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Definitely an ex-hippie. But harmless, obviously. I sure wasn’t driving any farther tonight if I could help it.
“So, M.D. or vet?”
“Excuse me?”
“Doctor, right?”
“Oh.” I waved my hand, regretting my slip. “The PhD kind. I’m a professor at UW.” I left out that I studied neurophysiology. Somehow I could never make that come out right. It was like telling people you were actually a rocket scientist. They never looked at you the same again.
Frank nodded to the hallway on my left. “You look tired. Take the Burning Daylight room. It’s our honeymoon suite. In the morning you’ll see sunrise on Devils Tower.” He said it as if there was no greater experience. Maybe to him there wasn’t. And I could barely keep my eyes open.
To hell with it.
“Do you need to swipe a credit card?” I reached to open my purse, but Frank just waved a hand at me.
“We can do that in the morning, after pancakes.”
I fell asleep to the sound of piano music. Ironic to find myself in the honeymoon suite, when I’d finally walked away from Clive. He was, no doubt, furious over yet another example of my erratic behavior. Illogical and dangerously emotional. Lying in that lodge bed, I really wondered what had possessed me. Maybe I needed to consider seeing a counselor. Out my window, the tower loomed, blacker than the night sky, a silhouette that blocked the stars. An absence of light that somehow still beckoned me.
I dreamed of the Dog, yet again.
The room was warm and steamy, lined with stones. The floor, ceiling, walls were all formed of rounded cobbles. I stood at the edge of a black pool. At least, it looked opaque in the flickering torchlight. At the shallow edge, near my toes, I could see that the water was transparent. The floor sloped down, the pool growing deeper and darker, until it disappeared into shadow. No end in sight. I must have been planning to bathe, because I was nude.
Then the Dog was there.
The angel hairs on the back of my neck lifted. I spun around. Like a statue of a hound carved out of black glass, the Dog sat on the stone steps that led down from above. Trapped. His amber eyes glinted with relentless hunger, and I wanted to flee but couldn’t. His jaws dropped into a canine grin, white fangs echoing sharply pointed ears. I waited for him to attack, knowing I had no other choice.
He cocked his ears and tilted his head, waiting for me to answer a question. I didn’t understand what he wanted. I just couldn’t quite grasp it.
*
I awoke, drenchedin nightmare sweat, to bright light and a sunny Devils Tower. It was always the same dream. Always the edge of disaster. Somehow that made it worse.
After a quick rinse-off in the shower, I dug my contacts out of the water glass I’d soaked them in for the night. I had to put my same panties back on—still slightly damp from the rinsing out the night before. Nothing I could do with my hair and makeup. Not that I’d look a whole lot better even if I had all my stuff. I slipped my necklace and earrings into the pocket of my purse, since the gold was too garish in the morning light. I still looked a little too like a coed doing the walk of shame in last night’s cocktail dress and makeup, but there was nothing to be done.
Frank gave me the promised pancakes and said nothing about my appearance, if he even noticed. The windows were filled with Devils Tower—and the spaces between had photos, paintings and etchings of the tower.
“Want me to help you climb it?” Frank asked, pouring strawberry yogurt an inch deep over his pancakes. “I take people up there all the time. I can loan you clothes and shoes.”
I mulled that over. “I don’t feel a need to climb the tower.”
“Afraid of heights?”
“No, I never really have been.”
“That’s probably why you don’t need to climb then. Your fear lies somewhere else.”
I shivered and didn’t look out the window. Though I knew perfectly well the Dog wasn’t there. Then I had to look, just to make sure. Bright sunlight on Devils Tower. Nothing else.
“I’m not sure every fear has to be faced,” I told Frank. “Some are just…figments. Bad wiring that got laid down early.”
“Or they’re not what you think they are,” Frank agreed. “I find most things have two faces—like the tower there. Like love and hate. There’s a dark and light side. Makes all the difference where you decide to climb.”
“Good and evil?” I smiled at him.
“No.” Frank cocked his head at me. “Just different aspects of the same thing. It was the Christian settlers who named it Devils Tower, when the natives told them it was the place of dark gods. For the whites, that meant only one guy. Not everybody sees the world that way.”
“Who are these dark gods then?”
