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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knowledge; she needed information.

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

If so, he'd been right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elizabeth nodded. "I made sure of it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?"

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

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

"Alex, are you there?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you all right?" he asked.

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

"Who was it?"

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

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

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

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

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

"You can't know that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Alex, hurry. I need your help!"

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

"Alex, don't!"

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

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