Then I wept again, lying down in the front seat. I don't know how long I was there, cocooned in my car in the mist. From time to time I turned on the heater to stay warm. The windows fogged and steamed with my tears.

Gradually my sobs degenerated into shaky hiccups and the occasional shudder. Oh, Cal, I thought. I need Cal. As soon as I thought that, a rhyme came into my head: In my mind I see you here. In my pain I need you near, find me, tract me, where I be. Come here, come here, now to me.

I didn't know where it came from, but by now I was getting used to the arrival of strange thoughts. I felt calmer hearing it, so I said it over and over again. I draped my arm over my eyes, praying desperately I would wake up In bed at home to find it had all been a nightmare.

Minutes later I jumped when someone tapped on the passenger-side window. My eyes snapped open, and I sat up, then cleared a space on the glass to see Cal, looking sleepy and rumpled and amazingly beautiful.

"You called?" he said, and my heart filled with sunlight. "Let me in—it's freezing out here."

It worked. I thought in awe. I called him with my thoughts. Magick.

I opened the door and moved over. He slid onto the front seat next to me, and it was amazingly natural to reach out, to feel his arms come around me.

"What's the matter?" he said, his voice muffled against my hair. "What's going on?" He held me away from him and searched my tear-blotched face with his eyes.

"I'm adopted!" I blurted out. "This morning I told my mom that I'm a blood witch, so she must be, and my dad, and my sister. They said no, It wasn't true. So I ran downstairs to see my birth certificate, and it had another woman's name—not my mother's."

I started crying spin, even though I was embarrassed to have him see me like this. He pulled me closer and held my head to his shoulder. It was so comforting that I stopped crying again almost immediately.