Erin had cleaned off the table, stacked the dishes in the sink, and even wiped off the kitchen counters with a damp cloth, and Kirchel still hadn't come back downstairs.

She put the cloth next to the sink and sat back down at the kitchen table. She spent a minute or two straightening the gauze on her hands, which had slipped while she was cleaning up. The green stuff Kirchel had put on her hands and knee seemed to be very effective. They didn't hurt at all now. Erin just wished Kirchel had something that could take away scars, too. She had quite a few by now that she wouldn't have minded getting rid of.

It was strange, the things Kirchel could and couldn't do. She could stop Erin from having nightmares while she slept, but she couldn't stop the nightmares during the day. She could identify dozens of different herbs just by sight, but she didn't know who or what Wraith was. And she could tell story after story about her childhood and teenage years, but she wouldn't say a thing about what she had been doing from the time she left Erin’s grandparents’ home until she had moved back into this house and started her floral shop five years ago.

Erin liked her cousin, in spite of only having known her a few days, and she didn't want Kirchel to feel like she was prying into her private affairs. But it would be nice if she were a little more forthcoming. Erin felt like Kirchel didn't quite trust her.

Of course, maybe that was understandable considering how she'd been acting recently.... She didn't mean to be difficult, but anymore it was hard not to be. It felt like her whole life had been turned upside down and inside out, and the temptation to take out her frustration on the people around her was sometimes too great to resist.

By now, Erin was beginning to wonder if Kirchel really would be able to help her. Mom was sure she could, but Erin didn’t really see how. Kirchel had said herself that she didn't know what Wraith was or why Erin was seeing him.

Erin looked up at the clock on the wall. It had been almost half an hour since Kirchel had gone upstairs to make her telephone call. She hadn't told Erin who it was she wanted to talk to, but Erin assumed it had something to do with trying to figure out her hallucinations. She shot a glance at the ceiling in the direction of Kirchel's bedroom. Maybe if she went upstairs she would be able to listen in on part of the conversation.

She stood up and headed for the stairs, where she had to make her way up slowly and laboriously, as usual. When she had made it to the top, she paused on the landing outside Kirchel's bedroom, listening for the sound of her voice.

She didn't hear anything.

The door to Kirchel's room was open, and Erin walked over to it. She assumed Kirchel would be in there, since that was the only room which had a telephone apart from the kitchen. And she knew Kirchel didn’t have a cell phone. Coverage in the little mountain valley was spotty at best, and here in the canyon it was nonexistent.

But when she looked in, she saw only the empty bedroom. The telephone was sitting in its normal place on the bedside table, obviously not in use. And there was no sign of Kirchel.

Erin stepped into the room, frowning slightly. Where was Kirchel? She had definitely said she was going to make a call. So why wasn't she here using the telephone? If she had already finished making her phone call, why hadn't she come back downstairs to tell Erin what she had found out?

Erin looked over at the door to the adjoining bathroom, wondering if Kirchel could be in there. But the bathroom door was open, and when Erin went across the room to look inside, the room was empty. Her puzzled frown deepening, Erin turned back to the telephone. Could there perhaps be another phone somewhere in the house that Kirchel hadn't mentioned?

Erin crossed over to the table and carefully picked up the phone, trying not to make any noise. But when she held it to her ear, she heard only the dial tone. That meant either Kirchel had another phone with another line somewhere or that she wasn't using a phone at all.

Nonplussed, Erin put the receiver back down. Where had Kirchel gone? If she wasn't talking on the phone, what was she doing?

Erin shook her head and left the room, thinking that she would have to go wait in her own bedroom until Kirchel reappeared and told her what she had been up to. But when she got back to the landing, she stopped. Now she could hear a voice. It was coming from the room next to Kirchel’s.

Erin hesitated. She had gotten the impression that she wasn't supposed to know what was in that room, although Kirchel hadn't specifically said so. They had conveniently skipped over it during the tour of the house, and Kirchel hadn’t said anything about it since. Erin had tried opening the door to peek inside a couple of times when Kirchel wasn’t around, but it was always locked—the only door in the house that was. Not even the rooms with the poisonous herbs were locked.

Erin knew it would probably be wiser to just go to her room and wait for Kirchel, but her curiosity was jabbing painfully at her, and she stepped over to the door to listen more closely. Surely it wouldn't hurt to listen for a moment and make sure it really was Kirchel's voice, would it? She’d feel more secure if she made sure, and then she could go to her room to wait.

She put her ear close to the door, listening hard. The voice definitely sounded like Kirchel's, but it was too faint for Erin to understand anything that was being said. Feeling slightly disappointed, though a little relieved at finally locating Kirchel, Erin listened for another minute or two, hoping to pick out a few words, but was still unable to decipher anything and finally gave up.

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Straightening, she was about to turn and head to her room again when something caught her eye, and she paused. The door wasn't completely closed. It had been shut, but not quite far enough for it to catch. And if it wasn't fastened, it wasn't locked.

Her hand was already on the doorknob before she stopped to consider. She knew she had already tried Kirchel's patience and kindness rather severely that day, and going into a room she didn't think she was supposed to see probably wasn't the best idea. But on the other hand, Kirchel had never said she couldn't go in this room. She had told Erin not to go into the herb rooms or the caves. If this room was included in the list of forbidden territory, why hadn't Kirchel said anything about it?

"I'm probably going to regret doing this," Erin muttered to herself. Then she took a deep breath and slowly pushed the door open a few inches.

At first all she saw was a line of wooden shelves full of boxes. She opened the door a few inches more and peeked around it. She saw more shelves, but no Kirchel. She pushed the door open a little further and slipped inside the room.

It was dimmer in the room than it had been out on the landing, and Erin stood just inside the door for a moment to let her eyes adjust. Light was coming from behind a row of shelves that went part way across the center of the room. These shelves were mostly full of plastic boxes of different sizes. They all had neat labels listing their contents written on index cards taped to the sides.

At least, Erin assumed the labels listed the boxes' contents. None of them seemed to be in English, or even in a language which used the same alphabet. Instead, the writing was in a strange, spiky script that joined together on the top. It looked a little bit like a row of icicles.

The two walls that Erin could see were also lined with shelves. These contained glass bottles and ceramic jars of all shapes, sizes and colors. The ones whose contents were visible held anything from a clear amber liquid that looked exactly like apple juice...to dried leaves...to what looked like pickled mushrooms, floating in a dark green liquid. These jars were labeled with the same strange writing as the boxes were.

Erin could hear Kirchel much more clearly now. Her voice, like the light, was coming from the other side of the shelves. Erin still couldn't understand what she was saying, but now she knew why. Kirchel wasn't speaking in English—or any language that Erin recognized. She moved closer, stopping at the end of the center shelves to listen. She was startled a minute later to hear a second voice—another woman's, older-sounding than Kirchel—coming from behind the shelves and speaking the same strange language.

Was there really another person back there? It sounded like it. If so, who was it, and how had she gotten there? Erin had a sudden mental image of Kirchel helping an old woman climb in through an upstairs window and then hiding her in this room—maybe sneaking a plate of food in to her in the middle of the night. She just managed to stop herself from laughing out loud at the idea and shot a nervous look in the direction of the voices.

She felt a little guilty eavesdropping on Kirchel, even though she couldn’t understand anything anyway. It might be better if she just quietly left the room and pretended she hadn't seen or heard anything. But curiosity was still pricking at her. Who was Kirchel talking to? And what was all the stuff in this room? If she didn't find out now, knowing Kirchel, she probably never would. And after all, she wasn't disobeying anything Kirchel had said by coming in here, and Kirchel herself had left the door open, although Erin had a feeling that she hadn't meant to. Surely it wouldn't hurt just to look around the shelves and see if there really was someone else there, would it?

Coming to a decision, Erin took a few cautious steps around the end of the middle row of shelves. The voices were still coming from the other side, and Erin could hear sounds of movement and what might have been a drawer opening and closing. She moved a little further forward, until she could see past the last shelves into the other half of the room.

The light was coming from a floor lamp, which stood against the far wall. Beside it was a large roll top desk made of dark brown wood. Kirchel was seated at the desk, her back to Erin. She was writing something on a piece of paper lying on the desk in front of her. Erin could only see a small part of it, but she thought it might be the same spiky writing that was on the boxes and jars. The second voice was still speaking—Kirchel seemed to be listening to it as she wrote, and occasionally she nodded or said something in response to it. But there was no sign of anyone else in the room.

Feeling perplexed, Erin watched as Kirchel wrote a few more lines on the paper and then put her pen down and turned to look at something on her left that Erin couldn’t see. That appeared to be where the other voice was coming from. Squinting slightly, Erin thought she saw a faint bluish-white light shining on the left side of the desk, as though from a television or computer screen. She was about to take another step forward to try to see what it was coming from when she glanced at the wall directly across from the opening in the shelves and saw something that made her pause.

In front of her was a tall wooden cabinet, stained a dark grayish-green with black carved designs on the front. One of the two doors was open, and Erin could see some of the contents of the shelves inside. On the bottom one, there were plastic containers holding feathers of different sizes and colors. The next shelf up also had plastic bins, but these held what looked like teeth or claws—or both. The middle shelf, Erin realized with a shudder, held an arrangement of various bones.

But it was the top two shelves that had caught her eye, that made her skin prickle as she looked at them. They were lined with skulls—bleached white and staring down at her with empty eyes and toothy grins. Most of them looked like they were from animals, but in the middle of the top shelf, half hidden behind the closed door, was one that looked very human.

There was the sudden sound of a chair sliding on carpet. Erin let out a faint gasp and stepped hastily backwards. Intent on the horrible contents of the cabinet, she hadn’t noticed that the voices had stopped. Kirchel might come around the shelves and find her at any moment, and after seeing those skulls, the last thing Erin wanted was for Kirchel to catch her sneaking into a room she was supposed to be locked out of.

Scarcely daring to breathe, Erin crept as quickly and as silently as she could back toward the door. She kept one eye on the space between the shelves, afraid that an angry Kirchel might appear at any moment to ask what she was doing there.

The trip out of the room seemed to take hours, but at long last, Erin was closing the door quietly behind her, making sure that she pulled it to the same position it had been in before she opened it. She heard footsteps inside the room as she did so, and it was all she could do to keep herself from breaking into a run as she hurried down the hallway to take refuge in the bathroom, hoping to have time to catch her breath and compose her flushed and guilty face before Kirchel saw her.