Chapter Eighteen
Comets and suns and stars—my dreams took me back into the cosmos that night. There before me was the beckoning wonder of Tenctah, glittering like a jewel in the velvet darkness of space. Then, in the off-kilter way of dreams, I was back on Earth in the sun-drenched summertime—and Del a welcome presence beside me. We were laughing, joking together. And the sun had grown low, the sky awash with fiery crimson and yellow—
A whisper: “Corinne.”
The both of us on the river now, Del on his boat, his back to me. The red light of the sun set the definition of his body in sharp, shadowed relief. He was shocking to look at—primal. I couldn’t look away.
“Corinne. Wake up.”
I gasped awake, my skin prickling with heat. The walls of my room were red as my dream, a thick, bloody red,
