His name was Clifford Rakes. Clifford's wallet contained a Florida Driver's License, Visa and Mastercard and American Express, members.h.i.+p cards for seven different writers' organizations, business cards for three chiropractors and two psychiatrists, a few mysterious 900 numbers scrawled on the back of a napkin, and a plastic insert that held several photos-Clifford Rakes's own private stroke gallery.

I'd never run across a man with Clifford's particular kink before-all the photos in his wallet were clipped from the dust jackets of hardcover books.

They were photos of bestselling women authors, each one backed with a series of carefully clipped blurbs that touted their accomplishments.

Jacqueline Susann. Danielle Steel. Jackie Collins.

Even, G.o.d help me, Barbara Cartland.

I closed Clifford's wallet and slipped it into my pocket.

I didn't like having those women there.

Not at all.

I tried to forget about Clifford Rakes's harem and concentrate on the matter at hand. Right now, that meant taking a look at the Cliffside, California phonebook.

There was no listing for a Janice Ravenwood. There was a Ripley, but the first name wasn't Spider. It was Gilbert.

Gilbert Ripley lived on Surf Glenn Lane, wherever that was. I played around with it. Circe's bugman bodyguard sure didn't look like a Gilbert. But I tore out the page just in case, folded it, and tucked it in my s.h.i.+rt pocket. Then I flipped to the yellow pages and checked out the listing for local bookstores.

Cliffside only had one.

The address was on Gull Lane, less than a block away. The place was called G.o.ddess Books. I figured I'd just gotten lucky, twice.

I was right. I only had to walk about twenty feet to find the store, and the display window featured Janice Ravenwood's books.

Chimes tinkled. The door opened and disgorged a gaggle of twentysomethings dressed in black. Neon hair and piercings and pupils that gleamed like dark little pills. Smiling, they pa.s.sed me by without a second glance.

One of the young men laughed. "Man, it's gonna be some freak show."

"Yeah," a woman with studded lips agreed. "The circus is definitely comin' to town."

"We're gonna have front row seats," the man said. "I can't wait for the f.u.c.kin' funeral."

"Caskets for two and devil wors.h.i.+ppers. You just don't get entertainment like that anymore."

The sick thing was that they were right. The circus was coming to town. The tribes were gathering. These kids were one harmless faction, but there were others far more dangerous.

Circe Whistler's true believers, for instance. I wondered what they would be like, the one's who had taken Diabolos Whistler's teachings to heart. One thing was clear-if they knew what I'd done to the man they wors.h.i.+pped as Satan's chosen one, they wouldn't pa.s.s me by with a smile and a laugh.

Armed with another reason to make my visit brief, I entered the bookstore. The clerk rewarded my bravery with a smile. In boots, a long skirt and flowing scarves, she looked like the lone survivor of seventies' hippie chic. Either that, or she'd stolen Stevie Nicks's clothes.

"Are you a reporter?" she asked.

"No," I said. "I'm looking for ghosts."

"Oh?" She arched an eyebrow, pleased with the news. Not that I was looking for ghosts, but that I wasn't a reporter.

It was simple, really. A reporter would want information. He wouldn't buy anything. I might.

"It's kind of hard for me to talk about," I explained. "Especially to a stranger. You see, I was born with a caul-"

"A definite sign of spiritual sensitivity," she interrupted.

"And lately I've had the strangest feelings, as if there are others around me when I know I'm all alone. Sometimes it's as if I actually see someone...." I laughed. "I'm sorry. You probably think I'm crazy."

"Not at all!"

"Well, it's just that telling someone that you see ghosts...."

"Around here, it's the people who don't see them that I worry about. Cliffside is known in the occult community as a place of dark energies." She glanced through the window at a pa.s.sing news van. "It seems that those energies may have gotten a little out of hand last night."

"It seems."

"It's nothing new, really." She bustled from behind the counter and directed me to a low bookshelf. "Cliffside was born in violence. That's our history, the root of the energy pattern that determines our collective destiny."

"How old is the town?"

"Well, we're dealing with written history, which is sometimes hard to trace. What I can tell you is that the Russians first came to this region in the early 1800s. They built Fort Ross in 1812, and another settlement was established near the present sight of Cliffside in 1815. In 1818, several Russian women accused of practicing witchcraft in the Cliffside settlement were tried and convicted by Russian authorities."

"Like the Salem Witch Trials in Ma.s.sachusetts?"

"What happened here was similar. Six women were executed at Hangman's Point, just north of town. To this day the hanging tree still stands. Some people claim that the spiritual resonance from the event still permeates everything that happens in Cliffside. I'm open to that kind of logic. I can't help thinking that last night-"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Well," she laughed, "it's only a theory." She handed me a couple books on the Hangman's Point witches. "If you like, you can visit the Point. I can give you directions. On nights when the energies are right, people with gifts such as yours have actually seen the shades of the Russian witches."

The clerk led me to a table at the front of the store, where several Janice Ravenwood books were on display. "These should help you," she said. "And they're all autographed. Janice lives in Cliffside."

I thanked the clerk and looked at the books. Janice had started at the bottom of the book world: Living with the Dead and The Ghost Inside You were both self-published under her own imprint. She turned the second book into a bestseller on the talk show circuit. At least that was the story according to the cover copy for her third, Marble Roads: Journeys From the Grave. New York had s.n.a.t.c.hed that one up. It was all about Janice and her spirit guide, a "n.o.ble blonde beauty who died at the dawn of the nineteenth century." The n.o.ble beauty in question was one Natasha Orlovsky, who not too surprisingly was one of the Hangman's Point witches.

I flipped to the back flap of Marble Roads and studied the hazy photo of Janice Ravenwood. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was fanned over a black evening dress and she was doing her best to look beautiful in a n.o.ble, Russian kind of way.

Which was another way of saying that the photo did exactly what it was supposed to do and then some. The way I figured it, with a jacket photo like that and a couple rungs' ascendancy on the bestseller lists, Janice was sure to earn herself a spot in Clifford Rakes's wallet gallery.

But I was getting ahead of myself, concentrating on the sizzle and forgetting the steak. I took the time to sample the words Janice Ravenwood had written. It was the usual stuff for the usual crowd, pillow books for the unimaginative and the gullible, but it wasn't all bad. Janice could actually write. She had it all over s.h.i.+rley MacLaine, and she kept the touchy-feely bits to a minimum. For example, she handled each and every one of those philosophical intangibles that troubled me in a straightforward glossary that closed out Marble Roads.

I was tempted to clip it and save it for easy reference.

Maybe keep it in my wallet.

Or the wallet I'd recently stolen.

Keep it right there with those photos of bestselling literary lionesses.

But clipping could wait. I grabbed paperbacks of Living with the Dead and The Ghost Inside You, adding a Marble Roads hardcover to my stack. Then I reached under my untucked s.h.i.+rttail, my hand barely skimming the pommel of my K-bar as I extracted Clifford Rakes's wallet.

Good old Clifford.

"I think these should get me started," I said, sliding the books toward the cash register.

The clerk's expression told me that I'd obviously made the right impression. "In two weeks, Janice will be doing a signing for To the Devil a Daughter," she gushed. "It's Circe Whistler's autobiography. Janice was the ghostwriter."

"They couldn't have timed that one better if they'd tried, huh?"

"Well, it's not out just yet," the clerk explained, managing to look slightly embarra.s.sed. "We're not scheduled to have copies until next week, but I'd be glad to reserve one for you if you're interested."

"Do you think there's any chance I could get in touch with Ms. Ravenwood before then? She seems like such an expert. I'd love to talk to her about the things I've seen."

"Since Marble Roads, Janice has become very popular. And with the Circe Whistler book coming, well...I'm sure you understand that Janice is a very busy person. She doesn't often do private consultations -"

"Sure." I handed over Clifford's American Express Card. But since I'm here in town...well, I really feel that I have to at least give it a try. I'm having such a hard time with the things I'm seeing, and I really want to understand what's going on."

The clerk's brows knitted in real concern.

Mine did too, but in antic.i.p.ation.

She opened the cash drawer, slipped a card from one of the trays, and handed it to me.

There was a phone number, but no address.

It didn't matter. This kind of detective work, I could handle.

I signed for the books and the clerk bagged them for me Then I returned to the pay phone. This time I made a call.

Janice picked up on the second ring. I mentioned her work on the Circe Whistler autobiography. I said that I was with CNN, specifically The Larry King Show.

I didn't say much else.

I didn't have to.

Janice took my introduction as an overture. She asked if I'd like to come over for lunch. A few seconds later, I had her address. I should have known it all along.

"It's the house at the end of Hangman's Point Drive," she said. "My place overlooks the hanging tree. You can't miss it."

2.

At the end of Hangman's Point Drive, a tree with gnarled branches scratched the iron sky.

Not one leaf on that tree, and nothing grew beneath its bare branches. I stepped over slabs of bark that lay on the ground like scales shed by a dying dragon. Lover's graffiti scarred the trunk, and fat black beetles scuttled in a pile of broken branches near a historical marker that looked more like a headstone.

Anyone else might have thought the hanging tree was dead. Ready for the chainsaw. But I knew that it was alive.

I could see that clearly.

The tree bore fruit. A fine crop of ghosts. Six Russian witches dangled from nooses that had rotted long ago, but the ropes didn't seem rotten to me. To my eyes they were as fine and strong as the day they were knotted, like healthy stems bearing the weight of ripe apples.

The ropes twisted and creaked against the rising wind. The storm was coming on fast. I leaned against the trunk and stared up at the iron sky through a tangle of crippled branches. The smaller branches swayed against the surging storm, scratching the sky more eagerly now. Before long, I knew they'd slice heaven's belly and rain would fall like cold droplets of blood.

I waited for that moment, and so did the witches.

s.p.a.ced evenly on low branches like decorations on a maypole, hands bound behind their backs with festive satin hair ribbons, the ghosts danced on the wind. A plump redhead here, a thin brunette there. A tall girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen, her naked feet forever kicking just an inch above the ground. An older woman with long black hair that lashed her face like a scourge, and another who had shed one of her shoes and seemed to be searching for it with eternally downcast eyes.

But it was the sixth witch that held my attention. She was blonde, with features that might be described as n.o.ble. I threaded my way through the others until I stood near her, close enough to study her bright blue eyes.

She was Natasha Orlovsky, Janice Ravenwood's spirit guide. She had to be. She was the only blonde in the bunch.

She looked down at me, and she didn't blink. Her expression softened as our eyes met, so suddenly that it surprised me. Despite the claims of the woman at the new age bookstore, I had no way of knowing how long it had been since someone with a heartbeat had looked into Natasha's eyes.

I was willing to bet that it had been a very long time, indeed. I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn't see how that was possible. For one thing, I couldn't speak Russian. But it wouldn't have mattered if I could. Natasha Orlovsky's spirit couldn't speak to anyone, in any language. Like her sister witches, her lips were st.i.tched closed.

In death, she was mute. There was no way that she could answer my questions, even if I could find a way to ask them.

There was no way she could tell me anything.

Me, or Janice Ravenwood, or anyone else.

"I'm sorry, Natasha," I said, even though I knew she couldn't understand me.

She moaned, or maybe it was only the branch that bore her spirit's weight. Resignation colored her eyes. And then the rising wind caught her, and the rope twisted, and the storm turned her eyes away.

A raindrop splashed my hand.

The first of many.

It felt like a tear.

The house was small and old. Nothing more than a vacation bungalow, really, though Janice had tried to spruce it up. Flowerpots dotted the porch, and the knocker on the front door was a brightly polished bra.s.s sun that smiled cheerfully.

I entered the house and found Janice Ravenwood in the kitchen, making precious little hors d'oeuvres for a reporter from CNN.

"You're a fraud," I said.

I must have surprised her. She gasped and gave a little start, but even in the cold silence of my accusation her eyes refused to surrender their secrets.