Chapter One<br >The wind howled aiad the ra~ pound~. A loose<br >shutter siappezl against the outside of the house<br >somewhere， bangh~g out an irregular， uneasy rhyt!~l.<br > Sask.ia shivereA. She switched on yet another lm~ap<br >in the parlor， but it didn t help. It was already down~<br >fight spookLv around here， mad the s，6ance hadn t even<br >begun.<br > "I th)~k we may be having a hurricane，" she said<br >uneasily， as she peered out the french doors into the<br >sto~. But all she could see was a gray wa!l of raN，<br >slashi~lg almost sidewaya as it beat on ~he gtlasso<br > What made it even more frightening was that she<br >had never !ived on the coast before， she didn t k~o，，v<br >what precautions she ought to .be tatting. Saskia<br >w/shed， not for the first time， that the house were more<br > She w~n t at all sure the roof wouldn t ~qy fight off，<br >or the wN1s cave ~， or the newly repaired north t-~wer<br >tumble to the ground under this kind on onslaught.<br >Her renovation plans had yielded ple~Pj of bills， a!l<br >