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was psychic.
    “Okay, I’ll take the silence as a yes. And, no, I don’t do satanic stuff. Enchantment is a New Age store with positive energy.”
    “Okay, then, help me out, Glinda the Good Witch. Tell me what these mean.”
    Pulling a piece of paper from her purse, Mairi set it in front of Rowan. It was a poorly drawn sketch of Lauren, complete with the symbols and their locations on her body. Rowan looked up, the sparkle in her jade-colored eyes gone.
    “Is this what you dreamed about?”
    Mairi swallowed hard. “If I tell you, you have to swear you won’t breathe a word. It’s confidential.”
    “Well, it’s wearing on you, Mairi. You look exhausted. You can’t keep it in. And of course, I won’t tell a soul. We’re best friends.”
    Mairi nodded. “Last night, one of the girls from Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow arrived in the ER. She was found lying half dead on a chalk drawing of an inverted pentagram. Those marks”—Mairi pointed to the drawing—“were carved on her body.”
    “Oh, God!”
    “And worse, I counseled her last week. She had my card. And I . . . I remember her.” And worst of all, Mairi had dreamed of those symbols weeks ago, the night she started having the strange dreams of him . The guy with the magic hands and mouth.
    “You’re creeped out,” Rowan murmured. “Look at you, you’re shaking.” Reaching for her hand, Rowan pulled Mairi around the counter and offered her a stool.
    “A bit unnerved, yeah,” she replied with a shaky laugh.
    “I have a pot of herbal tea all ready to go. Let me get you a cup.”
    “You don’t need to wait on me.”
    Her friend just glared. “I’m not an invalid—yet. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to wait on me hand and foot next week after they operate on my brain. God only knows what will be left of me then. And you can be damn sure I’ll milk it for all it’s worth.”
    “That’s not funny,” Mairi snapped. “That tumor is going to be benign and you’re going to be perfect.”
    “Well, I’ll have a bad haircut, that’s for sure.” With a laugh, her friend disappeared behind the purple satin curtains.
    She shouldn’t be burdening Rowan with her problems, not when her friend was so sick. But Mairi had nowhere to turn. No one who would understand like Rowan understood. There was something almost ethereal about her friend. She virtually radiated goodness and light.
    As Mairi sat quietly waiting for Rowan to return, she pulled up the sleeve of her denim jacket. Her wrist was still tingling, the kind that happened after a sunburn, when the skin started to heal. She scratched, watching the old, faded white streaks turn pink. Ever since last night, when she’d touched Lauren, that patch of scarred skin had felt strange. Kind of . . . Mairi swallowed as she looked down at the marks, which were now a brighter pink, despite the fact that she’d stopped scratching them. That patch of skin almost felt . . . alive .
    “Sweet, just how you like it.”
    Mairi shoved her sleeve back down and straightened in her stool. No way was she going to come clean about her wrist.
    Rowan passed her a delicate pink china teacup and saucer. Under her arm, she carried a black leather book, its pages edged in gilt. “Okay, let’s see what we can find here,” Rowan muttered. “Symbols . . .” Licking her fingers, she flipped through the pages. “The placement on the body has to be as important as the symbols themselves,” she mumbled as she thumbed through the book. “That’s part of any ritual, getting the placement right.”
    “And how do you know this?”
    “Just sip your tea.” Rowan winked at her. “Okay, here,” she said, drawing her finger down the page as she glanced at the drawing. “So, these symbols. They aren’t necessarily satanic. They’re occult.”
    “And the difference would be?”
    “Well, it’s not a devil worshipper, so you can get that thought out of your head, but there is magick involved. Both dark