt a chill deep in her bones. What was she doing in a place like this?

"Wouldn't stare into those woods too long if I were you. Might not like what you see."

Kelsey's body jerked at the sound of the drawled words, her breath catching even though she knew logically who must have spoken. Still, she didn't see him at first, his form blending with the cool gray shadows too perfectly. Slowly, her eyes adjusted until she could make out the shape of his tall, lean frame, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans, and one broad shoulder resting against the corner of the cabin. His eyes gleamed bright silvery gray.

Kelsey had never met Gideon Summers, but she had seen him once last summer when his tour had brought him to Long Island. The magazine had assigned Kelsey to interview Kate Kantrell, who'd been opening for Gideon. She was just heading back to find Kate, when she saw Gideon duck out of his dressing room, howling with laughter over something the person on the other end of the cell phone he was holding had said. He looked like any number of post-show musicians Kelsey had run into, shirtless and sweaty, his hair tangled and damp, and his leather pants riding low on his hips. He was gorgeous, yes, but Kelsey was used to gorgeous rock stars. She might not even have remembered him if he hadn't turned, just as they passed each other, and looked right at her. She'd never seen eyes quite like his, that uncanny silver. The way they fixed on her so entirely, with such sudden solemnity, told her he was no longer thinking about the person he was talking to. Kelsey felt suddenly dizzy. Time stopped, sounds faded, and for one instant, they were the only two people in the world.

Abruptly, the instant was gone, and Kelsey found herself once more in the noisy backstage hallway. Gideon's eyes glanced away from her as he said, "Wait, what?" into the phone. Kelsey kept walking, shaking off the foolish feeling his gaze had given her. But when she glanced back, he was looking at her again over her shoulder. His lips lifted once more in a slow grin. And then he was gone, disappearing around the corner. Kelsey was left feeling even more foolish, and worse than that, unprofessional—because all she wanted was to follow Gideon Summers around that corner and see if he would make time stop for her again.

Now, as Gideon stepped away from the cabin wall, Kelsey saw that he couldn't have looked more different than he had that day. Tonight he wore a blue flannel shirt over a tight white T, and his jeans were faded from too many washings. Hiking boots crunched over dead leaves as he made his way to her, ash-blond hair falling low over his forehead. He didn't look like a rock musician, but like an ordinary man, the kind that could live in a cabin in the mountains and be content.

Yet still there was something in his eyes, a chill in the silver—the silver that must only have been gray, really. His smile revealed too many teeth. The hairs on the back of Kelsey's neck rose, and she couldn't quite make herself move forward to meet him.

She didn't have to. Gideon crossed the distance to her rental car and held out his hand. "Gideon Summers," he said. "And I'm guessing you're Ms. Larson from The Troubadour."

His Louisiana accent was more pronounced than she'd expected. It lessened the cool effect of his gaze and made her realize how ridiculous she was being, letting the forest and the night get to her this way. She took his hand quickly, smiling her most professional smile. "Please, call me Kelsey."

"And you'll call me Gideon, of course." His fingers closed around hers, strong and callused, their warmth dispelling the last of Kelsey's nerves. "You'll have to forgive me for asking you to drive all this way, Kelsey, but I try not to go into the city when I'm not on tour. You could say there's still a little too much country boy left in me."

"It's not a problem." That wasn't what she'd been thinking ten minutes ago, but now… Gideon had a voice like good bourbon. It slow-burned all the way into her belly, and the soft tones he used to say her name swam in her gut. Embarrassed, she drew her hand back and cleared her throat. "I'm sorry I'm so late..."

His eyes were heavy-lidded, and a half-smile lingered on his lips. She wondered if he could tell where her mind had gone a second ago. "Don't you be sorry. Tonight I haven't got anything more important to do than you."

"Oh. Well." She didn't quite know how to respond to that. If he was being suggestive, she should make it clear right now that she was here on business only. But if he hadn't meant it that way, if it was only her imagination jumping to conclusions, offending him might cost her the interview. It might cost her the interview either way.

Wind swept across the clearing, making leaves dance. Kelsey shivered.

"Look at my manners." Mouth twisting downward, Gideon reached out a hand to clasp her shoulder. "You must be freezing out here. That jacket wasn't made for mountain winters. Come on inside. I've got a fire going, and I'll get your something to drink."

Even through the suede shoulder of her jacket, Kelsey felt the warmth of his hand. It sank past her skin, into muscle and bone, spreading lazily through her body. She stepped away, letting his hand slide away from her, and gave him a tight smile. "A drink sounds great. Lead the way."

Gideon tucked both hands back in his pockets, as casual as if she hadn't pulled away from him at all. "Right this way," he said, and stepped around the side of the cabin, into the dark.