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up another enchantment to cancel out any lingering traces of the disastrous one of the night before. That spell had most likely brought Rachel into the real world and she was sure the new one would get rid of her. Amanda couldn’t help but feel pity for Rachel.
    Rachel, who couldn’t rest. What torment her soul must have endured for its hate to still have so much power after all this time.
    Too much power for a dead woman...or a dead witch, if that was what she’d truly been.
    Rachel. What did you really want?
    Amanda didn’t really want to know the answer because knowing might only cause her more guilt. Interfering with the dead was no business for a live witch.
    She gazed pensively into the flames.
    She could do something for Rachel’s spirit, though.
    Softly, she spoke the words of one final spell, one that would give Rachel’s soul peace. Forever—or so she hoped.
    That was the least, and the only thing, she could do for a long-dead sister witch. Even that drained her so much she fell asleep in the rocking chair, fire still crackling, Amadeus cuddled in her lap; forgetting completely her vow to find the satanic cult that was causing havoc in the area.
    She’d just done too much magic in one day.

Chapter Two
    The next morning Amanda got up early, disturbing a comfortable Amadeus, and struggled into her robe with cold fingers. Scuffing into the kitchen in slippered feet, she snapped her fingers at the wood stove in the corner and flames leapt up inside.
    She warmed herself over it and gazed through the ice-etched window. Outside, an overnight milky blanket of ice had attached itself to the ground, and the frozen tree limbs clacked together in the breeze like loose skeletons under a forbidding steel-gray sky.
    She tried not to dwell on Rachel or Witch’s Pond. It was over. The incident was an enigma she would never solve now.
    It was Saturday. Seven days from All Hallow’s Eve. It was the night when her Celtic ancestors had celebrated Samhain, the beginning of winter, and thanked the earth for its bounty of the previous summer. Through the ages, this was the night they’d dance in wild abandon before bonfires in scary costumes, trying to divine the future, and driving all the God-fearing folks crazy. It was also a night when the barriers between human and supernatural forces were broken. A night for witches.
    Even the British church setting November first as holy All Saints’ Day couldn’t stop the pagan rites.
    She thought of her older sister and smiled. If it stays this cold, Rebecca, you’ll not be doing any nude cavorting in the woods this year.
    As if witches did such antics any longer. Well, perhaps, if it made good fodder for her books, Rebecca probably still did it.
    By the time she’d finished eating breakfast, the kitchen was warm and cozy. She had a book opened before her and Amadeus was begging for scraps in her lap when the knock came at the door.
    “Ernie!” Amanda exclaimed, after she tugged the door open. “Long time no see.” She grinned, feeling a little self-conscious in her robe, though he’d seen her in it many times when he’d come over to visit Jake. She pulled at her belt, tightening it.
    He stood there sheepishly in his mailman’s uniform, clutching a package in his arms. “Hello, Amanda. Got some things here for you. Your Book-of-the-Month club selections.” He handed her a brown package. Amanda loved books and read all the time, especially history books, science fiction, and horror. After she’d taken the books, he lifted a large package up from behind him for her to see, groaning at the weight of it. “And this enormous thing. Whatever it is.”
    “Heavy, huh?”
    “Very.”
    “Come on in with it,” she told him. “It’s freezing out there.”
    “I know.” He agreed, chattering his teeth to make her smile again.
    Amadeus had scuttled under the table. He curled up in a ball and glared out at Ernie as if he’d never seen him in his life.
    “Amadeus, behave.” She