The pleasure of your company is desired for cocktails and conversation
Eight P.M., September 4
Warrior’s Peak
You are the key. The lock awaits.

Now how weird was that? Malory asked herself, and gritted her teeth as the car shimmied in a sudden gust of wind. The way her luck was going, it was probably a scam for a pyramid scheme.

The house had been empty for years. She knew it had been purchased recently, but the details were sparse. An outfit called Triad, she recalled. She assumed it was some sort of corporation looking to turn the place into a hotel or a mini resort.

Which didn’t explain why they’d invited the manager of The Gallery but not the owner and his interfering wife. Pamela had been pretty peeved about the slight—so that was something.

Still, Malory would have passed on the evening. She didn’t have a date—just another aspect of her life that currently sucked—and driving alone into the mountains to a house straight out of Hollywood horror on the strength of an invitation that made her uneasy wasn’t on her list of fun things to do in the middle of the workweek.

There hadn’t even been a number or a contact for an R.S.V.P. And that, she felt, was arrogant and rude. Her intended response of ignoring the invitation would have been equally arrogant and rude, but James had spotted the envelope on her desk.

He’d been so excited, so pleased by the idea of her going, had pressed her to relay all the details of the house’s interior to him. And he’d reminded her that if she could discreetly drop the name of The Gallery into conversation from time to time, it would be good for business.

If she could score a few clients, it might offset the Escada mishap and the bimbo comment.

Her car chugged up the narrowing road that cut through the dense, dark forest. She’d always thought of those hills and woods as a kind of Sleepy Hollow effect that ringed her pretty valley. But just now, with the wind and rain and dark, the less serene aspects of that old tale were a little too much in evidence for her peace of mind.

If whatever was rattling in her dash was serious, she could end up broken down on the side of the road, huddled in the car listening to the moans and lashes of the storm and imagining headless horsemen while she waited for a tow truck she couldn’t afford.

Obviously, the answer was not to break down.

She thought she caught glimpses of lights beaming through the rain and trees, but her windshield wipers were whipping at the highest speed and were still barely able to shove aside the flood of rain.

As lightning snapped again, she gripped the wheel tighter. She liked a good hellcat storm as much as anyone, but she wanted to enjoy this one from someplace inside, anyplace, while drinking a nice glass of wine.

She had to be close. How far could any single road climb before it just had to start falling down the other side of the mountain? She knew Warrior’s Peak stood atop the ridge, guarding the valley below. Or lording itself over the valley, depending on your viewpoint. She hadn’t passed another car for miles.

Which only proved that anyone with half a brain wasn’t out driving in this mess, she thought.

The road forked, and the bend on the right streamed between enormous stone pillars. Malory slowed, gawked at the life-size warriors standing on each pillar. Perhaps it was the storm, the night, or her own jittery mood, but they looked more human than stone, with hair flying around their fierce faces, their hands gripping the hilts of their swords. In the shimmer of lightning she could almost see muscles rippling in their arms, over their broad, bare chests.

She had to fight the temptation to get out of the car for a closer look. But the chill that tripped down her spine as she turned through the open iron gates had her glancing back up at the warriors with as much wariness as appreciation for the skill of the sculptor.

Then she hit the brakes and fishtailed on the crushed stone of the roadbed. Her heart jammed into her throat as she stared at the stunning buck standing arrogantly a foot in front of the bumper, with the sprawling, eccentric lines of the house behind him.

For a moment she took the deer for a sculpture as well, though why any sane person would set a sculpture in the center of a driveway was beyond her. Then again, sane didn’t seem to be the operative word for anyone who would choose to live in the house on the ridge.

But the deer’s eyes gleamed, a sharp sapphire blue in the beam of her headlights, and his head with the great crowning rack turned slightly. Regally, Malory mused, mesmerized. Rain streamed off his coat, and in the next flash of light that coat seemed as white as the moon.

He stared at her, but there was nothing of fear, nothing of surprise in those glinting eyes. There was, if such things were possible, a kind of amused disdain. Then he simply walked away, through the curtain of rain, the rivers of fog, and was gone.

“Wow.” She let out a long breath, shivered in the warmth of her car. “And one more wow,” she murmured as she stared at the house.

She’d seen pictures of it, and paintings. She’d seen its silhouette hulking on the ridge above the valley. But it was an entirely different matter to see it up close with a storm raging.

Something between a castle, a fortress, and a house of horrors, she decided.

Its stone was obsidian black, with juts and towers, peaks and battlements stacked and spread as if some very clever, very wicked child had placed them at his whim. Against that rain-slicked black, long, narrow windows, perhaps hundreds of them, all glowed with gilded light.

Someone wasn’t worried about his electric bill.

Fog drifted around its base, like a moat of mist.

In the next shock of lightning, she caught a glimpse of a white banner with the gold key madly waving from one of the topmost spires.

She inched the car closer. Gargoyles hunched along the walls, crawled over the eaves. Rainwater spewed out of their grinning mouths, spilled from clawed hands as they grinned down at her.

She stopped the car in front of the stone skirt of a wide portico and considered, very seriously, turning back into the storm and driving away.

She called herself a coward, a childish idiot. She asked herself where she’d lost her sense of adventure and fun.

The insults worked well enough that she soon was tapping her fingers on the car’s door handle. At the quick rap on her window, a scream shot out of her throat.

The bony white face surrounded by a black hood that peered in at her turned the scream into a kind of breathless keening.

Gargoyles do not come to life, she assured herself, repeating the words over and over in her head as she rolled the window down a cautious half inch.