Witchcraft

counter. That envelope wasn't the first she had received, bearing the discreet address of a Los Angeles law firm. After opening the first several months ago, Kimberly had determined not to open any more. Still, for some obscure reason, it was difficult for her to just toss it in the garbage. The kettle came to a boil and Kimberly poured herself a huge mug of tea. She needed to get back to work. Her fictional characters were making more pressing demands on her than the silly incident with the rose. With a frown of concentration, she sat down to finish chapter three. She worked for an hour before thinking again of the pierced rose. Kimberly looked up, gazing absently into the middle distance beyond her window, and found herself staring at the crimson flower instead of untangling the intricacies of her current plot. That needle had been placed inside the petals deliberately. There was no point telling herself it had happened accidentally. And no mere accident had brought the flower to her doorstep.
    A spark of sunlight glinted on the needle, illuminating it harshly.
    Then one of the storm clouds rolling in from the ocean blotted out the brief ray of light. The steel needle continued to gleam dully. She ought to throw the rose into the garbage along with that letter from the lawyer, Kimberly told herself uneasily. But the unanswered questions surrounding the rose's presence on her doorstep seemed to make it impossible to just dismiss the incident. Thoughts of Darius Cavenaugh brushed through her mind again, and before they had disappeared she found her eyes sliding toward the yellow telephone. Without stopping to think she picked up the receiver, dialing the number on the small card quickly, as though something beyond her own will drove her to do so.
    "This is ridiculous," Kimberly muttered as she listened to the phone ringing a hundred miles away on the estate in the Napa Valley. She took a deep breath and hurriedly disconnected herself before anyone could pick up the receiver. But all afternoon as the storm began to gather itself out at sea for the assault on the coast, Kimberly's thoughts kept ricocheting back and forth between the rose on her windowsill and the image of Darius Cavenaugh . Twice more she found herself reaching for the phone as though an outside force were prompting her. Twice more she slammed the receiver back into the cradle with an exclamation of disgust. She could not call Cavenaugh . Not over something as trivial as this damned rose business.
    Chapter three.
    grudgingly ended shortly before five o'clock. With a feeling of relief Kimberly covered the typewriter. It had been terribly difficult to keep her mind on her work. Outside, the sky was already quite dark and the wind was beginning to howl demandingly around the small beachfront cottage.
    Turning on a few more lights to ward off the pressing storm-driven darkness, Kimberly built a small fire in the old stone hearth. It was not uncommon for the electricity to go off during a storm, and she didn't want to f and herself without heat or light later on this evening. A feeling of tension, real restless uneasiness, began to work on her nervous system as she lit the fire and went into the kitchen to see about dinner. Long accustomed to eating alone, Kimberly normally viewed the prospect with a certain quiet pleasure. She poured herself a glass of Cavenaugh Merlot wine and sipped it slowly as she prepared a baked potato and a green salad. This evening would be a good time to finish that wonderfully trashy adventure novel she had started reading last night. As usual she set a neat table for herself, preparing the baked potato exactly as she liked it with loads of sour cream and salad dressing, grated cheese, chopped black olives, a sprinkling of peanuts and some sliced hot peppers. Setting out the bottle of hot sauce to which she was pleasantly addicted, she poured a bit more of the Merlot into her glass. Kimberly had bought the Cavenaugh wine on a whim earlier that week when it showed up on the shelves of the tiny market in the nearby town. It had been an expensive whim, and not one she would indulge frequently. Writers living from one royalty statement to the next tended to become connoiseurs of wine that came in large bottles with screw tops. She'd actually had to dig out a genuine corkscrew for the Cavenaugh Vineyards bottle. The wine inside had proven to be excellent, but that didn't really surprise her. Anything Darius Cavenaugh did would be done