You Have New Mail the box down in the corner of Alan Jahnke’s computer screen flashed. The box also showed the topic and a little bit of the text; it was enough to tell him that there was a new message on the message board.

One of the advantages that Alan had as the administrator of the bootleg Spearfish Lake Message board was that it would send him an e-mail when a new message arrived. The message board itself was no big deal for him; he’d set it up one evening while he was screwing around and had nothing else to do, and almost immediately lost interest in it. It wasn’t a busy thing; once in a while he’d get two or three messages a day, but sometimes days went by before a new one came in. Nine times out of ten it was something that didn’t interest him in the slightest. He had to actually go to the message board to read the whole message, but that just involved a click on the mouse, which usually was worth about the effort he put into it.

Not this time! Oh, my God, it worked, it worked!

The picture of Frenchy’s car was a crappy phone picture, he could tell at a glance, but it may have been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Thank you Kushiel, whoever you are, he thought as he stared at the picture with a nearly overwhelming joy.

The hard thing about the whole thing was that he couldn’t actually see it with his own eyes, rather than in this lousy picture, but he knew he didn’t dare do that. God, Frenchy must be fuming! It’d be wonderful to see his reaction! After all the times Frenchy had pushed him around, beaten him up, verbally abused him and everything else that Frenchy had done to him – and yes, others around the school – it would have been sheer joy to watch him get it in the ass for once. That wasn’t to say that it made the shit from the other night worthwhile, but at least some of it had been paid back for once. The Dark Avenger had struck, and made it count!

This was just too good to be true, not that things were anything close to even. This was war, after all; Frenchy had made his life a living hell, and he needed to taste a little of it himself. Even before this picture had shown up on the message board, he’d been dreaming up other things he could do to pay Frenchy back. His original thought was to feed five pounds of Domino’s finest into Frenchy’s gas tank, but he’d been smart enough to Google the idea and found out that sugar in the gas didn’t work as well as the urban legend said it did. A couple places he’d seen suggested that bleach would work a little bit better, but some other places claimed that it didn’t work any better than sugar, which is to say, not that well.

That didn’t really matter. Attacking Frenchy’s tires had worked better than anything else he’d thought of and had been simple and quick, but it would be foolish to attack his car again right away. Let it die down a little, give him a little time to become complacent, and then maybe the Dark Avenger could do something again, maybe a little different, maybe not involving Frenchy’s car. He wasn’t sure what, but he would have time to figure something out. Something good, something that would top this!

Damn, he thought, a broad smile across his face as he continued to look at the picture. The worst part about the whole thing was that he knew from the moment he thought it up that he’d have to keep it a secret, and that meant telling no one. It was a darn shame. He would have liked to have shared his joy with someone, but that wasn’t how Dark Avengers worked, was it? Not at least if they wanted to keep their secret . . . and their ass.

“Sure, it’s nice of you to come by,” Mrs. Kempa told Brianna Melbourne. “She’s out on the back porch. Why don’t you just go on out and see her?”

Brianna didn’t need to be shown the way, she’d been there often enough. She headed out onto the porch, where Mary Lou sat in a lounge chair, wearing jeans and a T- shirt, idly flipping through an old copy of Seventeen. “Hi,” she spoke up. “Are you feeling any better today?”

“Not worth a shit,” Mary Lou replied. Her voice was sort of mushy and indistinct, the result of having to talk through her teeth. “My face hurts like you wouldn’t believe.”

Brianna gave Mary Lou a close look. The bruises on her face didn’t look any better, and she had an ugly black eye. There was a big piece of tape over her nose, and when she opened her lips to try to talk, Brianna could see what looked like braces on her teeth; she knew it was to keep her jaw from moving. As far as she was concerned, Mary Lou looked like shit. “It looks like it hurts,” she said neutrally, “but I think the worst of it will clear up before school starts.”

“Christ, I hope so,” Mary Lou grimaced. “I don’t want to be caught dead in school looking like this. I don’t even want to go out of the house right now. People would laugh their ass off to think that Vixen Hvalchek beat me up like this. When Frenchy and I get done with her she’s going to look worse than this. A lot worse.”

“Yeah,” Brianna commiserated. “It doesn’t help your reputation any that someone like Vixen could do something like that to you.”

“I still can’t believe that she would have done something like this to me,” Mary Lou snapped. “I mean, she’s a fucking nobody! I mean, who gives a shit about her? And here I am, wrapped up like the Curse of the Mummy! And then, to not have Frenchy do anything about it, that really pisses me off!”

“I can understand,” Brianna smiled. “So has Frenchy been by to see you?”

“No, he hasn’t,” Mary Lou shook her head. “I sure hope he’s been out looking for Vixen and Birdbrain. That took a lot of fucking nerve for him to get involved in a private thing like that. I hope Frenchy kicks his ass good.”

“I don’t know if Frenchy has been looking for him,” Brianna said. “What I hear is that he and Larry and Matt were going out to get drunk last night. That sort of pissed me off, if you want the truth. I’d kind of hoped that Matt and I could go out and have a little fun, but no, I was sitting home watching some stupid reality show. Now I ask you, what kind of boyfriend is that?”

“A lousy one,” Mary Lou said acidly. “Sometimes I don’t know why I put up with Frenchy. After all, I’m the one who gets hurt, and where the hell is he? Out sucking up beer with his buddies.”

Brianna carefully considered her response. She had a good idea of why Mary Lou put up with Frenchy, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was good to her, which he wasn’t at all. Frenchy pretty well had a lock on being the team captain for football, and if she was tight with him, there was a good chance that Mary Lou would wind up being cheerleader team captain. Among their crowd, that was as big a deal as could be hoped for around Spearfish Lake High School. It had something to do with why Mary Lou spent a lot of time in the back seat of Frenchy’s car with her legs spread. Brianna had tried him out a couple times, and in her opinion Frenchy was pretty much slam-bam without bothering with the ‘thank you, ma’am’. He liked it rough, and Brianna figured that maybe Mary Lou liked it that way, too. “Boys,” she said neutrally. “They can be such a pain.”

“You sure got that right,” Mary Lou agreed. “Sometimes it makes me wonder if lesbians like Nancy Halifax haven’t got the right idea. At least they don’t have to put up with boys.”

Brianna didn’t know if Nancy really was a lesbian, or what. She seemed to have a little more interest in girls than guys, and there were a lot of rumors about her, but no one had ever actually seen or heard of her making out with another girl. But she wasn’t part of their crowd at the school so was beneath contempt as far as Brianna was concerned. An un-person who didn’t really matter, like, say, Vixen Hvalchek.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Brianna replied with a giggle. “Now if lesbians came equipped with dicks, they might have something there.”

“Might be,” Mary Lou said with what passed for a smile under the circumstances. “You know, I’ve heard that there are actually people like that. It sort of makes you wonder what it would be like, doesn’t it?”

“I really doubt that we’re ever going to run across someone like that in Spearfish Lake,” Brianna laughed. “But it might be fun to try out, just for the sake of saying you’ve done it.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to try out anything like it, but she wouldn’t put it past Mary Lou, who had hinted in the past that she had some exotic tastes. Well, sometimes more than hinted.

“It would have to be a little different,” Mary Lou grinned, although with the way her face was bandaged it looked more evil than that. “But it might be fun sometime. So what else is going on?”

“Not much,” Brianna said. “The word around is that Rusty Frankovich got good and grounded. He’s supposedly not even going to be allowed to play football.”

“Oh, shit!” Mary Lou said. “What happened?”

Brianna took a couple minutes to tell the story she’d picked up the night before about Rusty’s date with Summer Trevetheck and abandoning her, and then getting in trouble for it.

Mary Lou shook her head. “Well, when you sleep with dogs you’re gonna get fleas,” she said. “What’d he think, that she was going to spread her legs easy just because he thinks he’s the great Rusty Frankovich?”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“She’s no great catch, and I don’t know why she’s holding onto it like that,” Mary Lou concluded. “But then, he’s no great catch, either, so you’d think it ought to work out. It sure would be a bummer if he couldn’t play football, though.”

“Yeah, I don’t think the team is going to be all that great, but they’re going to be even worse without him.”

“That’s a fact,” Mary Lou said glumly. “Shit, it’s going to be hard to go out there and cheer our asses off while we watch all the goose eggs go up on the scoreboard.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be a pain in the ass. Well, maybe you won’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you talked to Mrs. Bales?” Brianna asked. “Is she going to let you cheer with your jaw wired up like that? You might not even make it through tryouts.”

“I haven’t talked to her,” Mary Lou said. “I can’t believe she isn’t going to let me cheer this fall, jaw or no. After all, I’ve been on the team three years, both fall and winter.”

“Yeah, but you can’t yell like you used to,” Brianna pointed out. “And with your jaw, well, sort of tender, she might decide she doesn’t want to risk you hurting yourself even more. I’m sure you’ll have to get a doctor’s permission, and do you even know if you’re going to get that? ”

“Shit,” Mary Lou shook her head glumly as the realization sunk in. “I don’t know. I can’t believe Mrs. Bales would turn me down, but I don’t know about the doctor. I guess I’m going to have to find out.”

Brianna tried to keep her expression neutral and sympathetic, but underneath, she hoped the doctor wouldn’t let her cheer. In fact, she hoped Mary Lou would get so down about her chances that she wouldn’t even go to tryouts. If that happened, then Brianna had a real good chance of being team captain, without even having to fuck Frenchy again.

Heather Callahan’s phone call came as a bombshell to Ashley Keilhorn. The news that someone had finally gotten Frenchy LeDroit a good one was exciting, even thrilling. If anyone deserved it, Frenchy did. He had badmouthed her so much over the past few years that she’d been hoping that someone would take him down a notch or two. Heather didn’t have a lot of details, but just told her to go look at the web site.

As much as Ashley liked lying on the lounge chair and talking on the phone, she knew that she’d have to get up in a few minutes anyway. Her mother and father would be home from church soon, and that would be the end of her lying around dressed as comfortably as she wanted to be. The simple fact of the matter was that while Ashley liked dressing as a trashy slut and hot to trot, she only did it for herself. It was at least partly to use as a fantasy of being the person she wanted to be – not a trashy slut, necessarily, but a sexy slut. With her weight and her big, floppy boobs, she knew she’d never be the hot, sexy babe she’d like to be, but at least she could feel like it a little while now and then. It gave her a thrill to talk on the phone with friends while she was dressed like she was working in a Nevada cathouse.

But that was something her parents couldn’t be allowed to know about. They would have pitched a huge fit if they’d known how she dressed out on the back porch, so now was the time to change. She got up off the lounge and headed upstairs, taking her cell phone with her. After all, there was no telling when it would ring with something interesting.

She headed up to her room, set her computer to booting and peeled off her T-shirt. She knew she was going to have to wear a bra, something that she really didn’t want to do, but with her folks coming home she didn’t have much choice. She got that on, and decided to wear a sleeveless blouse instead of the spaghetti-strap camisole she’d liked to have worn; it was tight and allowed her to show off, but her mother thought that having her bra straps showing was a little tacky at best. The panties she had on were all right, but she covered them with some rather sloppy Bermuda shorts that covered up how big her butt was.

Changing clothes only took her a couple minutes, and by the time she was done the computer was up and running. It didn’t take her long to get on the Spearfish Lake message board, and sure enough, there was the picture of Frenchy’s car with its tires flat. Yeah, someone got him a good one, all right!

Ashley didn’t usually post on the board, but this was special. With a username that she made up on the spot, she quickly typed, “About time somebody evened things up a little bit. Good job, whoever did it. Hope Frenchy doesn’t figure out who you are!”

She’d just hit “SEND” when her phone rang. “Hi, Ashley,” a voice said. “It’s Laurel Haeussler. Have you heard that somebody really trashed Frenchy’s car last night?”

“Not only have I heard, there’s a picture of it on the Spearfish Lake Message Board,” Ashley grinned, like she knew all about it. Thank goodness Heather had tipped her off.

“I was working stacking shelves at the Fiesta station,” Laurel reported. “Boy, was he mad! My boss had to go outside and tell him to settle it down. I mean, Frenchy was swearing up a storm, and every third word was the f-word, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard Frenchy talk,” Ashley replied with a tone of disgust in her voice.

“No fooling,” Laurel snickered. “It was all about how he was going to kick someone’s behind or kill someone for doing that to him. Matt Effingham was with him, they had one of Frenchy’s tires in the back of Matt’s car, so it’s my guess someone slashed his tires or something.”

They continued to talk for a couple minutes but Laurel really couldn’t add much to what Ashley already knew, which was enough. She was feeling like she’d fallen behind – first Heather, then the message board, and now Laurel, and she hadn’t had a chance to surprise anyone with the news! That was disgusting. “Hey, Laurel,” she said finally. “I don’t really want to cut you off, but I think I’d better call some people.”

“Yeah, I guess I do, too. But wow, isn’t that cool that someone finally handed Frenchy back some of his own! I’ll see you around, Ashley. I’ve got to check the message board and then make some calls.”

Ashley clicked the phone off, grinning to herself. She knew darn well that the thing that Frenchy hated most was to have people laughing at him. If she had any say in it, the whole town was going to be laughing at him pretty darn quickly, she thought as she punched an auto-dial number.

Summer Trevetheck heard the news about Frenchy from Laurel not long afterward – Laurel had squeezed in one more phone call after she’d talked to Ashley, and got a no-answer from another number. Summer didn’t have any particular axe to grind with Frenchy, but she didn’t like him and thought he was a grade-one jerk. She knew that Rusty Frankovich hung around with Frenchy some, so that helped to explain why Rusty was a jerk, too.

But the news from Laurel was good news in more ways than one. Someone trashing Frenchy’s car was good news, and it showed how fast things got around town. But the real good news, she thought, was that she hadn’t heard one word about a pagan or Wiccan or any kind of ceremony out in the pine barrens on Friday. News like that would get around even more quickly than the news about Frenchy’s car, so that about had to mean that Jack hadn’t said anything about it – at least to anyone who would pass along the story. So, in spite of all the gossip around Spearfish Lake, apparently the lid was still on about that secret. There was no telling how long it would stay on, but it just proved to Summer that whatever action she took to make sure Jack didn’t pass on the story had to be done quickly.

So far, her mother hadn’t been able to talk to Eloise, so things remained pretty much on hold. It was a real shame that the secret of the Old Way had to be kept from her father, but that was the way things were done. The Old Way was a woman’s thing, and experience showed that when men found out about it real trouble followed. That often made things difficult, like it was making things difficult now, since it looked like her dad was going to hang around the house all afternoon. They might not be able to even get Eloise’s advice until after the word got out, and then it was going to be too late. That pretty well meant that any decision was going to come down to her mother and her, and ultimately to her.

She glanced at the clock – ten minutes later than the last time she checked. The time was dragging slowly, and she wanted to try to get to Jack again. At the same time, she didn’t want to make a pest of herself either – that might just get Jack and his family curious. The heck of it was that it wouldn’t surprise her if Jack and Vixen were gone all day. Then, that might not be all bad; Jack might burn Vixen out on bird watching, leaving the door open for her to get to him effectively. “Oh, cut it out,” she said to herself in a low voice. “You’re just grasping at straws.”

If only she could think of something else. A spell that really worked without constantly having to feed it was needed, but neither she nor her mother knew of a spell, other than the one Summer had already come up with. Why did this have to happen? Why was the Goddess testing her?

Good question, she thought. Maybe this was a test of faith, of fortitude, of her readiness to risk sharing her life with a nonbeliever. That was what the Venus Rite was all about, to signify her preparation for that, which was an eventuality that would happen to every woman of the Old Way who married – and a reason why some didn’t. She wasn’t really ready to get married – she hoped to put that off until after college – but unplanned things have a way of happening. In recent years it had been the custom to get the Rite out of the way a bit early, although further back in history it was usually done a lot earlier since marriage often took place earlier. At her age four hundred years ago she’d already be a wife and mother.

She’d planned on putting off looking for a possible mate at least until she was in college, but she hadn’t wanted to completely lose the fun of dating in high school. Even though her first real date the other night had ended in a disaster, she still knew it would be fun to have a boyfriend. Now that it might be too late, she realized that Jack had held that potential and she’d overlooked it.

Might-have-beens, she thought. She glanced at the clock again, wishing it would hurry up.

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