“According to your lineup, smitten.” She’d have to think about it. She studied the card in her hand. “So, they like the big ones?”

“Absolutely. You put those flowers in something pretty now. They’re too sweet to stay in that old bucket.” She gave Ripley a pat on the shoulder, then wandered off.

As soon as she could manage it, Gladys would be spreading the word that the village deputy was sweet on the mainlander. And vice versa.

The mainlander was back at work. He’d studied, organized, and logged the varied data that had come through on the night he and Ripley had been together. He was formulating theories, hypotheses, and working toward logical conclusions.

He hadn’t noted the time when he and Ripley had made love. His mind had been on more important matters. Nor had he clocked the duration. But his printouts, assuming that his theories on energy dispersal were correct, pinned it down for him.

The machines had picked up burst after burst, spikes, long, steady rises, fluctuations. Wasn’t it interesting that he hadn’t heard the clatter of them as they recorded? He’d been so completely absorbed in her.

Now he could look at the tangible record of what they’d brought to each other. It was oddly arousing. He measured distances between the spikes and rises, calculated the valleys between energy peaks and the output of each.

Then he had to get up and walk around until he could stop imagining her naked and concentrate on science.

“Long steady holding pattern here. Low-grade energy levels.” He crunched on an apple, pushed up his glasses. “Afterglow period. We’re just lying there now. Languor, pillow talk. Makes sense. So why does it start building again here?”

It was almost like steps, he noted. A rise, a plateau, a rise, a plateau. He tried to think. She’d gotten up, gone for the pizza, into the kitchen for a couple of beers. Maybe she’d been thinking about making love again. He didn’t mind thinking she was. It was a nice boost to the ego.

But it didn’t explain the abrupt and violent energy flash. Nothing steplike there. It had been like a rocket going off. Nothing he could find indicated that it came from an outside source or an underlying well of energy.

To his best recollection, he’d been in a kind of twilight sleep, just sort of floating while he waited for her. He’d been thinking about the pizza, about eating it in bed with her. Naked. It had been a pleasant image, but he hadn’t been the cause of this.

Therefore, Ripley had. But how and why were the puzzles.

An aftershock sort of thing? That was possible. But aftershocks were rarely as powerful as the initial quake, and this one punched right through the ceiling.

If he could re-create the event. . . . That was a thought. Of course, he would need to find a delicate way to propose that to her.

They had a lot to talk about.

He bit into the apple again, and felt happy just remembering the stunned look on her face when he’d walked in with all those flowers. He liked surprising her that way, then watching her deal with it. He just liked watching her.

He wondered how much work it was going to be for him to talk her into taking a trip with him, maybe in the spring. Before he had to buckle down and turn his data and theories and conclusions into a book. They could make a quick stop inNew York . He wanted her to meet his family. Then they could take a few days somewhere, anywhere she wanted. He wasn’t particular. Some time alone with her, away from work. It might help him evaluate another hypothesis he was working on. That he was falling in love with her.

Ripley decided to keep her distance from whatever was going to happen at Mia’s that evening. Since Zack had chosen to go along, she would have the house to herself for a change. She could take advantage of that by turning the TV up too loud, eating junk food, and watching a really bad action movie on cable.

She’d been spending nearly all her free time with Mac, and maybe that was part of the problem. A little alone time in her own space was just what she needed.

She would work off some energy lifting weights, take a long, hot shower, then settle in with popcorn, loaded with salt and butter, and watch TV with her pals Lucy and Diego. She turned the music up to earsplitting in the spare room she used for workouts, then with the dog and cat trailing her, walked into the bedroom to change into her gear.

And there were the tulips, the charming explosion of them, taking over her dresser. The air was sweet with them.

“Valentine’s Day’s just a racket,” she said out loud, then gave up. “But it really works.”

She picked up the card she’d bought for Mac. It wouldn’t take her very long to run over to the cottage, slip it under his door. In fact, it would probably be better if she didn’t have to give him something so, well, mushy face-to-face.

And she could add a little note saying that she would see him tomorrow. The more she’d thought about it, the less she wanted to talk about whatever it was he wanted to talk about when he was still pumped from his witch session.

She didn’t care if it was unfair or unrealistic, or even stupid. For now, for a while longer, she wanted to keep whatever it was they felt for each other separate from his work and her . . . gift. She’d never been in love before. What was wrong with holding on to that for a while, and putting off the rest?

“Okay, back in ten,” she told Lucy and Diego. “No smoking, drinking, or making long distance calls while I’m gone.”

She grabbed the card and headed toward the door leading out to the deck. And stepped out onto the beach, into a rising storm. The wind slashed, the icy tip of a whip. The air was blue with lightning. She was spinning, spinning through it, flying on a current of power that pulsed in a thousand heartbeats over her skin.

The circle was a white flame on the sand. She was in it, and above it, outside it. Three figures ringed inside it. She saw herself, who was not herself, link hands with her sisters. And the chants that rose up hummed inside her.

She saw herself, yet not herself, standing alone, beyond that bright circle. Arms lifted, hands empty. And the grief shot up out of that lonely heart into her own.

She saw herself, as she was, as she could be, alive in that storm. Beyond the circle where her sisters waited. Rage and power twisted inside her.

One man cowered at her feet, and another ran toward her in the violent dark. But she could not be reached. Would not be reached. In her hand was the bright silver sword of justice. With a cry, she brought it down.