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“Raine?” The voice on the other end of the phone sounded young and extremely nervous. But not hysterical, Raine decided with a modicum of relief. “This is Shawna Brown. I’m one of your grandmother’s girls—”

“I know. She told me all about you.” Raine couldn’t remember which of the teenagers Shawna was, but decided it wasn’t germane to the point. “Is my grandmother all right?”

“Well, that’s not an easy question to answer.”

“Why don’t you try, dear?” Nerves made her want to snap at the girl; years of courtroom experience allowed her to keep her voice calm.

“Well, she says she’s fine and dandy, but the doctors, they don’t seem so sure. So they’re making her stay in the hospital for tests, but—”

“Hospital?” Forgetting everything she’d ever learned about questioning a witness, Raine abruptly cut the girl off. “My grandmother’s in the hospital? What happened?”

Visions of Ida Lindstrom driving her ancient Jeep off the twisting wooded road into town flashed through Raine’s mind, followed on close order by the possibilities of a stroke or heart attack.

Her grandmother had always seemed as strong as one of the towering Douglas firs surrounding the Washington peninsula town. But then again, Raine reminded herself, it had been more than five years since she’d been back to Coldwater Cove. Some quick calculation revealed that somehow, while she hadn’t been paying attention, her grandmother had edged into her late seventies.

“It’s probably nothin’ real serious,” Shawna hastened to assure Raine. “She just had herself a little dizzy spell this morning when she climbed up on a kitchen stool to get the cornstarch. She was going to make a boysenberry pie.

“I’ve told her not to get up on that rickety old stool, that if she wants something on the top shelf of the cupboard, I’ll get it down for her. She’s so short, it’s a real stretch for her to reach. I don’t know why she even keeps things up that high, but you know your grandma. Told me she’d set things up that way when she first came to Coldwater Cove from Portland after her divorce, and didn’t see any reason to change.”

Just when Raine was about to scream, the girl stopped for a breath. “But I guess you already know that story.”

“Yes. I do. So, if you could just get back to this morning, I’d certainly appreciate it.”

“Oh…Sure. Well, I was out bringing the clothes in off the line because it was looking like it might rain, you know how iffy the weather is this time of year and—”

“Shawna.” Having spent years learning to organize her thoughts, Raine was growing more and more frustrated by the way the teenager’s explanation kept wandering off the subject. “Why don’t you please just tell me what exactly happened to Ida? Without any embellishments.”

There was a pause. Then Shawna said, “I’m sorry I’m not tellin’ this good enough for you.”

There was no mistaking the hurt feelings in the girl’s tone.
Nothing like badgering your own witness
. “And I apologize for sounding impatient,” Raine immediately backpedaled. “I’m just trying to find out what happened.”

“Mama Ida fell off the stool and, like, hit her head on the floor.”

“I see.” And she did, all too clearly. Raine’s heart clenched as she imagined her grandmother—all four-feet, eleven inches, ninety-eight pounds of her—sprawled on the kitchen floor. “Did she knock herself unconscious?”

“She says no. But we called 911, anyway. Which really riled Mama Ida up, but Renee was scared. And so was I.”

“Renee’s another one of the girls?”

“Yeah. She’s my sister. We ended up in the system after our mama and daddy died in a car wreck over by Moclips. For a while we were put in different homes, which is why Renee started running away. To be with me.” She paused as if trying to decide how much to reveal. “I wanted to take care of us, but I’m underage, and after I got busted at a kegger on the beach, the judge said I wasn’t responsible enough, so we had to stay in foster care. But things got better after we moved in with Mama Ida.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Nice little boarding school her grandmother was running, Raine thought acidly. Whatever happened to sponsoring a Brownie troop, where your biggest concern was the annual cookie sale? “So, you called 911. And the paramedics came?”

“Yeah. Though she was spittin’ like a wet cat, they took her off to the hospital in Port Angeles. Which was when all the trouble started.”

Raine pressed her fingers against her temple, where the jackhammer had been replaced by a maniac who’d begun pounding away with a mallet. The fire that had died down a bit during the conference-room celebration flared again in her chest. Higher. Hotter. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“Our probation officer—that’s Ms. Kelly, who Mama Ida always calls Old Fussbudget—was at the hospital checking on some guy who robbed a 7-Eleven a few years back. He’d been in a bar fight and was gettin’ a cut on his head stitched up when your grandmother was brought into the emergency room.

“Ms. Kelly called the house, and Renee, who’s too young to know any better, admitted we were here all alone. So, Ms. Kelly right away called Mrs. Petersen. She works for the county. In social services. She’s found Renee foster homes the other times she’s run away. Gwen, too.”

“Gwen?”

“She’s the pregnant one.”

The thought of three delinquents alone in her grandmother’s antique-filled home was not the most encouraging thing Raine had heard today. “I don’t understand. You said it happened this morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Why isn’t my mother handling things?”

“Oh, Lilith’s on the coast with her friends, preparing for some sort of return-of-the-sun celebration, or something. It’s like one of the coven’s most important gatherings.”

“Coven? My mother’s a witch, now?” Despite her ongoing concern for her grandmother, Raine couldn’t help being sidetracked by this little news flash.

“Not exactly. At least I don’t think so. I mean, I haven’t seen her waving a magic wand or boiling up toads and lizards in the Dutch oven or anything. It’s Mama Ida who’s always callin’ it a coven. Mostly it’s just some of your mama’s New Age stuff. She’s a pagan now,” Shawna added matter-of-factly.

“I see.” Raine poured a glass of water from the carafe on her desk and took a long drink, hoping it would put out the inferno blazing in her gut. It didn’t.

“I don’t care if the sun’s coming back, sucked into a black hole, or explodes, Shawna. I want you to call my mother right now and have her get back to Coldwater Cove.”

Not that Lilith would prove that much help. During her lifetime, Raine’s mother had been a flower child, a war protester, an actress usually cast as the soon-to-be-dead bimbo in a handful of low-budget horror films, as well as a rock singer with a pretty but frail voice who’d managed to stay in the music business because of her looks. Which were stunning. Unfortunately, she could be selfish, like beautiful women often are, and in Raine’s opinion, habitually behaved like a foolish, willful schoolgirl, mindless of the consequences of her actions. But at least she should be capable of preventing the kids from stealing the silver before Raine could get back home.

“I tried calling the lodge where they were supposed to be staying, but the lady who answered the phone said they all left to go camping out in the woods. She said Lilith said something about a ceremonial bonfire. But maybe the sheriff’s sent someone out—”

“The sheriff? How exactly did he get involved in all this?”

“Oh. That happened after we locked ourselves in the house.”

“You did what?” Raine jumped to her feet. At the same time she reached into the drawer for her plastic bottle of Maalox. “Why on earth would you do that?”

“Because Mama Ida told us to batten down the hatches and barricade the doors. She quoted something—you know how she does that all the time, right?—about free fighters and defenders of old homes and old names.”

“And old splendors,” Raine murmured. “It’s from
Cyrano de Bergerac
.” But, like everything else her grandmother quoted, it always came out twisted.

“Oh. That’s the guy with the big nose, right? Mama Ida brought home the video last month. Gwen thinks Steve Martin’s really funny. For an old guy, that is. Ever since then, she’s been thinking of maybe naming her baby Steve. If it’s a boy, I mean. Renee is voting for Leo. After Leonardo DiCaprio? I kinda like Denzel.”

“They’re all lovely names,” Raine said. She ground her teeth, making a mental apology to Ida, who’d paid for years of expensive orthodontia. “Now, if we could get back to why my grandmother told you to barricade yourselves in the house—”

“Oh, sure. That’s easy. She said there was no way she was letting any government bureaucrat take us away from our home just because we didn’t, like, have a responsible adult present in the house.”

“I see.” Personally, Raine thought that they’d be in the same fix if her mother
had
been home. No one, in her memory, had ever used the words “responsible adult” to describe Lilith Lindstrom Cantrell Townsend. “And I suppose it was when you wouldn’t open the door that the social worker called Sheriff O’Halloran?”

“Yeah. Along with half the police in the state, it looks like,” Shawna said. “They’re all outside. The TV stations are out there, too.” She paused. “Mama Ida also told us that we weren’t to bother you. And I’ve always tried to do what she says, but there are a lot of men with guns in the driveway.

“And I don’t want to scare Renee or Gwen, but I think you’d better get here as quick as you can. Before they send in a SWAT team to break down the door or something.”

Her knees grew weak. Raine sank back down into her chair and tried to ignore the movie hostage scenes flashing through her mind. The rain streaking down the window blurred the view of the tulips and spring green trees in the nearby park.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Meanwhile, do you have a phone number for the sheriff?”

“I can look it up. He’s called the house a couple times, but after I saw Mama Ida’s news conference on the television—”

“My grandmother gave a news conference from her hospital bed?”

As she twisted open the cap and chugged the Maalox, Raine told herself that she shouldn’t be surprised. Her grandmother was a lifelong firebrand. Ida had even gone to jail back in the fifties for setting up a mobile vasectomy clinic in the parking lot of the annual Sawdust Festival and offering two-for-one bonus pricing during the three-day event.

“Yeah. She looked real good, too,” Shawna said. “For a lady her age. Though I don’t think the sheriff is real happy about her callin’ him a storm trooper…Gwen taped it so she could watch it when she got home.

“Anyway, Mama Ida told us—on the TV—not to talk to anyone until she managed to escape the jackasses at the hospital. Those were her words, not mine,” Shawna added, as if afraid Raine might not approve of the vulgarity. “So I took the phone off the hook.”

After assuring Shawna that she’d take care of matters with the sheriff, Raine asked Brian to book her on the first flight to Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport. From there she could rent a car and take a ferry to Coldwater Cove. Fortunately, she always kept a suitcase packed with essentials in her office, which would prevent having to waste time by going to her apartment to pack.

She was anxious to call the hospital to check on her grandmother’s condition, but along with marshaling her thoughts before speaking, law school had taught her to prioritize.

Raine vaguely recalled Sheriff John O’Halloran to be an intelligent, easygoing man who continued to generate enough good will in the county to get elected year after year. She couldn’t imagine him attacking a house inhabited by three unarmed, frightened teenage girls.

Still, it didn’t take Clarence Darrow to realize that the most critical item on the agenda was to prevent any one of the other cops Shawna had mentioned from deciding to play Rambo.

Olympic National Park, Washington

Cooper Ryan had received three calls in as many hours regarding the strange goings-on near Heart of the Hills. The third call, and the one that had captured his attention, had begun the same as the others—an illegal campfire, discordant music, and eerie chanting. However, a new wrinkle had been added: several women were reported to be gallivanting around the forest, as naked as jaybirds.

Ascribing to a live-and-let-live philosophy, normally Coop wouldn’t have been all that bothered by the reports. However, a Boy Scout troop was scheduled for a nature hike through that area tomorrow and he doubted that their parents would be thrilled if the usual environmental ranger talk was replaced by an up-close-and-personal demonstration of the differences between boys and girls.

Coop drove out to the trailhead nearest the site of the reports and began hiking through the old-growth rainforest. They couldn’t be far, he determined when the scent of burning wood and silvery flute music drifted through the fog-shrouded tops of towering fir and hemlock trees. Mist rose off a cushioned forest floor that was a mosaic of countless shades of green. Starflowers were just beginning to blossom amidst the interwoven ferns and mosses, bright harbingers of summer. Except for the distant music, the occasional chirp of a bird, and the sound of water running over rocks, the ancient old-growth forest was as silent as a cathedral.

When he reached the edge of a clearing, he saw them: a dozen women, all as naked as the day they were born. Hands linked, they’d directed their attention toward a woman who stood atop a pyramid of stone between twin fires. Her hands reached skyward, her voluptuous body outlined by the light of dancing flames. Long waves, topped with the woven band of red and white flowers that encircled her head, streamed down her bare back like molten silver. Despite the fact that her hair was no longer a rich, tawny blond, Coop instantly recognized her.