Without giving him an answer, she stood and opened the bedroom door. She headed out first. When Clarissa and Ronan reentered the dining room, everyone was eating apple pie.

When they all looked up at her and Ronan, they smiled. Nothing but welcome and acceptance showed in their expressions.

"There she is," Sorley said. "Praise be. We thought maybe Ronan had kidnapped you for the night."

"Shut up, Sorley," Ronan said matter-of-factly, his voice as pleasant as if he'd been talking about the weather.

Clarissa slid back into her seat and Ronan returned to his. A piece of pie sat on a plate in front of her. "I'm sorry I walked out like that. I let my fears overwhelm me."

Erin's eyes held clear acceptance. "If this is too difficult to talk about, we don't have to do this now."

Clarissa shook her head. "Halloween is coming up fast, and if we don't find a way to band together to stop this horrible force, it will gain strength." Silence reigned supreme for a moment. "And then there might not be a November first for Pine Forest."

Chapter Seven

Ronan watched and listened to Clarissa, his mind if not his undead soul open to her story. If he cared too much the ache would return, the one he'd vowed never to allow again when Fenella died seven hundred years ago.

Watching this fascinating woman, the one he wanted in his bed, turned his sanity upside down and inside out. He couldn't decide if he wanted to leave her to her own devices or insist she listen to him. But this was the twenty-first century, and despite the fact he'd lived seven hundred years, he never found lording it over or commanding women to do things a savory prospect. Independent, strong women gave him a serious hard-on, and he sensed stubbornness inside Clarissa that matched any woman he'd known over the centuries.

Tonight he'd lost supreme control, his body and mind unwilling to listen to logic or protest. He wanted her with a burning need he hoped would ease. Anything else would consume him as he resisted following the awakening of his most primal instincts.

And if she saw him in his most primitive form she would run. She would leave Pine Forest and perhaps the doom she predicted for this town would come true.

No.He would do whatever he must to have her in his arms and his bed. Lives depending on them consummating their attraction in the most ancient way possible, and he couldn't allow his friends or this town to die because of moral ambiguities.

He returned his attention to what Clarissa was saying.

"My dreams always started out the same. I'm an adult in the dreams, which is strange considering I had this dream as a child. It always comes in stages, like viewing scenes in a movie. At first I see strange things happening in Pine Forest." When she paused Ronan could hear every other sound in the room. The wall clock in the living room bonged out the hour. Outside a tree branch scraped against the kitchen window. "People start calling each other names in heated arguments; they disagree vehemently about things of no consequence. People are unhappy about old squabbles they thought they'd buried years ago. Fires are set and the fire department has difficulty keeping up with the mess...and there's the big fire on Halloween night."

"When does the first stage happen where people are building resentments?" Jared asked.

"In the first segments of the dream I think its a few days before Halloween."

"Right now, in other words," Micky said, shoving her empty pie plate to the side and picking up her wine glass. She took a healthy swallow. "So we're well into it."

Clarissa turned her citrine ring around and around in a nervous gesture. "At the very beginning, I think. At least it seems so to me."

"Let me guess," Ronan said, "the next thing that happens is they get violent and crime starts to skyrocket in the town and makes it almost impossible for the police to keep up."

"Yes. How did you know?" Clarissa chewed another piece of pie.

Ronan exhaled a deep breath. "Because I've seen it happen before. Back in-"

When he cut himself off Clarissa asked, "Back when?"

When Ronan looked at her, a flicker of embarrassment made him wince, almost as if he'd slipped a top-secret government project to the enemy unintentionally. Clarissa's gaze darted from person to person, as if she detected everyone's discomfort. Bugger all, he wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

"Explain," Clarissa said, her peach-hued skin radiant under the lights, her tumble of red hair falling over her shoulders like a cape.

God, how he wanted to touch her again.

Pulling in his desires, he sent reassuring thoughts to her.Easy, girl. That's not a new sentment. Just like what you're talking about. I'll tell you all my secrets later.

Clarissa's cornflower blue eyes widened. A tiny smile flicked over her mouth, then disappeared. He felt her anger disappear, and he sighed in relief. Even though she looked bloody beautiful pissed off at him, he liked it better when she melted against him in passion. While she'd worked hard to conceal her sexuality, he felt it moving molten and heavy between them whenever they touched-hell, whenever they came within sight of each other.

Yeah, he would take her...soon.

Then, perhaps, all their troubles would be over.

Sorley had started talking, and Ronan barely heard what he had to say.

"Several years ago in Morocco, they had a strange problem, something like this," Sorley said. "They blamed it on evil spirits."

"We know it is evil this time, too." Clarissa chewed and swallowed the last piece of her pie slowly, as if contemplating what she should say next. "Anyway, I'm getting off track.

First comes the arguing about new resentments, then old. Then the crime spree, and fires."

"So why did you see this in your dreams?" Lachlan said. "Why you?"

Clarissa shook her head. "I wish I knew."

Ronan understood all too well. "From the moment I met Clarissa, I detected her abilities with the supernatural. She is a sensitive with great empathic abilities. She's capable of even more, though she may not know it." He decided to go for it, to concede something he could keep hidden but saw no reason to do so. "When we first encountered each other in the graveyard, she saw a piece of my past."

Clarissa's gaze snapped to his, and Ronan absorbed her surprised expression. Her soft lips parted, as if she might refute his claim, then she subsided. He heard her thought and chose not to respond.

Ronan Kieran, just you wait until I get you alone.

He smiled, not caring if the rest of the room wondered why. How could he not be pleased that she wanted to get him alone? He didn't care if she wanted to kick his ass or kiss him into oblivion. A warm, satisfied tingle raced through his undead body, and for a moment he almost felt mortal again. While he might be immortal and vampire and didn't begrudge his lifestyle or his powers, he sometimes longed for a normal life. Being inside this woman's body would remind him of the mortal life he once possessed.

"So in the dream you're at the community center on Halloween night and the center is burning?" Micky asked.

Clarissa was solemn. "I never see how the fire starts, unfortunately. If I had that information I'd tell you. I hear screaming. Men, women and children. It's beyond awful.

I'm in the building with the flames, too, and I can't get out."

Silence covered the room, and Ronan felt a lump rising high in his throat, a mortal reaction to the idea of carnage. He hadn't experienced that emotion in some time.

"How did you know we've been involved with what's happening in this town?" Erin asked. "How did you recognize us at the community center the other day and know to contact us?"

Ronan saw Clarissa swallow hard, as if she couldn't force words past her throat.

"Because in my dream I know you are all in the community center with me before it starts to burn. And you don't come out."

Another heavy silence, this one filled with yawning horror, blanketed the room like a dark storm cloud. Ronan felt the onrushing worry in his gut as he tasted the last of his wine.

Then the quiet broke like rushing floodwaters.

"That's horrible," Erin said, her voice sounding dry and cracked. Lachlan took her hand and held it in both of his.

Few things rattled Ronan's wiry, feisty friend Sorley, but this seemed to do the trick. The little Irishman's eyes widened. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph."