Page 2 of Witch Moon

And she was fully awake now.

"Just what doyou think you're doing. Rowan?"

Jonathon Hawthorne stood in the open doorway of his daughter’s bedroom, his breath knocked out of him by what he saw. She sat in the middle of her floor, surrounded by a ring of candles, which were the only light in the room. Her legs were crossed, eyes closed. Some tribal drumbeat pattered from her stereo system. She didn't open her eyes or react to his presence in any way, beyond the slight stiffening of her limbs.

"Damn it. Rowan, what have I told you about this garbage?" He strode into the room, hit the light switch first, the power button on the stereo second.

When he looked at her again, her eyes were open and furious.

For just a second he could have sworn he was looking at her mother. She used to get that same infuriated, offended, and slightly arrogant expression when he dismissed her farfetched beliefs as nonsense.

Unfortunately, he'd been right. Otherwise, Ashley would still be alive. And he was damned if he would stand by and watch Rowan start down the same delusional path her mother had traveled

"Since when do you just walk into my room?" Rowan asked without getting up.

"Since I don't want my house to go up in flames. Put the damn candles out. Rowan."

"You're supposed to knock!"

"Ididknock. You apparently thought it was part of the infernal pounding on that CD you had playing."

"That was ritual drumming by a group of Native Holy Men.Notinfernal pounding."

He pushed a hand through his hair. Rowan was everything to him. A mirror image of her mother, who had been everything to him, too. He just looked at her for a moment. At her deep burnished hair, endlessly long and perfectly straight; at her smooth, ivory skin; at her thick, dark lashes that didn't need the enhancement of mascara in the least. Fourteen. Five-three. A perfect size two with a burgeoning figure he pretended not to notice. Not a little girl any more. A young woman. And he felt sorry for the men she would encounter in a few more years. She'd put them all on their knees without even trying.

Lately, Rowan had been pulling away from him. And he hated it, but didn't have a clue how to fix things. Damn Ashley for leaving him to raise their daughter alone.Shewould know what to do with a daughter who suddenly changed from a smiling dimpled little girl into a brooding, incommunicative young woman who dressed mostly in black and rarely spoke more than a sentence at a time to her parent.

She sat now, glowering as she used a gold plated snuffer to extinguish her candles one by one, not even looking at him. "So what's the big emergency, Dad?" she asked when she'd snuffed the last one.

"I...nothing. I just wondered if you wanted a ride to school."

She stared at him lips thinning.

"Do you?"

"No. Anything else?"

He sighed. "Rowan, what were you doing in here, just now? With the candles and the drumming and-"

For the first lime, a hint of a smile tugged at her lips. "I was talking to Mom. Or trying to, at least."

It brought him up short. Like a punch in the gut, it drove the breath out of him, and it took him a minute to get it back. He closed his eyes, shook his head slowly, and when he could get words out again, he said, "Honey, your mother is dead. You can't talk to her, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a con-artist and a liar."

Her huge, expressive eyes grew angry again. "Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean it doesn't exist!"

He opened his mouth to shout back at her but closed it again. "Okay. I don't want to fight with you about this. Breakfast is on the table. Come downstairs and eat before you leave for school. All right?"

She pursed her lips. "Yeah. Whatever."

"Ten minutes."

He left her, closing the door behind him, then pausing in the hall to ask himself if he was doing anything right in any way, shape or form, where she was concerned. He'd read all the books out there for single dads raising daughters on their own. God knew there were enough of them. He'd listened to all the experts, and he was still lost as to how to deal with the sudden, drastic changes in his daughter.

Downstairs in the sunny, mostly glass breakfast nook, he picked up the newspaper, sampled his oatmeal and waited for Rowan to show up, determined to have a non-confrontational conversation with her for once.

But the story that caught his attention did nothing to help along those lines. Another crime with "occult" stamped all over it had taken place overnight. Someone had butchered a house cat in the local cemetery and painted odd symbols on a headstone in its blood. It was the fifth pet to have been killed in an apparent ritual sacrifice this month. One of the kids being questioned, the story said, had been seen running from the cemetery when police arrived. No doubt, the full details would be waiting on his desk when he arrived at work. Poor goddamned cat, he thought.

And he was supposed to allow his daughter to start poking around in this kind of bullshit? Incense and candles and spells and charms? No way. Not in this lifetime.

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