Free Body Temperature and Rising - Book One of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy by K. D. Grace

Keswick Mountain Rescue, for which he volunteered. Some tourist was lost around Raven Crag. By bedtime he still wasn’t home. 
    The relief at seeing he was back froze in her chest. The fine hair on the tops of her bare arms prickled. In the pale amber light of the lamp, her image was reflected clearly in the dark glass of the window pane. 
    But she wasn’t alone. 
    It was a reflection of a reflection she saw. Her night-shirted back was clearly visible in the free-standing mirror next to the closet, but through the patina of mist on the surface from the unusual chill, a dark image stood behind her, heavy arms folded across a broad chest, something coiled in his hand. For a split second she could almost swear she heard his heavy breath. It wasn’t possible, and yet there he was, the man from her dream, standing on the other side of the mirror smiling out at her. ‘You dreamed their dream,’ his voice was a deep rumbling between her hip bones. ‘What a clever girl you are, invading dreams that don’t belong to you. Rather rude in reality, but then I suppose no one can really blame such an innocent, someone who doesn’t know any better.’ She could swear she felt his hot breath against the back of her neck. ‘Perhaps you’d like to share my dreams as well. I’d welcome you with open arms, my lovely.’ He raised his hand in a swift upward motion, palm spread wide facing the sky and suddenly the fire in her pelvic girdle leaped upward to a blinding flash behind her eyes. 
    Images flew at her like a driving storm. There was a sailing ship tossing in an angry sea with Tara standing on the prow chanting words Marie couldn’t hear. There was water and fire and people drowning in both. There was a pale woman with golden hair sinking lifelessly beneath the waves. There was another woman tumbling backward off a precipice and falling endlessly. There were screams from the leaping flames, there was the crack of a whip, the brittle snapping of bones and Tara wandering the fells raging at the darkened sky. There was pain and suffering and sorrow deeper than anything Marie had ever felt before. And Tara Stone was at the centre of it all. The unbearable lot of it pressed down so hard on Marie that she cried out and doubled over as the man’s voice exploded inside her head. ‘Shall I now show you your own death? Would you like to see that too, my beauty, or perhaps you’d find Tim Meriwether’s death more interesting?’
    For a split second she felt Tara’s rage, and it exploded up through her and outward in all directions, like no anger, no pain she had ever felt before. Then somehow, from somewhere, it was suddenly her own rage that shoved its way to the surface, as she forced herself upright. A tingle and a sharp burst of heat rushed back down to her belly where it settled in a tight embrace, and she was blessedly free of the man in the mirror. 
    She stumbled toward her bed just as the pale shape of Anderson wavered then appeared. He rose from where he sat, walked quickly to the mirror and with a hand that seemed to take shape as he moved made an arching swipe across the misted glass. For a second Marie felt a wave of nausea, but only for a second, then she found herself stumbling drunkenly, barely able to stand. ‘Anderson? Anderson, what the hell’s going on?’ 
    He literally materialised around her, and it was a good thing. She wouldn’t have made it back to the bed without his solid support. At first he felt like cold marble, but the hard muscle of his embrace warmed almost instantly to body temperature.
    ‘What the hell are you doing here? Who was that?’ She slapped his hands away once she was settled onto the bed. ‘You think just because you’re a ghost you have the right to come and go as you please and materialise when you want and make things cold and scare me and, and, and fuck me.’ She bit back an angry sob.
    He pulled away slightly and folded his hands in his lap, sitting there on the edge of