I walked him to the door, and suddenly the reason for his visit came rushing back. "Tomorrow is going to be terrible, isn't it?" I said.

"Yes." He waited, not looking at me.

"All right." I leaned my head against the door frame. "I'll be there." I wanted to cry again, and I said, "Oh, Goddess, is anything ever going to feel good again?"

"Yes." Hunter kissed me again, quickly. "It will. I promise. But not until after tomorrow."

On Tuesday at sunset we gathered at Hunter and Sky's house for the ceremony. Sky and Hunter were there, of course, and so was a skinny teenage boy who looked familiar. "Where do I know you from?" I asked him.

"Probably from the party at Practical Magick. I play guitar with The Fianna. That was a sweet night," he said sadly.

"You're Alyce's nephew."

He nodded and held out his hand. "Diarmuid." He shifted uneasily. "Lousy occasion to be formally introduced."

"Will Alyce be here?" I asked.

"Already is," he said in a grim tone. "She started crying the moment we walked through the door. She's upstairs with Sky now. Auntie Alyce always wants to believe the best of everyone. She still can't quite believe it—that David called on the dark side. He's her dear friend, you know."

When everyone had assembled, there were five of us in the living room: Hunter, Sky, Alyce, Diarmuid, and me. Wordlessly Hunter led us to the room at the back of the house.

Candles flickered on the altar and in each of the four corners of the room. Outside, wind swept through the ravine, sending a high keening sound into the room.

David knelt in the very center of the room, inside a pentagram of glowing sapphire light. He wore a simple white shirt and white pants. He was barefoot. His hands were bound behind him with rope, his head bowed. He looked fragile and frightened. I ached to hold him, to comfort him somehow. But I knew I couldn't get past the light.

Hunter gestured, and we each stood on one point of the pentagram, with Hunter at the top of it. I noticed a drum on the floor behind Sky. Alyce stood quietly, her eyes locked on David and filled with grief.

Hunter surrounded the pentagram in a circle of salt, tracing signs for each of the four directions and invoking the Guardian of each.

"We call on the Goddess and the God," he began, "to be with us in this rite of justice. With the setting of the sun we take from David Redstone the magick that you gifted him.

"No more shall he wake a witch. No more shall he know your beauty or your power. No more shall he do harm. No more shall he be one of us.

"David Redstone, the International Council of Witches has met and passed judgment on you," Hunter went on in a still, neutral voice. "You called on a dark spirit, and as a result a man nearly died. For that you are to be punished by having your powers stripped from you. Do you understand?"

David lifted his head and nodded. His eyes were shut, as though he couldn't bear to keep them open.

"You must answer," Hunter said. "Do you understand the punishment that is now passed on you?"

"Yes." David's voice was barely audible.

Alyce bit back a cry of dismay, and I saw Diarmuid grasp her hand.

"Anger has no place here," Hunter cautioned us. "We are here for justice, not vengeance. Let us begin."

Sky began to beat a slow, solemn rhythm on the drum. The drumbeats seemed to go on forever. Gradually I noticed something shifting in the room. The drum was guiding us, subtly working on each one of us so that our breath aligned with it, our pulses followed it, and our energy joined and began to travel along the sapphire blue light of the pentagram as a line of blazing white.

I saw David hunch in on himself, as if trying to make himself small so that neither the blue light nor the white light could touch him.

The drum beat faster, more insistently, and the light intensified. The energy of five blood witches was fully intertwined now. The energy flowing around the pentagram crackled with power. We all held out our hands, drawing on the power, and I almost wept to feel my energy pouring out, familiar and strong.

Hunter stepped forward and touched the hilt of his athame to the pentagram. For a second the knife lit with blue and white light. The light continued to define the pentagram, but now Hunter walked around it, drawing his athame in a spiral around David, and the sapphire and white light blazed in a spiral as well.

I watched as our power flowed into the spiral and the spiral began to whirl around David. He whimpered as a transparent, smoke like image of a boy I recognized as himself appeared and vanished on the whirls of the spiral. Next came images of David in his robe, athame in hand, casting spells; David finding a wounded bird, making the sign of a healing rune over it and watching in delight as the bird flew from his hand; David charting the phases of the moon and its effect on the tides; David scrying with a crystal; David purifying Practical Magick with cedar and sage; David and another man facing each other in a circle and chanting in perfect harmony. All of it was leaving him, flying up the spiral like escaping spirits. And with each thing that left him, he sobbed with grief, a man watching everything he loved being destroyed. These were the experiences that had shaped him, that he used to define himself. They had formed the fabric of his life, and we were unraveling it. When the very last of David's magick had vanished on the whirls of the spiral, Hunter held out the hilt of his athame, drawing the glowing spiral into it once again.

"David Redstone, witch of the Burnhides, is now ended," Hunter said gently. "The Goddess teaches us that every ending is also a beginning. May there be rebirth from this death."

The drumbeat finally stopped, and with it the sapphire light of the pentagram winked out. David lay collapsed on the floor, a hollow shell. I wanted to fall over, too, but I stayed upright, feeling if I moved, I would crack into a million brittle pieces.

Alyce bent down slowly and put her arms around David.

"Goddess be with you," she murmured; then Diarmuid had to lead her out because she was weeping uncontrollably.

Sky watched silent and stricken as Hunter cut the bonds on David's wrists and gently helped him to his feet. "I'm going to give you some herbs to help you sleep," Hunter told David. The stern Seeker was gone from Hunter now, and he seemed only tender and sad. "Come with me," he said, taking David by the hand.

David let himself be led, walking with halting steps, like a lost child in a man's body.

Sky ran her hand through her hair and blew out a breath. "Are you all right?" she asked me as they left the room.

"It wasn't what I expected," I said. "I thought it would be more like the braigh."

"You mean, physical torture?"

I nodded. "This was tender. And yet, much worse." I thought of how Selene had wanted to take my power for herself. Goddess, what would that have been like? It was unthinkable.

"I never want to do anything like it again." Sky walked to each corner of the room and extinguished the candles there but left the two on the altar lit. "Let's get out of here," she said with a shudder. "I'll come back in and do a purification ceremony in the morning."

Moving in slow motion, I followed her into the living room.

"We found out what happened, you know," Sky said. "The taibhs terrified Afton so badly that he wanted nothing to do with the store. That's why he forgave the debt. Then, later, the continued stress of the encounter led to the stroke. Receiving Alyce's muffins was what pushed him over the edge."

"You mean Alyce. ." It was unbelievable.

"She had sent them as a thank-you. But dark forces work in devious ways, and so her kindness resulted in a terrible event." Sky put a finger to her lips. "She doesn't know, and I hope you won't tell her. It would hurt her too much."