9. True Name

    

    I am sorry for the delay in answering your last two letters. I have been ill. -- Brother Sinestus Tor, to Colin, August 1768.

    

    In American history I got a forty-seven on my test. I had never flunked a test before in my life, and my stomach clenched in a know of embarrassment.

    "Morgan, can you see me after class, please?" said Mr. Powell. I nodded, my face flushing.

    After class I waited until the other kids had left. Mr. Powell looked up at me, his wide grey eyes thoughtful behind gold wire glasses. "What happened with this test?" he jumped right in with no preamble.

    "I forgot about it," I admitted.

    He looked perplexed. "But even if you forget, you should have known enough to squeak by with a D. This test showed that you've learned virtually nothing since the winter holidays. I don't get it."

    I was so hating this. "I just… I've just had a lot going on."

    Once again he waited. I'd always liked Mr. Powell, even though I couldn't stand American history. I felt he always tried to make it interesting.

    "Morgan, I'll be frank with you." I hate it when teachers say that. "You've always been an excellent student. But the other teachers and I have noticed a significant drop in your grades this past quarter." He paused, as if waiting for me to explain. I didn't know what to say.

    "Morgan, I've heard… rumors."

    I blinked. "Rumors? About what?"

    "About Wicca. Students having witchcraft circles performing rites." He looked as uncomfortable as I felt. How in the world had he heard about that? Then I remembered the kids who had come to one or two of Cal's first circles. They'd left--it wasn't for them. I guessed they'd been talking about it.

    "Do you know anything about it?" he pressed.

    I felt like he was asking if I ever been a member of the Communist Party, if I was gay, if I was Jewish. "Um, well, I practice Wicca." Morgan takes a stand.

    Mr. Powell looked nonplussed for a moment, then tapped his fingers on his desk, thinking.

    Finally he said, "Is this interfering in your schoolwork?"

    "Yes," I almost whispered. Far from being surreal. I was smack-bad in the middle of harsh reality. I was going to flunk my junior year if I didn't get my act together.

    "What are you going to do about it?" he asked.

    "Study more?"

    "Will that be enough?"

    "Do extra credit?" I offered hopefully.

    "Let me think about it." He shut his notebook, no longer seeming approachable.

    "I'm sorry," I said, and he looked back at me.

    "Morgan, you're only seventeen. You're extremely bright. You could do anything you want with your life. Don't screw up this young." He turned and walked out of the room, as if he was personally hurt by my poor grade. I felt awful. I was being slowly crushed by pressure from all sides. I just had to get through and do the best I could do. The problem was, that probably wouldn't be good enough. For anyone.

    "Morgan!" Killian was waiting for me on his usual bench. But as I started toward him, I heard Mary K.'s voice behind me. My heart clutched suddenly--I didn't want them to meet. Quickly I turned my back to Killian and went to meet my sister.

    "I didn't see you this morning." She grinned. "Let me guess. You're having a hard time getting up in the morning."

    "You know me too well. How are things at Jaycee's?"

    My sisters face clouded. "It's fine," she said unconvincingly. "Jacyee's got a new friend--you know her. Alisa Soto. And a new boyfriend--Micheal Pulaski."

    I wasn't sure, but I thought Micheal was a sophomore. "She sounds busy."

    "Yeah." Mary K. shook her head. "I guess I'm not really used to sharing Jaycee. And Alisa is into Wicca, and I don't want Jaycee to get into it." This said with an apologetic glance. I know she hated my involvement with Wicca. "And it's hard to watch her being all happy and loveydovey with Micheal after--"

    "Hmmm," I said. "Yeah, I can see how that would bother you. Are you going to tell Jaycee how you feel about things?"

    "No. It wouldn't do any good, and it'd just make me look weird and clingy. Anyway. We're going to the mall tonight 'cause it's Friday. Alisa isn't going, and Micheal has hockey practice."

    "Good. You and Jaycee have a good time, then. And call me tomorrow, okay? Since I won't see you at school."

    She nodded. "Okay. Thanks." She gave me one of her quick, sweet smiles, and I felt a rush of love for her. My sister.

    After Mary K. had rejoined her friends, I walked over to Killian. Raven was practically in his lap. I wondered meanly how she avoided getting pneumonia, showing as much skin as she did. As I walked up, other members of Kithic drifted toward us.

    "Hey!" Killian greeted me. "I found something I wanted to show you all. Do we have enough cars?"

    And just that easily we were all swept into the Killian tide. Fifteen minutes later I realized we were almost to the old Methodist cemetery where our original coven, Cirrus, had first made magick. Where Cal and Hunter had had a showdown and I had put a holding spell in Hunter that he was probably still pissed about. What had Killian found here?

    "We've been here before," Matt told him as we gathered at the edge of the property.

    "You have? Then you know about power sink?" he looked disappointed.

    "What power sink?" I asked, and he perked up and began to lead us through the overgrown brush to the actual graveyard.

    "You know about power leys?" he asked. At our blank faces, he went on. "All around the earth, like strings wrapped around a ball, there are ancient lines of power that were created when the world was made. If a witch stands on one, works magick on one, their magick will be enhanced, more powerful. Anytime two or more of these leys intersect, the inherent power is even greater. Right in this cemetery is a huge power sink, probably five or more lines crossed together."

    It was somehow demoralizing that my party-guy, irresponsible, devil-may-care half brother was so much more knowledgeable than I was. Then we were standing in front of the stone sarcophagus that Cirrus had used as an altar on Samhain. The marker read Jacob Henry Moore, 1845-1871.

    "Right here! Killian said enthusiastically. "This is an incredible power sink."

    Bree met my eyes, and the other Kithic members were quiet. Cal had brought us here several times. Obviously he'd been aware it was a power sink and had used it to his advantage. And none of us had known.

    It occurred to me that of course Hunter knew about it also. He must have felt it when he was here with Cal. The power sink might even be the reason my holding spells had worked so well when I'd used them to stop Hunter and Cal from fighting. But Hunter hadn't told me.

    "Is a power sink important?" Bree asked.

    "Oh, yes," said Killian. "It's like turbo charging your magick--for both good and bad. I mean sometimes magick shouldn't be turbocharged. Know what I mean?

    "No," Robbie said.

    "I mean, some spells need to be gentle and shallow," Killian explained.

    While he was talking, I felt paranoia creeping into my veins. Quickly I cast my senses out strongly, sweeping the area for any kind of danger, anything out of the ordinary. Killian looked at me, his brows knit together, but I didn't stop until I was sure there was nothing unusual going on. Then I met his gaze calmly, and he cocked his head to the side.

    "Watch this," he said, and held out his left arm. He wore a thick suede glove on his hand and pulled the heavy wool tweed of his coat over his wrist. Then he opened his mouth and began to sing into the setting of the afternoon light. It was an odd, unholy song, in a voice nothing like his own It sounded inhuman but also frighteningly, hauntingly beautiful. The notes rose and fell and waxed and waned, and all the time my half brother, Ciaran's son, watched the sky. I realized he was repeating the song over and over again, and we all started to watch the sky also.

    Slowly, in the deepening twilight, I became aware of a large bird wheeling above us, dropping down toward us in reluctant spirals of grace.

    "Uh-oh," Ethan breathed, and Sharon moved closer to him.

    I could see now that the bird was a large red-tailed hawk, big enough to pick up a small dog in it's talons. It dipped and swayed above us, descending ever slower as if being reeled in on a kite string.

    "What are you doing?" I whispered.

    "I know it's true name," Killian said. "It can't resist me."

    We all stepped back as the large, powerful predator dropped the last eight feet, wings beating, to land on Killian's arm, I couldn't breathe. This wasn't a zoo bird, wings clipped so it couldn't fly. This was a raw piece of nature, a killing machine, with eyes the color of liquid gold and a beak designed for ripping open rabbits' stomachs like silk. Its talons gripped Killian's coat sleeve, but if it hurt, he didn't show it.

    "So beautiful," Jenna whispered, looking mesmerized.

    The bird was clearly nervous and afraid, not comprehending why it was here, so against its will, against its nature. I could smell fear coming off it, an acrid fragrance overlaid by anger and humiliation.

    "That's one fine bird," Ethan said in awe.

    "Incredible," said Bree.

    "Let it go," I said with clenched teeth. "Let it go now."

    Killian looked at me in surprise--the killjoy--then spoke some words. Instantly, as if released from a prison, the hawk took off. Its powerful wings beat the air with a sound like a helicopter's rotors. Within seconds it was a dark speck in the sky, leaving us behind.

    "Well," Killian began.

    "It hated being here," I said impatiently. "It hated it. It was afraid."

    Killian looked intrigued. "How do you know?"

    "I felt it!" I said. "Just like you must have."

    "How did you do that?" Raven asked, interrupting us.

    Killian turned to her, as if he had forgotten his audience. "I know its true name. The song I sang was its true name, the name it was born with. Everything has a true name that's irrevocable and individual and unmistakable. If you know something's true name, you have power over it."

    "Is a true name like a coven name?" Matt asked.

    Shaking his head, Killian said, "No, no one can give something else its true name. It's part of the thing or the person, like eye color or skin color or the size of your hands, You're born with it, you die with it.

    "Do you have a true name?" Raven asked.

    He laughed, showing the smooth column of his neck. "Of course. Blood witched learn their true name during initiation. Everyone has one, every person, every rock, every tree, every fish or bird or mammal. Crystals, metals--anything natural. They all have a true name. And if you know it, you own them."

    I watched Killian intently. Own them? There was a difference between owning a living being versus a crystal or even a plant. I wondered what my true name was. A chill went down my spine as I considered what might happen if somebody else were to know it. If there was one thing I had learned over the last few months, it was that there were plenty of people out there who would love to be able to own me and my power.

    "Does anyone else know your true name?" Robbie asked Killian. "Like your parents?"

    "Oh, Goddess, no!" Killian looked appalled at the thought. "It gives someone power over you if they know your true name."

    "You don't want your parents to know?" Robbie asked.

    "And give them power over me? Never. I'd rather be dead." All his humor was gone, and his face was closed and set. He glanced at the empty, darkening sky. "It's getting late. We'd better go."

    As we walked back to the cars, I thought about what Killian had just done. It had been beautiful; beautiful, painful magick. He had forced a living thing to do act against his nature, and he had done it lightly, capriciously, and solely to impress. He had broken about a hundred council rules with this one stunt. If every witch were like this, it would be a disaster. I began to comprehend the role the council played in the order of witches.

    I was almost to Das Boot when Killian took my arm gently. He leaned close to whisper in my ear: "Speaking of parents… I heard from Da, He's coming to see us." 10. Blood Ties Brother Colin, my battles are usually of the spirit, but today I had one of the flesh. On the road home from Atherton to Barra Head, I saw three roadside bandits set upon Nuala Riordan.

    I commanded them to unhand her, and two of them immediately set upon me. God forgive me, Brother Colin, but it was as if I were a lad once more, wrestling with you and Derwin. You'll remember that I always trounced you both at wrestling and I trounced both those sorry louts today. As for the third, he fell into some sort of fit; with no warning he fell to the ground, writhing in pain. At last he fainted, and Nuala and I left with all haste.

    Thanks be to God, she was unharmed. When I suggested that perhaps she should not leave the village, she looked at me oddly. Then boldly she told me she had no husband, nor a lover either.

    My cheeks burned at her frankness, Brother Colin, I admit is. Then, as soft as a dove's wing, she said my name--Sinestus--and it was as if her very voice was weaving a spell around me. I left her as quickly as I could, for to speak the truth, I feared the temptation of sin.

    It is time for vespers, Brother Colin, and then Brother Edmond is taking the post. I must finish this letter another time. --Brother Sinestus Tor, to Colin, September 1768 "Well, I'm fine," I told Aunt Eileen the next day. So far. I checked her name off my list of phone calls.

    "Are you sure?" she asked. "Why don't you come spend the weekend here?"

    "Oh that's okay," I said. "I'm just going to stay home and study. I need to pull up some grades."

    "You? Pull up them up to what? What's past an A?"

    I laughed nervously. We chatted for a few more minutes, then hung up.

    Next I called Mary K. at Jaycee's. It turned out that Jaycee's parents were taking the girls skiing for the weekend. I felt relief. I'd spent most of the night lying awake, dreading Ciaran's arrival. I wanted Mary K. away from here--I didn't want her associated with whatever happened between me and my blood father. I told her to be careful and not to break her leg and asked if she needed money, which she didn't. She was a chronic baby-sitter and consequently as rich as Midas.

    "Take care," I told her. "Use your good manners."

    She laughed at my Mom imitation.

    Next on my phone list was Hunter. "I haven't heard from Killian yet," I reported. "I don't know when Ciaran's coming in."

    "All right. Listen, I just got a cell phone. Write down this number."

    I did.

    "Now I need you to come to my house. Eoife is here, and we need to talk to you about plans and also teach you some spells you'll need to deal with Ciaran."

    I sighed. So much for hitting the books today. "Okay," I said. I'll be there soon."

    "Try to hurry."

    "All right." We said our good-byes, and I went to take a shower.

    Hunter let me in half an hour later. When I saw Eoife perched on the couch in the living room, my mood darkened. She looked paler, more fragile than the last time I had seen her, as if she were carrying a heavier weight. She gave me a faint smile.

    "So you where successful," she told me.

    "Well, Killian say's he's coming. We'll have to see if he does or not." I said.

    "He'll come," said Hunter, already pouring tea. "Now, tell us again everything Killian has told you."

    I did. I drank my tea, feeling its warmth slide down my throat, soothing me from the inside out. I told them about Killian finding the power sink at the cemetery and met Hunter's eyes.

    His expression betrayed nothing. I told them any snippets of conversation I had remembered, anything he had mentioned about his family. I felt disloyal to Killian, doing this, yet that had been the plan. That was that I signed up for.

    "Anything else?" Hunter said, his eyes on me.

    I thought about the hawk spell and closed my mind to Hunter. I didn't even know why, except I didn't want to get Killian in trouble. He didn't seem evil to me--just irresponsible. I wondered if he even understood the abuses that knowing someone's true name might lead to. When I looked up, Eoife's eyes seemed to look right through me, and I prayed I didn't blush. I wasn't fooling either one of them. Was I already the inherent test in all this, my choosing good over evil not just sometimes, but every time? I felt so inadequate.

    Hunter expelled his breath and sat back in his chair. He ran long fingers through his short blond hair, and to me it seemed like he only became more attractive every time I saw him.

    The bastard.

    "Right," said Eoife, sitting up straighter. "So let's talk about Starlocket. Suzanna Mearis has come out of her coma but has paralysis on her left side. They're continuing to work healing spells but since they don't know exactly what spell Amyranth used against her, they haven't been successful. In the meantime smaller things continue to happen: Rina O'Fallon's car lost its steering, and she had an accident. Someone's cat was found dead of no apparent cause.

    Someone's winter garden wilted overnight in its cold frame."

    I digested this silently,

    "The noose is closing," Hunter murmured.

    "Why can't they disband?" I asked, wanting it clarified.

    "It's traditional not to, in times of trouble," Eoife said, her eyes sad. "The bond between coven members is considered unbreakable. Only in very rare, extraordinary circumstances do members separate during dangerous times." Her glance flicked towards Hunter, and I remembered again that his parents had fled along with the rest of their coven before it was destroyed by a dark wave. I wondered what that extraordinary circumstance had been, but Hunter's face gave no clue.

    I felt that if I were in Starlocket, I'd be in Tennessee by now.

    "They're determined to fight evil in all its forms," Eoife added. "But I did tell them that we're still working to infiltrate Amyranth, and they were much cheered by this news."

    I looked at her blankly, then gulped when I realized that their only hope was me. If something happened to Alyce and Starlocket because I wasn't strong enough, good enough, how would I ever live with myself? Assuming I'd survive.

    "Anyway," said Hunter briskly, "we need to teach you some sigils of concealment and more wards of protection."

    "Yes," Eoife began, but then we were distracted by Sky's angry voice coming from the kitchen.

    "Dammit, that's not what I meant and you know it!" she was practically shouting.

    "Who's here?" I asked. I hadn't picked up on anyone else's presence.

    Hunter shook his head. "No one. She must be on the phone."

    "Anyway, Morgan," Eoife went on, "one of the first things I want to teach you is a simple concealment spell. It doesn't literally make you invisible, of course, but most people, animals, and even witches won't notice you're there."

    I nodded. "Like a you-see-me-not spell."

    Eoife looked startled. "You do this already?"

    "Um, only occasionally," I answered, wondering if I had just stepped on more Wiccan toes.

    "You know, if I don't… uh want to be seen."

    Eoife shot Hunter a glance, and he sort of threw up his hands. as if I were an unhousebroken dog he'd tried his best with.

    "Raven, I'm talking about last night!" Sky interrupted us loudly.

    We all felt embarrassed to be hearing this conversation. Then Eoife focused again.

    "This spell should get you into and out of most situations," she said. "If Ciaran knows you quite well, if he's familiar with your vibrations and your aura, he may be able to pick up on it, but not right away."

    "He knows some of that, if not all," I said thinking back to New York. He'd tried to steal my magick, so yeah, he probably knew my aura.

    "We'll have to do the best we can," Eoife said. "Ciaran is quite adept at knowing one intimately, only to use that knowledge to destroy. He enjoys destruction in and of itself, not just the dividends. He is the opposite of a creator."

    I hated hearing this about Ciaran but knew immediately it was true. What had happened in his life to make him that way? How much of his legacy had he passed on to me, to Killian, to his other children? Knowing he was evil the way I did, how could I still remember our odd connection with longing? What did that say about me?

    Eoife moved to sit cross-legged in front if the fire crackling in Hunter's fireplace. Gesturing to me to sit across from her, she said, "We'll bolster this with other spells of protection and attack. With your inherent strength, I feel it will work. If you learn it perfectly."

    Sitting across from Eoife on the floor, I tried to clear my mind and relax my breathing. I could still hear Sky in the kitchen, her voice rising and falling in anger. I tried to block it out. Hunter stayed where he was, in his chair, but I felt his eyes on me unwaveringly.

    “We’ll start with the words,” said Eoife, starting to murmur them.

    Leaning closer, I let my mind expand to envelop the softly spoken words. I loved spellcraft.

    There were so many different kinds: ones using crystals, oils, incenses, herbs. Ones using only words, ones combining words and gestures, ones made only within a circle and some you could make anywhere. This one has three parts: words, runes written in the air, and the casting of a glamour.

    Ten minutes later I had the words and runes down pat and felt confident I would remember them. The casting of a glamour I would have to work on. It was odd, but unlike school learning, which could sometimes go in me like a stone sinking in water, never to be seen again--magick seemed quite different. I had never forgotten a spell. Once learned it, it seemed part of the fabric of my being, another colored thread that made up the complete Morgan.

    I almost jumped when Sky raised her voice again.

    "No," she shouted, "That's not what I'm saying. You're twisting my words."

    I really didn't want to hear anymore and had stood up to ask if we could go work in the circle room, when Sky stalked out of the kitchen, her black eyes shooting sparks of anger. She saw us sitting there, and her gaze lasered in on me.

    "He is your brother," she said acidly. "You brought him here. He's a total bastard, and Raven's thick enough not to see it. But she should know better--after all, he's Woodbane."

    This last was spit at me, and I felt the blood drain from my face as she grabbed her black leather jacket and slammed out of the house. Outside I heard the roar of Sky's car as she peeled out, braked squealing.

    It was true: I had brought Killian here, and Raven was making a fool of herself over him, with his enthusiastic help. But I had brought him here at the council's wishes and for the greater good. I sat there feeling mortified, not knowing what to say. Hunter looked tight-lipped and withdrawn, but Eoife was calm as she arranged the tea things on their tray.

    "This is all part of life, my dear," she said in her soft Scottish accent. "Even pain and embarrassment are part of it."

    With a heavy sigh Hunter reached over and patted my knee.

    "Sky's just really angry. Not every Woodbane is evil," he said. "Your mother wasn't. Belwicket wasn't. I'm half Woodbane. There are many, many good Woodbane out there."

    "But not Killian, right?" I asked somberly. "And not Ciaran."

    Neither Hunter nor Eoife spoke, and silently I reached for my coat and let myself out of that house. Once again my heritage was catching up with me.

    

    

   I thank you for trying to intercede on my behalf, but it had been decided, Brother Colin. I have been remanded to the Abbey at Habenstadt, in Prussia.

    

    That night, at Bree's house, Raven didn't show for the circle. I'd arrived on time, and I was wearing cargo pants and a soft, thin sweater. After I'd gotten home from Hunter's, I'd felt depressed and confused, so I had cleaned the kitchen, done some laundry, scooped Dagda's box, and promised myself to try not to look so scruffy all the time.

    After Bree opened the door, the first person I saw was Sky. I was still stinging from her Woodbane comment but at the same time knew she was in love with Raven and getting burned and was not in a good frame of mind.

    "I think we are all here," Hunter said. His voice sounded both rough and melodious, and for no good reason I suddenly remembered how his voice sounded in my ear, talking to me when we were making out, hearing his breath coming hard and fast because of what we were doing. I felt myself blush and turned away from him, taking a long time to dump my coat on the pile in the hallway.

    "Let's go into the den," Bree said. "It's more comfy in there."

    "Actually," Hunter said, "I checked it out and it's full of electronics and furniture. Do you have someplace more bare?"

    Which is how we ended up sitting in a chalk circle on the flagstones at one end of her enclosed pool. Above us we could see the stars, wavering and dim through the glass enclosure. The furniture had been stacked and covered; the water was still and dark. The vibrations were very different here, surrounded by water and stone and glass.

    "While we wait to see if Raven is coming," said Hunter, "let's go around the circle and get a quick rundown of what you've been up to, what you've been studying, any questions you have, and so on. We should be preparing for Imbolic, also. It's a time to think about new beginnings." He nodded to Matt, who was sitting to his right.

    Matt was starting to look more like himself after weeks and weeks of looking both odd and somewhat disheveled. Tonight he was wearing a dark red velour sweatshirt and black cords, and his thick black hair was neatly cut, and brushed smoothly back. "I'm okay. I've been doing some general studying of correspondences--especially how to work with crystals."

    "Good," Hunter said. "Next."

    Thalia sat up straighter. I didn't know Thalia all that well; like Alisa, she had been part of the original Kithic coven, led by Sky, before they had absorbed the six of us who had been in the Cirrus coven, originally led by Cal. "I've been crazed with a science project. Other than that I've been reading a book about candle-burning rituals. It's really interesting."

    "I'm still doing a lot with the Tarot," said Bree. "I'm really loving it. Every time I do a reading, it's like a therapy session. I have to sit and really think about what the cards said and how it applies to my life."

    Robbie was next. "My dad lost his job. Again. Mom's threatening to kick him out. Again. He'll get another job, Mom will get off his back, everything will be back to normal. Again. It's a little stressful, but I'm used to it. In terms of Wicca, I've been reading Ellis Hindsworth's Basic History of the White Art."

    "That's a good book," said Hunter. "I hope things quiet down for you at home."

    Sharon, Ethan and Jenna all checked in. Simon Bakehouse, between Jenna and me, said he'd been studying Celtic deities.

    I thought about how ironic it was that Amyranth was planning to destroy Starlocket at Imbolic, which is supposed to be a time of rebirth. It seemed especially horrible. I felt a twinge of panic at the weight of my responsibility. When it was my turn to speak, I cleared my throat.

    "I've been studying a bunch of different stuff--history and spells and the basics of spellcraft.

    I'm having a hard time in school. And my parents are against Wicca."

    Alisa Soto was next. Most of us were seventeen and eighteen, and so she, at fifteen, seemed very young. "My dad is against Wicca, too. He thinks it's some kind of weird cult. I don't get it. Two of my aunts practice Santeria, so he should accept alternative religions. I've been reading a biography of a women who discovered Wicca and what it means to her."

    Last was Sky. She didn't look at any of us, and her voice was low and steady, almost expressionless. "I've been studying the medicinal uses of herbs. I'm thinking of going back to England for a while."

    I looked at her in surprise, wondering of she wanted to leave because of how Raven was acting. Sky and I had never been close, but we had forged a mutual respectful relationship, and I would miss her if she left.

    "Okay." said Hunter. He didn't look surprised. I figured that this must be something he and Sky had already discussed. Turning back to the circle, he held a hand out to each side. "I guess we can assume Raven's not coming, so let's stand up, join hands, close our eyes, and concentrate. Relax everything, release any pent-up energy, focus on your breathing, and open up to receive magick."

    Now the twelve of us stood in a circle. Hunter and Bree had lit many candles, and they surrounded us, flickering with our movements. I was beneath stars, next to water, standing on stone, in a circle of magick, and I felt that quick ecstatic fluttering in my chest that told me my body was open to receive what the Goddess wanted to give me.

    Slowly we moved deasil around our central candle. Hunter started a basic power chant, one we'd used before. Out voices wove together like ribbons, like warm and cold ocean currents sliding into one. Our faces were lit by candles, by joy, by fellowship, by an unexpected yet required trust of each other. Our feet flew across the flagstones, our energy rose, and the magick came down and surrounded us, lifting our hearts, fillings us with peace and excitement, making our hair cackle with static. During this time my worries about Ciaran, my dangerous mission, my fears all melted away. This was pure white magick, and it seemed a million miles away from the darkness and destruction that Ciaran represented.

    I could have stayed in the circle all night, whirling, feeling the magick, feeling beautiful and strong and whole and safe. But gently, gently, Hunter brought it down, slowed our steps, smoothed the energy, and then we sank gently on the stones again, our knees touching, our hands linked, our faces flushed and expectant.

    "Everyone take a moment, close your eyes, and think of what you'll turn your energy toward,"

    Hunter said softly. "What do you need help with, what are you able to give? Open your heart and let the answer come, and when you're finished, look up again."

    My head drooped, and my eyes fluttered shut. There was a strong, pulsing cord of white magick inside me, there for the taking, there for me to use as I would. The answer came to me almost immediately. Let me save Starlocket. Let me protect Alyce from harm.

    I straightened and opened my eyes to see Hunter looking at me intently. He blinked when I met his gaze and looked away. What had I seen in his eyes?

    When everyone had looked up, we dropped our hands, and Hunter began the lesson.

    "I want to talk about light and dark," he said, his English accent seeming elegant and precise.

    "Light and dark are, of course, two sides of the same coin. They make up everything we know in life. This concept has been more readily described as the principle of yin and yang.

    Light and dark are two halves of a whole. One cannot exist without the other. And more important, they are connected by infinite shades of gray."

    Uh-oh. I was starting to see where this was going. I'd had similar conversations with Cal and with David Redstone. The whole point of this light/dark concept is that it isn't always crystal clear what belongs on which side. Making a choice for good isn't always easy or even identifiable.

    "For example," Hunter went on, "a microbe can kill--like botulinum toxin. But the same thing, in a tiny amount, can be healing. A knife can be used to save a life or to take it. Love can be the most joyous gift or a strangling prison."

    So true, I thought, thinking of what I'd lost with Hunter. I also couldn't help flicking my eyes towards Sky. Her face was composed, she was looking at the ground, but at Hunter's word a delicate pink blush loomed on her pale cheeks.

    "The sun itself is necessary for life," Hunter said, "But it can also burn crops, make people die of thirst, sear our skin until blisters form. A fire, too, can bring life, make our food healthy, help protect us--but it can also be a raging avenger, consuming everything in its path, taking life indiscriminately, and leaving behind nothing but ash."

    I swallowed, a mosaic of fire images dancing in front of me. Fire and I had a love/hate relationship. Fire and I had been close allies until Cal had tried to kill me with fire… and fire had been Ciaran's weapon against my mother.

    "Light and dark," Hunter said. "Two halves of a whole. Everything we do, say, feel, express-it all has two sides. Which side to promote is a decision we each make everyday, many times a day."

    I felt like Hunter was speaking directly to me. The differences between light and dark, good and evil were simply blurred for me sometimes. Almost every experienced witch I had ever spoken to had confessed the same thing. The horrible thing was, the more you learned, the less clear it was. Which was why an unshakable inner compass of morality was so necessary. Which was what Hunter was trying so hard to help me develop.

    I sighed.

    After the circle Bree pulled out some soda's, seltzer, and munchies, and we fell on them. I often craved something sweet after making magick, and now eagerly downed some chocolate-chip zucchini bread.

    "This is delicious," Jenna said, taking a slice of the bread. "Did you make this, Bree?"

    Bree laughed. "Please. I don't know how to work an oven. Robbie made it."

    I avoided talking to either Hunter or Sky, and when people started going home, I nipped out the door to my car. I was exhausted and wanted to digest tonight's magick. I didn't want to talk or think about light and dark anymore. I wanted to go home and fall into bed. For the first time since my parents had left, I wished they were home, waiting for me. It wasn't that I hadn't missed them so far--but I hadn't felt a need for them. Tonight I knew I would have been comforted by their presence in the house.

    As I pulled into my dark driveway, I wondered where Raven had been tonight. Had she blown off Sky because of their fight, or had she and Killian gotten together?

    My chest felt heavy and my hands were cold as I went into the house. In my room I got ready for bed. With Dagda snuggled next to me, purring, I lay in the dark for a long time, thinking.

    Killian couldn't be trusted, not really. And Ciaran was getting closer with every breath.

    It was a long time before I slept.

    

    

    Thank you, Brother Colin, for your kind words and also the gift of wine you sent. I have added it to the abbey's cellar, and Father Josef was most appreciative. Thanks be to God, I am well, though still troubled by confusing visions and dreams. My knowledge of the Prussian language is expanding greatly, and I am in awe of the abbey's library of precious and holy books.

    

    When I woke on Sunday, I lay in bed until my head seemed clear. I wondered what my parents were doing and if they had church services on cruise ships. Surely they did. I wondered if Mary K. had found a catholic church near their ski resort. Since I had discovered Wicca, my sister had thrown herself into Catholicism with a vengeance.

    "Maybe I'll go to church," I said out loud.

    Dagda sat on the kitchen table, where he was so not allowed, and washed a front paw. He looked at me with his solemn gray kitty face, his big green eyes. "I just feel like it," I told him, then went upstairs to get dressed.

    My family has been going to St. Mary's all my life. It's like attending a family reunion. I had to talk to five people before I even sat down.

    The thing about Catholicism is that it can be comforting. It provides a structure to live your life within. In Wicca everything is wide open: choices about good and bad, ideas about how to live your life, ideas about how you celebrate Wicca and all its facets. Nothing is ever really, truly set in stone. Which was why individual knowledge is so important, because each witch had to determine all these things for herself. The way I saw Wicca, it was more based on the individual's choices and beliefs and less based on a set of rules. However, along with freedom comes responsibility and the increased possibility of completely screwing up.

    Today, as I sat and knelt and stood automatically, reciting words and singing hymns, I was able to see some of the things that Wicca and Catholicism shared. They both had the days of observation, reflection, and celebration, according to the year's cycle. Some Wiccan Sabbats and Catholic Holy Days of Obligation coincided--noticeably Easter, which occurs at the same time in both religions, except we call it Ostara in Wicca. Both holidays celebrate rebirth and use the same symbols: lambs, rabbits, lilies, eggs.

    Both religions used external tools and symbols: sacred cups, incense, prayer/meditation, robes, candles, music, flowers.

    To me it offered a continuity that helped me make the transition from one to another. I hadn't completely given up being Catholic--I didn't truly see how I ever could. But more and more my soul was turning towards Wicca. It seemed a path I couldn't go backward on.

    The choir filed out, singing, their voices raised in one of my favorite hymns. Father Thomas, his censer swinging, walked past, followed by the cross and Father Bailey. When it was my pew's turn to leave, I fell in line. I felt pleased and calmed and was glad I'd be able to tell my parents I'd attended services today. The rest of the day stretched before me, open, and I began to think about what I should do.

    I was almost to the doors when my gaze fell lightly on someone sitting in the last pew, waiting for his turn to exit. Then my heart stopped, and my breathing snagged in my throat. Ciaran.

    My father.

    He saw me recognize him. Standing, he followed me as I left the church, passing through the tall, heavily carved wooden doors. My heart kicked into gear again and thumped almost painfully in my chest. This was my mother's soul mate: the one person meant for her to love and to love her. And they had loved each other desperately. But he'd already been married;

    Maeve wouldn't be with him, and so he had killed her.

    Killed her. A cold knife of fear slashed through my belly. Ciaran could have killed me, too-hungry for my power, wanting to use it to strengthen Amyranth. I was entirely convinced that I was going to die at his hands until he had realized who I was and allowed Hunter to set me free and transport me to safety. Now we were going to meet again. What to expect? Should I be afraid now? How could we ever have a normal conversation?

    Outside the church the sunlight hurt my eyes, and the daylight seemed harsh after the dim church. I smiled and nodded good-bye to several people, then took a left and walked around the side of the church to a small, winter-dead garden. Ciaran followed a few steps behind.

    When we were apart from everyone else, I turned back to him. My eyes drank him in, trying to see the person who had almost killed me in New York--and then had helped to save my life. Our eyes were similar; his hair was darker and flecked with silver. He was handsome and barely more than forty.

    "My son contacted me," he said in his lilting accent, that deep, melodious voice that entered my bloodstream like maple syrup. "He said he was here with you. I thought perhaps he had called me at your request."

    "Yes," I said, trying to project courage. "He did. I met Killian in New York, I realized he and I were half siblings, I don't have any other siblings except your other children--not by blood."

    Mary K., please forgive me again. "I asked him to call you. I decided I wanted to know you because you're my biological father." All this was true, more or less. Very subtly I shut down my mind so he couldn't get in and projected an air of innocence and frankness.

    His eyes on me were as sharp as snakes' fangs. "Yes," he said after a moment. "You're the daughter I didn't know about. My youngest. Maeve's daughter. Your coloring is more like mine, but your mouth is hers, the texture of your skin, your height and slenderness. Why didn't she tell me about you I wonder?"

    "Because she was scared of you," I said, trying to control the anger that was seeping in my voice. "You'd threatened her. You were married and couldn't be with her." You killed her. "She wanted to protect me."

    Ciaran looked around. "Is there someplace we could go?"

    I thought for a moment. "Yes."

    The Clover Teapot had opened winter before last, on a little side street off Main. It was the closest thing we had to an English-style tea shop, and it seemed appropriate. Also, it was public and safe. I still wasn't sure what to expect from Ciaran. When we had ordered and sat at a small table by the front window, I felt his keen eyes on me again.

    "Have you seen Killian?" I asked, playing with the handle of my teacup.

    "Not yet, I will soon. I wanted to see you first."

    We sat there, looking at each other, and I felt him cast his senses towards me. I shut him out gently, and his eyes widened almost in amusement.

    "How long have you known you're a witch?" he asked?

    "Four months, a little less."

    "Your not initiated." It was a statement.

    "No," I shook my head.

    "Goddess," he said, and took a sip of his tea. "You know your powers are unusual."

    "That's what they tell me."

    "Who is your teacher? The Seeker?"

    "Well, not really formally. It's hard because I also have regular school. And my parents don't feel comfortable with the whole Wicca thing," In surprised myself by saying. Ciaran was easy to confide in. I had to be on guard against that. Was he already spelling me, trying to get inside my mind?

    "I can't believe any child of mine has to be concerned about such banalities," he said.

    I sat there, trying not to look stupid. Despite having known he was coming, I felt ridiculously unprepared to deal with him, to have a conversation with him. How could I have a normal conversation with the man who had killed my mother, had tried to kill me? Only my sense of obligation to Starlocket and my affection for Alyce kept me from giving into fear and getting the hell out of here. Did he already know I was working for the council? He knew Hunter and I were--had been--going out. Was he just playing with me before he struck me down?

    "You should have grown up surrounded by gifted teachers who would have helped you develop your natural powers," he went on. "You should have grown up among the moors and rocks and winds of Scotland. You'd be unmatchable." He looked regretful. "You should have grown up with me and Maeve." A spasm of pain crossed his face.

    He was unbelievable. He had been married, had seduced my mother, then followed her to America and killed her because she wouldn't be with him. And Amyranth had no doubt been responsible for Belwicket's destruction! And now he was all upset because we hadn't been a happy little family. I looked down at my tea, numb with disbelief.

    "I've asked people about you," he went on, and I almost choked on my lemon Danish. "I've found out surprisingly little. Just that Cal Blaire sniffed you out, revealed you to yourself, and then he and Selene tried to seize your power." His eyes were steady on my face. "And you resisted them. Did you help kill them?"

    Blood drained from my face, and I felt almost faint for a moment. My anger fled. I had intended to control this interview, to lead him where I needed him to go, to get information out of him. What a naive plan that had been. "Yes," I whispered, looking out the lace-curtained window to the street outside. "I didn't meant to. But I had to stop them. They wanted to kill me."

    "Just like you tried to stop me in Manhattan," he said. "Would you have killed me if you could? When you were on the table, knowing your powers were about to be taken form you?"

    What kind of question was that? Would I kill him to save myself, when he had killed my mother, when I had never known him as a father? "Yes," I said, resenting his easy manner. "I would have killed you."

    Ciaran looked at me. "Yes," he said. "I think you would. You're strong. Strong not only in your powers, but in yourself. There isn't anything weak about you. You're strong enough to do what needs to be done."

    If he had been anyone else I would have blurted out often I felt afraid, weak, incapable, inadequate. But we weren't really having a father-daughter chat. I needed to give himself up to me.

    "Do you still want to kill me, Morgan?" he asked, and the pull of his question felt like a tide, drawing me out to sea.

    Resist, I thought. How to answer? "I don't know," I said finally. "I know I can't."

    "That's an honest answer," he said. "It's all right. You must do what you can to protect, not only yourself, but your beliefs, your way of life, your heritage. Your birthright. And it's amazing how often others want to impinge on these things."

    I nodded.

    He looked at me speculatively, as if wondering if I were genuine. I tried to relax, but couldn't.

    My palms were sweating, and I rubbed them against my skirt. This was Ciaran, and as much as I wanted to take him apart and throw away the pieces, there was a part of me that still wanted to run in his arms. Father. How sick was that?

    "Have you met witched who think badly of Woodbane?" he asked.

    "Yes."

    "How does that make you feel?" He poured more hot water into his cup and dipped in the mesh ball filled with tea leaves again.

    "Angry," I said. "Embarrassed. Frustrated."

    "Yes, any witch who can trace his or her heritage back to one of the Seven Great Clans has been given a gift. It's wrong to be ashamed of being Woodbane or to deny your heritage."

    "If only I knew more about it," I said leaning forward. "I know I'm Woodbane. I know Maeve was from Belwicket, and they were a certain kind of Woodbane. I know you're Woodbane, and you're different. Your coven in New York was totally different from the covens I've seen. I read things in books, and it's like everyone blames the Woodbanes for everything. I hate it." I spoke more vehemently than I had intended to, and when Ciaran smiled at me, I was startled at how much it pleased me.

    "Yes," he said, looking at me. "I hate it, too." He shook his head, watching me. "I'm proud of you, my youngest, unknown daughter. I'm proud of your power, your sensibility, and your intelligence. I deeply regret that I didn't see you grow up, but I'm glad I have the opportunity to know you now." He took a sip of his tea while I tried to get a handle on my emotions.

    "But do I know you?" he murmured, almost to himself. "I think I don't.

    My breath stopped as I wondered what he meant, if he was about to accuse me of trying to trap him. What could he do here, in a tea shop?

    "But I want to change that," he said.

    That night I found out that if you lie with your head flat on the open page of a textbook, you don't necessarily absorb the knowledge any faster than if you read the words. God, it was impossible to concentrate on this stuff! What the hell difference did it make what general did what in the Revolutionary War? None of this made any difference in my life whatsoever. All it did was prove I could memorize, and so what?

    The phone startled me from my history-induced coma, and I could tell immediately it wasn't Hunter. Eoife? I had already called her to tell her about my tea with Ciaran, so it seemed unlikely she would call again so soon. Killian? Oh, God, could I handle another marathon Killian party?

    "Morgan?" The voice on the other end greeted me before I could even say hello, and it took me a second to place it.

    "Ciaran?"

    "Right. Listen, Killian and I are having dinner at a place called Pepperino's. Would you like to come join us?"

    My head felt foggy from too much studying. I tried to make sense of Ciaran's invitation.

    Dinner with my murderous father and unpredictable, charming half brother? Could I think of a better way to spend my Sunday night? "Sure, I'd love to. I'll be right there."

    Pepperino's is an upscale Italian restaurant in downtown Widow's Vale. It has tuxedoed waiters, white tablecloths, and candles, and the food is incredible. My parents went there sometimes for a birthday or an anniversary. It was almost empty since it was late Sunday night, and the maitre d' led me to Ciaran's table.

    "Morgan, welcome," said Ciaran, standing up. He shot Killian a glance, and Killian also stood up. I smiled at them both and sat down.

    "We've just ordered," said Ciaran. "Tell me what you'd like. The waiter says the calamari ravioli is superb."

    "Oh, no thanks," I said. "I already ate. Maybe just some tea?"

    When the waiter came, Ciaran ordered me a cup of Darjeeling and a slice of mocha cheesecake. I watched him, thinking how incredibly different he was from the father I had grown up with--my real dad. My real dad was sweet, vague, and slow to anger. My mom usually takes care of the money, the insurance, anything complicated. Ciaran seemed like he was always in charge, always knew the answer, could always come through. It would have been quite different, growing up with him. Not better, I knew, though we did seem to have a connection. Just different.

    Ciaran and Killian were drinking a wine that was a deep, dark purple-red. I detected a scent of crushed grapes and oranges and some kind of spice I couldn't identify. My mouth watered, and I wished I could have some, but I had sworn never to drink again for the rest of my life. I could almost taste the full, heavy flavor.

    The waiter brought over their appetizers and my cheesecake at the same time, and we all began to eat. How could I make this meeting work for me? I needed information. Thinking about this, I took a bite of cheesecake and smothered a moan. It was incredibly rich, incredibly dense, with notes of sour cream riddled with streams of sweet, smooth coffee and dark chocolate. It was the most perfect thing I had ever eaten, and took tiny bites to make it last longer.

    "Tell me about growing up here," said Ciaran. "In America, without knowing your heritage."

    I hesitated. I needed to share enough to make him feel that I trusted him, yet also protect myself from giving him any knowledge he could use against me. Then it occurred to me that he was so powerful, he could use anything against me and my being on guard was a waste of time.

    "When I was growing up, I didn't know I was adopted. So I believed my heritage was Irish, all the way through. Catholic. All my relatives are, all the people at my church. I was just one more."

    "Did you feel like you belonged?" Ciaran had a way of cutting into the heart of a matter, slicing through smoke and details to get at the very core of the meaning.

    "No," I said softly, and took another sip of the tea. It was light and delicate. I took another sip.

    "You wouldn't have fit in any better in my village," Killian broke in. His face looked rough and handsome in the dim light of the restaurant, his hair shot through with gold and wine-colored strands. He didn't have Ciaran's grace or sophistication or palpable power, but he was friendly and charming. "It was a whole town of village idiots."

    I was startled into laughter, and he went on. "There wasn't a normal person among us. Every single soul was some odd character that other people had to watch out for. Old Sven Thorgard was a Vikroth who had settled in our town, Goddess knows why. The only magick he worked was on goats. Healing goats, finding goats, making goats fertile, increasing goats' milk."

    "Really?" I laughed nervously. As hard as Killian was trying to entertain us, Ciaran was still watching us both with a suspicious, dark expression. I wondered whether that was his response to Killian or just evidence that he was actually planning to do away with both of us.

    "Really," Killian said. "Goddess, he was weird. And Tacy Humbert--"

    At the mention of that name, Ciaran broke into a smile and shook his head. He drank some wine and poured a tiny drop more in Killian's glass. I relaxed a bit.

    "Tacy Humbert was love starved," Killian said in a loud whisper. "I mean starved. And she wasn't bad looking. But she was such a shrew that no one would take her out more than once. So she'd put love spells on the poor sap.

    Ciaran chuckled. "Her aim wasn't perfect."

    "Perfect!" Killian exclaimed. "Goddess, Da, do you remember the time she zapped old Floss?

    I had that dog climbing all over me for a week!"

    We all laughed, but I thought I detected a warning glance exchanged between Ciaran and Killian. I wondered what Ciaran's problem was. I loved hearing about the very different life Killian had lived in Scotland. "Here, top us up, Da." Killian said, holding out his wineglass.

    With narrowed eyes Ciaran filled it half full, then put the bottle on the other side of the table.

    Killian gave Ciaran a challenging look, but being ignored, he sighed and drained his glass.

    "Were there many Woodbane in your village?" I asked.

    Killian nodded, his mouth full. He swallowed and said, "Mostly Woodbanes. A couple of others. People on the outside of the village or who had married into families. My Ma's family has been there longer than folks can remember, and they're Woodbanes back to the beginning."

    At the mention of Killian's mother, a shadow passed over Ciaran's face. He toyed with the last of his salad and didn't look at Killian.

    "It must have been nice, being surrounded by people like you. Feeling like you fit in, like you belong," I said. "All celebrating the same holidays." Like Imbolic.

    "It is nice to have an all-Woodbane community," Ciaran put in smoothly. "Particularly because of the commonly held view that most witches have about us. If it were up to them, we would be broken up and disbanded."

    "What do you mean?" I asked.

    "I mean, Woodbanes are like any other cultural or ethnic group who has been forcibly dispersed. The Romany in Europe. The Native Indians here. The aboriginals in Australia.

    These were intact cultures that other cultures found threatening and so were killed, separated, dispersed, exiled. Within the Wiccan culture, Woodbanes have been cast in that role. The other clans fear us and so must destroy us."

    "How do you fight that?" I asked.

    "Any way I can," he said. "I protect myself and my own. I've joined with other Woodbanes who feel the same way."

    "Amyranth," I said.

    "Yes." His gaze rested on me for a moment.

    "Tell me about them," I said, trying to sound casual. "What is it like to have an all-Woodbane coven?"

    "It's powerful," said Ciaran. "It makes us feel less vulnerable. Like American pioneers, circling their wagons at night to keep intruders out."

    "I see." I nodded, I hoped not too enthusiastically. Maybe this was my chance, I realized.

    Ciaran was opening up. Talking about Woodbane heritage seemed to animate him, to make him less suspicious. I remembered the sigil and thought if I could just touch his arm, in a loving, daughterly gesture, I might be able to quickly trace the sigil on his sleeve…

    "I'm glad to hear you say that," I said confidently, shifting my chair closer. "Woodbanes are persecuted, so it's only natural that we'd try to protect ourselves, right?" I smiled, and Ciaran only regarded me curiously. It was impossible to read that expression. Did he trust me?

    Trying to keep my had from shaking, I lifted from my lap. I will touch his hand and say thank you, I thought. Thank you for telling me that I shouldn't be ashamed of my heritage. I reached out to touch him. "Th--"

    "Excuse me for a moment," Ciaran broke in, rising. He headed towards the back of the restaurant, and Killian and I were left alone. I was stunned. I moved my hand back to my lap.

    What was he doing? Had I been too obvious? Was he calling Amyranth to get help in capturing me again?

    Ciaran had left his suit jacket folded over the back of his chair, and my eyes lit on it. If I could put the watch sigil on his jacket… But Killian's bright gaze stopped me.

    "Do you have plans for Imbolic?" I asked quickly.

    Killian shrugged, giving me an almost amused expression. Had he seen what I was thinking?

    "I'll hook up with a coven somewhere. I love Imbolic. Maybe I could sit in with Kithic?"

    "Maybe," I said evasively, wondering what Hunter's plans were for our celebration.

    Ciaran was back in a few minutes and paid the check. I didn't sense any anger in his demeanor. He put on his jacket, and I regretted not tracing the sigil on it. What to do now?

    Should I press him for more information? Goddess, I was bad at this.

    "Morgan, can you come to the house where Killian's staying?" Ciaran asked as we left Pepperino's. "It's the house of a friend who's currently out of the country. She's been kind enough to let him stay there."

    As I looked at Ciaran, trying to remain calm, terror gripped at my insides and refused to let go. This was the perfect opportunity to learn more about their plans and to plant the watch sigil. Yet the thought of actually being with Ciaran and Killian was beyond terrifying. What if he's seen what I'd been trying? What if he was leading me back to the house to punish me for it?

    "I got a glimpse of your remarkable powers in New York," he continued. "I'd like to see how much you know and teach you some of what I know. I'm impressed with your gifts, your strength, your bravery."

    My glance flicked to Killian, who was carefully blank-faced. He could kill me, I thought with a sick certainty. He could finish the job he was planning to do in New York. I tried hard to fight my fear--wasn't this what I'd been praying for all those party nights with Killian?--but my terror was too strong. I could only think about getting out of there.

    I was hopeless. As a secret agent, I was a fraud.

    "Gosh, I really can't," I said lamely, hoping I didn't sound as terrified as I felt. "It's late, and I've, um, got school tomorrow." I tried to produce a yawn. "Can I take a raincheck?"

    "Of course," said Ciaran smoothly. "Another time. You have my number."

    Another time. I gulped and nodded. "Thanks for dessert."

    

    

    Brother Colin, I am sure you will be most distraught to learn that I have received a letter form her. The abbot of course reads my post, and I cannot imagine he would let a missive from her pass, so perhaps the letter was spelled. (Do not think this to be my insensate fear--I am quite certain that the villagers of Barra Head had powers beyond what I as mortal can comprehend.) Naturally once I realized who it was from, I turned it over to Father Edmund and have since been praying in the chapel. But I could not stop myself from reading it, Brother Colin.

    

    "All right, class," said Mr. Alban. "Before we start on 'The Nun's Tale,' I'd like you all to hand in your compositions. Make sure your name is on them."

    I stared at my English teacher in horror as my classmates began to bustle purposefully, pulling out their compositions. Oh, no! Not again! I knew about this damn composition! I'd picked out my topic and done some preliminary research! But it wasn't due until… I quickly checked my homework log. Until today, Monday.

    I almost broke a pencil in frustration as everyone else around me handed up their papers and I had nothing to hand in. I was seriously screwing up. I had zero excuse except that my life seemed to be about more important things lately--like life or death. Not Chaucer, not compositions, not trig homework. But actual life, the life I would be leading from now on. I had five days until Imbolic.

    The rest of the day passed in a drone. When the final bell rang, I went outside and collapsed in the Killian-less stone bench, feeling very depressed. I was confused; it was hard to focus; I felt like a horse was standing on my chest. I couldn't even summon the mental or physical energy to go home and meditate, which usually pulled all my pieces together.

    "You look beat," Bree said, sitting next to me.

    I groaned and dropped my head into my hands.

    "Well, Robbie and I are going to Practical Magick," she said. "Want to come?"

    "I can't," I said. "I should go home and study." Actually, I would have loved to have gone, but it seemed likely that Ciaran was keeping tabs on my. I didn't want him to have chance to suspect I was working with Alyce on anything. There was only a handful of days before Imbolic. I felt the clock ticking even as I sat there, As the Kithic members drifted off, I felt sad and alone. My miserable failure last night weighed heavily on my conscience. If I had the guts to go with Ciaran, who knows--I might be done with the mission by now. I had spend the entire day kicking myself, yet the memory of my terror was so real. I understood why I had refused to go; I just wished that somehow I could conquer my fear.

    Across the parking lot my sister waved at me as she and Alisa got into Jaycee's minivan. I'd talked to her this morning--she'd had a great time skiing.

    I missed Hunter with a physical pain. If only he could be right by my side during this mission.

    I knew I had to see Ciaran and Killian again. I had to find out the exact time of the dark wave and possibly some of the spell words. I had to try to put a watch sigil on Ciaran. They drew me to them because we were related by blood. Oh, Goddess. What to do?

    The honk of a car's horn made me jump. Hunter's Honda glided to a halt next to me, and the passenger door opened.

    "Come." He said.

    I got in.

    We didn't speak. Hunter drove us to his house, and I followed him up the steps and inside.

    Neither Sky nor Eoife was there, and I was grateful. In the kitchen Hunter still didn't speak but started frying bacon and scrambling eggs. It occurred to me how hungry I was.

    "Thanks," I said as he put a plate in front of me. "I didn't even know I was hungry."

    "You don't eat enough," he said, and I wondered if I should take offence. I decided I would rather eat then argue, so I let it go.

    "So," he said. "Tell me what's going on."

    Once I opened my mouth, everything came pouring out. "Everything is so difficult. I mean, I like Killian. I don't think he's a bad guy. But I'm spying on him and using him. I think that Ciaran mistrusts me, but he also seems to--to care about me. And I'm completely terrified of him and of what he can do to me, what he did to my mother, what he's done to others. But I wonder how this is going to end. I mean, I'm going to betray both of them. What will they do to me?"

    Hunter nodded. "If you weren't feeling these things, I'd be bloody worried. I don't have any answers for you--except that the ward-evil spells you know are more powerful than any you've worked before. And the council--and I-- are going to protect you with our lives. You aren't alone in this, even if you feel that way. We're always with you."

    "Are you following me around?"

    "You're not alone," he repeated wryly. "You're one of us, and we protect our own." He cleaned his plate, then said, "I know Ciaran is incredibly charismatic. He's not just a regular witch. From the time he was a child, he showed exceptional powers. He was lucky enough to be trained well, early on. But it's not only his powers. He's one of those witches who seems to have an innate ability to connect with others, to know them intimately, to evoke special feelings in them. In humans this kind of person, if they're good, ends up a Mother Theresa of Ghandi. If they're bad, you get a Stalin or an Ivan the Terrible. In Wicca you get a Feargus the Bright or a Meriwether the Good. Or, on the other side, a Ciaran MacEwan."

    Great. My biological father was one of the Wiccan equivalent of Hitler.

    "The thing is," Hunter went on, "all of those people were very charismatic. They have to be to influence others, to make others want to follow them, to listen to them. You're confused and maybe scared about your feelings for Ciaran. It's perfectly natural to have those feelings.

    You're related by blood; you want to know your father. But because of who he is and what he's done, you're going to have to betray him. It's an impossible situation and one that I didn't want you to take on, for these reasons."

    Hearing him imply he didn't think I could handle it made me want to insist I could. Which might have been why he said it.

    "It's not just that," I said. "It's other stuff. I mean, I like the way he talks about Woodbanes.

    Everyone else hates Woodbanes. I'm sick of it. I can't help who I am. It's a relief to be around someone who doesn't feel that way."

    "I know. Even being half Woodbane, I catch that sometimes." Hunter cleared our places and ran the water in the sink. "A lot of that is old-fashioned prejudice from people who just don't know better. But covens like Amyranth do tend to set us back hundreds of years. Here's a group of pure Woodbanes who feel justified to murder and pillage other covens simply because they are not Woodbane. One coven like them can ruin things for the rest of us for a long, long time."

    He was talking about the awful things Ciaran had done, and thought of all the people he had killed made me shiver. My father was a murderer. I was right to be scared to be alone with him. In the end, Hunter hadn't made me feel better--but I didn't know if that had been his intention in the first place. He drove me back to school to my waiting car, as silent as he had been on the ride to his house.

    "Morgan," he said as I started to get out. I looked at him, at the glitter of his green eyes in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. "It's not too late to change your mind. No one would think worse of you."

    His concern made my heart constrict painfully. "It is to late," I said bleakly, grabbing my backpack. " I would think worse of me. And if you're honest, you'll admit that you would, too."

    He said nothing as I swung out of the car and headed for Das Boot.

    

    

    Brother Colin, you would hardly recognize me. I have lost almost three stone since last autumn. I can neither eat nor sleep. I had given up on myself; I am lost. God has chosen that I should pay for my sins on earth as well as in the burning fire to come. --Brother Sinestus Tor, to Colin, February 1771.

    

    On Tuesday morning when I got in Das Boot to go to school, I found a book on the front seat.

    I was sure I had locked the night before. I'm the only person with a key. With a sense of foreboding, I climbed into the driver's seat and picked up the book. It was large and bound in tattered, weather beaten black leather. On its cover, stamped in gold that was now almost completely flaked off, was the title: An Historical View of Wodebayne Life.

    I turned the book this way and that and flipped through crumbling pages the color of sand.

    There was no note, nothing to say where this had come from or why. I closed my eyes for a moment and spread my right hand out flat on the cover. A thousand impressions came to me: people who had held the book, sold it, stolen it, hidden it, treasured it, left it on their shelf.

    The most distinct impression, no more that a fluttery butterfly-soft trembling, came from Ciaran. I opened my eyes. He had left this book for me. Why? Would having this book spell me somehow? Was it a no-strings gift or a devious trap? I had no clue.

    At school I joined Kithic on the basement steps. Alisa was there, which was unusual, so I made a point to say hi. I didn't mention the book, which I had just barely squeezed into my backpack, but sat down as Raven informed us all that she and Sky had broken up.

    "It just wasn't working, you know?" she said, popping her gum in an ungothlike manner. "She couldn't accept me for who I am. She wanted me to be as dull and serious as she is."

    "I'm sorry, Raven," I said, and I was. Raven had seemed a little softer, a little bit more happy, when she and Sky had first gotten together. Now she seemed so much more like her old self: cold, calculating, uncaring. I wondered if my bringing Killian to town had been the thing to finish off their relationship or whether it would have crumbled on its own, I couldn't decide.

    "Yeah, well, don't be," she said shrugging. "I'm glad to be out of it." She almost sounded sincere. But when I cast out my witch senses, I felt a surprising level of pain, sadness, confusion.

    I waited for someone to mention Killian or to ask Raven pointed questions about him, but to my relief, no one did. I was pretty sure Killian had a lot to do with this breakup, whether or not he realized it or cared.

    When the bell rang, I lugged my backpack to homeroom, feeling the book calling to me to read it. In English class I had a chance to and opened it up under my desk. It was written in old-fashioned language and had no copyright date or publishing info. The type was hard to read, which made it slow going. But after the first page I was hooked. It was fascinating. As far as I could tell, it was a nonfiction account of a monk's life, back in the 1770s. He had been sent to a far-off village to bring God to the pagans. I could barely take my eyes away from the pages and wondered why Ciaran had wanted me to read it.

    I managed to escape detection through the whole class, and then the bell rang, I sneaked it back into my backpack and went up to Mr. Alban.

    "Morgan," he said. "I'm seem to be missing your composition. Did you forget to turn it in?"

    "No," I admitted, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Alban--I spaced it. But wanted to ask if I could do a makeup paper--maybe six pages long instead of four? I could turn it in next Monday."

    He looked at me thoughtfully. "Ordinarily I would say no," he said. "You had plenty of time to turn in this paper, and every other student managed to turn it in on time. But this is unusual for you--you've always been a good student. I tell you what--turn in six pages, double spaced, on Monday, and we'll see."

    "Oh, thanks, Mr. Alban," I said, relieved, "I absolutely will turn it in I promise."

    "Okay, see that you do."

    I trotted off to calculus, already planning my outline.

    Morgan. The power sink.

    I looked up, though I knew I wouldn't see Ciaran.

    "Morgan," asked Bree, "What is it? You where in the middle of telling me about Mr. Alban."

    "Oh, nothing." I shook my head. "Yeah, so he's letting me do a makeup paper. It's going to be cool, and this time I won't forget."

    I sent a message back. Tea shop?

    Fine, Ciaran responded.

    "I said, do you want to go to the mall tonight?" Bree repeated patiently. "We could grab something to eat, shop, get home early."

    "That sounds good," I said. "But I can't. Homework."

    "Okay. Some other time." Bree walked toward her car, her fine dark hair being whipped by the wind.

    On the way to the Clover Teapot, I tried to concentrate on my mission. Four days remained. It was still possible. I needed to get some information out of Ciaran. I needed to plant the watch sigil on him. I'll do it, I promised myself. Today is the day. I will accomplish my mission.

    When I got there, Ciaran was already sitting at one of the smaller tables. I ordered and sat down, once again looking at him closely, seeing myself in him, seeing the possibilities of who or what I could have been, or might still be. If I had grown up with him as my teacher, my father, would I now be evil? Would I care? Would I have almost unlimited powers? Would it matter?

    I felt him look at me as I took a sip of Red Zinger tea, holding the paper cup to warm my fingers. I needed a good opening. "Is it true that kids in Killian's village don't have to go to school?

    "Not to a government school," he said. "The village parents get home-schooling certificates.

    As long as the children can pass the standard tests…" He shrugged. "They can read and write and do sums. It's just that all the indoctrination, the government oppression, the skewed view of history--they don't get that."

    "How much did you teach Killian, and Kyle, and Iona?"

    Killian had told me the names of his siblings. My other half brother, my half sister.

    A troubled look clouded Ciaran's face, and he looked out the window into the thin, pale winter sunlight. "Is there somewhere else we could talk? More private? I had mentioned the power sink…"

    "I have an idea," I said. I stood up and gathered my cup of tea and a scone in a napkin. "I could show you our park." I acted like his agreement was given. I couldn't go to the power sink, knowing that any magick he worked there would be dangerously enhanced. But if I were driving, if I chose the place--though really, there were only superficial reassurances.

    Ciaran was so strong that there wasn't much I could do to protect myself from him except work the ward-evil spells Eoife had taught me and hope for the best. But I was almost glad to be spending some time with him. When we were apart, I was both scared and intensely curious about him. When I was actually with him, my fears danced around the periphery of my consciousness, and mostly I just soaked in his presence.

    "Lead on," he said, and fifteen minutes alter I parked Das Boot next to a Ford Explorer at the entrance of our state park.

    We sat and drank our tea and ate our scones in silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence.

    But I had noticed that most witches were more peaceful to be around than most regular people. It was as if witches recognized the value of silence--they didn't see a lack of noise as a vacuum that needed to be filled.

    "So how much did you teach Killian, Kyle and Iona?" I repeated.

    "Not very much, I'm afraid," was his quiet reply. "I wasn't a good father, Morgan, not to them, not by a stretch of imagination."

    "Why?"

    He grimaced. "I didn't love their mother. I was tricked into marrying her because my mother, Eloise, and Grana's mother, Greer Murtagh, wanted to unite our covens. I was just eighteen, and Grania got pregnant, and they promised me leadership over the new, very powerful coven. I would inherit all their knowledge, my mothers and Grania's."

    I knew he was lying about being tricked into marrying Grania, but I played along. "Why would you inherit and not Grania? I thought the lines were supposed to be matriarchal."

    "They usually are. But by the time Grania was eighteen and had been initiated and all the rest, it was clear she lacked the ambition, the focus, to lead a coven. She wasn't really interested." His words were tight with derision, and I felt sorry for Grania. "But I was amazingly powerful. I could make the coven something new and stronger and better."

    "So you married her. But she was pregnant. She didn't get pregnant by herself," I pointed out primly.

    Ciaran's body tightened with surprise, and he looked at me as if trying to look through my eyes to something farther in. Then he threw back his head and laughed, an open, rolling laugh that filled my car and seemed to make the darkening twilight brighter.

    I waited with raised eyebrows.

    "Maeve said the exact same thing," he said. Saying her name, he grew more solemn. "She said the same thing, and she was right. As you are. My only excuse is that I was an eighteentear-old-fool. Which is not much of an excuse and not one that I've ever accepted from Killian. So I have a double standard."

    His frankness was disarming, and I tried to picture him as a teenager. A very powerful Woodbane teenager. I had to lead him back to my question about Imbolic.

    "Then I met Maeve," he went on, and his voice took on a richer timbre, as if even remembering his love made his throat ache with sadness. "I knew almost instantly that she was the one I should be with. And she knew it about me. Her eyes, the wave of her hair, her laugh, the shape of her hands--everything about her was designed to delight me. We were drawn to each other like--magnets." He looked at his own hands, fair skinned, strong, and capable. The hands that had set my mother on fire.

    I desperately wanted to hear more, more about her, about them, about what had gone so terribly wrong. But I struggled to keep my focus on Starlocket. I had to put other needs before my own.

    "Imbolic is coming up," I said. "Are you going to celebrate with Amyranht? Is Amyranth the coven you inherited from Greer?"

    Inside my car it became very still. We kept our gazes on each other, each of us measuring, waiting, judging.

    Then Ciaran said, "Amyranth is part of the coven I inherited from Greer. Not entirely--not everyone from Liathach wanted to join. And Woodbanes from other covens have joined us.

    But for the most part, those are people I grew up with, who I'm related to, who I can trust with more than my life." His words were soft, his voice like warmed honey. "We share blood going back thousands of years," he went on. "We're intensely loyal to each other."

    "Like the mafia?" I said.

    Again he laughed.

    Still, I found his description oddly compelling. The idea of being among people who were completely accepting and supportive, who only wanted to help you grow and increase your powers, who, you could trust implicitly, no matter what--it would be amazing. That picture of a Woodbane clan was to painful to think about--I could almost taste my own longing for it, and it terrified me to know that I was thinking about Amyranth. The coven that had tried to kill me. The coven that right at this moment was planning to destroy Starlocket. From the inside, I realized, it might not feel evil at all.

    No one in my life had ever accepted me exactly the way I was. I didn't fit in as a Rowlands.

    Within my coven I stood out as a strong blood witch, and it had become clear to me that not even Robbie and Bree, my closest friends, could feel entirely comfortable around me anymore. Hunter and Sky and Eoife all seemed to want different things of me, for me to be different somehow, to make different choices.

    My glance flicked back to Ciaran. How far could I push this? Was this the time to ask about the dark wave? Surely he suspected I was up to something.

    "You're nervous," Ciaran said softly. "Tell me why."

    It was dark now, and somehow there in the car I felt safe.

    "I'm incredibly drawn to that picture of Woodbanes," I told him honestly. "But I hated Selene Belltower and everything she stood for. She tried to kill me, and I know she had murdered others. I don't want to be like that."

    He waved his hand in dismissal. "Selene was an overambitious, overconfident climber--in no way did she represent what my coven is about."

    "What is your coven about?" I asked clearly. "I saw what you were doing in New York. What was that? Is there some larger plan?"

    Ciaran sat back against the passenger door. His eyes on me were bright in the darkness, his powerful hands still on the wool of his coat. Slowly, slowly, his lips parted in a smile, and I saw his white teeth and his eyes crinkling.

    "You are very interesting, Morgan," he said quietly. "You are a wild, untamed thing with the power of a river about to overflow its banks. Are you afraid of me?"

    I looked at him, this man who had helped create me, and answered truthfully, "Yes and no."

    "Yes and no," he repeated, watching me. "I think more no than yes. Yet you have every reason to be terribly afraid of me. I almost took your life."

    "You almost took my magick--my soul--which is much worse than taking my life," I retorted.

    "But you didn't because you are my father."

    "Morgan, Morgan," he said. "I find you very--gratifying. My other children are afraid of me.

    They don't ask me hard questions, they don't stand up to me. But you…are something different. It's the difference between a child born of Grania and a child born of Maeve."

    Frankly, I was feeling kind of sorry for all of us, his children.

    "You alone I see as being able to appreciate my coven," he went on. "You alone I feel would understand. There is something being planned--"

    I caught my breath silently, willing him to continue. He stopped and looked out then window, as if he hadn't intended to say so much. "I really should be getting back," he said absently.

    I squelched my disappointment and frustration. It would be too east for him to pick up on them. Without a word I started my car and backed out of the parking space. We drove back through the night, toward town. I tried not to even think about what he'd almost said, what we'd talked about. There would be enough time for that later.

    I drove Ciaran back to where he said Killian was staying. The house was nowhere near the deserted road where Killian had had me drop him off. He must have been out--the house was dark.

    "Good-bye for now," he said. "But not for long, I hope. Please call me soon."

    I nodded and leaned closer. In a low voice I said, "Father, I want to do what you do. I want to work how you work. I want you to show me."

    He shut the door, his face flushed with emotion at the word father. I drove off without looking back and cried the whole way home. I had called him father. I hated myself.

    

    

    Brother Colin, by now you will have heard of my latest travail. Why God has chosen this fate for me, I do not know. All I can do is His will.

    

    "So this was a good day," Bree said. She propped one booted foot up on the stone bench next to me. "It's not snowing, it's almost forty degrees, and I missed both trig and chemistry because of that fake fire alarm. Not bad for a Wednesday."

    "Do we know who did the fire alarm?" I asked.

    "I heard it was Chris Holly," Robbie said, coming up behind us. Chris was en ex-boyfriend of Bree's and a typical Bree castoff: good-looking in a jock kind of way, with the IQ of your basic garden toad.

    "Oh, jeez," Bree groaned.

    Robbie grinned. "Word is that he didn't study for his English and panicked. Unfortunately, he was observed pulling the handle."

    I shook my head. "What a loser."

    A muffled ringing sound overlaced their laughter.

    "Your purse is ringing," Robbie told Bree, who was already taking out her phone. She said hello, hang on a minute, then handed the phone to me, mouthing, "Killian."

    "Little sister!" came his cheerful voice. "I haven't seen you in days! How are you?"

    "I'm fine," I said, smiling at the sound of his voice. "What have you been doing?"

    "This and that," he said lightly, and I mentally groaned, wondering what mischief he'd been causing. "Want to get together tonight? Maybe all the gang?"

    "Yeah, let's get together," I said, walking a few paces away from my friends. "But can it be just you and me? I want some time to hang out and talk."

    "Sure," Killian said. "Alone's fine, too. Let's meet at that coffee place in that row of shops you took me to. We can decide what to do from there."

    "Great," I said. "I'll see you there at eight tonight." I hung up and gave Bree back her phone.

    "Okay, I'm gone." Robbie kissed Bree on the cheek and took off, not noticing how virtually every female around turned to look at him.

    Bree watched him till he got into his red Volkswagen Beetle. "You do good work," she said, referring to the fact that Robbie had once been incredibly unattractive and now looked like a god, thanks to a little spell I had done. It had unintended effects. Another lesson for me.

    "How are things with you two?" I asked.

    "Up and down," she said, clearly not wanting to talk about it. "What about you? How are you doing with your parents out of town, broken up with Hunter, and with a bunch of new relatives you hadn't known about?"

    For a long moment I looked at Bree. Until four months ago I had know her as well as myself.

    But now we each had big secrets, unshared things between us. And I couldn't share this with her--about my mission, about my imminent betrayal of Killian and Ciaran, about my fear of being inevitably pulled toward dark magick.

    "It's been up and down," I said, and she smiled.

    "Yeah. Well, see you later. Call me if you want to get together."

    "I will," I said.

    At eight o'clock I walked through the door of the coffee place that Killian and I had agreed to.

    I ordered a decaf latte and a napoleon.

    An hour later I was royally pissed and rehearsing how I would blast him when he finally did drag his ass through the door. Except that I wouldn't be here to blast him because I was going home. I stomped outside to Das Boot and opened my door, only to see Raven's battered black Peugeot pulling up next to my car.

    "Where's your friend Killian?" she said through her open window.

    "He's somewhere being an hour late to meet me," I snarled.

    Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean? He was meeting me."

    "Au contraire," I said". "We had an eight o'clock date."

    "Well, princess," she said. "Your time is up. I've got him at nine. See ya."

    I frowned. This was too strange. Why would Killian stand me up? What if he had messed up somehow, pissed someone off--had Ciaran done something? Or allowed someone else to do something to him?

    I looked at Raven. "Will you do me a favor? Will you follow me to the house where he's staying?"

    She frowned. "Why? He's supposed to meet me here, not at his place."

    I gestured to the empty parking lot. "Do you see him? Besides, if he's on his way, we'll pass him and you can turn around. I just have a funny feeling about this."

    Furrowing her brows, Raven glanced around the empty parking lot one last time. "All right," she said finally. "But if we pass him, we turn around and you go home."

    "Deal." I climbed into Das Boot and headed out.

    This was one of those times when I should have slowed down, thought things through, asked myself questions like, is this smart? Am I likely to be killed or maimed doing this? Should I have some kind of backup plan? Any plan at all?

    I screeched to a halt in front of the house where I knew Killian was staying. No cars were in the driveway, but the house was ablaze with light, and even from out on the sidewalk I could here music blasting. Raven and I looked at each other.

    I rang the doorbell four times, but no one answered. Picturing Killian lying in a pool of blood, I used a little unlocking spell that Hunter had taught me and opened the door. The scent of incense drifted towards us. The house wasn't large, but it was old, and even I could tell it was beautifully decorated. A hundred candles of every color were burning in the living room.

    There was an open bottle of scotch on the coffee table and a couple of used tumblers.

    Raven frowned, and I followed her glance. At the entrance of the hall leading to the back a black leather jacket lay on the floor. We walked over to it: a clue. My eyebrows rose. This jacket was Sky's--I recognized the silver pentacle hanging from her zipper. Together Raven and I, the unlikely duo, looked farther down the hall. I recognized Sky's black boots on the floor.

    "What the hell?" Raven muttered, stalking forward.

    Right next to Sky's boots was a man's belt. I thought I remembered Killian wearing it but wasn't sure. As if we were two puppets drawn on strings, Raven and I went forward. We came to a door that was slightly ajar. I heard the murmur of voices, and then good sense at last kicked in and I decided to get the hell out of here. Whatever Killian was doing, he was fine.

    But Raven, not coming to this same conclusion, punched the door open with her fist. I knew it must have hurt, but not as much as the scene before us. Sky was sitting on the bed, and Killian was standing at the foot. They looked up in surprise when the door burst open, saw us, and started laughing. Killian was wearing only a pair of black pants. Sky was in a camisole and her underwear. My mouth dropped open in naive shock. Ridiculously, I remembered Hunter saying he didn't think Sky was actually gay--she just like who she like.

    Apparently right now she was liking Killian.

    "Hi," Sky said, and laughed so hard she almost fell sideways. She was drunk! I couldn't believe it. Killian, however, seemed a little more together.

    "Little sister!" he said, and hiccupped, which made him laugh more. "Oops, I forgot our date, didn't I?" All around the room I could detect the faint traces of tingling magick, in the air, on the bed, on the floor. Goddess only knew what they'd been doing.

    "And ours, too, you bastard!" Raven screeched, launching herself at Killian. He was unprepared and so went down heavily under her fury. She smacked the side of his face as hard as she could, and I winced as his head snapped to the side.

    "Ow, ow," he said, but was still laughing weakly.

    "Oh, stawp, stawp," Sky was saying ineffectually in her slurred English accent. Leaving Raven and Killian rolling gracelessly on the floor, I went in search of a phone. Once I found it I called Hunter.

    "Come get Sky. She's smashed," I said, and gave him the address.

    When I got back to the room, Raven was shrieking at Sky, Killian was on the floor, watching the scene with fascination, and Sky was starting to yell awful things back at Raven, personal things about their relationship that made me ears burn.

    "Hold it!" I yelled, waving my arms. "Hold it!"

    Surprisingly, the three stopped to look at me. I snatched up Sky's black leather pants and what I hoped was her shirt. Leaning over the bed, I grabbed her arm, hard. "You come with me," I said firmly, and she actually did, practically falling off the bed.

    I dragged her out into the hall and down to the bathroom, where I shoved her roughly into her clothes. As soon as her arms were in the correct sleeves, I heard Hunter slam through the front door, shouting for Sky.

    I produced her, handing him her boots and jacket.

    At that moment the other two Stooges emerged from the bedroom. Raven's face was still contorted with fury, and Killian was starting to look a little less cheerful. Sky laughed when she saw him, and as Hunter began hauling her toward the door, she yelled, "Go for it, Raven!

    He's a great kisser!"

    I dropped my head into my hands. I was completely disgusted with all of them. Was everyone going completely insane? Looking at Raven and Killian with disdain, I left the house and went to see if I could help Hunter pour Sky into his car.

    He was buckling her in. She looked tired and wasted but not unhappy. He turned to me, his face furious. "Are you happy with your charming brother now?"

    My mouth dropped open. "I don't--"

    "When is he going to learn to consider others?" he shouted. "Does he think it's a game, making magick in there, in this situation? Does he think it's funny to do this to Sky?"

    I stood there, shocked, as he swung into the driver's seat and slammed the door. I knew he was upset about Sky, but I felt like he was blaming me for Killian's behavior. And I was the most blameless person in this ugly scene!

    Futile tears of rage started coursing down my cheeks as Hunter peeled off into the night.

    I had given up the person I loved most to prevent him from being tainted by my potential inherent evil, and here I was being blamed for my blood ties, even when I had nothing to do with their actions. I was risking my life to try and save Starlocket, and he thought I was cooking up party gamed with those three idiots.

    Still crying, I was starting to cross the street to get to Das Boot when a car honked in my face and almost gave me a heart attack. I leapt back onto the curb in to see a pimply faced kid race past me in a souped-up muscle car. I watched him speed off, and as he did, he shot me the bird.

    My mouth dropped open for the ninth time that evening. Without having a second to think, I raised my hand in a quick gesture and muttered just five little words. Instantly the kid's car locked up and he started skidding out of control, spinning sideways and heading right for the crash rail in front of a deep ditch. I was shocked.

    "Nul ra, nul ra!" I said fast, and with another second the kid had gained control of his car and come to a stop. After a moment he started the engine and continued down the road at a slower pace.

    I sat down weak-kneed on the curb. What had I done? I had almost killed a stranger because I was upset at Hunter. I was unbelievable. Just last month I had been involved in two deaths.

    What was wrong with me, apart from being Ciaran's daughter? Was this how my decent into evil would being? After looking both ways I crossed the street and sat in my car. I cried for a long time, too upset to drive, and then I heard a voice, Ciaran's voice, saying, Power sink.

    

    

   I received your letter yesterday, and I thank you most gratefully. To answer your question, this hospice is not at all like a prison; as long as we stay on the grounds, we are allowed much freedom. There is no one here who is dangerous to himself or another, though we are all tormented. I thank God that Father's estate can subsidize my stay here. They have allowed me to wear my monk's habit, and I am grateful.

    

    The old Methodist cemetery was dark and cold, and a frigid wind whipped through the scrub pines and unshaped cedars that surrounded it. I strode forward, casting my senses strongly, and felt Ciaran waiting for me.

    "Thank you for coming," he said in that soothing, accented voice. With no warning I burst into tears again, embarrassed to do it in front of him, and then his arms enfolded me; I was pressed against the rough tweed of his coat, and he was stroking my hair.

    "Morgan, Morgan," he murmured. "Tell me everything. Let me help."

    I actually couldn't remember the last time Dad had held me when I cried--I was too cool for that. I cried alone, in my room, quietly. Ciaran's embrace seemed so welcoming and comforting.

    "It's everything," I choked out. "It's being Woodbane and Catholic, it's having witch friends and nonwitch friends. It's Killian and Sky and Raven. Cal and Selene died, and I was so relieved, but I actually miss Cal sometimes. Or the Cal I thought I knew." More sobs racked me, but still Ciaran held me, letting me lean on him. "And my folks are so nice and I feel like scum because I want to know my birth father!" I sobbed and wiped my nose on the back of my glove. "And I wish I had known Maeve in person, but I can't because you killed her, you bastard!" My fist flew out quickly and slammed Ciaran in his chest. He swayed back a bit, but I'd been too close to put much into the punch. I swung again, but he caught my wrist in a grip like a braigh and stilled me.

    "I'm so sorry, Morgan," he said, his voice sounded torn. "I'm tortured about Maeve's death every day of my life. She was the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me, and not a day goes by that I don't feel pain and anguish over what happened. The only good thing about her being gone is that she can no longer feel pain; she's no longer vulnerable and can no longer be hurt."

    I leaned backwards into a tall tombstone and buried my face in my hands. "This is all too hard," I cried. "It's too much. I can't do it. I can't bear it." In that second all that felt absolutely true.

    "No," Ciaran said, holding my wrists gently. "Yours is not an easy path. Your life feels hard and difficult now, and I can promise you it will only become harder and more difficult."

    I made an indistinct sound of despair, and his voice went on, slipping into me like a fog.

    "But you're wrong in thinking you can't do it, can't bear it," he said. "You absolutely can. You are Maeve's daughter and my daughter. You have strength in you. You are capable of things beyond your imagination."

    I kept crying the tension of the past week spilling out of me into the dark night. Tonight's awful scene, all my conflicting emotions were being dissolved in a salty wave of tears.

    "Morgan," Ciaran said, brushing my hair out of my face. "I cherish you. You're my link to the only women I've ever truly loved. I see Maeve in your face. And of my four children, you are the most like me--I see myself in you in a way I don't with the others. I want to trust you. I want you to trust me."

    A chill shook me, and Ciaran rubbed my arms. Slowly my crying subsided, and I wiped my eyes and nose. "What happens now?" I asked him. "Are you going to disappear from my life, like you did with your other kids?" I saw Ciaran wince but went on. "Or will you be with me more, teach me more, let me know you?"

    How much true and how much manipulation to fulfill my mission? Goddess help me, I no longer knew. He hesitated, and a slow shivering made me tremble from head to toe.

    At last he said, "You're young, Morgan. You're still gathering information. You don't need to make any life decisions tonight."

    Gathering information? Chills ran up and down my spine. What did he mean by that? How much did he know?

    I nodded slowly, unable to look into his eyes.

    "What I would like you to do," he said, "to have, is a more complete understanding of what being Woodbane can mean--the joy, the power, the beauty of its purity, the ecstasy of its potential."

    I looked up the, hazel eyes meeting hazel eyes. "What do you mean?"

    "I would like to share something with you, my youngest daughter," he said. "You, who are so close to my heart and so far from my life. I sense in you something strong and pure and fearless, something powerful yet tender, and I want to show you what that could be. But I need your trust."

    I was scared now and also unbelievably drown to what he was saying. There was a taste in my mouth, and I licked my lips, then realized it wasn't actually a taste so much as a longing: a longing for what Ciaran was talking about.

    "I don't understand." The words came out in a near whisper. "Is this about--"

    "I'm talking about shape-shifting," he said quietly. "Assuming another being's physical form in order to achieve an heightened awareness of one's own psyche."

    Suddenly I realized where he was going with this. I tried not to gape. I had heard about witched shape-shifting before--in fact, I knew the members of Amyranth shape-shifter--but I understood that it was generally forbidden, considered dark magick. Of course, that wouldn't stop Ciaran.

    "You're kidding, right?" I asked.

    "No. Morgan, you have so much to learn about your own persona. You must trust me--there is not better way to know yourself than looking through another being's eyes."

    "Shape-shifting? Like a hawk? Or a cat?" He couldn't be serious. Where was he going with this?

    "Not necessarily a hawk or a cat," he explained. "no witch can change themselves or someone else into a being that does not resonate with the one to be changed. For example, if you feel an affinity for horses, want to know what it would feel like to race across the plains, then it's fairly easy to shift into that. But if you feel no affinity for the animal, have nothing of that creature in you, then it can't be done. Which is why witched don't usually shift into most reptile or fish."

    Oh, Goddess, he seemed serious. I tried to stall. "Can all witches do this?"

    "No. Not even very many. But I can, and I think you can, too." He looked deeply into my eyes until I felt that the two of us made up the entire universe. "What do I feel like to you?" he whispered. "What do you feel like?"

    An image came to me, and animal. I hesitated to say it. It was the animal that had come to me in terrifying dreams in New York--the animal that represented Ciaran and all of his children, me included. I was so scared about what might happen right here, right now, that it was beyond comprehension. But if I couldn't understand it, then I couldn't really feel it. "A wolf," I said. "Both of us."

    His smile was like the moon coming out from behind a bank of clouds. "Yes," he breathed.

    "Yes. Say there words, Morgan: Annial nath rac, aernan sil, loch mairn, loch hollen, sil beitha…"

    Mindlessly, wondering if I were being spelled by Ciaran but no longer caring, I repeated the ancient, frightening words. Before my eyes Ciaran began to change, but it was hard to say how--were his teeth sharper, longer? His hands curling into claws? Did I see a new, feral wildness in his eyes?

    His voice was growing softer and softer, and I cast my senses out to hear the words so I could repeat them. Then I heard something that wasn't a word. It was… a sound and a shape and a color and a sigil, all at once. It was impossible to describe. No. It was Ciaran's true name, the name of his essence. I don't know how I recognized it… it was instinctive. I had learned Ciaran's true name, I thought hazily. That meant…

    In the next second I gasped and bent double, racked with a searing, unexpected pain. I stared down my hands. They were changing. I was changing. I was shape-shifting into a wolf. Oh, god, help me.

    I cried out, but my voice was already not my own. I dropped to my hands and knees, feeling the soft loam beneath me, barely aware of Ciaran changing slipping out of his clothes, revealing a thick black-and-silver coat. His intelligent hazel eyes looked at me from a wolf's face. I tried to scream in horror and pain, but my voice was strangled and broken. My body was in a rack, being forced to bend and curl in unnatural ways, as if every bone was being stretched or compressed or twisted in some incomprehensible nightmare. Helplessly whimpering, I closed my eyes and fell on my side, unable to fight or resist this overwhelming process. When Ciaran nuzzled me, I reluctantly opened my eyes again, and when I got up I was on all fours. I was a wolf. My fur was thick and russet colored. I looked down and saw four straight, strong paws tipped with sharp, non-retractable claws. I looked at Ciaran and recognized him: he was absolutely himself, yet he was a wolf. I felt absolutely myself, but as I began to cautiously examine my internal process, I felt quite different. Foreign. Like a wolf instead of a person. It was as if my humanness was a rope hammock that had come undone in one end, and I was now watching it unravel. Soon it would be completely gone. I had two thoughts: How would I get back? And what of my mission?

    I stepped closer to Ciaran, my four legs moving smoothly, precisely, with no effort. I felt hw strong I was, how powerful--my jaws felt heavy, my legs were roped with lean muscle, and I was breathing easily, although the change had been horribly stressful. Ciaran opened his mouth in a sinister, wolfy grin, as if to say, Isn't it great? I grinned back at him and was awash with a sudden ecstasy and exhilaration that I was experiencing this. Instinctively I stepped closer to Ciaran and nuzzled his neck, and he returned it.

    Then I remembered. The watch sigil. The wolf in me wanted to be running, to be away, to be coursing through the dark night. The last vestige of a human Morgan remembered the watch sigil. I pressed my face against Ciaran's thick neck fur and breathed the words of the spell against him. In a quick, desperate move I traced the sigil against his neck with my wet canine nose.

    Ciaran made no response, as if he hadn't noticed, hadn't felt it. I had no idea whether or not it would "stick" since he was a changed being. Then Ciaran nudged me with his head and, turning, bounded off into the night. Feeling fiercely happy, all thoughts of Morgans and missions and spells gone, I leapt after him. My muscles contracted and expanded effortlessly; it was easy to catch up with him, and we loped along side by side as a million new sensations flooded my animal brain. With my magesight I could always see well in the dark, but now it was as if things were highlighted and outlined for me with infrared. With each indrawn breath a world of scent, flavors borne on the breeze, added an incredibly powerful, exciting beyond description.

    When Ciaran looked back, I opened my mouth and showed him my pointy teeth. He had given me the gift of a lifetime, I knew. We ran for miles through the woods, leaving the cemetery behind, following scents, feeling the crisp air ruffling through our fur. I ran happily in Ciaran's paw prints, trying to soak up as much of this sensation as possible. I didn't know if it would ever happen again, and I wanted to relish every second.

    I hadn't even begun to tire when Ciaran cantered to a halt and sniffed the air. Eagerly I stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and lifted my head. My eyes widened, and I looked at him, seeing the knowledge in his eyes. I smelled it too. Prey.

    

    

    Colin, I write to you in fevered hysteria. I learned only hours ago that Nuala is to be burned at the stake, in Barra Head. I can see that at last her devil's work has caught up to her, but the sentence! As Father Benedict himself said, God is to judge good and evil, not man! Cannot her soul yet be saved? Can no one bring her to the Lord's joy? It can be done only if she is alive--surely they must see that, Colin?

    

    Prey. Oh, God. I was hit by a hunger so strong, it almost overwhelmed me. It was a bloodlust, an animal's need to kill or be killed, hunt or be hunted. I was a predator--an efficient, predestined killer--and the idea of prey made my stomach tighten in anticipation. I licked my lips and inhaled deeply, drawing the delicious scent into my lungs. It was almost familiar, a wonderful, maddening smell that I had to follow or die trying.

    Without waiting for my father, I set off after the prey, my feet moving swiftly and silently over the detritus of the forest floor. Prey, prey, I thought. My prey. The scent swept through these woods, here touching a tree trunk, here brushed against leaves on the ground, here on the holly bush with their shiny, prickly leaves. Sometimes the trail doubled back on itself, and I circled trees in frustration until I found the one thread that was a fraction stronger. Then I was off again, moving like a wraith through the darkness, filtering out a thousand other scents: tree, loam, mold, bird, insect, deer, rabbit. But I focused on the one scent, that one tantalizing smell that made my mouth ache in longing.

    I was barely aware of the other wolf, the black-and-silver one trotting behind me; I couldn't hear his breathing, and his paws made almost no sound.

    Here I took a sharp right, and at once the scent became closer, stronger. I almost howled in excitement. Soon. Close. Mine. The next second I froze: there it was! The scent was washing over me now, the air woven through with it. It was close. With every breath I inhaled the promise of the joy of victory over a lesser being. It was beyond hunger, beyond desire, beyond want. My mouth was wet; my eyes were piercing the night. I scanned the woods all around me as the other wolf came to a silent stop next to me. Tree by tree by tree by bush by bush…it was close. It was within range.

    There! There, forty feet away. My moving target, my destination, my fate. It was heading away from me, leaving an obvious trail to follow. I smiled. Without having to think, my muscles gathered and exploded, launching me into the night. The distance between us closed rapidly. I felt an intense, palpable hunger, a need to bring my prey down, to sink my sharp white teeth into its fresh, hot, salty blood. I whimpered with want and raced ahead.

    With one more leap I would bring it down. My weight would knock it to the ground; it would be scared, confused; I would rip into its throat and not let go… the prey turned around and saw me rocketing toward it. Then it was on the move, charging away from me, running in zigzags, ducking below branches, crashing through the underbrush with as much noise as a tree falling heavily on the ground.

    I chased after it, following the traces of its warm footprints, its scent, now laced with fear, that it left in its wake. My breath came rapidly, my lean sides pumping oxygen efficiently through my blood, my incredibly strong heart pushing fresh blood through my veins.

    I was glad my prey was putting up a chase--it shouldn't be too easy. I felt the other wolf behind me, and I sensed that he was enjoying it as much as I was. I detected a familiarity in his movements: he had done this before. Hunted before. Killed before.

    A streak of crackly blue light flew through the trees and almost hit my head. I ducked instinctively, and it exploded on a pine next to me. The scent of charred bark and stickysweet sap hit my nostrils. Another ball of blue light came at me, and once again I dodged, almost feeling annoyance. I hunkered down, kept my head low and concentrated on following my prey.

    A strong scent of deer crossed my path, and it would have made me swerve if I had been after any other animal. The air seemed full of delicious scents: deer, rabbit, turkey--but I ignored them, as I ignored the false, confusing trials that told me my prey had taken another path. I was unstoppable, undistractable. I had one purpose. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted it more than I'd ever wanted anything in my whole life.

    The other wolf moved away from me, splitting off from my path and heading farther on. I realized he was going to come at our quarry from the left side, while I would chase it from the right. Together we would corner it, and then I alone will take it down; I alone would get the spoils of victory.

    Within a minute we had succeeded: there was a sharp rock outcropping there, and my prey was trapped against it. It flattened itself against the wall, as if that would help. The other wolf moved in, but I growled at him to stay back. This life belonged to me. I could hear it panting, gasping to get air into its puny lungs. The smell of fear covered it and made me wrinkle my nose. Its heart was hammering in its weak chest, and the thought of the blood pumping through that heart made me step closer, baring my teeth.

    This was what I wanted more than anything. I had to bring it down, had to kill it, had to taste it. It was created solely to be my victim. The fur on my back stood up in a bristly line with excitement. Hunkering down, a low growl coming from my throat, I began to creep toward it.

    My eyes never left it, my muscles were poised to leap away at any second if it would try to run. Its pale green eyes were wide with fear, and I wanted to grin. Should I leap on it and drag it down, face first? Should I launch myself toward it from the side? How much could I play with it before it died? No, better make it a clean, quick kill. It was the wolf's way. Ever so slowly I advanced, feeling a delicious thrill flooding my being. Nothing was better than this sensation, this victory over weakness. Nothing could compare.

    I glanced up and found that my prey was staring at me, right at my eyes. I frowned. That wasn't what prey did. Prey cowered, prey hid, prey made it fun. Prey didn't stare at its hunter.

    I took another step closer, and its gaze caught mine, unwavering. It was infuriating. I pulled my lips back to show it my deadly fangs; I growled deeply from within my chest, knowing that the vibrations of the rumble would strike terror into it. Closer and closer want, becoming more enraged by the second by its boldness.

    The my prey whispered, "Morgan?"

    I froze, one paw in mid air. I blinked. That sound was very familiar. Behind me the other wolf stiffened, then moved closer, barely rustling the leaves on the ground. I turned my head a fraction and growled a warning to him: Stay back. This is my kill.

    "Morgan?" My victim was still panting hard, sweating, pressed against the rocks. It looked deeply into my eyes, and with surprise I found it almost painful. I desperately wanted it to turn away, to quit staring at me. As soon as it dropped its gaze, I would leap on it, tearing out its throat, feeling its lifeblood soak away. Play your role, as I play mine.

    It wouldn't look away. "Oh, Morgan," it said. With its next breath it straightened up, away from the rock, and my muscles tensed. Unbelievingly I felt it relaxing, calming its fear. It raised its paw and unwrapped some covering from around its neck. My eyes opened wider--it had bared its throat for me! I could see pale, smooth skin where before there had only been some thick, wrinkly thing. "Your choice, Morgan," it said, and waited.

    Again I blinked, trying to process this situation in my wolf brain. This wasn't making sense.

    This prey was talking to me, it was saying my name. My name? My name? I thought--I felt only like Me. But like a trickle of water slowly eating through rock, a realization shot through me. My name was Morgan. My name was Morgan?

    Oh, Goddess, my name was Morgan! I was a girl, not a wolf, not a wolf! Only a girl. And my prey was Hunter, and I loved him, and right now I wanted to kill him and taste his blood more than anything in the world.

    What was happening?

    "Your choice, Morgan," Hunter said again.

    My choice. What kind of choice? I had hunted him down; the right of the kill was mine. Could I choose not to kill him? Abruptly I sat down, my haunches folding neatly under me, brushy tale swishing out of the way.

    My choice. I would choose what? To kill or not to kill? Oh, Goddess, was the choice between good and evil? Between power or guilt? Light or darkness? Oh, God, did this mean I couldn't kill this prey? I wanted it, I wanted it, I need it, I had to have it.

    Behind me the other wolf growled: Do something. Kill it or I will.

    Oh, God, oh, God, oh, Goddess, help me. Oh, God, I choose good, I thought, almost weeping with regret at the blood I wouldn't spill, the life I couldn't take. I threw back my head and howled, a strangled, smothered howl of pain and longing and a desire to kill.

    And as soon as I thought, I choose good, my exhilarating wolfness began to slip away from me, like a tide away from a shore. This too I regretted: I wanted to be a wolf forever. How diminishing to go back to being a mere girl, a pathetic human; how pitiful, how humiliating! I lowered myself onto my front paws, wanting to weep but unable to: wolves can't cry.

    The other wolf--Ciaran, it came to me--trotted forward suddenly with an irate snarl. Hunter tensed against the rock, and I leaped to my feet, thinking, No! No! I saw Ciaran's powerful muscles gather and knew he would be on Hunter in an instant. Quickly in my mind I thought his true name, the name that was his very essence, the name that was a sound, a shape, a thought, a song, a sigil, a color all at once.

    Ciaran dropped in mid leap like a stone. He turned to me, wolfish eyes wide in astonishment, awe, and even fear. No, I thought. You may not have Hunter.

    Things began happening too quickly to comprehend. I began to change back to a human, and it was painful and I cried out. Ciaran, still a wolf, melted into the shadows of the woods like a fog, as if he had never existed. Then Eoife and many other witches I didn't know burst into the clearing, shouting spells and weaving magick everywhere.

    "He went there!" Hunter shouted, pointing in the direction that Ciaran had gone. I lay curled on the ground, still mostly wolf, trying not to retch, knowing in my heart that they would never catch Ciaran, that my father had already escaped. But the weight of their magick and the strength of their spells amazed me--I didn't want to be anywhere near them. It was a weight, pressing on me, binding Woodbanes, chasing Ciaran, and the magick made me feel ill.

    Vaguely I felt Hunter wrap me in something warm and pick me up, and then the pain of his every step was so much that I passed out and sank into a delicious darkness where there was no pain, no consciousness.

    I don't know when I awoke, but when I did, I was stretched across Hunter's lap, wrapped in his overcoat. My eyes fluttered, and I whispered again, "I choose good."

    "I know, love," Hunter whispered back.

    I saw my naked feet sticking out from his coat; they were freezing. I felt impossibly pale and weak and wormlike after the glorious strength and beauty of wolfdom. I began to cry, thinking again, I choose good, I choose good, just in case it hadn't taken the first time. Hunter held me and stroked his hands over my bare human skin. He murmured gentle healing spells that helped take away the nausea and pain and fear. But not the regret. Not the anguish. Not the loss.

    

    

    Diary of Benedict, Cisterian Abbot, December 1771.

    Today we held the sad burial and consecration of one of our sons. Brother Sinestus Tor was brought from Baden and laid to rest in the abbey's churchyard. His mother assured me he had received the last sacraments, but the Brothers and I performed extra rites of purity and forgiveness. I cannot think that gentle Sinestus, so bright and full of hope, became an agent of the devil, but there are facts of this matter that trouble me greatly, though I shall take them with me to the grave, God willing. How is it that the boy died at the exact moment of the exact day the witch Nuala Riordan was burned at the stake? They were hundreds of miles apart and had no earthly communication.

    

    "Drink this," said Hunter, folding my stiff fingers around a warm mug. I took a tentative sip, then coughed, gagging on its foulness.

    "Agh," I said weakly. "This is awful."

    "I know. Drink it anyway. It will help."

    I did, taking small sips and grimacing after each one. If this tonic was magickal, why couldn't he have spelled it so it didn't taste like crap?

    I was huddled in front of the fireplace at Hunter's house. He had given me some of Sky's clothes to wear since mine were back at the cemetery.

    The fire crackled and spit in front of me, but I avoided looking at the flames. I couldn't bear anything else tonight--no revelations, no lessons, no visions, no scrying. Although I had a blanket wrapped around me, I shivered uncontrollable and felt that the fire put out hardly any heat.

    I didn't understand anything.

    "Is Sky here?" I thought to ask.

    Hunter nodded. "Upstairs, sleeping off her drunk. Tomorrow morning she'll probably feel worse than you do now."

    "I find that hard to believe." Every muscle and bone and nerve and tendon and cartilage in my body ached as if it had been torn. Even my hair and fingernails hurt. I dreaded having to get up to walk, and driving seemed impossible. Creakily, like an old woman, I raised the mug to my lips and drank again.

    "Why were you out there?" My words came out as a croak.

    Hunter looked at me somberly. "I was looking for you. I got a message from Ciaran that you were in danger."

    Ciaran. I don't know why I was surprised. "How did you know where I was? How did Eoife show up at the last minute?"

    "We scried," said Hunter. "Ciaran had blocked himself from us, but you hadn't. Ciaran wanted us to look for you. He wanted to plant me in your path while you were shape-shifting. He was testing you."

    I shuddered again at the thought of what I had almost done to Hunter. Then, considering Hunter's words, I frowned. "I did block myself. I was covered with protective spells, spells that wouldn't let anyone find me without my will."

    For a moment Hunter looked uncomfortable, and I thought, Oh my god, he's lying to me.

    "You have a watch sigil on you," he said, and blew out a breath, as though glad I finally knew.

    "Excuse me?" I almost dropped my mug.

    "You have a watch sigil on you." He looked embarrassed. "Since Eoife taught you the wardevil spells. During one of those she put a watch sigil on you."

    I stared at him.

    "We needed to know where you were, who you were with. You're inexperienced, love, and that makes you a target.

    Any dark witch who knew that would be dangerous to you. There was nothing about this mission that was safe."

    If we'd been having this conversation before Eoife had come to town, I would have been furious. As it was, after all I'd been through, all I knew, all I felt was a vague sense of gratitude. I sighed and murmured, "Take it off now."

    "I will," Hunter promised.

    I stared into the bottom of my dark mug. "I feel like such a failure. I haven't learned anything about the time of the dark wave, or the spell, or anything. I've sentenced Alyce and Starlocket to death." My eyes stung, and I knew tears would come later.

    "No, Morgan," Hunter said, rubbing my knee through the blanket. "You got Killian here, and Ciaran. They know we're here and that we're on high alert. And you have to remembered, you did incredibly well just not to have been killed."

    "Oh, God." I groaned and shook my head. "At least I planted the watch sigil on him."

    "What? You did?" Hunter looked incredulous. "When?"

    "Right as we were turning, shifting. I breathed it into his fur and traced the sigil on his neck.

    Actually, that was probably useless, too. Once he changes back--"

    "It will still be on him," Hunter said, his face breaking into a huge grin. "Oh, Goddess, Morgan! The council is going to be ecstatic to hear it. That's the best news I've had in a long time." He leaned and kissed my cheek and my forehead. "Morgan, I think your mission was a smashing success. You planted the watch sigil on Ciaran, and we're both still alive, unhurt…"

    Hunter took my free hand and kissed it, looking at me encouragingly. I didn't know how to respond.

    The truth was, his joy didn't affect me that much. I had planted a betraying sigil on my biological father. And he had given me such a gift… For a moment I remembered running through the woods on all fours, and I closed my eyes.

    And then I remembered… I had learned his true name. Something that could give me complete power over my father, one of the darkest witches the world had ever know. The thought of using it against him made my stomach clench. For now, I thought, I would guard this as my secret. I wouldn't tell the council--wouldn't even tell Hunter. If it became necessary, I could use it. But I didn't want to give anyone else the power to destroy my natural father. I couldn't.

    "He wanted you to kill me," he said softly, as though he was reading my mind. He wrapped his arms around me, and I felt his warmth seeping through the blanket. "If you had killed, it would have been one less Seeker--and you'd have lost your muirn beatha dan. It would have bound you to him in a way that love alone never could."

    I shuddered at the thought of losing Hunter. "I was starting to care for him," I admitted.

    "I know," said Hunter. "How could you not? He's your birth father. And I believe that his feelings for you were sincere also. Despite everything, I believe that's true."

    Then I began to cry again, tears leaking silently out of my eyes and running hotly down my cheeks. I didn't have the energy to sob, and it would have hurt too much, anyway.

    "I have you," Hunter said, holding me close. "I have you. You're safe. It's all right.

    Everything's going to be all right."

    "There's no way anything will ever be all right again," I said shakily, and he began kissing the tears away from my cheeks.

    "That's not true," he said.

    I looked into his green eyes, the eyes that had stared me down when I was a wolf. And I knew then: I knew in my heart that I was good.

    "I love you so much," I said.

    He gave me a half smile and leaned closer, blotting out my vision of the fire. He's going to kiss me, I thought, but by then his lips were already against mine. Tentatively at first, then with increasing pressure as I responded. Gradually I felt light growing all around us, bathing us in a silvery white glow. I reached one arm up to curl it around his neck, and then we had our arms around each other. We kissed deeply an more deeply, trying to fuse together after being apart too long. Then suddenly it was just like the day at Bree's house with Killian: flowers, all different kinds and colors and sizes, showering down upon us, petal soft. I broke away for a moment, gazing around me, and started to laugh. Hunter followed my gaze, looking up at the shower of petals, and his face transformed into a huge smile. He kissed me again, and his body pressed against mine, comforting me to my very soul. I held him t me as tightly as I could, all my muscles screaming in pain as I moved. I didn't care. I was back in Hunters arms and he was in mine, and everything was going to be all right.

    My parents came home the next day, while I was home "sick." I felt their car come up the driveway and quickly ran my hands over my ears, checking to make sure they were still round and naked instead of pointy and furry. Moving gingerly downstairs, I met them at the front door.

    "Hi, honey!" My mom said, giving me a big hug. I tried not to moan in pain; every cell in my body still hurt. She glanced at her watch and looked at my face more closely.

    "Morgan!" Dad said, struggling through the door with two suitcases. "Are you sick?"

    "You look awful," Mom said, putting her hand to my cheek. "Do you have a fever?"

    "I think so," I said. "I thought I'd better stay home today. It's the only day I've missed."

    "Poor thing," Mom said, and I felt a maternal mantle of comfort settle around me. "You go get back into bed. I'll bring you some Tylenol and a ginger ale."

    I almost wept with happiness. "I'm glad you're home," I choked out, then headed back upstairs to my waiting bed. Ciaran was gone, Killian hadn't been heard from since our father disappeared, Hunter and I were back together (I thought), and my parents were home. It was a whole new day.

    "Today is the feast of lights," said Eoife at our circle two days later. She raised a white candle high. "Today is for new beginnings, for purification, for renewal of spirit, body, hearth, and home. We give blessed thanks to the Goddess for the past year and dedicate ourselves anew to our studies and devotions."

    Next to her Alyce Fernbrake ignited her candle from Eoife's, and the two women smiled at each other before Alyce turned and bent to light Suzanna Mearis's candle. Suzanna was now in a wheelchair. Around the circle went the flame, from candle to candle, witch to witch.

    "Blessed thanks," we said when the last candle was lit. Then, moving deasil around Hunter and Sky's large circle room, we each sprinkled a small handful of salt on the floor around us.

    It crunched under our feet. I looked around at the many softly lit faces. It was Saturday night, Imbolic, February 2. For this joyful celebration, one of the four major Wiccan Sabbats, Kithic had joined forces with Starlocket, and there were twenty-six of us purifying ourselves, this room, this year.

    After Alyce had led us in prayer to Brigid--she pronounced it Breed--the Goddess of fire, we sat in a large circle. I gazed across at Hunter, thinking about how beautiful he looked in candlelight. He'd pretty much convinced me that after passing the test of choosing good over evil, I was probably safe for him to date. Now every time I looked at him, my heart went al fluttery and I wanted to hold him.

    "Blessed be," Hunter said, and we repeated it. "This joyful occasion," he went in, "signifies the beginning of winter's end. The days are becoming longer, the sunlight brighter--it's a time of rebirth."

    "Yes," said Eoife. "Many witches choose this time to spring clean their homes, performing purifying rituals and literally making a clean sweep of everything."

    "It's also a time for spiritual rebirth," said Alyce, her wise face and blue-violet eyes serene. "I use this holiday to forgive anyone who wronged me in the past and to seek forgiveness from anyone I've wronged. To begin the new Wheel or the Year with a clean slate."

    Alisa spoke. "I read there's a ritual where you write down things you wish to be free of in the coming year--flaws, problems, worries--and then you burn the paper."

    "We will do that in a little while," Hunter said. "Right now let's stand again and call on the god and the goddess."

    We all joined hands.

    "May the circles of Starlocket and Kithic always be strong," Hunter said.

    "Blessed be," I whispered. The other members murmured their response.

    As we began to move widdershins in our circle, Hunter began to chant in a low voice. The chant was unfamiliar to me, but I understood it somehow: it was about new beginnings, casting the darkness behind you and living in light. Gradually Alyce and Sky joined in, and then the words came to me and I began to chant, too. Energy flowed through my body as we spun around the room. A joy began to fill me that cannot be put into words. We were all alive, safe. I caught Hunter's eye, and he smiled at me. He was mine again. My body filled with warmth and energy, and I smiled back.

    On the other side of the circle Alyce's face was turned up in a mask of pure joy. I felt a rush of comfort. Alyce was still with me, and Starlocket intact. I had helped make it that way. In the time to come, the council would track Ciaran, and if he should ever come for me again, I was ready for him. For the first time in weeks I felt utterly safe and happy.

    I stared into the candle flamed and felt my power rise.

    Later that night, on my front porch, I fished my keyed out of my jeans. My shoe tapped something, and I looked down. As soon as I saw the small, lumpy bundle of purple silk, my heart dropped. I whipped my head around, looking for Ciaran. I knew this was from him as surely as I knew I was a witch. I cast my senses out strongly and felt nothing except Dagda on the other side of the front door. Slowly I knelt and picked it up. It was almost alive with tingling traces of magick. I untied the knot, and the bundle fell open. My mouth opened wordlessly as I stared down at the golden watch. It was the watch I had found in Maeve's old apartment in New York. Ciaran had taken it from me as he had tried to steal my powers. It was the watch that had first made him aware that I must be his daughter.

    "Oh, Goddess," I muttered. A fluttering white note caught my eye, and I picked it up. You should have this, it said.

    I stroked the watch, feeling the warmth of the gold, the fineness of the wrought chain. This was truly a family heirloom, something to be kept and handed down for generations.

    Unfortunately, it was also from Ciaran, which meant I shouldn't even be holding it. When Cal and I had first gotten together, he'd given me a silver pentacle necklace that I had worn constantly. It had been spelled, of course, and he'd used it to help control me. Goddess only knew what Ciaran had done to this watch: I knew he had given it to me sincerely, out of love, and I knew also that he'd had some ulterior purpose in doing so, that it would somehow be to his advantage. That was Ciaran: light and dark. Like me, like the world, like everything.

    I tied it back into its purple silk. I desperately wanted to go inside and sleep, but instead I found myself sliding behind the wheel of Das Boot. I drove well out of town, at least ten miles, to an old farm I had come to once with Maeve's tools. I walked through the tree buffer that separated the meadow from the highway and stepped into the clearing where Sky Eventide had found me, working magick on my own.

    The ground was frozen, of course, but I'd come prepared and said a tiny spell that made digging easy. I dug a whole almost two feet deep and then with bittersweet feelings placed the purple silk bundle at the bottom of it. I filled in the hole. Then I knelt and said all the purifying spells I knew, all the ward-evil ones from Hunter and Eoife and Alyce. I stood up and made my way back to the car, feeling like I would be lucky to make it home without falling asleep at the wheel.

    With time the earth's healing purity would work its own magick on the watch, purifying it and removing all traces of spells and evil. It would take a very long time. But one day I knew, I would reclaim it.