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The full moon had just cleared the pines when we suspended the search for Danny.

Even without my brother’s disappearing act, it would have been one of those nights. You could feel it in the air, tickling the nape of your neck like a skittish spider.

Because of that, and the fact Danny had pulled an X-Files move, I was in dire need of a cigarette and a shot of something—preferably alcoholic and tequila-flavored.

Never let it be said that I don’t take my big sister duties seriously, even though I haven’t been home in over a year. Coming back to the California foothills to find my twenty-year-old brother lost in the woods wasn’t exactly my idea of a welcome home party. Call me bitchy, but I had hoped for something a bit more festive, something that celebrated the fact that I’d finally decided to quit my wandering ways and settle down to a home and business of my own.

Instead, like the good, eager-to-please daughter I’d become, I trekked off into the boonies, searching for our hometown’s golden boy.

Don’t get me wrong…I love Danny, but we’re two totally different people. I seriously think Mom must have had a thing for the meter reader after I was born. At least that’s the only explanation I’ve been able to come up with.

It was the call from his flavor of the month, Dee Dee Mather, that had really set off Mom. The brainless twit had babbled something into her cell phone about Danny wandering off into the woods and not coming out. At the time I’d been skeptical. Knowing Danny’s taste in women, he was probably out taking a leak and she hadn’t given him enough time to finish.

In retrospect, she’d been right to call us in, since not one person had seen hide nor hair of my little brother since he’d walked away from his truck.

How in the world Danny could have ever become involved with Dee Dee was beyond me.

Oh wait, that’s right, she has enormous knockers. Attributes like Dee Dee’s were usually enough to sway even the most logical male mind.

I wound my way around a thicket of buck brush, swinging my flashlight in front of me like a light saber, wishing I were in a galaxy far, far away. Then I wouldn’t be beating the bushes searching for my hormone-driven, short-on-common-sense brother.

We worked our way back to Danny’s pickup as a group, twenty good Christian men and women and me, the heathen. Danny’s fifteen-year-old Dodge looked like it might have any other night, parked on the side of the fire road, the perfect place for an assignation with a Hooters Girl in training. Except Danny had heard a noise he just had to investigate instead of something as simple as hitting the woods to take a leak. It would have been nice if Dee Dee had included that little tidbit when she called my parents.

It might have stopped me from leaving the house bitchy as hell and muttering under my breath about Danny’s paternity.

The noise Dee Dee had heard was “real creepy”. An English scholar she was not. Then she’d shivered, her pouty lips making an impact even the good Christian men of Ponderosa Basin couldn’t ignore. Ergo, their wives were now in tow.

They didn’t trust Dee Dee and they didn’t trust me. I knew why Ms. 38DD set off their radar, but why they were so suspicious of me pissed me off.

I’m a witch. It’s that plain and simple. Not a bad witch, but not necessarily a good one either…just like most folks I know. I go through my day-to-day life the same way they do, I simply worship a different deity.

I reached my own well-worn pickup, parked all by its lonesome, and rooted around in the glovebox for the pack of Marlboros I’d stashed there, pushing aside the scraps of poetry I’d tossed in as an afterthought over the past few years.

That first drag was pure bliss, and even though the smokes were stale (I’d been trying to quit for the past year, and sort of succeeded for four months—until today), that first quick buzz hit my bloodstream—a smoker’s answer to mainlining.

Then, in spite of the pleasant, legal high of the tobacco, or maybe because of it, I got an even worse case of the heebie-jeebies. I glanced nervously at my wrist, wondering how close it was to midnight, and stared dumbly at my naked forearm before remembering I’d ditched my watch the day I left the Everglades to return to California for good.

It had been a grand gesture, a sign I didn’t need to keep time anymore, didn’t need to be anywhere at a certain, prescribed hour during this little vacation. I remembered telling myself that I’d strap on a watch again when I opened my bookstore in Mammoth Lakes in a month. Now that action had backfired, because I needed to know exactly what time it was, for some inexplicable reason.

I shrugged into my denim jacket, feeling the chill of the October air for the first time as it caressed my shoulders and bare legs. At least I hoped it was the nippiness of the air.

I gazed around the wilderness that used to be my home, marveling that such a beautiful place could harbor such a conflicting set of memories. And there was no doubt that Ponderosa Basin was a High Sierra paradise. The mix of high-country oak and lodgepole pines usually combined in a dazzling display of nature at its best.

Now it simply gave me the willies. Darkness pooled beneath the trees, forming elongated, sinister shadows that did nothing to curb my anxiety. I wondered if Dee Dee hadn’t been right on the mark about something creepy going on out here in the not-so-civilized woods.

I ran my hands briskly up the arms of my jacket, hoping for some warmth in friction, then absently scratched at a chigger bite on my thigh, looking with a critical eye at my surroundings.

The rest of my search and rescue team huddled in a tight prayer group near the clump of their own vehicles, their mumbles and “amens” clear in the late night air. I didn’t need to see their sidelong glances to know some of those prayers were for me and my seriously endangered soul.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with other people’s religions. I may not understand them, but I’ve lived in enough places over the years to know there are too many beliefs out there to simply tick off on your fingers. I just wish my tolerance extended to other people. Unfortunately, the folks with me tonight had known me for years and seriously believed I could be redeemed. It was something I’d learned to take with a smile and a shrug years ago.

The sheriff finally ambled over to me, his good-ol’-boy face set in serious lines, gut hanging over the edge of his web belt, strides short in his too-small, but cool-looking cowboy boots. He hadn’t changed much in the eight years since high school.

“Amanda, we’re gonna have to call off the search until daylight.” He appeared totally abject and apologetic, a twenty-six-year-old hick scuffing the toe of his pointy-toed boot in the mountain clay.

“I understand, Jared,” I reassured him as I stubbed out my butt. After all, I did. Given the serious itch forming at the base of my spine, it was probably better that they left, as a matter of fact. I had the distinct feeling that what Danny was dealing with out there in the woods was probably better not faced until it was light. Unfortunately for both me and Danny, he probably didn’t have that long. Don’t ask me where that sudden thought came from, but it was there, and so strong I knew I had to move on it, and soon.