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“Gaelic,” she replied. “It’s a wee spell for protecting the house.”

“Does it work?”

“Aye.” A secretive smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Sit ye down and have some tea. Do you take milk? Sugar?”

Usually I didn’t take tea at all. I preferred coffee strong and black. But when in Rome…

I told her I’d take the tea black. Balancing the cup and saucer in one hand, trying not to miss the convenience of a mug, I took a cookie from the plate she offered. The cookie tasted of real butter and rich dark chocolate. I licked my lips. No store on earth sold cookies this good.

“Did you bake them yourself?” I asked.

Mrs. Ferguson leaned toward me and whispered, “Can ye keep a secret?” I assured her I could. “The brownies made them.”

I thought I understood. Girl Scouts here were sometimes referred to as Brownies. I said as much to Mrs. Ferguson but she instantly corrected me.

“Brownies,” she said, “are wee folk—you might call them elves—who live in my house and do the chores while I sleep.”

It would have been easy to dismiss Mrs. Ferguson as senile, but as a paranormal investigator I’ve seen things even I found hard to believe. So I took her at her word. Clearly someone was keeping this cottage spic and span. Maybe it was elves…I mean brownies.

“More tea?” she asked.

I declined the tea but accepted another cookie. Between mouthfuls I asked her to tell me about her dreams.

“How much has Douglas told you?” she asked.

“Just that you had the same dream three nights in a row. Something about drowning.”

The sparkle left her eyes. “Aye, that’s true,” she said. “I dreamed I was floating in the loch. The water was blissfully warm, which it never is in reality. I felt so secure and comfortable. Completely at peace. Then the water started to froth and bubble. All of a sudden it turned ice cold.

“I was sucked down, deep, deep into the black water. I couldn’t see or hear or breathe. I opened my mouth and water gushed into my lungs.”

Flipping open my notebook, I scribbled frantically, taking down every word she said.

“Was that the end of the dream?”

“Aye,” she whispered.

“And you’ve had this dream three times?”

She nodded.

“Exactly the same each time?”

“Exactly,” she said.

I thought about that for a while. “Douglas told me you’ve had other dreams that came true.”

“Only if I have the dream three times.” She continued in a singsong voice, “Dream times three, true it be.”

I looked at the tiny woman opposite me. There seemed little chance of her going swimming in the loch, which meant that her dream couldn’t possibly come true. Hoping I wouldn’t offend her, I pointed this out.

Instead of becoming defensive, which I had half expected, she leaned toward me. “Douglas hasn’t told ye much about me, has he?”

I confirmed that he hadn’t and waited for her to go on.

“Let me tell ye about the worst week of my life. Every night I dreamed about pain—down my arm, across my chest—it was agonizing. On the eighth day Edwin died of a massive heart attack. I knew it was coming but I couldn’t persuade him to see a doctor. He said he’d had more than his rightful three score and ten years—twenty-five more to be precise—and it was time to go. He even suggested we die together. We argued over that. I’m not the kind to kill myself. I’ll go when the good Lord tells me it’s time and not before.

“What I’m trying to tell ye is that, although the events in my dreams appear to be happening to me, in real life they always happen to others. Someone is going to drown in the loch. It might be Douglas or Sir Alastair or even ye, lassie, but it won’t be me.”

It wouldn’t be me either. There was no way I’d swim in the loch unless the temperature rose by at least twenty degrees, but perhaps Douglas and Sir Alastair, whoever he was, were made of sterner stuff.

“Mrs. Ferguson, I’d like to clarify a couple of things about your dream. When you felt yourself being sucked under, did it feel as though someone was pulling you under?”

“Ye mean like hands around my ankles?” She shook her head. “No, nothing like that.”

“What about something pulling you under?