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probably her studio. They liked to sit unblinking on the fireplace mantel, so completely motionless that visitors sometimes mistook them for oversize knickknacks.
    She smiled as she scooped up the empty plates, rinsed each one thoroughly and stashed them in the dishwasher. Then she dried her hands, crossed to the back door and peered at the dead bolt. She knew she’d locked it that morning, before leaving the house, but she’d been known to forget things, like everybody else.
    Dutifully, Melody moved on to the next item on her mental agenda—making sure the front door was secured. She’d been pretty flustered after the encounter with Spence.
    Then she examined each and every window.
    Since she worked at home, and she’d never gotten around to having an air-conditioning system installed, she often kept three or four of them open during the day, hoping to catch any stray breeze that might have swept down from the snow-crowned peaks of the Grand Tetons.
    The tour ended in Melody’s studio, her favorite part of the house.
    The space, originally the living room, wasn’t huge, but it was a great place to work, with its strategically placed skylights, built-in bookshelves and the custom-made cabinets where she stored art supplies.
    The tension seeped from her shoulders as she looked around. Some nights, unwilling to be parted from whatever project happened to be consuming her at the time, she actually slept in here, curled up on the long sofa, burrowed under the soft weight of a faded cotton coverlet, spinning straw into gold as she dreamed.
    The cats, as she’d predicted, sat side by side on the wide mantel above the fireplace, impersonating statues. Thanks to the permanent claim they’d staked to the entire surface, Melody couldn’t keep framed photographs or a nice clock or any other decorative items there, as a normal person might. She shook her head, smiling, and turned to look at the design board that took up most of the opposite wall. Every inch bristled with sketches, appointment cards, snapshots, sticky notes scribbled with reminders and ideas for new pieces of jewelry, and glossy images of watches and pendants, rings and bracelets, torn from various magazines.
    Melody would never have copied another artist’s work, but she liked to admire the really good stuff. Now and then, some aspect of a design sparked her own imagination and hurled her into a creative—okay, manic—frenzy that might last for hours or even days. She invariably emerged from these episodes with some new and totally original creation.
    When she worked, she focused almost entirely on process rather than objectives. For Melody, the magic lay in the what-ifs , the little experiments, the sheer alchemy of transforming raw materials into something beautiful, timeless and utterly unique, a piece she hoped would be treasured and eventually passed down, generation after generation.
    Tired though she felt, Melody was tempted to perch on the cushioned stool in front of her drafting table, open her sketchbook to a fresh page, pick up a pencil and see what emerged.
    Get some sleep first, counseled her practical side.
    Melody decided to take her own advice. Although she’d pulled many an all-nighter over the course of her artistic career, she did her best work after a good night’s rest.
    It was time to hit the sheets.
    Ralph, Waldo and Emerson, still sitting on the mantel, watched inscrutably as she passed, unmoving except for their eyeballs.
    Pausing to flip the light switch before leaving the room, Melody smiled again. “Hadleigh and Bex are right,” she told them. “You’re not ordinary earth cats, you’re aliens.”
    *
    S PENCE’S INNER ALARM clock woke him promptly—and completely—at four the next morning, like it always did in the summertime. In the dead of winter, he usually made it to five before his eyes flew open and stayed that way, whether he’d gotten any real rest or not.
    “Damn,” he muttered, sitting up, running the palms of