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  He raised the joint and blinked at it as if surprised to find it in his hand before offering it to Ratboy. “Toke?”

  “No!” A sudden sweep of Ratboy’s arm made me jump toward them, but he was only snatching the cigarette to fling it to the gravel. He crushed it under his heel, glaring at Skidmark from close range. “Fix. The. Truck,” he ground out. “Now.”

  “I can have a look at it if you want,” I offered, hoping to defuse the situation. “Those old trucks are usually pretty easy to work on.”

  Ratboy shot me a contemptuous look before deliberately turning his back.

  Skidmark blinked again, his hand poised as though still holding the now-defunct doobie. His gaze tracked slowly to Ratboy’s glare. “Fixing trucks is men’s work,” he mumbled.

  Ordinarily I’d have responded to a comment like that with an insult of the unprintable variety, but the tension in their exchange stilled my tongue.

  “Mm,” I murmured noncommittally and fell back a pace, watching.

  Ratboy gave a sharp nod and jabbed a finger at Skidmark’s face. “Fix it. Or I’ll have the woman do it.”

  Okay, that was enough to piss me off.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I drawled. “I don’t think the woman will be able to do it after all. Men’s work is much too complicated.”

  Ratboy barked an unintelligible word and strode away, his boots crunching angrily on the gravel.

  Skidmark and I watched in silence while he marched down the road, his shoulders rigid. When he rounded a curve and the trees hid him from view, Skidmark yawned and scratched his head under the lank grey ponytail that dangled half-way down his back.

  “He called you a whore,” he translated helpfully.

  I turned to stare at him and he smiled, his blank innocent eyes incongruous in his weathered face.

  “Well, golly gee,” I said after a moment. “Now my feelings are hurt and I’m going to go home and cry. What a little dickwad.”

  Skidmark wheezed what might have been laughter. Then he directed a puzzled frown at his empty fingers and mumbled, “Coulda sworn I rolled a bomber just before I came out here…”

  “Ratboy squished it,” I reminded him, and pointed to the crushed cigarette.

  “Aw, man…” Skidmark squatted slowly, eyeing the scrap of paper with intense concentration. “Bummer…” He bowed his head as if in requiem. He stayed that way for so long I was about to bend down and make sure he was okay when he moved at last, reaching for the mangled joint. “Good roach…” he muttered, and brushed most of the dirt off it before tucking it into the pocket of his stained coveralls. “Smoke it later…”

  He rose in slow motion and drifted over to stand contemplating the truck. After several minutes he sighed. “Need a toke,” he said, and shuffled away.

  I shook my head and wandered over to the truck. The keys were in the ignition, and I popped the hood before sliding into the driver’s seat.

  The starter cranked over reassuringly, but the engine didn’t even hint at catching. I grunted and slid down from the seat to go around the front. Poking my head under the hood, I eyed the greasy old V-8 squatting in the middle of its cavernous bay, festooned with grimy wires and half-perished rubber hoses. I sucked in a deep breath of burnt-oil scent and smiled. Likely an electrical problem.

  After a brief visual inventory, I began to trace the ignition path. Examining the wire leading up from the ignition coil, I let out a ‘hmph’ of surprise when it dropped away from the distributor cap.

  “Well, that’ll do it,” I muttered, and reconnected it.

  Sure enough, the engine fired up on the first try, and I was basking in the satisfaction of an easy fix when it abruptly died.

  “What the…?” I hopped out of the cab just in time to catch Skidmark carefully laying the wire in its original loosened position on the distributor cap.

  “What the hell?” I demanded.

  He straightened and took a drag from a fresh joint. After a long pause, smoke filtered through his beard as he mumbled, “Patience is a virtue, girlie.”

  My mouth dropped open in indignation, but then I caught the barest hint of a twinkle in his eye.

  I snickered. “Ratboy’s patience?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Skidmark said, and offered me his cigarette. “Toke?”

  “No thanks.”

  He nodded sleepily before taking another long draw himself. I stepped away from the eye-watering combination of pot smoke and body odour and was about to head for the road when he spoke again.

  “So you’re a girl mechanic.”

  “I’m not a mechanic. I just like working on cars.”

  “Huh.” He squinted blearily at me. “Hey, you’re really tall…” He blinked. “…Are you a dude in women’s clothes?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, deadpan.

  He stared in silence for a long moment, his cigarette hand drifting up to his lips as though of its own volition.

  “Far out…” he mumbled, and took another drag. After a long exhalation of smoke, his eyes narrowed as though an idea had braved the burned-out corridors of his brain. “Wanna go back to my place and screw?” he inquired.

  “I just finished telling you I’m a man.”

  He shrugged. “So I’m into equal rights. Can I touch your ass?”

  “No.”

  His shoulders jerked rhythmically, accompanied by the wheezing that served him for laughter. “You’re a woman all right.” He offered his joint. “Toke?”

  “No,” I repeated.

  The distant crunch of approaching footsteps made me turn, my pulse kicking up a notch at the thought of another confrontation with Ratboy. My heart rate failed to slow at the sight of the man rounding the bend in the road.

  Orion.

  He smiled and waved, and I waved back while Skidmark stood blinking placidly in the mist that was beginning to gather itself into raindrops.

  “Hi, Storm,” Orion greeted me as he strode up. “Hi, Skidmark.”

  I managed a casual ‘hi’ in return.

  Damn, it should be illegal for a man to have eyelashes that thick and dark. They framed moss-green eyes alight with intelligence, almost the same colour as the soft corduroy shirt he wore loosely over a brown T-shirt that showcased the hard contours of his chest and abs. He had been clean-shaven with close-cropped hair when he had arrived at the commune a few months ago, but now short whiskers accented a chin that might have been carved by Michelangelo and his hair fell in those soft waves that begged me to run my fingers through it…

  My cheeks warmed when I realized he’d spoken while I was ogling him.

  “Sorry, I’m brain-dead today. What did you say?” I stammered.

  He smiled. “Word of advice: Don’t stand so close to Skidmark. If you’ve been breathing that fug, you’re probably half-stoned.”

  My brain snapped out of ogle-mode and into full alert. There it was again. A wholly Canadian accent, but ‘fug’? Nobody used that word around here.

  Stemp had enemies overseas. If someone was going to come after his parents to gain revenge on him, they might have some sort of British or European accent…

  I forced a chuckle, and Skidmark emitted his wheezy laughter before offering Orion the much-diminished joint. “Toke?”

  “Sure.” Orion appropriated the butt and took a short drag before offering it to me.

  “No thanks,” I said for the third time.

  Orion was handing the roach back to Skidmark when the sudden clamour of bells made me flinch and swear.

  Chapter 4

  “Jesus, not again,” I muttered.

  “Come on!” Orion seized my hand and dragged me into a full run. The pealing of the bells mounted to a frenetic crescendo, and I dug in my heels as we reached the first bend of the road.

  “Hang on!” I pulled free of his grip. “You go ahead if you want, but they can honour the Earth Spirit without me this time. Moonbeam already hauled me out of bed in the middle of the night a couple of day
s ago. I’m all honoured-out for this week.”

  “Come on, Storm!” Orion grabbed my hand again and pulled. “Hurry up!”

  Damn, he was strong. Dragged into a reluctant jog, I protested, “Hell, Orion, you’re a smart guy. You don’t really believe the ground’s going to open up and swallow us if we skip some hokey ceremony, do you?”

  He skidded to a halt. “It’s not hokey! This is important! Why are we here if not to honour the Earth Spirit?”

  “Honouring the Earth Spirit is fine if that’s what you believe in, but these random rituals are bullshi…” My heart smote me as his beautiful eyes widened with hurt. I blew out a breath. “Sorry.” I let him pull me into a run again.

  When we panted up to the main building, Aurora Peace Rain was practically dancing with impatience beside the door.

  “Hurry, hurry!” she brayed. “You’re the last ones, and the Earth Spirit needs us!”

  Clenching my teeth against the onslaught of her voice, I accepted the rolled-up mat she pushed at me and followed Orion into the darkened building. Weaving between supine bodies, I tiptoed to my designated spot, where I unrolled the mat and lay down.

  Blissful humming rose from the commune members and I closed my eyes, trying without much hope to achieve the meditative state Moonbeam wanted. It hadn’t happened in four months, so it didn’t seem likely now.

  I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Hell, even the little kids were lying perfectly still and humming along with their parents. Surely I could manage some form of meditation. What had Moonbeam said? Something about grounding my root chakra to the Earth Spirit…

  But wasn’t my root chakra somewhere down around my ass? So if I was going to ground it to the Earth Spirit, wouldn’t it make more sense to sit instead of lying down?

  But sitting on the Earth Spirit’s face seemed a tad disrespectful.

  Then again, dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night for a ‘Spirit Calling’ was damn disrespectful, too.

  Maybe the Earth Spirit could just kiss my chakra.

  My eyes popped open in defiance of Moonbeam’s ‘eyes closed’ edict and I studied my surroundings without moving. The heavy hand-hewn beams above us were barely visible in the dimness cast by the heavy shutters shrouding the windows. The wall beside me radiated a damp chill, and I wondered what architectural madness had impelled the builder to pour a four-foot-high concrete base and then finish the building with wood frame construction.

  A soft green glow swelled into the room, and I slitted my eyes to peer between my lashes, shifting slowly to get a clear sight line without disturbing my humming neighbours.

  The raised dais at the front of the room always held a large copper gong suspended from a wooden frame, with a small table a few feet in front of it. But now green light pulsated from the heart of the large crystal that occupied the centre of the table.

  While I watched, Aurora and her sidekick Zen rose from their mats below the dais and stepped up to the crystal, each pressing an ear against it from opposite sides while their hands stroked a complex pattern over its surface.

  The green glow brightened, illuminating their exalted expressions, then abruptly extinguished.

  Blinking to clear the afterimage, I barely saw Aurora and Zen exchange nods. Zen crossed to the back of the dais and struck the gong once.

  As though animated by the mellow reverberation, the recumbent bodies stirred and sat up, looking expectantly toward the dais. I sighed and did the same. I knew what was coming.

  “The Earth Spirit has spoken! Come; follow.” Aurora’s voice ravaged my eardrums like a jackhammer after the peace of the meditation.

  Everyone rose and split into two groups, one behind Aurora, the other behind Zen. Two other leaders whose names I had forgotten brought up the rear, apparently to corral any stragglers.

  Cold rain pelted down as we filed out of the building, and I hitched my jacket collar up and muttered to Orion beside me, “Remember, this was your idea.”

  “Silence! We must honour the Earth Spirit with our silence.”

  Aurora had caught me. She gave me a severe look and I ducked my head, hoping I looked contrite and holding back the urge to reply, “I’ll shut up if you will.”

  Instead, I bit my tongue and joined the rest of the mute group to plod off into the wet forest single-file behind Aurora. With superhuman restraint, I managed not to grouse about the stupidity of tramping the winding forest trails instead taking the direct route along the gravelled road. After about fifteen minutes of hiking, our dripping crew filed into a large open field, meeting Zen’s band as they arrived from the opposite side.

  Like well-drilled soldiers, we split into groups under our four leaders and moved to the cardinal points of the field where we knelt in the sodden grass, still silent.

  The icy wetness made my knees ache and the rain trickled in cold rivulets down the back of my neck. A raw breeze moaned through the trees behind me, cutting effortlessly through my soggy jeans. In front of me a bald man with a bushy beard shivered uncontrollably, and I blessed my long thick hair. It was soaking wet, but at least it provided a bit of insulation.

  After what seemed like forever, Aurora and Zen must have received some sign from their beloved Earth Spirit. They released us with a joyous cry of, “The blessings of the Earth Spirit are upon you!”

  The supplicants replied with an equally enthusiastic, “And upon you, too!” as they scrambled to their feet, though I could have sworn the bald man had actually said, “And fuck you, too.”

  Or maybe that was just me.

  Shivering, I hurried for the road and made a beeline for the main building, jostling past the smiling and chattering commune members who seemed impervious to the bone-chilling rain.

  Orion found me half an hour later at one of the big woodstoves in the communal kitchen, where I was reheating a pot of soup and huddling as close to the stove as I could get without actually branding myself for life.

  His hair hung in dripping ringlets against cheeks ruddy with cold, and his green eyes sparkled with amusement at the sight of me.

  “Are you just a bit chilly, then?” he inquired, grinning.

  “Shut up.” I licked the hot soup off the spoon before clasping it between my icy hands. Its warmth dissipated almost instantly, and I sighed and resumed stirring.

  He touched the towel I’d wrapped turban-style around my head. “I like it. You look exotic.”

  “I look like I’m in the final stages of hypothermia. Which, by an amazing coincidence, I am.” I scowled and licked the spoon again before lovingly embracing its tiny heat.

  He moved a little closer, his eyes darkening. “You’d warm up a lot faster if you did that to me instead of to the spoon.”

  I hid my sudden breathlessness in a snort. “If I put these cold hands on you, you’d have indoor plumbing for the rest of your life.”

  “It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  Those green eyes. Dammit.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners, dark lashes lowering over heat. “I’m up for shower rotation today. My slot is in an hour. You could share it with me.” A slow blink, his eyes hooded with desire. “Nothing like a steamy-hot shower to warm you up.”

  Speaking of steam…

  A curl of vapour drifted past my face. I stepped away from the stove just in case, but it was likely only wafting up from my suddenly-overheated nether regions.

  I suppressed a sigh. After four months of peaceful cohabitation it seemed unlikely that Orion was a threat to Moonbeam and Karma, but still. I was under orders. And there was that niggling suspicion…

  I leaned past him to grab a bowl. “Sorry, the power will come on in half an hour and I want to blow-dry my hair. And I want to wash some clothes while the power’s on, too.”

  “Well, you know where I’ll be if you change your mind.” He gave me one last scorching look before withdrawing from my personal space to sink into a nearby chair. “I don’t suppose there’s enough soup in your pot for
two?”

  I glanced up to see if that was some kind of innuendo, but he was hungrily eyeing the saucepan on the stove.

  “You’re in luck.”

  He grinned. “It’s not really the way I was hoping to get lucky, but it’s almost as good.”

  I shrugged and ladled out soup. “You can get as lucky as you want. Any of the women and probably half the men would be delighted to share your shower.”

  “Not any of the women.” When I glanced up, he was studying me intently. “You won’t.”

  I sank into a chair and directed my attention to my soup before he could read my face. “So I’m a freak. Nothing personal.”

  “Are you… er…” He hesitated. “Do you prefer indoor plumbing?”

  Soup shot into my sinuses and tears streamed down my face while I choked and groped for a napkin.

  “Jesus!” I sputtered when my coughing subsided. “Don’t do that when I’ve got a mouthful of soup! No, I like your plumbing just fine…” My face heated. “I mean, as far as I know,” I added hurriedly. “Not that I’ve been looking… oh shit, shut up! Isn’t it time for you to go take a shower or something?”

  Orion leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Not quite.”

  Hoping to fill my mouth with food so my foot wouldn’t fit in again, I reapplied myself to spooning soup. Conversations from the other occupied tables rose around us, emphasizing our little island of silence.

  Moonbeam and Karma strolled in looking warm and dry, their arms around each other and heads together in quiet conversation. I jerked my chin in their direction and muttered, “I didn’t see them freezing their asses off in the rain.”

  Orion stiffened. “Moonbeam and Karma perform very important rituals when the Earth Spirit calls. Sometimes those rituals can be extremely uncomfortable, so please show some respect.”

  I clamped my teeth on my spoon so I wouldn’t say anything I’d regret. Orion seemed like such a nice normal guy most of the time, but he turned into a total freak over this Earth Spirit thing.