'Oh, more than one, some years… Yes, she is. She was in here yesterday, like a laughing tornado…' Atlantis was not only a bookshop, it was a clearing-house for personal news. Few people knew whether the family were witches, Golden Dawn magicians, spiritualists, or of any other occult persuasion; they had a natural gift for ecumenism, so everybody talked to them and listened to them. The girl went on exchanging news with Moira while Moira browsed.

She bought two books and a magazine, and was still lingering and chatting when the fire-bomb was flung through the door. Moira ducked instinctively as it flew past her and burst into flame at the back of the little shop, behind the central display. They both screamed in disbelief and shock, but the very speed with which the fire took hold jerked them into action. The girl cried, 'Take the till!' as she grabbed the phone and dialled 999 for the fire brigade. Moira swept the till off the cash table and took some seconds to open the door inwards with the awkward load in her arms; whoever had thrown the bomb had slammed it shut afterwards. By the time she had got the till across the narrow street to the opposite pavement, the girl had run to join her.

Already it was too late to save anything else. Whatever the bomb had been made of, it engulfed the whole shop in less than a minute. They stood watching helplessly among the fast-growing crowd, while tears of rage and grief poured down the girl's face.

Nobody had seen the attacker, although two policemen were on the spot almost at once asking for witnesses, so no one was ever charged with the crime. Of the entire stock, fourteen undamaged and just over a hundred slightly damaged volumes were salvaged. The rest was a dead loss.

Gregory said: 'I think we ought to be ready to take to the woods,' and for a while nobody in the candlelit Circle spoke.

It was the quiet time after the ritual, when they all sat on the floor around the chalice of wine for a while, relaxed, savouring both the wine and the comfort of the still un-banished Circle. Diana had fallen asleep, her small head cradled against old Sally's ample naked belly; they had all been keeping their voices low so as not to waken her, and somehow the very quietness of Greg's pronouncement loaded it with drama.

Dan eventually broke the silence with a cautious: 'Let's not panic, Greg. It may just be a passing phase.'

'You don't believe that any more than I do,' Greg told him. 'And I didn't say we should rush off right now. I said we should be ready. For when the balloon goes up, if it does. Come the crunch, it'd be too late to pack, we'd have to go. Not even stand and fight, with Sally and Di to think of.'

'I'm not senile yet,' said Sally predictably.

Equally predictably, Dan insisted, 'Cut the metaphors, Greg – what balloon – what crunch?'

'All right, Devil's Advocate, I'll tell you. Another earthquake, maybe a much worse one. Real panic and an anti-witch explosion. We're being set up for it, whether deliberately or not. And it wouldn't be just books they'd be burning. They'd be burning us.'

Diana stirred in her sleep, murmuring, and Rosemary said, 'Careful, Greg. Small ears.'

They were silent again, but all the faces turned towards Moira, sitting cross-legged with her back to the altar. She drew herself up instinctively, knowing that it was always like this while they were in the Circle. Dan and Greg would state the facts as they saw them, checked and balanced by contributions from Rosemary and Sally, and when they were ready, they would lay the problem at her feet. Not as Moira Mackenzie, wife and friend, alone; but as High Priestess, into whom, with the 'drawing down of the Moon' early in the ritual, the Goddess had been invoked, as channel, as oracle, as pythoness.

'Greg is right,' she said.

Dan asked immediately: 'What had you in mind, Greg?'

We're lucky,' Greg said, 'we've both got garages. We can keep the cars loaded up without attracting attention. Your station wagon's ideal, but our Beetle's too small. There's a Bedford van in the workshop the owner wants to flog – I can trade the Beetle in for that. It's in good nick, I overhauled it myself. We're OK for camping equipment -Sally could have the blow-up igloo tent and the rest of us the big frame jobs. Use the van as kitchen…'

'Rosemary and I will stock up rations,' Sally interrupted. 'Moira can see to Di's needs, medical stuff, and so on. You boys can see to tools, gas cylinders, weapons and that.'

How calm she is, Moira thought.

'Did you say weapons?' Rosemary asked, a little shakily.

'Don't be daft, girl. Of course I said weapons.'

'But…'

'Leave that to us,' Dan said. 'Think of rabbits and pheasants if it makes you easier…Should we pack a sewing machine?'

'Mine's the lightest,' Moira said.

'OK then. Now, about currency…"

The practical debate became almost eager, and Moira (High Priestess or not) was suddenly overtaken by a moment of terror. She managed to conceal it, because she recognized it for what it was: the acknowledgement, at last, of the spectre they had all been suppressing. They had all been telling themselves that the earth tremors were a freak phenomenon, that the witch-hunt was a passing madness; they had paid lip-service to the sense of growing crisis but they had not really let themselves believe it. Even she, with the clear warnings which her Tarot readings had unlocked from the storehouse of her intuition, had been running away from their implications. Now the barriers were down. It had only taken Greg's proposal, and her own ex cathedra endorsement of it, for pretence to evaporate… They could be on the brink of disaster. Homes, friendships, the protection of law, the certainty of recognizable tomorrows, could all be snatched from them. They must be ready. The truth had been faced; now, in an avalanche of acceptance, they could talk of cars, tents, sewing machines – and weapons.

Moira's moment of terror ebbed. She was aware of the altar at her back, and of her own function; she straightened her spine proudly, throwing her hair backwards, hollowing her stomach, jutting her breasts, grasping her spread knees firmly in each hand.

Dan caught her eye and sent her a private smile. He always knew.

Some news of anti-witch violence did get into the media but they suspected that more was going on than was being reported. A neighbouring coven in Woking had a window broken and two parked cars burned during a Circle, and a friend of Greg's who was a High Priest in Liverpool wrote that his teenage daughter had been waylaid in a back street by an unknown but obviously purposeful gang who shaved her head and painted 'WITCH' on her scalp with gentian violet. Neither of these incidents made even the local press – probably, Dan suggested, because they might create sympathy for the victims. Reporting seemed selective and mostly confined to clashes where the witches had fought back, so that doubt could be cast on who had provoked whom.

Some liberal opinion did make itself heard, condemning the violence, but even this current of feeling could, it seemed, be exploited. It so happened that a parliamentary by-election was to be held on 20 July in the constituency which included Bell Beacon and an Independent candidate, Quentin White, who had been standing on a rather vague combination of local issues, came out with a new demand – that public pagan festivals be made illegal, in the interests of civic order. White had been expected, indeed, had himself expected, to lose his deposit, but local revulsion at the Bell Beacon shambles was given a new outlet by his switched campaign, and his meetings, which had drawn handfuls, were now attracting hundreds. The constituency bordered on Staines, and Moira's group watched the campaign apprehensively.

'He can't get in, though, surely,' Dan said. 'This ban-the-Festivals thing of his – it's too bloody woolly. He doesn't say how it could be made law. Probably unconstitutional, in any case.'