Tess cleared her throat. "Kitty, oh, kitty, where are you?"

Nothing.

"Tippy Tail?"

A moan of a meow sounded from deeper within the cellar. Tess walked over to a dark doorway adjoining the laundry room. She held up the lantern, and swore under her breath when she realized it was a dirt cellar. She could see the outlines of heating ducts, pipes, piles of junk.

"Damn. Come on, cat, don't you want to let me take you home?"

It was pitch-dark in the dirt cellar, utterly black, with no windows at all. Tess had newfound respect for Davey Ahearn and the forty years he'd spent going in and out of places like this to fix people's plumbing.

She tilted her lantern, its light striking more cobwebs. "Man, Davey, never mind snakes. I bet you know your spiders."

But thoughts of him and the way he'd doubted her, what she knew he'd say if he could see her now, rekindled her resolve. She proceeded.

It was a dirt floor, silty, cool and a dull brown. The foundation walls were stone. It was like a cave. As she picked her way deeper into the old dirt cellar, Tess could see the outlines of the trapdoor overhead, light from the kitchen angling through the narrow gaps. She made out the ladder hooked to the ceiling. There was no way. No damn way.

A naked, dusty lightbulb was screwed into a socket in the ceiling, and she had to put her hand through thick cobwebs to reach the string. The bulb gave off a dull, yellowed light. She saw a bunch of dead flies caught in a cobweb.

Pipes and heating ducts hung from the low ceiling, and there was a furnace, a pump, piles of castoff furniture, buckets, old brooms. Nasty.

The cat meowed again, softly.

"You'd better be a cat." Tess touched the cell phone on her hip, just to reassure herself. "Tippy Tail, don't you want to call it a night and come on out?"

She had three choices. One, call it a night herself and turn up the volume on her white-noise machine. Two, get help from the neighbors. Three, proceed.

At least she wasn't worried about coming upon Jedidiah Thorne. If she were a ghost, she'd find a better place to hang out than down here.

She hit her shin on a rusted bucket. "Ouch-damn it." But she checked herself, keeping her tone cajoling, slightly high-pitched. She didn't want to scare the cat. "Come on, kitty." She felt silly. She'd never had a cat, but one ex-boyfriend had talked to his Siamese this way, so it had to work. "Have you had your babies? Couldn't you find a nice place? I mean, Tippy Tail, this is a dungeon."

Tess coughed, resisted the urge to spit. Dirt and dust seemed to invade her eyes, her nostrils, her throat. She pulled her shirt up over her mouth and pushed farther into the cellar, away from the light-bulb and laundry room.

It was so damn dark, even with her lantern and the lightbulb.

"The hell with it. Tippy Tail, you are on your own."

She pulled on the string, and the lightbulb went off.

The cat meowed again, pitifully, and Tess couldn't abandon her without one more try. The animal was somewhere close, very close. Tess sighed and shone the lantern into a corner piled with old furniture, none of which looked worth saving. There were dining-room chairs, a metal kitchen table, a couple of old nightstands too rickety even for the country look she planned for the carriage house if she kept it. She spotted an iron bed frame that might have possibilities.

Her light hit a pair of golden eyes, and she had to stifle a startled yell. "Well, there you are."

The cat was out of reach, tucked amidst old rags and junk in the absolute farthest corner of the old cellar. Tess couldn't tell if the presumed Tippy Tail had had her kittens. She leaned over a nightstand for a better look, trying not to spook the cat with her lantern.

Suddenly the nightstand gave way. Tess lost her balance, her lantern flying out of her hand, her right arm following the crashing nightstand while the rest of her went sprawling in the opposite direction. She jerked her arm free, but her momentum pitched her backward onto the bed frame.

She landed on her back on the dirt floor.

"Oh, gross!"

And painful. She hurt just above her hip where the bed frame had dug in. She pushed it away, scrambling onto her knees and reaching for the lantern. She was disgusted, shuddering at the thought of what she might be kneeling in. Cobwebs, decayed animal droppings.

She got to her feet, ignoring the pain in her hip, and pointed the light back toward the corner. She was breathing hard, beyond repulsed.

The cat was gone. The commotion must have frightened her off.

Tess was in no mood. "Tough, kitty. It didn't do much for me, either." She felt her hip. No blood. Probably just bruised. The pain subsided, slowly. "Tippy Tail?"

Her cell phone was missing, too. It must have gone flying at the same time she had. She brought the lantern around, searching for cat and cell phone.

She spotted the phone in the dirt under the bed frame.

But no cat.

She wasn't about to continue the night without a phone. Ignoring her bruises and scrapes, she lifted the bed frame and reached down into the dirt. "Just don't think," she muttered.

Her light caught something. She wasn't sure what, but her response was visceral, almost primal. Adrenaline pumped into her bloodstream, and her muscles tightened, every fiber of her body and soul urging her to run.

Bones.

Her mind registered what the rest of her already knew she had seen.

Bones.

And not rat bones. Human bones.

No. This was not possible. She was imagining things because she was totally grossed out from falling onto the dirt floor.

She steadied her lantern for another look. "Jesus."

It was a human skeleton. A skull, right there in the dirt under the bed frame. She must have dislodged the shallow grave when she'd taken her spill.

Well, it wasn't a real skeleton. It couldn't be. Some weird doctor or mad scientist must have lived here, had himself a little fun. It could not be real.

The skull looked real.

"'Alas, poor Yorick.'" Her voice was a rasping, dust-choked whisper, and she couldn't breathe. She coughed, sick to her stomach. "Holy shit."

She was blinking rapidly, unable to get a decent breath. Her heartbeat was wild. She took a step backward, then another, then turned and ran.

When she reached the laundry room, she screamed. It was a cathartic scream, no holds barred, loud and deep and unrepressed. When she finished, she shuddered. "Damn."

She was shaking now, and she flipped off the light and stumbled up the bulkhead steps, just managing to hold on to her lantern. "Holy shit."

A cat having kittens. Cobwebs. A spooky, dark, old cellar.

And a skeleton.

"My God."

She didn't even sound like herself. She charged out into the cool, clear, clean night air and slammed the bulkhead door shut as fast as she could, as if the skeleton might swoop up out of there.

She breathed deeply. Lilacs tinged with ocean salt. The wind was calmer. She breathed again.

"Ike-Jesus, what the hell was that?"

She was drenched in sweat, shaking, coughing dust and God only knew what, and she breathed again, trying to calm herself.

She had no idea what to do. Call the police? Her father? Davey? What did she know about the Beacon-by-the-Sea police? She was alone up here in a strange town, at night. Susanna would come in a flash. Her ex-husband was a Texas Ranger, her parents both in law enforcement.

No. Tess shook her head, breathing more slowly now, more deeply. She must have imagined the skeleton-or, with her vivid imagination, turned something innocent into a skull. This place had been in the Beacon Historic Project's hands for five years before Ike had turned it over to her. Surely they'd have noticed if a damn skeleton was buried in the cellar.