I was nervous about meeting her sisters, and then I got inwardly defiant, and then it turned out to be irrelevant. If anyone was around, they weren't evident. We giggled and "Ssh"ed our way up the stairs to her room like a couple of schoolgirls sneaking cigarettes.

While Paige was down the hall taking a shower I looked around her room. I love the girl, but God help anyone who ever hires her as a housekeeper. Of course, with multiple interests and a relatively small room, anyone might have a clutter problem. Art supplies, including an easel folded up in the corner; several dozen CDs, most in a rack but a lot of them just scattered around the CD player, everything (in terms of both time and genre) from Peggy Lee to Nelly (marked lack of classical music, though – nobody's perfect); books about the occult and witchcraft – that's why she was so interested in my original occult-shop idea! – as well as tarot cards and a chart of moon phases; cosmetics, jewelry, and accessories on top of the bureau banking up around the pot of a carefully cultivated bonsai tree.

Two pictures, prettily framed, have a place of honor on her nightstand where the reading lamp shines on them. One is of a pleasant looking couple in their early to mid-40s, nicely dressed, maybe a photo for a church directory or some such. I assume these are her late parents. The other is of Paige with two other young women, whom I assumed were her sisters. It looks like someone said something funny just as the picture was taken; all three of them are either on the verge of or bursting into laughter. Looking at it, Scrooge would smile.

There were five paperback books on an upside-down crate with a white candle on either side of them and a big chunk of quartz crystal sitting on top. Those were the romance novels she'd bought from the store. Wondering what her selections might reveal about her, I picked up one, and noticed a pungent smell about the book immediately.

It didn't take much investigation; there was a blob of something sticky, with a strong herbal smell, on the title page, covering the "Ex Libris" stamp we'd talked about just that afternoon. And there was something else, a circular symbol nesting in the previously empty half-circle beneath the words.

It was a ring, broken in several places, and inside a symbol or an abstract design, can't really reproduce it, but it somehow made me think of petals being cut off flowers or wings being pulled off butterflies. Just looking at it brought back the clammy despair I'd felt about the shop, myself, everything.

I looked at the other books' title pages. All of them had been daubed with the sticky stuff. Four out of five had the "Ex Libris" stamp and the disturbing symbol underneath. The one without the stamp bore no symbol.

Well, that was as much as I could bear to look at them. I re-stacked the books, put the crystal back on top, and sat on Paige's bed facing away from the crate.

I know, I know, those books were mine originally, and whatever Paige put on them simply revealed the symbol like some kind of invisible ink. But I couldn't help thinking: Of course. If she accepts me there must be something wrong with her, I should have known that, some weird satanic cult fixation. I didn't want to ask her about it, didn't even want to think about it, certainly not both drunk and depressed.

The door clicked shut, and I looked around as Paige said, "Mm, I love feeling clean and warm."

She was teasing me, posing against the closed door, wearing a slightly sheer and very short white nightgown. To me, at least at that moment, she looked the opposite of satanic.

"Oh," was all I could say at first, then: "Can you go to hell for lusting after an angel?"

She laughed like I'd said something really funny. "Gee, I hope not."

She got onto the bed with me and we kissed deeply, my hands sliding and bunching and I'm afraid damaging her gown. She responded in kind. In a couple of minutes she murmured, "You wear way too much underwear."

"Not everyone's as daring as you are."

"You don't kid me. I know how daring you can be."

There's nothing like it, I can't think what else could be, being fully exposed to your lover and your lover to you, every inch of skin responding to touch, every touch building to an intensity that takes you out of yourself, falling asleep in a tangle of bare arms and legs, her shoulder against your lips, your only covering each other.

However, when the door slams open just at midnight and someone pops on the light, it's wildly unnerving.

"Oh!" the woman in the doorway gasped as Paige and I woke sharply, confused, disentangling. "Oh! I didn't realize – uh – Paige, we need – I'm so sorry – uh – Hi, I'm Phoebe, and you must be – "

Another woman stuck her head in the door, summed up the situation in a glance, snapped, "Paige. Attic. Now," and disappeared.

By this time Paige almost had her nightgown on and was reaching for her robe. Phoebe smiled like a hostess whose guest of honor has just been called to the phone and said, "She'll be right back." She stood for a moment more as if trying to think of something else, then fled.

"What's going on?" I asked – pulling the comforter up around me, like that made any difference now.

Paige rolled her eyes in exaggerated unconcern. "Family crisis. What else is new." But then she stopped on her way out, turned and said seriously, "Stay right here. Don't leave the room." And she pulled the door completely shut as she left.

I threw on my outer clothes and opened the door. I'm still a little surprised that I didn't, oh, jump out the window. Being exposed like that, in the most humiliating way possible, has always been one of my worst fears. But I think I didn't react to it more because another fear was predominating. What was so terrible in that attic that Paige would tell me, twice, to stay in her room? And if it was that threatening, why was she going up there in only her nightgown and robe, unarmed, with no power greater than her two sisters to help her?

Looking down the hall in the direction that Phoebe and (I assumed, and correctly) Piper had gone, I could see a few steps leading upward, though I couldn't see what was at the top. I could hear a thump, a crash, women talking in unison.

Then there was a high-pitched screech, a small but definite explosion, a flash of light that lit the staircase clear into the hall.

I don't remember running down the hall and up the stairs, but I must have, because the next thing I remember is standing in the attic doorway and seeing Paige lying on the floor. She was pulling herself up onto her elbows, though, looking vexed but unharmed.

Piper was kneeling on the floor, picking up a big heavy old book that looked to have fallen from a lectern that was lying on its side. Phoebe was trying to pull something metallic out of the wall. She turned when I came in and so I couldn't see the object behind her, but I could see the bleeding cut on her arm.

"What was that?" I asked.

After a moment Paige said forcefully, "We had a raccoon in the attic."

"Big raccoon," Phoebe said. "Huge."

Well, I can understand why they wouldn't want to advertise to a stranger the presence of vermin in their home, but I was looking around for a big raccoon corpse and not seeing one. "Did you shoot it?"

Paige pointed at me. "We set off a firecracker."

Phoebe laughed a trace wildly. "You should have seen him run!"

Piper was stone-faced. "Yep, that's one raccoon that won't be coming back any time soon."

I gaped as Piper righted the lectern and set the book on it. For heaven's sake, Paige told me that Piper's pregnant! "Well – but – you could have hurt yourselves horribly! You could have set the house on fire!"

"It was Paige's idea," Phoebe said.

"Yes, and Paige," Piper said acidly, "do you think it was the best idea to have a guest the night that we set the raccoon trap?"

"I didn't think you were doing it tonight. I thought you and Leo were so busy tonight. I thought we were doing it tomorrow."

"No, that's not what I said. What I said was – "

"Excuse me," I interrupted. "Isn't the main point that the raccoon is gone?"

Phoebe gave me her glowing hostess-with-the-mostest smile. "You're exactly right. Girls, there's no need to fight about this. Our work is done, the raccoon is vanquished, gone, and we can all go to b— We can all go back to doing what we were doing bef— Goodnight."

She couldn't quite meet my eyes, but she gave me a little wave as she passed me in the doorway.

Paige, by now on her feet, joined me at the door but spoke to Piper. "Sorry about the misunderstanding. Don't stay up too late."

"Good-night, Paige."

"Hey, Piper? Thanks for all your help. With, you know, my project."

Piper gave her a smile lit with intelligence and wry humor. "With the obvious exception – really nice work, Paige. Good to see you, Eileen. Hopefully we can meet again under less exciting circumstances."

"They know who I am?" I whispered as we went down the stairs.

"Of course they do," she said, not whispering at all.

When we got back to the room, Paige made something of a show of seduction, flinging her robe over the upside-down crate, but I really didn't think I could handle it with her sisters knowing what was going on, and truth be told, Paige looked pretty tired. We curled up on the bed together, and I slept better than I've slept in months.

And then this morning I opened the store, and didn't notice it at first, even after raising the blinds. It was when I was walking back to turn on the lights in the back office that I noticed a huge gap in one of the shelves, half the books gone. The books on either side of the gap were faintly singed.

There were three much smaller gaps on the shelf above, each just the width of one book. And several similar gaps on the next shelf over. And suddenly I was turning in the middle of the room – how could I have missed it, as obvious as broken teeth in a grin – a big percentage of the downstairs books was gone, and I could see singe and scorch marks where they had been.

I ran upstairs and just stared, and the bell over the front door rang and I went downstairs again, more slowly, leaning on the railing because everything else suddenly felt so unreal.