Prologue - Touch of Evil Proposal

          "I gather," observed Drake Benedict, eyeing the corpse on the washroom floor, "she was dissatisfied with her arrangement?"
          "She must have been emotionally unstable," noted Victor, with a nervous clearing of his throat.
          Drake lifted his gaze to the older man beside him.  For Victor, trained to be dispassionate, to show unease meant Drake's fellow mage was worried indeed.  But perhaps not nearly enough.
          "Emotionally unstable?" Drake repeated softly.
          Victor swallowed, but nodded.  "That would be my guess."
          "This surprises you?"
          Victor looked away, both from the woman's bloody remains and from his colleague's cold-blooded logic.
          "The woman volunteered to sacrifice her very life force to another person.  We all believe in the good of the Order, yes, but she volunteered to die for it.  She had the foresight of a dull- witted sheep, and you call her emotionally unstable?"  He paused, took a cooling breath.  Perhaps killing herself well before the ritual that would have drained her power--and alone, so that no one else could benefit--would prove this woman's greatest act of sanity.  "My dear Victor, you simply must find a way to bottle your awe-inspiring powers of observation."
          "I did not think she would commit--"
          "You have not thought at all!"  As soon as he snapped the accusation, Drake regretted it.  A second-degree magic user, he too had been trained in dispassion.  It kept him powerful.  Perhaps, he thought, eyeing his balding companion in the blood-spattered mirror, even more powerful than Victor. 
          Not the type of speculation that one tested lightly.
          "This," Drake decided, regaining quiet control with minor effort, "shall prove problematic."  Calmly he left the fourth-floor washroom for the eerie hush of the executive offices.  Implications disturbed him even more than the mess their sacrificial lamb-to-be had made in her premature exit from this realm.  The offices stank of this woman's magic, the one kind in which their Order had never dabbled.  Blood magic.  Second in power only, perhaps, to a willing self-sacrifice. 
          And she'd used her own blood--an intriguing double-whammy.
          "What shall I do with the body?" Victor trailed him.
          "You've had a year here to assimilate; handle it.  It's your problem.  The least of your problems."  Drake studied his blunt-fingered hand, his emerald-eyed-dragon ring.  How to put this so the older man would comprehend its significance without questioning Drake's loyalty?  "Either the Order cancels its ritual, or we've barely a month to locate another volunteer of magical lineage."
          "I don't know what that has--"
          "You do realize what kind of heritage flows through your veins?"  That stopped Victor cold.  Good.  "And mine?"
          "But it needs be a willing sacrifice!" Victor protested.
          "Obviously her willingness proved . . . less than overwhelming?"  Drake had no idea whether his colleagues truly had the resolve, the tenacity, to replace--he glanced toward the loo--that.  Might this, too, fall into his capable hands?
          "Yes," murmured Victor, slow comprehension dawning.  "Of course you're right."
          Drake favored him with a smile, one he knew would not comfort the older man in the least.  "I am always right, Victor," he chided, pleased to see from the man's nervous swallow that he hadn't lost his touch.  Yes, he could probably outmatch the older mage, will to will and power to power, if it became necessary.
          Considering the weaknesses their Order seemed to have developed while he was away, he feared it might.  And he stopped smiling.  "Remember that."
          He rather suspected that Victor would.                                        top

Chapter One - Touch of Evil Proposal
          Karen Jackson had almost forgotten what a creepy place an empty office building could be.  There'd been a time when she'd always arrived early to turn on all the lights, back at the old building, when Personal Edge had been good old SmithTech.  But here in the new, sleek, sterile offices, things were different. 
          The president's level-one secretary had accused Karen of wasting company electricity--Karen didn't know at what point people at Personal Edge warranted overhead lights, but obviously level-three secretaries didn't qualify.  And, to be honest, Karen didn't like being here, anymore, anyway.  Especially not alone.
          Yet here she was, alone, on a Saturday morning.
          Karen made her way past the gloomy maze of gray fabric- walled cubicles, lit only by security lighting and the glowing red eyes of occasional exit signs.  An eerie silence surrounded her, stark contrast to the usual cacophony of mingling conversations, humming photocopiers, ringing phones.
          A deathly silence.
          Acoustic ceilings and pile carpet swallowed even the sound of her footsteps.  She clutched at the large box of donuts she'd brought--Information Services had scheduled a Saturday-morning meeting for its management employees, and management employees must eat.  The carton felt warm, but insubstantial, against the meat-locker chill.  The cooling system took its battle against the heat of a Louisiana autumn very seriously.
          Everything at Personal Edge was far too serious.
          Karen breathed a sigh of relief when finally she reached the relative safety of her own desk.  She put down the donuts and snatched up her work-sweater, wrapping it around her, against the cold.  Familiar things surrounded her now--her kitten calendar, her "World's Greatest Mom" mug, the portrait of Dick and Joey on her desk, and Joey's latest Crayola masterpiece taped to the filing cabinet.  Even if Karen didn't warrant her own cubicle, much less an office--the tallest piece in her work area was the filing cabinet, leaving the U-shaped desk open to the rest of the department--she at least had her own nest in this corporate warren.  She snapped on the recessed lights over her desk, the glow chasing away the shadows and the monsters and--
          "You're in early."
          Karen spun to see that not all the monsters were banished.  "Um--yes, Lenore.  I thought I'd try to get here first, so--"
          "What in the world is that?" interrupted the same level-one secretary who had complained about the lights.  Karen hesitated to follow the woman's manicured point.  Despite a chic suit, styled brown hair, and cover-model makeup, Lenore Hunt looked ghastly.  She'd always seemed unnaturally slim, but this morning Lenore looked gaunt, with shadows beneath dulled eyes, hollows in her cheeks.  Karen could almost make out the ridge of Lenore's teeth behind her upper lip.
          Maybe personal problems caused Lenore Hunt's thinness and her nastiness.  Maybe beneath her icy facade, Lenore Hunt was in fact a decent person, crying out for attention.  Karen latched onto that idea and, resolving to be more patient with the woman, she turned to see what Lenore referred to.
          Joey's drawing.  "Oh!  My little boy did that.  He's only three, but he--"
          "Get rid of it," said Lenore Hunt, voice deceptively soft..
          Karen caught her breath as if slapped.  "Wha--?"
          Ms. Hunt studied the emerald ring on her too-bony hand for effect. "This is a place of business, Mrs. Jackson, not an art gallery for preschool scribbling.  Your desk creates a first impression for people entering this department.  Save trash like that for your refrigerator at home."
          "B--but... we don't deal with clients over here--"
          Hunt silence her with a cool glare.
          Karen struggled to swallow the unacceptable responses that raged to get out.  Cry?  Quit?  Fight?  She and Dick really needed this income.  So she just stared, stricken, helplessness roiling from her so thick it felt tangible.  Her throat strained against the obscenities she wanted to scream at this sleekly dressed, over-educated, underfed ghoul!
          Except that oddly, as Lenore Hunt stood there a moment longer, the level-one secretary didn't look quite so terrible.  Color filled her cheeks; life lit her dark eyes.  She smiled a poised, almost victorious smile, turned, and exited through the fabric-walled maze.  Karen suddenly thought of a well-fed cat, as if Lenore had somehow lapped up her misery, fed on it . . . .
          Karen shuddered, and pulled her sweater closer around her neck as if for protection from a vampire.  Maybe she was overtired.  After all, this was Saturday!  She didn't even feel angry anymore, didn't even feel hurt.  Just . . . drained.
          And on some instinctive level, she knew that scrawny witch had done it on purpose.

          His door was open.
          Cypress Bernard, hurrying to reach her office and get some extra work done before the other managers arrived, stopped so abruptly that her briefcase swung forward and nearly pulled her off her one-inch heels.  The door to the department vice president's office hadn't been unlocked, much less open, for over a week.  It had remained shut tight since Russ, the previous VP, had stunned the entire department by accepting early retirement and leaving not only the company but the state, without a word.
          Well . . . without a word to anyone except Cypress.
          Thanks a lot, Russ.
          But Cy owed her former boss, for hiring her into SmithTech in the first place, and more recently for promoting her to the level she now held at Personal Edge.  Plenty of folks in this area of Louisiana wouldn't have invested that kind of confidence in a woman, much less in a mixed-race woman with suspiciously dark skin and high-society bloodlines.  So if Russ thought those files on his computer were important enough for her to retrieve before his replacement could arrive--and he'd specified that, before I'm replaced--retrieve them she would.
          Cypress ducked into the dark lair of the VP's office--odd, that she got a window but the VPs did not.  Reluctantly, she flipped on the overhead lights, and immediately realized how close she was cutting this.  Of course the place would look different without Russ's sports posters on the dark-panelled walls, his basketball net over the trash can, his Mr. Potato-Head on the desk.  But someone had already moved in new furniture, chairs of black leather, a black-marble-topped coffee table.  Neatly- stacked packing boxes waited against one dark-panelled wall.  A coffee mug the shiny-gray of hematite sat on the desk.
          Well, now she knew what the meeting was about: the new VP.
          Cy considered backing out, here and now, but reminded herself of the note Russ had hidden in her suspense file:  I know this sounds cloak-and-daggerish, Bernard, but you of all people need to see this stuff.  The files are passcode-protected.  My password is "Paranoia."
          She'd tried to get in to the office for two days.  But even Facilities had misplaced their key.
          Not one to chew a decision to death, Cy crossed the room toward the computer, which sat on a wall-length counter behind the desk.  If she meant to do this, speed counted.  Plush gray carpeting swallowed her footsteps as she circled the desk and nearly tripped on another cardboard box, this one open.  Against her better judgement, she glanced down at its contents:  color- coordinated file folders, a box of herbal teas, and a large sphere of onyx, with a golden stand.  She loved crystals; this opaque ball drew her to it, but she resisted.
          She hated doing this.
          Hurrying now, Cy switched on the computer and monitor, and heard the buzz of power surging into it, the series of clicks as the memory counted up.  Then the machine paused and beeped-- neither sound part of the regular procedure.
          Invalid Command.com        System halted
          Cypress stared at the PC for a moment, then typed the proper code for a soft reboot.  The computer screen went blank, then repeated it's clicks, pause, and unwanted beep.  She did a hard reboot by turning the computer off, then back on.  The white plastic of the keyboard seemed particularly stark, inanimate, contrasted against her hands.  She tried to ignore the feeling that she shouldn't be here, since she'd already made the decision, for better or worse.
          She wondered what on earth Russ had wanted her to see.
          Invalid Command.com        System halted
          Someone had seriously messed up this computer.  But nobody had even been in Russell's office since--
          She heard nothing, absolutely nothing, and yet suddenly Cypress knew she wasn't alone.  Even without looking, she also knew who had probably walked in on her, no psychic abilities required.  Whose office was this, after all?
          What a terrible way to start off a working relationship. 
          Slowly, she turned.  The new VP was tall, Caucasian, and male, apparently in his mid-thirties--chalk up another one for the law of probability.  He was broad-shouldered but elegantly so, less like a construction worker and more like a . . . prince.  The cut of his obviously expensive gray suit may have helped put that image in her mind.  Dark hair flowed back from his squared face, almost liquid, the only soft thing about him.  He held his head with his equally squared chin raised in a royal disdain, his dark, deep-set eyes so intense they set the room crackling--and yet, with heavy-lidded dispassion, completely unreadable.
          He looked good, actually, but only like a sculpture might look good.  He seemed as impersonal, inanimate, as the computer.
          Cy took a deep breath and, with an embarrassed smile, stepped around the desk and extended her hand.  "You must be--"
          But she stopped, letting her hand fall to her side, when this new Vice President of Information Services finished entering the room and the Manager of PC/LAN Operations came in after him.  Tucker Long was the same level management that Cypress had attained only three months ago--and he'd made it clear he had no intention of accepting her as a colleague.
          This first-encounter just got better and better, huh?  It was Tucker who demanded, "What the hell are you doing in here?"
          Only then did the new VP speak.  He turned his aloof gaze from Cypress and favored Tucker Long with an equal measure of disinterest.  "Accessing the computer, obviously.  I should think that you of all people would recognize the procedure."
          Had Cypress not been so flustered, she would have smiled at his cool, faintly accented put-down.  She noticed that Tucker, in the spirit of the weekend, had dared to wear jeans . . . but Tucker didn't have to be as careful about his professional image.
          "I meant to pull some of Russ' files," she explained, before Tucker regained his voice.  "But the computer isn't--"
          "What have you done?"  Tucker charged to the computer so fast, Cy barely managed to back out of his way.  Still, she stood way too close when he turned on her.  "You reformatted it?"
          "No.  But someone--"
          "I'm supposed to believe you didn't do this?"  Tucker tried typing a few commands, but his weathered face flushed as stubborn beeps answered his efforts.
          "I reformatted it."  Again the smooth, controlled voice commanded their attention.  Both Tucker and Cy turned to stare at their new vice president.  He was in charge of all the computers at Personal Edge--how could he have made that kind of mistake?
          Their amazement didn't phase the man in the least.  "Quite on purpose, I assure you.  An eccentricity of mine.  New broom sweeps clean, and all that.  You are--?"
          It took a moment for Cy to escape the spell of his soft, impersonal voice and realize he had addressed her.
          "Cypress Bernard, Informations Analyst.  I work pretty closely with the mainframe side--"  She began to offer her hand, but Tucker stepped between them as if she weren't there.
          "Look, uh, Benedict, new brooms or not, Russ might have left some important stuff.  Records, you know?  You did make a back-up first, right?"
          The VP--Benedict?--widened his eyes as if to say, backup?  What backup?
          Tucker shook his head, appalled.  "No backup.  Okay.  Well.  Maybe I can recreate whatever was there, so long as nobody's messed with it."  He glared over his shoulder at Cypress.
          "All I did was reboot," she insisted.
          He turned back to their boss.  "I'll just get a DOS disk--"
          "Thank you, no.  Your welcome proved . . . educational, Mr. Long, but I've no further need of your services at the moment.  Ms. Bernard?"
          When the stunned manager didn't move, the new boss extended a casual hand, not quite touching the backs of his fingers to Tucker's upper arm and gently scooting him out of his and Cy's line of sight.  There was something almost mesmerizing about him, beyond his appearance, beyond his rank.  Cypress had to force herself to think clearly as she met his gaze.
          She was usually the clearest thinker she knew.
          Tucker frowned--probably as angry at not getting the job himself as he was at the new VP's return rudeness.  But he did scoot, right out of the office.  Even the plush carpet couldn't muffle his petulant tread.
          "Yes, Mr. . . ?"  But she didn't even know what to call him.  "I'm sorry--Tucker said 'Benedict,' but I don't know if that's your first or last name."
          "Drake Benedict, Ms. Bernard.  What exactly were you seeking, on my predecessor's now-defunct hard drive?"
          Odd.  The question should seem casual, yet she felt a chill of internal alarms going off somewhere near the base of her spine.  "If everything's gone to byte heaven, I guess it doesn't really matter," she pointed out carefully.
          "I . . . guess."  The expression sounded unfamiliar in his mouth, like a duke referring to public transit.  "Will there be anything else?"
          Well--it could surely have gone worse.  At least he didn't look like he was going to get his boxers in a wad about her little brush with corporate intrigue.
          "Just--congratulations on your new position," she said, stepping closer, offering her hand.
          This time, with an apathetic "Thank you," Drake Benedict took it.
          At the touch of their palms, something jolted through her like an electric shock.  It singed her blood, shuddered over her skin, unbalanced her.  What on earth . . . ?
          But she knew what it was.  And Drake Benedict, new Vice President of Information Services at Personal Edge, had felt it too.  Despite his composure, she saw his eyes flare minutely wider, in a millisecond of surprise.  Power.  Power like Cypress had never felt before in her life--and she knew power.
          She was, after all, a witch.
          What, she had to wonder as they both pretended nothing had happened, as he inclined his head toward the door, as she made her escape.
          What was he?
* * *
          She smelled of mint and rosemary.
          Drake paused as he reached for the door, surprised by his sensory observation.  The woman had trespassed on his computer, would not admit why, obviously possessed some modicum of magical ability--and what stood out about her was her scent?  He closed the door, international corporate signal for "Keep Out," and only then allowed his too-human senses the diversion.  Yes.  Instead of cloying perfume, or sharp cologne, the woman carried on her the disarmingly comforting fragrance of fresh herbs.
          He allowed the diversion, mastered it, and turned his attention to more pressing, more cerebral matters.
          What was she?
          Drake went to his desk, sat, and withdrew his briefcase.  Its protective wards, a magical alarm system of sorts, had not been disturbed.  He retrieved from it the "Org Chart" which graphed the organizational hierarchy at Personal Edge, and confirmed that Cypress Bernard reported to him.  She carried the same level as the managers of both the PC and Mainframe sides of the department, although she had no direct reports herself.
          Her personnel file provided little more.  Her birthday made her thirty years old, and a Taurus.  She'd checked "Other" in the optional box under "Race"--that explained her exotic coloring, dusky skin, heavy black hair.  She'd graduated from Louisiana State University with a 3.7 grade point average, and had been with SmithTech--now Personal Edge--for six years.
          She had received glowing evaluations throughout her career.
          Drake let the useless file fall to his desk.  What he needed to know about her would hardly show up in an evaluation-- besides, he rarely trusted the opinions of others.  What he needed to know about her he must evaluate from the woman herself.  He could already tell that she valued her job; her effort to maintain a professional demeanor both with him and with the surprisingly juvenile Tucker Long told him as much.  So did her dress, especially for a weekend meeting.  The forest-colored suit and gold, primitive jewelry also indicated that she either managed money terribly well, or that she came from a well-to-do family.  Or both.  Her gold Bulova certainly indicated that either her boyfriend or her family--someone inclined to give expensive gifts --could afford slightly more than standard fare.  And the way she stood, moved, and spoke indicated good breeding.
          Beyond the intelligence indicated by her file, Drake had seen her be clever enough not to tell him what she'd been searching for . . . if not clever enough to avoid being caught.
          That made her dangerous.  Drake had erased the hard drive because he trusted his own abilities far above those of others.  The previous VP--the last holdover from the quaint SmithTech-- might have left some sort of virus to avenge his early retirement.  He'd certainly left such a warren of nested sub-directories on the system that Drake preferred starting fresh to cleaning up.  Now he wondered if he had inadvertently accomplished something else more significant.
          Surely someone as intelligent and career-motivated as Cypress Bernard would not risk infiltrating his office for unimportant information?
          Finally, despite his careful shields, Cypress Bernard had sensed Drake's power.  Taking her hand in his had felt like completing a circuit, which could only mean she, too, was a magic user--though obviously not of the Order.  Considering last night's unfortunate loss--which Victor had apparently hushed up nicely--Drake found the coincidence . . . intriguing.
          Whoever and whatever his new Informations Analyst was, he meant to find out.  Only knowing whom--and what--he faced would allow him to judge how best to deal with Ms. Bernard.

          Cypress breathed a sigh of relief when finally she reached the safety of her own office.  Despite the fact that Personal Edge's colors, like those of the electronics they sold, tended toward grays and blacks, she had managed to make her office downright homey.  She'd covered the majority of the dark panelling on her inside wall with hand-woven Indian blankets in earth tones.  Dark green throw-rugs brightened the floor and reflected the colors of the Louisiana pine forest outside the full-length window that made up her outer wall.  Plants in painted clay pots lined the floor beneath the window, most of them herbs from her own backyard garden, and their rich aromas filled the office.
          After a moment's hesitation, Cypress selected a pot of basil and one of pennyroyal, and moved them to either side of her doorway.  Both were protective herbs, symbolizing safety ever since her Great Grammy had introduced her to them.
          Cy wished she could ward her office, surround it with a protective forcefield so that nothing bad could get in.  But Drake Benedict was her boss--at some point, she would have to invite him in . . . and that permission would invalidate the best wards she was capable of magically erecting.  Maybe permanently.
          A person's word was perhaps the most powerful magic of all.
          Besides, she reminded herself.  Just because Drake Benedict was powerful didn't mean he was evil.
          Right?
          Cy sank into her desk chair and made herself take a deep breath.  Surely she had overreacted.  This morning hadn't exactly been her best.  She still had a tendency, under stress, to revert to her Grammy's superstitions, instead of her own more positive Wiccan beliefs.  And after the year her witch friends--her Circle --had experienced, she was bound to get paranoid.
          Like if the rest of them had to deal with monsters, in one form or another, it must now be her turn.
          "They're all married, too," she reminded herself softly.  "So I guess I'm just the rebel in love and monsters."  She turned on her radio--some nice Bach--and switched on her own computer.  This one booted right up . . . in contrast to the enigmatic Drake Benedict's.  But her enthusiasm for some weekend work had faded.
          The man had reformatted his hard drive?  It didn't make sense.  On impulse, Cypress unlocked her bottom desk drawer, the one that held the suspense file.  From Thursday's folder, day- before-yesterday's, she retrieved a sheet of yellow paper with its hastily scrawled note.
          Bernard:
          Personal Edge wants me out.  I'm taking them up on their offer.  Part of the agreement is that I go fast and quiet.  But you know what a stubborn SOB I am.  Something weird is going on at P.E.  I've been keeping records on my PC.  Please, if at all possible, download them and erase the originals before I'm replaced.  The new VP will just be another one of them.
          I know this sounds cloak-and-daggerish, Bernard, but you of all people need to see this stuff.  The files are passcode- protected.  My password is "Paranoia."
          Russ.
          That seemed to be the word for the day:  paranoia.  When Cypress first came across the note, she'd thought it was a joke.  Then, when none of the secretaries could find a key to Russ's office, and even Facilities couldn't get in, she began to harbor suspicions.  Now that she'd actually met Russ's enigmatic new replacement--one of them?--and now that she'd touched him, felt his power surge into her and over her . . . .
          Howdy, Paranoia.  Come on in.  Make yourself comfortable.
          The staff meeting was scheduled to start in a little over an hour.  All she had to do was keep a low profile during that-- surely Benedict would be overwhelmed by other employees far more eager than her to establish an immediate relationship.  By noon, one at the latest, she could flee to the heavily warded safety of her own home, could get together with her circle--her best friends, also witches--and they'd laugh about this . . . .
          But then Cy remembered what her unexpected meeting with Drake Benedict had chased from her mind.  She had plans for this afternoon that included more than witches.
          This afternoon was her latest attempt to merge her professional and personal lives:  her painting party.

          Beneath the rhythmic music from Sierra's boom box, Cypress heard the faint sound of another car door.  Putting down the roller she held and wiping her hands on her cut-offs, she came around the corner of her house into the front yard to see who else had shown up.  Already she'd gotten a better turn-out than she'd expected for her twist on an old-fashioned barn-raising.  Not only had two of her three best friends--and circlemates-- arrived with husbands in tow, but three people from work had also shown up to lend a hand.
          Five people from work, she corrected as she recognized Tim from Mainframe Support and his wife, Sharon.  Both wore overalls, Tim barechested beneath them in an attempt to beat the late September heat.
          Cy raised her paint-mottled hand in welcome.  "Hi!"
          "You said the more the merrier, right?" asked Tim, reaching over the iron gate to unlatch it for his wife.  The protective wards that Cypress had long-ago set around her property barely registered the couple's entrance--after all, they meant her no harm.  After the disturbing sense of imminent danger, this morning at work, Cypress treasured the safety of her own home, her sanctuary, all the more.
          "You know I did," she agreed happily, leading them around the freshly painted front of her one-story house to the side that was still being transformed from a weather-dulled ginger color to a soft mossy shade.  "Thank you so much for coming!  I've got snacks and cold drinks set up in the back yard; help yourselves."
          "Actually," admitted Sharon, "I think Tim's here for the gossip as much as anything."
          Sierra, secretary for the Mainframe side of the department, laughed when she overheard that and slapped a damp paintbrush into Tim's hand.  "You want the poop, baby, you gotta paint."
          "The poop on what?" asked Mary Poitiers, one of Cy's witch friends.  But Cypress knew exactly what--or who--her coworkers wanted to gossip about.  Oh well.  It wasn't as if discussing the man would summon him, like a demon, into their midst.  She was just being superstitious again. 
          "We got a new VP in Information Services today," she explained, for the benefit of the folks who either didn't work at Personal Edge, or hadn't attended the Information Services staff meeting.  Then she picked up her roller and went back to work on the wall beneath the bedroom window; that was all she meant to contribute to this open forum.
          After all, there were only two people here--and maybe their husbands--who would understand if she said Drake Benedict exuded enough energy to levitate this here house.
          One of them, Mary again, protested, "Today's Saturday."
          "The man is gorgeous."  Lisa, from LAN Administration, collaborated Cy's announcement.  "And to think, I almost skipped!  When they introduced him, I almost fell to my knees to give thanks--especially that he's not wearing a wedding ring."  With an appreciative glance at her masculine co-painters, she added, "Unlike some of the other studs around here." 
          The assorted husbands in the group pretended not to notice the compliment, waved it away, or bowed with a flourish, depending on their personalities.
          "Oh he is fine," Sierra admitted, and winked at Cy, like they had a private joke.  "For a white guy.  But he's spooky."
          "Mr. Drake Benedict," announced Tim, dipping his brush into an open can of pain, "is not the most personable of men."
          "I think he scared Karen," offered Sierra, referring to another of the department's secretaries.  "She ducked out early."
          "Y'all had to go in on a Saturday?" squeaked Mary Poitiers, still disbelieving.  She didn't much like the corporate world.
          "Maybe he isn't even human," teased Diana the Sysop, or System Operator, from Mainframe.  "I spilled coffee on the man--"
          That silenced the rest of the Personal Edge contingent.  Then Sierra challenged, "You're lying.  Smooth move!"
          Though not, thought Cypress, as smooth as being caught snooping in his office.
          "That beautiful suit!" mourned Lisa.
          "Not on his suit, just his hands," admitted the Sysop.  "I was getting coffee, and when I turned around there he was, like he'd just appeared there, and it startled me so much--"
          Sierra raised her paintbrush in vindication.  "I told y'all the boy's spooky."
          "--I spilled hot coffee over my hand.  Hurt like hell."
          Cy could see her friend Mary, a healer, surreptitiously check out Diana's hands to make sure they were okay.
          "But what's weird," Diana continued, "is that when he took the cup from me the coffee sloshed onto his hands too, and he didn't even blink.  He just handed me a napkin--"
          Lisa sighed.  "He gave you a napkin?"  But she laughed with everyone else.
          "--and took one himself and turned back to the masses."  Diana shrugged.
          Cypress heard another car door, and put down her roller again.  "Time to put on my hostess hat."  She wondered if it would be bad manners to hope nobody else from the office showed up.  The more they talked about Drake Benedict, the more uncomfortable she felt.  He'd done nothing to reveal himself as evil, of course.  But he surely was, as Sierra had put it, intensely "spooky."
          He was also, she realized, stopping dead on the lawn as she circled the house, standing just outside her gate beside Morris, the Manager of Mainframe Operations.
          For a moment, she thought she was mistaken--paranoia, again.  But no.  The man wore black jeans and a t-shirt instead of, and as sleekly as, an Armani suit.  He could be wearing a sword, breastplate, and cowled black cape, for all the power he exuded.  He stood, almost impatiently, on the sidewalk in front of her little house instead of within the confines of the Personal Edge offices.  But this was definitely Drake Benedict.
          A shiver through her blood confirmed it, just in case her eyes weren't up to the identification.
          "Howdy, Bernard," greeted Morris, looking particularly out of place in jeans.  "You said this was an open-invitation shindig, so I brought the new guy to get to know his folks a bit better.  Hope you don't mind."
          Morris was already unlatching the gate and entering her yard, her sanctuary, before she'd even answered.  Why shouldn't he?  She had said "the more the merrier"--though she'd said it before she knew her next boss would be some kind of mage.
          Cypress stared at Drake Benedict, who waited on the walk outside, tall and composed and . . . in charge.
          "May I come in?" he asked softly, ignoring Moe's laugh at his formality in favor of holding Cy's dismayed attention with his own cool gaze.  He knew exactly what he was asking.
          And he didn't mean to cross her wards until he got it.
          Cypress could say no.  Even with her colleague hesitating on the lawn, looking confused.  Even with other co-workers noticing the scene from behind her, and she knew damn well they'd noticed.  All she had to do was belie the professional image she'd struggled so long to build, and neglect her gracious upbringing, all in one firm "No."
          And she couldn't do it.  She couldn't reject everything important to her, just because he was magic.  She was magic too, after all.  Paranoia wasn't worth it.
          So she held Drake Benedict's dark, seemingly amused gaze.  She reminded herself that southern women were hospitable from strength, not weakness.  She said, "Yes.  Thank you for coming."
          And he smiled a cold smile of victory.                               top

Chapter Two:  Touch of Evil Proposal
          That, decided Drake, had been painfully easy.  When he stepped through her little iron gate, he felt the surprisingly competent forcefield of energy around her property resist, then relax as he passed through.
          He couldn't tell if Cypress Bernard's obvious dismay meant she'd again felt his power, as he entered her territory, or that she realized now that she'd invited him in, he could return at any time.  Probably both.  She might look refreshingly common, her paint-stained cut-offs and tank-top showing off her tawny, bare limbs, her black hair pulled into an impossibly thick ponytail.  But her wards confirmed that she not only sensed magic, she indeed practiced it.
          Whatever she was, whatever she knew--he did not mean to underestimate her.
          "How kind of you to be here," she lied, with a tilt of her chin that acknowledged that they both recognized her insincerity.  But she held onto the pretense, if only for the sake of their spectators, as she turned away and led them around the house.  "I've got snacks and cold drinks out back.  Help yourselves."
          "Oh, I will," he assured her solemnly.
          He found her increased dismay almost . . . amusing.
          In fact, Drake decided as a handful of his underlings greeted him and Morris with attempts at enthusiasm, learning what Cypress Bernard knew might even prove enjoyable.
          And Drake found he enjoyed so little, of late.
          He allowed the gaggle of renovating revelers to arm him with a paint roller and aluminum pan, and joined their efforts if not their eagerness.  He made the obligatory social noises, putting his employees to foolish ease merely by asking about family members, the names of whom he'd memorized from personnel files.  But he paid particular attention of Ms. Bernard's personal friends.  Rand and Sylvia Garner, he repeated silently after the introductions, and he noted that he seemed to make Sylvia particularly uneasy--perhaps she was capable of sensing something off him?  Mary and Guy Poitiers were easy--the little blond woman wore a pentagram, not inverted to show Satanism but point upward, to indicate witchcraft.
          Was that all he was dealing with?  A mere witch?
          But Drake hadn't reached his level of power--personal or professional--by not verifying his hunches.
          As soon as he grew weary of the chatter about work, the blinding simplicity of housepainting, and the insufferable cuteness of the obviously newlywed Poitiers couple, Drake asked Cypress Bernard if he might use her facilities.
          "Inside?" she asked, too quickly, and then had the grace to look embarrassed.  This might be rural Louisiana, but he imagined outhouses had gone out as long ago as . . . Beta videotapes?
          "There's a hallway just inside the back door," started Lisa Phillips, LAN Administrator, thirty-four, divorced, no children, 116 Magnolia Drive.
          But Bernard interrupted.  "It's broken."
          "Pardon?"  She wasn't letting him into her house?
          "You'll have to go next door and ask Mrs. Francis to use hers," she added firmly, wincing just a bit--he imagined, at putting the hospitable "Mrs. Francis" in imagined jeopardy.  No she truly wasn't letting him into her house.
          He looked Cypress Bernard up and down, from her bare feet to her handsomely boned face, testing the woman's resolve--then nodded, almost in admiration.  The little witch--assuming she was one--at least had some sense of self-preservation.  After all, who would ward her property without separately warding her house?
          "Your toilet's broken?" questioned Lisa Phillips again--the sort of woman who, in contrast, hadn't the personal protections of a new-born rabbit.
          "Just a bit ago," added Sylvia Garner, coming to her friend's defense as if through unspoken agreement.
          Again he mused, witches.  Drake smiled insincerely.  "I only wished to wash my hands before partaking of the refreshments.  Unless the sink is broken . . . ?"
          Sylvia Garner, not quite surreptitiously enough, kicked her long-haired husband who said, "You don't want to go in there.  It's pretty messy.  I called a plumber.  He said to stay out.  Health reasons."  He glanced at his wife, who nodded approval.
          "If all you need is to wash your hands," decided their hostess, apparently tiring of the games, "come on with me."  Her look silenced her friends--the Personal Edge flock remained relatively oblivious to the battle of wills played out before them.  But Drake didn't miss how long Bernard's suspicious gaze lingered on him for a moment after she'd started to turn away.
          And well she might be suspicious.  If she meant to show him her kitchen sink, she would drop considerably in his estimation-- since he assumed that, too, would be inside the house.
          And a quaint little house it was, he noted as she led him into the back yard.  Blocky and small, with wooden walls and no fireplace, Cypress Bernard's house looked about as old as she did, but without her personality.  Her yard better reflected her interests.  Someone had built on a covered deck, which held wrought-iron furniture and a multitude of plants in stand-alone pots, hanging from the roof's edge, or climbing trellises.
          Again the scent of herbs, sweet peppermint and savory chives and tangy dill, caught Drake's attention, drew his eyes to the garden that covered over half of her yard.  He blinked, surprised at how crisp the smells were, how vibrant the colors.  Ripe with red tomatoes, red and green peppers, yellow summer squash and purple eggplant, Bernard's garden looked positively festive.  Between some of the vegetables grew autumn colored marigolds, and pom-poms of red and white zinnias, and a row of tall corn stood sentinel in back.  On the outskirts grew more herbs, clustered among large rocks she must have brought in herself, since large rocks seemed all but foreign to the local, silty soil.  Especially large rocks with veins of crystal--quartz?--running through them.
          Apparently his Informations Analyst had quite the green thumb, though the fact that the muggy Louisiana weather gave her a natural hothouse in which to work likely helped.
          "Over here?" prompted that analyst, and Drake turned to see that Bernard had retrieved a serpentine length of green hose from beside her house.  She wasn't letting him inside, after all.
          He felt oddly relieved.
          Which wasn't right--rather, didn't make sense.  His main purpose was, after all, to ascertain who this woman was and, more importantly, whether she knew aught of the Select--wasn't it?
          But he felt his precious focus dissipate beneath the less familiar, almost gentle assault on his usually muted senses.  The surrounding smell of rosemary, oregano, bay,  thyme, grass . . . and fresh paint.  The heat and humidity that he recognized, despite his usual imperceptiveness of such things, heavy on his skin, thick in his lungs.  Water spurted from the metal nozzle of the hose Cypress Bernard held, catching bits of light as it splashed to the grass.  Drake raised his hands, and nearly caught his breath at the feel of water, first warm but quickly cooling, gliding across his skin.
          He looked back at her, at how natural she looked standing before him, hose in hand, her skin looking as warm as the afternoon sunshine, her bare toes curling in the grass.  How real she looked.  How deeply, elementally earthy.
          Alive.
          That's when he realized what was happening.  He was on her property, surrounded by it.  Whatever power this woman had--and what was magical power, but one's personal energy?--infused the vegetation she had grown, the deck she'd probably helped build, the house she'd likely painted herself at least once.  He couldn't stand on this ground without touching her, couldn't inhale without breathing her--not unless he shielded himself far more firmly against outside influences.
          Drake found himself strangely reluctant to do so.
          "Sure you can't get any cleaner, Pontius?" asked Bernard.  Drake drew his hands from the cool trickle of water and stepped back from her.  At least he could minimize the level of stimulus.
          "That is sufficient," he demurred, and watched her coil and carry the hose to the side of the house.  He wiped his hands on his jeans, and the black denim felt coarse and surprisingly warm.
          She caught him watching her.  "You maybe wanted a drink?"
          He looked pointedly at the hose--hardly.  But Cypress Bernard followed his thoughts too easily--he really should strengthen his guard, no matter how intriguing he found this interaction.  She actually smiled, a bright flash of a smile, a dimple appearing in one cheek, and then laughed.  The lilting honesty of the sound startled him.
          He'd done well not to further insist on being allowed inside her home.  Her own guard was falling as well.
          "I meant, there's beer and soda and stuff in the cooler," she explained, cocking her head toward the plastic chest on a wrought-iron chair, beside the table which held some sort of foodstuffs protected from insects beneath bell-lids of wire mesh.
          Then she turned away, raised the hose, and tipped her head to catch some of the water in her open mouth.  She protected herself from the splashes with a cupped, paint-speckled hand.
          Drake made himself look away before she caught him again watching, to better foster her good mood.  He need not have worried.  Within moments, she gave him what he wanted.  As he chose a small bottle of spring water from the bed of ice, Cypress Bernard joined him in the shade of the deck, seemed to size him up, and then said, "Let me ask you something."
          He took a long swallow of cold, pure water, watching her.  Perhaps he'd been thirsty after all.  Resisting the urge to lick his lips, he inclined his head expectantly.
          "Why Stagwater?:" she asked.
          What did she know?  He covered the resurgence of suspicion with a soft yet sharp, "Pardon?"  His own guard back up, he didn't bother to take more water.  He wouldn't taste it, anyway.
          "This area isn't exactly in the middle of an economic boom," Bernard pointed out easily, choosing a cola for herself and popping the top.  "Why on earth would Personal Edge--y'all started in Canada, right?  Why would the company set up corporate headquarters in backwoods Louisiana?"
          She sounded sincere, but . . .  "Why do you assume I know?"
          After a long draw of soda, she did lick her lips.  Then she widened her dark eyes in feigned innocence.  Her drawl thickened.  "Why Mr. Benedict, don't you just know everything?"
          What made her sarcasm so amusing was how close she came to the truth.
          Personal Edge was run by one of the few men Drake considered more powerful than himself, the aging Nigel Prescott-- and Drake was his right-hand man.  Drake had overseen over half the deals it had taken to move the business down to Louisiana, and he was the one who had stayed behind to run their previous company through it's death throes, until he'd managed to close out every aspect of it.
          Drake had also "closed out" most of the third-through- sixth degree magic users in the ceremonial order which Prescott --one of the few first-degree mages--captained; most of them could more easily find another lodge than move to the United States.  The seventh-degree members were still studying magic through a correspondence course, to weed out dabblers and to protect the identity of the higher members, the Select.  Sending them to other fraternities had proved relatively simple.
          Drake knew more about the business and the Order than any other man except for Prescott himself--at least, he had known more about both organizations only a year ago.  But things, especially in the Order, seemed to have somehow changed, almost imperceptibly, in his absence.  Though he would not go so far as to title those changes with such foolishly subjective labels as good and bad, he did find them vaguely . . . disturbing.
          He also knew exactly what the biggest selling point for Stagwater, Louisiana, had been.  But he wasn't about to tell the increasingly nosy Cypress Bernard.
          However, he tried always to speak the truth--if not the whole truth.  "Personal Edge received significant tax breaks specifically because the area is economically depressed," he pointed out.  "SmithTech had its own distribution center in place, which also cut our costs.  We felt it best to start business on a small scale--catalog and in-state retail--and only expand once our foundation proved--"
          "I get it, I get it," she insisted, holding up a hand to make him stop before he even got to the point that they were only an hour outside of New Orleans; hardly the backwoods.  "Just curious, boss."
          Not always the safest personality trait.  But he refrained from pointing that out.  Apparently, though she held suspicions about him, those suspicions did not include the company or its other executives.
          Best to keep it that way.
          Still, though she had relaxed in his presence, Bernard had not fully lowered her guard for him.  And now that he had closed himself off to the sensations and vibrancy she put off like pheromones, he found himself wearying of such small talk.
          He'd come here for a purpose, and meant to fulfill it.  "Let me," he suggested, using her words, "ask you something."
          "Ask away," she invited.  "Though we should get back--"
          "What tradition are you?" 
          Cypress Bernard's guard didn't quite slam shut--but it slid quickly and firmly into place.  "Come again?"
          Drake put down the water, studied the woman before him.  "Mere curiosity," he excused honestly, dangerously.  For effect, he even smiled.  He knew that, unlike hers, his smile was not in the least natural.  "What kind of witch are you?"

          The question shouldn't have surprised her; if she'd sensed his power, how could he not have sensed hers?  But surprise her it did, and for the worst of reasons.
          Cypress was beginning to find her boss attractive.
          Friendly, no.  Charming, hardly.  Romantic fodder, not likely.  But flat-out seductive?  She was a very physical woman, and he was indeed a fine-looking man who wore an air of barely- contained strength about him like an invisible cloak.  Every physical bone in her body had sounded the alarm from the moment he'd followed her away from the others.
          Maybe even before that.
          She'd let her base enjoyment of his nearness, the challenge of his nearly unreadable face, the mesmeric sound of his voice lull her into false complacency.  Therefore she took a moment too long to demand, "What makes you think I'm a witch?"
          "You've obvious magical abilities," he noted, ignorant--she hoped--of his effect on her.  "Your home is warded.  One of your friends wears a pentagram, and your lawn is practically an herbal clearinghouse."
          "That doesn't make me a witch."
          "It hardly," he held her gaze, "exonerates you."
          "And what about you?"  An awkward deflection, at best; she saw by his superior hint of a smile that he thought so too.
          "Your new supervisor?"
          She'd wanted to somehow reconcile her home-life and her work-life . . . and now that it was happening, she didn't like it.  She didn't like it at all.  "Not in this yard you aren't."
          "I might guess Voodoo," he decided, not even blinking.  "Yet in your file you list your maternal grandmother as beneficiary, and her last name is Vega.  Mexican?"
          Of course he had her file, she realized, annoyed and unsettled.  He was her boss.  Even in this yard.  "Spanish."
          "Which does not discount Santeria or Brujeria," he mused.  "Yes, I have what I want; you needn't confirm or deny."
          "I hadn't planned to," she assured him, but her unease may have confirmed for her.  Her training, like her blood, included magic of Haitian, Hispanic, and even Native American origins.  If he'd been using some sort of psychic talents, Cy would have found the accuracy of his guess unnerving.  That he seemed to rely solely on his powers of observation worried her even further.
          "Thank you so much for your time."  He nodded with mock politeness and began to turn away.
          Uhn-uh!  He wasn't playing lord of the manor here.  "Wait!"
          He paused, inclined his head toward her.
          "What about you?" she repeated.
          He considered that, the autumn sunlight playing across his pale darkness, a faint breeze ruffling across his deceptively soft hair.  When he spoke, he sounded almost sincere.  "It may well be in both our best interests that you know as little of me as possible.  Good day."
          Like she was going to take that, boss or no boss.  Cypress dodged in front of Drake Benedict, blocked his path.  "Oh no.  It doesn't work that way."
          "It works, Ms. Bernard, as I say it works."
          "We aren't in the office now.  You're the one who came here; I didn't go looking for you.  You owe me some information."
          He raised an amused eyebrow at the thought of owing her.
          Fine.  He wouldn't tell her?  She could play Sherlock Holmes too.  Cy grasped at her only real clue.  "I'd guess from your attitude that you're a ceremonial magician.  Maybe OTO."
          Drake Benedict blinked.  That's all she got--a blink.  But it was a faster blink than his usual sleepy, almost snakelike movements.  She'd scored a point, all right.  Cy smirked, to hide that she'd been bluffing.  She'd only heard of the OTO by its initials, in pagan company.  Those ceremonial magicians, folks would say, sure don't lack for ego.
          "I am not," clarified her supervisor coldly, "with the Ordo Templis Orientis."  Which proved what she'd wanted.
          "But you are a ceremonial magician."
          After a long pause, he inclined his head again.  Yup--chalk one up for Cypress.  "I am that," he assured her with barely controlled . . . what?  It chilled her, not quite unpleasant, but certainly not safe.  "A ceremonial magician who was invited onto your property.  You'd do well to remember that, witch."
          And he circled her, and strode around the corner of the house to the muffled greetings of the others.
          Cypress stared after him, torn between alarm and noticing how well the man filled a pair of jeans.
          Damn, but she had poor judgement in physical matters.  She had something more important than his cute butt to deal with.
          The sound of the door from the house, onto the back deck, startled her; her friend and fellow witch, Sylvie, peeked furtively out.  "Is the Prince of Darkness gone?"
          An apt image.  "Hit and run.  He went thattaway."
          Sylvie, a slim brunette several years younger than Cypress, raised her eyebrows, intrigued.  Very much like the Prince of Darkness himself.
          Cy asked, "What do you know about ceremonial magicians?"
          "Rut-roh," murmured Sylvie, a cartoon expression she'd picked up from her husband, Rand.  She shut the door behind her, and came to Cypress's side.  "He's a ceremonial magician?"
          "And he seems to think that can beat a witch, hands down."
          "I've heard they've got healthy egos," Sylvie mused.
          Cypress planted her hands on her hips.  "I know he talks the talk--can he walk the walk?"  Bad choice of words; she forced the image of Drake Benedict's back pockets out of her mind.
          "That," admitted Sylvie, "would depend on the magician.  And the witch.  But . . . ."  She valiantly tried not to look discouraging.  "He might have the odds."
          That's what she'd been afraid of.  Cypress shook her head, and looked towards where her magical mystery boss had vanished.
          "Rut-roh," she said.

          "What makes you think I'd know about Western Mystery Traditions?" asked Brigit Peabody when the circle congregated at her duplex that evening.  Brie hadn't attended the painting party because her infant daughter, Morgan, had a cold.
          But her circlemates, done painting, filled her in.
          "If Western Mystery Tradition means ceremonial magicians," said Cypress, "then you already know more than I do."  She spoke quietly, so as not to wake the baby who slept, tummy down and tiny fists clenched, in the playpen beside the dining-room table.  Little Morgan Peabody had her mother's dark red hair--and probably her mother's magical abilities, as well.  Although Cypress had gotten arcane training from her great grandmother and her granny, Brie was the only official family tradition witch in their circle.  Mary and Sylvie, both arriving with armloads of Syl's reference books, were naturally gifted witches, but relatively new to the Craft.  So Brie was Cy's main hope.
          She wouldn't sleep well, certainly wouldn't be able to concentrate at work, as long as Drake Benedict held the upper hand in whatever secretive little game they were playing.
          "Well yes, I know they exist," Brigit admitted now, relaxing into her chair as if she rarely got a chance to do so.  Then again, with a two-month-old baby, she probably didn't.  "They're like fraternities for magic users.  Very secretive.  I've heard people belong for years without knowing the identity of other members--only the high-ups know that.  They rely on mathematics and ancient symbols and precision the way we rely on nature."  She grinned. "Mom calls it 'Magic for anal retentives."
          "What about that ordo templi . . . the OTO?" pursued Cy.
          Sylvie, who'd perched at the table and spread several books before her, checked an index.  Owner of a new-and-used bookstore, she had a strong magical library.  "Ordo Templis Orientis--a Germanic occult order," she announced, after flipping to the appropriate pages.  "They're called Western Mystery Traditions because they believe themselves to be continuations of the mystery orders of Egypt and Greece.  And Atlantis."
          Brigit's clean-cut husband, Steve, walked into the dining room, but stopped as Mary said, "As in, the Lost Continent of?"
          "Oh geez," he muttered, and backed out again.
          Sylvie exchanged a knowing grin with her sister-in-law, Brie, over her brother's skepticism.  "Right.  Ever hear of the Golden Dawn?"
          Actually, Cy had.  Sort of.  "Why does it sound familiar?"
          "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is one of the more famous Western Mystery Traditions," explained Sylvie, brown hair feathering over her cheek as she skimmed her finger across the text.  "Established in the late 1880.  Included members like William Butler Yeats--the poet--and Aleister Crowley.  Huh."
          Cy leaned forward.  "Huh?"
          "He's the one that wrote, 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.'"
          Mary, who had kneeled beside the playpen to rub Morgan's back, asked, "Not, 'an it harm none, do what thou wilt?'"  That was the Wiccan rede.
          "So."  Cy hated to ask it,  to make it real.  "You're saying he could be evil."  She felt inordinately relieved when Sylvie, their best empath, shrugged.  And it wasn't just the relief of feeling safer.
          "I couldn't read anything off of him either way.  Just because he's not a good guy wouldn't make him evil, though.  Assuming there's any such thing," the empath added.
          Cy wasn't the only witch to stare at her.  "You're lying!  After the nasties we've run into this year?"
          "Those were dangerous, but not wholly evil," Sylvie insisted.  "Like me and the werewolf.  Lycanthropy makes people do evil things, but it doesn't make them evil.  It's a disease."
          Cy grimaced.  "One 12-step program I do not want to see."
          "Or what happened to Brigit.  The spirit that had threatened her was the product of his environment--religious fanaticism and mass hysteria messed him up."  She got up, leaned into the hallway.  "Hey Steve, was Josiah Blakelee inherently evil?"  As his sister, she was allowed to tease him.
          "No comment."  Steve liked to ignore the "weird stuff."
          "The thing in the swamp that almost killed Guy was evil," declared Mary, her tone daring an argument.  She wouldn't get it from Cypress.  Cy had seen evil all her life, in high-society megalomaniacs and in people so wholly intolerant they could be nothing but evil.  She respected Sylvie's intelligence . . . but evil couldn't be intellectualized away.
          "Honey, there is definitely such a thing."  She propped her chin on her fist.  "But I surely hope my new VP isn't involved with it.  Try explaining that one at my next job interview.  'So why did you leave your last position, Ms. Bernard?'"
          "He's a ceremonial magician, not a Thuggie," Brie clarified encouragingly.  "From what I've heard, they're more about wisdom and enlightenment than summoning demons, or cursing enemies."
          Cy stared at her friend--this was comfort?  "If he's even summoned one demon, that is one damn demon too many.  Look at this Aleister Crowley person.  Even the folks that actually like him admit he was no angel.  And he was in the Golden Dawn?"
          "They kicked him out."  Sylvie had gone back to her books.  "Before they disbanded, earlier this century.  He formed a splinter group.  Lots of them did.  The Merlin Temple, the Order of the Stones, the Society of Light."  She smiled.  "MT, OTS, and SOL for short."
          "SOL's what I guess I am."  Cy glanced belatedly at the sleeping baby before modifying, "Spit out of luck.  So we don't have any way to be sure who this man is working with?"
          "Not unless his order has team jerseys or vanity license plates," joked Sylvie.  "Maybe they know a secret handshake."
          Cy remembered how his hand had electrified hers this morning, and shivered.  Girl, if only you knew.  She slumped back in her chair, folded her arms.  Okay, so maybe Benedict wasn't evil.  Maybe he was just checking her out--so to speak.  Maybe he'd even wanted to make sure she didn't pose any danger to him; she liked that idea, even if she didn't wholly believe it.  But him invading her wards, establishing himself as some kind of conqueror instead of leaving them at an equal level--that she truly hated to accept.
          "Too bad I don't know where he lives," she muttered darkly.
          And Mary, still on the floor, said, "Within walking distance from you."  She drew her hand from the baby, sat back on her heels--and sneezed.  Cy suspected Morgan's cold would be much better soon.  "When he left this afternoon, right after talking to you, whatsisname--the white-haired one--"
          "Morris?"
          "Morris offered him a ride.  But Drake said he would walk.  I bet if we talk to neighbors, they'd know.  If not--"  She wrinkled her nose.  "I haf my vays."
          Cy began to grin.
          "But he got you to let him in because he guessed your weaknesses," warned Sylvie.  "He set you up in front of your colleagues.  We don't know any of his weaknesses.  Those secret orders don't exactly publicize their vulnerabilities."
          "Exactly," decided Cypress, poking the table for emphasis.
          The other three stared at her, blank.  "They're a secret order?" she prodded.  Nothing.  "Catch up with the program, women!" she teased.  "That's their weakness." 
          Then she looked at Brie, whose eyes widened in understanding.  "We'll never talk him into it!"
          But Cypress hadn't gotten as far in the world as she had by accepting never as an answer.

          "I cannot believe," muttered Steve Peabody, heading up Drake Benedict's front walk, "that you talked me into this."
          "That's because you've got yourself one narrow belief system.  But we love you anyway."  Cypress, back on the sidewalk with Brigit, hadn't yet followed Steve onto her boss's property.  And a fine piece of property it was.  The two-story, gray-brick house had an impressive, double-doored entranceway and windows of bevelled glass, with precise, uninspired landscaping outside.  Then again, inspired landscaping would have him living on the edge of a sea-tossed cliff . . . and in Louisiana, that was hardly likely.
          Steve paused and looked meaningfully back at his wife and, as he put it, his friend-in-law.  This would be Cypress's second time in two days to trespass onto Drake Benedict's property.  First his computer, yesterday morning.  And now, this overcast afternoon, his home.
          She corrected herself:  his house.  And it didn't count as trespassing if he invited them in.
          Assuming he did invite them in.
          Cy would have taken Brie's hand for strength, but both of Brie's hands were busy carrying a covered casserole.  So Cypress took the step alone.
          The energy that shivered across her when she entered his property felt familiar, but hardly safe.  Yeah, Benedict had definitely warded the place.  But since she and Brigit meant no harm--harm none, right?--the wards let them in.
          "He knows we're here," Brie murmured, low, as they cleared the first magical boundaries.
          "I'm thinking he knew already," Cy murmured back.
          Steve gave them both a disgusted look.  But as they reached the front stoop, he did mutter, "Only because I love you," to his wife before he knocked.  Steve had gotten a lot more open-minded about magic over the last year--which just went to show how close-minded he'd once been.  But he still didn't believe an executive vice president at a company like Personal Edge could think he was a ceremonial magician.
          The vice president who opened the door--one of the doors-- looked equally skeptical.  He also looked as good as Cypress had remembered, good beyond his casual, dark clothes.  Like a man sculpted from alabaster, she thought, with eyes of jet.
          Those eyes darted from Steve, to Brie, to the casserole, and finally, meaningfully to Cypress.  "To what," Drake Benedict inquired, "do I owe this . . . pleasure?"
          Show time.  "We heard you lived near us, and thought we'd welcome you to the neighborhood," said Cypress brightly.  "Maybe visit.  Get to know one another."
          His dark gaze, annoyed and unwavering, all but said:  Do the words 'fat chance' mean anything to you?  The opinion of Cy's co-workers had held sway over her, obliging her to grant him entrance.  But Benedict had no reason at all to be civil to some mere suburbanite couple bearing macaroni.
          Or so he thought.
          "This is Brigit Peabody," Cy introduced as if he appeared at all welcoming, and she mentally crossed her fingers.  "And this is her husband, Steve.  Steve owns and edits the local newspaper."
          And she smiled her sweetest, most gracious smile.                              top


Chapter Three:  Touch of Evil Proposal
          Drake Benedict's chin rose, almost imperceptibly--and he swallowed.  Quickly.  On another man, it might have been a gulp.  Muscles in his cheek worked, tense.
          "Do come in," he said, in something just short of a hiss.
          Chalk one up to Cypress Bernard.
          Steve draped his arm around his wife, demonstrating the difference between skepticism and carelessness.  Stiffly, Benedict stepped away, leaving an open path for the couple.  But as Cypress began to follow them, he angled himself back in front of her, his broad chest and shoulder blocking her passage--
          --stopping her in the middle of the overpoweringly protective energy of his wards.  Magic flowed over and around her, harmless--he had invited her in--yet tangible, disorienting.  But this abrupt lesson in what he was capable of couldn't unsettle her so much as his knowing, accusatory glare.
          He held her, pinned her with his gaze as she stared helplessly back up at him.  Then, seemingly satisfied that she understood her mistake, he spun and followed his "guests."
          Leaving Cypress to stumble free from his wards on her own-- and to wonder how just how dearly she would pay for penetrating Drake Benedict's defenses.

          The little fool!
          As soon as he thought that, Drake realized just how B-movie it sounded, and composed himself.  But he disliked being drawn from his own pursuits to entertain strangers.  He hardly considered himself a social man.  And he very much resented being threatened by one of his own underlings.
          Although, he admitted to himself as he reached the living room, stepping aside so that the straight-backed Cypress Bernard could join her friends by the sofa, she had indeed been clever.
          Turnabout being fair play, and all that.
          "Please," he said to Mrs. Peabody, taking the casserole-- how rustic--from her.  "Do make yourselves comfortable.  May I get drinks?"
          All three declined, a shade too quickly.  Not surprising.  Nor was he likely to eat any food the little witch--witches?--had prepared.  To maintain the pretense, though, he carried the covered dish to his large, impeccably neat kitchen.
          Of course it was neat.  He hadn't lived here a week.
          Yet already he knew the town was crawling with witches.  Perhaps for the same reason that had drawn his Order?  It occurred to him, as he put the casserole into the double-doored, stainless-steel refrigerator, that he was making assumptions.  So, closing the ice-box door, he glanced back toward the unseen living room and cast his thoughts outward, brushed them lightly over his visitors.
          Both women were indeed magic-users; their resistance to his gentle probing felt reinforced by craft.  Peabody, though well shielded, seemed mundane.  Interesting.  Drake had known few mages to have non-practicing spouses.  Few, actually, to take spouses at all.  Romantic entanglements detracted far too severely from one's focus.
          Having just made tea before he sensed their arrival, Drake moved the pot and four teacups onto a serving tray, careful not to burn himself the way the Mainframe Sysop had.  Just because he rarely registered normal levels of pain--so strictly did he filter sensory input--didn't mean he welcomed expending energy to heal himself.  Then he carried the tray back into the living room, for show if nothing else.  As long as these interlopers were here, he might as well play good host.
          After all, Cypress Bernard's move had effectively put him in check.  He planned to consider his own next move carefully.
          "Are you sure you won't have anything?" he tested again, setting the tray on the coffee table and sinking onto a black leather.  He poured his own cup in front of them, to show he meant to drink from the same source.
          The three on the sofa shook their heads.  Just as well.  He could easily have doctored the cups.
          "You own the local paper?" he asked Steve, even as he wondered--and do you know your wife is a witch?  If Steve Peabody did not know, then he would pose less of a threat to the Order's secrecy.  But if he knew, and was in on Bernard's plan to invade Drake's wards, then he already posed a threat indeed.  Were, that is, the pen mightier than the sword.  Which it was not. 
          Peabody shifted into a more open position, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees as he expounded about his paper.  Mentally filing information about the quaint-sounding Stagwater Sentinel, Drake took a sip of tea.
          Gentle warmth from the china teacup soothed his palms.  Steam caressed his face, its faint aroma mingling with a whiff of peppermint to . . . .
          Realizing what was happening--again--Drake looked too quickly at Cypress Bernard.  She widened her eyes at his silent accusation.  Either she was a better mage and actress than he suspected, or she was not doing this on purpose.
          She was, however, doing it.
          "So you're new here," prompted Peabody, necessitating Drake's involvement in the conversation.  "From up north?"
          "Canada," Drake clarified, trying to ignore how his track lighting conquered the shadows of this too-neat room, how comfortable the leather chair felt.  "British Columbia."
          "The weather must be gorgeous this time of year."  This time Bernard spoke, her voice a husky lilt that he already recognized as Creole.  "Does the heat here bother you?"
          "I imagine it is," he admitted, fully meeting her sloe-eyed interest . . . in something as trivial as how he managed the weather?  He supposed, if he troubled himself, he could recall enough memories of autumn leaves, brilliant foliage, the entire, picture-post-card qualifications.  But nature's glory had rarely mattered; the change to a more tropical environment mattered even less.  "And no, it does not."
          He wondered, if he saw the autumn leaves with Cypress Bernard, whether the sight would make more of an impression.  Just her presence in the room was somehow lending him to savor the taste of his tea, to catalog his visitors' accents and habits and scents . . . .  When Brigit Peabody turned to lean against her husband's shoulder, he smelled something else.  A touch of . . . milk?  A touch of powder.
          He looked at them and said, "You've a baby."
          They might have been pretending to be social only moments ago--for all he knew, perhaps it was no pretense.  But all three stiffened at his deduction.  Peabody's hand closed over his wife's, their eyes searching his face to ascertain exactly what he had meant by his announcement.
          When all he'd actually meant was--they had a baby.
          He realized they interpreted it as a threat.  Even--  His gaze slid back to Bernard, his departmental witch, as she uncrossed her long, denim-covered legs and tried to mask her dismay.  The wise thing for Drake to do would be to encourage their assumption.  Perhaps ask the child's age, gender, description.  Perhaps wonder aloud who kept it at this very moment.  They'd put him in check by invading his wards?  He now knew their greatest weakness.  Checkmate.
          And yet his gaze returned to just how tightly husband and wife had grasped each-other's hand, their forearms and elbows pressed close, their knuckles almost white.  Their strengths, their arcane and mundane energies, combined against perceived danger.  He considered probing them again, to test how much stronger they became through this joining, for he could tell they'd indeed become stronger.
          He decided against defiling the moment with analysis.
          "You smell of baby powder," he explained smoothly, too much the gentleman to mention the milk.  "Rather pleasant, in fact.  As is Ms. Bernard's eau de peppermint?"
          Bernard blinked, surprised.  "I smell like peppermint?"
          Peabody, relaxing to the change of topic just as Drake had hoped, challenged, "You didn't know you smell like herbs?"
          Bernard stared at him, then at Mrs. Peabody, who nodded and even attempted a wary smile.  Then Bernard stared back at Drake, her full lips still parted in surprise.
          The chill of the air-conditioner.  The faint sound of birds and insects outside his windows.  The warmth of compan--
          That one surprised him more than all the rest:  the warmth of companionship.  It surprised him and it threatened him.  He had transcended emotional reactions, long ago rejected the distractions of friendship and affections.  He had no intention of backsliding now, merely because he had a long, quiet night ahead of him.  Merely because he only now realized just how large this house was for a single person.  Merely because he was, indeed, new in town, in state, in country.
          He remained a mage, above all else.  He had his Order.
          However, he hedged, amused by Cypress's comical expression, his Order did not prohibit an occasional social diversion.
          "Hardly unpleasant," he reassured her, and raised his teacup to his lips again.  Understatement.  For whatever reason, he very much enjoyed her scent, her presence.  He enjoyed the vibrant play of her black eyes, the way his lighting caught a glitter off her ebony hair, the symmetry of her high cheekbones, and how her parted lips now turned up into a flattered smile.
          She was his direct report--but he would hardly behave unprofessionally, no matter how intriguing he found her.  She was a witch--but he couldn't imagine her having enough strength, certainly enough control, to pose a threat.  And yet she seemed to know something . . . .
          A threat to his Order, he had to take more seriously.  But Drake decided, settling back in the comfort of his chair, that even if she posed a danger to his Order, he would not discover what that might be unless he won her trust.
          Or at least, he qualified, belied her worst suspicions.
          He did notice, with amused satisfaction, that even as the others relaxed in his presence, as they laughed over something Peabody said, or frowned mock warnings at one another--nobody else touched the tea.
          Instead of escaping after a courteous twenty minutes, Bernard and her friends stayed for over an hour--and then it was Mrs. Peabody, probably thinking of her child, who finally made the first overtures to leave.
          "Maybe we can do this again, sometime," suggested Peabody, as the four of them reached Drake's foyer.  The editor had proven himself surprisingly intelligent, Drake conceded, and an interesting conversationalist.  Peabody's wife, oddly, glanced at Cypress before nodding. "I'd like that."
          Drake hesitated, realizing nobody had ever said that to him.  Odd, that such an everyday exchange should strike him so.
          "On neutral ground?" the redhead qualified with a laugh, misinterpreting his silence.  It was the first reference any of them had made to the magical undercurrents to their visit.  Peabody rolled his eyes--yes, he knew of his wife's leanings.
          "Not necessary," Drake assured them as the couple stepped outside, into the humid September night.  After all, now that they'd entered his house, keeping them out would require a foolish amount of energy.  He looked meaningfully down at Cypress Bernard, who had hesitated, just inside the current of his wards.
          What was it about the woman that so appealed to him?
          "But next time," he clarified, more softly but still in command, "do call before you come?"
          She had the grace to glance down, chagrined at having set him up.  But when she looked back, she surprised him with a bright smile.
          "Or else?" she teased, too lightly, far too affectionately.
          "Exactly," he assured her, in an almost-hiss.
          Her smile faltered beneath his threat, then stubbornly brightened again, reassurance that she hadn't taken him seriously.  Perhaps she should.  He was her boss, and a very powerful mage in a very powerful Order.  Her appeal could mean nothing to him.  Best for them both to keep their distance.
          He did not smile back.
          Yet the woman seemed determined.  "The casserole's legit," she announced with determined gaiety.  "No little love whammies on it or anything.  Treat yourself."
          Then she backed away from him, out the door, eyes sparkling at him until finally she pun and hurried after her friends.
          Drake watched her.  Then he realized he was watching her and, annoyed, shut the door.

          They came.
          At first the dark antechamber sat empty, windowless, black and deathly silent.  Then a single line of light appeared in the void, alien against the stillness of the little room, and quickly widened into a tall rectangle.  Artificial illumination poured into the chamber's interior, catching ghostly shapes in the incense smoke, creating a halo for the two cowled figures who stepped forward, from the light into the darkness.
          Then the elevator doors slid shut behind them, leaving only the candles they carried for faint illumination.
          They spoke in low, solemn tones as, gradually, the other five members of the Select arrived.  For each, the elevator's secret door flooded the antechamber with momentary brightness, then slid silently shut as its black-robed occupants stepped off.  First one, then three, then one.
          All that kept the seven figures from anonymity, other than their heights and voices, were the medallions they wore, each with a symbol or ancient rune indicative of their magical names.  A sword, for Pendragon.  A Grail, for Parsifal.  The Key of Solomon, for Faust.
          Only the Gray Man's medallion, in the murky candlelight, was blank.  Thus it seemed only fitting that, into their quiet discussion of the third-degree mage's suicide, the Gray Man would formulate it into a question:  "Can she in fact be replaced?"
          Calliope, turning her shadowed face, said, "She must."
          "There are certain parameters," clarified Pendragon sternly, "which must be met."
          Now several cowled heads turned to him.  Parameters were the by-word of ceremonial magic, after all.  One working had dominated their time and energies for almost two years:  The Ritual of Enlightenment.  The ritual would provide the only route by which their leader, the Gatekeeper, already an adept of tremendous wisdom and power, could possibly advance further.
          And as the leader advanced, so would his disciples.
          However, the ritual became possible only on a single night in late October, at a specific time, in this year, in this place.
          Parameters.
          "What I mean," clarified Pendragon, his done dropping with annoyance, "is that to succeed in the ritual, we must only meet those parameters.  Our recent volunteer--"  He did not say her name; they all knew she'd attempted some sort of magic through her suicide, "--can indeed be replaced."
          "If," agreed Delphi, the taper in her hands revealing a hint of smooth skin, soft lips, "she meets the same parameters."
          Pendragon, silent, inclined his head.
          The smell of burnt herbs--clove, and dragon's blood--curled around and between them, smoke writhing in the candlelight.
          "Of magical lineage," clarified the Gray Man for them, obviously not satisfied.  "And . . . a volunteer?"
          "Willing," clarified Faust.
          "Yet we choose him or her," challenged the Gray Man.
          "That is," hissed Pendragon, "the plan.  We cannot compromise the parameters of the ritual.  Our choice shall be willing."
          Had his candle not writhed under his words, they might not even have heard the Gray Man's comeback, "With the proper persuasion, of course."
          Even then, they pretended not to hear.  The tall clock in the corner of the antechamber had begun to chime its overture.  The Select took formation and, with solemn tread, pushed through the black velvet curtains to enter the perfectly square ritual chamber itself exactly as the clock began to toll the hours.
          Midnight.
          In single formation each entered, carrying candles where neither artificial nor sunlight had ever been permitted.  Each took his or her position before thrones on either side of the tall, unlit quarter candles--east, south, west, north.
          Before the larger northern throne their leader, the Gatekeeper, waited.  Only he had no hood, instead wearing a black Pharaonic nemyss atop his white hair.
          As the twelfth stroke rang into silence he spoke, strong and sure:  "Why have you come to this place?"
          Answered the Select--Pendragon, Calliope, Faust--, "I come to seek, to see, to serve."
          Spoke the Gatekeeper, "Do you come of your own free will?"
          Answered the Select--Delphi, Gilgamesh, Parsifal--, "I do."
          And only then, a deliberate beat behind the other six, did the Gray Man also say, "I do."  The editorial implied by his timing was not lost on the others, especially not Pendragon, whose shadowed face turned slowly, disapprovingly, toward him.
          But the Gatekeeper ignored the discordant note beneath the careful measure of their ritual, and led them into their opening meditation, in search of a new--and somewhat willing--sacrifice.

          "They were erased," said Karen as Cy walked by her desk.
          Already reluctant to go into Friday staff meeting any sooner than necessary, Cypress stopped to stare at the level- three secretary.  "The back-up tapes?"
          "Mmhm."  After catching a cough against the back of her hand, Karen finished scribbling a pink, While You Were Out phone message, tucked it into the appropriate memo slot, and looked back at Cy.  A short brunette woman in her mid-thirties, Karen was one of the people at the office on whom Cy truly thought she could depend.  "That's what you asked me to find out, right?"
          Cypress nodded, still staring.  Since most of the Personal Edge computers were connected on a LAN, or local access network, much of their activity was recorded onto tape each night, in a central location.  She'd thought that, if Drake Benedict had erased Russ's computer, she might have a slim chance of finding the information she'd wanted on the LAN back-up tapes.
          The multi-line phone buzzed; Karen smiled apologetically, coughed again, and picked it up.  "PC Services.  May I help you?  Right, Sierra.  Mmhm.  Just forward them over."
           How do back-up tapes get erased?  But Cy figured she knew that better than Karen would.  A magnetic field, most likely.  And if she started asking how the storage procedure could be so shoddy as to allow magnetism anywhere near those tapes, she'd be stepping on Tucker Long's toes.  Bad enough that Cy was daring talk to his secretary.
          "Well, thanks for looking into it, anyhow."  Cy leaned her elbows on the counter beside Karen's desk as Karen hung up the phone, but then noticed Sierra hurrying toward the conference room, steno-pad in hand.  Two final supervisors from the mainframe side bringing up the rear.  It looked like she'd avoided Drake Benedict's cold presence as long as she could.
          But she noticed something odd about the secretary's workstation.  "Hasn't Joey drawn anymore pictures for your file cabinet, Karen?  I've missed them."
          For some reason, Karen's eyes widened--then she looked quickly down.  "Um . . . ." she said, picking up a pen, fumbling it.  "It's--"  She took a deep breath, and looked up.  "I decided that they weren't very businesslike," she said in an odd tone.
          Cy would have laughed--businesslike?--had Karen's brown eyes not seemed so haunted.  Instead, Cy looked closer.
          "You still aren't feeling any better, are you?  You shouldn't have come back in.  Do you want to go home?"
          The telephone buzzed.  Reaching for it, Karen quickly shook her head.  "I'm as better as I'm going to get," she whispered, then punched the line button.  "PC Services.  May I help you?"  She tipped her head toward the conference room.  "I'm sorry; they're all in staff meeting right now.  May I take a message?"
          Cypress backed away from the reception desk, her internal alarms ringing loud and clear--was something going on with Karen?
          Then she realized some of those internal alarms were probably her internal clock, telling her she was officially late.  Sierra waited in the doorway, giving her a look, and Cy hurried in, a little embarrassed to be the last one.
          Especially when Drake Benedict, already seated, flicked his dark, intense gaze toward her, then back to his paperwork, as if dismissing her just that quickly.  Tucker Long, beside him, rolled his eyes at just who was holding up the show.  Cy and Sierra found empty seats even while Benedict started the meeting, his faintly accented voice commanding the attention of the entire room, though he spoke softly.
          He definitely commanded Cy's attention--and it wasn't as if she didn't fight it.  When the sure, measured rhythm of his speech tingled through her, she quickly concentrated on the photocopied agenda in front of her.  When she caught herself admiring the aristocratic set of his shoulders, his posture, his profile, wrenched her attention back to her colleagues.  As if each of the two managers, and then their supervisors, gave particularly interesting weekly activity reports!  When it was finally her turn, she reported her work with data for the Credit, Retail Ops, and Distribution departments clearly and confidently.
          Knowing that she would want nothing more than to stumble into silence when her boss's intense gaze turned on her--knowing how foolishly hurt she'd felt when, on Monday, he seemed no warmer than he had before their Sunday visit--she had practiced in the car all the way to work.
          "What about Personnel?" asked Benedict, scribbling a quick note, when she finished.  That surprised her--not that he hadn't quizzed other employees.  He kept them on their toes, she'd give him that.  He'd won their respect, if not their affection.
          "Personnel?" she echoed.
          He waited, arrogantly sure she'd heard him the first time.
          "If you mean, do I work with them," she clarified, a bit defensive, "then the answer is yes.  My main priority has been Credit lately, because they're just now getting themselves off the ground.  But I work with Personnel.  What was it I can find out for you?"  As an afterthought, she added, "Sir?"
          Nobody had ever called Russ "Sir," but almost everyone addressed this new VP so.
          Instead of answering immediately, Benedict sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and slid his gaze to Tucker Long.  "I noticed that Ms. Jackson is back at her desk?"
          Tucker quickly recovered from being tagged It.  "Why, yessir, Drake.  I called her yesterday and told her I didn't like her attendance record this past year, not one bit."
          "How proactive of you," murmured Benedict thoughtfully.  "Most people send get-well-soon cards; you send 'get-well-now?'"
          Tucker's grin faltered.  Cy's grin, on the other hand, just begged to be let loose.  Just when you think it's safe to dislike this guy . . . .
          "What about Timothy Montville?"  Benedict turned his attention to the supervisor of LAN support, who flushed guiltily.
          "Still out with some kind of throat problem, Sir."
          In fact, the VP's questioning quickly revealed that over ten percent of their department was out sick.
          And he knew every one of them by name. Cy gave up trying to avoid the mesmeric draw of Drake Benedict in action.  Even Russ hadn't known everyone's name.  The contrast between her boss's arrogant apathy and his clear-headed priorities fascinated her.
          He fascinated her.
          He was also looking at her again.  "What I want of you, Ms. Bernard," he clarified, "is a report on our absentee rate, compared with the rest of the company.  Can you do that?"
          "Already did."  Ha--he blinked.  That, she'd already come to realize, was how the cold-blooded, slow-moving wizard showed surprise.  "Last April I compiled a report on just that; a friend of mine thought there were maybe ergonomic problems here."
          In fact, you met her, she wanted to add.  Mary Poitiers.  The healer.  How curious, nicely so, to know that had they been alone, she could say just that--and her boss would understand!
          But they weren't alone.  "Would you like me to include it with my current findings, so you can compare the two?"
          Another blink, but this one slower, more thoughtful.  His heavy lids shadowed his dark eyes, so that she almost couldn't read the suspicion in them.  Of her?  What had she done?
          But no, when his gaze cleared, he turned none of the distrust toward her.  "Yes," he agreed finally.  "Please do that.  If Human Resources has similar records from SmithTech . . . ?"
          "I'll ask," she assured him, intrigued--because this interested her too?  Because he'd maybe cast some kind of "team player" whammy on the whole department?  Or just because she liked the way Drake Benedict's dark eyes lingered on her before he said, "Thank you," and moved on to pending projects?
          She wanted to compile those reports, if only to have him thank her again.  Maybe less aloofly, less like a polite-by-rote nobleman and more like someone who actually appreciated her.
          Rather, her work.
          She made a note on the back of her meeting agenda:  Pull Absentee Info.  But listening to the confident purr of his words, watching the contrast of his soft hair barely brushing against his squared face as he drilled first one, then another manager with his attention, she knew that was silly.
          No way was she forgetting anything this man said to her.

          Friday evening.  Drake, in the dark second bedroom of his two-story home, was having trouble meditating.  This very much frustrated him, and on more counts than one.  As a second-degree adept, practiced since childhood, he should be able to meditate--
          He almost smiled at the thought.  Should be able to meditate with his eyes closed?
          But that sort of humor represented the problem.  His focus was drifting far too often nowadays, to inconsequential ideas, sounds, images--or scents.  All the more reason to turn his thoughts inward, to explore the motivations behind his suspicions, his frustrations . . . his interests.
          This room provided the perfect meditative atmosphere.  Black velvet swathed the walls, shutting out natural light, since natural light dissipated etheric forms.  Dark rugs lay on the floor, to support whatever yoga position he might adopt.  He had a small altar with a candle on it, and a smoking censor, to promote a more thorough shift of his brain-wave patterns.
          Yet even with the scent of myrrh thick in his nostrils, and a single light of a candleflame on which to focus, he could not maintain a shallow, much less deep, alpha state.
          Whenever he began slow his thoughts into altered consciousness, to purposefully weaken his filters of rationality and open his mind to the non-ordinary, he pictured Cypress Bernard.  Bernard at staff meeting this morning, her black, dark-lashed eyes trailing his every movement.  Before that, the insubordinate expression on her handsome face, the Creole lilt to her voice, as she made her weekly report.  And before that, Bernard with her back to him, while she was speaking with the secretary.  One of her tawny, nylon-sleek heels had played, in and out, in and out of her pump as she'd talked, though he doubted she was aware of the habit.  The fitted skirt of her fawn-colored suit had traced the curve of her bottom--
          Drake blinked, focused less on the candle and more on the dark room around him, and abandoned his attempt at traditional meditation.  If his body craved sensory input, the austerity of his usual surroundings would hardly satisfy it.  As controlled a man as he was--and he considered himself highly controlled--he could not stop being a man.  Unless he occasionally eased his less-than-cerebral interests, he would only compound the problem.
          Best to handle this while he could still appease his physical side with something as simple as an evening stroll.

          October had arrived, but a person wouldn't know it from his surroundings.  Drake wore a t-shirt and jeans, and still felt overdressed, so warm was the evening air.  As he cautiously lowered the armor he usually kept between himself and the world around him, he could feel the humidity in the air slide, thick and sultry across his skin.  Few of the trees that choked so- called "vacant" lots, or loomed over houses, or blocked the dark sky beyond those houses, were deciduous.  Those that were hadn't yet realized the time for falling leaves had arrived.
          He breathed deeply, filled his lungs with the scent of damp, vegetative decay--and consciously slowed his thoughts out of an alert beta state into the relaxation of alpha.
          Appeased by the faintest touch of air to his face, the chirring of insects and amphibians from the woods, his thoughts complied.  Hardly a traditional form of meditation, of course.
          But it made do.
          Alpha-state was not, despite misconceptions, a true "trance."  Drake remained conscious, ambulatory, aware--perhaps even hyper aware.  But thoughts and images came more easily, as did memories, insights.
          And he could use a little insight.
          There had been a time when the Order had acted and thought like one unified entity, magical watchers over a naive society that knew nothing of their existence.  Most Hermetic Orders worked similarly.  Yet this one now harbored dissent.  Some of the Select seemed averse to their latest plan.  Some showed enthusiasm unbecoming for mages of their level and restraint.  Too many hid behind shields of neutrality.
          His memories and mind remained clear; the Order had not fostered such discord before.  He had not changed; they had.
          But why?
          And what, if anything, was he to do--
          Senses open, he smelled the magical bolt, like a whiff of ozone, the instant before it struck him.  Too late to spin and face its source.  To late to cry out in surprise--as if he would.  Barely enough time to draw his shields tight against the sharp smell, the fiery sizzle, the etheric red brilliance of it, and against the impact--
          PAIN!
          He stumbled beneath the blow, back arched while, as if electrified, his muscles spasmed in agony.  Nerve-endings screamed.  Crimson brilliance flooded his vision.  Whispers of static filled his ears.  He felt his knees, then his shoulder make jarring impact against the ground.
          Someone was attacking him.
          With magic.

Forest of the Night page                                        Top



The Lost Beginning....
I'll admit--I don't take requests for revisions well.  But I also gladly admit that what you are about to read, the proposal for my initial version of what would become Forest of the Night, was nowhere near as good as what I revised it into after this one was rejected.  Why was it rejected?  Too dark, for one thing.  The hero was too damned unlikeable (I think you'll agree!) and the "willing sacrifice" concept was a bit too unrealistic. 

And by the way, I'm keeping several of these scenes and ideas to use elsewhere!

But if you're into trivia, or want the reminder that being published doesn't mean you never get rejected, feel free to check out what I sent in as the original version what would become Forest of the Night.-- a little proposal called A Touch of Evil....



Yvonne Jocks
Von Jocks
EvelynVaughn                                                             
Touch of Evil (became FOTN) (Silhouette)
The Lost Beginning....
I'll admit--I don't take requests for revisions well.  But I also gladly admit that what you are about to read, the proposal for my initial version of what would become Forest of the Night, was nowhere near as good as what I revised it into after this one was rejected.  Why was it rejected?  Too dark, for one thing.  The hero was too damned unlikeable (I think you'll agree!) and the "willing sacrifice" concept was a bit too unrealistic. 

And by the way, I'm keeping several of these scenes and ideas to use elsewhere!

But if you're into trivia, or want the reminder that being published doesn't mean you never get rejected, feel free to check out what I sent in as the original version what would become Forest of the Night.-- a little proposal called A Touch of Evil....



Prologue - Touch of Evil Proposal

          "I gather," observed Drake Benedict, eyeing the corpse on the washroom floor, "she was dissatisfied with her arrangement?"
          "She must have been emotionally unstable," noted Victor, with a nervous clearing of his throat.
          Drake lifted his gaze to the older man beside him.  For Victor, trained to be dispassionate, to show unease meant Drake's fellow mage was worried indeed.  But perhaps not nearly enough.
          "Emotionally unstable?" Drake repeated softly.
          Victor swallowed, but nodded.  "That would be my guess."
          "This surprises you?"
          Victor looked away, both from the woman's bloody remains and from his colleague's cold-blooded logic.
          "The woman volunteered to sacrifice her very life force to another person.  We all believe in the good of the Order, yes, but she volunteered to die for it.  She had the foresight of a dull- witted sheep, and you call her emotionally unstable?"  He paused, took a cooling breath.  Perhaps killing herself well before the ritual that would have drained her power--and alone, so that no one else could benefit--would prove this woman's greatest act of sanity.  "My dear Victor, you simply must find a way to bottle your awe-inspiring powers of observation."
          "I did not think she would commit--"
          "You have not thought at all!"  As soon as he snapped the accusation, Drake regretted it.  A second-degree magic user, he too had been trained in dispassion.  It kept him powerful.  Perhaps, he thought, eyeing his balding companion in the blood-spattered mirror, even more powerful than Victor. 
          Not the type of speculation that one tested lightly.
          "This," Drake decided, regaining quiet control with minor effort, "shall prove problematic."  Calmly he left the fourth-floor washroom for the eerie hush of the executive offices.  Implications disturbed him even more than the mess their sacrificial lamb-to-be had made in her premature exit from this realm.  The offices stank of this woman's magic, the one kind in which their Order had never dabbled.  Blood magic.  Second in power only, perhaps, to a willing self-sacrifice. 
          And she'd used her own blood--an intriguing double-whammy.
          "What shall I do with the body?" Victor trailed him.
          "You've had a year here to assimilate; handle it.  It's your problem.  The least of your problems."  Drake studied his blunt-fingered hand, his emerald-eyed-dragon ring.  How to put this so the older man would comprehend its significance without questioning Drake's loyalty?  "Either the Order cancels its ritual, or we've barely a month to locate another volunteer of magical lineage."
          "I don't know what that has--"
          "You do realize what kind of heritage flows through your veins?"  That stopped Victor cold.  Good.  "And mine?"
          "But it needs be a willing sacrifice!" Victor protested.
          "Obviously her willingness proved . . . less than overwhelming?"  Drake had no idea whether his colleagues truly had the resolve, the tenacity, to replace--he glanced toward the loo--that.  Might this, too, fall into his capable hands?
          "Yes," murmured Victor, slow comprehension dawning.  "Of course you're right."
          Drake favored him with a smile, one he knew would not comfort the older man in the least.  "I am always right, Victor," he chided, pleased to see from the man's nervous swallow that he hadn't lost his touch.  Yes, he could probably outmatch the older mage, will to will and power to power, if it became necessary.
          Considering the weaknesses their Order seemed to have developed while he was away, he feared it might.  And he stopped smiling.  "Remember that."
          He rather suspected that Victor would.                                        top

Chapter One - Touch of Evil Proposal
          Karen Jackson had almost forgotten what a creepy place an empty office building could be.  There'd been a time when she'd always arrived early to turn on all the lights, back at the old building, when Personal Edge had been good old SmithTech.  But here in the new, sleek, sterile offices, things were different. 
          The president's level-one secretary had accused Karen of wasting company electricity--Karen didn't know at what point people at Personal Edge warranted overhead lights, but obviously level-three secretaries didn't qualify.  And, to be honest, Karen didn't like being here, anymore, anyway.  Especially not alone.
          Yet here she was, alone, on a Saturday morning.
          Karen made her way past the gloomy maze of gray fabric- walled cubicles, lit only by security lighting and the glowing red eyes of occasional exit signs.  An eerie silence surrounded her, stark contrast to the usual cacophony of mingling conversations, humming photocopiers, ringing phones.
          A deathly silence.
          Acoustic ceilings and pile carpet swallowed even the sound of her footsteps.  She clutched at the large box of donuts she'd brought--Information Services had scheduled a Saturday-morning meeting for its management employees, and management employees must eat.  The carton felt warm, but insubstantial, against the meat-locker chill.  The cooling system took its battle against the heat of a Louisiana autumn very seriously.
          Everything at Personal Edge was far too serious.
          Karen breathed a sigh of relief when finally she reached the relative safety of her own desk.  She put down the donuts and snatched up her work-sweater, wrapping it around her, against the cold.  Familiar things surrounded her now--her kitten calendar, her "World's Greatest Mom" mug, the portrait of Dick and Joey on her desk, and Joey's latest Crayola masterpiece taped to the filing cabinet.  Even if Karen didn't warrant her own cubicle, much less an office--the tallest piece in her work area was the filing cabinet, leaving the U-shaped desk open to the rest of the department--she at least had her own nest in this corporate warren.  She snapped on the recessed lights over her desk, the glow chasing away the shadows and the monsters and--
          "You're in early."
          Karen spun to see that not all the monsters were banished.  "Um--yes, Lenore.  I thought I'd try to get here first, so--"
          "What in the world is that?" interrupted the same level-one secretary who had complained about the lights.  Karen hesitated to follow the woman's manicured point.  Despite a chic suit, styled brown hair, and cover-model makeup, Lenore Hunt looked ghastly.  She'd always seemed unnaturally slim, but this morning Lenore looked gaunt, with shadows beneath dulled eyes, hollows in her cheeks.  Karen could almost make out the ridge of Lenore's teeth behind her upper lip.
          Maybe personal problems caused Lenore Hunt's thinness and her nastiness.  Maybe beneath her icy facade, Lenore Hunt was in fact a decent person, crying out for attention.  Karen latched onto that idea and, resolving to be more patient with the woman, she turned to see what Lenore referred to.
          Joey's drawing.  "Oh!  My little boy did that.  He's only three, but he--"
          "Get rid of it," said Lenore Hunt, voice deceptively soft..
          Karen caught her breath as if slapped.  "Wha--?"
          Ms. Hunt studied the emerald ring on her too-bony hand for effect. "This is a place of business, Mrs. Jackson, not an art gallery for preschool scribbling.  Your desk creates a first impression for people entering this department.  Save trash like that for your refrigerator at home."
          "B--but... we don't deal with clients over here--"
          Hunt silence her with a cool glare.
          Karen struggled to swallow the unacceptable responses that raged to get out.  Cry?  Quit?  Fight?  She and Dick really needed this income.  So she just stared, stricken, helplessness roiling from her so thick it felt tangible.  Her throat strained against the obscenities she wanted to scream at this sleekly dressed, over-educated, underfed ghoul!
          Except that oddly, as Lenore Hunt stood there a moment longer, the level-one secretary didn't look quite so terrible.  Color filled her cheeks; life lit her dark eyes.  She smiled a poised, almost victorious smile, turned, and exited through the fabric-walled maze.  Karen suddenly thought of a well-fed cat, as if Lenore had somehow lapped up her misery, fed on it . . . .
          Karen shuddered, and pulled her sweater closer around her neck as if for protection from a vampire.  Maybe she was overtired.  After all, this was Saturday!  She didn't even feel angry anymore, didn't even feel hurt.  Just . . . drained.
          And on some instinctive level, she knew that scrawny witch had done it on purpose.

          His door was open.
          Cypress Bernard, hurrying to reach her office and get some extra work done before the other managers arrived, stopped so abruptly that her briefcase swung forward and nearly pulled her off her one-inch heels.  The door to the department vice president's office hadn't been unlocked, much less open, for over a week.  It had remained shut tight since Russ, the previous VP, had stunned the entire department by accepting early retirement and leaving not only the company but the state, without a word.
          Well . . . without a word to anyone except Cypress.
          Thanks a lot, Russ.
          But Cy owed her former boss, for hiring her into SmithTech in the first place, and more recently for promoting her to the level she now held at Personal Edge.  Plenty of folks in this area of Louisiana wouldn't have invested that kind of confidence in a woman, much less in a mixed-race woman with suspiciously dark skin and high-society bloodlines.  So if Russ thought those files on his computer were important enough for her to retrieve before his replacement could arrive--and he'd specified that, before I'm replaced--retrieve them she would.
          Cypress ducked into the dark lair of the VP's office--odd, that she got a window but the VPs did not.  Reluctantly, she flipped on the overhead lights, and immediately realized how close she was cutting this.  Of course the place would look different without Russ's sports posters on the dark-panelled walls, his basketball net over the trash can, his Mr. Potato-Head on the desk.  But someone had already moved in new furniture, chairs of black leather, a black-marble-topped coffee table.  Neatly- stacked packing boxes waited against one dark-panelled wall.  A coffee mug the shiny-gray of hematite sat on the desk.
          Well, now she knew what the meeting was about: the new VP.
          Cy considered backing out, here and now, but reminded herself of the note Russ had hidden in her suspense file:  I know this sounds cloak-and-daggerish, Bernard, but you of all people need to see this stuff.  The files are passcode-protected.  My password is "Paranoia."
          She'd tried to get in to the office for two days.  But even Facilities had misplaced their key.
          Not one to chew a decision to death, Cy crossed the room toward the computer, which sat on a wall-length counter behind the desk.  If she meant to do this, speed counted.  Plush gray carpeting swallowed her footsteps as she circled the desk and nearly tripped on another cardboard box, this one open.  Against her better judgement, she glanced down at its contents:  color- coordinated file folders, a box of herbal teas, and a large sphere of onyx, with a golden stand.  She loved crystals; this opaque ball drew her to it, but she resisted.
          She hated doing this.
          Hurrying now, Cy switched on the computer and monitor, and heard the buzz of power surging into it, the series of clicks as the memory counted up.  Then the machine paused and beeped-- neither sound part of the regular procedure.
          Invalid Command.com        System halted
          Cypress stared at the PC for a moment, then typed the proper code for a soft reboot.  The computer screen went blank, then repeated it's clicks, pause, and unwanted beep.  She did a hard reboot by turning the computer off, then back on.  The white plastic of the keyboard seemed particularly stark, inanimate, contrasted against her hands.  She tried to ignore the feeling that she shouldn't be here, since she'd already made the decision, for better or worse.
          She wondered what on earth Russ had wanted her to see.
          Invalid Command.com        System halted
          Someone had seriously messed up this computer.  But nobody had even been in Russell's office since--
          She heard nothing, absolutely nothing, and yet suddenly Cypress knew she wasn't alone.  Even without looking, she also knew who had probably walked in on her, no psychic abilities required.  Whose office was this, after all?
          What a terrible way to start off a working relationship. 
          Slowly, she turned.  The new VP was tall, Caucasian, and male, apparently in his mid-thirties--chalk up another one for the law of probability.  He was broad-shouldered but elegantly so, less like a construction worker and more like a . . . prince.  The cut of his obviously expensive gray suit may have helped put that image in her mind.  Dark hair flowed back from his squared face, almost liquid, the only soft thing about him.  He held his head with his equally squared chin raised in a royal disdain, his dark, deep-set eyes so intense they set the room crackling--and yet, with heavy-lidded dispassion, completely unreadable.
          He looked good, actually, but only like a sculpture might look good.  He seemed as impersonal, inanimate, as the computer.
          Cy took a deep breath and, with an embarrassed smile, stepped around the desk and extended her hand.  "You must be--"
          But she stopped, letting her hand fall to her side, when this new Vice President of Information Services finished entering the room and the Manager of PC/LAN Operations came in after him.  Tucker Long was the same level management that Cypress had attained only three months ago--and he'd made it clear he had no intention of accepting her as a colleague.
          This first-encounter just got better and better, huh?  It was Tucker who demanded, "What the hell are you doing in here?"
          Only then did the new VP speak.  He turned his aloof gaze from Cypress and favored Tucker Long with an equal measure of disinterest.  "Accessing the computer, obviously.  I should think that you of all people would recognize the procedure."
          Had Cypress not been so flustered, she would have smiled at his cool, faintly accented put-down.  She noticed that Tucker, in the spirit of the weekend, had dared to wear jeans . . . but Tucker didn't have to be as careful about his professional image.
          "I meant to pull some of Russ' files," she explained, before Tucker regained his voice.  "But the computer isn't--"
          "What have you done?"  Tucker charged to the computer so fast, Cy barely managed to back out of his way.  Still, she stood way too close when he turned on her.  "You reformatted it?"
          "No.  But someone--"
          "I'm supposed to believe you didn't do this?"  Tucker tried typing a few commands, but his weathered face flushed as stubborn beeps answered his efforts.
          "I reformatted it."  Again the smooth, controlled voice commanded their attention.  Both Tucker and Cy turned to stare at their new vice president.  He was in charge of all the computers at Personal Edge--how could he have made that kind of mistake?
          Their amazement didn't phase the man in the least.  "Quite on purpose, I assure you.  An eccentricity of mine.  New broom sweeps clean, and all that.  You are--?"
          It took a moment for Cy to escape the spell of his soft, impersonal voice and realize he had addressed her.
          "Cypress Bernard, Informations Analyst.  I work pretty closely with the mainframe side--"  She began to offer her hand, but Tucker stepped between them as if she weren't there.
          "Look, uh, Benedict, new brooms or not, Russ might have left some important stuff.  Records, you know?  You did make a back-up first, right?"
          The VP--Benedict?--widened his eyes as if to say, backup?  What backup?
          Tucker shook his head, appalled.  "No backup.  Okay.  Well.  Maybe I can recreate whatever was there, so long as nobody's messed with it."  He glared over his shoulder at Cypress.
          "All I did was reboot," she insisted.
          He turned back to their boss.  "I'll just get a DOS disk--"
          "Thank you, no.  Your welcome proved . . . educational, Mr. Long, but I've no further need of your services at the moment.  Ms. Bernard?"
          When the stunned manager didn't move, the new boss extended a casual hand, not quite touching the backs of his fingers to Tucker's upper arm and gently scooting him out of his and Cy's line of sight.  There was something almost mesmerizing about him, beyond his appearance, beyond his rank.  Cypress had to force herself to think clearly as she met his gaze.
          She was usually the clearest thinker she knew.
          Tucker frowned--probably as angry at not getting the job himself as he was at the new VP's return rudeness.  But he did scoot, right out of the office.  Even the plush carpet couldn't muffle his petulant tread.
          "Yes, Mr. . . ?"  But she didn't even know what to call him.  "I'm sorry--Tucker said 'Benedict,' but I don't know if that's your first or last name."
          "Drake Benedict, Ms. Bernard.  What exactly were you seeking, on my predecessor's now-defunct hard drive?"
          Odd.  The question should seem casual, yet she felt a chill of internal alarms going off somewhere near the base of her spine.  "If everything's gone to byte heaven, I guess it doesn't really matter," she pointed out carefully.
          "I . . . guess."  The expression sounded unfamiliar in his mouth, like a duke referring to public transit.  "Will there be anything else?"
          Well--it could surely have gone worse.  At least he didn't look like he was going to get his boxers in a wad about her little brush with corporate intrigue.
          "Just--congratulations on your new position," she said, stepping closer, offering her hand.
          This time, with an apathetic "Thank you," Drake Benedict took it.
          At the touch of their palms, something jolted through her like an electric shock.  It singed her blood, shuddered over her skin, unbalanced her.  What on earth . . . ?
          But she knew what it was.  And Drake Benedict, new Vice President of Information Services at Personal Edge, had felt it too.  Despite his composure, she saw his eyes flare minutely wider, in a millisecond of surprise.  Power.  Power like Cypress had never felt before in her life--and she knew power.
          She was, after all, a witch.
          What, she had to wonder as they both pretended nothing had happened, as he inclined his head toward the door, as she made her escape.
          What was he?
* * *
          She smelled of mint and rosemary.
          Drake paused as he reached for the door, surprised by his sensory observation.  The woman had trespassed on his computer, would not admit why, obviously possessed some modicum of magical ability--and what stood out about her was her scent?  He closed the door, international corporate signal for "Keep Out," and only then allowed his too-human senses the diversion.  Yes.  Instead of cloying perfume, or sharp cologne, the woman carried on her the disarmingly comforting fragrance of fresh herbs.
          He allowed the diversion, mastered it, and turned his attention to more pressing, more cerebral matters.
          What was she?
          Drake went to his desk, sat, and withdrew his briefcase.  Its protective wards, a magical alarm system of sorts, had not been disturbed.  He retrieved from it the "Org Chart" which graphed the organizational hierarchy at Personal Edge, and confirmed that Cypress Bernard reported to him.  She carried the same level as the managers of both the PC and Mainframe sides of the department, although she had no direct reports herself.
          Her personnel file provided little more.  Her birthday made her thirty years old, and a Taurus.  She'd checked "Other" in the optional box under "Race"--that explained her exotic coloring, dusky skin, heavy black hair.  She'd graduated from Louisiana State University with a 3.7 grade point average, and had been with SmithTech--now Personal Edge--for six years.
          She had received glowing evaluations throughout her career.
          Drake let the useless file fall to his desk.  What he needed to know about her would hardly show up in an evaluation-- besides, he rarely trusted the opinions of others.  What he needed to know about her he must evaluate from the woman herself.  He could already tell that she valued her job; her effort to maintain a professional demeanor both with him and with the surprisingly juvenile Tucker Long told him as much.  So did her dress, especially for a weekend meeting.  The forest-colored suit and gold, primitive jewelry also indicated that she either managed money terribly well, or that she came from a well-to-do family.  Or both.  Her gold Bulova certainly indicated that either her boyfriend or her family--someone inclined to give expensive gifts --could afford slightly more than standard fare.  And the way she stood, moved, and spoke indicated good breeding.
          Beyond the intelligence indicated by her file, Drake had seen her be clever enough not to tell him what she'd been searching for . . . if not clever enough to avoid being caught.
          That made her dangerous.  Drake had erased the hard drive because he trusted his own abilities far above those of others.  The previous VP--the last holdover from the quaint SmithTech-- might have left some sort of virus to avenge his early retirement.  He'd certainly left such a warren of nested sub-directories on the system that Drake preferred starting fresh to cleaning up.  Now he wondered if he had inadvertently accomplished something else more significant.
          Surely someone as intelligent and career-motivated as Cypress Bernard would not risk infiltrating his office for unimportant information?
          Finally, despite his careful shields, Cypress Bernard had sensed Drake's power.  Taking her hand in his had felt like completing a circuit, which could only mean she, too, was a magic user--though obviously not of the Order.  Considering last night's unfortunate loss--which Victor had apparently hushed up nicely--Drake found the coincidence . . . intriguing.
          Whoever and whatever his new Informations Analyst was, he meant to find out.  Only knowing whom--and what--he faced would allow him to judge how best to deal with Ms. Bernard.

          Cypress breathed a sigh of relief when finally she reached the safety of her own office.  Despite the fact that Personal Edge's colors, like those of the electronics they sold, tended toward grays and blacks, she had managed to make her office downright homey.  She'd covered the majority of the dark panelling on her inside wall with hand-woven Indian blankets in earth tones.  Dark green throw-rugs brightened the floor and reflected the colors of the Louisiana pine forest outside the full-length window that made up her outer wall.  Plants in painted clay pots lined the floor beneath the window, most of them herbs from her own backyard garden, and their rich aromas filled the office.
          After a moment's hesitation, Cypress selected a pot of basil and one of pennyroyal, and moved them to either side of her doorway.  Both were protective herbs, symbolizing safety ever since her Great Grammy had introduced her to them.
          Cy wished she could ward her office, surround it with a protective forcefield so that nothing bad could get in.  But Drake Benedict was her boss--at some point, she would have to invite him in . . . and that permission would invalidate the best wards she was capable of magically erecting.  Maybe permanently.
          A person's word was perhaps the most powerful magic of all.
          Besides, she reminded herself.  Just because Drake Benedict was powerful didn't mean he was evil.
          Right?
          Cy sank into her desk chair and made herself take a deep breath.  Surely she had overreacted.  This morning hadn't exactly been her best.  She still had a tendency, under stress, to revert to her Grammy's superstitions, instead of her own more positive Wiccan beliefs.  And after the year her witch friends--her Circle --had experienced, she was bound to get paranoid.
          Like if the rest of them had to deal with monsters, in one form or another, it must now be her turn.
          "They're all married, too," she reminded herself softly.  "So I guess I'm just the rebel in love and monsters."  She turned on her radio--some nice Bach--and switched on her own computer.  This one booted right up . . . in contrast to the enigmatic Drake Benedict's.  But her enthusiasm for some weekend work had faded.
          The man had reformatted his hard drive?  It didn't make sense.  On impulse, Cypress unlocked her bottom desk drawer, the one that held the suspense file.  From Thursday's folder, day- before-yesterday's, she retrieved a sheet of yellow paper with its hastily scrawled note.
          Bernard:
          Personal Edge wants me out.  I'm taking them up on their offer.  Part of the agreement is that I go fast and quiet.  But you know what a stubborn SOB I am.  Something weird is going on at P.E.  I've been keeping records on my PC.  Please, if at all possible, download them and erase the originals before I'm replaced.  The new VP will just be another one of them.
          I know this sounds cloak-and-daggerish, Bernard, but you of all people need to see this stuff.  The files are passcode- protected.  My password is "Paranoia."
          Russ.
          That seemed to be the word for the day:  paranoia.  When Cypress first came across the note, she'd thought it was a joke.  Then, when none of the secretaries could find a key to Russ's office, and even Facilities couldn't get in, she began to harbor suspicions.  Now that she'd actually met Russ's enigmatic new replacement--one of them?--and now that she'd touched him, felt his power surge into her and over her . . . .
          Howdy, Paranoia.  Come on in.  Make yourself comfortable.
          The staff meeting was scheduled to start in a little over an hour.  All she had to do was keep a low profile during that-- surely Benedict would be overwhelmed by other employees far more eager than her to establish an immediate relationship.  By noon, one at the latest, she could flee to the heavily warded safety of her own home, could get together with her circle--her best friends, also witches--and they'd laugh about this . . . .
          But then Cy remembered what her unexpected meeting with Drake Benedict had chased from her mind.  She had plans for this afternoon that included more than witches.
          This afternoon was her latest attempt to merge her professional and personal lives:  her painting party.

          Beneath the rhythmic music from Sierra's boom box, Cypress heard the faint sound of another car door.  Putting down the roller she held and wiping her hands on her cut-offs, she came around the corner of her house into the front yard to see who else had shown up.  Already she'd gotten a better turn-out than she'd expected for her twist on an old-fashioned barn-raising.  Not only had two of her three best friends--and circlemates-- arrived with husbands in tow, but three people from work had also shown up to lend a hand.
          Five people from work, she corrected as she recognized Tim from Mainframe Support and his wife, Sharon.  Both wore overalls, Tim barechested beneath them in an attempt to beat the late September heat.
          Cy raised her paint-mottled hand in welcome.  "Hi!"
          "You said the more the merrier, right?" asked Tim, reaching over the iron gate to unlatch it for his wife.  The protective wards that Cypress had long-ago set around her property barely registered the couple's entrance--after all, they meant her no harm.  After the disturbing sense of imminent danger, this morning at work, Cypress treasured the safety of her own home, her sanctuary, all the more.
          "You know I did," she agreed happily, leading them around the freshly painted front of her one-story house to the side that was still being transformed from a weather-dulled ginger color to a soft mossy shade.  "Thank you so much for coming!  I've got snacks and cold drinks set up in the back yard; help yourselves."
          "Actually," admitted Sharon, "I think Tim's here for the gossip as much as anything."
          Sierra, secretary for the Mainframe side of the department, laughed when she overheard that and slapped a damp paintbrush into Tim's hand.  "You want the poop, baby, you gotta paint."
          "The poop on what?" asked Mary Poitiers, one of Cy's witch friends.  But Cypress knew exactly what--or who--her coworkers wanted to gossip about.  Oh well.  It wasn't as if discussing the man would summon him, like a demon, into their midst.  She was just being superstitious again. 
          "We got a new VP in Information Services today," she explained, for the benefit of the folks who either didn't work at Personal Edge, or hadn't attended the Information Services staff meeting.  Then she picked up her roller and went back to work on the wall beneath the bedroom window; that was all she meant to contribute to this open forum.
          After all, there were only two people here--and maybe their husbands--who would understand if she said Drake Benedict exuded enough energy to levitate this here house.
          One of them, Mary again, protested, "Today's Saturday."
          "The man is gorgeous."  Lisa, from LAN Administration, collaborated Cy's announcement.  "And to think, I almost skipped!  When they introduced him, I almost fell to my knees to give thanks--especially that he's not wearing a wedding ring."  With an appreciative glance at her masculine co-painters, she added, "Unlike some of the other studs around here." 
          The assorted husbands in the group pretended not to notice the compliment, waved it away, or bowed with a flourish, depending on their personalities.
          "Oh he is fine," Sierra admitted, and winked at Cy, like they had a private joke.  "For a white guy.  But he's spooky."
          "Mr. Drake Benedict," announced Tim, dipping his brush into an open can of pain, "is not the most personable of men."
          "I think he scared Karen," offered Sierra, referring to another of the department's secretaries.  "She ducked out early."
          "Y'all had to go in on a Saturday?" squeaked Mary Poitiers, still disbelieving.  She didn't much like the corporate world.
          "Maybe he isn't even human," teased Diana the Sysop, or System Operator, from Mainframe.  "I spilled coffee on the man--"
          That silenced the rest of the Personal Edge contingent.  Then Sierra challenged, "You're lying.  Smooth move!"
          Though not, thought Cypress, as smooth as being caught snooping in his office.
          "That beautiful suit!" mourned Lisa.
          "Not on his suit, just his hands," admitted the Sysop.  "I was getting coffee, and when I turned around there he was, like he'd just appeared there, and it startled me so much--"
          Sierra raised her paintbrush in vindication.  "I told y'all the boy's spooky."
          "--I spilled hot coffee over my hand.  Hurt like hell."
          Cy could see her friend Mary, a healer, surreptitiously check out Diana's hands to make sure they were okay.
          "But what's weird," Diana continued, "is that when he took the cup from me the coffee sloshed onto his hands too, and he didn't even blink.  He just handed me a napkin--"
          Lisa sighed.  "He gave you a napkin?"  But she laughed with everyone else.
          "--and took one himself and turned back to the masses."  Diana shrugged.
          Cypress heard another car door, and put down her roller again.  "Time to put on my hostess hat."  She wondered if it would be bad manners to hope nobody else from the office showed up.  The more they talked about Drake Benedict, the more uncomfortable she felt.  He'd done nothing to reveal himself as evil, of course.  But he surely was, as Sierra had put it, intensely "spooky."
          He was also, she realized, stopping dead on the lawn as she circled the house, standing just outside her gate beside Morris, the Manager of Mainframe Operations.
          For a moment, she thought she was mistaken--paranoia, again.  But no.  The man wore black jeans and a t-shirt instead of, and as sleekly as, an Armani suit.  He could be wearing a sword, breastplate, and cowled black cape, for all the power he exuded.  He stood, almost impatiently, on the sidewalk in front of her little house instead of within the confines of the Personal Edge offices.  But this was definitely Drake Benedict.
          A shiver through her blood confirmed it, just in case her eyes weren't up to the identification.
          "Howdy, Bernard," greeted Morris, looking particularly out of place in jeans.  "You said this was an open-invitation shindig, so I brought the new guy to get to know his folks a bit better.  Hope you don't mind."
          Morris was already unlatching the gate and entering her yard, her sanctuary, before she'd even answered.  Why shouldn't he?  She had said "the more the merrier"--though she'd said it before she knew her next boss would be some kind of mage.
          Cypress stared at Drake Benedict, who waited on the walk outside, tall and composed and . . . in charge.
          "May I come in?" he asked softly, ignoring Moe's laugh at his formality in favor of holding Cy's dismayed attention with his own cool gaze.  He knew exactly what he was asking.
          And he didn't mean to cross her wards until he got it.
          Cypress could say no.  Even with her colleague hesitating on the lawn, looking confused.  Even with other co-workers noticing the scene from behind her, and she knew damn well they'd noticed.  All she had to do was belie the professional image she'd struggled so long to build, and neglect her gracious upbringing, all in one firm "No."
          And she couldn't do it.  She couldn't reject everything important to her, just because he was magic.  She was magic too, after all.  Paranoia wasn't worth it.
          So she held Drake Benedict's dark, seemingly amused gaze.  She reminded herself that southern women were hospitable from strength, not weakness.  She said, "Yes.  Thank you for coming."
          And he smiled a cold smile of victory.                               top

Chapter Two:  Touch of Evil Proposal
          That, decided Drake, had been painfully easy.  When he stepped through her little iron gate, he felt the surprisingly competent forcefield of energy around her property resist, then relax as he passed through.
          He couldn't tell if Cypress Bernard's obvious dismay meant she'd again felt his power, as he entered her territory, or that she realized now that she'd invited him in, he could return at any time.  Probably both.  She might look refreshingly common, her paint-stained cut-offs and tank-top showing off her tawny, bare limbs, her black hair pulled into an impossibly thick ponytail.  But her wards confirmed that she not only sensed magic, she indeed practiced it.
          Whatever she was, whatever she knew--he did not mean to underestimate her.
          "How kind of you to be here," she lied, with a tilt of her chin that acknowledged that they both recognized her insincerity.  But she held onto the pretense, if only for the sake of their spectators, as she turned away and led them around the house.  "I've got snacks and cold drinks out back.  Help yourselves."
          "Oh, I will," he assured her solemnly.
          He found her increased dismay almost . . . amusing.
          In fact, Drake decided as a handful of his underlings greeted him and Morris with attempts at enthusiasm, learning what Cypress Bernard knew might even prove enjoyable.
          And Drake found he enjoyed so little, of late.
          He allowed the gaggle of renovating revelers to arm him with a paint roller and aluminum pan, and joined their efforts if not their eagerness.  He made the obligatory social noises, putting his employees to foolish ease merely by asking about family members, the names of whom he'd memorized from personnel files.  But he paid particular attention of Ms. Bernard's personal friends.  Rand and Sylvia Garner, he repeated silently after the introductions, and he noted that he seemed to make Sylvia particularly uneasy--perhaps she was capable of sensing something off him?  Mary and Guy Poitiers were easy--the little blond woman wore a pentagram, not inverted to show Satanism but point upward, to indicate witchcraft.
          Was that all he was dealing with?  A mere witch?
          But Drake hadn't reached his level of power--personal or professional--by not verifying his hunches.
          As soon as he grew weary of the chatter about work, the blinding simplicity of housepainting, and the insufferable cuteness of the obviously newlywed Poitiers couple, Drake asked Cypress Bernard if he might use her facilities.
          "Inside?" she asked, too quickly, and then had the grace to look embarrassed.  This might be rural Louisiana, but he imagined outhouses had gone out as long ago as . . . Beta videotapes?
          "There's a hallway just inside the back door," started Lisa Phillips, LAN Administrator, thirty-four, divorced, no children, 116 Magnolia Drive.
          But Bernard interrupted.  "It's broken."
          "Pardon?"  She wasn't letting him into her house?
          "You'll have to go next door and ask Mrs. Francis to use hers," she added firmly, wincing just a bit--he imagined, at putting the hospitable "Mrs. Francis" in imagined jeopardy.  No she truly wasn't letting him into her house.
          He looked Cypress Bernard up and down, from her bare feet to her handsomely boned face, testing the woman's resolve--then nodded, almost in admiration.  The little witch--assuming she was one--at least had some sense of self-preservation.  After all, who would ward her property without separately warding her house?
          "Your toilet's broken?" questioned Lisa Phillips again--the sort of woman who, in contrast, hadn't the personal protections of a new-born rabbit.
          "Just a bit ago," added Sylvia Garner, coming to her friend's defense as if through unspoken agreement.
          Again he mused, witches.  Drake smiled insincerely.  "I only wished to wash my hands before partaking of the refreshments.  Unless the sink is broken . . . ?"
          Sylvia Garner, not quite surreptitiously enough, kicked her long-haired husband who said, "You don't want to go in there.  It's pretty messy.  I called a plumber.  He said to stay out.  Health reasons."  He glanced at his wife, who nodded approval.
          "If all you need is to wash your hands," decided their hostess, apparently tiring of the games, "come on with me."  Her look silenced her friends--the Personal Edge flock remained relatively oblivious to the battle of wills played out before them.  But Drake didn't miss how long Bernard's suspicious gaze lingered on him for a moment after she'd started to turn away.
          And well she might be suspicious.  If she meant to show him her kitchen sink, she would drop considerably in his estimation-- since he assumed that, too, would be inside the house.
          And a quaint little house it was, he noted as she led him into the back yard.  Blocky and small, with wooden walls and no fireplace, Cypress Bernard's house looked about as old as she did, but without her personality.  Her yard better reflected her interests.  Someone had built on a covered deck, which held wrought-iron furniture and a multitude of plants in stand-alone pots, hanging from the roof's edge, or climbing trellises.
          Again the scent of herbs, sweet peppermint and savory chives and tangy dill, caught Drake's attention, drew his eyes to the garden that covered over half of her yard.  He blinked, surprised at how crisp the smells were, how vibrant the colors.  Ripe with red tomatoes, red and green peppers, yellow summer squash and purple eggplant, Bernard's garden looked positively festive.  Between some of the vegetables grew autumn colored marigolds, and pom-poms of red and white zinnias, and a row of tall corn stood sentinel in back.  On the outskirts grew more herbs, clustered among large rocks she must have brought in herself, since large rocks seemed all but foreign to the local, silty soil.  Especially large rocks with veins of crystal--quartz?--running through them.
          Apparently his Informations Analyst had quite the green thumb, though the fact that the muggy Louisiana weather gave her a natural hothouse in which to work likely helped.
          "Over here?" prompted that analyst, and Drake turned to see that Bernard had retrieved a serpentine length of green hose from beside her house.  She wasn't letting him inside, after all.
          He felt oddly relieved.
          Which wasn't right--rather, didn't make sense.  His main purpose was, after all, to ascertain who this woman was and, more importantly, whether she knew aught of the Select--wasn't it?
          But he felt his precious focus dissipate beneath the less familiar, almost gentle assault on his usually muted senses.  The surrounding smell of rosemary, oregano, bay,  thyme, grass . . . and fresh paint.  The heat and humidity that he recognized, despite his usual imperceptiveness of such things, heavy on his skin, thick in his lungs.  Water spurted from the metal nozzle of the hose Cypress Bernard held, catching bits of light as it splashed to the grass.  Drake raised his hands, and nearly caught his breath at the feel of water, first warm but quickly cooling, gliding across his skin.
          He looked back at her, at how natural she looked standing before him, hose in hand, her skin looking as warm as the afternoon sunshine, her bare toes curling in the grass.  How real she looked.  How deeply, elementally earthy.
          Alive.
          That's when he realized what was happening.  He was on her property, surrounded by it.  Whatever power this woman had--and what was magical power, but one's personal energy?--infused the vegetation she had grown, the deck she'd probably helped build, the house she'd likely painted herself at least once.  He couldn't stand on this ground without touching her, couldn't inhale without breathing her--not unless he shielded himself far more firmly against outside influences.
          Drake found himself strangely reluctant to do so.
          "Sure you can't get any cleaner, Pontius?" asked Bernard.  Drake drew his hands from the cool trickle of water and stepped back from her.  At least he could minimize the level of stimulus.
          "That is sufficient," he demurred, and watched her coil and carry the hose to the side of the house.  He wiped his hands on his jeans, and the black denim felt coarse and surprisingly warm.
          She caught him watching her.  "You maybe wanted a drink?"
          He looked pointedly at the hose--hardly.  But Cypress Bernard followed his thoughts too easily--he really should strengthen his guard, no matter how intriguing he found this interaction.  She actually smiled, a bright flash of a smile, a dimple appearing in one cheek, and then laughed.  The lilting honesty of the sound startled him.
          He'd done well not to further insist on being allowed inside her home.  Her own guard was falling as well.
          "I meant, there's beer and soda and stuff in the cooler," she explained, cocking her head toward the plastic chest on a wrought-iron chair, beside the table which held some sort of foodstuffs protected from insects beneath bell-lids of wire mesh.
          Then she turned away, raised the hose, and tipped her head to catch some of the water in her open mouth.  She protected herself from the splashes with a cupped, paint-speckled hand.
          Drake made himself look away before she caught him again watching, to better foster her good mood.  He need not have worried.  Within moments, she gave him what he wanted.  As he chose a small bottle of spring water from the bed of ice, Cypress Bernard joined him in the shade of the deck, seemed to size him up, and then said, "Let me ask you something."
          He took a long swallow of cold, pure water, watching her.  Perhaps he'd been thirsty after all.  Resisting the urge to lick his lips, he inclined his head expectantly.
          "Why Stagwater?:" she asked.
          What did she know?  He covered the resurgence of suspicion with a soft yet sharp, "Pardon?"  His own guard back up, he didn't bother to take more water.  He wouldn't taste it, anyway.
          "This area isn't exactly in the middle of an economic boom," Bernard pointed out easily, choosing a cola for herself and popping the top.  "Why on earth would Personal Edge--y'all started in Canada, right?  Why would the company set up corporate headquarters in backwoods Louisiana?"
          She sounded sincere, but . . .  "Why do you assume I know?"
          After a long draw of soda, she did lick her lips.  Then she widened her dark eyes in feigned innocence.  Her drawl thickened.  "Why Mr. Benedict, don't you just know everything?"
          What made her sarcasm so amusing was how close she came to the truth.
          Personal Edge was run by one of the few men Drake considered more powerful than himself, the aging Nigel Prescott-- and Drake was his right-hand man.  Drake had overseen over half the deals it had taken to move the business down to Louisiana, and he was the one who had stayed behind to run their previous company through it's death throes, until he'd managed to close out every aspect of it.
          Drake had also "closed out" most of the third-through- sixth degree magic users in the ceremonial order which Prescott --one of the few first-degree mages--captained; most of them could more easily find another lodge than move to the United States.  The seventh-degree members were still studying magic through a correspondence course, to weed out dabblers and to protect the identity of the higher members, the Select.  Sending them to other fraternities had proved relatively simple.
          Drake knew more about the business and the Order than any other man except for Prescott himself--at least, he had known more about both organizations only a year ago.  But things, especially in the Order, seemed to have somehow changed, almost imperceptibly, in his absence.  Though he would not go so far as to title those changes with such foolishly subjective labels as good and bad, he did find them vaguely . . . disturbing.
          He also knew exactly what the biggest selling point for Stagwater, Louisiana, had been.  But he wasn't about to tell the increasingly nosy Cypress Bernard.
          However, he tried always to speak the truth--if not the whole truth.  "Personal Edge received significant tax breaks specifically because the area is economically depressed," he pointed out.  "SmithTech had its own distribution center in place, which also cut our costs.  We felt it best to start business on a small scale--catalog and in-state retail--and only expand once our foundation proved--"
          "I get it, I get it," she insisted, holding up a hand to make him stop before he even got to the point that they were only an hour outside of New Orleans; hardly the backwoods.  "Just curious, boss."
          Not always the safest personality trait.  But he refrained from pointing that out.  Apparently, though she held suspicions about him, those suspicions did not include the company or its other executives.
          Best to keep it that way.
          Still, though she had relaxed in his presence, Bernard had not fully lowered her guard for him.  And now that he had closed himself off to the sensations and vibrancy she put off like pheromones, he found himself wearying of such small talk.
          He'd come here for a purpose, and meant to fulfill it.  "Let me," he suggested, using her words, "ask you something."
          "Ask away," she invited.  "Though we should get back--"
          "What tradition are you?" 
          Cypress Bernard's guard didn't quite slam shut--but it slid quickly and firmly into place.  "Come again?"
          Drake put down the water, studied the woman before him.  "Mere curiosity," he excused honestly, dangerously.  For effect, he even smiled.  He knew that, unlike hers, his smile was not in the least natural.  "What kind of witch are you?"

          The question shouldn't have surprised her; if she'd sensed his power, how could he not have sensed hers?  But surprise her it did, and for the worst of reasons.
          Cypress was beginning to find her boss attractive.
          Friendly, no.  Charming, hardly.  Romantic fodder, not likely.  But flat-out seductive?  She was a very physical woman, and he was indeed a fine-looking man who wore an air of barely- contained strength about him like an invisible cloak.  Every physical bone in her body had sounded the alarm from the moment he'd followed her away from the others.
          Maybe even before that.
          She'd let her base enjoyment of his nearness, the challenge of his nearly unreadable face, the mesmeric sound of his voice lull her into false complacency.  Therefore she took a moment too long to demand, "What makes you think I'm a witch?"
          "You've obvious magical abilities," he noted, ignorant--she hoped--of his effect on her.  "Your home is warded.  One of your friends wears a pentagram, and your lawn is practically an herbal clearinghouse."
          "That doesn't make me a witch."
          "It hardly," he held her gaze, "exonerates you."
          "And what about you?"  An awkward deflection, at best; she saw by his superior hint of a smile that he thought so too.
          "Your new supervisor?"
          She'd wanted to somehow reconcile her home-life and her work-life . . . and now that it was happening, she didn't like it.  She didn't like it at all.  "Not in this yard you aren't."
          "I might guess Voodoo," he decided, not even blinking.  "Yet in your file you list your maternal grandmother as beneficiary, and her last name is Vega.  Mexican?"
          Of course he had her file, she realized, annoyed and unsettled.  He was her boss.  Even in this yard.  "Spanish."
          "Which does not discount Santeria or Brujeria," he mused.  "Yes, I have what I want; you needn't confirm or deny."
          "I hadn't planned to," she assured him, but her unease may have confirmed for her.  Her training, like her blood, included magic of Haitian, Hispanic, and even Native American origins.  If he'd been using some sort of psychic talents, Cy would have found the accuracy of his guess unnerving.  That he seemed to rely solely on his powers of observation worried her even further.
          "Thank you so much for your time."  He nodded with mock politeness and began to turn away.
          Uhn-uh!  He wasn't playing lord of the manor here.  "Wait!"
          He paused, inclined his head toward her.
          "What about you?" she repeated.
          He considered that, the autumn sunlight playing across his pale darkness, a faint breeze ruffling across his deceptively soft hair.  When he spoke, he sounded almost sincere.  "It may well be in both our best interests that you know as little of me as possible.  Good day."
          Like she was going to take that, boss or no boss.  Cypress dodged in front of Drake Benedict, blocked his path.  "Oh no.  It doesn't work that way."
          "It works, Ms. Bernard, as I say it works."
          "We aren't in the office now.  You're the one who came here; I didn't go looking for you.  You owe me some information."
          He raised an amused eyebrow at the thought of owing her.
          Fine.  He wouldn't tell her?  She could play Sherlock Holmes too.  Cy grasped at her only real clue.  "I'd guess from your attitude that you're a ceremonial magician.  Maybe OTO."
          Drake Benedict blinked.  That's all she got--a blink.  But it was a faster blink than his usual sleepy, almost snakelike movements.  She'd scored a point, all right.  Cy smirked, to hide that she'd been bluffing.  She'd only heard of the OTO by its initials, in pagan company.  Those ceremonial magicians, folks would say, sure don't lack for ego.
          "I am not," clarified her supervisor coldly, "with the Ordo Templis Orientis."  Which proved what she'd wanted.
          "But you are a ceremonial magician."
          After a long pause, he inclined his head again.  Yup--chalk one up for Cypress.  "I am that," he assured her with barely controlled . . . what?  It chilled her, not quite unpleasant, but certainly not safe.  "A ceremonial magician who was invited onto your property.  You'd do well to remember that, witch."
          And he circled her, and strode around the corner of the house to the muffled greetings of the others.
          Cypress stared after him, torn between alarm and noticing how well the man filled a pair of jeans.
          Damn, but she had poor judgement in physical matters.  She had something more important than his cute butt to deal with.
          The sound of the door from the house, onto the back deck, startled her; her friend and fellow witch, Sylvie, peeked furtively out.  "Is the Prince of Darkness gone?"
          An apt image.  "Hit and run.  He went thattaway."
          Sylvie, a slim brunette several years younger than Cypress, raised her eyebrows, intrigued.  Very much like the Prince of Darkness himself.
          Cy asked, "What do you know about ceremonial magicians?"
          "Rut-roh," murmured Sylvie, a cartoon expression she'd picked up from her husband, Rand.  She shut the door behind her, and came to Cypress's side.  "He's a ceremonial magician?"
          "And he seems to think that can beat a witch, hands down."
          "I've heard they've got healthy egos," Sylvie mused.
          Cypress planted her hands on her hips.  "I know he talks the talk--can he walk the walk?"  Bad choice of words; she forced the image of Drake Benedict's back pockets out of her mind.
          "That," admitted Sylvie, "would depend on the magician.  And the witch.  But . . . ."  She valiantly tried not to look discouraging.  "He might have the odds."
          That's what she'd been afraid of.  Cypress shook her head, and looked towards where her magical mystery boss had vanished.
          "Rut-roh," she said.

          "What makes you think I'd know about Western Mystery Traditions?" asked Brigit Peabody when the circle congregated at her duplex that evening.  Brie hadn't attended the painting party because her infant daughter, Morgan, had a cold.
          But her circlemates, done painting, filled her in.
          "If Western Mystery Tradition means ceremonial magicians," said Cypress, "then you already know more than I do."  She spoke quietly, so as not to wake the baby who slept, tummy down and tiny fists clenched, in the playpen beside the dining-room table.  Little Morgan Peabody had her mother's dark red hair--and probably her mother's magical abilities, as well.  Although Cypress had gotten arcane training from her great grandmother and her granny, Brie was the only official family tradition witch in their circle.  Mary and Sylvie, both arriving with armloads of Syl's reference books, were naturally gifted witches, but relatively new to the Craft.  So Brie was Cy's main hope.
          She wouldn't sleep well, certainly wouldn't be able to concentrate at work, as long as Drake Benedict held the upper hand in whatever secretive little game they were playing.
          "Well yes, I know they exist," Brigit admitted now, relaxing into her chair as if she rarely got a chance to do so.  Then again, with a two-month-old baby, she probably didn't.  "They're like fraternities for magic users.  Very secretive.  I've heard people belong for years without knowing the identity of other members--only the high-ups know that.  They rely on mathematics and ancient symbols and precision the way we rely on nature."  She grinned. "Mom calls it 'Magic for anal retentives."
          "What about that ordo templi . . . the OTO?" pursued Cy.
          Sylvie, who'd perched at the table and spread several books before her, checked an index.  Owner of a new-and-used bookstore, she had a strong magical library.  "Ordo Templis Orientis--a Germanic occult order," she announced, after flipping to the appropriate pages.  "They're called Western Mystery Traditions because they believe themselves to be continuations of the mystery orders of Egypt and Greece.  And Atlantis."
          Brigit's clean-cut husband, Steve, walked into the dining room, but stopped as Mary said, "As in, the Lost Continent of?"
          "Oh geez," he muttered, and backed out again.
          Sylvie exchanged a knowing grin with her sister-in-law, Brie, over her brother's skepticism.  "Right.  Ever hear of the Golden Dawn?"
          Actually, Cy had.  Sort of.  "Why does it sound familiar?"
          "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is one of the more famous Western Mystery Traditions," explained Sylvie, brown hair feathering over her cheek as she skimmed her finger across the text.  "Established in the late 1880.  Included members like William Butler Yeats--the poet--and Aleister Crowley.  Huh."
          Cy leaned forward.  "Huh?"
          "He's the one that wrote, 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.'"
          Mary, who had kneeled beside the playpen to rub Morgan's back, asked, "Not, 'an it harm none, do what thou wilt?'"  That was the Wiccan rede.
          "So."  Cy hated to ask it,  to make it real.  "You're saying he could be evil."  She felt inordinately relieved when Sylvie, their best empath, shrugged.  And it wasn't just the relief of feeling safer.
          "I couldn't read anything off of him either way.  Just because he's not a good guy wouldn't make him evil, though.  Assuming there's any such thing," the empath added.
          Cy wasn't the only witch to stare at her.  "You're lying!  After the nasties we've run into this year?"
          "Those were dangerous, but not wholly evil," Sylvie insisted.  "Like me and the werewolf.  Lycanthropy makes people do evil things, but it doesn't make them evil.  It's a disease."
          Cy grimaced.  "One 12-step program I do not want to see."
          "Or what happened to Brigit.  The spirit that had threatened her was the product of his environment--religious fanaticism and mass hysteria messed him up."  She got up, leaned into the hallway.  "Hey Steve, was Josiah Blakelee inherently evil?"  As his sister, she was allowed to tease him.
          "No comment."  Steve liked to ignore the "weird stuff."
          "The thing in the swamp that almost killed Guy was evil," declared Mary, her tone daring an argument.  She wouldn't get it from Cypress.  Cy had seen evil all her life, in high-society megalomaniacs and in people so wholly intolerant they could be nothing but evil.  She respected Sylvie's intelligence . . . but evil couldn't be intellectualized away.
          "Honey, there is definitely such a thing."  She propped her chin on her fist.  "But I surely hope my new VP isn't involved with it.  Try explaining that one at my next job interview.  'So why did you leave your last position, Ms. Bernard?'"
          "He's a ceremonial magician, not a Thuggie," Brie clarified encouragingly.  "From what I've heard, they're more about wisdom and enlightenment than summoning demons, or cursing enemies."
          Cy stared at her friend--this was comfort?  "If he's even summoned one demon, that is one damn demon too many.  Look at this Aleister Crowley person.  Even the folks that actually like him admit he was no angel.  And he was in the Golden Dawn?"
          "They kicked him out."  Sylvie had gone back to her books.  "Before they disbanded, earlier this century.  He formed a splinter group.  Lots of them did.  The Merlin Temple, the Order of the Stones, the Society of Light."  She smiled.  "MT, OTS, and SOL for short."
          "SOL's what I guess I am."  Cy glanced belatedly at the sleeping baby before modifying, "Spit out of luck.  So we don't have any way to be sure who this man is working with?"
          "Not unless his order has team jerseys or vanity license plates," joked Sylvie.  "Maybe they know a secret handshake."
          Cy remembered how his hand had electrified hers this morning, and shivered.  Girl, if only you knew.  She slumped back in her chair, folded her arms.  Okay, so maybe Benedict wasn't evil.  Maybe he was just checking her out--so to speak.  Maybe he'd even wanted to make sure she didn't pose any danger to him; she liked that idea, even if she didn't wholly believe it.  But him invading her wards, establishing himself as some kind of conqueror instead of leaving them at an equal level--that she truly hated to accept.
          "Too bad I don't know where he lives," she muttered darkly.
          And Mary, still on the floor, said, "Within walking distance from you."  She drew her hand from the baby, sat back on her heels--and sneezed.  Cy suspected Morgan's cold would be much better soon.  "When he left this afternoon, right after talking to you, whatsisname--the white-haired one--"
          "Morris?"
          "Morris offered him a ride.  But Drake said he would walk.  I bet if we talk to neighbors, they'd know.  If not--"  She wrinkled her nose.  "I haf my vays."
          Cy began to grin.
          "But he got you to let him in because he guessed your weaknesses," warned Sylvie.  "He set you up in front of your colleagues.  We don't know any of his weaknesses.  Those secret orders don't exactly publicize their vulnerabilities."
          "Exactly," decided Cypress, poking the table for emphasis.
          The other three stared at her, blank.  "They're a secret order?" she prodded.  Nothing.  "Catch up with the program, women!" she teased.  "That's their weakness." 
          Then she looked at Brie, whose eyes widened in understanding.  "We'll never talk him into it!"
          But Cypress hadn't gotten as far in the world as she had by accepting never as an answer.

          "I cannot believe," muttered Steve Peabody, heading up Drake Benedict's front walk, "that you talked me into this."
          "That's because you've got yourself one narrow belief system.  But we love you anyway."  Cypress, back on the sidewalk with Brigit, hadn't yet followed Steve onto her boss's property.  And a fine piece of property it was.  The two-story, gray-brick house had an impressive, double-doored entranceway and windows of bevelled glass, with precise, uninspired landscaping outside.  Then again, inspired landscaping would have him living on the edge of a sea-tossed cliff . . . and in Louisiana, that was hardly likely.
          Steve paused and looked meaningfully back at his wife and, as he put it, his friend-in-law.  This would be Cypress's second time in two days to trespass onto Drake Benedict's property.  First his computer, yesterday morning.  And now, this overcast afternoon, his home.
          She corrected herself:  his house.  And it didn't count as trespassing if he invited them in.
          Assuming he did invite them in.
          Cy would have taken Brie's hand for strength, but both of Brie's hands were busy carrying a covered casserole.  So Cypress took the step alone.
          The energy that shivered across her when she entered his property felt familiar, but hardly safe.  Yeah, Benedict had definitely warded the place.  But since she and Brigit meant no harm--harm none, right?--the wards let them in.
          "He knows we're here," Brie murmured, low, as they cleared the first magical boundaries.
          "I'm thinking he knew already," Cy murmured back.
          Steve gave them both a disgusted look.  But as they reached the front stoop, he did mutter, "Only because I love you," to his wife before he knocked.  Steve had gotten a lot more open-minded about magic over the last year--which just went to show how close-minded he'd once been.  But he still didn't believe an executive vice president at a company like Personal Edge could think he was a ceremonial magician.
          The vice president who opened the door--one of the doors-- looked equally skeptical.  He also looked as good as Cypress had remembered, good beyond his casual, dark clothes.  Like a man sculpted from alabaster, she thought, with eyes of jet.
          Those eyes darted from Steve, to Brie, to the casserole, and finally, meaningfully to Cypress.  "To what," Drake Benedict inquired, "do I owe this . . . pleasure?"
          Show time.  "We heard you lived near us, and thought we'd welcome you to the neighborhood," said Cypress brightly.  "Maybe visit.  Get to know one another."
          His dark gaze, annoyed and unwavering, all but said:  Do the words 'fat chance' mean anything to you?  The opinion of Cy's co-workers had held sway over her, obliging her to grant him entrance.  But Benedict had no reason at all to be civil to some mere suburbanite couple bearing macaroni.
          Or so he thought.
          "This is Brigit Peabody," Cy introduced as if he appeared at all welcoming, and she mentally crossed her fingers.  "And this is her husband, Steve.  Steve owns and edits the local newspaper."
          And she smiled her sweetest, most gracious smile.                              top


Chapter Three:  Touch of Evil Proposal
          Drake Benedict's chin rose, almost imperceptibly--and he swallowed.  Quickly.  On another man, it might have been a gulp.  Muscles in his cheek worked, tense.
          "Do come in," he said, in something just short of a hiss.
          Chalk one up to Cypress Bernard.
          Steve draped his arm around his wife, demonstrating the difference between skepticism and carelessness.  Stiffly, Benedict stepped away, leaving an open path for the couple.  But as Cypress began to follow them, he angled himself back in front of her, his broad chest and shoulder blocking her passage--
          --stopping her in the middle of the overpoweringly protective energy of his wards.  Magic flowed over and around her, harmless--he had invited her in--yet tangible, disorienting.  But this abrupt lesson in what he was capable of couldn't unsettle her so much as his knowing, accusatory glare.
          He held her, pinned her with his gaze as she stared helplessly back up at him.  Then, seemingly satisfied that she understood her mistake, he spun and followed his "guests."
          Leaving Cypress to stumble free from his wards on her own-- and to wonder how just how dearly she would pay for penetrating Drake Benedict's defenses.

          The little fool!
          As soon as he thought that, Drake realized just how B-movie it sounded, and composed himself.  But he disliked being drawn from his own pursuits to entertain strangers.  He hardly considered himself a social man.  And he very much resented being threatened by one of his own underlings.
          Although, he admitted to himself as he reached the living room, stepping aside so that the straight-backed Cypress Bernard could join her friends by the sofa, she had indeed been clever.
          Turnabout being fair play, and all that.
          "Please," he said to Mrs. Peabody, taking the casserole-- how rustic--from her.  "Do make yourselves comfortable.  May I get drinks?"
          All three declined, a shade too quickly.  Not surprising.  Nor was he likely to eat any food the little witch--witches?--had prepared.  To maintain the pretense, though, he carried the covered dish to his large, impeccably neat kitchen.
          Of course it was neat.  He hadn't lived here a week.
          Yet already he knew the town was crawling with witches.  Perhaps for the same reason that had drawn his Order?  It occurred to him, as he put the casserole into the double-doored, stainless-steel refrigerator, that he was making assumptions.  So, closing the ice-box door, he glanced back toward the unseen living room and cast his thoughts outward, brushed them lightly over his visitors.
          Both women were indeed magic-users; their resistance to his gentle probing felt reinforced by craft.  Peabody, though well shielded, seemed mundane.  Interesting.  Drake had known few mages to have non-practicing spouses.  Few, actually, to take spouses at all.  Romantic entanglements detracted far too severely from one's focus.
          Having just made tea before he sensed their arrival, Drake moved the pot and four teacups onto a serving tray, careful not to burn himself the way the Mainframe Sysop had.  Just because he rarely registered normal levels of pain--so strictly did he filter sensory input--didn't mean he welcomed expending energy to heal himself.  Then he carried the tray back into the living room, for show if nothing else.  As long as these interlopers were here, he might as well play good host.
          After all, Cypress Bernard's move had effectively put him in check.  He planned to consider his own next move carefully.
          "Are you sure you won't have anything?" he tested again, setting the tray on the coffee table and sinking onto a black leather.  He poured his own cup in front of them, to show he meant to drink from the same source.
          The three on the sofa shook their heads.  Just as well.  He could easily have doctored the cups.
          "You own the local paper?" he asked Steve, even as he wondered--and do you know your wife is a witch?  If Steve Peabody did not know, then he would pose less of a threat to the Order's secrecy.  But if he knew, and was in on Bernard's plan to invade Drake's wards, then he already posed a threat indeed.  Were, that is, the pen mightier than the sword.  Which it was not. 
          Peabody shifted into a more open position, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees as he expounded about his paper.  Mentally filing information about the quaint-sounding Stagwater Sentinel, Drake took a sip of tea.
          Gentle warmth from the china teacup soothed his palms.  Steam caressed his face, its faint aroma mingling with a whiff of peppermint to . . . .
          Realizing what was happening--again--Drake looked too quickly at Cypress Bernard.  She widened her eyes at his silent accusation.  Either she was a better mage and actress than he suspected, or she was not doing this on purpose.
          She was, however, doing it.
          "So you're new here," prompted Peabody, necessitating Drake's involvement in the conversation.  "From up north?"
          "Canada," Drake clarified, trying to ignore how his track lighting conquered the shadows of this too-neat room, how comfortable the leather chair felt.  "British Columbia."
          "The weather must be gorgeous this time of year."  This time Bernard spoke, her voice a husky lilt that he already recognized as Creole.  "Does the heat here bother you?"
          "I imagine it is," he admitted, fully meeting her sloe-eyed interest . . . in something as trivial as how he managed the weather?  He supposed, if he troubled himself, he could recall enough memories of autumn leaves, brilliant foliage, the entire, picture-post-card qualifications.  But nature's glory had rarely mattered; the change to a more tropical environment mattered even less.  "And no, it does not."
          He wondered, if he saw the autumn leaves with Cypress Bernard, whether the sight would make more of an impression.  Just her presence in the room was somehow lending him to savor the taste of his tea, to catalog his visitors' accents and habits and scents . . . .  When Brigit Peabody turned to lean against her husband's shoulder, he smelled something else.  A touch of . . . milk?  A touch of powder.
          He looked at them and said, "You've a baby."
          They might have been pretending to be social only moments ago--for all he knew, perhaps it was no pretense.  But all three stiffened at his deduction.  Peabody's hand closed over his wife's, their eyes searching his face to ascertain exactly what he had meant by his announcement.
          When all he'd actually meant was--they had a baby.
          He realized they interpreted it as a threat.  Even--  His gaze slid back to Bernard, his departmental witch, as she uncrossed her long, denim-covered legs and tried to mask her dismay.  The wise thing for Drake to do would be to encourage their assumption.  Perhaps ask the child's age, gender, description.  Perhaps wonder aloud who kept it at this very moment.  They'd put him in check by invading his wards?  He now knew their greatest weakness.  Checkmate.
          And yet his gaze returned to just how tightly husband and wife had grasped each-other's hand, their forearms and elbows pressed close, their knuckles almost white.  Their strengths, their arcane and mundane energies, combined against perceived danger.  He considered probing them again, to test how much stronger they became through this joining, for he could tell they'd indeed become stronger.
          He decided against defiling the moment with analysis.
          "You smell of baby powder," he explained smoothly, too much the gentleman to mention the milk.  "Rather pleasant, in fact.  As is Ms. Bernard's eau de peppermint?"
          Bernard blinked, surprised.  "I smell like peppermint?"
          Peabody, relaxing to the change of topic just as Drake had hoped, challenged, "You didn't know you smell like herbs?"
          Bernard stared at him, then at Mrs. Peabody, who nodded and even attempted a wary smile.  Then Bernard stared back at Drake, her full lips still parted in surprise.
          The chill of the air-conditioner.  The faint sound of birds and insects outside his windows.  The warmth of compan--
          That one surprised him more than all the rest:  the warmth of companionship.  It surprised him and it threatened him.  He had transcended emotional reactions, long ago rejected the distractions of friendship and affections.  He had no intention of backsliding now, merely because he had a long, quiet night ahead of him.  Merely because he only now realized just how large this house was for a single person.  Merely because he was, indeed, new in town, in state, in country.
          He remained a mage, above all else.  He had his Order.
          However, he hedged, amused by Cypress's comical expression, his Order did not prohibit an occasional social diversion.
          "Hardly unpleasant," he reassured her, and raised his teacup to his lips again.  Understatement.  For whatever reason, he very much enjoyed her scent, her presence.  He enjoyed the vibrant play of her black eyes, the way his lighting caught a glitter off her ebony hair, the symmetry of her high cheekbones, and how her parted lips now turned up into a flattered smile.
          She was his direct report--but he would hardly behave unprofessionally, no matter how intriguing he found her.  She was a witch--but he couldn't imagine her having enough strength, certainly enough control, to pose a threat.  And yet she seemed to know something . . . .
          A threat to his Order, he had to take more seriously.  But Drake decided, settling back in the comfort of his chair, that even if she posed a danger to his Order, he would not discover what that might be unless he won her trust.
          Or at least, he qualified, belied her worst suspicions.
          He did notice, with amused satisfaction, that even as the others relaxed in his presence, as they laughed over something Peabody said, or frowned mock warnings at one another--nobody else touched the tea.
          Instead of escaping after a courteous twenty minutes, Bernard and her friends stayed for over an hour--and then it was Mrs. Peabody, probably thinking of her child, who finally made the first overtures to leave.
          "Maybe we can do this again, sometime," suggested Peabody, as the four of them reached Drake's foyer.  The editor had proven himself surprisingly intelligent, Drake conceded, and an interesting conversationalist.  Peabody's wife, oddly, glanced at Cypress before nodding. "I'd like that."
          Drake hesitated, realizing nobody had ever said that to him.  Odd, that such an everyday exchange should strike him so.
          "On neutral ground?" the redhead qualified with a laugh, misinterpreting his silence.  It was the first reference any of them had made to the magical undercurrents to their visit.  Peabody rolled his eyes--yes, he knew of his wife's leanings.
          "Not necessary," Drake assured them as the couple stepped outside, into the humid September night.  After all, now that they'd entered his house, keeping them out would require a foolish amount of energy.  He looked meaningfully down at Cypress Bernard, who had hesitated, just inside the current of his wards.
          What was it about the woman that so appealed to him?
          "But next time," he clarified, more softly but still in command, "do call before you come?"
          She had the grace to glance down, chagrined at having set him up.  But when she looked back, she surprised him with a bright smile.
          "Or else?" she teased, too lightly, far too affectionately.
          "Exactly," he assured her, in an almost-hiss.
          Her smile faltered beneath his threat, then stubbornly brightened again, reassurance that she hadn't taken him seriously.  Perhaps she should.  He was her boss, and a very powerful mage in a very powerful Order.  Her appeal could mean nothing to him.  Best for them both to keep their distance.
          He did not smile back.
          Yet the woman seemed determined.  "The casserole's legit," she announced with determined gaiety.  "No little love whammies on it or anything.  Treat yourself."
          Then she backed away from him, out the door, eyes sparkling at him until finally she pun and hurried after her friends.
          Drake watched her.  Then he realized he was watching her and, annoyed, shut the door.

          They came.
          At first the dark antechamber sat empty, windowless, black and deathly silent.  Then a single line of light appeared in the void, alien against the stillness of the little room, and quickly widened into a tall rectangle.  Artificial illumination poured into the chamber's interior, catching ghostly shapes in the incense smoke, creating a halo for the two cowled figures who stepped forward, from the light into the darkness.
          Then the elevator doors slid shut behind them, leaving only the candles they carried for faint illumination.
          They spoke in low, solemn tones as, gradually, the other five members of the Select arrived.  For each, the elevator's secret door flooded the antechamber with momentary brightness, then slid silently shut as its black-robed occupants stepped off.  First one, then three, then one.
          All that kept the seven figures from anonymity, other than their heights and voices, were the medallions they wore, each with a symbol or ancient rune indicative of their magical names.  A sword, for Pendragon.  A Grail, for Parsifal.  The Key of Solomon, for Faust.
          Only the Gray Man's medallion, in the murky candlelight, was blank.  Thus it seemed only fitting that, into their quiet discussion of the third-degree mage's suicide, the Gray Man would formulate it into a question:  "Can she in fact be replaced?"
          Calliope, turning her shadowed face, said, "She must."
          "There are certain parameters," clarified Pendragon sternly, "which must be met."
          Now several cowled heads turned to him.  Parameters were the by-word of ceremonial magic, after all.  One working had dominated their time and energies for almost two years:  The Ritual of Enlightenment.  The ritual would provide the only route by which their leader, the Gatekeeper, already an adept of tremendous wisdom and power, could possibly advance further.
          And as the leader advanced, so would his disciples.
          However, the ritual became possible only on a single night in late October, at a specific time, in this year, in this place.
          Parameters.
          "What I mean," clarified Pendragon, his done dropping with annoyance, "is that to succeed in the ritual, we must only meet those parameters.  Our recent volunteer--"  He did not say her name; they all knew she'd attempted some sort of magic through her suicide, "--can indeed be replaced."
          "If," agreed Delphi, the taper in her hands revealing a hint of smooth skin, soft lips, "she meets the same parameters."
          Pendragon, silent, inclined his head.
          The smell of burnt herbs--clove, and dragon's blood--curled around and between them, smoke writhing in the candlelight.
          "Of magical lineage," clarified the Gray Man for them, obviously not satisfied.  "And . . . a volunteer?"
          "Willing," clarified Faust.
          "Yet we choose him or her," challenged the Gray Man.
          "That is," hissed Pendragon, "the plan.  We cannot compromise the parameters of the ritual.  Our choice shall be willing."
          Had his candle not writhed under his words, they might not even have heard the Gray Man's comeback, "With the proper persuasion, of course."
          Even then, they pretended not to hear.  The tall clock in the corner of the antechamber had begun to chime its overture.  The Select took formation and, with solemn tread, pushed through the black velvet curtains to enter the perfectly square ritual chamber itself exactly as the clock began to toll the hours.
          Midnight.
          In single formation each entered, carrying candles where neither artificial nor sunlight had ever been permitted.  Each took his or her position before thrones on either side of the tall, unlit quarter candles--east, south, west, north.
          Before the larger northern throne their leader, the Gatekeeper, waited.  Only he had no hood, instead wearing a black Pharaonic nemyss atop his white hair.
          As the twelfth stroke rang into silence he spoke, strong and sure:  "Why have you come to this place?"
          Answered the Select--Pendragon, Calliope, Faust--, "I come to seek, to see, to serve."
          Spoke the Gatekeeper, "Do you come of your own free will?"
          Answered the Select--Delphi, Gilgamesh, Parsifal--, "I do."
          And only then, a deliberate beat behind the other six, did the Gray Man also say, "I do."  The editorial implied by his timing was not lost on the others, especially not Pendragon, whose shadowed face turned slowly, disapprovingly, toward him.
          But the Gatekeeper ignored the discordant note beneath the careful measure of their ritual, and led them into their opening meditation, in search of a new--and somewhat willing--sacrifice.

          "They were erased," said Karen as Cy walked by her desk.
          Already reluctant to go into Friday staff meeting any sooner than necessary, Cypress stopped to stare at the level- three secretary.  "The back-up tapes?"
          "Mmhm."  After catching a cough against the back of her hand, Karen finished scribbling a pink, While You Were Out phone message, tucked it into the appropriate memo slot, and looked back at Cy.  A short brunette woman in her mid-thirties, Karen was one of the people at the office on whom Cy truly thought she could depend.  "That's what you asked me to find out, right?"
          Cypress nodded, still staring.  Since most of the Personal Edge computers were connected on a LAN, or local access network, much of their activity was recorded onto tape each night, in a central location.  She'd thought that, if Drake Benedict had erased Russ's computer, she might have a slim chance of finding the information she'd wanted on the LAN back-up tapes.
          The multi-line phone buzzed; Karen smiled apologetically, coughed again, and picked it up.  "PC Services.  May I help you?  Right, Sierra.  Mmhm.  Just forward them over."
           How do back-up tapes get erased?  But Cy figured she knew that better than Karen would.  A magnetic field, most likely.  And if she started asking how the storage procedure could be so shoddy as to allow magnetism anywhere near those tapes, she'd be stepping on Tucker Long's toes.  Bad enough that Cy was daring talk to his secretary.
          "Well, thanks for looking into it, anyhow."  Cy leaned her elbows on the counter beside Karen's desk as Karen hung up the phone, but then noticed Sierra hurrying toward the conference room, steno-pad in hand.  Two final supervisors from the mainframe side bringing up the rear.  It looked like she'd avoided Drake Benedict's cold presence as long as she could.
          But she noticed something odd about the secretary's workstation.  "Hasn't Joey drawn anymore pictures for your file cabinet, Karen?  I've missed them."
          For some reason, Karen's eyes widened--then she looked quickly down.  "Um . . . ." she said, picking up a pen, fumbling it.  "It's--"  She took a deep breath, and looked up.  "I decided that they weren't very businesslike," she said in an odd tone.
          Cy would have laughed--businesslike?--had Karen's brown eyes not seemed so haunted.  Instead, Cy looked closer.
          "You still aren't feeling any better, are you?  You shouldn't have come back in.  Do you want to go home?"
          The telephone buzzed.  Reaching for it, Karen quickly shook her head.  "I'm as better as I'm going to get," she whispered, then punched the line button.  "PC Services.  May I help you?"  She tipped her head toward the conference room.  "I'm sorry; they're all in staff meeting right now.  May I take a message?"
          Cypress backed away from the reception desk, her internal alarms ringing loud and clear--was something going on with Karen?
          Then she realized some of those internal alarms were probably her internal clock, telling her she was officially late.  Sierra waited in the doorway, giving her a look, and Cy hurried in, a little embarrassed to be the last one.
          Especially when Drake Benedict, already seated, flicked his dark, intense gaze toward her, then back to his paperwork, as if dismissing her just that quickly.  Tucker Long, beside him, rolled his eyes at just who was holding up the show.  Cy and Sierra found empty seats even while Benedict started the meeting, his faintly accented voice commanding the attention of the entire room, though he spoke softly.
          He definitely commanded Cy's attention--and it wasn't as if she didn't fight it.  When the sure, measured rhythm of his speech tingled through her, she quickly concentrated on the photocopied agenda in front of her.  When she caught herself admiring the aristocratic set of his shoulders, his posture, his profile, wrenched her attention back to her colleagues.  As if each of the two managers, and then their supervisors, gave particularly interesting weekly activity reports!  When it was finally her turn, she reported her work with data for the Credit, Retail Ops, and Distribution departments clearly and confidently.
          Knowing that she would want nothing more than to stumble into silence when her boss's intense gaze turned on her--knowing how foolishly hurt she'd felt when, on Monday, he seemed no warmer than he had before their Sunday visit--she had practiced in the car all the way to work.
          "What about Personnel?" asked Benedict, scribbling a quick note, when she finished.  That surprised her--not that he hadn't quizzed other employees.  He kept them on their toes, she'd give him that.  He'd won their respect, if not their affection.
          "Personnel?" she echoed.
          He waited, arrogantly sure she'd heard him the first time.
          "If you mean, do I work with them," she clarified, a bit defensive, "then the answer is yes.  My main priority has been Credit lately, because they're just now getting themselves off the ground.  But I work with Personnel.  What was it I can find out for you?"  As an afterthought, she added, "Sir?"
          Nobody had ever called Russ "Sir," but almost everyone addressed this new VP so.
          Instead of answering immediately, Benedict sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and slid his gaze to Tucker Long.  "I noticed that Ms. Jackson is back at her desk?"
          Tucker quickly recovered from being tagged It.  "Why, yessir, Drake.  I called her yesterday and told her I didn't like her attendance record this past year, not one bit."
          "How proactive of you," murmured Benedict thoughtfully.  "Most people send get-well-soon cards; you send 'get-well-now?'"
          Tucker's grin faltered.  Cy's grin, on the other hand, just begged to be let loose.  Just when you think it's safe to dislike this guy . . . .
          "What about Timothy Montville?"  Benedict turned his attention to the supervisor of LAN support, who flushed guiltily.
          "Still out with some kind of throat problem, Sir."
          In fact, the VP's questioning quickly revealed that over ten percent of their department was out sick.
          And he knew every one of them by name. Cy gave up trying to avoid the mesmeric draw of Drake Benedict in action.  Even Russ hadn't known everyone's name.  The contrast between her boss's arrogant apathy and his clear-headed priorities fascinated her.
          He fascinated her.
          He was also looking at her again.  "What I want of you, Ms. Bernard," he clarified, "is a report on our absentee rate, compared with the rest of the company.  Can you do that?"
          "Already did."  Ha--he blinked.  That, she'd already come to realize, was how the cold-blooded, slow-moving wizard showed surprise.  "Last April I compiled a report on just that; a friend of mine thought there were maybe ergonomic problems here."
          In fact, you met her, she wanted to add.  Mary Poitiers.  The healer.  How curious, nicely so, to know that had they been alone, she could say just that--and her boss would understand!
          But they weren't alone.  "Would you like me to include it with my current findings, so you can compare the two?"
          Another blink, but this one slower, more thoughtful.  His heavy lids shadowed his dark eyes, so that she almost couldn't read the suspicion in them.  Of her?  What had she done?
          But no, when his gaze cleared, he turned none of the distrust toward her.  "Yes," he agreed finally.  "Please do that.  If Human Resources has similar records from SmithTech . . . ?"
          "I'll ask," she assured him, intrigued--because this interested her too?  Because he'd maybe cast some kind of "team player" whammy on the whole department?  Or just because she liked the way Drake Benedict's dark eyes lingered on her before he said, "Thank you," and moved on to pending projects?
          She wanted to compile those reports, if only to have him thank her again.  Maybe less aloofly, less like a polite-by-rote nobleman and more like someone who actually appreciated her.
          Rather, her work.
          She made a note on the back of her meeting agenda:  Pull Absentee Info.  But listening to the confident purr of his words, watching the contrast of his soft hair barely brushing against his squared face as he drilled first one, then another manager with his attention, she knew that was silly.
          No way was she forgetting anything this man said to her.

          Friday evening.  Drake, in the dark second bedroom of his two-story home, was having trouble meditating.  This very much frustrated him, and on more counts than one.  As a second-degree adept, practiced since childhood, he should be able to meditate--
          He almost smiled at the thought.  Should be able to meditate with his eyes closed?
          But that sort of humor represented the problem.  His focus was drifting far too often nowadays, to inconsequential ideas, sounds, images--or scents.  All the more reason to turn his thoughts inward, to explore the motivations behind his suspicions, his frustrations . . . his interests.
          This room provided the perfect meditative atmosphere.  Black velvet swathed the walls, shutting out natural light, since natural light dissipated etheric forms.  Dark rugs lay on the floor, to support whatever yoga position he might adopt.  He had a small altar with a candle on it, and a smoking censor, to promote a more thorough shift of his brain-wave patterns.
          Yet even with the scent of myrrh thick in his nostrils, and a single light of a candleflame on which to focus, he could not maintain a shallow, much less deep, alpha state.
          Whenever he began slow his thoughts into altered consciousness, to purposefully weaken his filters of rationality and open his mind to the non-ordinary, he pictured Cypress Bernard.  Bernard at staff meeting this morning, her black, dark-lashed eyes trailing his every movement.  Before that, the insubordinate expression on her handsome face, the Creole lilt to her voice, as she made her weekly report.  And before that, Bernard with her back to him, while she was speaking with the secretary.  One of her tawny, nylon-sleek heels had played, in and out, in and out of her pump as she'd talked, though he doubted she was aware of the habit.  The fitted skirt of her fawn-colored suit had traced the curve of her bottom--
          Drake blinked, focused less on the candle and more on the dark room around him, and abandoned his attempt at traditional meditation.  If his body craved sensory input, the austerity of his usual surroundings would hardly satisfy it.  As controlled a man as he was--and he considered himself highly controlled--he could not stop being a man.  Unless he occasionally eased his less-than-cerebral interests, he would only compound the problem.
          Best to handle this while he could still appease his physical side with something as simple as an evening stroll.

          October had arrived, but a person wouldn't know it from his surroundings.  Drake wore a t-shirt and jeans, and still felt overdressed, so warm was the evening air.  As he cautiously lowered the armor he usually kept between himself and the world around him, he could feel the humidity in the air slide, thick and sultry across his skin.  Few of the trees that choked so- called "vacant" lots, or loomed over houses, or blocked the dark sky beyond those houses, were deciduous.  Those that were hadn't yet realized the time for falling leaves had arrived.
          He breathed deeply, filled his lungs with the scent of damp, vegetative decay--and consciously slowed his thoughts out of an alert beta state into the relaxation of alpha.
          Appeased by the faintest touch of air to his face, the chirring of insects and amphibians from the woods, his thoughts complied.  Hardly a traditional form of meditation, of course.
          But it made do.
          Alpha-state was not, despite misconceptions, a true "trance."  Drake remained conscious, ambulatory, aware--perhaps even hyper aware.  But thoughts and images came more easily, as did memories, insights.
          And he could use a little insight.
          There had been a time when the Order had acted and thought like one unified entity, magical watchers over a naive society that knew nothing of their existence.  Most Hermetic Orders worked similarly.  Yet this one now harbored dissent.  Some of the Select seemed averse to their latest plan.  Some showed enthusiasm unbecoming for mages of their level and restraint.  Too many hid behind shields of neutrality.
          His memories and mind remained clear; the Order had not fostered such discord before.  He had not changed; they had.
          But why?
          And what, if anything, was he to do--
          Senses open, he smelled the magical bolt, like a whiff of ozone, the instant before it struck him.  Too late to spin and face its source.  To late to cry out in surprise--as if he would.  Barely enough time to draw his shields tight against the sharp smell, the fiery sizzle, the etheric red brilliance of it, and against the impact--
          PAIN!
          He stumbled beneath the blow, back arched while, as if electrified, his muscles spasmed in agony.  Nerve-endings screamed.  Crimson brilliance flooded his vision.  Whispers of static filled his ears.  He felt his knees, then his shoulder make jarring impact against the ground.
          Someone was attacking him.
          With magic.

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