"No," I breathed, feeling my heart implode. It wasn't true. We weren't destined to be together. I knew that now.

"Morgan, forgive me. I love you. Please, Morgan. ."

The last word was a whisper, and I struck out blindly with my hand and brought it down on the candle flame. There was a hiss and a faint, charring smell. And I was alone in the darkness.

12. Ugly

July, 1991

I thought Fiona was delirious from the fever, but her terror was so intense that I ended up bundling her up and putting her into Leandre's car. I chose a direction at random: east. We had driven for less than an hour when Fiona let out a cry. “Leandre!” She grasped my arm. “I can feel him dying.”

I pulled up at the first little village bistro I could find and rushed in to phone Leandre, but I couldn't get though. Not until late that night did we find out that his farm had been consumed by a mysterious wildfire. He and all his family had been trapped in their house.

“It was the dark wave.” Fiona whispered, shuddering. “It's hunting for us.”

Without discussing it, we got back into the car and continued east, fleeting across France. As I drove though the clear summer night, I kept remembering something Selene had said shortly before I left her the first time. She'd come back from a meeting with her Woodbane friends, the ones I feared, and once again she'd been in an oddly frenetic state, as if she had so much energy within her that she must keep moving or catch fire. I asked her what they'd done. “Watched the wave,” she said with a strange, sharp laugh. Of course, I though she meant waves: we lived on the Pacific coast. But now, as I drove, I wondered if she'd meant something else altogether.

Did Selene have something to do with sending the dark wave? Is she taking her revenge at last?

— Maghach

I don't know how long I sat there, shaking, too shocked even to cry. Goddess, help me, I thought desperately.

Cal. Oh, Cal. Tears began to rain down my cheeks, scalding and salty. I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked back and forth, keening quietly, trying to smother the sound. My palm throbbed where I'd crushed the candle flame, and as I sat there, the pain seemed to spread until my whole body was one pulsing, raw wound.

After a while Dagda mewed and tapped me tentatively with one paw. I looked at him numbly.

At some point my brain began to work again. How had that happened? How had Cal gotten into my vision? Was it his dark magick? Or had I summoned him somehow—had my own subconscious betrayed me?

He'd said he still loved me. He'd said he'd love me forever. Wasn't that truth I'd heard in his voice?

I gasped and squeezed my head between my hands. "Stop it! Stop it!" I muttered.

I sat there for another few minutes. Then I forced myself to climb into bed. Dagda sprang up and curled himself into a ball on my stomach. I lay there, staring blindly at the ceiling as tears ran down the sides of my face to soak my pillow.

I went through school the next day like an automaton. The burn on my palm had swelled into a shiny blister that burst halfway through the day. It hurt to write, so I just sat in class, not bothering to take notes. Not that my notes would have been much good, anyway. For all I got, my teachers might as well have been speaking Swahili. All I could think was: Cal. He had spoken to me.

What did it mean? Did he still hope to convince me to join him and Selene? Or was this some cruel plan to make me go crazy? If that was it, it was working. I'd never experienced such a horrible mixture of longing and revulsion. I felt like I was going to split apart.

When I got home from school, I had a message from Bob Unser, saying that Das Boot's parts had come in and asking me to drop off the car tomorrow morning. I could pick it up again on Wednesday morning, he said. Perfect, I thought. I couldn't possibly go to Hunter's on Tuesday since I wouldn't have transportation. I knew I was being incredibly stupid, not telling him about seeing Cal, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't share it, especially with him. Not yet, anyway.

I shot off an e-mail to Hunter, saying I had to cancel tomorrow because I would be vehicularly challenged. I also told him what David had told me about how he hurt his hand.

Then I sat at the kitchen table, drumming my fingers on the Formica surface. I had to do something to distract myself. I knew Aunt Eileen and Paula were moving in all week; some manual labor would be just what the doctor ordered. So I set off for Taunton.

Taunton was a smaller town than either Widow's Vale or Red Kill. Both Widow's Vale and Red Kill had had their town centers "revitalized," but Taunton was more mainstream America. There were the usual strip malls with the predictable fast-food joints, auto supply places, mega stores, and video and drugstore chains.

Eileen and Paula's neighborhood was older. Although each house was different, they fit together harmoniously. Huge old trees shaded the lawns and arched out over the center of the street. The neighborhood had a nice, settled feel to it.

Paula and Eileen's house was at the very end of the street I wanted to surprise them, so I parked at the other end of the block. I started walking.

As I got closer to the end of the block, I saw three teenage boys standing in front of one of the houses. Two of them wore parkas with shiny reflective tape on the seams. The third wore a loose camouflage jacket over camouflage pants. At first I thought they were having a snowball fight with some other kids I couldn't see; then I realized that they were throwing rocks at Paula and Eileen's house. My mouth dropped open, and I froze in my tracks.

"Queer!" one of them shouted.

"We don't need dykes in this neighborhood!" called another.

In one instant I got it, and then I was running hard toward the house, anger coursing through my veins like alcohol.

"Come on out, bitch!" one of the boys yelled. "Meet your neighbors! We're the welcome wagon!"

I heard the sound of glass shattering as at least one of the rocks connected. The boy closest to me looked up, his alarm quickly replaced by naked aggression.

"What the hell are you doing?" I demanded, breathing hard. "Get out of here, and don't come back!"

The boy couldn't be older than me, I saw. He had a shaved head, a nose that was nearly flat, and pale blue eyes. "Who are you?" He sounded amused. "One of their dyke friends? You don't know what you're missing, baby."

"Get. Out. Of. Here," I said, my voice vibrating with only marginally controlled fury. I felt on fire with rage.

The guy with the shaved head advanced on me, and his two friends closed in behind him. "Or what?" he said nastily. "You'll hit me with your purse?" He turned around to his friends, and the three of them laughed. My hands were trembling, clenched into fists, and I felt almost ill.

"Leave," I said, eerily calm. My voice didn't sound like my own. "Don't make me hurt you."

He burst into laughter. "Baby, maybe what you need is a man. Like those other dykes." He opened his arms wide. "Let me show you how it's supposed to be."

One of his friends laughed.

"You don't know what you're doing," I almost whispered.

Grinning, Flat Nose reached out to grab my arm, but before he touched me, I shot out my hand and sent a burning, crackling ball of blue witch fire at his throat. I didn't even think about it—I just unleashed my fury. The fire hit him so quickly, he had no time to react. His hands went to his throat, and he dropped to his knees. He doubled over, making little whimpering sounds of pain.

I felt encased in ice, completely calm, ready to annihilate them all. I began to call on my power. "An di allaigh, re nith la," I murmured.