Cold Fire

configuration of a big snow-white moth.
    The extraordinary vividness and unusual nature of the nightmare—and the fact that the effects of the dream had continued after she had awakened in her motel room—had encouraged her to believe that it was somehow connected with Jim Ironheart. Two encounters with the paranormal in such close succession had to be linked. But she was relieved, all the same, when his stunned reaction confirmed her suspicion.
    “Limestone walls,” she said. “Wooden floor. A heavy wooden door, banded in iron, that opens on some limestone steps. A yellow candle in a blue dish.”
    “I've dreamed about it for years,” he said softly. “Once or twice a month. Never more often than that. Until the last three nights. But how can we be having the same dream?”
    “Where's the real windmill?”
    “On my grandparents' farm. North of Santa Barbara. In the Santa Ynez Valley.”
    “Did something terrible happen to you there, or what?”
    He shook his head. “No. Not at all. I loved that place. It was … a sanctuary.”
    “Then why did you go pale when I mentioned it?”
    “Did I?”
    “Picture an albino cat chasing a mouse around a corner and running into a Doberman. That pale.”
    “Well, when I dream of the mill, it's always frightening—”
    “Don't I know it. But if it was a good place in your life, a sanctuary like you say, then why does it feature in nightmares?”
    “I don't know.”
    “Here we go again.”
    “I really don't,” he insisted. “Why did you dream about it, if you've never even been there?”
    She drank more beer, which did not clarify her thinking. “Maybe because you're projecting your dream at me. As a way to sort of make a connection between us, draw me to you.”
    “Why would I want to draw you to me?”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “Anyway, like I told you before, I'm no psychic, I don't have abilities like that. I'm just an instrument.”
    “Then it's this higher power of yours,” she said. “It's sending me the same dream because it wants us to connect.”
    He wiped one hand down his face. “This is too much for me right now. I'm so damned tired.”
    “Me, too. But it's only nine-thirty, and we've still got a lot to talk about.”
    “I only slept about an hour last night,” he said.
    He really did look exhausted. A shave and a shower had made him presentable, but the bruise-dark rings around his eyes were getting darker; and he had not regained color in his face after turning pale at the mention of her windmill dreams.
    He said, “We can pick this up in the morning.”
    She frowned. “No way. I'll come back in the morning, and you won't let me in.”
    “I'll let you in.”
    “That's what you say now.”
    “If you're having that dream, then you're part of this whether I like it or not.”
    His tone of voice had gone from cool to cold again, and it was clear that what he meant by “whether I like it or not” was really “even though I don't like it.”
    He was a loner, evidently always had been. Viola Moreno, who had great affection for him, claimed he was well-liked by his students and colleagues. She'd spoken of a fundamental sadness in him, however, that separated him from other people, and since quitting his teaching position, he had seen little of Viola or his other friends from that life. Though intrigued by the news that he and Holly were sharing a dream, though he had called her “refreshing,” though he was to some degree attracted to her, he obviously resented her intrusion into his solitude.
    Holly said, “No good. You'll be gone when I get here in the morning, I won't know where you went, maybe you'll never come back.”
    He had no energy for resistance. “Then stay the night.”
    “You have a spare bedroom?”
    “Yeah. But there's no spare bed. You can sleep on the family-room couch, I guess, but it's damned old and not too comfortable.”
    She carried her half-empty beer into the adjacent family room, and tested the sagging, brown sofa. “It'll be good enough.”
    “Whatever you want.” He seemed indifferent, but she sensed that his indifference was a pretense.
    “You have any spare pajamas?”
    “Jesus.”
    “Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't bring any.”
    “Mine'll be too big for you.”
    “Just makes them more comfortable. I'd like to shower, too. I'm sticky from tanning lotion and being in the sun all afternoon.”
    With the put-upon air of a man who had found his least favorite relative standing on his doorstep