Face the Fire by Nora Roberts

he left it alone, for now, and continued to walk toward the cottage. The solitude he’d welcomed on his first day pressed down on him now and became loneliness. He shook it off, and instead of going into the house, he moved into the woods.
    Until Mia talked to him, he would learn what he needed to learn, see what he needed to see, by other means.
    The dark was deep, with a scatter of stars and a thin sickle of moon. But there were other ways to see. He tuned himself to the night. He could hear the babble of a little stream, and knew that wildflowers were sleeping on its banks. There was the rustle of a small animal in the brush,and the plaintive call of an owl. One would feed, the other would perish.
    He smelled earth, and water, and knew there would be rain before morning.
    And he felt power.
    He moved through the dark, through the trees, as confidently as a man walks down Main Street on a sunny afternoon. Power pulsed along his skin, that awakening thrill of magic.
    He saw, where there was only ground scattered with fallen leaves, where the circle had been cast.
    The three were strong when linked, he thought. He’d felt that same trickle of energy on the beach and had known that a circle of power had been cast there. But this one had come first, and so he would look here first.
    “It would be simpler if they’d just tell me,” he said aloud. “But probably not as satisfying. So.”
    He lifted his hands with palms up, like cups ready to be filled.
    “Show me. I call to the three, once and ever a part of me. I use as my mirror the night to bring what transpired to my sight. Show me how and why this circle was cast that I might begin to complete my task. Grant this vision unto me. As I will, so mote it be.”
    The night thinned, and billowed like a blowing curtain. Parted. Fear, like a rabbit in a trap. Hate, sharp as ravaging teeth. And love, wrapped warm in courage.
    He saw what Zack had told him, saw Nell racing through the woods, and her thoughts were clear to him. Fear and grief for Zack, a desperation not only to escape what pursued her but to save the man she loved.
    Sam’s hands fisted as he saw Remington leap at her, angle the knife at her throat.
    Emotions pounded at him. There was Mia, in a blackdress scattered with silver stars, and Ripley, holding a gun. Zack, bleeding, his own weapon pointed.
    The night was alive with madness and terror.
    The magic began to hum.
    It pulsed from Nell, who glowed as she rejected her fears. It shimmered around Mia, whose eyes gleamed as silver as the stars she wore. And slowly, almost reluctantly, it sparked from Ripley when she lowered her gun and clasped Mia’s hand.
    And then the circle burned like blue fire.
    The punch of it caught Sam unprepared and pushed him a full two paces back before he regained himself. But he’d lost his hold on the vision, and it wavered, faded.
    “The circle’s unbroken.” He lifted his face, watched clouds stream across the stars. “You have to let me in, Mia, or this was for nothing.”

    Late into the night, without plan, without design, he reached out to her in dreams. Floating back in time to when love was fresh and sweet, and everything.
    She was seventeen and leggy, with hair a tumble of fire and eyes as warm as summer fog. Her beauty struck him, as always. A fist in the heart.
    She laughed as she waded in the cove. She wore trim khaki shorts and a bright-blue top that left her arms and an inch of her midriff bare. He could smell her, over the scents of salt and sea, he could smell that heady, taunting fragrance that was Mia.
    “Don’t you want to swim?” She laughed again as she splashed up water. “Sad-eyed Sam, what are you brooding about today?”
    “I’m not brooding.”
    He had been. His parents were freezing him out becausehe’d chosen to work on-island that summer in the hotel rather than in New York. He’d been wondering if he was making a mistake, a terrible mistake, by being so desperate to stay on-island because