"It'll be over soon," she murmured to herself. "It can't go on forever. It can't."

This very same terror had haunted her childhood, but after so many years of undisturbed sleep, Meredith had assumed she'd outgrown the nightmare. After all, she was a woman now, nearly twenty-nine years old-a woman reliving the most frightening night of her life.

While other children may have dreamed of dragons beneath the bed or cackling crones lurking in the shadows, Meredith had dreamed of Hurricane Delia. And now, with another Delia screaming outside the windows of the gray-shingled cottage, Meredith's fears had returned with such astounding clarity that she wondered if she had ever really left them behind.

"Shiver me timbers! Awwwk! Thar she blows!"

"Shut up, Ben!" Meredith whispered. The gray parrot flapped its wings, the movement eerily illuminated on the closet walls like some bizarre shadow-puppet game. The electricity had failed six hours ago and all she had to scare away the dark and her demons was an old hurricane lamp, the flame sputtering and swaying with every draft that slipped beneath the closet door.

"Would you perchance have a piece of cheese?" Ben inquired, punctuating the request with a wolf whistle and another squawk.

If she hadn't been so preoccupied with her phobias, Meredith probably would have throttled the bird then and there. First, he'd presented a recitation of every nautical cliché in the book and now, he'd started quoting his namesake, Ben Gunn from Treasure Island. But in all honesty, she was glad she didn't have to face Delia alone. She'd faced the hurricane alone when she was just a child and the experience had haunted her until the day she'd sailed away from Ocracoke Island on the Hatteras ferry.