Through my limited (mostly a.s.sistantless) research I knew that devil stories were rare. Ghost and witch stories were abundant, but devils... Rare.

After persuasion, Jackie told the story in a couple of sentences, but she told all of it in those two sentences. Someone once told me that if a person was a really good storyteller he could tell the story in one word and that word would be the t.i.tle of the book. Exorcist is an example. Says it all.

Her story intrigued me so much that I thought maybe my ears would start flapping and pull me straight up. Wow! A woman loved a man the townspeople believed was the devil. Why did they believe that? And they killed her. Not him. Her. Why didn't they kill the man? Fear? Couldn't find him? He'd gone back to h.e.l.l? What happened after she was murdered? Any prosecutions?

But before I could ask anything, Jackie dropped her gla.s.s-on purpose but I had no idea why-and all the girls turned into squawking hens and ran for the nearest bathroom.

I took a few moments to try to turn myself into their idea of a cool, calm, sophisticated best-selling author, then hightailed it after Jackie.

As soon as she came out of the bathroom some guy went up to her, said he had to leave and called her "Pumpkin." No one on earth looked less like a "Pumpkin" than that curvy little creature.

I didn't like him. He was too slick-looking for my taste. A used-car salesman trying to look like a stockbroker. And he was with a tall young man who looked like someone had turned the lights off inside his head. I'd be willing to bet six figures that those two were up to no good.

But then, maybe it was just that I really was beginning to want this young woman to work for me so I was getting possessive.

I again tried to get into a conversation with her and find out more about the devil story, but she seemed to be embarra.s.sed because her friends had said that she should write a book. First of all, I didn't remember hearing that. It was probably when my ears were twitching and I was floating.

Second, I wanted to say, "Honey, everybody wants to be a writer."

But as I chatted with her about her not wanting to be a writer, I found out she was getting married in three weeks (I guess to the salesman-broker).

Then she more or less told me that she wouldn't work for me if I were the last man... Et cetera. I went home.

Early the next morning I called the moving company and indefinitely postponed my move. I decided I really did need to figure out where I was going before I packed up.

By this time, I didn't have an a.s.sistant or a housekeeper, so I lived with dirty clothes and TV dinners-both of which made me think of my childhood. For weeks, I used every resource I had to try to find out about Jackie's story. I went on the Internet. I called Malaprop's in Asheville and had them send me a copy of every book they had on North Carolina legends. I called my publisher and she got me phone numbers of several North Carolina writers and I called them.

No one had heard of the devil story.

I called Mrs. Lady of the House (had to fish her invitation out of the garbage can where it was, of course, stuck to something wet and smelly) and asked her to please, pretty please, find out the name of the town in North Carolina where the story had happened, but not to tell Jackie or any of her friends I'd asked.

By the time I hung up I wanted to ask the woman to negotiate my next book contract-if/when, that is. She said she would get the name of the town, but only if I agreed to talk at one of her women's club lunches ("a reading would be nice and an autographing afterward"). In the end she set me up for three whole hours, and I was to get my publishing house to "donate" thirty-five hardcovers. All this for the name of a town in North Carolina. Of course I agreed.

She called back ten minutes later and said in her best silly-me voice, "Oh, Mr. Newcombe, you're not going to believe this but I don't have to ask anyone anything. I just remembered that I already know the name of the town where Jackie's story happened."

I waited. Pen ready. Breath held.

Silence.

I continued waiting.

"Is the twenty-seventh of this month good for you?" she asked.

I gritted my teeth and clutched the pen. "Yes," I said. "The twenty-seventh is fine."

"And could you possibly donate forty books?"

It was my turn to be silent, but I bent the tip of my pen and had to grab another one from the holder.

I guess she knew she'd pushed me to my limit because she said in a normal voice, no ooey-gooey gush, "Cole Creek. It's in the mountains and isolated." Her voice changed back to little-girl. "See you on the twenty-seventh at eleven-thirty A.M. sharp," she said, then hung up. I said the filthiest words I knew-some of them in Old English-before I hung up my end.

Three minutes later I had the number to the Cole Creek, North Carolina, public library and was calling them.

First, in order to impress the librarian, I gave my name. She was indeed properly impressed and gushed suitably.

With all the courtesy that I'd learned from Pat's family, I asked her about the devil story and the pressing.

The librarian said, "That's all a lie," and slammed down the phone.

For a moment I was too stunned to move. I just sat there holding the phone and blinking. Big deal writers don't have librarians or booksellers hang up on them. Never has happened; never will.

As I slowly put down the phone, my heart was beating fast. For the first time in years I felt excited about something. I'd hit a nerve in that woman.

My editor once said that if I ran out of my own problems to write about, I should write about someone else's. At long last I seemed to have found a "someone else's problem" that interested me.

Five minutes later I called my publisher and asked a favor. "Anything,"

she said. Anything to get another Ford Newcombe book is what she meant.

Next, I looked on the Internet, found a realtor who handled Cole Creek, called and asked to rent a house there for the summer.

"Have you ever been to Cole Creek?" the woman asked in a heavy Southern accent.

"No."

"There's nothing to do there. In fact, the place is little more than a ghost town."

"It has a library," I said.

The realtor snorted. "There're a few hundred books in a falling-down old house. Now if you want-"

"Do you have any rentals in Cole Creek or not?" I snapped.

She got cool. "There's a local agent there. Maybe you should call him."

Knowing small towns, I figured that by now everyone in Cole Creek was aware that Ford Newcombe had called the library, so the local realtor would be on the alert. I said the magic words: "Money is no object."

There was a hesitation. "You could always buy the old Belcher place.

National Register. Two acres. Livable. Barely livable, anyway."

"How far is it from the center of Cole Creek?"

"Spit out the window and you'll hit the courthouse."

"How much?"

"Two fifty for the history. Nice moldings."

"If I sent you a certified check tomorrow how soon can it close?"

I could hear her heart beating across the wire. "Sometimes I almost like Yankees," she said. "Sugah, you send me a check tomorrow and I'll get that house for you in forty-eight hours even if I have to throw old Mr. Belcher out into the street, oxygen tank and all."

I was smiling. "I'll send the check and all the particulars," I said, then took down her name and address and hung up. I called my publisher. I was going to buy the house in her name so no one in Cole Creek would know it was me.

I knew I couldn't leave town until after the twenty-seventh of April when I had to pay the blackmail-reading, so I occupied myself by reading about North Carolina. The realtor called me back and said that old Mr. Belcher would give me the house furnished for another dollar.

That took me aback and I had to think about why he'd do that. "Doesn't want to move all his junk out, does he?"

"You got it," the realtor said. "My advice is not to take the offer. There's a hundred and fifty years of trash inside that house."

"Old newspapers? Crumbling books? Attic full of old trunks?"

She sighed dramatically. "You're one of those. Okay. You got a house full of trash. Tell you what, I'll pay the dollar. My gift."

"Thanks," I said.

The twenty-seventh was a Sat.u.r.day, and I spent three hours answering the same questions at Mrs. Attila's ladies' luncheon (chicken salad) as I had everywhere else. My plan was to leave for Cole Creek early Monday morning. My furniture was to go into storage and I planned to take just a couple of suitcases of clothes, a couple of laptops, plus a gross of my favorite pens (I was terrified that Pilot would discontinue them). I'd already shipped my research books to the realtor to hold for me. And Pat's father's tools were on the floor of the backseat of my car.

At the luncheon Mrs. Hun told me that Jackie Maxwell was getting married the next day. Smiling-and trying to be gracious and amusing-I asked her to tell Jackie that I'd bought a house in Cole Creek, and was spending the summer there, where I'd be researching my next book, and if Jackie wanted the job, it was still open. I even said she could ride with me when I left on Monday morning.

Mrs. Free Books smiled in a way that let me know I'd missed my chance, but she agreed to relay my message to Jackie.

On Sunday afternoon I was shoving my socks into a duffel bag when there was a hard, fast knock on my door. The urgency of the sound made me hurry to answer it.

What I saw when I opened the door startled me into speechlessness.

Jackie Maxwell stood there in her wedding dress. She had on a veil over what looked to be an acre and a half of long dark hair. The last time I'd seen her her hair had been about ear length. Had it grown that fast? Some genetic thing? And the front of her dress was... well, she'd grown there, too.

"Is the research job in Cole Creek still open?" she asked in a tone that dared me to ask even one question.

I said yes, but it came out in a squeak.

When she moved, the dress caught on something on the porch. Angrily, she s.n.a.t.c.hed at the skirt and I heard cloth tearing. The sound made her give an evil little smile.

Let me tell you that I never want to make a woman so angry that she smiles when she hears her own wedding dress rip. I'd rather-truthfully, I can't think of anything on earth I wouldn't rather do than be on the receiving end of anger like I saw in Ms. Maxwell's eyes.

Or was this after the ceremony and she was now Mrs. Somebody Else?

Since I wanted to live, I asked no questions.

"What time should I be here tomorrow?"

"Eight A.M. too early for you?"

She opened her mouth to answer but the dress caught again. This time she didn't jerk it. This time her face twisted into a frightening little smirk, and she very, very, very slowly pulled on that dress. The ripping sound went on for seconds.

I would have stepped back and shut the door but I was too scared.

"I'll be here," she said, then turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the street. There was no car waiting for her, and since I lived miles from any church, I don't know how she got to my house.

At the street sidewalk, she turned left and kept walking. Not a person or child was in sight. No one had come out to see the woman in the wedding dress walk by. I figured they were as scared as I was.

I watched her until she was out of sight, then I went inside and poured myself a double shot of bourbon.

All I can say is that I was real glad I wasn't the man on the receiving end of that anger.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Jackie I decided I was never going to tell anyone what had pa.s.sed between Kirk and me just before the wedding ceremony. The organist was playing that march, the one that was my cue to start walking down the aisle, and Jennifer was on the other side of the door, pulling on the k.n.o.b and hissing at me, but I wasn't moving. I was sitting there with my wedding dress billowing out around me in a life-of-its-own heap (I'd punch it down, then, like bread dough gone wild, it would rise again) and listening to Kirk's tearful story.

The tears were his, not mine. I don't know what he expected from me.

Did he actually think I'd do as he asked and "forgive" him? Did he think I'd kiss away his manly tears, tell him I still loved him bunches and heaps, then walk down the aisle and marry him?

Yeah, right. As his wife, I'd be legally responsible for half the debt he was telling me that he'd incurred.

No, thanks. The fact that he'd lost all my savings, the tiny inheritance my father had left me, and that now all I owned were my clothes, my camera equipment, and my dad's books, didn't seem to bother him. Kirk held my hands in his and, sobbing, told me that he'd get it all back for me. He swore it. On his mother's grave. On his deep love for me, he swore he'd pay me back.

It's an odd thing about love. When someone you love cries, your heart melts. But when someone you don't love cries, you look at them and think, Why are you telling me this?

And that's how I felt at seeing Kirk cry: nothing. I felt nothing at all except rage at his presumption. And rage at how he'd finagled the local bank president (his cousin) into helping clean me out. "It was for you, Pumpkin,"

he told me. "I did it all for you. For us. "

Wonder when he'd been planning to tell me? If one coincidence after another hadn't happened, I wouldn't have found out about my empty bank account until after I was his wife. Then what could I have done?

For that matter, what could I do even if I wasn't married to him? Sue?

Now that's a good idea. Kirk's father was a judge. Maybe I'd get my almost father-in-law on the bench in the case. Or one of his father's golfing buddies.

No, I knew that all I could do was cut my losses and get the h.e.l.l away from him and his relatives as fast as possible. Yesterday, Jennifer's mother had laughingly told me that Ford Newcombe had said the job was still open, that he was leaving on Monday for Cole Creek, and that I could ride with him. At the time, I'd just smiled and shook my head. While watching Kirk cry and beg me to forgive him, I decided to take the job.

There was a backdoor to the little anteroom-the room where brides and bridesmaids are supposed to giggle in happy antic.i.p.ation-and I walked out of it. Outside, I grabbed one of those tall, steel sprinklers out of the lawn and wedged it through the door handles to give myself a few moments before Kirk ran after me.

By the time I reached Newcombe's house (so ordinary and inexpensive that the townspeople said, "Is he trying to pretend he's poor? That he's just like us?") I hated that big fat white dress. And I hated the hair extensions Ashley and Autumn had talked me into. And I especially hated the padded bra they'd put on me.

When I got to Newcombe's house, I could see that he was dying to ask me a thousand personal questions but I didn't explain anything to him, nor did I plan to. I wanted to keep it on a business level between him and me.