Midnight Pleasures

Dedicated with love to all the members of RavenMyst Circle, Inc.

REDE OF THE WICCAE

by Lady Gwynne Thompson as given by her grandmother, Adrianna Porter(Being Known as The Counsel of the Wise Ones)

1. Bide the Wiccan laws ye must in perfect love and perfect trust.

2. Live and let live—fairly take and fairly give.

3. Cast the Circle thrice about to keep all evil spirits out.

4. To bind the spell every time, let the spell be spake in rhyme.

5. Soft of eye and light of touch—speak little, listen much.

6. Deosil go by the waxing Moon—sing and dance the Wiccan rune.

7. Widdershins go when the Moon doth wane, and the Werewolf howls by the dread Wolfsbane.

8. When the Lady's moon is new, kiss the hand to her times two.

9. When the Moon rides at her peak, then your heart's desire seek.

10. Heed the Northwind's mighty gale—lock the door and drop the sail.

11. When the wind comes from the South, love will kiss thee on the mouth.

12. When the wind blows from the East, expect the new and set the feast.

13. When the West wind blows o'er thee, departed spirits restless be.

14. Nine woods in the Cauldron go—burn them quick and burn them slow.

15. Elder be ye Lady's tree—burn it not or cursed ye'll be.

16. When the Wheel begins to turn—let the Beltane fires burn.

17. When the Wheel has turned a Yule, light the Log and let Pan rule.

18. Heed ye flower, bush and tree—by the Lady blessed be.

19. Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone an truth ye'll know.

20. When ye have need, hearken not to other's greed.

21. With the fool no season spend or be counted as his friend.

22. Merry meet an merry part—bright the cheeks and warm the heart.

23. Mind the Threefold Law ye should—three times bad and three times good.

24. When misfortune is enow, wear the blue star on thy brow.

25. True in love ever be unless thy lover's false to thee.

26. Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill—an it harm none, do what ye will.

CHAPTER 1

The gorgeous brunette clenched her hands into fists at her sides, her torn blouse gaping just enough to reveal the swell of her artificially enhanced cleavage as her chest heaved in anger.

"You'll never get the best of me, you black-hearted Warlock!"

The Warlock, whose shirt had been conveniently ripped off during the struggle with the Enchantress, stood facing her, his clenched, just slightly unshaven jaw and black eyes flashing defiance. "Oh, but I already have," he said in a sexy growl.

"What are you waiting for? Vanquish him!" shouted the blonde, an innocent bystander whose bosom was also enhanced, exposed and heaving.

The Witch marched forward, clutching an ancient-looking book, which she had opened to a faded parchment page. Tossing her hair and lifting her chin, she read aloud in a rather tedious monotone, " 'By your own power of dark and fear, Warlock, you are out of here!'"

The Warlock flung his arms over his face and staggered backward, through the breakaway front door. His exit would be much more impressive once they added in the special effects, Melissa supposed. There would probably be flashes of fire, whirlwinds of smoke, and a thundering roar. She'd been watching this show for a while now. There were always flashes of fire, whirlwinds of smoke, and thundering roars.

The director yelled, "Cut!" and the others in the room broke into spontaneous applause.

Melissa pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. "That was awful. It was horrible. My Goddess, where are you people getting this stuff?"

"From the writers," a deep voice said.

She turned and looked at the guy who, she thought vaguely, should have been playing the sexy "warlock." His eyes were as black as coal and she felt them when they touched her. They made her shiver, those eyes. She tried to look elsewhere, to notice his careless hair, a little too long, completely unstyled, or his clothes—the way the black polo shirt strained against the push of his chest or the way the jeans hugged his thighs. But no, she couldn't focus on anything but those eyes.

"Are you new on the set?" he asked.

"Um, not yet." She swallowed hard, wet her lips, told herself to work harder on forming coherent sentences, and finally thrust out a hand. "I'm Melissa St. Cloud. I have an appointment with Alexander Quinn."

He lifted his brows. "Tell me it's about the tech consultant position."

"It's about the tech consultant position."

He smiled, a slow, knowing smile. His eyes seemed unable to let go of hers.

She tipped her head to one side, wondering who the hell he was. A stand-in for the dark warlock? The actors were already heading their separate ways; the two starlets didn't speak so much as a civil word as they split. But then, never breaking eye contact, the gorgeous man yelled, "Everyone, get back here. I want you to hear this!"

Muttering, they gathered around. He nodded at Melissa. "Now, tell us what was wrong with that scene."

The brunette shot her daggers. "Who is this person?"

"Just be quiet and listen, Rita," he said in that deep, authoritative voice that rubbed all Melissa's nerve endings until they quivered. God, she'd never been so turned on by a man in her life. There was something about him. He looked at her, touched her with his eyes. She shivered with awareness. "Go on. What was wrong with the scene?"

She swallowed the dryness in her throat. "Well… that's just not how it works. Reading a line from a book, no matter how old and dusty it might be, is not how one casts a spell. And a warlock is not a male Witch."

The actresses exchanged looks of disbelief; then they turned on the man, waiting. "Alex, just what the hell is going on here?" the blonde asked.

Alex? So he was Alexander Quinn, the creator-slash-executive producer? Why hadn't he said so?

"This is Melissa St. Cloud," he told them. "She's our new technical consultant."

"On what?" the brunette asked.

"On Witchcraft."

All eyes turned toward Melissa. She felt herself shrinking a little. The actresses were both a good six inches taller than she was and built of little more than skin, bone, and breast implants.

"You're an expert on Witchcraft!" the brunette asked. "Isn't that kind of like being an expert on, oh, I don't know, the Tooth Fairy?"

The others laughed. Alex just watched Melissa, as if waiting to see how she would handle herself.

Melissa closed her eyes, got in touch with her inner bitch, and stood a little straighter. "I've been involved in the Pagan community and the study of Witchcraft for fifteen years," she told them. "I'm a High Priestess, a licensed minister, and I hold a Ph.D. in religious studies. I teach Alternative Religions classes at UCLA one semester a year, and I've consulted on seven books on the subject. Any more questions?"

The actresses rolled their eyes, sighed, studied their nails. They did not, however, speak up again.

"Ladies," Alex said, "the network has been inundated with mail complaining that we are getting it wrong. It seems there are a lot of people out there these days who take this kind of stuff rather seriously. In today's market, the viewers are more savvy than ever before. If we want to suspend their disbelief, we have to be as accurate as possible."

"Do you hear what you're saying?" asked the blonde. "How can you be accurate about something that doesn't exist?'

Melissa sent her a swift glance. "Oh, it exists."

"Oh, please. Fine, it exists. And you're a real-live modern-day Witch. So why don't you prove it? Levitate one of us or make something disappear." She crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them up even higher. "Well? Go on, we're all waiting."

Melissa turned to Alex. "That," she said, "is precisely the kind of misinformation that's messing up your show." Then she glanced back at the girl. "But somehow, I don't think explaining all of this to a bunch of actors is going to get us anywhere. After all, they only recite the lines the writers give them and follow the director's orders." She returned her attention to Alex, dismissing the actresses without another word. "We should probably schedule a sit-down meeting with the writing team."

He smiled very slowly, his eyes warming. "You want it, you've got it." He nodded to the others, a signal that they could leave; then he took her arm.

When his hand closed around her elbow, she shivered with an inexplicable tingle of pure sensation. My God, she had it bad. And the guy was her new boss.

Not a good situation.

He led her to a small room on the set, created by freestanding partitions with a door in them—no ceiling. Inside was a desk strewn with piles and piles of paper, a coffeemaker, and a chair. He nodded to the chair. "Sit."

She sat.

He perched on the edge of the desk, close to her. Really close. "Those credentials you were reciting in there—they all legit?"

She blinked her eyes. "You didn't already know? It was all in my résumé—I sent it in with the job application."

"Oh. Right."

"You did read it, didn't you?"

He looked away. "I got a pile of résumés. Looked them over, but after a while they all blend together. I had my secretary set up a bunch of interviews, of which you are the first."

"But… you hired me."

"Yeah." Again he couldn't seem to break eye contact, though he did at length. He reached for a piece of paper and a pen. "Jot down your name, address, Social. I'll get you on the payroll this afternoon."

She jotted while he watched her every move. When she finished, he took the sheet, looked at it, then at her.

"Anything else?" she asked.

He licked his lips. "Yeah." He got up from the desk, stood next to her, and bent low to pull open several drawers. His forearm brushed her thigh and she closed her eyes and wondered if an attraction this potent could possibly be for real or if she'd accidentally eaten a dose of Spanish Fly with her morning granola. This close, she could smell him—the soap he used, no cologne. He wasn't a cologne kind of man. And she could feel him—his body heat.

He finally straightened with a six-inch-thick stack of pages, which he handed to her. "This is the story arc for the season, along with the breakdowns for each episode. You're going to need to get familiar with it. Fast."

She took the heavy stack, rose slowly to her feet.

"I'll be in touch later, to let you know when we've scheduled your meeting with the writing team. You have any questions?"

She had a thousand, but right now she just wanted to get out of there. She couldn't think straight this close to the man. So she just shook her head from side to side.

"Good. Go on home, then. Read. I'll see you later."

She turned and left the studio. And it wasn't until she was in her VW Bug and heading home that she realized she had actually landed the job of her dreams. Smiling widely, she thanked the Goddess and kept on driving.

Alex figured his mind settled back into working order when she got about fifty yards away from him. He sank into his chair. It was still warm from her body. "What the hell was that?"

He didn't get an answer. He didn't believe in magic. And it was a good thing, or he'd have thought the woman had cast some kind of a spell on him. And yet, he had no doubt he'd chosen the right person for the job. The show—his creation—was in trouble. The ratings were dropping, the actresses were feuding, the sponsors were fading, and the right-wing zealot groups were boycotting the sponsors. He was no Hollywood insider, but he was sure as hell swimming with the sharks now.

The charm he wore around his neck burned against his skin. A deep whisper echoed in his mind.

Perfect. It'll all be perfect. You have the Midas touch, you know.

He frowned, looking around the office. But he saw no one there. It must have been a snippet of dialogue from one of the nearby soundstages. Sounded excellent. Creepy, with an otherworldly hollowness to it. They must be working on a horror flick or something.

He leaned back in his chair and turned on the radio to drown out the noise, and then he tried again to figure out what it was about the woman that had hit him so powerfully.

CHAPTER 2

Melissa drove to the beach house, an hour away. She had rented it for the summer, with the option to buy if things worked out for her here. And it looked as if they were about to work out Big-Time.

A little voice whispered misgivings—it wasn't like her to experience such intense feelings for a man she'd just met. It was more than unlike her; it was unprecedented. And she had the niggling feeling there was something more going on with Alex than was apparent—something hidden beneath the surface. Something… unnatural.

Her body's reactions to him puzzled her—simultaneous chills and heat, fire and ice, assaulted her at once. She was curious, wary, and attracted.

And she knew better than to feel any of those things. The man was her employer! She had to get her head straight. She had to get to the beach.

She loved the sea, the shore. The East Coast had always beckoned her, touched something deep inside her, and been her home.

The Pacific had a different energy to it. A darker, older feel. As well it should. The sun set here. It rose in the east. The two seas were opposites and yet they were reflections of the same cosmic whole, the great pouring sea of death and rebirth.

She left her VW Bug in the driveway and hurried into the house she was quickly coming to love, peeling off her clothes on the way through. Then she stepped into the shower to rinse away the day's stress and the distinct weight of negative energy she felt clinging to her. She scrubbed it away, along with her makeup, her hair spray, and the frustration of coming face-to-face with the stereotypes that drove her nuts; let all of that baggage swirl down the drain.

When she stepped out again she felt measurably lighter. She pulled on a loose-fitting cotton kaftan of soothing turquoise, and nothing else. Then she padded barefoot through the small house and out the sliding doors in back. There was a natural stone shelf there, almost like a homegrown patio, and at its edge, steps led down to a tiny section of private beach. The beach house was modest. It was the beach that made the place valuable—far more than she could have afforded for much longer, had it not been for this new job.

The strip of beach was secluded, with the house at its back, groups of towering boulders flanking it, and the sea creating its fourth border. That sandy enclave had become her haven, her refuge, and her temple.

Here she could work magic. And she had no need for special effects.

Alex looked at the address he'd copied down, then up at the beach house. The numbers matched. He had the right place.

He was fascinated by the woman, the Witch. Mesmerized, maybe. He couldn't get her off his mind after she left, and though he'd fought the demanding urge for a while—a token fight, really—he'd ended up giving in and driving out here. He didn't feel as if he had much choice in the matter. And it wasn't just due to the insane events of the past few weeks of his life, either. There was something about her that lured him, pulled him, like gravity.

She lived on the beach. It seemed fitting. He thought of legends of sirens luring sailors to their doom and wondered if this was the same sort of pull those sailors felt.

He climbed the shallow landscaped steps to the front door and knocked. Then he waited, but there was no answer. A car was in the driveway, but no one seemed to be in the house.

And then the wind picked up and he heard it: a woman's voice, lifted in an enchanting, mesmerizing, haunting song and coming from the beach around back. He followed the sound, picking up the words as he went around the beach house.

"Come, Mother Ocean; come, Lady Night; come, Warrior Woman; come, bring your might."

He found the steps in the back and stared down at the woman on the beach below. And that thing, that powerful attraction he'd felt before, washed over him again like an ocean wave washing over the shore. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. He could only stand there, looking on, wondering what it was about her that sent his head spinning and tied his stomach in knots.

She stood in the sand, arms raised high above her head, a flowing blue dress dancing around her legs in the ocean breeze. There was a small fire crackling in front of her, its light melding with the orange glow of the sun, as it set over the ocean, to paint her body and hair in brushstrokes of bronze and yellow and red.

"Come, Moonlight Maiden; come, Graveyard Crone; come, Dark Enchantress, Goddess of the Foam."

Her voice seemed to grow hypnotic, more mystical with every verse she sang. As the sun sank over the sea and darkness gathered like a blanket, surrounding the firelight and the woman in its center, he noticed for the first time other tiny lights—candles, planted in the sand. Four of them, one just ahead of her, toward the sea, one to either side of her, and one behind her. And there was something on the sand in between them, leading from one dancing candle to the next in a gentle arc so that a circle was formed. As he was drawn ever closer, he squinted. Seashells. The circle was made of seashells.

"Come to thy priestess; come, fierce and strong; come, live within me; come, we are one!"

The words wound themselves around his mind. The final three kept echoing in an ever-fading whisper, and he found himself unsure whether it was real or some trick of the night. His knees bent, without his permission, and he sank into the sand, watching her in silence. The sun breathed its last and vanished beneath the waves at the same moment he sank down.

Slowly, she lowered her arms. Her hair danced in the wind that was suddenly more powerful than before. She stood for a long time, facing the sea, meditating or pondering in silence. Sometimes, he thought he saw her lips moving, as if she were speaking to someone. Time ticked by, but he didn't make a sound. He couldn't bring himself to interrupt, wasn't even certain he would be able to if he tried. What she was doing seemed… sacred. And he got the feeling he was witnessing one of the mysteries he had come here hoping to solve. So he watched as she moved around the circle, wafting incense smoke, tossing something—a guttering stone, he thought—into the sea. Finally, she straightened and rifted her arms again.

"Thank you, my lady. Merry meet and merry part. With me always, in my heart. Hail and farewell."

He could see something leave her body, perhaps just tension or tautness. Or maybe something more. The glow of the firelight seemed to dim just a little, but that could have been his imagination. She walked forward then, to one of the four candles, held her arms out wide, and slowly drew them together, as if closing a pair of curtains. She said something too softly for him to hear as she snuffed the flame, stood still for a moment, then repeated the action at the next candle, and then the next, and the last. Then she walked around the circle of seashells with her palm flat toward the sand, and finally she moved out into the foamy water that washed gently up onto the shore, knelt there, and pressed her palms into the wet sand. A wave rolled in, washing up to her elbows, soaking the dress where she knelt. Yet she remained until it seemed she had finished whatever it was she was doing. Rising, she brushed the sand away from her hands and her dress, turned, and looked him straight in the eye.

"Thank you for not interrupting."

He blinked, surprised. "You knew I was here the whole time," he said, and it wasn't really a question. He had a feeling this woman was as aware of him as he was of her.

She smiled. The firelight on her face did something to her eyes. She'd been beautiful to him when he'd seen her at the studio today. Beautiful, though it made no sense. It wasn't on the surface, certainly not when she'd stood flanked by two of the most glamorous beauties in the business, wearing a rather conservative skirt and blazer, her hair in a bun, her face lightly made up. His sense of her beauty had been based on something inside her, something not seen.

Now, it was more. Now, like this, she was stunning. Inside and out.

"You can come out by the fire, if you like. I've already taken up the circle." As she spoke, she walked back toward the fire. "Grab those two folding chairs and bring them along, will you?"

He glanced to his left, saw two beach chairs sitting there. He picked them up and carried them with him across the sand to where she waited, setting them near the fire.

She sat down, and he did the same. He couldn't seem to stop looking at her, trying to nail what it was that drew him. There was something wildly attractive about her. Forbidden and natural. Her eyebrows were fuller than most women wore them these days, and her hair—God, her hair was everywhere. Untamed, long and wavy, its color a lustrous honey-tinted brown that glowed bronze in the firelight. Her feet were bare, coated in damp sand. Her breasts were heavy and unbound underneath the loose, flowing dress she wore. He liked that best of all. The weight of them. He wanted to touch, to feel.

"I'm surprised to see you here," she said. Was she nervous? She should be. He didn't know what the hell this was, but it made him nervous, too.

"I told you I'd see you later. I always say what I mean." He reached up, impulsively, to brush a bit of sand from her cheek. But the moment his fingers touched her skin, she stiffened and pulled back, her brows drawing together in a frown.

"I'm sorry." He drew his hand away, held it in midair.

She only blinked, looking him over. "It's not you—it's… Stand up a second, Alex."

He was puzzled, but he rose. She did, too, going closer to the fire and bending to pick up a large shell with some dried leaves inside. She took a flaming stick from the fire and touched it to the leaves. They blazed a little. She blew gently until the flames died, and smoke billowed. Then she moved toward him, knelt in front of him, and blew the smoke at his legs and feet.

Alex closed his eyes in a mingling chaos of anguish and desire. God, she was killing him.

She moved behind him, still blowing. Then higher, her breaths pushing smoke toward his thighs and buttocks. She came around to the front of him again, blowing gently at his groin.

"Jesus," he muttered, and his hands twitched, wanting to bury themselves in her hair. He fought the urge and hoped she didn't notice how hard he was getting, but hell, he was only human, and there was an earthy wild woman kneeling in front of him blowing on his crotch.

She stood, still moving around him, still blowing gently, wafting smoke over his belly and chest, his back and sides, his arms and shoulders, his neck, face, and head.

When she finished, she blew a little smoke at his chair and the area where he'd been sitting. "Better?" she asked.

He looked down at himself, frowning. When he managed to look past the fact that he was more turned on than he'd been in a decade, he realized he felt… different. As if he'd just stepped out of the shower. And the dull ache that had been knotting his lower back all day was gone. "Yeah," he said. "I do feel better."

"You should. You were practically reeking with negative energy."

"Yeah?" He sniffed his shirtsleeve. "And now I'm reeking of… ?"

"Sage." She smiled at him, sitting down in her chair, nodding for him to do the same. "Who have you been hanging around with lately, anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "Well, I'd hate to think all that darkness in your aura was coming from you. It couldn't, or I wouldn't be so—" She bit her lip, stopped herself. "You must be picking it up somewhere else."

"You wouldn't be so… ?" He searched her eyes and wondered which one of them was going to be the first to admit that they were each sitting here thinking about ripping the other's clothes off.

She averted her gaze. "Nothing. I just… nothing."

He licked his lips. No, he wouldn't bring it up. Not just yet, he decided. "Could it be the actresses?"

"They're nasty, self-centered, and vain, but I don't think they're malicious. This feels… dark."

He shrugged, averting his eyes, ignoring the warning bells going off in his mind. He'd been feeling the same way himself for weeks now. As if there was some dark shadow clinging to him like a parasite. He was tired, moody, didn't feel well. He kept thinking it might be the house. But damn, he didn't want it to be the house.

Time to change the subject. "So what were you doing when I arrived? Magic?"

"Not really."

It was not the specific answer he would have liked. "Listen, you have the job. This isn't a test. But I want to know more."

"About what I was doing when you arrived?"

He held her eyes. "For starters." She just looked at him, waiting, as if she knew he wasn't being honest.

"All right," he admitted. "What I really want is the truth. What really goes on?"

Her brows rose. He decided he liked them. You couldn't tell what a woman was thinking when her eyebrows had been reduced to a pair of plucked, waxed, colored, and extremely thin arches. Hers were expressive. Now they were expressing—what? Surprise?

"What really goes on?" she repeated.

"Not the kinds of things you would normally reveal to an outsider. I want the truth. I want to know what it's really like. Ritual magic. Covens. Spells. Curses. All of it."

She lowered her eyes. "I'm not sure you have the stomach for it, Alex."

His stomach knotted up when her lips formed his name and her voice spoke it. He tried to shake off the feeling. What he was asking her was important. More important than she could know. "I have the stomach for anything you can dish out."

She tipped her head to one side, meeting his eyes once again. Hers glittered with something close to anger. "Are you sure? We're talking about some pretty heavy stuff here. Bloodletting. Ritual orgies. Animal sacrifice. The Scourge."

He held her eyes, his own unflinching. "I can handle it."

She pursed her lips and turned her head away. "We don't do any of that stuff, Alex. My God, where do you get those ideas? This is a spiritual belief system, not a cult." Lowering her head, she shook it slowly. "You created the show—are you telling me you didn't do any research at all?"

"Of course I did. I just—lately I've learned some things that contradict what I thought I knew."

"From whom?"

He shook his head. He wasn't going there, not with her.

"Tell you what," she said. "I'll loan you a book or two, so you can read up on the subject. And then we'll talk some more. All right?"

She's lying.

He frowned, ignoring that whisper in his mind. "You're going to give me one of those light, fluffy, 'harm none' books, aren't you?"

"Harm none is one of the core values of the Craft, Alex."

"So you all keep telling me."

"We all?" she asked. Then she frowned. "You sound as if you've been doing some digging on your own."

He nodded, getting to his feet, frustrated and angry. Even more angry that he didn't want to leave this spot, this woman. He wanted to stay. For her, not the information he sought. "I really hoped you'd be different. Willing to tell me the truth," he said. "I'm disappointed that you're only giving me the same party line as the rest of the so-called Witches in town."

"So-called?" She got up as well. "Maybe if you told me just what it is you're looking for?"

He sighed, shaking his head. "Look, Melissa, not every character in this show is a do-gooder. I mean, we need opposing forces. Villains. The polar opposite of good Witches who play around with white light and moonbeams."

She stood very still, pinning him to the spot with her eyes. "Alex, don't mess with the dark stuff. You don't want that kind of energy clinging to you, trust me on this." Then she frowned. "You've already been messing with it, haven't you? That's where all that negative energy came from."

He held her gaze. Eyes like black velvet, deep and dark and potent. "Don't be so dramatic. It's not as if any of this is for real."

She closed her eyes as if praying for patience. "It's for real." Her words emerged as a whisper, one that sent shivers of reaction creeping up his spine, into his nape, tingling along his scalp. But not so much as when she opened her eyes again and they locked onto his, held them.

Something moved between them. Some energy he couldn't have put a name to even if he'd tried. It tagged him, bodily, so much so that he swayed forward. He gripped her upper arms, and she tipped her face up. And then he lowered his head to kiss her.

She turned her face away, so his mouth only grazed her cheek.

"I don't… I can't…" She drew a breath. "Go, please," she whispered.

God, the woman pulled him in like gravity. What the hell was that? Since when did he hire a woman he knew nothing about and proceed to make a move on her?

He turned and hurried back up the stone steps, around the little beach house, and to his car. He would get his answers, just apparently not from her.

He drove back to the gloomy mansion that belonged to him, pulled into the driveway, and sat there for a long moment, just staring up at the huge granite stones of the place, thinking about the events of the past several weeks, as if thinking about them, analyzing them, would cause them to make sense. They didn't. They hadn't then, and they wouldn't now.

And now there was one more inexplicable event unfolding in his life. An attraction to a woman he'd just met that felt like the most powerful force in the entire universe. God, maybe he needed therapy.

CHAPTER 3

Mists rose from the river far below, engulfing the suspension bridge and the couple who stood upon it. Melissa stared through the rising mists at the man, who bore a striking resemblance to Alexander Quinn, except that he wore black ritual robes and an inverted pentacle of solid gold with diamonds winking at each of its five points. The woman stood near the railing, her back to the man, her flowing white dress dancing in the mist-laden breeze like a living thing. Her wild golden hair was damp with the kiss of the moist air. Melissa couldn't see her face, but she knew the woman was weeping.

The man spoke, though his lips never moved. Go on. Do it. Do it, now! He pulled something from his pocket, a small white-robed doll with hair like the woman's. Do it! He shoved the doll toward the railing.

The woman climbed over it.

"No," Melissa whispered. "No, wait."

But neither of them could hear her. It was as if she weren't really there.

The man moved closer to the rail, held the doll out over the water. As he did, a pair of hands, strong astral hands, attached to nothing and no one, appeared behind the woman, hovering above her shoulders.

The woman turned, as if suddenly aware of the presence, and Melissa gasped as she saw her face. It was almost like looking into a mirror.

Do it! the man commanded, and then he flung the doll over the rail.

The hands closed on the woman and pushed her.

She fell silently, her white dress wafting behind her. Like an angel cast from heaven, she spiraled downward. The water opened where she plunged into it, then closed around her, swallowing her down.

Melissa screamed.

The sound of her own voice shocked her awake, and she found herself sitting bolt upright in her own bed. Her skin was damp with sweat, her heart pounding, as she looked around the room. But it was real. She was there, in the beach house, and the rest had just been a dream.

"No," she said softly. "Not a dream. Something else—a prophecy, or a memory, or something—it was too vivid to be just a dream."

She glanced at her nightstand. The clock read 2:00 a.m. A soft, steady beep emanated from somewhere in the living room, startling her for just a second, before she recognized the familiar sound of her answering machine. Somehow, she'd been too deep in the vision to have heard the telephone ringing. Sighing, she got out of the bed, padded into the living room, hit the playback button, and then shivered at the sound of Alexander Quinn's deep voice.

"We're meeting with the writers in the morning, Melissa. Ten a.m., my office." The machine beeped once more to signal the end of the message and then went silent.

Pushing a hand through her hair, she wondered if she should just quit now and have it over with. She wandered through the living room, toward the table in the back where she'd dropped the script he'd given her the day before. As she did, she looked up, through the glass doors.

And she saw something on the beach—a shape, with long golden hair and a flowing white gown.

Her heart tripped and she lunged forward, hands pressing to the glass, eyes straining. What the hell… ?

There was nothing there. Maybe it had just been a reflection, a trick of the moonlight on the water, or a stray light on her glass doors. But she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she'd just seen the woman from her dream, standing in the sacred space of Melissa's own circle.

She checked her locks, just in case. Then she picked up the manuscript and took it with her, back to her bed, where she felt safe.

She wanted to do this job right—and for more reasons than just the money. She'd made a promise to her Goddess that if she could land this job, she would do it justice, set the record straight on prime-time network television. For her Craft, for her fellow Witches, for all those who'd died due to ignorance in the past.

She couldn't quit. Maybe all of this was some kind of a test.

It was not easy, forcing Alex and that troubling dream from her mind. Something was going on with him—with the two of them, maybe. She felt it in her gut, and she never ignored her intuition. It was usually dead-on. She was as afraid of him as she was drawn to him. She knew he felt that attraction, too. The air between them practically sparked with it when he was close to her.

What was the dream then? A warning? Was Alex to become her lover or her killer? Or both? Or was the dream just a manifestation of her own fears of failure and of this sudden, potent desire?

She couldn't dismiss him or the questions from her mind, only push them to the back long enough for her to do her work. She spent the rest of the night with her copy of the season's story arc, a stack of episode-by-episode breakdowns, and a red pen, which ran out of ink, so she had to finish in blue.

She wasn't exactly fresh when she finished at 7:45 a.m. She spent a half hour doing yoga, fifteen minutes in the shower, and just had time for her morning ritual before she had to begin the transformation into working-girl Melissa. The change involved taming her wild hair into a nice neat bun, corralling her breasts within the confines of a bra, putting on panties and nylons and a nice, civilized-looking outfit that included an ivory-colored silklike sleeveless blouse, a matching skirt, and a pair of pumps with two-inch heels. She flat-out refused to wear heels higher than that.

Then she drove her beloved lime-green Bug into the city, into the traffic, whispering prayers of protection to keep from being hit by the frantic driving tactics common to LA.

She made it to the meeting at one minute before ten. The others were already there, seated in comfortable overstuffed chairs and minisofas in a room that looked more like a living room than an office. The head writer, Merl Kinney, was there, gray hair, white at the temples, three-hundred-dollar suit, way too thin for a man his age and way too tan as well. Only one of his underlings had shown up, a young, pale woman with blond curls. The two were sleeping together. Melissa wasn't sure if it was as obvious to everyone else as it was to her, but as far as she was concerned they might as well have been wearing a sign. The director, Karl Stone, was there. But one presence dominated the room. Alex.

He was as potent to her senses as a shot of adrenaline. Dark hair, killer smile, and those piercing black eyes that seemed always to be focused on her. He wore tight-fitting jeans, a tank-style undershirt, and a short-sleeved button-down shirt, unbuttoned. All black. As her gaze slid over him, it froze on his chest.

He wore a pendant that rested there. An inverted pentacle with diamondlike stones winking at its five points.

Melissa's blood went cold. It was the same as the one from her dream.

She dragged her gaze from it, up to his eyes, and then got stuck there, captured. If he saw the fear in her eyes, he didn't show it. He smiled as if he knew something she didn't, then rose from his chair until she sat in one of her own.

Karl Stone said, "What do you want, Mel, coffee? Tea? A soft drink?"

She tried not to grimace at his calling her Mel. "Nothing, thanks, I'm fine." She opened her briefcase, pulled out the story arc and breakdowns, and stacked them on the coffee table in front of her.

Merl Kinney leaned forward, brows drawing together at the red markings on the top page. Without asking, he drew the stacks toward him, flipping through the top several pages. "My goodness," he said. "Had I known I was in need of a ghostwriter, I'd have hired one myself."

The room went dead silent. She could hear the soft ticking of someone's wristwatch, it was so quiet.

Drawing a breath, Melissa called up her courage. "These are only suggestions. I wouldn't dream of changing your words, Mr. Kinney. I only tried to highlight the places where I found… technical inaccuracies. The notes in the margins are suggested corrections."

He lifted his gaze from the script pages, locking it with hers. "I've won an Oscar and three Emmys, Miss St. Cloud."

"I've worked magic, Mr. Kinney."

Their gazes held.

Alex broke the silence. "Merl, Melissa was hired to tell us where we were getting it wrong, as far as the Witchcraft stuff goes. All she's done here is exactly what I hired her to do." He drew the manuscript toward him, began flipping through. "Keep in mind, we are free to take her suggestions or leave them—"

"If you leave them, I'm going to have to quit," she said, addressing Alex now.

He blinked at her as if she'd suddenly levitated or sprouted a wart on the end of her nose. "I don't follow…"

"I'd prefer not to have the entire Pagan community think of me as a traitor, much less an uninformed poser, Alex. I don't want to deal with the mail I'd get, much less the E-mail." Turning her gaze to the head writer's again, she went on. "And I don't mean to tell you what to write, or how to write. Only what's accurate. And Alex is right: you can take it or leave it."

Kinney frowned and leaned back in his chair. But the tense, offended body language remained. "Why don't you nutshell some of these… inaccuracies for me?"

She nodded, licking her lips, wishing she could snatch the script back from Alex as a reference, but he was engrossed. And she found it easier to concentrate when his eyes were not on her, so she decided to let it be. God, she so wanted to keep this job. But she might very well be fired or forced to walk on her first full day.

"Just as a for-instance," she began, choosing her words carefully, "the spells. When a Witch casts a spell, there's a lot more to it than just reading a couple of lines from a book. The words aren't magic. The Witch is."

"So… how would you go about casting a spell?" Alex asked, lifting his gaze from the manuscript, pinning her with it. It burned. There was something in his eyes both attractive and intense. It shook her right to the core. And those damned stones in his necklace winked in the light, adding to her discomfort.

"First I'd determine the goal, then do a divination to determine whether I should even proceed. If I got the okay, then I'd calculate the best possible timing for the spell. Best day of the week, moon phase, other astrological correspondences, best time of day, and so on. I'd determine what herbs or scents, crystals or colors should be used, picking ones whose energies and vibrational frequencies mesh with the goal. I'd compose the words of the spell, and they would be very important, everything from the rhyme scheme to the number of syllables per stanza would have meaning. I'd decide how I wanted to raise energy. Then I'd do yet another reading to ensure every precaution had been taken."

Kinney raised his eyebrows. "It sounds like we're going to need longer episodes. This might end up being a Costner-length feature every single week."

"Even if you just refer to the preparation involved, it would help," Melissa said. "A throwaway line or two would be enough. Just acknowledge there's more to it than simply opening the book and reading the lines."

He nodded. "Doable, I suppose. But boring. This is entertainment, Mel. Not a documentary."

"I understand that. And naturally there will be times when your characters have an emergency situation and have to act instantly."

"What about the actual spell-casting part?" Alex asked. "I mean, all the rest is prep work, correct?"

He was on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, eyes glued to hers, except when they veered south every little while, to slide over her body, down her legs like a caress. She could feel his eyes when they touched her that way.

"Yes. When the time is right, I would create sacred space and cast a ritual circle. I'd invoke the forces and entities I had chosen to meld their powers with mine. Part of the spell casting would involve raising energy by dancing or chanting, drumming or rattling, clapping or whispering, or any number of other methods. When the energy reaches its peak, the Witch releases it from the circle, sending it off to do its job. Then she gives thanks and releases any forces or entities she has invoked. Finally, she takes up the circle."

"So instead of a thirty-second scene it's a half-hour scene," Kinny said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

"Sounds like a riveting scene to me," Karl Stone said. It was the first comment from the director. "Can you imagine the special effects we could put in there? Tell me, Melissa, is this magic circle visible to the naked eye?"

"Not usually. But most experienced Witches know it's there. It wouldn't be outrageous to show it, as if the Enchantress were seeing it with her inner vision."

"And the… forces and, uh, entities she invokes?"

"Those, too. But they would always be positive in nature, so I wouldn't make them too scary-looking."

"Because our Witches only practice white magic, right?" he asked, clearly intrigued.

Alex rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

"That's not exactly true," Melissa said. "True white magic is magic designed to put the Witch more in touch with the divine, more in tune with spirit. Magic designed to help yourself or others is more accurately referred to as gray magic. Nothing wrong with it, but it's not pure, either. That's why you do the divination first, to be sure it's wise to proceed. Magic designed to cause harm to yourself or anyone else is black, and to be honest, there are times when it's called for."

"I thought the rule was 'Harm none,'" Alex said. He was watching her. She swore her blood was heating while her skin sprouted goose bumps.

"Some would say allowing evil to flourish unchecked is doing harm," she told him. "So some don't feel restricted from using magic to stop evil, or protect the innocent, or see to it that a criminal is caught. Some Witches wouldn't use it even then. Others insist on doing no more than turning the evildoer's own energy back to its source, so he ends up destroying himself. That would be the most likely course of action for your characters when they were attacked by surprise, with no time to prepare—just flinging up a reflective barrier that bounces the energy back to its source. Personally, I've never subscribed to the belief that we are given the power of the gods to wield and then expected to be victims or passive witnesses to wrongdoing."

The director was rubbing his hands together, the wheels behind his eyes turning. "This is good stuff. We can use this. We're talking about true moral conflicts here. Real soul-searching." He scribbled a note, then glanced her way. "What else have you got?"

"Oh, please," Kinney said, clearly exasperated. "Are we producing a prime-time drama here, or is this going to be a Wicca One-oh-one class?"

"Kinney, you're the head writer, not the creator," Alex said. His tone, normally firm, had gone softer, and somehow that was more intimidating. "Karl and I came up with the idea; this is our baby. Our vision. If you want to stay on as head writer, I suggest you pay attention." Then, turning to Melissa, he smiled. "Please, go on."

She went on. The meeting stretched into two hours as she did her best to give the team a crash course on magic and Witchcraft. By the time she finished, she was energized, bubbling over with enthusiasm. They were actually listening to her!

Kinney alone remained hostile, though he kept it to himself throughout the rest of the meeting. Alex seemed interested, attentive, intense—but he still exuded a sense of frustration she couldn't quite understand.

When the meeting ended, a secretary came in with a list of messages for Alex even before everyone had filed out. Melissa had hoped for a private word with him, but he was clearly too busy just now. So she headed to her Bug with a new spring in her step. She was going to keep her job and her promise. They were taking her suggestions seriously.

Maybe the dream wouldn't come back again now that she'd gained a little confidence that she could actually do this job. Maybe it was only nerves after all. If she could just keep her feelings for Alex under control, she might actually get through this.

She was unlocking the car door, trying not to dance for joy, when Alex's voice came from behind her.

"You really do know your stuff, Melissa. You blew everyone away in there."

His voice sent shivers of awareness up her spine. He moved closer, standing right behind her, invading her aura. His warmth on her back made her close her eyes briefly. Then she straightened and turned to face him, resting her back against the car door. "Thank you." Her gaze lowered to the pentacle on his neck. "I wanted to ask you… about the pent'."

"You like it?"

"Yeah, but why are you wearing it inverted?"

He lifted a hand to finger the five-pointed star, enclosed within a circle, with its topmost point aimed downward. "It came that way. Besides, as I told you, I need to get inside the heads of the villains this season. Isn't this the way a dark magician would wear it?"

She shrugged. "Actually, in the Craft it's the symbol of the Second Degree—the descent into the shadow-self. But it's rarely used that way in the States anymore, because of its negative connotations. I think the Satanists have adopted it as their symbol, but I didn't see any Satanists cast as villains in the breakdowns."

"Wouldn't a dark magician be the same thing as a Satanist?"

"Not at all. A dark magician would be anyone who practiced magic designed to cause harm to others, or to manipulate the free will of other people for his own interests or gain. Some Satanists might be dark magicians, but I'd bet most of them aren't."

He nodded. "I think I like the symbol, even if it's not wholly accurate. In fact, I was thinking of using it as a prop on the show. It will certainly give the viewers the right cue at the right time. They see this, and they think, 'Evil.' "

"And that's a lie you intend to perpetrate even further?" She shrugged, disappointed in him, then stared at the pent', battling a shiver. "It's really a magnificent piece," she whispered. "Where did you find it?"

"It was my father's."

She lifted her head, a frown knitting itself between her brows.

"So where would one go to find an authentic dark magician?" he asked. "I have some books, but—"

Her hand shot out to clasp his upper arm. "Who are you, Alex? What are you playing with here?"

His eyes seemed to darken, to intensify, and her hand tingled where she touched him. "That's what I'm trying to find out," he told her. He shook her arm off and turned to walk away.

She went after him, grabbing his arm and turning him around again. "Don't dabble in the dark side, Alex. It will pull you in like quicksand. It will destroy you."

"You think so?" He shook his head. "Look over there, you see that car?"

She did. The sleek Mercedes SL 500 convertible was silver and gleaming in the sunlight.

"And there's my house. A mansion. And money. So much money I can have anything I want."

"And you got all you have through black magic?"

He seemed to go still, confusion etching his face for just a moment. "I didn't used to think so. Now… I'm not so sure."

She had no idea what he was talking about. Impulsively she touched his shoulder. "You can have anything you want anyway. You don't need black magic to get it. The universe is surging with abundance; all we need to do is claim it."

He smiled slowly. "Is that why you're driving a VW Bug?"

She tilted her head, studying him. "I love my car. Besides, it's good on gas, and better for the environment. I try to live in harmony with nature, Alex, and nature provides everything I need."

"But not everything you want."

"You don't understand. You have to get past the mentality of a child in a toy store. When you grow spiritually, Alex, your wants and desires start to meld with the will of spirit. And when that happens, things just fall into place. I adore that little car. I smile every time I look at it. I love my little beach house. And I'm starting to love this job—or I was."

"Well, I love my mansion, and I love my Mercedes, and I love the idea that I can have anything I want." He looked at her, her eyes, her lips. "Anyone I want."

She lifted her brows. "You think so, do you?"

"I think so." He moved closer still, closing the tiny gap between them, and his arms slid around her waist. He bent over her and covered her mouth with his. God, he knew how to kiss. His lips and tongue were talented, and he tasted good, and she was female enough to enjoy every second of it. She didn't fight him, didn't struggle. She didn't want to. Instead, she returned the kiss, but gentler, slowing the movement of her mouth beneath his, soothing him with her hands as they moved on his back and shoulders, visualizing cool blue water melding with the red-hot fire she sensed burning through him.

He responded, as she had known he would. His arms around her relaxed a little, so he held her close, but not crushingly. His mouth explored, now, rather than invading. His kiss warmed, gentled, and she felt a shudder rise up as if from somewhere deep within him, and an answering one rose within her.

When he lifted his head away, he blinked twice, and his eyes searched hers. He took a step backward, away from her, licked his lips, and then lowered his gaze. "That was… I was being an ass."

"Yeah, I noticed," she said.

"It's been a rough month. I'm going through some things." He turned away slowly, raking his hair with one hand.

"We all go through things, Alex. But just for the record, that kiss just now didn't happen because of any magic, black or otherwise. Or because of your money or your car. It happened because I wanted it to happen. So don't beat yourself up too much over it, okay?"

She turned back to her car while he was still standing there, in a state of—she didn't know what. Confusion, remorse? She got behind the wheel, started up the Bug. He spun around as if he hadn't realized she'd even moved, even took a few steps toward her as she drove away. Then he stood there watching her go, still looking slightly dazed.

Melissa held her hand out over the passenger seat, opened her fist, and let the gold pentacle drop onto the upholstery. Her palm still pulsed with the energy the piece held. Powerful energy, but dark. She could not wait to get home and wash her hands. She would just do a little cleansing work on Alex's jewelry tonight. He could have it back tomorrow.

It was completely against her principles to do this sort of thing—messing around with his pent' without his permission. Much less stealing from her brand-new boss. But something deep inside was telling her to do it, that she had to do it. That he needed her help. And she never ignored her intuitions.

CHAPTER 4

She left, and he watched her go, cussing himself for acting like an idiot and wondering what homy little demon had possessed him, just now. But no, he couldn't blame his actions on anyone but himself. He was getting cocky. Starting to buy into the bullshit his father's diaries were trying so hard to sell. No matter how ridiculous Alex told himself it was, he was falling into it. He felt himself falling into it.

Maybe he just wanted it to be true. Maybe he'd just wanted an identity so badly for so long that he was embracing his newfound heritage with a little more zeal than common sense. And maybe he ought to have listened to his first instinct and stayed the hell away from the secluded old mansion where his father had lived and died.

The thought of parting with the place, though, sent a pang through his chest. It and its musty contents were all he had of his father. All he would ever have.

Besides the genes. The blood. The power.

Part of him rolled his eyes at the latter notion. Another part of him considered hurling a lightning bolt at something, just to see.

Until recently the practical part, the skeptic, had been stronger. Lately the two seemed evenly matched, and he felt constantly torn by the struggle.

He sighed and went to his car. Everyone had gone their separate ways, but they were due to meet at the studios the next day to refilm today's scene. Karl and Merl were supposed to brainstorm changes to the script, though the actual implementation would be done by Merl's writing team, who would fax the new scripts to the actors tonight. Later Karl would head to the studio to talk special effects. Alex would have to approve all of it before they shot tomorrow, but none of it would be ready for hours yet. He had the afternoon free.

So did Melissa.

He could go out there, he thought with a stirring of hunger. But another thought, one that didn't feel like one of his own, overpowered the impulse. Don't chase her. Let her come to you. She will, you know. If all the things your father wrote in those diaries are true, she will—simply because you want her to. Wait and see.

He rolled his eyes at the ridiculous notion even as he wondered what a good shrink would make of the voices in his head that never sounded quite like his own inner monologue. Then he got in the Mercedes and drove to the house he couldn't quite think of as home.

Melissa used the afternoon to bury Alex's pentacle in the sand, in a spot too high for the tide to reach it, though well outside her sacred space. She called on the energies of Earth and Sea to cleanse it of its negative vibes, sprinkled rosemary, angelica, rue, and sage into the hole with it, and sank a tall stick into the sand beside it to mark the spot.

Then she washed her hands repeatedly, first in the sea, then with soap and water in her bathroom sink, and finally with Moon Water that had been blessed and charged with lunar energy.

After that, she got on the phone with Alex's secretary and got his address from the woman. He was famous enough that Melissa expected his secretary would be extremely careful about letting the information out. It surprised her when the secretary gave her the address without even a token protest. Strange.

So it was done. She'd buried the pilfered pent' to cleanse it, and she'd gotten the address without effort. Now all she had to do was work up the nerve to go over there and tell him what she'd done… and maybe why she'd felt compelled to do it.

But what was she supposed to say? Was she going to lecture him about what he'd been reading, who he'd been talking to? Grill him about who the hell this father of his was that he'd gone around with a half-pound of diamond-studded gold hanging from his neck? It was none of her business. She barely knew Alex, and she was certainly in no position to preach to him. He was wealthy, powerful, successful, and respected. How dare she presume to know what was good for him?

Even if she did.

She wasn't certain whether she should go over there or not, and she wasn't going to be able to come to a reasonable decision in this state. She needed to get centered.

A long hot soak in a scented bath helped. She added sandalwood and myrrh oils to the water. Very grounding. She dressed in her comfort clothes—a gray fleece warm-up suit and thickly cushioned white socks. She tied her hair in a loose ponytail and then phoned her favorite take-out place and ordered a bowl of seafood chowder. Thick and creamy. Rich and piping hot.

After she'd eaten, she went to the quietest room in the house. It had been intended as a second bedroom, but since she only needed one, it had become her temple room. Beaded curtains hung in the doorway. Goddess statues stood on pedestals, and there were shelves lined with books upon books. A small table, her working altar, stood in the center of the room.

She lit her candles, fired up her censer, then went to the west, sat on the floor on a soft cushion, and let her body relax. She focused on her breaths, rushing in and out, like waves on the sea, and she felt her mind slow and quiet. Absence of thought, stillness of the mind, that was true meditation, and it was that peace she sought.

When one didn't consciously search for an answer, that was when the answer was free to come on its own. At least that theory had proven true for her, time and time again. So she emptied her mind and sat in silence, floating in a peaceful void, without expectations or demands.

The darkness beyond her eyes began to fill with shapes and colors. The silence came alive, very slowly, with whispers and sounds.

Gradually, the shapes and colors took on more solid form.

Alex was there. No. The man from her dream, the one who looked like Alex, only dressed in dark robes and wearing that pent'. He had blood on his hands. He stood, facing toward her but not looking at her.

Melissa, where are you? I need you.

She frowned, certain that voice was not Alex's. And yet the face, the eyes, of the apparition were so like his—

She shivered and realized the entire room had gone icy cold. She opened her eyes to end the vision and saw her own breath cloud in front of her face.

Melissa's alpha state faded so fast she felt as if she had literally fallen from the sky, landing solidly in her body with a jarring thud. She was still sitting on the floor, in her temple room. She rubbed her arms against the chill.

"He's in trouble," a woman's voice whispered. "Help him, my sister."

Melissa jerked her head around, searching for the owner of that soft voice. But there was nothing, no one. Rising slowly, she inspected everything in the room for some clue. The spiral of incense smoke wasn't doing anything unusual. The candles' flames were steady and strong.

Except for the one in the west. It was flickering rapidly. And now that she was looking that way, she noticed the incense smoke was sort of flowing inward from that direction as well.

"I should have cast a goddamn circle," she muttered, because it was clear something had come in. She hadn't imagined the woman's voice or the man in the vision. She'd been a Witch too long to doubt her own senses, even the ones most people didn't believe in. She walked to the cabinet, took out a bundle of sage, changed her mind, and reached instead for the tightly sealed jar of asafetida, devil's dung. Removing a piece, keeping her face averted, she touched it to the candle's flame. The herb blazed up, and she blew it out, then walked counterclockwise around the room, smudging it with the rancid-smelling smoke.

"Spirits, depart!" She didn't whisper or chant or intone. This was a time for a clear, firm tone, one of command. "Depart through the gate you entered. This is my home and you have not been invited here. Depart, and go your way. Go, I say!"

The only sign that anything had happened was that the incense smoke swirled in a funny little eddy for a moment and then flowed steadily in the opposite direction, outward, toward the west. Melissa went to the western quarter and used the smoldering weed to draw a banishing pentagram in the air with its foul smoke. Then she doused the devil's dung, and using her hands she mimicked closing the veil, pulling it tight. She sealed the gateway with an equal-armed cross.

"So mote it be," she muttered. Then was still for a moment, waiting, sensing. But the chill was gone, as was that sense of someone else in the room.

Sighing, she extinguished her candles and her censer. Then she opened the window, to let the disgusting smell out. She left the ritual room through the tinkling beaded curtain and wondered what sort of visitation she'd just had.

She'd seen Alex. Or a man who looked like Alex—a man with blood on his hands. But what did it mean? Whether actual or symbolic, it would mean the same thing. Alex—or whoever the apparition was—was somehow responsible for causing harm, perhaps even death. She remembered the dream she'd had the night before—the woman she'd seen pushed from a bridge. Had that other voice been hers? Or was she some version of Melissa herself?

She shouldn't meddle in Alex's life any more than she already had—especially without his consent or knowledge.

There were forces moving in his life that were beyond her depth. Things she knew she would be better off not touching.

Yet her instincts were telling her to go to him.

And she never ignored her instincts.

She took her car keys from the hook and picked up the slip of paper with Alex's address on it before she headed out the front door.

CHAPTER 5

Melissa pulled her VW Bug to a stop on the dark, narrow unpaved road and just sat there, staring at the house.

It was a monster. That was the word that whispered through her mind. It squatted there in the darkness, a red-rock monster, glaring at her from rectangular window-eyes. The grounds around the place hadn't been tended in a very long time. Gnarly trees and twisting vines, weeds and brush, grew in a tangled mess that was as good as a moat. All except for the narrow path that led to the massive wooden front door.

A light rain fell. She could easily imagine it was always raining on this place. She could almost see the black cloud over it, and she decided to leave her car on the road, rather than pulling it into the barely discernible tire tracks that passed for a driveway. She backed up a bit, then pulled forward, parking the car on the opposite shoulder. It was far enough off the road so no one would hit it as they passed, though she doubted she would encounter another vehicle on this stretch of cow path even if she stood here for a week.

Getting out of the car, she left it unlocked. For some reason, she didn't want to do anything that would delay her getting back in. She pocketed her keys and crossed the gravel road, stepping through the iron gate that stood hanging open, slightly crooked, shiny with wetness. As soon as she set foot on the path, a full body shudder racked her to a stop. Closing her eyes, clenching her fists, she sought calm.

She felt the Earth power rising up through her feet, softly glowing green. She felt the Sky power rinsing over her in the rain, a pulsing vibrant gold. The energies met in her center, swirling and growing until they filled her to bursting. She felt the power tingling in her fingers, burning in her toes. And then it grew still bigger, until it suffused her aura, surrounding her in a sphere of white light.

Better, she thought. Lifting her chin, she continued walking the path, less fearful now, more confident. She walked up the two stone steps, stood on the top one, and rapped the brass knocker that was clasped in the teeth of a gargoyle.

The rain came down a little harder. She didn't mind it in the least. Maybe it was rinsing away some of the negativity that clung to this place like a smog cloud over a large city. When there was no response to her summons, she knocked again. She glanced toward the side of the house, spotted the shiny reflection of Alex's Mercedes gleaming there in the rain. He was home.

She rapped again.

Eventually, footsteps approached and locks turned and the large door groaned open.

Alex stood on the other side, black jeans sinfully tight, black T-shirt showing every powerful muscle in his torso. He looked irritated, then surprised when he saw who stood on his stoop.

"Melissa?"

"Hello, Alex. We need to talk. Do you mind if I come in?"

He licked his lips as if nervous but stepped aside to let her in. Melissa stepped into the foyer and felt as if she'd stepped into a pool of pure blackness. It enveloped her, and she hugged her arms and shivered. She looked around the place, disliking it more and more. It was dim, unnaturally cool, cavernous, and hollow. And there were others there, though she couldn't see them. She could feel them, their eyes watching her.

"This way," Alex said. "We'll be more comfortable in the sitting room."

She followed him, but her infallible instincts were telling her not to. They were telling her to turn around and run. She ignored them, and she knew better. Her stomach felt queasy.

She and Alex crossed through a huge living room with a domed ceiling and a few pieces of furniture that looked antique. Almost Gothic. But they didn't stop there. Alex led her into a smaller room off the right side, where more contemporary furniture, overstuffed brown velour, and a glass-topped coffee table formed a horseshoe pattern around a marble fireplace. There was a fire in the hearth, and she welcomed the warmth, taking the chair nearest it.

Alex sat on the sofa. "What did you want to talk about?" he asked her.

She had been studying the flames, and she jumped when he spoke. "Is anyone else here?"

He shook his head. "No, we're alone. Why?"

She heard whispers, unintelligible but unmistakable. He didn't act as if he heard a thing. "I… I just had the feeling someone else was here."

"There's a housekeeper who keeps a room here but rarely uses it. Elizabeth was my father's nurse before he died, and she stayed on, keeping the place up until it could be sold. I couldn't see putting her out, so I kept her on. But she's off tonight."

Melissa nodded slowly. "This was your father's house."

He nodded.

"And he's passed the veil."

"Yeah."

She looked around the room. "I think he's still here." Her voice had dropped to a near whisper.

Alex glanced at her sharply, then smiled. "I like to think so."

She studied his face. "What kind of man was he, your father?"

"His name was Victor Moring. I don't know what he was like. I never met him."

She frowned, waiting for him to continue, but he didn't. She licked her lips and followed her instincts. She reached across to where his hand rested on the arm of the sofa and closed hers around it. "Tell me," she whispered.

He narrowed his eyes on her. "Why?"

"I don't know. I just… I have the feeling it's important."

He hesitated a moment, staring at her hand on his. Finally, he sighed and gave a slight nod. "I was raised in an orphanage," he said, and he said it so matter-of-factly that she knew this was of deep importance to him. He was trying too hard to make it seem otherwise. "St. Luke's, in Boston. The nuns there didn't know who my parents were. I was left by a young woman one night, when I was barely a week old, with just a tiny wooden box that contained a note from my mother and a hunk of quartz. She told them my name was Quinn, but I'm certain that was a lie. When I was ten, and started asking questions about my family, the sisters gave the box to me and told me what little they knew, which was just what I've told you."

She blinked rapidly, tried to calm her suddenly racing heartbeat. "Can I see it?"

"What? The box?"

She nodded.

He blinked slowly, studying her face as if trying to read her. "Did you take my pent', when I kissed you earlier, Melissa?"

She looked down, feeling guilty as hell. "Yes. It's safe, I promise. I shouldn't have taken it, I just—"

"I want it back."

She nodded. "It's at my place. I never intended to keep it, just to cleanse it and bless it for you." He lifted his brows. "It's a Witch thing. We do it with all our important ritual tools." She attempted a smile that was probably weak. "It was… my gift to you."

His lips thinned, but he nodded and got to his feet. "Next time, ask first, okay?"

"I should have this time," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't."

"You're right, you should have." He turned for the door. "Stay here."

She nodded, even though he couldn't see her, and he left the room. His footsteps soon vanished in the depths of the house. Melissa got up, pacing the room, brimming with nervous energy and tingling with apprehension. There was something in this house—something dark. She kept feeling as if someone was standing right at her back, only to spin around and see no one.

Finally, Alex returned. She was standing close to the fire by then, soaking up its heat, staring into its flames. She turned when he came into the room; then her breath hitched in her throat. For just an instant, she'd seen that other face, superimposed over his. The face of the man in her dream, who was like Alex but not Alex.

Then it faded.

"What's wrong? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"I… nothing." She looked at the small wooden box he held. "Is that it?"

"Yeah." He held it out, and she took it from him, returned to her seat in the chair, and gently opened the lid.

A folded scrap of time-yellowed paper rested inside. She looked to Alex for permission, and when he nodded, she picked it up and noticed the glittering quartz crystal that rested underneath it. Unfolding the sheet carefully, Melissa read the note.

My dearest Alex,

Leaving you with the sisters is the hardest thing I have ever done. But my love for you is so strong that I know it is my only choice. I fear my life in this world will soon end—for the evil that pursues me draws closer every day. The best I can do for you is to put you as far from its reach as I can, in a place where I know you'll be safe. The only thing I ask of you, my son, is that you never attempt to find the man who fathered you—for I tell you from my heart, he is evil, and he will destroy you. Know that I will always be with you, watching over you, protecting you, and loving you.

Always,

Your mother, Jennifer

As she read the note, Melissa swore she could hear the words, spoken in a gentle, loving voice—the same voice she'd heard earlier tonight in her temple room. Blinking back tears, she refolded the note and set it in the box. As she did, her fingertips caressed the crystal and she felt a surge of warmth suffusing her hand and arm.

Her chest felt tight, her heart full, as she closed the lid.

Then she frowned, holding the box in her hands. "There was something else?"

Alex seemed startled. "Yes. How did you know?"

She only shrugged.

"Three months ago, I somehow left my bedroom window open—not here, I was living closer to LA then. It stormed that day, and a gust must have swept through. When I got home, the bedroom was wet, and things were scattered everywhere. The box had been blown off its shelf, to the floor. When it hit, a little compartment in the bottom popped open. There was a card inside."

"Your father's?" she asked.

He nodded. "By then, I'd been trying to trace my roots for years. I'd managed to learn his last name, Moring, but nothing else. The address was for this house, and when I came here, there was a real-estate sign on the lawn. Elizabeth was still here. She told me my father had passed only a few months prior. But all of his things were still here as well. And the place was for sale."

"So you bought it."

"Of course I bought it." He sighed, shaking his head. "To think I'd been in LA for so long and he was so close all that time. But I only found him after he'd died. Elizabeth said he always knew I'd come back someday. She said he'd have wanted me to have the house." He searched the depths of the fire; for what, she couldn't have said. "I thought, by being here, going through his things, I could finally get to know my father."

"And have you?"

He snapped his gaze to hers. "I don't know. He… he left diaries—but the entries are always addressed 'Dear Alex,' as if he was writing them to me, knowing I'd find them and read them someday. And they're full of…" He stopped there, as if afraid he would reveal too much. "He was either the most powerful sorcerer I could have imagined, or he was completely insane."

She nodded slowly. "And that's why you've had all the questions about the dark side of magic."

He started to nod, but stopped halfway. "Not that I think what he practiced was black magic. Just that it—it doesn't quite mesh with the fluffy white lighter stuff you find in all the books meant for public consumption."

She drew a breath, lifted her chin. "Would you be willing to let me see them?"

His head came up fast, and again, the face of that "other" seemed to hover over his own. "No!" The word blasted from his lips in a voice like thunder, and it hit her with a force that was palpable. A force she felt might have physically harmed her, had she not taken the time to shield herself before entering this place. The air in the room turned to ice, even as she shot to her feet and backed toward the door.

Alex blinked twice, frowning as if confused. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout."

She held up a hand, shook her head, tried to form words to excuse herself, but gave up. Instead she simply turned and ran. She didn't look back until she was in her car, heading away from that place.

And when she did, she saw Alex, standing in the middle of the narrow road, staring after her.

Alex was shaking all over, couldn't seem to stop it. Hell. What in God's name had just happened to him? And how was he going to explain it to Melissa when he didn't understand it himself?

He was sweating, he realized as he ran a palm across his forehead. A cold sweat. More dampness gathered on his skin from the soft, mistlike rain that fell, and he shivered. He walked back into the house.

It's just as well. She's a Witch, and she'll ruin everything. Stay away from her from now on.

Alex frowned at the foreign voice in his mind. It wasn't his own. It wasn't his inner self expressing nervousness over the sheer power of what he felt for Melissa. Everything in him was screaming just the opposite.

"I don't want to stay away from her," he whispered. "I think… I think I need her." He sighed, lowering his head. It was true. He sensed it right to his soul. He needed her. He didn't know why or how or exactly what it was he needed from her.

The truth was, he was burning to tell her everything—everything that had happened to turn his life upside down. He had been, ever since he'd first set eyes on her. In that moment when he'd opened the door to find her standing there, it felt as if he'd been lost in the desert and finally caught sight of water. Cool, clear, life-giving water. Something inside her seemed to speak to something inside him. And just being near her felt… soothing. Healing. When she had walked into this godforsaken tomb of a house, he swore he could almost feel a fresh, cool breeze rushing in, blasting away the cobwebs and dust and darkness.

Absently he rubbed his hand where hers had closed around it. He wanted to touch her again.

No!

Mustering his will—and God, it was an effort—he ignored the voice in his head and walked back outside, pulling his car keys out of his pocket as he did. He had to go after her.

This wasn't over.

CHAPTER 6

He found her sitting on the natural stone patio behind her beach house. There was a lawn swing there, made of bamboo. She sat in it, swinging gently, and she didn't look the least surprised to see him there.

"I didn't mean to scare you away."

She offered a small, if somewhat uncertain, smile. "It's not you that scares me." Drawing a breath as if drawing up courage, she patted the empty spot beside her.

He moved forward, sat down beside her. "I don't know what happened. I'm sorry."

She studied his face for a long moment. "Is it gone now? Whatever it was that came over you?"

He nodded. "I'd never hurt you, Melissa."

"I know."

She leaned back in the swing, seemingly relaxing a little. Maybe those all-seeing eyes of hers told her that he was no threat. Maybe she was just more confident on her home turf. Whatever, he was irrationally glad that his outburst back at the house hadn't made her decide to have no more to do with him.

The sea breeze rinsed over him, and it reminded him of what he felt emanating from Melissa. The woman was like the ocean: deep and full of mystery and power. Cool and soothing. Mystical. And emanating a fragrant, refreshing energy the way a tree emanates oxygen, sustaining and strengthening the life force of everyone within her orbit.

He sat there watching the waves as they rolled in, breaking into curls of white froth, hissing as they ran out of steam and retreated into the depths again.

"I won't ask you any more questions if you don't want me to," she said. "And if you just came for the pent', I'll take you to it."

It was some sort of a test, he thought. She didn't dare ask him any more questions without feeling him out first. And she wasn't sure what he was doing here.

"I didn't come for the pent'. I came… I don't know why I came."

She let her eyes close, lashes resting on her cheeks.

"Do you believe in luck, or coincidence, Melissa?"

"I think you make your own luck," she said, not opening her eyes. "And I don't think there's any such thing as coincidence. Synchronicity isn't random. Why?"

He leaned back, too, trying to adopt a more relaxed pose. She looked so comfortable, so at ease. He couldn't bring himself to close his eyes, though. He couldn't look at her with his eyes closed, and he found himself compelled to look at her.

"I've always been very successful. As far back as I can remember, everything I've tried to accomplish has worked out. Grades, scholarships. My career has been one lucky break after another, one amazing success after another. Opportunities seem to line up to knock on my door."

She nodded. "You work hard at what you do. I've only worked for you for two days, and I already know that. And you're good. You have a natural talent for visual storytelling. It's a gift. Probably what you were always meant to do."

"Maybe. Or maybe it was something else."

Time ticked by, silence stretching out between them, as the gentle rush of the waves over the sand whispered like a lullaby. Finally, she said, "What else could it have been, Alex?"

It was a gentle nudge, and it made him aware that he had fallen silent before completing his thought. He credited her with having distracted him. Her and the ocean.

"According to my father's diaries, it's genetic. I inherited the ability to wield his power. Anything I want, I only have to think of it to have it come to me. He wrote that it was his gift to me, but that it would fade in time, unless I learned to appreciate it and to control it."

He pushed with his feet and long legs, moving the swing gently back and forth in perfect time with the waves, and he looked at her. Her huge brown eyes were open now, plumbing the depths of his soul. He could drown in them.

"Did he say… how he expected you to do this?"

He nodded. "There's… a ritual."

Melissa sat up a little. "What kind of ritual?"

"I haven't seen it yet, but it's supposed to transfer his power to me. So that I'm not using his, but making it my own. Elizabeth knows how it goes. I guess she worked with my father a lot when he was alive. She's supposed to assist when the time comes, and I'm not supposed to know too much about it in advance."

Melissa seemed about to say something but then stopped herself.

"I thought the entire idea was ridiculous at first. But the more time I spend in that house—I don't know. It's as if it makes more sense all the time."

She nodded. "I felt him there, Alex. Your father. I think his spirit is still in that house."

He nodded slowly. "He's trapped there, according to Elizabeth. He won't be free until I undergo this—this rite. He can't rest in peace. I know it sounds crazy, but God, I feel him there, too. Then again, he died of brain cancer. All of this might just be the crazy ramblings of a man whose mind had deteriorated to the point of madness."

"Or maybe it's a little bit of both," she told him.

He nodded. "I've thought of that, too."

"What about the pentacle?" she asked.

"It was his. He'd left it with Elizabeth with instructions to give it to me when I came—he seemed to know I would in time."

"Maybe he did. But Alex, do you really believe that you have everything you do because of him, and not because of your own hard work and talent?"

He thought for a long moment about that. "My father… he was extremely wealthy. Looking over the things he writes about his life, it seems that he was a lot like me. Everything he tried turned out to be successful. His diaries claim that he used magic to make it that way—that he used that same magic to ensure my life would be that way, as well." He drew a deep breath, sighed. "That's why I wanted you to teach me about magic. So that—on the off chance it is true and this ritual does grant me some kind of… power… I will know how to use it."

She jumped to her feet. "God, Alex, you don't intend to go through with this!"

He frowned. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Alex, everything in me tells me it's black magic, and that your father has been practicing it all his adult life—he would have to have in order to be as powerful as he claims to be. Do you have any idea the kind of negativity that must be clinging to his spirit by now? Can't you feel the darkness in that house of his? You don't want to open yourself up and invite all that darkness to jump from his lingering spirit into you. My God, it would be like—like walking unvaccinated through a smallpox ward."

Alex shook his head slowly. "I don't think he was evil," he said. "I really don't."

She stared down at him, her eyes intense. "What about the note? What about your mother's warnings?"

He had thought of that. Over and over he had thought of that, wondered about it.

"Alex, when you work magic or do anything else that causes harm to others, or takes things that were rightly meant for others, that harm brands you. It marks your soul. And the more harm you do, the bigger the mark. That mark becomes a beacon for negative energy. So the harm you do comes back. It's impossible for it not to."

He sighed, lowering his head and running his hand over the nape of his neck. "Dammit, Melissa, I think you're making too much out of all of this. You don't know he did harm to anyone. There's no proof of that."

"No?"

He shook his head.

"What about your mother? What about the harm he did to her?"

His head came up slowly. He reached out a hand, but she backstepped just enough to avoid his touch. "We don't know he did her any harm at all."

"How did your mother die, Alex?"

He shook his head hard, instant, absolute denial. "Come on, Melissa. Don't you think you're giving in to melodrama here?"

"You don't know, do you?"

"No. I don't know. The diaries only say that she took their newborn son and left." He met her eyes. "Seems to me that she was the one who did harm to him."

"Maybe." She didn't look as if she believed it, though. "I think you should find out for sure."

He threw his hands in the air. "Why the hell did I think I could talk to you about any of this? Jesus, Melissa, I thought you would understand. I thought you would give me some practical advice, not accuse a dead man—one I spent my whole life searching for—of everything from black magic to murder."

"You want practical advice?" she asked him. And even though his voice had been rising, hers remained steady, deep, and firm. "Here it is: Get away from everything to do with that man. Get as far away as you can. Have a cleansing ritual performed on you. Get the stink of his negativity off you. Give away everything he gave you. Or share his fate."

"His fate? He died a billionaire who could have anything he wanted."

"He died an old man, without a family, without his wife or his son. He died alone, horribly. And if he got his wealth the way I think he did, his next lifetime isn't likely to be much better. That is his fate. The fate he created for himself. The fate he wants to pass on to you from beyond the grave."

Alex sighed heavily and turned away from her.

"You're not listening, are you? You're not hearing a word I say."

"I have to go. Before I do, I want my pent' back."

"Fine." She started off down the steps that led to the beach below but didn't step into the circle area.

Sacred space, he figured. She wouldn't take his father's filth into her precious white-lighter circle. She walked along the beach a little ways, off toward the left. He saw a branch standing there, one end driven deep into the sand. That was where she stopped, and then, using the branch as a digging tool, she unearthed the pentacle.

He stood there, watching. When it was uncovered, she knelt in the sand, reached her hand toward it, but didn't touch it. The moonlight bathed her face, and the sea wind played in her hair.

She shook her head. "It's still bad," she said. "I can feel it from here. You should leave it for three nights, Alex. Even then, I'm not sure—"

He reached down, not for the pent' but for her. He couldn't stand this, couldn't stand not touching her when he wanted to so very badly. His hand closed on her upper arm, and he pulled her to her feet.

"Alex?"

He pulled her closer, gently, giving her all the time in the world to resist. But she didn't. He closed his arms around her, and he kissed her. The water washed up over their feet and the moon beamed down on them and he kissed her. He thought, vaguely, that it was magical.

When he could break contact and speak again, he cradled her head to his chest, buried his hand in her wild hair. "Why am I so drawn to you? Are you messing with my head, working your own brand of magic on me?"

"I wouldn't use magic to make you feel anything for me. It would be unethical. But I have to tell you, Alex, I've been wondering the same thing about you."

"No. I wouldn't know how."

"Then what is this?" she asked him, whispering.

"I don't know."

She drew a breath, sighed.

"I've searched for him for twenty years, Melissa. I can't just deny him what was his dying wish. Please don't ask me to."

Closing her eyes slowly, she laced her fingers through his, hands at their sides. "It's a mistake, Alex. At least… at least think about this some more. And promise to let me know your decision before you go ahead with it."

"That much I can do."

She nodded. "You need cleansing, and shielding. You need wards. God, the thought of you going back into that house…"

"I'll be fine."

She stepped back, glancing down at the pent' in the sand. "Your pent'—"

"Leave it. Three nights, like you said."

She smiled, though it was shaky. "Good. Good, it can't hurt."

He held her gaze for a long moment. "Don't give up on me, Melissa. Things are—things are so messed up right now. But for some reason, at this moment, I don't want anything in the world quite as badly as I want… as I want you."

He tipped her chin up with his hand, kissed her again, and buried the pentacle in the sand with his feet.

"I should go," he whispered. "Because if I don't, I'm not going to."

She kissed him again, then pushed him away. Reaching down, she picked up the branch and thrust it into the ground to mark the spot where the pent' lay buried.

They turned, and he put his arm around her shoulders, held her close beside him, and they walked back toward the little beach house. But instead of veering left, toward the house, they veered right, toward her special place on the beach.

He let her lead him, unsure why she was taking him there. At least, he was until she stopped and turned to face him. Slowly, she tugged her fleece shirt upward, over her head, and dropped it into the sand beside her.

Alex caught his breath, his throat going dry.

She heeled off her shoes and socks, then slid the soft gray fleece down over her hips and stepped out of the pants. She stood there, naked in the moonlight. And more than ever before, she seemed like some mystical creature. The spirit of the sea itself, bathed in moonlight.

"My God, you're beautiful," he whispered.

He drew her close, his hands sliding over her warm, smooth skin, and he kissed her again. Her body felt good, pressed against his. He helped her undress him as they kissed, and they fell to their knees in the sand. She lay down, pulling him with her, opening to him, welcoming him.

When he slid inside her, his body trembled, shook, and he thought he heard thunder, but whether it was in the distant sky or only within him he couldn't be sure. He held her, she wrapped herself around him, and they moved in time with the waves washing up over the sand. And he felt it—the power building, surrounding them, heat and passion and something more. It grew higher, stronger, until it was unbearable. And then it seemed to break loose at the moment when she cried out his name and he poured his very soul, it seemed, into her. For a moment it seemed the very air around them glowed.

For a long time, they lay there, just holding each other. Alex didn't know what had just happened between them. It hadn't been just sex. It hadn't even been just lovemaking. It had been something else, something more powerful than he'd ever felt before. And he knew, somewhere down deep, that it was something he would never feel again—not with anyone but Melissa.

CHAPTER 7

Melissa didn't sleep that night after Alex, somewhat reluctantly, went home. He had work to do tonight, he said. And deep down, she knew she needed time to digest what had just happened.

She'd never attempted sex magic before. But passion, especially the kind of passion between her and Alex, generated incredible power. And even while she'd lost her focus to the ecstasy, she'd felt the power continue building within and around the two of them, surrounding them both in protection, empowering them.

She hadn't felt drained when it was over. She'd felt energized, and she sensed he had, as well. She prayed that sense was true and not just wishful thinking on her part.

Deep into the night, she sat in the darkened living room, in a chair drawn up to face the sliding glass doors that looked out over the beach and the sea. The ocean was angry tonight. Restless and moody. It swelled and receded, swirled and spat froth at the waning, lopsided moon.

Something's coming, her instincts whispered in her mind. Something bad.

Melissa couldn't quite bring herself to go outside, to explore the darkness and the mood of the sky and sea. Like a child, she hid in the safety of the house, wishing for daylight, and even though she knew she would never sleep, she hugged herself all the way to her bedroom to crawl beneath the covers.

As she pulled back the blankets something thudded gently to the carpeted floor behind her. The sound made her jump at first, but as soon as she spun around and saw what it was, she relaxed. The red velvet pouch full of rune-stones. The nail from which the pouch usually hung was bent low. Maybe the weight of the stones had slowly proven too much for it…

… or maybe the stones were trying to tell her something.

Frowning, she gathered the pouch in her palms, kneading it gently, feeling and hearing the gentle click-clack of the stones as they moved against one another inside. She loosened the drawstring, dipped inside, and closed her hand. Two cool stones rested within her fist when she drew it out again. She opened her palm and stared down at them.

Raido, action and movement. Kennaz, understanding and knowledge.

She got the message. She could not huddle in her bed, hiding and waiting for the bad thing to come, thinking she'd done all she could to prepare. She had to take action, figure out what she—what they both were up against, and then proceed accordingly.

Knowledge; she needed information.

Sighing, she wrapped herself in a warm, plush robe—the next best thing to huddling in her bed—and returned to the living room to turn on her computer. Connecting to the Internet, she typed the name of Alex's father, Victor Moring, into the search box and let the machine do the rest. Alex hadn't done the research he should have done. Partly, she sensed, because he didn't want to know the truth. Maybe deep down he knew what he would find wouldn't be good.

If so, he'd been right.

There were several news articles mentioning Moring's young wife, Jennifer, who'd gone missing along with her brand-new infant son, thirty years ago. The missing-persons report had been filed, not by Jennifer Simone-Moring's husband, as one might expect, but by her mother.

There was a photo of the missing woman, and Melissa sat there, rubbing her chilled arms as she waited for it to load. Line by line, the image filled in, top to bottom, the face coming clear.

Melissa jerked back from the computer, sucking in a breath. "My Goddess," she whispered. "She looks like me." The woman stared back at her, a warning in her eyes.

A sudden chill raced up Melissa's spine, and she swung her head, searching the rooms around her, suddenly feeling as if someone was watching her, someone close.

She saw no one, though, and forced herself to return her attention to the computer screen, to click on the link to the next article about the missing woman. That one talked about the police suspecting that Victor may have been involved in her disappearance and the investigation that revealed that both the man and his young wife had ties to what the police called the occult. No details on what they meant by that were offered.

But Melissa thought she might have an inkling. Alex's mother, she sensed, had been a Witch.

The next article said that the body of a young woman had been found in a New York river and that she had later been identified as Jennifer Simone Moring. The whereabouts of her infant son were still unknown, but authorities feared the worst. Her death had been ruled a suicide.

Melissa recalled the dream vision she'd had of the young woman, standing on a suspension bridge. In the dream, she hadn't gone over the rail of her own will. She'd had help—astral help perhaps, since the hands that had seemed to push her hadn't been connected to the man in the dream. So maybe it hadn't been a flesh-and-blood human there with her. But maybe, just maybe, she'd died at the will of a powerful magician.

Something moved outside. Melissa caught it from the corner of her eye, jumped to her feet, and spun to face the sliding glass doors and the darkness beyond them. Her heart pounded and her lungs clutched every breath.

A filmy gray shape moved silently along the beach, near where Alex's pent' was buried. Whatever it was, it was dark and malicious. Melissa gasped, and her hand flashed upward, inscribing a banishing pentacle in the air with her finger and projecting its image toward the intruder. "Evil thing, be gone!" she hissed into the night. "Be gone, I say!"

She ran into her temple room and took the tiny bottle of her most powerful Moon Water, charged during a lunar eclipse, then ran to the back doors. It chilled her to stand so close, with nothing but a thin sheet of glass between her and the blackness of the night beyond, and that shape, that being, whoever or whatever it had been, gone now from her sight. She whispered an invocation to Hecate and her hounds and wet her forefinger with the Moon Water. Then she drew the banishing pent' on the glass. "By the moon and by the tide, nothing evil comes inside."

Melissa rushed through the house, repeating the process, drawing the five-pointed stars at every window and door. She turned on every light and double-checked every lock while she was at it. When she'd covered them all, she stood in the center of the living room, focused her energies, and connected them by sending a streak of astral blue flame from one mark to the next. When the blue flame boundary was complete, she focused on widening it, deepening it, expanding it beyond the walls and ceiling and floors, until her home was enclosed within a protective bubble of astral blue light. She stomped a foot to seal the energy.

Finally, she looked at the clock and vowed she would wait until dawn before she picked up the telephone and dialed Alex's number. She would not draw him back here now, when something that felt so menacing lurked just outside. She huddled in her robe in front of her computer, gaze jumping from one door or window to another with every breeze and every sound. It was going to be a long night.

The housekeeper wore a gray hooded cloak, which had been intended to be seen by the Witch and to scare the hell out of her. She hoped the message had been received. She peered into her employer's bedroom, saw the young man thrashing in his bed, moaning the word "no" over and over. Alex was sweating, his face beaded with it. He'd flung off the covers, and he was naked from the waist up. His father, no doubt, was providing another nightmare to keep Alex off balance, unsure of himself, vulnerable.

She moved slowly forward, obeying the voice she heard inside her mind, the voice of the man she had loved.

"I followed him earlier, just as you instructed," she whispered, though no one was in the room. "The Witch lives in a beach house, had the pentacle buried in the sand." She held the pentacle, letting it dangle and spin from its chain.

Did she see you? the voice in her mind asked.

Elizabeth nodded. "I made sure of it."

Excellent. Go now, put the pentacle on my son where it belongs.

Elizabeth did exactly as she was told. She always did exactly what he told her. She leaned over Alex, fixing the chain around his neck. It was a direct link to his father's energy. It had to remain with Alex, to prepare him and link his father to him. Otherwise, the rite would never work. She straightened again and watched Alex struggling in his sleep. "Do you want to release him from the dream now that it's done?"

No. Let it eat him alive. Let it do its work. We have to burn her out of his life or she'll ruin everything, just as my darling young wife tried to do.

The woman nodded, realizing this nightmare must be about the Witch. She disliked the woman—disliked her intensely. She reminded Elizabeth of Victor's dead wife, Jennifer. How she had suffered watching the man devote himself to that woman, relegating Elizabeth to the role of housekeeper and mistress. But it was power he sought. Jennifer had it. It would combine with Victor's own in their offspring, creating for Victor an even more powerful form than he'd had the last time around.

"I can't wait," Elizabeth whispered, her gaze sliding over Alex's chest. "He's got a beautiful body, Victor. It's going to look so good on you."

The telephone beside Alex's bed was ringing. He rolled to one side, opened his eyes, and felt anger surging in him, though he wasn't even sure why. He reached out and yanked up the phone.

"What?"

"Alex? Alex, it's Melissa. I need to talk with you. Something happened last night."

He felt his jaw harden, his eyes narrow, and he remembered now the source of his anger. Melissa—playing him for a fool. Seducing him in order to take everything he had, only to toss him aside when she'd finished; turning him against his father so that he would have no powers with which to fight her; and all the while sleeping with every man she had to in order to get what she wanted.

"Alex, are you there?"

"I'm here. Jesus, do you know what time it is?" He glanced at his clock as he asked the question.

"Five a.m. I haven't been to sleep yet," she told him. "Are you all right, Alex? You sound… strange."

"Fine." He sat up, struggling to shake away the remnants of sleep. "What do you want?"

"Someone was here last night," she told him. "Down on the beach. I saw them. God, Alex, I was so scared."

He came more fully awake. Her voice, the fear in it, got to him. And slowly, as his brain cleared and the cobwebs faded, he realized that all that other stuff had been a dream. Just a dream. God, it had seemed so real.

But it wasn't real. He knew Melissa. She was not the kind of woman who would use sex as a weapon. Sex with her was—was more like a balm. A healing, tranquil balm to his troubled soul.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She sighed; in relief, he thought. "Yes. Just frightened."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know. I… when it got light out, I went out there. There were footprints in the sand. And the… the pent'. It's gone."

He couldn't have explained why his hand rose to touch his chest, but it did, and he knew he would feel the cool gold weight there even before his palm found it. "Jesus."

"Alex, you have to get out of there. Your father—he's more dangerous than you think."

He closed his eyes slowly. "Look, I'm going to do what you said—check into things, look at some sources besides my father's own words. But I didn't have a chance to yet—"

"I did. I think he may have killed your mother."

"You can't know that."

"Look, there was a whole series of thirty-year-old news articles about him. His pregnant young wife, Jennifer Simone Moring, your mother, disappeared, and he didn't even report her missing. Jennifer's mother—your grandmother—called the police after being unable to reach her for several days."

There was a lead ball forming in Alex's stomach. "And then?"

"The investigation turned up what the police called 'occult connections' surrounding both your parents. That set off all kinds of alarm bells. Your father's house was searched, he was kept under surveillance for weeks. But they never found anything concrete. The investigation was closed when they found your mother's body in a New York river. A witness claimed to have seen her jump from a bridge. Her death was ruled a suicide, and the case was closed. Your father was under surveillance, a continent away, at the time of her death, so he was in the clear."

Alex sighed slowly, nodded. "The orphanage was in Boston. She must have taken me there, then started back, and killed herself along the way."

"She took you there, then she started back, probably trying to get as far from you as she could before he managed to track her down. To protect you from him, Alex."

He shook his head slowly. "You must be one helluva Witch, to be able to read the mind of a dead woman." He said it gently, not sarcastically. He didn't want to hurt her, but she was reaching here. "My mother said in her note she wasn't long for the world. She must have been planning to take her own life when she wrote it."

"She said the evil that was pursuing her was getting closer. I think that evil was your father. Alex, she didn't want you anywhere near him. So he used some kind of powerful black magic to push her off that bridge. I know it, I feel it in my gut."

There was a shout from the hallway in a voice he recognized. Alex said, "Hold on a second, something's up." Then he went to the door, opened it. "Elizabeth? Is that you?"

"Alex, hurry. I need your help!"

He frowned, worried, and brought the phone back to his ear. "It's Elizabeth; something's wrong. I have to go."

"Alex, don't!"

He clicked the off button, tossed the phone toward the bed, and went down the stairs.

CHAPTER 8

"Alex? Alex, don't go!"

There was no reply, just dead air. God, what was happening over there? She could only go by her instincts—and her instincts told her it was bad.

Melissa got to her feet, raced into her temple room, snatching a sack-type shoulder bag from a hook on the way past. Inside, she yanked open the cabinet, pawing through the herbs. Sage. Bindweed. Nightshade. She even tossed in her jar of devil's dung. Rosemary, yes. Angelica. She turned to her jewelry box, tugging out and donning every protective, magically charged amulet she had. Amber and jet necklace, onyx ring, agate pendant.

Hurry, she told herself. There can't be much time.

You can't face him alone.

Melissa froze in place, her hands halfway into the drawer where she kept her semiprecious stones, as the gentle whisper pervaded her mind.

Blinking, she lifted her head, found herself facing her mirror, which hung in the west. There was an image there, a face beside hers, almost like a photo that had been doubly exposed. The face was so similar to her own that at first she thought she was seeing double. But it wasn't exactly like her own. And it was of no substance. And then she realized she was face-to-face with Alex's mother.

"J-Jennifer?" she whispered.

Get help. You must get help. You can't fight him alone.

Melissa spun around, shivers racing up her spine, because she swore she felt the breath of that voice on her ear, but there was no one there. "Get help?" she cried to the empty room. "Where the hell am I supposed to get help? It's not like I have a coven."

There was no answer. Melissa swallowed hard, tried to stop her heart from pounding. She quickly grabbed some crystals, quartz, more agate, turquoise. Then she hurried into the living room, feeling in her soul that she was running low on time.

Get help! This time the voice shouted, and it was accompanied by a burst of wind. Pages of the news articles she'd printed out from the Internet blew from the stack beside the computer, drifting to the floor.

The bag she carried fell from Melissa's numb hand, thunking when it hit, the jars of herbs and the crystals clattering against one another. Melissa tried to stop shaking as she moved forward, then bent to pick up the fallen sheet of paper that had landed faceup on top of the rest.

It was one of the news articles she'd printed out—the one that said Jennifer's mother was the person who had reported her missing.

The words stood out on the page, their type seeming darker, bolder than the rest, though she knew it wasn't really: "Marinda Simone of Gardendale…"

Swallowing hard, Melissa turned toward her telephone. She had no doubt she had just received a clear communication from a spirit. She knew by the way the fine mist of hairs on her forearms stood upright, as if in response to static electricity. She knew by the hollow feeling in her chest and the funny skips in her heartbeat. She knew this was for real.

She picked up the phone, dialed the operator, asked if there was a listing for Marinda Simone in the small development of Gardendale, California, asked for the number and the address. She waited a beat, then nearly fainted when the computerized voice began reciting the number and the street address.

Melissa jotted it down with hands that shook, thought about calling, but decided to drive over there instead. Not only was it on the way to Alex's gloomy mausoleum, but… she needed time. She needed time to figure out just what the hell she was going to say to the woman when she got there. The twenty minutes it would take to get there were not nearly enough.

The house was a small white Cape Cod, with slate blue shutters and trim, a picket fence, and an herb garden with rosemary growing at the gate. Wind chimes hung from the front porch. A broomstick stood, bristles up, to one side of the front door, and a tiny clear glass Christmas ornament, with what looked like herbs inside it, dangled from a red ribbon directly over her head when Melissa stood at the front door.

She rang the bell, wondering if she was reading the signs correctly.

The door opened. A woman stood there, smiling, mildly curious. She had long once-black hair, now streaked with silver, and deep blue eyes. Aside from the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes and the silver in her hair, the woman showed little sign of her age, though Melissa guessed she had to be well over sixty. And she was beautiful. But then the older woman's smile died and she stared as if stunned at Melissa's face. "My Goddess," she whispered.

"I, um—I'm sorry to bother you. Are you Marinda Simone?"

The woman managed to wipe the stunned expression away. "Yes. I'm—I'm sorry for my reaction, it's just that you look so much like… like my daughter." She blinked again, gave her head a shake. "Who are you?"

Melissa licked her lips. "My name is Melissa St. Cloud. I'm a friend of—of your grandson."

The woman's eyes widened. "Alex? You—you know Alex?"

"Yes."

Tears rose in those blue eyes. "I think you'd better come inside, dear."

"There's no time, Ms. Simone. He's in trouble."

The woman's eyes narrowed; her jaw clenched. "Is it his father? Is it Victor?"

"Yes."

Without a word, the woman clasped Melissa's hand and pulled her inside. Marinda left the door wide open, dragging Melissa at a trot through a cozy, neat-as-a-pin house and into what Melissa assumed was a bedroom.

Only it wasn't. Melissa was left to stand by the small table in the room's center, where a black cast-iron cauldron stood on a heat-resistant ceramic square. She scanned the room, the paintings of goddesses on the walls, the sculptures of them in every corner, the unlit candles everywhere. The place smelled powerfully of sandalwood and dragon's blood, and the windowsills were lined with huge blocks of amethyst and onyx and quartz.

There was a trunk on the floor in the back of the room, and the woman had opened it. She drew out a knife, unwrapping it from its black silk bindings. It had a very long double-edged blade and black handle with symbols burned into it.

"You're a Witch," Melissa said.

"As was my daughter," the woman replied, closing the trunk, turning to face Melissa, eyeing her jewelry. "As are you."

Melissa nodded. "We have to hurry."

With a nod, Marinda kept pace as Melissa rushed through the house and out to the car. Melissa dived behind the wheel. As she drove, the woman said, "Victor Moring is dead. Tell me it wasn't a mistake or a hoax when I read that in the papers."

"It wasn't. He is dead. But before he went, he planned some kind of ritual, to pass his powers on to Alex. Alex bought the house—he's living there now. Victor's old housekeeper, Elizabeth, is somehow in charge of seeing to it that the ritual happens, and I'm afraid she'll trick Alex into going through with it, somehow, even though I've warned him not to."

Marinda lowered her head and shook it. "No, it's not his power he wants to pass. I know what he wants. That's why I promised my daughter I would never try to find Alex. Because Victor would find him through me if I did, and because his intent is so foul."

She shot Melissa a look. "He'd been experimenting, researching, planning for this for his entire life. I don't believe it could even work, but I'm damned if I'm going to stand still and let him try."

"Try… try what?"

"Soul transferral," Marinda said. "He's going to try to move his own soul into Alex's body, so that he can return to the world of the living in Alex's place."

Melissa shook her head hard. "It won't work. It can't work."

"I've seen too much in my lifetime to put my faith in something being impossible. But even if it is, it won't matter. Jennifer learned what he was up to, and it frightened her so much that she ran away with little Alex to keep him safe. Victor's theory is that the first soul has to vacate the body at the moment his own tries to enter. In order for the spell to work, he has to bring Alex to the brink of death, then push him over." She closed her eyes. "He's going to murder his son, Melissa."

CHAPTER 9

Alex followed Elizabeth's voice but didn't find her on the ground floor as he'd expected. He did hear her, though. Footsteps from—the stairway to the basement?

"Elizabeth?"

He headed down, the basement stairs, worrying about what he might find. Was Elizabeth hurt, sick?

"Elizabeth, are you there?"

"Down here, Alex. Hurry, now, there's not much time!"

Alex picked up the pace, heading into the basement, wondering what on earth was wrong with the woman. If she was hurt, why the hell was she heading into the basement?

He wished he'd had time to dress in more than the pajama bottoms he was wearing. He'd never been in the basement of this old house. Elizabeth had told him there was nothing down there but the furnace and, now that he thought about it, seemed to have actively discouraged him from poking around below. He didn't relish the idea of traipsing through the cellar shirtless and barefoot. The concrete floor, while cool under his feet, seemed clean enough, and no spiderwebs stuck to his chest as he followed the sounds of Elizabeth's footsteps, and occasionally her voice, through the basement. The lights, what few there were, were low-wattage bulbs suspended from the ceiling and covered in red glass globes that were held in place by metal frames. Odd choice for a basement. But then again, his father had been an odd man.

The basement was huge, with cinder-block sides and a concrete floor. There were a furnace, a water heater, a fuel tank, and some boxes, all the things one would expect to find in a basement. There was also a wooden door, arched at the top, painted red, and standing open, that didn't seem to belong. But it was that door through which Elizabeth had gone. Beyond it, there was only darkness. Her voice floated back as if from the bowels of hell: "Come, Alex. Hurry now."

He stepped inside, wondering when she would find the light switch and flip it on. Then he heard the door close behind him, heard a lock turn. His stomach clenched tight.

"We don't want to be interrupted," Elizabeth said. A match flared, the sudden orange light licking at her face, making her seem demonic in the darkness. But she smiled and touched the flame to a candle on the floor, and then another, and another, moving around the room, spreading the light until he could finally see. He was standing within a circle of black candles. Shapes and symbols were painted on the floor, and in the center was a stone slab that looked like a bier, waist-high, rectangular, shaped as if to support a coffin.

He lifted his gaze toward Elizabeth. "What the hell is going on?"

She met his steady look with a smile. "Hush, now, and listen. It's time. It's time for your father to pass his gift on to you."

Alex gave his head a shake. "It's his gift, Elizabeth. Not mine. I'm not even certain I want it."

She went still, just staring at Alex's face. Then she seemed to shake herself. "You'd deny your father's dying request? Would you, Alex, after all he's done for you?"

Alex said nothing, just pushed a hand through his hair, trying to find a way to explain.

"Never mind," Elizabeth said softly. "Never mind then. It's your decision, after all." She dabbed tears from her eyes. "At least… join me in a drink to your father's memory. After that, we'll go back upstairs. I won't bother you about any of this again."

She nodded toward the slab.

Alex looked at it. "Let's go upstairs now. We can toast my father's memory up there."

"Oh." She seemed disappointed. "I… I thought you'd want to see this place, though I admit I was saving it for this special day. Now, it doesn't matter. This was your father's sacred room, Alex. He loved this room more than any other in the house."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I'll get the lights, in a second," she said, "so you can take a look around." She came toward him, carrying a tray with two ornate goblets on it. "Just sit, for a second. Take your drink. Then we'll go upstairs."

Alex pushed himself up onto the table, his legs hanging over the side, facing Elizabeth. He had to admit, he was curious about this room. "Thank you for understanding."

She lifted a goblet and handed it to Alex and took the other for herself, lowering the tray to the floor.

'To Victor Moring," Elizabeth said, lifting her glass. "May he find his ultimate joy. And to his son, may his body retain its power, its health, and its youthfulness for a long, long time to come." She tapped her goblet to Alex's, men drank.

Alex took a sip as well. The liquid was honey-sweet, with the sting of hard alcohol and the slightly thick texture of a liqueur. Alex swallowed, then lifted his own goblet in salute. "To my father," he said softly. "May his mistakes be forgiven, and his soul be at peace."

Again Alex drank, deeply this time. "This is very good," he said. "What is it?"

"Your father's special blend," Elizabeth told him. "He called it ambrosia."

"Nectar of the gods, huh?" Alex drained the glass, set it beside him on the slab.

She smiled, nodded, and turned to walk away, muttering, "Now where is that light switch?" She wandered into the shadows beyond the candlelight.

Alex waited. "Elizabeth, did you work for my father before I was born?"

From the darkness she answered, "Yes. I've been with your family for a very long time."

"I'd really… I'd like to know more about my mother."

"Your mother?" she asked. "What do you want to know about her?"

Alex blinked. Had Elizabeth's voice turned suddenly harsher than it had been before? No matter. He had to force himself to go ahead with his questions. "How did she die?"

"How do you think?"

Dizziness hit Alex like a wave hitting the sand. It made him think of the sacred place on the beach behind Melissa's house as he swayed and bobbed with the tide.

"Are you all right, Alex?"

"Yeah, I—" He pressed a hand to his forehead, got his upper body to stop wobbling. "I don't know what that was. That ambrosia must be stronger than it tastes."

"It is. A lot stronger. Lie down, Alex. It'll pass."

Alex lay down, obeying without resistance. He kept thinking he should be alarmed, he should be getting the hell out of this eerie basement. He kept wondering why it was taking Elizabeth so long to find the light switch. But his brain was too numb to act on any of it. His bare back pressed to the cold stone slab. He drew his legs up, stretching them out on the slab as well.

"Better?"

"Yes. But you didn't answer my question. About my mother."

"She committed suicide, Alex. Jumped off a bridge. You see, she had taken you from your father. His own newborn child. She ran away with Victor's son and heir. And then she just gave you away, like a stray cat she no longer wanted. Just gave you away, hoping Victor would never find you. You, his own guarantee of immortality. I suppose she couldn't live with the guilt of having betrayed her husband so horribly."

Alex shook his head from side to side, but the act made his head spin so badly that he had to close his eyes. "That doesn't make sense."

"Well, she knew why Victor wanted a son. Needed a son. Victor knew he would die relatively young, you see. He'd foreseen his own demise, dreamed of it. He knew exactly when it would come. Fortunately, he also knew your mother's plans. He found her precious little wooden box with her note to you inside it, and he substituted it with a box of his own, an identical one, with a hidden compartment. Then he spoke an incantation over it, ensuring you would find it in time to come to him before he died." Alex heard the woman sigh deeply. "But the cancer in his brain took an unforeseen turn—or maybe it had help from one of your mother's allies. At any rate, he passed just before his work came to fruition and brought you back to him." Her words seemed to echo, as if coming from within a deep well.

"If he knew her plans, why didn't he just… stop her from leaving?"

Elizabeth laughed. "To be honest, he had no intention of raising her brat on his own. Why should he, when he knew he wouldn't need you until much later? He let the nuns keep you. He knew you would come to him when his time drew near."

Frowning hard, Alex let those words sink in, tried to make sense of them. He turned his head slowly, opened his eyes. But the candles on the floor around him seemed to be revolving, and he couldn't blink Elizabeth into focus.

"He… he didn't want me?"

"Didn't need you. Not then."

Footsteps came closer. Elizabeth was back within his range of vision now but different. She'd donned a dark hooded robe that hid her face in shadows. She came to Alex's side, even as he tried to sit up and found his body completely unwilling to cooperate. She leaned over him, and chains rattled. Real fear crept into his blood, chilling it, when he realized she was locking manacles around his wrists and then his ankles.

She vanished again, and when she returned this time, she was holding a dagger. She muttered words in some language he didn't understand and drew the blade across his chest.

Pain sprang up in a fiery trail that followed the knife point. His back arched, lips pulling away from his teeth, arms jerking against the restraints. He cried out, but he couldn't escape. Whatever she'd given him made him weak, dizzy and confused, but it did nothing to dull the pain.

Again and again she lifted the blade, turned it, and drew another line, as if inscribing a message in his flesh. He could feel the warm blood flowing over his ribs, pooling at his sides.

"Are you insane? Jesus!"

She wiped the blade across Alex's thigh, turned, and left him. He managed to turn his head. "What the hell are you doing to me?"

"I'm sorry, Alex. But your father needs your body. He'd planned to take it before he passed, but he was a powerful magician. He's still a powerful magician. He can make it work, even from beyond. Sadly, you can't both fit in there at the same time, so I'm afraid you're going to have to leave."

He wasn't sure what the hell she meant—and when he tried to figure it out, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. But he had to know. "You're going to kill me."

The woman shrugged. "Technically, no." Even as she said it, Elizabeth was wheeling what looked like a defibrillation unit up beside Alex's stone bed. "The minute your heart stops, you'll leave your body. Your father has already left his. But he has trained and practiced with this type of thing his entire life. He is in complete control. He will enter your body. You will go on to the afterlife. And then, I'll restart your heart. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you'll still be alive."

Alex shook his head weakly. "You're insane. It won't work. It will never work."

"Nonsense, Alex." A sharp stabbing pain at his wrist made Alex jerk his arm against the chains, but he couldn't pull clear of the pain. Elizabeth had returned, and she was leaning over him now, adjusting the intravenous line she'd just stuck into his wrist. The tube that led from his wrist hung down, and he lifted his head to see what was on the other end.

Nothing. The tube ended abruptly at an open end that dangled over an empty pail.

He slid his gaze up to his wrist, saw his own blood filling the tube, up to the point where the former nurse had it clamped. "Whenever you're ready, Victor," she said, to no one in the room.

And inexplicably, Alex heard a man's voice whisper, "Begin."

She removed the clamp. To Alex's horror, a stream of blood began flowing through the tiny tube, into the pail on the floor.

CHAPTER 10

Melissa pulled her car into the driveway of the ancient-looking house. Storm clouds had gathered overhead, almost as if conspiring to block morning from coming to this desolate place. As she and Marinda walked to the front door, thunder rumbled in the distance. But to Melissa, it didn't sound like thunder at all but more like the menacing growl of some cosmic cur, warning them away.

She hesitated. Marinda closed a hand on her arm. "There's no such thing as a deity of absolute evil," she whispered, her voice close to Melissa's ear. "There's only energy. Victor has mastered his ability to tap into it, but the choice to use it for evil was all his. He was just a man, Melissa. Only a mortal man."

Melissa nodded.

"Center yourself, Witchling. We can tap into the same source, the same energy, and direct it against him. His spirit is working against nature. Nature's on our side."

Nodding, Melissa closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, curled her toes inside her shoes as she let the mighty force of the planet, the Mother, flow up and into her. She tipped her head back and opened her eyes, letting the endless energy of the Sky, the Father, pour down into her. She even tapped the power of the storm, and knew, when the wind whipped harder against her face and the lightning flashed, that it was real.

The power of the universe was real, and she was a part of it and a conduit for it.

Lowering her head, she stared at the house. "I'm ready."

The two of them marched side by side up the front stairs, to the door. Melissa was surprised to find it unlocked. She opened it and stepped inside. But she saw no one. The house was silent and brooding, and it felt abandoned.

"Victor's temple room is in the basement," Marinda said.

"How do you know?"

"My daughter lived here, for a time. She told me many things. This way, come on."

She led the way through the massive house, and Melissa followed, struggling to hold on to her connection with the Source of all power. They came to a door, which hung open, went through it and down a steep, long set of stairs into the bowels of the place. It was eerily lit with red-globed bulbs, and the energy that filled it was toxic. Melissa felt it around her, prickling her skin and raising goose bumps on her arms. Marinda never hesitated. She walked through the basement and up to a large door, carved all from one slab of wood. She tried the knob, careful not to make a sound as she twisted.

"Locked," she said.

"Wait." Melissa dug in her bag, pulled out a long, heavy hairpin. "I expected the place to be locked. I'll try to get it open." Marinda moved aside just slightly, and Melissa inserted the pin into the keyhole, twisting, feeling, willing the lock to open.

Marinda pulled something from her pocket, a dry brown flower on a tall, nearly leafless stem. "Maybe this will help." She held the blossom against the lock.

Immediately Melissa felt the tumblers turn against her hairpin and knew the lock had opened. Whether due to her own efforts or the other woman's weed, she couldn't be sure.

Marinda whispered, "Chicory cut with blade of gold, midnight or midday at the height of Sol, clears the pathway to your goal, against it no man's locks will hold." She shrugged. "Hold on to the stem, dear. Folklore claims it grants invisibility as well."

Melissa dropped her hairpin back into her bag and closed a hand around the bottom of the stem the other woman held. "Hell, it can't hurt."

Melissa turned the knob and pushed the door open. The scene laid out within the circle of dancing black candles in the room she entered shocked her right to the core. Alex was on a stone table, chains on his arms and legs, his chest covered in blood that ran in rivulets down his sides. A tube in his arm ran with more blood that was collecting in a pail on the floor.

"Alex, my God!" She let go of the weed and ran to his side, yanking the needle from his wrist and closing her hand over the wound, to halt the blood flow.

"So you've arrived," a woman said.

Melissa jerked her head up sharply, so focused on Alex that she hadn't even noticed the woman standing in the circle. She wore a hooded robe that shadowed her face, and stood between the table on which Alex lay and a machine of some kind.

"You broke the circle," she whispered. "But it's not going to matter." The woman lifted a dagger and came slowly toward Melissa. "Back away from him. Now."

Melissa looked down, and her stomach convulsed when she saw the amount of Alex's blood in the pail. She clenched his wrist tighter, refusing to let go. "You can't kill us all."

The woman looked up, surprised, and only then did she seem to notice that Melissa hadn't come alone. Marinda stepped out of the shadows, into the light cast by the dancing flames of the candles.

"You," Elizabeth said, her voice louder than before.

"That's right, Elizabeth." Then she looked around the room. "Do you hear that, Victor? I'm not going to let you murder my grandson the way you did his mother. What kind of spell did you use to make her jump off that bridge?"

Elizabeth smiled slowly. "Oh, it was nothing so complicated for a man of Victor's power, Witch. A mind control spell, some posthypnotic suggestion, and it was done."

She moved toward Melissa again. Melissa flung up a hand, projecting all the energy she could muster. "Halt, damn you!"

Again the woman stopped.

Melissa focused on Alex then. "Mother Earth, goddess strong, stop this blood by witches' song. Mother Earth, goddess strong, stop this blood by Witches' song. Mother Earth…"

Marinda joined in the chant, coming closer, standing right at her side, placing her hand over Melissa's. Melissa felt the wound tingling against her palm.

"Stop it! Dammit, stop right now!" Elizabeth cried. She raced forward again, swinging her blade at Melissa.

Marinda yanked Melissa aside, pulling her hand from Alex's wrist as she did. The blade hissed by, doing no damage. And as Melissa stumbled, regained her balance, and glanced back at the wrist, she saw no further bleeding. Either the charm had worked or Alex was already dead.

Elizabeth stood crouched, blade aloft, ready to attack. But there was something beside her. Some dark, shapeless form that pulsed with evil.

"He's here," Marinda whispered, leaning close. "Open the Western Gate, Melissa. We have to send Victor back through, it's the only way to end this."

Melissa nodded, but she didn't want to leave Marinda's side with this mad knife-wielding woman so close by.

"Go!"

Melissa went. Elizabeth moved to come for her, but Marinda was ready. She snatched the bag from Melissa's shoulder and swung it, catching the other woman upside the head and knocking her to her knees. The dagger clattered to the floor as Elizabeth scrambled to her feet, and then the two women were locked in a struggle, hitting, punching, clawing each other. Melissa knew Marinda had a blade of her own, but she would never use it. Not to do violence.

Melissa located the western point, partly by instinct and partly by the symbols inscribed on the floor in red paint and the large bowl of water that stood at the circle's edge. She stood with her back to the life-and-death struggle, to Alex, and it took all her willpower to do that. Every part of her practical, mortal mind was telling her to turn, to fight, to drag Alex out of here. But the Witch in her, that impractical, intuitive part, knew this was far bigger than a physical battle, and told her to do what had to be done.

She focused, centered, envisioned the great pouring sea, the womb of the Earth mother, the place of transformation, the gateway between the worlds. When she saw it so clearly that she could feel the spray and hear the crashing waves, she pushed her arms straight out in front of her, then slowly opened them wide, parting the mystical waters.

"Guardians of the Western Gate, open the portals wide! Beloved ancestors, come, come, come to us now! Come to gather the soul that awaits its rest. Come to gather the wounded heart of this lonely spirit, whose time on this plane has passed!"

She paused, waiting. She could still hear movement behind her, the grunts of pain, the impacts of hands on flesh. And another voice, a dark voice, Victor's voice, moaning, "No. No, God, no!"

"Sisters of the Moerae, Weavers of the Web of Fate, come! Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, come!" Melissa cried, her voice gaining strength and volume. "Bring with you the Keres! The hounds of the Underworld! Two men lie at your feet. Two souls hover between the worlds. You alone know which is meant to pass at this time and which is destined to live on in the mortal realm. Come, Sisters! Weave the thread of life into the web of your grand design. Come!"

Melissa paused only long enough to draw a ragged breath, then went on, not even thinking about her words. They came from somewhere deep within her. "Hecate! Lady of the Crossroads!" Melissa was shouting now, and her voice filled the room and reverberated from the walls. "Come, triple goddess! Claim the soul that is your own and spare the innocent from further harm!"

Melissa was jarred from her state of intense focus by a blast of wind and a crashing sound. The pot of water that had been sitting at the western edge of the circle lay on its side, its contents flowing over the floor. She hadn't touched it; she was sure no one else had, either. It was a moment before she realized the water was flowing toward the center of the circle, and she turned to see it racing toward the table where Alex lay, the dark shape hovering closely over him.

Above the water there was a blur of white. Or was it a trick of her eyes and the candles?

Elizabeth broke away from where she was locked in physical combat with Marinda and ran to Alex's side. Her feet slapped down into the stream of water, and it splashed up and into that dark form.

And at that very instant, the dark form vanished.

Marinda looked up from the floor, her face cut and bleeding in places and bearing angry red handprints in others. Her hair was a wild tangle. Elizabeth was babbling now, weeping, shaking Alex's body as if trying to wake him. "Victor? Are you there? Did you make it?"

Melissa hurried to help Marinda to her feet. "It's over, now, Elizabeth," she whispered. "It's done. Victor's gone."

"No!" the nurse cried. "I only have to wake him in his new body."

Melissa snapped her head around. The woman had grabbed the defibrillator machine's paddles and hit its power buttons.

"He has to be all right! He has to." She leaned over Alex, even as Melissa lunged forward. "Come back to me, Victor!" Elizabeth cried, lowering the paddles.

"No! Wait!" Melissa hit Elizabeth hard, knocking her away from Alex just as she hit the buttons. Elizabeth stumbled, the paddles turning and touching her own body. A charge of electricity surged from the paddles into the woman who held them and who was standing with her feet in a puddle of water. She spasmed there for an instant, like a marionette on quivering strings, and then collapsed to the floor, dropping the paddles.

Melissa hurried to her side, bent over her, checked her pulse. There was nothing. Her hair was smoking. So was the machine. Melissa lifted her gaze to Marinda, automatically seeking the older woman's wisdom.

Marinda shook her head. "The Fates wanted her. They took her. Let her go." Then she looked past Melissa and smiled. "And my grandson is awake."

Melissa ran to Alex, lifting his head, running her hands through his hair, kissing his face. "You're all right. Oh, God, you're all right."

He tried to embrace her, only to find his arms couldn't reach, because of the chains. "Melissa, Elizabeth was… she tried to—"

"I know. It's all right now. It's over." She leaned in, pressed her lips to his, felt the life in him, strong and steady.

"Close the gate, young Priestess," Marinda said, coming to join her at Alex's side. "You've done well today."

Alex was struggling to sit up. His grandmother helped him, freeing him from the manacles and whispering to him to wait, to be still for just a moment. Then he sat there in silence, watching as Melissa turned slowly away, facing west. She pictured that sea again, saw herself on its shore, opened her arms wide.

Then she paused, because she saw… something. That woman, that same woman she'd seen before. Jennifer, standing on the shore. Melissa turned quickly to see if the others saw her, too. From their stunned expressions she knew they did.

"Jennifer?" Marinda whispered.

Alex said, "What… who… what am I seeing?"

"That's my daughter, Alex," Marinda said gently. "Your mother."

"My mother?"

The apparition seemed to smile. Melissa heard, not out loud but in her mind, Jennifer's voice. Her message.

Thank you, Melissa. Thank you for saving my son. Thank you, dear Mother, for helping her.

The rest seemed to be addressed to Alex: Don't worry about Victor, my darling child. This is a place of healing and transformation, not punishment. Now, for the three of you, I have only one request. Love one another, as I love you all.

And then she faded, growing smaller and vanishing altogether.

Tears flooding her eyes, Melissa opened her arms again. "Thank you, Jennifer, for bringing us together, for giving your own life to save that of your son. We love you and we will forever honor your memory." The tears spilled over. "Thank you, Hecate, goddess of the crossroads. Thank you, Sisters of Fate, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. Hail and farewell."

"Hail and farewell," Marinda echoed.

"Good-bye, Mother," Alex whispered.

Melissa drew her arms down and together, closing the veil between the worlds. Then she turned and went to Alex.

He was pale, none too steady, as she and Marinda helped him down from the table. "Alex, this is Marinda Simone. She's your grandmother."

He smiled weakly at the older woman. "Hello, Grandmother."

"Hello, Alex." She leaned close, kissed his cheek. Then she sighed, all business. "There's no reason to open up your father's private life and all his mistakes to public scrutiny. I'll ground the circle energy. Then we'll clean up down here and move the body upstairs. We can throw a hair dryer into the bathtub with poor Elizabeth. The world can believe her death was accidental electrocution. It's close enough to the truth."

"But what about Alex?" Melissa asked. "He needs a hospital."

"No." Alex touched her face with his palm. "Look at the pail. I can't be more than a couple of pints low. The cuts on my chest are shallow. I'll be fine."

She stared at him and she imagined her heart was in her eyes, but she didn't care. "Are you really all right?"

He leaned closer, kissed her mouth, and probably tasted the salt of her tears, she thought, as she clung to him. When he lifted his head, he said, "I'm all right. From now on, everything is going to be all right."

Alex let Melissa pull his arm around her shoulders, but he refused to lean on her as she led him through the darkness of the great below, up the stairs, and into the great above. The sun was streaming through the windows now, and the house seemed almost… cheerful.

He sat in a chair and allowed Melissa to wash the blood from his chest and his sides, while his grandmother was in the kitchen, brewing what she called a healing tea.

"What did that insane woman cut into my chest?" he asked Melissa as she ran the cloth over the shallow wounds. It stung, but he didn't care.

"Victor's name, in Theban script." She applied salve she'd found in the medicine cabinet, then wrapped his chest in soft gauze and taped it in place. "He thought he could steal your body, basically make himself live again."

"I know. Elizabeth said as much while she was carving me up." Melissa had a clean shirt in her hands, taken from Alex's room upstairs, but she paused now, staring at him with her huge, beautiful eyes. "Do you think that it's possible this thing could have worked?" she asked.

"I don't know. I just… I don't know. I think he's been—haunting me sort of. Maybe preparing for this. I've felt him in my head more than once—but not anymore." He shook his head.

"I suppose just about anything is possible," she said.

He reached out, took the shirt from her, and set it aside. Then he took her hands in his. "What about forgiving me, for being such a stubborn idiot about all of this and nearly getting you killed? Do you think that's possible?"

Her eyes seemed to search his—and he felt to his core they were doing exactly that. Searching for some reassurance that he hadn't absorbed his father's twisted values and negativity.

Licking his lips, knowing what he had to do, he got to his feet. "You sit. I want to tell you some things I figured out while I was lying down there being drained into a mop bucket."

She did as he said, but she never took those potent, all-seeing eyes from his. God, he loved her. He'd loved her from the second he'd set eyes on her, he thought. She sat in the overstuffed chair, but only after pulling another one closer, so he could sit facing her.

She knew he was still weak and dizzy. She seemed to know more about him than he did, most of the time. She had from the start.

He sat in the chair facing hers and took her hands in his. "I realized down there, when I was pretty sure I was going to die, that you were right. He's built up a lot of negativity, or bad karma, or whatever you want to call it. I figure, since I lived through all of this, I have the opportunity to make things right. Take that negative energy and redirect it into something positive."

"Really? How are you going to do that, Alex?"

"For starters, I'm going to sell this house and everything in it and give the money to St. Luke's School for Boys."

She smiled a little. He liked that, knew he was on the right track.

"Do you think you have to do that for me, Alex? Because you don't, you know. I've been falling in love with you since the first time you said my name. That's not going to change."

He smiled fully. "You think I haven't figured that out already? Hell, woman, you came charging in here unarmed and laid your life on the line for me. I kind of guessed that might mean you cared."

"Not overconfident or anything, are you?" she asked, her tone teasing.

"Not even close." He got to his feet, tugged her to hers. "Melissa, you are—you're good. You're so good that I feel like I want to be better. I want to be the kind of man who's worthy of loving a woman like you." He slid his arms around her waist, pulled her close to him.

"You already are, Alex," she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. "I promise, you already are."

EPILOGUE

"Shhhh!" Melissa hissed. "It's starting!"

She sat in the arms of her husband, in front of the television in the living room of their beach house. There were people all around them. Bowls of popcorn, open pizza boxes, and lots of icy soft drinks covered every surface. The director was there, along with the two beautiful starlets and the new head writer, a woman who was a practicing Witch herself. Marinda was there as well, beaming with approval at her grandson and his wife and hinting about the greatgrandchildren she hoped wouldn't be too far away.

The season finale of The Enchantress began with the Witch as a guest at an authentic Wiccan wedding, with the bride and groom being played by none other than the creative consultant and the show's producer/creator.

The ceremony was built around Melissa and Alex's actual wedding, held in a grove of oaks, the guests forming a circle around them. Every flower and color and gift had a special spiritual significance, and the officiating minister was a Wiccan High Priestess by the name of Marinda Simone.

Of course, in the script the ceremony was interrupted by some ill-intentioned demon and the Enchantress was forced to vanquish him, but at least she didn't accomplish that by a deadpan recitation of a rhyming couplet from a book. Thanks to the new writing team, the poor, overworked Witch was forced to do research, determine the best astrological timing, find and gather appropriate herbs, stones, and candles, call on the Divine, and channel her power from the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit. Also thanks to the new writing team, the show's ratings had climbed through the roof. Every episode dropped a tiny bit of Witchlore or ancient wisdom, all wrapped up in a damn good story, and the viewers couldn't get enough.

When the credits rolled and everyone inside was celebrating, high-fiving each other, cracking a few beers, Alex took Melissa's hand and tugged her with him, through the sliding doors, and down onto their special place on the beach.

"I need you with me for this," he told her. Then he pulled something from his pocket: the gold pentacle that had belonged to his father.

"Alex?" She searched his eyes. "Honey, I thought we were going to keep that put away?"

He nodded. "We were. But I don't think keeping it in a locked box in the back of the closet is really good enough. Not even after all the cleansing you've done on it. I think… I think it's time to let it go."

"But it's the only thing you have left of your father."

He shook his head. "No. I've only just begun to realize all the other things he left me. Because of him, I found you. And Grams. And my mother. My family. I have all of that. I don't need a hunk of metal. Besides, I think it makes a great offering of thanks."

She smiled. "And just what are you giving thanks for?"

"Everything I just mentioned. Plus the success the show is enjoying. And most of all, for the little one that's going to be coming into our lives pretty soon."

She frowned. "Honey, I'm not—"

"Yes, you are. Have been, since that first night on the beach."

"How do you know?"

He smiled down at her. "My mother told me, in a dream last night. It will be a little girl, and we'll name her Jennifer." He pulled her close and kissed her. Then he turned to face the sea and hurled the pendant as hard as he could.

It splashed into the water, just as the sun went down. Melissa closed her eyes and whispered, "So mote it be."