Pt. 4

Maggie sat up with a gasp, looking around the room in confusion. The remnants of the dream still echoed in her head, the sounds and smells still clinging to both her conscious and unconscious mind. She had a fuzzy memory of a voice that sounded like her own, crying out in anger. A whiff of smoke hung in the air.

*Oh crap! What's going on?* she thought, looking around the still-lit room. Thankfully she hadn't set anything on fire – at least not that she could see. Maggie was startled when someone started pounding on the door.

"Maggie? Are you all right?" Roarke's voice called from the hall, the door rattling in its frame as he knocked.

"Hang on, I'm coming!" Maggie called, sliding off the bed and padding over to the door. She cracked it open cautiously, looking at her host from behind the veil of her long hair. "Sorry! Did I get loud?"

"You sounded as though you were in trouble," Roarke said with concern.

"I was having that dream again. Only not quite the same. It was like the next scene in a not quite familiar play. It's way too confusing to talk about now. I'll tell you about it in the morning." She started to close the door, but Roarke's hand was in the way.

"Are you sure?" he asked quietly, worry in his voice.

"Yes, I'm sure," she replied in exasperation. "I've had these dreams for weeks. The worst that's happened is that I set a Paris hotel on fire. Trust me – if there's a problem, you'll be the first to know it." She gently pulled the door loose from his grip and closed it, leaning against it with a sigh. "Well, that was special," she murmured. "Why is the dream changing?" She opened her bag and pulled out her Book of Shadow, a large, old-fashioned ledger filled with creamy blank pages which had been Byron's gift to her in college. Maggie sat on the floor, folding her legs under her in a lotus position, with the book propped in her lap. She opened to a blank page and ran her hand gently over its surface, murmuring a command. A few minutes later, words and pictures started to appear on the page, glowing with a golden light. She ran her fingertip along the page, reading intently.

-

Outside the bedroom door, Roarke leaned against the door. Maggie had assumed she had cried out in her sleep; but in fact, he had felt the power of her dream all the way into his office. Something — or someone — wanted this woman to feel the horror of events from long ago. Perhaps they wanted to wear her down, make her vulnerable to attack. He suspected, however, that all it was doing was making her angry. Considering what happens when she gets angry, this might not bode well for my home,* he thought dryly.