HE NAP DIDN’T HAPPEN. IRELAND INSISTED ON SHARING A BLOW-by-blow of her SEM prep process. Then I spent an hour creeping through a construction slowdown on I-85. I arrived at the Annex in time to feed Birdie, pop two aspirins, and set out again.

Jennifer’s directions sent me along the same route I’d taken to the Klapec scene on Thursday. This time, a quarter mile before hitting the lakeshore, I turned onto a small, winding road. At an abandoned fruit stand, I made a left and continued until I spotted a hand-painted wooden plaque with an arrow and the words Full Moon. From then on it was gravel.

The sun was low, turning the woods into a collage of green, brown, and red. As I slipped in and out of shadow, crimson arrows shot the foliage and danced my windshield. I saw no other cars.

A quarter mile in, I spotted a wooden trellis curving eight feet above a pair of tire tracks taking off to the right. Following Jennifer’s instructions, I made the turn.

Ten yards beyond the archway, the woods gave way to a clearing approximately sixty feet in diameter. At the far side, two dozen cars angled toward a crudely built log cabin. Another hand-crafted sign above the door announced Full Moon. This one featured what looked like a Paleolithic mother goddess—full breasts and buttocks, just a hint of head, arms, and legs.

Parking beside a battered old Volvo, I got out and looked around. No one approached or called out. Below the goddess, the cabin door remained closed.

The air smelled of pine and moist earth and a hint of bonfire smoke. Notes drifted from the trees beyond the cabin. Panpipes? A recorder? I couldn’t be sure.

Circling the building, I spotted a path and moved toward the music. The sun was down now, the woods in that murky limbo between dusk and full night. No birds called out, but now and then some panicked creature skittered away through the underbrush.

As I picked my way along, the music sorted itself into flute and guitar. A lone female voice sang lyrics I couldn’t make out.

Soon I saw the flicker of flames through the trees. Ten steps and I reached a second clearing, this one much smaller than that surrounding the cabin. Pausing at the edge of the trees, I looked for Jennifer. No one noticed my presence.

The gathering was larger than I’d anticipated, perhaps thirty people. A few sat on logs placed around the perimeter of the fire pit. Others stood talking in groups.

The guitarist was a woman of forty or fifty, with long gray hair and a whole lot of jewelry. The flautist was a person of indeterminate gender with squiggly snakes painted on his/her cheeks and forehead. The singer was an Asian girl in her late teens.

Beyond the musicians, eleven women and one man followed the instructions of a woman clothed in an intricately embroidered robe.

“Raise your hands to the heavens.”

Twenty-four arms went up.

“Inhale deeply. Follow your breath. Feel it enter each part of your body, moving down your throat, to your heart, your breasts, your solar plexus, your genitals, your feet. Repeat. One. Two. Three. Four times.”

A lot of breathing and arm waving followed.

“With each breath receive blessings from the universe. Five. Six. Seven times.”

More air intake.

“Accept a deep inner calm. Be filled with peace.”

Embroidery woman drew her hands to her mouth.

“Now, thank yourself. Love yourself. Kiss each of your hands.”

Embroidery woman kissed her palms. The others did likewise.

“Kiss your knuckles. Your fingers. You are love!”

Mercifully, at that moment I spotted Jennifer. She was wearing jeans and a black hoodie, adjusting logs in the fire with a long iron pole. Sparks spiraled around her, like tiny red stars carried on a cyclone.

Skirting the edge of the trees, I joined her.

“Hey,” I said.

Jennifer looked up, skin amber in the glow of the flames. A smile lit her face. “You found us.”

“The group is”—I was quite at a loss—“larger than I expected.”

“This is actually a small gathering. Since we’re between holidays, we’re not celebrating anything special tonight.”

I must have looked confused.

She smiled. “Let’s sit down.”

I followed her to one of the logs circling the fire.

“OK. Wicca one-oh-one.”

“Condensed version,” I said.

Jennifer nodded. “Wiccans recognize the existence of many ancient gods and goddesses—Pan, Dionysus, Diana. But we also view the God and Goddess as symbols, not as living entities.” She swept one arm in an arc. “In the trees, the lake, flowers, the wind, each other. All nature’s creatures. We view, and treat, all things of the Earth as aspects of the divine. You with me?”

I nodded, not sure that I was.

“The Wiccan calendar is based on the ancient Celtic days of celebration, with eight commonly recognized holidays. Four occur at the time of the solstices or equinoxes, the other four fall roughly midway between. Historical research shows that these holidays were celebrated throughout Europe and the British Isles in early pre-Christian times. Many festivals were so popular the Church couldn’t stamp them out, so they appropriated and linked many to various saints.

“Brigantia, or Imbolc, the day when newborn lambs begin to nurse, became the Christian Candlemas, honoring the purification of the Virgin. Held February second, it marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. Brigantia is the day of Brigit, the Irish goddess of smithcraft, healing, and poetry. Moving on toward spring, the vernal equinox usually falls around March twentieth.”

“Twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of light,” I said.

She nodded. “Roman Catholics turned this one into the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Next comes Beltane, on May first.”

“The day for dancing round maypoles.”

“Exactly. An obvious fertility ritual. Summer solstice, the longest day of the year, falls around June twenty-first. For Wiccans, the summer solstice is when the maiden gives way to the mother aspect of the Goddess.

“Lammas, celebrated around August first, announces the coming of autumn and the beginning of the harvest. Then it’s on to the fall equinox, around September twenty-third.”

“The point when day becomes shorter than night and winter looms.”

“Right again. The fall equinox was also the time of the second harvest, and of winemaking. For Wiccans, it is when the mother prepares to yield way to the Crone aspect of the Goddess.

“Samhain falls on the last day of October, and is celebrated today as Halloween. In ancient times, it was customary to slaughter livestock and begin smoking meat on Samhain. In the old Celtic calendar, it was the end of one year and the beginning of the next, so the separation of the living from the dead was especially dicey at this time.”

“So we dress up in scary costumes to keep the spirits at bay?”

“That’s one interpretation. Finally, the winter solstice falls on or about December twenty-first. Also known as Yule, this is the shortest day and longest night of the year. For Wiccans, it’s the period of the year during which the Crone aspect of the Goddess reigns. Many religions have placed the birth of their gods at the solstice. Jesus, Horus, Dionysus, Helios, and Mithras all claim Yule as their birthday.”

“Makes sense to me. The days begin growing longer, so it’s a time of rebirth and regeneration.”

“Right on, again. So, to make a long story short, tonight we’re not celebrating anything special. Just coming together for companionship and to worship the God and Goddess.”

I thought of Slidell’s reports from neighbors concerning activity the night before Jimmy Klapec was found.

“How often do you gather?”

“Typically, the second Tuesday of each month.”

Funderburke first spotted Klapec’s body the previous Tuesday.

“Always?”

“Usually.” Her brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“What about last Monday?”

“Yes, of course. There was a planning session that night for the Samhain festival. I forgot because I wasn’t here.”

Maybe she was being honest, maybe not. Her expression gave no hint.

“Did Asa Finney attend that meeting?”

She looked off into space.

“No. He attends very few.”

“Do you know where he was?”

She shook her head.

“Did you try contacting him?”

“I called several times to see if he would be going out to camp that night.” She looked down at her hands. “I got no answer.”

I watched the bonfire reshape the features of her face, elongating her nose and deepening the hollows below her eyes and cheekbones.

She looked up into my gaze.

“Asa is incapable of harming another human being.”

“He’s a self-proclaimed witch.”

“So am I. So is every person here.”

I said nothing.

“Asa is fully committed to Wicca, and, therefore, to a reverence for life. I know in my heart of hearts he could never take a life.”

She shook her head in frustration.

“There are so many misconceptions about us. We’re linked to Satanism, vampirism, Freemasonry. Some say we engage in group sex and human sacrifice. It’s all madness, based on ignorance.”

She turned to me, body tense, reflected firelight flickering in the darks of her eyes.

“Fear of women’s power runs like a subtext through most of today’s religions. Modern church doctrines are full of stories of sirens and witches and enchantresses under the full moon. Empowering male propaganda.

“And it’s so ironic, because ancient artifacts suggest people first worshipped a female deity, a goddess or earth mother. Did you see the image over the coven house door?”

“It’s modeled after the Venus of Willendorf,” I said, referring to a Paleolithic figurine unearthed in Austria in 1908.

“Of course.” She smiled. “You would know your prehistoric archaeology. And you would also know that the earliest written records suggest worship of both gods and goddesses. And that these early female deities eventually lost out to patriarchal storm gods like Baal, Raman, and Yahweh.”

Her eyes moved over my face.

“Wiccans are modern pagans who imagine our first mother as the Goddess worshipped in prehistory, before the old boys’ deity network came along. We strive to bring the subtext of female subjugation to the forefront, and to change that mind-set. We want a different world here and now, one in which women and men are equal, in which assumptions about who should hold power and what has value are different.

“But we want change brought about peacefully. Wiccans honor the feminine, but, first and foremost, we view our religion as a personal, positive celebration of life. We revere the creative forces of nature, symbolized by both a god and goddess.”

She took my hands in hers.

“Let me introduce you to the others. Let us show you who we are, what we believe, what we do. You’ll see. No one among us could take the life of another.”

“All right,” I said. “Show me Wicca.”

So I met Sky Bird, Raven, India, and Dreamweaver. I witnessed dancing and drumming and chanting. I ate. I listened. I asked questions.

I learned that Wicca claims an estimated 400,000-plus practitioners, making it the tenth largest religion in the United States, behind Christianity, nonreligious/secular, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, agnostic, atheist, Hinduism, and Unitarian Universalist.

I learned that Wicca has no official book, central governing agency, physical leader, or universally recognized prophet or messenger.

I learned that there are many Wiccan traditions, each with its own distinct teachings and practices, including Alexandrian, Faery, Gardnerian, Odyssean, Reclaiming, Uniterranism, and dozens of others.

I learned of the Law of Threefold Return, the belief that both good and bad deeds reflect back on the doer, and of the Eight Wiccan Virtues: mirth, reverence, honor, humility, strength, beauty, power, and compassion.

Despite the tarot cards, and grimoires, and crystals, and love spells, I sensed an unaffected genuineness in all I met.

I came to understand that Wiccan beliefs and practices remain largely unknown because followers hide out of fear of persecution.

Persecution of the sort sold wholesale by Boyce Lingo.

I left at midnight, still unsure about Asa Finney, but certain we needed to proceed cautiously lest our investigation be tainted by preconceived bias. Convincing Slidell would be a hard sell. But that was for the morrow.

Pulling into my driveway, the headlights swept a rectangular object sitting on the back stoop.

Charlie strikes again. I smiled, got out, and walked toward the door

The object was a cardboard box with the flaps tucked tight. Balancing it on one knee, I unlocked the door and let myself in.

“I’m home, Bird,” I called.

Birdie appeared as I was removing my jacket. After figure-eighting my ankles once or twice, he hopped onto the counter.

And froze in a Halloween cat tableau, back arched, tail poofed to double its size. A primal clicking sound rose from his throat.

The skin crawled on my arms and neck.

I gathered Birdie and displaced him to the floor. He shot back onto the counter.

Blocking the cat with one arm, I disengaged the flaps one-handed and opened the box.

A dead copperhead lay upside down in the bottom, belly slit, innards billowing, glossy and red. Below the jaw, an inverted pentagram had been carved into the pale yellow skin.