"I heard that, and you're not funny."

Before returning to the cabin Leone stood and sampled the night air. The forest was lively, activity carrying on as usual. She could sense nothing strange or out of place. Far from content, she moved back to the porch. Hesitating on the top step, she sniffed the air again, accepting there was nothing out there waiting. At least not anymore.

By the time she entered the living room Amy was in the loft stripping the bed down with great gusto.

"How the hell did it get in here?" she cried as sheets, pillowcases, * 105 *

and a quilt cover parachuted to the room below. Leone gathered the various items together and took them into the kitchen, dumping them on the floor by the busy washing machine.

"Dunno," she called back. "They hunt in trees for birds. Maybe she fell onto the roof and found a way through the shingles into your rafters. I suppose she dropped on your bed and burrowed in for safety. In the wild they live in burrows and-"

"In the rafters?" Amy looked up horrified at the cross beams above her bed. "Oh my God. You've got to go up there and find the hole. This whole cabin's falling apart. Connie used to look after it like a newborn baby. Doesn't anybody mend things anymore? Who maintains the cabins around-"

"Hey. Hey," Leone called up to her. "Calm yourself. It was just a guess about the rafters. I'll check the roof in the morning, first thing, okay? And there's nothing wrong with the cabin. Stop getting in a tizzy. The snake's gone and...umph." AT-shirt and shorts landed on her head.

"Cover yourself up and make some tea while I finish this bed. There's bread and some cheese in the cupboard. Let's have supper."

Leone made a light supper and banked up the fire. Soon they were sitting snug on the couch before a warm blaze.

Amy sat and watched the fire, finally calming down after her encounter with the valley's reptiles. Absently she nursed her empty cup, its porcelain heating her hands. As usual Leone was sitting too close, but the heat from her body was relaxing and secure, and Amy was too frazzled to care about the close contact. Together they sat, watching patterns form and melt in the flames, the only sound the ticking of Connie's old mantel clock.

Amy sighed. This feels so right. Like it's always been a part of my life, but I've been absent from it. Like it's always been here, waiting for me...and I was always somewhere else?

"What feels so right?"

Amy jerked and turned to look in Leone's questioning eyes.

Shit. Did I just speak out loud? "Huh?"

"You were mumbling something about things being right? You * 106 *

are happy here, aren't you? I mean, everything is going okay with your work?" Leone didn't want to discuss their personal problems tonight. Now that there was peace between them. This was not the time to fall back into their circling dance, where Amy resisted the inevitable and Leone tried to lure her in deeper.

"Yes, yes. I've always liked it here. Love it, in fact. Once I get to speak with Connie I'll be a hundred times happier, of course. But the work is going well. I see no problems with it," Amy said. "I'm glad to be back in Little Dip."

Leone nodded in response. Her shoulders relaxed, she was happy with the answer. She reached over and squeezed Amy's hand. "We're all glad you're back," she said, pleased when Amy didn't immediately pull free. She cleared her throat. "After you left I thought about you a lot. Where you were, what you were doing.

Connie told me your news. How good things were going for you.

Places you'd been to. It all sounded so much better than here..." Her voice trailed off, thick, faltering. Her question was-would Little Dip be enough for a hardened globetrotter like Amy? But she was unsure how to ask it.

Amy slid her hand out of the warm grasp. It had not been better than here. Nothing had been. This was home. Everywhere else was...not home.

She'd limped around Europe from job to job between her university studies, burying herself in work, carving out a growing reputation based on skill and a hell of a lot of luck. In the beginning she had been a timid student, shocked and hurt that a love supposedly so safe, so solid, could falter and fail. That such essential things could be wrenched away, leaving her with absolutely nothing. It was a hard life lesson. But Connie had nursed her through a heartache not even five thousand miles could dissipate.

Now she was a mature woman, a professional artist. She moved around the cities of Europe with ease. She spoke several languages, earned good money. She'd had more love affairs than she cared to remember. She had survived and she had changed, but she had never really been happy. Home was always missing.

* 107 *

It seemed they had come full circle. Well, almost full circle.

Here she was, once again in Little Dip, sitting much too close to Leone, her creature of smoke and mirrors. A creature in whom she had invested every ounce of her young, inexperienced heart. Amy knew Leone was only trying to help her, to protect her. She also knew Leone still held feelings for her, even after all these years. Leone had not moved on with time. Amy could see that. She was engrained into this valley, entrenched within her family. She had kith and kin, hearth and home. All the things Amy had not. Leone might as well have been a tree, she was rooted so deep in this place.

"What did you do after you left, Leone?" She suddenly needed to know.

"Me?"

"Yes. After you left." Amy cautiously circled closer to that painful time. Leone seemed to instinctively know what Amy was asking.

"I went to Vancouver to learn about Garoul Print for the rest of the year. But you know that." Leone shifted in discomfort. "Then I came back to the Portland head office and started working at Garoul Press." Her answer was awkward, the words sticking, so she cleared her throat often as she spoke. There was no joy in the telling. It was obvious she had not been happy with her allotted tasks. But it had always been that way for the eldest of the Garoul children. They took over the family business, simple as that. Marie had given up medicine to take over from her mother, Leone had not even entered college when her call came. She looked over at Amy and asked, "Didn't Connie tell you?"

"I never asked."

They fell back into silence, the air around them still and melancholy.

"I better make tracks." Leone stood and stretched, exposing her flat brown belly with its small, deep navel. Amy's eyes locked on it, remembering out of nowhere, kissing the dark brown freckle that nestled on its rim.

A surge of panic, and distress, and something else a lot subtler, rose to swamp her. She didn't want Leone to leave. She didn't want * 108 *

to be alone in a cabin where snakes dropped from the rafters. She didn't want to lose the company, the relaxed honesty before the open fire. The melancholy had pulled her into a stupor, and she was afraid of the void when Leone left. She had a hundred reasons. But the real one was that tonight they had been close. Not in words, but in understanding. Tonight they had begun to repair something a long time damaged.

"Don't go," she blurted. Her face flamed as soon as the words left her mouth.

Leone's stretch stilled, and she slowly drew her arms back down to her sides. She said nothing, but looked expectantly at Amy.

"I mean...what if it comes back? I won't sleep. I know I won't.

And I need to. I really, really need to if I'm to begin in the studio tomorrow," Amy explained anxiously, suddenly aware her invitation could be interpreted differently.

Leone nodded, understanding. "I guess I can sleep on the couch.

At least my clothes will be bone dry in the morning."

She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but inside she thrilled at being asked to stay, to serve and protect. She was needed after all.

And that meant somewhere deep down inside Amy Fortune, there was a small sliver of space for her. A little nook she could creep into and curl up in contentedly, like a kernel waiting to seed.

The hours of anxious waiting by Big Jack and the fight on the porch all melted away. She knew it was a long journey back to Amy's heart. She knew she deserved to crawl every inch of it on her hands and knees and be thankful for the privilege. There were also extraneous circumstances that could make her fail at any moment.

But she wasn't even going to consider the possibility. She was wanted, needed, necessary, and had been invited to stay.

All the magic Connie had taught her was slowly coming true.

* 109 *

* 110 *

chapteR twelve.

It was nearly three in the morning, and Amy had not slept a wink. Her anxious gaze swiveled from rafter to rafter above her head, looking for any signs of furtive slithering. The wind had lifted, and rain blew in from the west, tapping on the windows and pattering on the roof.

Below she could hear the fire popping and crackling, the couch creaking and blankets rustling as Leone rose to add another log. Amy squeezed the little herbal sachet she had found under her pillow.

Squeeze and relax, squeeze and relax. Until it was twisted so out of shape it looked like it would burst at the seams. When she remade the bed it had fallen at her feet and some strange compulsion made her leave it at her bedside. Now she gripped it like a stress ball.

This is awful. I'll never sleep tonight. If Leone doesn't get the roof fixed tomorrow, I may never sleep again. My timetable will be a shambles! She worried her lower lip as she pondered her options.

The wet weather meant she'd be better off working in the studio.

She frowned as she realized something odd. Surely if there was a hole in the roof big enough for a twenty-foot snake to sneak in, then the rain should pour through, too?

The sachet squeezing became frantic. What if the snake had been planted there, under the bedclothes? But would Leone do that?

She knew about Amy's snake phobia. But would she be that cruel?

Her instincts told her Leone would never do that to her. On a deeper, intuitive level she knew Leone cared for her, wanted only to help * 111 *

and protect her. Her nose twitched. Scullcap. She's burning that damned stink again.

Amy remembered the spell book. It said scullcap was used in love spells; no mention of termite control. Was Leone burning it now for her?

A violent gust of wind made the rafters above creak. This was no time to ponder witchy wooing. With a terrified glance at the beams Amy's resolve broke into smithereens, she couldn't stay up here with all these snakes...

Leone lay watching the lazy swirl of incense smoke trail away overhead. She knew Amy was wide awake. She could tell by her breathing, light, a little fast, sometimes hitched and irregular when a bad thought surfaced.

The snake incident angered Leone, though she disguised it well. She dreaded to think what might have happened if she hadn't been here. Amy would have vacated her place of safety in seconds flat, and plowed straight into the forest and definite danger in a blind panic.

The rustling of bed linen and the soft pad of bare feet alerted her that Amy was on her way down from her loft. Leone closed her eyes and tried to relax her face muscles in a semblance of sleep.

"Leone," a small voice whispered from the foot of the couch.

"Yeah," she answered immediately. Propping herself up on an elbow, she saw Amy's troubled eyes and tremulous chin, and felt her heart break in two.

"Leone. The snake...it wasn't planted there, was it? It really did fall from the rafters? Nobody would play a joke like that on me here, would they?"

"Oh, Amy." Leone sat up and drew Amy down into her arms in a tender, reassuring embrace. "No one in this valley would ever do that to you. Never, ever. It was just a freak thing," she lied through her teeth.

They sat together swathed in Leone's blankets. "I promise I'll check the roof first thing in the morning."

"Thanks." Amy snuggled further into the warm blankets, and in doing so wormed deeper into Leone's arms. Encouraged, Leone held her tighter, surprised and pleased at this unexpected outcome.

* 112 *

She decided to try to reassure Amy even more if it made her snuggle in more.

"I mean, it could have been in here all along and you just never noticed."

"What?"

"Yeah, maybe it just sneaked in for some warmth? Or it could've been chasing a rat-"

"A rat!"

"Or maybe it was looking for somewhere to lay its eggs-"

"Eggs."

Amy drew her feet up under her, fingers fretfully plucking fluff off the blanket.

"Of course, some snakes don't lay eggs," Leone mused aloud.

"Some give birth to hundreds of live-Hey."

Amy was nearly up and off the sofa before Leone could grab her and calm her down.

"Okay, okay." Leone tried to soothe her, realizing she had made a slight tactical error. Laughter bubbled in her voice. "Forget that one. No baby snakes, or even eggs. It's the wrong time of year.

I'm sorry."

Amy glared at her until Leone apologized again. "Look, whatever it was, it was a one-off. It will never happen again. I promise you."

"Maybe that crap you're burning attracts them." Amy came right back at her with an agenda of her own. Two could play torture games.

"Huh?"

"That termite stuff."

"Mmm, no. It's okay to burn that." Leone shifted uncomfortably.

"I think you should put it out."

"No. It's fine-"

"Extinguish it. Just in case?"

"Connie said to burn it. I promised...termites..." Desperation crept into Leone's voice. Amy noted it with wicked glee.

Oh, so we can't snuff out the stink spell, in case all the love in the room goes poof?

* 113 *

Smugly she watched Leone squirm for excuses to keep the incense lit. There was no doubt in Amy's mind this was the spell from Connie's Wicca book. Termites, my ass.