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become Sunny. An executive type, who’d been sitting with another man at a table, came up to the bar, taking the stool next to her. As the bartender mixed his drink, they joked about the fact that he just couldn’t stay away from his customary stool, and that he would have to reclaim it as soon as his client left. The man left an empty glass on the bar. When the bartender turned, Rowenna confiscated the glass. She gave the glass to Joe that evening, and one thing led to another, until Joe had a suspect.
    It turned out that the man was a broker from Sunny’s firm and had been skimming profits from his partners. Sunny hadn’t known anything, but he was afraid she did and had been the one to fire her. Angry, she had threatened him at the bar, convincing him that she really did know what he was up to, and he had panicked, following her, picking up a knife on his way past the bar, where the bartender had left it after slicing lemons.
    After that, Joe had decided that she had psychic abilities. It wasn’t true, but she hadn’t been able to convince him of that. It was a talent to get into the head of another person, she admitted, but there was nothing mysterious about it. After that, he often came to her for help on puzzling cases, but she made him swear that he wouldn’t mention her name to the press. Some of the other guys at the station knew that he consulted her, but he kept any mention of psychic ability out of it, so no one really worried about it and they all liked her.
    She hoped she would be able to help them find Jeremy’s friend, even though she knew how he would react if she were brought into the investigation.
    She felt pathetic, like a lapdog hoping for a sign of approval.
    Rowenna stood up and brushed her hair, trying to imagine being Mary Johnstone. A woman with a husband who loved her but had cheated on her. A husband who was trying to rebuild their marriage. Someone she really loved.
    She hadn’t walked out on him. And this wasn’t a practical joke; she wasn’t pretending to disappear to get even with him for his transgressions.
    She closed her eyes. She knew the cemetery, and she could see it plainly in her mind’s eye. She felt the sea breeze that came in from the water, cool now, with the touch of fall. She could see the fallen leaves in their brilliant colors.
    As she stood there, “becoming” Mary, soaking in the atmosphere of the cemetery and the beauty of the day, she was startled by a wall of sheer black settling over her vision.
    And once again she saw the cornfields that had so terrified her in her dream.
    Crows shrieked, as she ran through the corn. She wasn’t a child, and she wasn’t Mary. She was herself, an adult, running and running, seeing the scarecrows towering above the fields, running toward the one scarecrow that terrified her the most.
    And there was something beyond. No, some one . A figure in the distance, clad in a dark cape, nothing more than darkness amid shadow…
    The Harvest Man.
    There was a sharp knock at her door. It was as startling as an alarm bell.
    Her eyes flew open, and the cornfields vanished. She realized that she was shaking, that her hands were clenched at her sides, her palms damp.
    â€œRowenna?”
    Jeremy Flynn was here to pick her up. And she was glad, and not only because she was going to have one more chance to spend time with him.
    She’d been afraid to reach the scarecrow in the cornfield.
    No, not afraid. She had been terrified.

3
    H e could tell immediately that Rowenna was tense when she opened the door. He might not have a psychic bone in his body, but he could read the strain in her features and the tic that pulsed rapidly at her throat. And he noted the change in her expression, from something white and frightened to a false, tight smile when she greeted him.
    â€œHi. Hey, I’m sorry you had to come for me. I could have driven out myself,” she said. “I just need,