The morning dragged for Summer Trevetheck. There was no other word to describe it. The worry about the photos was over with, at least as much as she could make it. There was no telling if Jack would say anything; it seemed unlikely, but there was little that she could do about it if he did.

What really surprised her when she stopped to think about it was the way lightning had struck with Alan Jahnke the night before. She’d accompanied Jack and Vixen to Alan’s more with the idea of hanging out with someone she knew, perking things up for them a little bit. She’d never expected a crush on Alan, but she could hardly get him out of her thoughts this morning.

Alan was a nice guy, if a bit on the quiet side, but she’d always known that. She’d never considered him in a romantic way, but after they’d kissed the night before, that had changed in a flash. It had been hard for her to get to sleep, and her dreams were filled with visions of him. Nicely erotic visions, that is; mostly they involved the two of them wearing very little or no clothing and making wild, passionate love. There were dregs of those dreams left in the morning, and they left her with a whole different outlook on life.

Needless to say, Alan was not very far from her thoughts as she read through the role- playing game book, taking some notes. Not that it could ever happen, but what would Alan think of her being an adherent of the Old Way? He was a rather logical and scientific sort, she knew, not driven by faith. As far as she knew, the Jahnke family had no religious affiliation. Would he think of her as some sort of halfwit for believing the things she believed, that had been handed down for generations? Thank Goddess the family tradition was that the men were never told about the Old Way!

It might not even be an issue at all; one night hanging out with friends, a few kisses that had made her spine tingle along with some other body parts, did not necessarily a romance make. Nevertheless, Summer was never very far away from the phone, even though she knew that Alan was not likely to call much before noon, if then. All morning she wondered what was happening to him, how things had worked out with the lawyer, and so forth. She hoped that whatever happened, it would ease things up for him a little. It was just too damn bad that nobody seemed to be able to do anything about Frenchy and his friends. If they were out of the way, it seemed likely that she and Alan might be able to get something going. It would be fun to have a boyfriend in her senior year in high school. She knew that a lot of people at school considered her to be a mousy little nonentity, but having a boyfriend might go a long way toward her feeling like a real person.

But it all depended on him calling when he was clear of the things he was doing with his father, and it had her nervous beyond belief. She didn’t want to act like she was too anxious, but she finally decided that if he hadn’t called by the middle of the afternoon that she might just call him, if for no more reason than to see if he was back yet.

Noon came and went; finally she made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it didn’t taste all that good, and she mostly picked at it for a while before she threw half of it away in disgust. What was happening with Alan, anyway?

Just when she’d all but given up hope, the phone rang. She raced to it, picked it up, and said “Hello?”

Oh, good! It was Alan! “I was wondering if I’d find you home,” he said.

“Yes, just hanging around,” she told him, not wanting to admit just yet about how obsessed with him she’d been since last night. “I got through that book and took a few interesting notes. It looks like it might be a fun game.”

“I sort of thought so,” he said. “If we can come up with enough players, we really ought to have a ball with it.”

“So, Alan,” she replied, “How did it go with the lawyer this morning? ”

“Wow, that’s a long story,” Alan said. “The police chief came by this morning while Dad was still trying to get an appointment, and we spent a long time talking about Frenchy and his friends. Then the chief set us up to meet with Judge Dieball for a personal protection order. It won’t be finalized until tomorrow or the next day when it gets served, but it looks like it’s going to go through. The chief sort of told us that we’d be wasting our money on a lawyer just now, since whatever we could do might involve what he comes up with in an investigation. So we put the lawyer on hold for the time being.”

“So the police really are going to do something?” she asked brightly. This was too good to believe!

“We can’t be sure,” Alan told her, “but at least it looks like they’re going to try, which is more than I ever expected would happen after Saturday. By the way, don’t tell anyone about that. The chief wants to give Frenchy plenty of rope to hang himself.”

“I won’t tell anybody, really,” she promised. “I’m not one of those girls who has to blab everything she hears all over town.”

“I figured that,” Alan grinned. “Anyway, Dad has headed to work, he said he might as well try to get some honest work done today. So the place should be quiet if you want to come over.”

“All right,” she said, her heart pounding. “I’ll be over in a few minutes. See you then.”

Oh, Goddess, she thought as she hung up the phone. Do I look all right? Am I dressed all right? Shit, I’ve had all morning to think about it, and now I have to worry about it! She tore into her room and looked at herself in the mirror. She had on short denim shorts, which struck her as all right for hanging around with a potential boyfriend, but her top just didn’t strike her as providing the effect that she wanted to give. Not sexy enough, she thought. She pulled off the sleeveless blouse and her bra and replaced them with a spaghetti-strap tube top that offered her some support, and seemed to be a little bit hotter, in her mind. She ran a brush through her hair, thought about makeup a little, but decided against it. That might go a little too far, she thought.

Unlike Alan and Vixen, and unlike Jack, for that matter, Summer had a car of her own. It was a nice little Ford Escort, getting a little old but still in good condition. She grabbed the role-playing game book and her notes and headed out to it.

A few minutes later she was pulling into Alan’s driveway, wondering if she should greet him with a hot kiss, a peck on the cheek, or just a quick “hi.” Once she’d gotten up to his front door, she realized that the best she could do would be to play it by ear.

As it turned out, Alan greeted her at the door, and she wound up giving him a peck on the cheek and a half hug, since she was holding onto the book with one hand. “It’s good to see you again, Summer,” he smiled. “I’ve thought about you an awful lot since last night.”

“I have too,” she grinned. “That was really a fun night, wasn’t it?”

“Right,” he said. “I had a lot of fun, but the best part of it was when I was in your arms.”

Summer’s knees just about melted at his words. It was too early to get serious about romance or anything like that, but he’d just indicated that he was a little moved by the experience the previous night, too. If nothing else, that made a good base to build on.

It would probably be best to not push too quick, she thought. “Me, too,” she smiled. “I’ve thought about it a lot.” She gave him a nice smile. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this RPG book,” she said. “It strikes me as a little hokey, and vampires are a little overdone, I think. Still, I think we can have a good time and it might be a good game to introduce beginners like Jack and Vixen.”

“Yeah, I thought that too,” he replied with interest, although somehow Summer thought that she detected a touch of disappointment that the subject had changed to the game. Perhaps it was one of her Old Way powers starting to come out, she thought. If it was, the Goddess would let her know. “I thought of someone else we might ask to sit in on a game, Lyle Angarrack. I know he’s into gaming at least a little bit; we’ve talked about it some but never have tried to do anything with it.”

“Could be,” Summer shrugged. “I don’t know him very well.”

“He tries to keep away from people,” Alan shrugged. “I mean, sort of like I do. He’s taken a lot of shit from people over the years. Seeing some friendly faces might do him some good. What do you say we head into my room? I can fire up the computer and we can work on these character sheets a bit.”

Summer was aware that she was going to be alone in the house with him, and being in his room implied there being a bed in the room. Normally she would have shied away a little bit, but not this time. After all, he seemed to be interested in the game at the moment, and his room was where his computer was, so that seemed reasonable. She was aware that many of the time lines of her future seemed to involve being in a bed with Alan, and possibly fairly soon. She would rather that it wasn’t this afternoon since she wanted to build up the romance level a little. Still, right at the moment her body wanted him so badly that one part of her wouldn’t have cared if they wound up making love on the living room floor in the next five minutes.

In the end, she didn’t protest, but followed him to his room, stopping in the kitchen as he grabbed a folding chair for her. She was a little surprised to find that his room was neat and tidy, unlike the unorganized mess she lived in. She didn’t know why she put up with it that way but she did; it seemed like a teenage thing to do. Still, the neatness of Alan’s room made her feel ashamed of the way hers looked, and she resolved to do something about it in case he wound up in it, which didn’t seem impossible at the moment.

They talked about the game as the computer booted up, and soon were deep in designing the characters. Really, they didn’t want to let them get too complicated at this point, since there would be newbies playing them, but it was fun to talk about some of the things that could be done.

After an hour or so they’d done about what they’d set out to do. It was an interesting hour, with both of them contributing ideas; there were going to be some interesting characters there. Of course, their minds were pretty set on their gaming, and that was what they were talking about. “You know,” Alan said as he leaned back in the folding chair in front of the computer – like the gentleman he was, he’d given her the comfortable desk chair – “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“What was that?”

“What you said about this game being about vampires, and how it struck you as hokey and overdone. There’s an awful lot of that vampire stuff going around, and it’s fun to play them, but I keep thinking I’d like to write my own game based on something else.”

“It strikes me as a heck of a lot of work,” she commented. “I suppose you’d want to write a space opera game, about the stellar patrol battling weird aliens.”

“No, that’s a little overdone, too,” he shrugged. “Can I let you in on a little secret? I mean, it’s not an ‘if I tell you I’ll have to kill you’ type secret, but it’s something that I wouldn’t want to let out around school.”

“Sure,” she smiled. “I have a couple of those, too.”

“I’m sure you do,” he grinned. “In fact, in some ways I consider you the mystery girl. You tend to keep things to yourself pretty well.”

“I suppose I do, a little,” she replied, thinking that “a lot” would be a better description. “So what’s your secret?”

“Well, I’m supposed to be a science and math nerd,” he said. “But I’m kind of partial to Middle Ages stuff. I like to read about it, especially the more mystical side.”

“I’ve done some of that, in fact, my older sister Spring likes to hang around renaissance faires. I’d really love to check one out some time but I’ve never been able to go.”

“You and me both,” he nodded. “I’d like to set a game back, oh, before the renaissance some time. Back in the days when superstitions ran rampant, and they burned people for being witches. I think an alchemist would be a fun character to play. There’s some other characters that would be fun, witches, magicians, battling the forces of evil – the inquisition, that is.”

“Those were some terrible times,” she said, a chill running up her spine. Burning witches was not a concept that she really wanted to contemplate. There were those who would have said that, as a member of the Old Way, she could be considered a witch. If she’d been living in those days, she would have been meat for the inquisitor and being burned at the stake, which is why the Old Way was still very secretive.

“Yeah, they were,” he said, “but people really endured them, so a game like that would be a lot more grounded in reality. Writing something like that strikes me as a heck of a lot of work, but the burning witches and inquisition aspect I think adds a lot more terror. Of course, I’m partial to witches, it sort of runs in the family.”

“Huh?” She wanted to add “What in the living name of the Goddess did you just say?” but was more than a little afraid to. This conversation had just taken a really unexpected turn! Doing her best to keep a straight face, she asked as levelly as she could, “How does it run in the family?”

“Oh, my grandmother on my Dad’s side claims she’s a witch,” Alan said. “His sister, too. I haven’t talked with her about it a whole lot, but she says it goes back in the family for generations.”

Oh my Goddess! Summer thought. I don’t believe it! Keep your cool, girl! See if you can find out more without sounding too interested and giving yourself away! “Do you really believe they’re witches?” she asked.

“That’s not an easy question to answer, other than saying ‘yes and no,’”' Alan said conversationally. “They believe they are witches, and servants of some kind of earth goddess. I can’t say as I believe it, but I can’t say I disbelieve it, either. I mean, it’s like you and I both know people who say they’ve been saved by Jesus. I don’t know that I buy any of that Christian belief, but I can’t say that it absolutely is pure bullshit, either. From what I know of you, I don’t think you’re some sort of born-again nutcase, but separating the truth from the fiction of Christianity is not really possible. The same thing holds with their witchcraft. I’ve seen some evidence over the years that leads me to believe they might be right, the same as I’ve seen evidence that Christians may be right, too.”

“This is sort of like Wiccan, right?” she said. “I’ve done a little reading about that.” Actually, she’d done a lot of reading about it, but it wasn’t exactly something she wanted to tell him right then if ever.

“Pretty close,” he smiled. “I don’t know where to split the hairs. Here, let me show you something.” He got up from the chair, went over to the dresser and pulled an oblong red box out of a drawer, then came back and sat next to her.

“What’s this?” she said.

“Something my grandmother gave me a while ago,” Alan said. He opened the box and removed a layer of packing material, then showed the box to her.

She took one glance and couldn’t help but let out a gasp. “Oh, wow!” she breathed, hoping she wasn’t giving herself away. “It’s beautiful! What is it?” She didn’t need to ask the question, since she knew an athame when she saw one – a ceremonial knife of the Old Way, and the foundling Wiccans, for that matter. This one was really gorgeous – solid crystal, with no guard, sharp on both edges, and a pentacle carved into the handgrip.

“It’s an athame, a ceremonial knife,” he explained with a smile. “And I agree, it’s gorgeous. It’s made out of solid high-impact glass, pretty close to unbreakable.”

“Oh, wow,” she said again. “May I?”

“Sure, but don’t cut yourself,” he said. “Both those edges are pretty sharp.”

She reached out and touched it, feeling its power. Almost helpless to stop herself, she picked it up by the handle in her right hand, and brought it close as if to study it, while her mind frantically raced through an unbelievable possibility. There was no doubt that this was an athame; she had one of her own, although made of iron and bone. While she didn’t know Alan’s family tradition, in her family tradition, no Elder Castress she’d ever heard of would have ever given someone an athame unless they had been initiated into their Circle, and as far as she knew it was much the same for Foundlings. That had to mean . . . My Goddess, it had to mean . . . that at least at one point Alan had been more of a believer than he’d let on. Maybe still was. The idea was almost mind boggling.

Helpless to stop herself, she stood up, placed her left hand over her right that held the knife, and held it over her head, pointing skyward like she’d seen Eloise, the Elder Castress of her Circle do on many occasions. She’d done it, too, on occasions when she’d wanted to honor the Goddess by herself. As she held the point of the athame skyward, she could feel the power and the love of the Goddess flow into her. Alan had to know what she was doing, she thought, but somehow the Goddess told her that for once it didn’t matter. “Thank You,” she whispered soundlessly to the Goddess, then lowered the knife, put it back in the box, and sat down.

“Wow,” she said. “You can really feel the aura that puts out.” Aura wasn’t exactly the word she had in mind, but it still seemed to be a good idea to be a little misleading.

“Yeah, you can,” he smiled, “but you’d better never let my grandmother or my aunt hear you say that or you’re going to get a real earful of their beliefs.”

“I can imagine,” she said breathlessly, starting to consider the implications, which were profound. “I can just imagine.”

“Oh, shit,” Frenchy said. “My knee fucking hurts. I’m going to fucking kill that little Erikson shit when I fucking get my hands on him.”

“You probably tried to use it a little too much,” Larry said as he strained at the jack on Frenchy’s car. The one off the junker van down in Moffat had actually worked easier. “Why don’t you go sit down and let me fuck with this?”

“I’ll fucking take you up on that,” Frenchy said. “Shit on that little fucker.”

There must have been something in the awkward way they’d carried the tires back up to the truck that had made his knee worse, Larry thought. They’d been hot, sweaty and swearing when they finally got the guy paid and the tires in the back of the truck. Larry had stopped at a Golden Arches drive through in Moffat to get some burgers and, more importantly, something for them to drink, then headed back up the road for Spearfish Lake. “Almost there,” he said as Frenchy sat down on the curb.

Fortunately, Frenchy and Matt had put the lug nuts on the spare tire loosely when they’d taken the main tire off on Sunday, and they came off easily. It was only the work of a moment to swing the new wheel and tire into place, and start running the lug nuts on by hand. “By God, the wheel actually fits,” Larry reported.

“Fuck, that must mean that something actually went right,” Frenchy snorted. “Christ, it’s going to be good to have the car back.”

Larry had just gotten the nuts hand tight and was starting in with the tire iron when he heard Frenchy say, “Now what the fuck does he want?”

“What?”

“That little dink cop coming this way in his fucking cop car,” Frenchy snorted. “Shit, he don’t never come back this way. I wonder what kind of bug he’s got up his ass?”

Larry didn’t answer, because the cop car pulled up beside them. The window came down, and they could see that it was the police chief. “I sure hope you two have got a receipt for those tires and wheels,” he said in a hard tone of voice.

“Up in the truck,” Larry said. “We got them down at a junk yard near Moffat.”

“Can I see it?” the cop asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Larry shrugged and got to his feet. “No big deal.” He went to the truck, and got out the yellow slip of paper, and took it back to the cop.

The cop looked it over. “You got a good deal,” he said conversationally. “You’ve got to understand, when I find you guys exchanging four flat tires for four good used ones, I have to think someone’s car is up on blocks somewhere, missing four tires.”

“Yeah, there is one on blocks,” Larry said. “Down at the junkyard, and we paid for them tires.”

“Good enough,” the cop said, then handed the receipt back, rolled the window back up and drove off slowly.”

A little to Larry’s surprise, Frenchy had kept his mouth shut all the way through the encounter. That was probably good; Frenchy’s mouth could probably have gotten them into trouble if he’d opened it. Now, he did. “Shit,” he said. “That little fucker just was looking for some excuse to fuck with us. It’s a goddamn good thing you kept that receipt, Larry.”

“Yeah, no shit, especially when I thought about pitching it with the trash from the burger shack,” Larry agreed. “Then we would have been up shit creek.”

With the miserable jack and no help from Frenchy, it took Larry a good hour to get the new wheels and tires on Frenchy’s car. “A cold beer would taste awful damn good right about now,” he said as he lowered the jack the last time.

“Yeah, it fucking would,” Frenchy agreed. “Except I ain’t got no beer. I was going to make a beer run Sunday when that fucker flattened my tires. I suppose I could still do one tonight, but the way my fucking knee hurts there ain’t no way I want to drive that far. I just want to get an Ace bandage on this knee, take a shitload of aspirin, see if I can steal a couple snorts from my , and see if it feels any better in the morning.”

“I could go with you,” Larry offered.

“No, better not,” Frenchy shook his head. “My source might get a little upset if I go up there with someone. I’ll go during the day tomorrow. Maybe my knee will feel better then.”

“You take care of that knee,” Larry replied, disappointed once again that he hadn’t been able to weasel Frenchy’s supplier out of him. “We’re gonna need you bad when football season starts.”

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