Novice

A gifted teenage law student on vacation notices her camouflaging companion acting skittish and begins to experience vivid mental images and unsettling sensations. Alone in a foreign garden and under a critical aunt's eye, she probes a developing telepathic bond with the animal, follows clues among shrubbery, and confronts a vision of a doorway and a dark interior that suggests an unseen presence. The narrative tightens around her methodical observation, mental probing, and cautious problem-solving as she seeks to identify the source of the intrusion and to assert control over an ambiguous, potentially dangerous situation.