It was getting close to nine before Jack took Mr. Jahnke back to his home and got on the road for Camden. They had actually talked about birding a bit at the Spearfish Lake Café; Mr. Jahnke said that it sounded a little interesting but not anything that he thought he’d like to do.

The run down to Camden in the open Jeep was enjoyable, although Jack was in a hurry now. He had left the note for his folks that he’d be back around noon, and was supposed to call Vixen a little after that. Of all the stuff that had happened in the last day, he was most surprised about that. Granted, he couldn’t really call her a girlfriend, at least not yet, but even having a friend who a girl was more than he’d ever had in the past, and the possibility of her becoming a girlfriend was intriguing.

As it turned out the photo shop wasn’t busy, and the twentyish woman behind the counter said that she could knock the film right out – if she didn’t get too busy, it would probably take her less than an hour. That meant that Jack had an hour to kill, and there really wasn’t anything to do but sit and wait. “It’s actually nice to see someone using film,” she said nicely. “As good as digital cameras are, I still don’t think they’re up to the quality of a good film camera.”

“They have their points,” Jack said noncommittally, knowing that it was going to cost him twenty bucks to get out of the shop, when being able to use a digital camera would have meant that the photos would have cost him essentially nothing. That assumed, however, that he had a digital camera with a ten-power lens, and he could process a lot of film for what one of those cost. He had to support his hobby on a rather limited budget.

While he killed time he leafed through some photo magazines – they tended to be mostly ads with very little useful information, especially to him – and checked out some equipment, most of which he couldn’t use since the Pentax was so obsolescent. Even that got boring after a while, so he found himself thinking about Vixen. He couldn’t believe that she wanted to go birding with him! Probably it was just an excuse to be with him, but maybe it wasn’t. Perhaps he ought to do something to encourage her interest in birds and make it something they could do together. It could be something that didn’t involve a drive to Camden for a movie, or hanging out at the Frostee Freeze, which didn’t seem like a very appealing thing to do just what happened last night.

And then there was her mother. From the way Vixen had talked the night before, her mother must be a piece of work. It seemed pretty clear that she was going to be a problem, but maybe she could be convinced that their interest in each other really was a shared interest in birding, which at the moment it really was. Maybe something material could convince her. A pair of binoculars, maybe? That seemed like a pretty expensive gift right at the moment, and there was nothing in the photo shop that he’d want to give a novice to use. Maybe she could use his old 8x35s; they had a good field of view and would be easier for a novice girl to hold steady. But a gift did seem appropriate – maybe a bird book? They were really more important than the binoculars, after all.

There was a Barnes and Noble right across the way – it was a possibility. It’d only take a minute to run over and see. “Hey, back in a minute,” he called to the woman behind the counter. “I gotta go get something.”

Sharon Nancarrow, the woman doing the processing in the photo shop, thought that Jack seemed like a pretty nice kid. She’d seen him before and remembered he always brought in film with a lot of pictures of birds on it, some of them awful good. He sure must like his birds, she thought as she took the 36-exposure film from the dryer. She glanced at the strip of negatives before feeding it into the print maker – yep, more birds.

Running film through a one-hour printmaker was a pretty straightforward exercise, and Sharon had become bored with it long before. Once again, she thought she’d like to get a real job in photography, rather than just running a one-hour machine, but at least it beat unemployment. The process was pretty automated, and there really wasn’t much she could do to the photos on a typical double-print 4x6 job. She could vary the lightness or darkness slightly, and had to do that by eye, but after thousands upon thousands of photos of somebody’s kids, grandma, and grandpa or whatever the hell, she was about as automatic as the machine.

When you got right down to it, she thought as she loaded the negative strip into the machine, birds are going to be just about as boring as grandma and grandpa photos. Every once in a while she saw something interesting go by, something dirty. She was even used to that, although once in a blue moon she made an extra copy of an interesting print for herself – not that she actually did anything with them but throw them in a box at home. It had a little voyeuristic thrill that she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit to.

As she ran the film, each shot came up on a computer screen, and she only had to click on a mouse to do any adjustment needed. Bird, bird, bird, the same bird in a slightly different position. Either the kid had a motor drive or a damn quick shutter finger, she thought. Everything was in focus with the same exposure value, so after the first adjustment there was nothing to do but click with the mouse and advance the frame.

Then the scene changed; it took her a moment to realize it. That wasn’t a bird, she thought, it was a woman’s bare backside seen though some pines. The exposure value still was about correct, so she clicked the mouse again, wondering where the kid had come up with that one. Another shot, almost the same, and then . . .

Oh, shit! Where did the kid get that?

She knew damn well where the kid got it. That was her own bare backside in the photo, standing there, holding hands with Autumn Trevetheck in the esbat circle yesterday. And there was Summer blindfolded, with Eloise gesturing with the athame. They’d taken advantage of the fact that yesterday was Lughnasadh – at least as their family reckoned it, which was different from other traditions – to hold Summer’s Venus rite. It signified that she was of age to seek a husband to marry – although she might not do it for a while.

My Goddesses, she thought. Summer would just shit to know that someone had taken pictures of her Venus rite! Hell, more than Summer – all the Trevethecks, and Eloise for sure. In fact, she wasn’t sure her own panties weren’t just a little stinky. This was the last thing she’d expected to happen today! Where had the kid come from? She hadn’t had any hint he was there, although her back was toward him, and no one else had mentioned it, either. Well, telephoto lens, obviously. He must have been pretty well back in the trees, and probably everybody’s attention was on Eloise and Summer, anyway. Rowan had assured them that no one would ever find this location for the circle. Well, guess what?

More importantly, what the hell would she do? There was no way she could tell the kid his photos didn’t come out. They’re in the middle of the roll, and she knew that he knew what he had. There was no way around it; she had to give them to him!

She glanced over her shoulder. Good, the kid wasn’t there, although he could come back any second. Maybe I better try to make a set of my own, just in case! Summer might even like them, once she got over the shock. Quickly, she ran off a set of single prints until the negatives turned to birds again, then backed up and ran double prints of the same photos. It took a minute for each print to process, but she had a good feel for how long that minute was and snagged the single prints as they came out of the machine. She set them on the shelf behind the keyboard, face down, and glanced over her shoulder again. Just in time, the kid was coming back now. Goddess, now what do I do? she thought. I better call Eloise, although I can’t very well do it now.

Jack was just a little bit miffed. It had taken no time at all to grab a copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to the Eastern Birds. However, the checkout counter had only one person, and that one person was busy arguing with a customer ahead of him about the amount of credit remaining on a gift certificate, or some damn thing. It seemed like it had taken forever to get out of there.

“I’m back,” he said to the woman sitting at the photo machine.

“Good deal,” she replied cheerfully. “I’m almost done. What kind of bird is this? You’ve got some great shots.”

“Kirtland’s Warbler,” he replied. “They’re rare as hen’s teeth in this neck of the woods. That was a real find for me.”

“Well congratulations,” she said. “I guess that’s a feather in your cap.”

“It better not be a Kirtland’s Warbler feather,” he laughed. “They’re protected.”

“OK, that’s it,” she said with a smile at his weak joke. “It’ll be a couple minutes to get the rest kicked out. Did you want the negatives cut?”

“I’d prefer not,” he said. “At least this time. That’s a life list photo, so I may need the whole uncut roll for confirmation. Just roll them up and put them in an envelope.”

“You’re pretty serious about your bird watching, I take it,” she said, trying to make conversation and not show that she was flustered.

“I try to be,” he replied as she brought the stack of photos over to him. He flicked quickly through the photos, checking them out. “Nice shots,” he said finally. “I just got lucky as hell on that second series. I was just walking back to the Jeep when I saw that thing sitting on a limb, but boy, that’s a classic shot. That might get into print. Have you got an extra envelope?”

She handed him a couple, and he quickly fanned through the stack of photos, separating out the ritual shots and stuffing them into one of the envelopes. “I saw you had something on the roll besides birds,” she forced herself to snicker. “What was that all about?”

“Beats the heck out of me,” Jack replied, going through the photos again and separating the bird photos into two different sets. “I was just walking through the woods and I came across that. I snapped a few shots, then realized that it was something private and I had no business being there, so I left. I have no idea what it was all about. People are strange, I guess. I know you’ve seen them now, but I don’t plan on showing them to anyone else. I have a feeling that it’s something they wouldn’t want breezed around.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she conceded. “It does look a little weird, but it’s probably something those people are pretty serious about. It’s probably not a good idea to show them around or you might get into more trouble than you want to.”

“My thinking exactly,” he nodded. “What do I owe you?”

Jack walked out of the mall a couple minutes later, over forty dollars poorer, what with the Petersen’s and the envelopes of photos stuck in the bag with it. Money well spent, he thought. The one-hour photo also came out to be less than an hour, so he still had a chance to make it back to Spearfish Lake by noon, even counting the stop at the discount gas station that he still had to make.

It has been said that small towns are like fishbowls, where everyone seems to know everyone else’s business. It isn’t actually all the way like that since some people can go out of their way to be a little secretive, and some news travels faster than the rest, depending on what it is and who’s saying it. Of course, it’s a fact that as news is passed from mouth to mouth, changes, embellishments, and inaccuracies creep in to greater or lesser degrees.

There are actually different levels of small-town gossip; adults, for example, usually only pick up scattered bits of high school gossip, somewhat garbled. Teen gossip travels at its own speed, although just a little slower on a Saturday morning than it would have if the gossip pressure cooker of school had been in session. For instance, at the time that Jack was walking out of the mall in Camden, only a handful of adults had heard that a police car had been seen in front of the Jahnke house. That led to the reasonable assumption that Alan must have somehow gotten in trouble with the law. Neither teen had told any other teenagers about Jack finding Alan out south of the lake in the predawn hours, but in certain circles it was all over town that Alan had mouthed off to Frenchy LeDroit and had gotten his ass kicked for it.

But gossip runs in channels, too. Except for those teenagers still asleep – and teens being teens, that was a good percentage of them – most of them had heard about the incident at the Frostee Freeze. Here, though, the gossip streams split, depending on who people were talking to and who was telling the story. Among the football and cheerleader crowd, the story was that Vixen had attacked Mary Lou for no good reason at all, and although the cheerleader had taken a couple licks she’d given better than she got. LeDroit had gone to Mary Lou’s rescue, and had faced down Jack’s vicious dog to break up the fight.

There was another gossip channel running that morning that basically told what had actually happened, although a bit exaggerated. After being attacked, Vixen had pounded the living shit out of Mary Lou, leaving her bleeding and crying on the pavement, while Jack had pounded the living shit out of LeDroit when he’d tried to pound on Vixen. Those stories also had Jack and Vixen having a long, serious kiss as both Frenchy and Mary Lou lay battered on the pavement, then walking off arm in arm.

Needless to say, truth only went so far, but in a small town where nothing much is going on, anything out of the ordinary gets commented on with embellishments. At least a few people from both groups looking for more juicy details decided to go to an eyewitness for them.

While there were other eyewitnesses, by virtue of her job as window sitter at the Frosty Freeze, Ashley Keilhorn, had had a good view of the whole incident. That meant her cell phone was very busy that morning as she sunned herself on the back porch. Again, just about the time that Jack was walking out of the mall in Camden, there was a fly buzzing around Ashley that was downright irritating, interfering with her telling the story for about the tenth time. Not biting or anything, like the damn black flies did in the spring, just buzzing around and making a pure pest of himself or itself or however it was said about flies. She’d shooed it off half a dozen times, but the damn thing kept coming back to bother her again.

Maybe, she thought, she just ought to go inside and get out of the damn bugs. But no, it was hot inside, stifling in spite of the windows being open. Since it was cool to downright bone-chilling much of the time in Spearfish Lake, her folks had decided not to bother with air conditioning, but on a day like this it seemed to Ashley like it would be worthwhile. As a result, Ashley was glad that her cell phone didn’t send photos, since she was sitting in the shade of the back porch wearing as little as she could manage. That was not much at all. In fact, it was about as little as a bikini could be and still possibly be called a bikini. It was very tiny and very thin; the only place she ever wore it was on the back porch on very hot days when her parents weren’t around. She never went near the water with it on since it was almost transparent when dry; water would turn it just about as clear as glass. She’d made it herself and thought of it as her “sunning bikini.”

Ashley was not a small girl. She stood about five-eleven but was over 200 pounds. Though she was not hugely obese, there was a lot more of her than most people consider appropriate in this day and age. Her sunning bikini would have been scandalous on a much smaller girl, like Vixen, for example. On Ashley, it was well beyond merely scandalous, although to be fair, a lot of cheerleaders would have called it just plain gross.

The fly landed on one of her breasts, which were about the largest in the senior class of Spearfish Lake High School. Somehow it managed to land on a cloth covered part, which was a small percentage of the whole. Almost instantly her hand flicked out in an attempt to slap the little black bastard. The flat of her hand landed with an audible whack. “Shit,” she said. That stung! Worse, she’d missed the fly.

“What was that?” Heather Callahan said from the other end of the call.

“Oh, just a damn fly,” Ashley said. Maybe she ought to go in and get a flyswatter, but that would involve getting up, and the heat made her so lethargic that it hardly seemed like it was worth the trouble. It wasn’t all bad; the fly wasn’t bothering her for the moment, although it seemed likely that it would be back.

“So how bad did Mary Lou get hurt?” Heather asked.

“Well, she walked away, but she was pretty bloody when she did,” Ashley reported honestly. “I guess she thought that she could get away with it, but Vixen did a number on her.”

“Wow, I never thought that Vixen had it in her. I’m glad she did it. If anyone deserved to get beat up, Mary Lou leads the list.”

“Well, Vixen does have a temper,” Ashley said. “It takes her being really pissed to bring it out. Maybe having her boyfriend there had something to do with it.”

“That’s really hard to believe, you know?” Heather commented. “I mean, Jack Erikson? I was like, wow, as if, you know? Not that Jack is exactly a hunk, but who would have thought that they’d go for each other? Do you think they’re getting physical?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me either way,” Ashley agreed. “Really, it’s come down awful quick. I hadn’t heard of anything between them before, but that doesn’t mean anything, either. I haven’t heard much about Vixen all summer, and you don’t hear about Jack doing anything but his birds.”

“Yeah, but still waters run deep,” Heather snickered.

Ashley was getting tired of the conversation, especially since she’d had pretty much the same conversation a dozen times over this morning, so she greeted the quiet beeping from her phone with a touch of relief. “Hey, Heather, I got a call waiting,” she said. “I’ll catch you around.”

“See ya,” Heather agreed, and clicked her phone off.

Ashley thumbed her phone with a little resignation, since whoever was calling probably wanted to go over the same ground again. It would be nice to hear something new about the latest newsworthy item around Spearfish Lake. “Hello,” she said into the phone.

“Hi, is this Ashley?” a woman’s voice said.

“Yes.” Though she didn’t recognize the voice, it was obviously not one of her teenage friends.

“Ashley, this is Marilyn Hvalchek, Vixen’s mother.”

“Yes?” Ashley said, wondering if this call meant trouble.

“I’ve had a half dozen calls about some sort of fight down at the Frostee Freeze last night,” Mrs. Hvalchek started. “I’ve heard some of the most incredible things about what happened. Vixen says that she was just defending herself; she said that you were there and saw what happened. What did you see?”

“Well,” Ashley began, quickly deciding how to slant the story to limit the effect it would have on Vixen. She knew Mrs. Hvalchek was pretty bossy and overbearing, and that Vixen had a difficult time with her. Don’t make things worse, she thought. “Mary Lou Kempa was there with her friends, some cheerleaders, and Frenchy LeDroit, along with some other guys from the football team. I think Mary Lou had been drinking, since she was even nastier than normal, and so she like started dissing on Vixen. I guess Vixen wasn’t having any of it, so Mary Lou decided to start a catfight, and Vixen decked her. I don’t think Mary Lou actually even touched her, but Vixen sure laid her out.”

“Mary Lou attacked Vixen?” Mrs. Hvalchek said. “That’s not the story that Georgette, uh, Mrs. Kempa told me.”

“What do you think Mary Lou would have told her mother?” Ashley snorted. “Whatever happened to her, she’d be sure to make it out that it wasn’t her fault.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Mrs. Hvalchek agreed. “Was there a boy involved?”

“Well, Jack Erikson was there, but I don’t think he was there with her,” Ashley replied, knowing very well how suspicious Vixen’s mother was. “He told her that he’d better take her home before anything else happened, and they got in his Jeep and left.”

“Are you sure they weren’t there together?” Vixen’s mother asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Ashley said. “Jack was there, oh fifteen or twenty minutes before Vixen showed up. He ordered some burgers and the grill was way backed up, so he had to wait around for them. I noticed him sitting out in his Jeep alone while he waited. Vixen had just shown up and got a cone.”

“So he wasn’t involved in the fight?”

“Well, not at the beginning, but after Vixen knocked Mary Lou down, Frenchy decided he was going to beat on her, and Jack and his dog stepped in, and Jack wound up knocking Frenchy down to keep him off of Vixen.”

“Jack never touched Mary Lou?”

“Not even close,” Ashley said. “Look, I wasn’t the only one there, no matter what Mary Lou and her friends said. Mr. Jorgensen saw it, and Mrs. Clark’s husband was the one who actually broke it up.”

“He was there too? I hadn’t heard that.”

“You can call him up, I’m sure he’ll give you the same story,” Ashley replied. “Or Mr. Jorgensen, and there are some others.”

“You’re sure that Vixen didn’t do anything to get Mary Lou mad at her?”

“Other than just being there, no,” Ashley said straight out. “Mary Lou was drunk enough to be pretty nasty to everyone.”

Mrs. Hvalchek let out a long sigh. “Ashley, I’m glad you set me straight on this,” she said after a long sigh. “You know how stories go around this town. I had difficulty believing that Vixen would have attacked Mary Lou without any reason, even though that’s what Georgette said.”

“Like I said, what would you have expected Mary Lou to tell her mother?”

“I suppose you’re right. Thanks, Ashley. I think I’d better go and make up with Vixen.”

“Whatever the stories are, she’s not at fault,” Ashley reinforced her message. Then, with curiosity getting the best of her, she added a question. “Did Mrs. Kempa say how bad Mary Lou was hurt?”

“Pretty bad,” Mrs. Hvalchek replied. “They had to take her down to the ER in Camden late last night. She’s got a broken jaw and a broken nose, and apparently she was bruised up pretty badly. Georgette was pretty upset.”

“I don’t know why she should be,” Ashley said. “Mary Lou has badmouthed so many people over the years that someone was bound to even things up sooner or later. There have been more than a few times I wouldn’t have minded doing it myself. Mary Lou considers people like Vixen and me to be some sort of subhumans since we don’t measure up to her standards of beauty or whatever.”

“Just between you and me,” Mrs. Hvalchek snickered. “Mary Lou must have gotten that from her mother. She was just like that when she was in high school. Runs in the family, I guess. I think I understand things a little better now. Thanks again, Ashley.”

“No prob, Mrs. Hvalchek,” Ashley grinned. “Tell Vixen ‘good job’ for me, would you? Maybe have her call me some time?”

“I’ll do that, Ashley,” Mrs. Hvalchek said. “See you around.”

“See you around, Mrs. Hvalchek,” Ashley said and punched off her phone. She scratched an itch on an exposed part of her breast as she thought for a moment, then punched Heather’s number. The fact that Mary Lou had been in the emergency room with a busted nose and a busted jaw was first rate news and she couldn’t wait to pass it on . . .

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