Nashville
10:00 p.m.

Ariadne had made it her business to know where the various covens met. When she was part of the ruling council, it was her right, and her duty. As wonderful as Wicca was, there were always abusers, those who sought power over their coven members. There was a very specific code of ethics that governed coven work—taking money was forbidden, as was insisting on a physical culmination of the Great Act to be accepted into the coven. In ceremonies, the Great Act was symbolic—athamé plunging into chalice, chalice opening to athamé—instead of actual sex. Priests and priestesses couldn’t insist that members worship skyclad—there were any number of rules in place to assure freedom, free will and comfort were always present during ceremonies.

But the ways of man included the sin of power-seeking. Ariadne was the higher authority to whom those abused by the power in their coven appealed. She had a solid working knowledge of where most of the covens in the area practiced, and an even greater antenna for spiritual portals, spots in the wilderness that were especially close to the Goddess.

She’d recognized the place from her dreams as holy ground, both secular and Wicca, a tract of land that had seen the good and the bad, and as such had been imbued with powerful spirits. It was in a private graveyard, on the western edge of Davidson County, down a cow path that led to a clearing off a small two-lane road called McCrory Lane.

Her home was downtown, off Sixteenth Avenue South, just up the street from the area of town known as Music Row. She’d done all the backbreaking restoration herself—tearing out a 1960s avocado-green kitchen, a flimsily paneled den—instead filling the house with white marble and period wainscoting. The walls were painted in rich Easter-egg pastels, edged in white crown molding; the six-paneled doors had crystal doorknobs. The parlor had an original frieze of a chariot race in ancient Rome that she’d restored. She trailed her hand along the chair rail in the hallway as she left, glad that her people didn’t see pride as a sin.

The trip to the graveyard took twenty minutes. Through the Village, past the holiday carnage in Green Hills to Old Hickory. To her right, the open expanse of the Steeplechase fields glowed black in the night. She turned left on Highway 100, the shadowy road winding through the surrounding landscape, rolling hills and protected forests and horse farms, breaking open into civilization at Ensworth High School. She drove through the intersection of Highway 100 and Old Harding, dismayed to see stores of modern convenience squatting on newly shriven land, then the road grew dark again.

The turn was up here, just past the Loveless Café and the Shell station. She turned and the friendly lights disappeared, the road plunged into gloom.

There, on the right.

She slowed the car, pulling into the grass on the shoulder. The land was flat here, but joined the woods one hundred yards in. The cow path ran through there, deep into the forest, and exited into a small glade, the headstones of the dead poking up from the forest floor like mushrooms.

She draped her cloak around her shoulders and pulled it tight, warding off the chill. The crescent moon gave a bare light. She could see a few steps in front of her, enough to keep her from tripping. It was quiet tonight, the birds and squirrels were silent as the grave. Someone was near.

Heart beating in her throat, she moved faster, then stumbled into an unseen hole a few feet from the car, twisting her ankle painfully. She bit her lip to stifle her cry. Cursing quietly under her breath, she headed back to the Subaru for a flashlight.

The solid, artificial yellow beam at least allowed her to miss the mole holes. She started off again, slower this time, training the light downward so the boy, if he was here, couldn’t see her coming. The trees loomed ahead, black trunks reaching for the sky, limbs raised in supplication.

She was no stranger to the emptiness of the night, the darkened earth breathing around her, summoning, questioning. Alive. All the tiny sighs of brush and grass were heightened in the gloom, and a small bank of fog had gathered in the brush. She could smell rain on the horizon, saw the shadow of a cloud cross under the tip of the moon.

The night was her world, and she its concubine.

Step by step, she inched closer. Forty yards, twenty, ten. She smelled a fire burning, oak and poplar and leaves and twigs being licked by the flames, and slowed to a creep, edging her way closer still. She drew energy from the earth and shielded herself, protecting her fragility with an invisible psychic barrier.

She could see him clearly, lying on his side, a lump under a blanket. His back was to her, she didn’t think he could see her. The flickering fire crackled, covering her small sounds. She eased the flashlight off, just in case. The fog curled around him like a lover, keeping him hidden in its dense embrace.

He was asleep. She couldn’t read him. Deep breaths mingled with the shurring rush of the wind.

She debated for a few moments, dithering, then moved away from the glade, back toward the car. She shouldn’t be afraid of this boy, but she was. Her hands were shaking. She would call the lieutenant, let her come and take him.

She stepped on a twig, the crack of the dry wood a loud retort in the quiet air. She froze.

By the fire, Raven opened his eyes.