Quickly I scanned for Maeve Riordan. There were lots of Riordans. Then I saw it. Maeve Riordan. Born Imbolc, 1962, Ballynigel, Ireland. Died Litha, 1986, Meshomah Falls, New York, United States.

My jaw dropped open as I stared at the screen, Imbolc. Lithe. Those were Wiccan sabbats. This Maeve Riordan had been a witch.

A sudden wave of heat pulsed through my head, making my cheeks prickle. I shook my head and tried to think. 1986. She died the year after I was born. And she was born in 1962, Which would have made her the same age as the woman listed on my birth certificate.

It's her, I thought. It has to be.

I clicked all over the screen, trying to find links. I felt almost frantic. I needed more information. More. But instead a message popped up: Connection timed out URL not responding.

Frustrated, I shut down the computer. Then I sat tapping my lower lip with a pen. Thoughts raced through my head. Meshomah Falls, New York. I knew that name. It was a little town not too far away from here, maybe two hours. I needed to see their town records. I needed to see their… newspapers.

Two minutes later I had grabbed my jacket and was in Das Boot heading for the library. Of Widow's Vale's three library branches, only the biggest one, downtown, was open on Sundays. I pushed through the glass door and immediately headed downstairs to the basement.

No one else was down there. The basement was empty except for rows and rows of books, out-of-date periodicals, stacks of books to be mended, and four ugly black-and-wood-grain microfiche machines.

Come on, come on, I thought, pawing through the microfiche files. It took twenty minutes to find the drawer containing past issues of the Meshomah Folk Herald. Another tedious fifteen minutes trying to figure dates, counting forward from my birthday to about eight months after it. Finally I pulled out an envelope, turned on a microfiche machine, and sat down.