“You love your husband and your children, and the children who’ve come from them. You love books, and you’re proud of the work you’ve done. You love this town, and respect the life you’ve lived here.”

Estelle gave her a look of approval. “You have an efficient and insightful way of summing up. You didn’t say I loved my husband, but used the present tense. That tells me you’re an observant and sensitive young woman. I sensed from your books that you have an open and seeking mind. Tell me, Miss Black, do you also have courage?”

Quinn thought of the thing outside the window, the way its tongue had flicked over its teeth. She’d been afraid, but she hadn’t run. “I like to think so. Please call me Quinn.”

“Quinn. A family name.”

“Yes, my mother’s maiden.”

“Irish Gaelic. I believe it means ‘counselor.’”

“It does, yes.”

“I have a well of trivial information,” Estelle said with a tap of her finger to her temple. “But I wonder if your name isn’t relevant. You’ll need to have the objectivity, and the sensitivity of a counselor to write the book that should be written on Hawkins Hollow.”

“Why haven’t you written it?”

“Not everyone who loves music can play the tune. Let me tell you a few things, some of which you may already know. There is a place in the woods that borders the west of this town, and that place was sacred ground, sacred and volatile ground long before Lazarus Twisse sought it out.”

“Lazarus Twisse, the leader of the Puritan sect-the radical sect-which broke off or, more accurately, was cut off, from the godly in Massachusetts.”

“According to the history of the time, yes. The Native Americans held that ground as sacred. And before them, it’s said, powers battled for that circle of ground, both-the dark and the light, good and evil, whatever terms you prefer-left some seeds of that power there. They lay dormant, century by century, with only the stone to mark what had passed there. Over time the memories of the battle were forgotten or bastardized in folklore, and only the sense many felt that this ground and its stone were not ordinary dirt and rock remained.”

Estelle paused, fell into silence so that Quinn heard the click and hum of the heater, and the light slap of leather shoes on the floor as someone passed by the room toward other business.

“Twisse came to the Hollow, already named for Richard Hawkins, who, with his wife and children, had carved a small settlement in 1648. You should remark that Richard’s eldest daughter was Ann. When Twisse came, Hawkins, his family, and a handful of others-some who’d fled Europe as criminals, political or otherwise-had made their life here. As had a man calling himself Giles Dent. And Dent built a cabin in the woods where the stone rose out of the ground.”

“What’s called the Pagan Stone.”

“Yes. He troubled no one, and as he had some skill and knowledge of healing, was often sought out for sickness or injury. There are some accounts that claim he was known as the Pagan, and that this was the basis of the name the Pagan Stone.”

“You’re not convinced those accounts are accurate.”

“It may be that the term stuck, entered the language and the lexicon at that time. But it was the Pagan Stone long before the arrival of Giles Dent or Lazarus Twisse. There are other accounts that claim Dent dabbled in witchcraft, that he enspelled Ann Hawkins, seduced and impregnated her. Others state that Ann and Dent were indeed lovers, but that she went to his bed of her own free will, and left her family home to live with him in the little cabin with the Pagan Stone.”

“It would’ve been difficult for her-for Ann Hawkins-either way,” Quinn speculated. “Enspelled or free will, to live with a man, unmarried. If it was free will, if it was love, she must have been very strong.”

“The Hawkinses have always been strong. Ann had to be strong to go to Dent, to stay with him. Then she had to be strong enough to leave him.”

“There are a lot of conflicting stories,” Quinn began. “Why do you believe Ann Hawkins left Giles Dent?”

“I believe she left to protect the lives growing inside her.”

“From?”

“Lazarus Twisse. Twisse and those who followed him came to Hawkins Hollow in sixteen fifty-one. He was a powerful force, and soon the settlement was under his rule. His rule decreed there would be no dancing, no singing, no music, no books but the Bible. No church but his church, no god but his god.”

“So much for freedom of religion.”

“Freedom was never Twisse’s goal. In the way of those thirsty for power above all else, he intimidated, terrorized, punished, banished, and used as his visible weapon, the wrath of his chosen god. As Twisse’s power grew, so did his punishments and penalties. Stocks, lashings, the shearing of a woman’s hair if she was deemed ungodly, the branding of a man should he be accused of a crime. And finally, the burning of those he judged to be witches. On the night of July the seventh, sixteen fifty-two, on the accusation of a young woman, Hester Deale, Twisse led a mob from the settlement to the Pagan Stone, and to Giles Dent. What happened there…”

Quinn leaned forward. But Estelle sighed and shook her head. “Well, there are many accounts. As there were many deaths. Seeds planted long before stirred in the ground. Some may have sprouted, only to die in the blaze that scorched the clearing.

“There are…fewer reports of what immediately followed, or followed over the next days and weeks. But in time, Ann Hawkins returned to the settlement with her three sons. And Hester Deale gave birth to a daughter eight months after the killing blaze at the Pagan Stone. Shortly, very shortly after her child, whom she claimed was sired by the devil, was born, Hester drowned herself in a small pond in Hawkins Wood.”

Loading her pockets with stones, Quinn thought with a suppressed shudder. “Do you know what happened to her child? Or the children of Ann Hawkins?”

“There are some letters, some journals, family Bibles. But most concrete information has been lost, or has never come to light. It will take considerable time and effort to dig out the truth. I can tell you this, those seeds stayed dormant until a night twenty-one years ago this July. They were awakened, and what sowed them awakened. They bloom for seven nights every seven years, and they strangle Hawkins Hollow. I’m sorry, I tire so quickly these days. It’s irritating.”

“Can I get you something? Or drive you home?”

“You’re a good girl. My grandson will be coming along to pick me up. You’ll have spoken, I imagine, to his son by now. To Caleb.”

Something in the smile turned a switch in Quinn’s brain. “Caleb would be your-”

“Great-grandson. Honorary, you could say. My brother Franklin and his wife, my dearest friend, Maybelle, were killed in an accident just before Jim-Caleb’s father was born. My Johnnie and I stood as grandparents to my brother’s grandchildren. I’d have counted them and theirs in that long list of progeny before.”

“You’re a Hawkins by birth then.”

“I am, and our line goes back, in the Hollow, to Richard Hawkins, the founder-and through him to Ann.” She paused a moment as if to let Quinn absorb, analyze. “He’s a good boy, my Caleb, and he carries more than his share of weight on his shoulders.”

“From what I’ve seen, he carries it well.”

“He’s a good boy,” Estelle repeated, then rose. “We’ll talk again, soon.”

“I’ll walk you downstairs.”

“Don’t trouble. They’ll have tea and cookies for me in the staff lounge. I’m a pet here-in the nicest sense of the word. Tell Caleb we spoke, and that I’d like to speak with you again. Don’t spend all this pretty day inside a book. As much as I love them, there’s life to be lived.”

“Mrs. Abbott?”

“Yes?”

“Who do you think planted the seeds at the Pagan Stone?”

“Gods and demons.” Estelle’s eyes were tired, but clear. “Gods and demons, and there’s such a thin line between the two, isn’t there?”