Howie Erikson didn’t share his brother’s habit of getting up early in the morning; he was a more typical teenager who preferred to rise at the crack of noon. He didn’t quite make it this Saturday morning, but rolled out of bed around ten or so. He glanced at the brightly lit day outside, yawned, farted, and gave some thought to trying for another hour or two of sleep. Probably a little too early to be calling Misty, he thought; she’s probably still asleep, too.

Several times over the course of the past couple weeks he’d given some thought to getting out and running a little in the morning, just to get in shape for football practice. Thinking about it hadn’t gotten quite as far as actually doing it, though – having to lie low from Frenchy for a few days and hanging out with Misty had more or less kept him from actually doing it. He thought he was in pretty good shape, considering; he’d ridden his bike quite a bit in that time, but still there were going to be those wind sprints that every coach seemed to think they had to have.

Might as well do it at least a little, he thought, and do it now, so he wouldn’t have to shower twice. Then maybe he and Misty could get together after lunch for a while. Nintendo might not be the greatest idea with his folks home, but maybe they could go down to the beach again – that had been fun. Running wasn’t exactly his favorite idea of a fun thing to do, but it really was one of those things that needed to be done. He thought he might as well get it out of the way for today.

That much of a decision made in his sleep-fogged brain, he pulled on a pair of running shorts, a beat-up old T-shirt and a pair of running shoes, then headed downstairs. “Well,” he heard his mother say, “the sleeper awakes. Heading out to see Misty, I presume?”

“Not just yet,” he protested. “I’m going to head out and get in a little running to get ready for practice.”

“You might want to call Misty back,” she replied. “She’s called for you twice already this morning.”

Oh, shit, Howie thought. She probably wants to hang out all day and half the evening again, and I really should get out and run a bit. But she is cute, after all, and the prospect of better things lay ahead. “I guess I’d better call,” he sighed.

It only took an instant to have her on the phone. “Howie, I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to get up,” she said. “Rusty is being a pain in the butt again. Is it all right if I come over now?”

“Not just now,” he said. “I need to get out and get in an hour or so of road work. After all, practice starts Tuesday and I need to be ready.”

“Are you sure you need to?” she replied petulantly. “I thought maybe we could go spend some time on the beach. I haven’t seen anybody else out getting ready the last few days.”

“I really should,” he maintained. “Otherwise I’m going to be killing myself when they have us in practice Tuesday. There’ll be guys puking all over the place because they don’t have themselves at least a little bit ready.”

“But Howie,” she whined in even more of a protest. “Wouldn’t you rather be with me?”

“Sure,” he said, “but there are sometimes other things I have to do. Look, I’ll be back in an hour. I’ll get a shower and call you then.”

“Well, all right,” she said in evident disgust. “I guess that’ll have to do.”

Howie hung up the phone and headed out the door before his mother could start cross-examining him about the phone call, and started up the street at an easy pace to warm up, although his thought processes were already running pretty warmly. As much as he liked Misty, she’d just done it again. Whatever she wanted seemed to come first with her, no matter what he wanted or had to do. She was a cute girl and all that, and they’d had a lot of fun the last few days, but this was getting to be a pain in the butt. Well, she was going to just have to learn that he couldn’t be at her beck and call all the time, cute girl or not. There were other things in life that he had to do.

On the other hand, she was fun to hang around with most of the time and it was kind of neat to have a girlfriend. It would be nice to be back in school and have people knowing that he had a girlfriend, especially one as cute as Misty. There were a lot of guys who would envy him, and maybe a few girls who would rather they were the one hanging out with him. That would be nice; there were a lot of couples running around school, and he’d envied them a bit. But still, Misty had been coming onto him awful hard the last few days, and he guessed that having to put up with those moods of hers was the price he would have to pay. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad price, after all . . .

He picked up his pace a little, with his mind running no less hard, wondering where he was going to go. Until a few moments before, he’d have been tempted to run over by Misty’s house so she could see that he was out training, but now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe if he went the other way, went out Point Drive to the tip of the point it would be about right. There wasn’t as much traffic that way, and it might give him a little time to think about just how much he was willing to pay Misty’s price.

Howie’s running route took him past Brandy and Phil’s house. The Saturday morning skill session was just breaking up; as usual there had been kids from both the girls’ and boys’ teams there, although, as had almost always been the case, the girls predominated. More than one high school romance over the years had started out in Brandy’s driveway, and she thought it was always fun to watch them develop.

She happened to look up as Howie went running by on the sidewalk, dodging a couple kids heading for their cars or starting to head for home on foot. “How about that,” she said to Amanda in a low voice. “That’s the first time this season that I’ve actually seen a football player out running to get ready for practice.”

“Howie Erikson,” Amanda shrugged. “He’s only on JVs.”

“Yeah, but still,” Brandy shook her head. She started to say something else but decided not to – Amanda might get a hint of what she’d been working on for the football team the day before. She hadn’t heard any discussion of it during the session this morning, so there was a good chance it was still a secret. If it could just last through Monday, things would be a lot simpler. “I think our kids looked pretty good today,” she said to change the subject.

“Becca is starting to get pretty good at that fake and jump move,” Amanda said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how she handles it for real.”

“Yeah, they’re coming along pretty good,” Brandy said noncommittally. In thinking about it over the course of the last day, she’d come to the realization that Coach Hekkinan had a point – it might be a little too much to try to coach and be principal at the same time. Of course a lot was going to depend on how bad the waves were going to be over the football situation. There was no way to tell how it would turn out until after it happened. It was clearly going to be a pain in the butt to be athletic director and have to oversee sixteen sports over three seasons and still be principal – each of them represented a full-time job, and she was going to be busy with the primary one. She’d had an awful lot of fun and satisfaction coaching the last few years, but maybe it was time to turn a new corner in her life, too. “Look,” she told Amanda. “Like I told you yesterday, you’re going to have to take over the morning skills sessions starting Monday. Maybe I can help out in the evenings some, and maybe not. I won’t know until I get there.”

“Yeah,” I know you’re going to be awful busy,” Amanda replied. “I’ll try to not call on you anymore than I have to. Are we still on for tonight?”

“Might as well,” Brandy said, “but I need to head in, get a quick shower, and get some more done to be set for Monday.”

“One of the problems I see,” Charlie Wexler said to Steve Stoneslinger as they drove out to the fishing spot off of 417 to get a first-hand look at the site, to confirm that reality matched Steve’s memory, “is that we’re just not going to have enough cars. I mean, I can commit one if I have the other patrolling, and you’re only able to commit four.”

“Five,” Steve replied. “I’m figuring on using the dog warden’s truck, especially since I’m going to have him in on it. But you’re right, that’s not enough vehicles to haul everybody. That means we’ll have to commit some privately owned vehicles. I mean, I don’t mind using my sport-ute, and if you use yours, that gets us pretty close to enough.”

“Fred has one, too,” Charlie said. “And I’m going to have to lean on him a little bit to organize things when we start calling the part-timers in. I hate to not let him know what’s happening until after it gets started, but I don’t think there’s any choice but to do it that way.”

“Thank you to whoever our little leaker is,” Stoneslinger snorted. “I hate to do it that way too, but I don’t see much of any other way to do it.” He changed the subject. “As dry as it’s been, I think it would still be tough to get through that swamp.”

“I agree,” Charlie said, glad to be off the subject of the leaker, whoever he was, if he was even still around – there’d been some turnover in both departments since the previous raid had failed – but there was no way to know for sure. “You’re right, that should funnel things down pretty good.”

“Well, let’s head back and check out the site,” Stoneslinger said. “There’s probably not many people around. Well, Saturday morning, there might be a shore fisherman or two.”

“I suppose it can’t hurt,” Charlie said. “It might tip our hand if they have someone around setting things up, though.”

“Yeah, but maybe not, too. I think one of us at least needs to head back there and make sure I’m right.”

“Why don’t you leave me out by the road?” Charlie said as they were arriving. “If there’s someone there you could say you had a report of an abandoned car or something. I could check things out at this end while you’re gone.”

“Not a bad idea,” Steve replied, turning off onto the two-rut and pulling to a stop a few yards up the track. “I won’t be long.”

Being careful, Charlie headed right back into the woods to get a little out of sight of the road. The woods here were a little thicker than he remembered, which had good and bad points. With swamps not far away, the mosquitoes could normally be expected to be thick, but as dry as it had been they weren’t too bad. Still, he made a mental note to bring bug dope – and more than he’d need for just himself too.

After longer than he thought it should have taken, he heard a car coming back up the two-rut from the fishing spot. He was out of sight of the road, but headed towards it, and soon saw Stoneslinger’s sport-ute, which stopped short of the road and waited for him to get in. “Nope, no abandoned car back there,” Stoneslinger said, “but about half a dozen others – Jack Erikson and Vixen Hvalchek, leading a bird watching tour.”

“I know Jack and Vixen, and I don’t think they’d blow the whistle on us,” Charlie said hopefully. “Jack doesn’t play football, and I know he doesn’t think much of the football players. I doubt he’ll say anything.”

“Me, either,” Stoneslinger replied, “but there’s always the chance they could say the wrong something to somebody. I’m just glad you had the idea of me going down there by myself.”

“It’s a risk that we’re just going to have to run.”

“I think so too. I mean, from the stories going around, we’re both pretty sure that the Awkerman kid got the beer and he either has it in his car or stashed somewhere. It would be tempting to go knock on his door.”

“It would take a warrant to find out for sure,” Charlie pointed out, “and then he might have it stashed somewhere else, too.”

“Even if I knew he did have the beer in his car, I’d say the thing to do would be to do nothing. If we got him, all we’d get is one kid and a lot of probably cheap beer. However, if we can pull this off, we stand to wipe quite a bit of egg off our faces.”

“And stir up a hornets’ nest in the process,” Charlie shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong, I want to pull this off too, but the aftermath is going to keep us busy for a while.”

Along about that time Summer Trevetheck pulled to a stop in Alan Janke’s driveway. Alan didn’t have a car, although frequently had use of his parents’, while Summer had a rather elderly Ford Escort, although one that was in good condition. As a result, when they went anywhere together she was usually the one to drive. It seemed a touch strange to her – after all, the guy was supposed to be the one who provided the transportation – but there wasn’t much about their whole relationship that didn’t have a touch of strange to it.

Alan was a nice guy, she thought as she got out of her car. In a way, it’s a shame that people have overlooked that, but I guess the Goddess was watching over me to have him still available when I realized it.

She grabbed a book bag from the seat of the car with some of the research materials she’d used in developing the game. It was a long way from done; much of it was still in outline, and it was going to be a big job to complete. They’d played a couple of modules of it the best they could with the two of them, and it seemed to be working, but there was still a lot to do. Really, she thought, the game didn’t matter. It gave the two of them enough reason to spend a lot of time together, and considering the subject matter of the game, if someone heard them discussing something else that they really shouldn’t be hearing, it could be explained away in the context of the game.

Alan’s mother Lisa answered the door. She was someone Alan and Summer would not have wanted to overhear some of the things they’d been talking about. “Well, Summer!” she said as if she were surprised. “It’s strange to see you around here again!”

“I just keep turning up,” Summer grinned. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on the game.”

“I know,” she smiled. “He’s up working on it already. I’m sure you know how to get there.”

Summer went inside and headed up the stairs to Alan’s room. Sure enough, he was banging away on the computer. “Morning, Alan,” she said.

“Good, Summer, you’re here,” he replied. “I’ve been throwing together a few ideas for the burning module.”

“That’s one of the scarier ones,” she agreed. “I’ve been thinking about it too. Let’s see what you’ve got done.”

They settled into talking about the game, discussing things that would be mostly incomprehensible to anyone overhearing them, not that some of them weren’t pretty incomprehensible to them, as well. That went on for half an hour or so, until Alan’s mother stuck her head into the room. “I’m going to head over to the Super Market for shopping,” she reported. “Your dad is at the fire station, Alan. It’ll probably be a couple hours before either of us gets home.”

“It’s OK, Mom,” he replied. “I think we’ve got enough to keep us busy for a while.”

They heard her head back down the stairs, and a minute or two later Alan looked out his window to see his mother backing her minivan out of the driveway. “All right, we’re safe for a while,” he reported to Summer as he got up from the computer.

“Thank the Goddess,” she replied as she got up, too. “I know you said she usually went shopping on Saturdays but I was starting to wonder if she was ever going to leave.”

In only seconds the two of them were having a deep kiss that had been delayed by his mother’s being in the house. “Oh, Goddess, I was needing that this morning,” Alan said when they came up for air, not a short time later.

“I did, too,” she agreed. “Let’s get comfortable.”

In seconds both of them were on Alan’s bed – still fully clothed, and under the circumstances likely to stay that way, at least this morning. That still left room for plenty of serious kissing, touching and cuddling over the next few minutes. After a while that wound down a little, but left them still face to face on the bed, arms around each other, talking in whispers as if there were someone in the house to overhear them. “I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about yesterday,” Alan said. “I think Jack and Vixen have to know, but maybe not just yet.”

“I think Jack knows, at least a little,” Summer replied. “I’m sure he doesn’t have any idea of the depth of it. I don’t think the story I gave him after he stumbled on my Venus rite satisfied him at all. He’s a curious kind of guy, and he doesn’t always let you know what he’s thinking.”

“I think you’re being a little too paranoid about it,” Alan said. “But then, that’s your tradition, which is not quite the same as my tradition.”

“No fooling,” she replied. “In my tradition, you wouldn’t even know about it and Jack would be cursed for what little he has found out.”

“That’s why we started our own circle, so we could meld the traditions and not have to be quite as paranoid about everything,” Alan pointed out. “In my tradition, I never even heard of anything like a Venus rite. That’s not saying my grandmother might not have, but if she has she’s never said anything to me about it. But I agree, Jack is curious and he may have some clues. I’ve never heard him say anything about it, and I very much doubt that he’s said anything to Vixen. He may know a little about you, but I really doubt he knows anything about me.”

“You may be right,” she sighed. “He was so busy driving and Vixen was so busy hanging on when Frenchy was chasing us the other night neither of them probably saw us getting the athames out, and I think we got them put back away before they noticed.”

“I really hated the thought of having to christen an athame like that,” Alan sighed. “At least if we had it would have been in self-defense, and I don’t think the Goddess could have blamed us for that. But it all worked out for the best, and I don’t think Jack and Vixen were any the wiser.”

“Yes, the Goddess smiled on both of us that night,” she said, recalling the terror of the wild chase through the woods – and the chancy move that Jack had used to break contact, not to mention the relief that it had worked and that they’d survived it.

“The Goddess and whatever God it is that’s in charge of Jeeps,” she smiled. “There had to be some special magic involved in that.”

“No fooling,” he said, “but that gets us away from the problem. I agree, Jack has to have had some hint of what’s happening, but my guess is that he hasn’t put all the pieces together.”

“When he gave me the negatives, he told me that he realized that what he’d seen was none of his business,” she told him. “Jack is an honorable guy. I don’t think he’d break his word on something like that, even though it wasn’t anything like a blood oath.”

“If he’s not a believer, a blood oath wouldn’t mean anything to him,” Alan pointed out. “But when you get right down to it, it’s neither here nor there. I don’t think my grandmother would mind if he knew. I know your family would have problems with it, but that’s your family. Again, that’s why we started our circle, so we could share the beliefs and not have to reveal anything about your family.”

“And so anyone who did find out anything would think that it’s just a little meaningless teenage experimentation,” she agreed. “Let’s face it. Like we agreed yesterday, if we wind up going to college together Jack and Vixen are going to have to know, and it’s not something we want to drop on them at the last minute. That means we have to be telling them pretty soon, and run the risk of the word getting out around the school. I honestly don’t think they’ll be up for joining with us, their minds don’t work that way. They are much more interested in the physical than the metaphysical, or they wouldn’t be quite as crazy about birds.”

“What I really hope is that if we’re willing to let them be crazy in their own way, they ought to be willing to let us be crazy in ours.”

“That’s what I hope, too,” she sighed. “I hope they’ll be willing to just let us be friends who have some different interests than they do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been good to hang out with them and I hope it can continue, because they’ve been the kind of friends to stand by you when the going gets tough. But if it comes down to a choice between them and our beliefs, we may have to leave them by the wayside.”

“So we’re no closer than we were before,” Alan summed up. “I don’t think we want to be in too big a hurry. In any case, we’re not going to be telling them today. We’re going to have enough to talk about after the four of us meet with Cody and Jan this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “I’m hoping that’s going to clear the air on a lot of things, or at least get our thinking organized. There’s even a good chance it could help us out with what we’re going to do about this problem.”

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