Suddenly the back door just behind them shattered with a clamoring racket, causing all three women to scream and throw themselves against the farthest wall. A third man stumbled through its ruin, leering and obviously drunk. "Boo," he said, thinking this so funny that he could only lean against the ruined jamb and laugh at first.

"Oh, looky here!" exclaimed one of the men from out front, sticking his face in through a broken window. "Bonus points, Sandoval! One for each of us!"

"Three little tree huggers, lined up on a wall," chanted the man who'd broken in the door. "Tasty little rabbits, and I'm gonna eat 'em all." He bent double with drunken laughter as his two companions pushed the front door open and came inside as well.

"What kind of animals?" Ferristaff growled in disbelief. "Didn't they have guns?"

"Of course." Bruech shrugged. "But it was dark, and they kept missing. Apparently this went on all night, and by morning they'd had enough. They packed up and high-tailed it out of there."

"Well, I didn't pay them to turn and run the minute they encountered a little wild life, you can tell 'em there's no check in the mail." Ferristaff ran a hand through his thatch of silvering hair, and went to stare unhappily out at the darkness through one of his expansive living room's picture windows. The house he'd built of local timber here in the hills outside of Taubolt had an impressive view of the coastline meandering north into the moonlit haze. "Frankly, I'm tired of all these ridiculous setbacks, Bruech. Why is it suddenly so hard to get a simple little survey done?"

"I'm as frustrated as you are, Robert, but I don't know what else to try," Bruech protested. "It's like sending men into the devil's triangle up there. I hire seasoned professionals-people we've used lots of times in much rougher terrain than this seems from the air-but they just end up wandering in circles, or losing their equipment. Now this. I don't know what to make of it."

"Well someone has to own that mysterious hole," Ferristaff grumbled. "Whoever that is could answer most of the important questions. Why haven't you found them yet?"

"Frankly, sir, I think they're hiding from us. Or being hidden. It's the same game these people have been playing since we got here."

Ferristaff said nothing to this. The memory of his embarrassment when he'd tried to leverage some cooperation from these yokels by reporting their tax evasion was not one he wanted stirred. Someone had beaten him to the punch there, and he wasn't going to try it again, even if he thought anyone would pay attention to his accusations a second time. "There must be something we can use to make them quit this shit," he muttered.

His thoughts were derailed by the sound of tires crunching across his gravel drive.

"Who would that be?" Ferristaff murmured, going to the door. Before he got halfway there, someone was banging on it to wake the dead. Angered, Ferristaff picked up speed, Bruech following behind, and yanked the door open to find Tom Connolly glaring at him on the porch.

"I want you out of here!" Connolly shouted so fiercely that Ferristaff balled his fists, bracing to block a swing that didn't come. Connolly just stood there, shaking and livid, and continued to shout. "Your whole goddamn company and these goddamn thugs you import had better be packed up and-"

Ferristaff simply slammed the door shut again in his face, but Connolly resumed banging on it almost immediately.

"What the fuck is he about?" Ferristaff snapped at Bruech, who simply shrugged, looking startled. "If you can't calm down and talk to me like a civilized man, Mr. Connolly," Ferristaff shouted through the heavy redwood door, "then you'd better go because I'm about to call the police!"

"From Heeberville?" Connolly jeered back. "Now I'm scared! As it happens, they're already on their way! I called them half an hour ago!"

"What?" Ferristaff asked, turning back to Bruech, who simply shrugged again and shook his head.

On the porch, Connolly had finally fallen silent.

"Mr. Connolly, I don't know what's happened, and I do want to," Ferristaff said more calmly. "If I open this door, will you tell me what's going on in some more reasonable manner, or do we have to wait until there are officers here to protect me?"

"Oh, that's rich!" Connolly snapped.

After another lengthy silence, Ferristaff, who had never had much trouble handling himself in a fight, shrugged at Bruech, and opened the door.

Connolly stood glaring as before, obviously struggling for control. "Three of your men," he rasped, "just tried to rape my daughter."

Ferristaff's jaw swung down like the tailgate of a dump truck. "My God!" he breathed. This was trouble. Real trouble, if not managed carefully. Fortunately, his very real shock seemed to temper Connolly's rage, if only slightly. "Is she-" Ferristaff began.

"Jake happened to be nearby and got to them in time to stop it," Connolly grated. "But your presence here has got to end. By morning, you won't have a friend left in-"

"Mr. Connolly," Ferristaff cut in levelly, "are you suggesting that I had something to do with this appalling crime?"

"You came under false pretenses," Connolly accused, "and your activities here have been nothing but one big toxic spill ever since! We don't want any more of-"

"I am deeply, deeply sorry about what's been done to your daughter, Mr. Connolly," Ferristaff interjected again, "and I will spare no effort or expense to see that these man are found and-"

"They're already in custody," Connolly interrupted in turn. "The only thing you can do for us is leave. If you need help packing, please don't hesitate to ask."

"I own this land, Mr. Connolly," Ferristaff said, allowing just enough steel into his voice to cut through any illusions Connolly's distraught condition might have allowed him. "I bought every acre I'm harvesting up here fair and legal. I'm sure I'd feel just as you do, had it been my daughter, but I am not the guilty party here, nor in any way associated with what those jackasses did. Consider them fired, and I hope they hang, but I have no intention of going anywhere. I don't want you to leave here confused about that."

"It's your neck," Connolly said with pure contempt, and whirled toward his car.

A moment later, as Connolly sped off in a spray of gravel, Ferristaff turned to find Bruech looking rather gray. "Forget the north coast for now. First thing in the morning, I want everything there is to know about this whole sorry fuckup. We've got some serious damage control ahead of us. Stockholders hate this sort of thing."

"How's Hawk handling it?" Ben asked somberly.

"He's awfully torn up for Rose," Laura said, "and angrier than I've seen him since Sandy left. He'd like to see those men all killed, I think."

"I can't blame him," Ben replied, frowning more at the mention of her abusive ex-husband than of the would-be rapists. Over the years, it had become only harder to forgive himself for leaving her to such a fate.

They walked along the dry, grassy path in silence for a while, listening to the sigh and boom of surf from beyond the cliff tops. Laura had called him at the inn that morning to say she couldn't paint and didn't want to sit alone at home. Joby was at school, and Hawk was skipping classes to spend the day with Rose at her house. Ben had suggested lunch and a walk.

"That little flyer's not going to improve tempers either," Ben observed.

"What an ass," Laura sighed. "Pretending to sympathize, while virtually blaming her at the very same time. Who does Ferristaff think he's fooling?"

"Does seem like he'd have done better to say nothing at all," Ben agreed.

The half-sheet flyers were circulating all over town. With impressive speed, Ferristaff had arranged for someone to leave little piles of them everywhere. Laura had been shown one at lunch, by a friend at the restaurant, and been almost too angry to eat after reading it. While decrying the terrible act, and calling for the stiffest punishment allowed by law upon Ferristaff's three now ex-employees, the flyer had also suggested that it might be safer for Taubolt's youth to avoid "associating with known provocateurs."

"She only went up there to talk that woman out of what she was planning!" Laura said heatedly. "He should be thanking her, not accusing her of asking for trouble!"

"In a town this size," Ben said, kicking himself for bringing it up again, "everyone will know that soon enough, and Ferristaff will only have slit his own throat further."

"I know," Laura said sullenly. "But any idiot should have seen how those flyers will infuriate all Rose's friends. If anything, he's just given them all one more reason to flock to Greensong's side. I hope whoever distributed those things had the sense not to leave any at the school."

"If they did, I'm sure Joby had the sense to get rid of them quickly," Ben said, eager for a change of subject. "I've gotta say, it's great to see him catch his stride again at last. It's even better to see you guys together finally," he added to be politic. "Took him long enough, but all's well that ends well." Receiving only striking silence in response, Ben looked curiously at Laura, and said, "Isn't it?"

For a moment, she just looked away uncomfortably as they continued to walk. Then she said, "Ben, I'm so glad you've come. There's been no one I could talk to here. Who knows Joby like you do, I mean."

"Hey," Ben said, touching her arm to draw her to a halt. "What's wrong?"

She turned back to look at him. "I'm not sure," she said. "Maybe nothing, but . . ."

"Is it Hawk?" Ben asked. "Do you think he suspects?"

"No," she said, looking suddenly older and more tired than he'd ever seen her. "And he never will. It's way too late to change that decision now. But it's so hard deceiving him. And, for the rest of our lives, Ben? I wish we'd told him."

"I know," Ben said miserably. "I've always hated lying to him too, but I'm still not sure we had a choice. He was in such awful shape. One more blow, and who knew what he'd have done to himself? He was even worse when I saw him back in Berkeley. There's just never been any good time to tell him, and now . . . You two are together. That's the future. The past is past," he said, wondering how much richer and more joyful both their lives might have been if he'd just had the courage to stay with her and help her raise the boy himself. He hadn't felt remotely ready to be a father or a husband then, but he'd have been better than Sandy, and now he'd have had everything his heart desired. Why, he wondered, did such clarity always seem to come so long after it was needed?

"But that's just it," she said unhappily. "I'm not sure the past is gone at all. Not for Joby. Sometimes, when we're together, I'd swear we're right back in high school."

"What do you mean?" Ben asked, both genuinely dismayed and uncomfortably curious to learn that all was not as well between them as he had assumed.

"We've been together for a year, Ben," she said, just above a whisper, "and we've still never slept together. We smile. We kiss. We cuddle. We talk. He says all the right things-does all the right things-until it's time to move ahead-somewhere-with what we have. Then . . ." She raised her hands helplessly. "I've tried nudging him, but he's full of perfectly reasonable answers. 'Why rush? Let's enjoy all the seasons of our relationship! Lay solid foundations!' Ben, there's nothing there to argue with, but sometimes it feels so much like he's not there either!"

"Then nudge harder," Ben said, compelled to encourage her despite another wish he didn't want to acknowledge even to himself. "You've just got to tell him how you feel-what you want."

"And do what I did to him the last time?" she said.

"What?" Ben said. "I don't see how telling him-"

"That he's got to sleep with me or lose me?" she said, almost shrilly.

"No!" Ben said. "How do you . . . That's not what I meant. Telling him that you want to move forward somehow, like you just said, doesn't have to be an ultimatum."

"What if he takes it that way?" she pressed. "What if he's acting like this because he still doesn't trust me, then I say this, and-"

"If he's even halfway worthy of you," Ben interjected firmly, "and I think he is, he won't. I think you know he won't too-or you wouldn't be with him to begin with." He gave her a skeptical look, and asked, "What's this really about, Laura? It's not just the sex. Not with you. What aren't you telling me?"

She was silent for a long time, looking everywhere except at Ben. It was a moment before he realized that she was trying not to cry.

"Oh!" he said softly, and, without thinking, put his arms around her and drew her close. "What's up, Lady Bayer?" he crooned, as she wept into his shoulder.

"What if I don't want him anymore?" she barely breathed. "How could I do that to him?"

Ben felt ambushed, though he should have seen it coming. The conflict of emotions within him was immediate and titanic. "If you didn't want him anymore, I think you wouldn't be crying now," he said softly, holding everything else rigidly inside. "What makes you think-"

"It's not me he doesn't trust," she wept. "I know that. It's himself. Still." She pulled away to wipe her eyes and face and try to gather her composure. "He keeps telling me there's never been anyone for him but me and never will be, and I can tell he means it. It's himself he doesn't love, Ben. No matter how recovered he may seem here. I know the signs all too well, because . . ." She began to lose it again, but pulled herself together with visible severity. "Because Sandy was exactly the same. Why do I keep choosing men who don't love themselves enough to love anybody else?"

"You don't," Ben said, adding both anger at Joby and grief for him, to the list of feelings at war within him. "You chose Joby way before he was ever such a man. We both did. It was Joby, King of the Roundtable, we both loved, and-" Ben fought a lump growing in his own throat. "I can't believe he's not still inside there, somewhere." With that declaration, the war inside him seemed suddenly decided. "If you still love him, you've got to fight this out with him, Laura. He needs someone to do that for him."

"How?" she asked miserably, falling back into his arms, still leaking tears. "He's talked to me about all those years in Berkeley. All the awful things that happened. He says he's left it all behind. He lives as if he has, but . . ." She pulled away from him again, with a deep breath and an air of grim decisiveness. "You're right. I'm still in love with the Joby we knew as children, but that Joby has been pulverized for years. I don't know why, or whose fault it was, but it happened." She shook her head in frustration. "How do you fight a lifetime, Ben? How do you put a pulverized child back together, and fit it into the body and the life of a grown man? If you have any concrete ideas, I'm all ears."

Ben could think of no credible reply.

"I'm very certain of one thing," she said firmly. "I've been through Sandy once. I am not doing that, to myself or to Arthur, again. Not even for Joby. Not even for love."

"Then you have to tell him that," said Ben, "and convince him not to make you. Maybe Joby is the only one who can put that child back together, but at least you have to tell him what's at stake and help him try." Shoving the last inch of the blade into his own heart, Ben said, "I'll help you do that any way I can. Both of you."

23.

( Conspiracy ) From the moment he'd come before the Cup three weeks earlier, Swami had understood that Joby was somehow key to whatever was unfolding around them and woefully unprepared for whatever part he was to play. There had been no vision or voices; only a visceral knowing like that which told him where his limbs were in the darkness, or what he wished to eat when he was hungry. Knowing was Swami's gift. The Council respected his talent, but not enough, he suspected, to approve what he intended now, so he had not asked their permission, or told anyone that he was bringing Joby here. Since that moment in the chapel, his sleep had roiled with vivid dreams, of Joby and of the Garden. If the Council condemned him for this later, so be it. Swami knew what he knew, and had learned to trust his gift.

Still, as he and Joby knelt by Swami's car, stuffing a few last items into their backpacks before hoisting them on and adjusting the straps, Swami was nervous.

"You ready?" he asked Joby.

Joby smiled and nodded. "You sure the car will be all right here, like this?"

"No one will come here," Swami assured him.

Joby glanced again at the car, pulled not quite out of the rutted dirt road onto a narrow, weedy shoulder against a high embankment, then grinned and said, "I suppose you're right. I didn't even realize this road was here until you turned onto it. How does anyone remember where that turnoff is?"

"Anyone doesn't," Swami said, forcing a smile. "Let's go."

Coming to perch high atop a fir tree, Michael folded his hawk's wings, and watched Swami lead Joby down the trail toward what very few had any business seeing. Michael had no idea where the boy's reckless choice would lead, but the angel knew better than to interfere with anything in which Joby was involved. So he watched, contemplating the accelerating disintegration of Taubolt's carefully ordered existence.

As if yet another reason for concern were needed, something troubling had recently crossed into Taubolt. Michael was not sure how long ago, for it seemed able to hide from him-in itself, reason for apprehension-straying into his awareness only for fleeting instances since early September. It was nothing human, but too full of intelligence to be any mere animal either. The brief glimpses Michael had been allowed were fevered with despair, confusion, or anger. While the Cup's power still filled the land for such a distance, it could not be a demon, though that is what it felt most like, but whatever it was, Michael felt certain it should not be here.

As Swami and Joby disappeared around the bend, Michael's mind flew out again across the fields and ridge tops, deep into the forests, along the winding roads, searching for some further sign of . . . And there it was again! In the woods east of town! Much too close for comfort! Michael spread his wings and flew, but even as his mind reached out to pin the presence down, it flinched away from his awareness like a feral, frightened animal, and fled. What on earth could do that to an archangel? With Merlin accounted for, Michael could not imagine.

All afternoon Swami had led him steeply upward over hillsides covered in the usual dry grass and dusty brambles. It had been a hard, hot climb under fully loaded packs, making the few blessed stretches of shady woodland especially welcome. Not until early evening had they finally reached the ridge top, and stopped to gaze out over a breathtaking expanse of coastline stretching north, layer after paler layer, into the mountainous distance. Thickly forested hills of amazing height plunged down to meet the sea far below them, where mist churned up against the rocky shoreline spread into deep ravines giving the view a mythic atmosphere.

From there, Swami had led Joby down into woodland immediately different from any he'd ever seen. The trees here were wind-sculpted into graceful geometric shapes, as if decorations for a fairy tale, and the gargantuan ferns lining their path brushed at Joby's shoulders as they dropped farther into the gorge. Many of the tree trunks here were easily fifteen feet across, and an almost eerie stillness made the place seem even more primeval. When Swami had invited him to come backpacking for the weekend, one last time before the heat of Indian summer failed, Joby had expected nothing so remarkable.

"Where are we?" Joby breathed at last. It seemed no place they should have been able to walk to in a single afternoon. "How come I've never heard of this place?"

"We're on the Garden Coast," Swami answered, turning back to face him gravely. "This is one of Taubolt's most guarded secrets, Joby. You must promise never to speak a word of it to anyone who hasn't spoken to you about it first."

Joby was unsure what to make of such a strange request.

"I'm serious," Swami pressed. "Please. Promise me you'll keep this to yourself."

"Sure." Joby shrugged. "Wouldn't want this crawling with tourists, would we?"

Seeming mollified, Swami turned and continued down the path.

It got darker as they hiked through stands of impossibly huge redwoods and other kinds of trees Joby didn't think he'd even seen before. No sound but their own footfalls disturbed the evening air. When it had grown almost too dark to see, they came to a small flat patch of grass beside the black glass pools of a gurgling brook, where Swami suggested they make camp for the night.

The place imposed its quiet on them as they prepared and ate a simple meal of tortillas and beans. After that, they sat watching sparks fountain up into the well of stars between the trees above their fire.

"This is real virgin forest, isn't it," Joby murmured at last.

"You can't begin to guess," Swami replied, his obsidian eyes and swarthy face grown suddenly fey and sad in the firelight. "I'm turning in. Long hike tomorrow."

"Yeah. Me too," said Joby and headed for his sleeping bag wondering what kinds of dreams a place like this might bring.

As they packed up their camp after breakfast, a gem-bright bird of red and blue flashed down from the trees above them to snatch a crumb of oatmeal, and fly off again.

"What was that?" Joby exclaimed. "I've never seen a bird so beautiful!"

"It's called a ruby thrush," Swami replied, hoisting his pack onto one knee and over his shoulders with practiced ease.

"I've never even heard of it," Joby said in awe.