The massive wooden door was covered with iron buckles and buttons, but none of them appeared to be a knocker or a doorbell. Finally I found a button, not on the door itself, but tucked into the mortar between two stones. After pushing it I stepped back and took in a full view of the castle. It was one of the most forbidding places I’d ever seen. Three stories of rough stones set in mortar, topped by towers and crenellations that wouldn’t have looked out of place on top of a German or Irish mountain. There were no windows, except for the narrow arrow slits in the towers. There was no moat, but a high stone wall surrounded a yard filled with dead trees and shrubbery. Set in the center of a neighborhood of 1950s ranch-style houses, the place couldn’t have been more incongruous.

The door opened with a long, resistant creak. My heart pounded at the sight of Derek Fielding. He was still as attractive as before, but he looked exhausted to the point of dropping. I wondered how long it had been since he’d had a decent night’s sleep. He held the door open, but looked past me down the path, as if checking to make sure I’d come alone.

“Dr. Dillon,” he said. “This is a surprise.” He met my eyes and gave me a tentative smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You never followed up with Dr. Kay.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do you make house calls for all your patients?”

I smiled through my nervousness. “Only the ones who can sing.”

He stood still, staring at me with a strange look on his face.

“Can I come in?”

“Well, I…,” He looked back into the house.

“Oh, do you have company?” I’d never thought about whether he had a girlfriend, but surely someone as handsome as him would have one. I stepped back from the doorstep.

He laughed, just a tiny bit. “You might say that. But not the kind you’re thinking of.” He opened the door wider. “Please come in.”

I stepped inside and touched his arm, trying to ignore the tingle I felt when my hand contacted his silken skin. “Your parents are worried about you.”

Before I could move my hand he laid his own on top of it. “And you? Are you worried, Dr. Dillon?”

“I’m not your doctor anymore, so please call me Maggie. And yes, I was worried. That’s why I’m here.”

I followed him through the dim, oak-paneled foyer to a cavernous rectangular room, mostly empty. It bore a striking resemblance to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Arched windows on the ocean side were reflected in arched mirrors on the opposite wall. The coved ceiling was adorned with paintings, crisscrossed with gold molding, culminating in busts of maidens at the corners. Crystal chandeliers hung at three-foot intervals. It was a rococo monstrosity, built by a person with more money than taste.

An oil painting hung over the gilt and marble fireplace. Although it was in a seventeenth-century style gilt frame, the subject was a man from the early twentieth century. He wore a suit and a thin red tie, and had slicked-back dark hair, heavy brows, and a broad, bulbous nose. But he was handsome, and the smile on his face was wide and jovial. The painting had a generic quality, like the photos that are already in a frame when you buy it: a happy couple, a kid with a dog.

“Is that the guy who built the house?” I asked.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t really look like that.”

I thought of asking how Derek knew that, but then decided to let it go for now.

The only things that obviously belonged to Derek were three guitars, hanging in racks next to a dais. On the dais was an oversized gilt and velvet chair. From its height the sitter could view the city of Pacifica and the ocean that gave it its name, both on the ocean side and multiplied hundreds of times in the mirrors.

I walked over to the guitars. “Which one is your favorite?” I asked.

His eyes lit up. “That one in the middle. It’s a 1954 Gibson Les Paul.” He pointed to an electric guitar with a fin on the side and four gold buttons. The varnish on it was metallic gold, but darkened and burnished with age to a deep honey color.

“Will you play something for me?” I asked.

When he put the strap over his shoulder I noticed his guitar was singed under the strings and gave off a faint smell of melted glue. I remembered the fire in Derek’s studio and wondered what else had been damaged or destroyed.

Derek perched on the edge of the dais and plugged the guitar into an amp. He stretched his fingers across the strings, wincing as the tendons in his wrists put tension on his stitches. I started to tell him that he didn’t need to play, but then he began and I forgot everything but the music.

He played a blues tune, something so heartfelt and resonant that it brought tears to my eyes. His face was even more beautiful when he played. I sat down on the floor near him, closed my eyes, and let the music wash over me. He finished one song and moved seamlessly into another.

But then something started to go wrong. He played a sour note, recovered, and then faltered again. More wrong notes dropped in, discordant and painful to the ear. His expression turned from joy to confusion to dismay. Finally he stopped. His head dropped until his forehead touched the guitar.

“What happened?” I asked.

Derek lifted his head. Fear seized my body, turning my guts to liquid. He began to change before my eyes, all the features slowly sifting, as if his face was made of sand instead of flesh. His eyebrows drifted low onto a ridged Neanderthal forehead. His eyes darkened by several shades. He smiled, but the expression was sardonic and malevolent. I squeezed my eyes shut, but when I opened them again, the changes were still happening.

“I don’t know how to play the guitar.” Derek’s breath was fogging up, as if he’d walked outside into a cold day. The puff of vaporized breath continued to grow, turning into a white mist that wreathed his head. I shivered from the sudden chill in the air.

It was almost unbearable to look at him, but I forced myself to keep my eyes steady, my face calm. “What’s your name?” I asked.

He threw his head back and laughed. His movements were jerky and stiff, while Derek’s were smooth and graceful.

“I’m a figment of his imagination, is that what you believe? Hah! I’m as real as you are, girly. You think the drugs you gave him will drive me away? Derek could be as doped up as a shanghaied sailor and I’d still be here. It’s only a matter of time. Every time I take him over it’s harder for him to come back. Eventually he just won’t.” He looked down at the guitar in his lap.

“I think while I’m here…” He stood up, grabbed the guitar by the neck and swung it over his shoulder like a giant hammer.

“No!” I ran over and grabbed the guitar, just as it began its downward arc.

We struggled. The guitar was pulled out of my hands. Again, he lifted it high and swung it toward the floor. I closed my eyes and held out my arms, bracing for the pain that was coming.

Nothing happened. I looked up to see Derek cradling the Gibson like a baby. Tears ran down his face as he placed it gently in the stand. As quickly as it had come on, the episode that Derek had just experienced was over.

“Derek?” I reached for him, but grabbed air instead.

“No! I’ll kill you first. I’ll kill both of us if I have to!” Derek was running for the fireplace. He leaped and grabbed the painting off the wall.

A hoarse, wordless cry came from deep inside his body as he smashed his heavy boot into Edgar’s face. Over and over he pounded the painting. When the ornate gilt frame split into pieces he picked one up and used it to tear the canvas and break up the stretchers and remaining pieces of frame. I stood nearby, helpless in the face of his hysteria.

All at once Derek stopped kicking the painting. “Do you hear that?” he cried out. “He’s laughing at me.”

He pressed his palms against his ears. “Stop it!” he screamed.

I gasped as bright red blood seeped through the bandages on his wrists. “Derek, you’ve got to stop.” I grabbed his hands and pressed them down gently but firmly. He finally looked at me, his eyes wild and desperate.

“Maggie, help me. Oh, God, help me.” He collapsed onto my shoulder. I held him tightly while his body shuddered helplessly.

“Derek,” I spoke quietly into his ear, “you’ve got to go see Dr. Kay.”

He moved his head back so he could look at me. His expression was bitter and sad. “You don’t believe me. You don’t believe this is real.”

I stroked his arm. “Of course it’s real.”

He moved quickly out of my reach, his arms crossed protectively over his chest. “Don’t twist my words. You know what I mean.”

I looked away so I didn’t have to meet his piercing gaze. “I know what you mean.”

He grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. His breath smelled of cigarettes, which was odd, since I hadn’t seen him smoke. “So, is it real or isn’t it? Because if you just think I’m crazy then we have nothing more to say to each other.”

He held my chin, lightly but firmly. I would have given anything at that moment not to have to answer him.

“It’s real, Derek, it’s as real as anything I’ve seen. If you want to get into some existential philosophy about what reality is, that’s up to you. What’s important is that I believe, just like you do, that this thing will kill you.”

He let go of my chin and dropped his forehead to my shoulder.

“I’ll go see Dr. Kay,” he said.

I stroked his hair and then cupped the back of his head in my hand. His breath smelled of cigarettes, but his hair smelled like a hippie commune—sandalwood and warm spices, like cloves and cinnamon. I took a long whiff and let my lips rest against his smooth neck, just for a moment.

I lay sprawled on the couch in the tidy, some might say sparse, living room of my flat above a veterinary hospital on Seventh Avenue. I’d come home at eight p.m. after a nonstop shift where everything was moving so fast it started to seem slow. It was almost to the full moon, and although none of us would admit it to anyone outside of the profession, that’s when the crazies came out. I’d taken a shower and put on my favorite pajamas, made of T-shirt material with cats on them. I climbed into bed but sleep wouldn’t come, so now I was staring at the TV.

My mind kept drifting back to Derek Fielding, as it had more or less every twenty minutes since I’d left him the day before. Even the half-naked man who came in screaming that aliens had stolen his invention (an artificial bladder) out of his backpack couldn’t keep my thoughts from eventually circling back to Derek. I’d told him to call me if it was an emergency, but otherwise to make an appointment with Dr. Kay for today and I’d see him tomorrow, which was my day off.

My favorite hospital drama was on TiVo, but I’d had to replay the same scene three times. It was a scene where my favorite dreamy doctor was making love to his current intern during an earthquake. If I couldn’t concentrate on that, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I clicked the TV off and went to the kitchen for a snack. My refrigerator contained only beer, mustard, pickles, and a half-full container of cake frosting, which I ate with a spoon after particularly difficult shifts at the hospital. I chose alcohol instead of sugar and popped the cap off a beer as I walked to my bedroom. My dirty clothes lay in piles as high as a Maine snowdrift. If I couldn’t sleep or watch TV I could at least get a load of laundry started.

With my arms full of clothes, I stopped in front of the long staircase down to my front door. Someone was tapping insistently on the glass. I went downstairs and pulled the curtain, only to meet the wide, dark eyes of Derek Fielding. I opened the door a crack.

“How did you find me?” I asked. Vestigial self-protectiveness born of years of psychiatric training had kept me from giving him my address, and I was more than unlisted. All the doctors at Pacific University kept their home addresses and phone numbers locked up like Fort Knox.

He shrugged. “I just got in the car, and I knew your address.”

“You just knew it?”

Derek grabbed the door frame. “He knows things about people, and when he’s inside me I know them too. Like he knew your name.”

I was speechless.

“Can I come in?” His wavy hair standing up in wild tufts, as if he’d been pulling on it. Tricholtillomania, my clinical mind said, before I told it to shut up.

“Well,” I said hesitantly. Conflicting emotions staged a full-scale war in my body, concentrating in my stomach and chest.

Derek’s long eyelashes fluttered as he slowly blinked. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly, “he won’t hurt you. He likes you. It’s me he wants to get rid of.”

I opened the door. Derek had a guitar in a bag strapped to his back. His eyes were wet and bloodshot, as if he’d been crying. I resisted the urge to pull him into my arms and comfort him, instead ushering him ahead of me up the stairs.

Derek ignored my offer to sit. He leaned his guitar against the wall and hugged the window overlooking Seventh Avenue, staring down as if he’d never seen sushi restaurants and liquor stores before. I deliberately chose the couch instead of the armchair, sitting cross-legged so I wouldn’t look like a shrink.

After a minute or two Derek turned to me. He gave me a small, pained smile. “You look terrible,” he said. “Are you all right?”

Well, I guess I could give him points for honesty. “I had a rough day at the hospital, that’s all.”

“Hmm. I bet you have a lot of those. Have you eaten?”

I shook my head.

“Want to go out?” He glanced at my pajamas. “Why don’t I cook us something?”

“You cook?”

“Pretty well, in fact. My mom made sure of that. Where’s your kitchen?”

I pointed. “It’s back there, but there isn’t much to work with.”

“Oh, I can work miracles.” I followed him down the hall, trying not to stare, but his well-worn T-shirt did nothing to hide the way his sinewy back muscles flexed as he walked. The snake tattoo undulated across his gleaming skin before diving under the bandage on his wrist.

He opened my refrigerator, glanced at the contents, and closed it again. He turned to me and raised his eyebrows. “How do you survive?”

“Coffee and Clif bars.”

He pushed his gold-flecked hair behind his ears. “Where’s the closest grocery store?”

Twenty minutes later I was sitting at the tiny table in my kitchen watching a culinary miracle. From one pot and a dented frying pan, Derek had conjured fresh fettuccini and a sauce called sugo alla puttanesca, an Italian name he refused to translate. Steam rose from the stove along with a heavenly spicy tomato aroma. I sipped a fruity Zinfandel while he sprinkled chopped basil over slices of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes on top of grilled ciabatta bread.

“Do you have any plates?” he asked.

“Of course!” I glanced sheepishly into the sink. “I’ll need to wash them, though.”

When the plates were clean, Derek ladled out saucy ribbons of pasta for both of us, topped with a light grating of fresh Parmesan cheese. For a few minutes silence reigned as we shoveled food into our mouths.

“This is really delicious,” I said.

He winked at me. “You sound surprised.”

“I haven’t met too many men who can cook.”

“Do you have a boyfriend, Maggie?” he asked.

I shook my head, looking down at my plate. “No.”

“Why is a beautiful, accomplished woman like you not taken?”

A warm flush overpowered my normally pale cheeks. “I could say I’m too busy, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. The job I do, it taps you out: mentally, physically, and emotionally. I just don’t have the energy for a commitment.”

The intensity of his gaze did nothing to ease my embarrassment. “Maggie, a job should fuel you, not tap you out.”

A jolt of righteous anger shot through me. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a singer. What you do is not exactly life and death.”

Now it was his turn to blush. Chagrined, I encircled his wrist just above the bandage. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

He shrugged and placed his hand on top of mine. “You’re right. What’s going on now is the first life-and-death thing I’ve ever dealt with.”

I pushed my plate away. “Why don’t we go into the living room?”

“Remember that song you were singing at the hospital, Derek? It’s an Irish lullaby, right?” I’d never learned the name, I realized, even though my mother had sung it dozens of times. I hummed a few bars.

He nodded. He was perched on the edge of the armchair while I was back on the couch. He looked as anxious as he had when he arrived at the door, but he smiled through it. “Yes, I love that song. It’s from an album of Irish lullabies I did a few years ago. It sold about six copies.”

I perked up. “I bought an album of Irish lullabies about three years ago. It was called Home through the Night.”

“That’s it. Only five more copies to account for,” he said drily, but I saw a tiny hint of a smile.

“But I don’t remember your name being on it.” I thought for a moment. “It was by the Fieldstone Brothers.”

“It was a combination of our names—Derek Fielding and Eric Stone, a friend of mine. We just did the one project together.”

“That was a great album. I wished I could have given it to my mother.”

“Why didn’t you?”

My eyelids were suddenly heavy with the weight of tears. “She died when I was eight. Killed herself.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Derek folded his arms as if he was trying to hide his bandages from me.

“My mother used to sing that song to me when I was a little girl.”

He smiled ruefully. “Not mine, I’m afraid. Drina’s not much of a singer.”

“Have you been playing much music yourself?” I asked, pointing to the guitar.

All pleasure washed out of his face, leaving the same blank misery I’d seen in the hospital. “I still can’t play anything. Not since you were at my house.”

“Have you been taking your medication?”

“Yes, Maggie. I’m taking the pills.”

“Have you had any more, um, visits from Edgar?”

He shook his head.

“Well, that’s good. Now, this thing with the music, it must be some kind of temporary aphasia brought on by stress. I’m sure if you give it time it will fix itself.”

He looked at that moment as if he pitied my sad, closed mind. “No, Maggie, Edgar did something to me. It’s like he wiped that part of my brain clean.”

“So why did you bring your guitar with you tonight?”

“I thought maybe here, with you, something might come back to me. I loved the way your face looked when I was playing.”

“Well, give it a try,” I said, patting the sofa cushion next to me.

He sat next to me with the acoustic guitar on his lap, nervously chewing his lower lip and running his fingers across the strings. A couple of times he looked up at me, and I smiled, projecting encouragement. He strummed the guitar. A few discordant notes echoed through the room, sounding like a cat had run over the strings.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Maybe you should stop for now….”

The guitar skittered across the hardwood floor until it stopped at the opposite wall.

“I can’t do it! The most important thing in the world to me, and the bastard took it.” He dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders convulsing with silent sobs.

Normally I considered the consequences before I took any action, however small. It often took me five minutes to decide between nonfat and 1 percent milk. But I didn’t think at all before putting my arms around Derek. He returned my embrace, pulling me so tight my breasts were squeezed against his slender, muscular frame. His long, curly hair, smelling of cloves and sandalwood, tickled my cheek. He pressed his lips against my neck. His breath was warm and damp. My heart was so loud it echoed in my head, and I could feel Derek’s heartbeat pounding equally wildly against my chest.

Then we were kissing, and it was just like my fantasy at the hospital. He kissed me like it was the last kiss he’d ever have. His tongue probed deeply as my own glided over the slick polish of his teeth, then they entwined, first softly, then with eager pressure. He encircled my neck and pulled my hair free from its band while the other hand lit fires over every inch of my skin.

I pulled back, suddenly frightened of what we were doing, of how important it felt. When he sensed my hesitation he kissed me harder. With one hand lost in my hair and the other under my pajama top, he deftly flipped me onto my back and pressed me into the couch. He positioned himself so that our bodies met at every point that ignited heat, and he savaged my neck and chest with licks, kisses, and nips.

The hard length of him, studded by the buttons of his jeans, ground against me through the thin cotton of my pajamas. The intense pleasure was tinged with pain, but when he lifted himself off me I was desperate to make him keep going. I grabbed his hips to try to move him back. Instead he slid his cool hand into the waistband of my pajamas, stroking tiny circles on my abdomen before continuing downward. My thighs tightened in anticipation as his hand slipped under my panties and between my legs.

Nothing else existed but his fingers as they glided over my damp and yearning flesh. My breath caught raggedly in my throat as he tortured me with hovering, feather-light touches. When my hips jerked upward, slamming against him, he groaned again, and then dived deeply into me. His talented fingers played me with strength and dexterity. Gasping with pleasure, on the edge of release, I opened my eyes. I wanted to see his face, to reassure myself that he was enjoying himself as much as I was. But when I looked up everything that was moving in me slammed to a halt. My blood stopped flowing, my heart ceased beating, the joy I was about to express died in my throat.

The face I was looking at wasn’t Derek’s.