She found Brad in the living room, rooting through their collection of books. Grocery bags stuffed full of folded sweaters dotted the floor. A cardboard box on the kitchen counter held the blender, the Mr. Coffee, an assortment of glassware and the ever-inquisitive Ming. Brad's suitcase lay open on the sofa, toiletries and clothing dumped in it haphazardly.

      She slammed the door behind her, dropped her soaked coat onto a kitchen chair. "What are you doing here?"

      He tossed a paperback into the suitcase and said, "I'm moving my stuff. That's what you want, isn't it?"

      "That's exactly what I want. Why are you doing it now?"

      He shrugged. "Why not?"

      "Goddamn it, Brad! The place is empty all day long. You could have moved your precious stuff any time between eight-thirty and six without any risk of running into me."

      "I had classes."

      "Don't give me that crap. You're just here to pester me. And I'm not in the mood for it."

      He stood and came over to her. "You look real tense, Allie. Anything I can do?" He tried to massage her shoulders, but she stepped out of reach.

      "You can get out of here. Right now. I mean it."

      He made a tsk-ing sound, as if she were being utterly unreasonable. "Well, I'm not finished packing, so I'll only have to come back. Maybe I'll have some time this weekend, but I can't promise anything."

      Before she could reply, the phone rang. Brad picked up the receiver. "Hello? Yes, just a minute. She'll be right with you."

      She snatched the phone from him. "Yeah?"

      A startled hesitation. Then a deep, male voice with a slight Caribbean lilt said, "Ah, is this Alison Davis?"

      "Yes?"

      "My name is Claude Baribeau. I am the, uh, pastor at the First Church of Caribbean Mysteries, just up the street from your office."

      She was vaguely familiar with the church, a squat brick building a block away from Light Phantastic. But she was in no mood to buy raffle tickets or donate items to a rummage sale. "Can you call back some other time? I'm kind of busy right now."

      "I'm calling about your young, skinny friend with the black hair."

      The name was out before she could stop herself. "Joey?"

      "Yes. I really must speak to you and him. Tonight if at all possible."

      "Look, what is this all about?"

      Baribeau said, "It is far too complicated to discuss over the telephone. But your friend is in considerable danger."

      Despite the melodramatic phrases, the voice itself was not frightening, its warm timbre rather comforting, in fact. But the memory of Joey's face, so pinched and waxen when she last saw it, made Alison sick with dread. "Wh-what are you talking about?"

      Brad noticed the quaver in her voice and regarded her questioningly.

      The voice on the phone said, "Perhaps I should speak directly with Joey. May I have his number? It doesn't seem to be listed."

      He had looked so sick when she left, like an injured, rain-soaked fox kit. She should have insisted he go to the Emergency Room. Damn it, why hadn't she? "I don't think that'd be a good idea."

      "Then please come out and talk to me yourself. Choose a place you feel comfortable. Please, Ms. Davis, this is very, very important."

      Brad mouthed at her, "Are you all right?"

      Alison turned so she wouldn't have to look at him. She took a deep breath and made her decision. "I'll be at Henry's, the bar in the Hotel Durant, in fifteen minutes."

      "It will take me a little longer to get there."

      "I'll wait ten minutes. That's all."

      "Fine. The Hotel Durant at ten forty-five."

      "This had better be good, Mr. Baribeau."

      "Not to worry. Goodbye."

      She hung up. Would this night ever end?

      "Who was that?"

      She knew there was no point in explaining anything to Brad. Better just to go back out, meet this Baribeau character and hope Brad would leave before she returned.

      "Never mind. Finish your packing. You'd better be gone when I get back." Before he could protest, Alison grabbed a dry jacket and an umbrella from the hall closet and set off to keep her appointment.

      Henry's was warm and bright, filled with noisy students and only a few serious drinkers. It felt safe, an unlikely place for a nasty scene. God knows, she had had enough of those for one evening.

      From a small corner table, Alison scanned the room and saw no one who resembled any kind of minister. She had a smoke, ordered a scotch and sipped it meditatively, wondering just how far she'd go in the name of friendship. One of these days, she was going to have to sit herself down and sort out some things. But right now, there didn't seem to be time.

      The door to the bar opened, letting in a puff of damp night air. A black man in a Navy pea coat and a watch cap entered. He moved with a curious tips-of-his-toes gait, as if walking through ground glass. It didn't make him appear silly or effeminate, as it might another man. Rather, his posture suggested that he was ready for either fight or flight, whichever proved necessary.

      Removing the cap and tucking it into a pocket, he approached Alison's table. He smiled pleasantly and said, "Ms. Davis? I'm Claude Baribeau. May I sit down?"

      He looked all right. There was an air of intelligence in his fine-featured face that inspired trust. With her toe, Alison pushed out the chair opposite her. "Sure."

      A waitress arrived promptly and took Baribeau's order, tonic and lime. When she left, Baribeau wiped the moisture from his wide brow and said, "Thank you very much for meeting me here. May I call you Alison?"

      "If we can get right down to business, Claude."

      "Fair enough." He hunkered forward over the table, looked straight into her eyes and said, "How much do you know about vodoun?"

      She almost laughed, but his serious gaze checked her. "I'm sorry, but did you say voodoo?"

      "Vodoun is the preferred name, but essentially, yes."

      She wondered if she should just get up and walk on out of the bar. She could be home in minutes.

      The only thing that stopped her was the knowledge that if there was one person in all of Northern California who could possibly be mixed up in voodoo, it was her friend Joey Spelvin.

      The waitress deposited Baribeau's drink on the table. Alison held up her half-finished scotch and said, "Another." To Baribeau, she said, "I know next to nothing about the subject."

      Baribeau nodded. "Vodoun is not what people think: devil dolls, and other such nonsense. It is a very ancient, very complex, religion.

      "I am a hungan, a vodoun priest. I was born and raised in Haiti, leaving with my mother and sister in 1965. Now I have a small congregation, about three dozen celebrants. As I mentioned on the phone, our temple is not far from the Light Phantastic offices."

      Alison said, "I've seen it. It looks very ordinary."

      "It is meant to." Baribeau swirled his drink and watched the bubbles rise. "We worship the loas, a word that does not translate well into English. For me, `gods' describes them most accurately. These supernatural beings involve themselves in all manners of human endeavor, most often by possessing their worshippers. We call this `riding the horses.' "

      Alison's glass dropped to the floor. Heads swivelled in her direction, and she felt herself flush with embarassment. The waitress, after swabbing up the mess, deposited Alison's second round on the table with a look that suggested maybe she'd had enough. Ignoring her, Alison knocked back half the glass's contents in one fiery swallow.

      Baribeau regarded her with deep interest. He said, not unkindly, "Perhaps you have more experience with vodoun than you first imagined."

      She recalled Riggs Robertson and his semi-hysterical audience. "`Hi there, horses!' That's exactly what he said. Just before Joey had his seizure."

      Baribeau gently placed his hand on Alison's arm. "Your friend? The black-haired man?"

      "Yes. The moderator was talking about being `ridden to success', the drums started playing, and poor Joey blacked right out."

      "When? Where?"

      "Tonight. At the Crossroads Center."

      Now it was Baribeau's turn to be startled. His grip on Alison's arm tightened, and she jerked it away to avoid a nasty bruise.

      He croaked, "Crossroads Center?"

      "Yes. You've heard of it?"

      He shook his head slowly and seemed to get a grip on himself. "I never dreamed there was such a thing."

      "Claude, you're scaring me. Please, what's this all about?"

      The hungan sat back and ran a hand through his grey-flecked hair. "In vodoun, there are basically two sets of loas. There are the rada loas, gods brought from Africa to the islands. They are old and wise. They kill in order to punish the wicked but rarely do they harm anyone out of spite.

      "The petro loas, on the other hand, were born in Haiti, products of slavery's stinging hatred and grueling pain. They are vicious, vengeful gods. They eagerly do the bidding of sorcerors and rarely do they care whom they hurt."

      Throughout the room, patrons conversed, flirted and drank. Their normalcy contrasted sharply with Baribeau's odd beliefs. Alison said, "Which set of loas is stronger?"

      "In the islands, there is a balance between the rada and the petro. The petro loas are in many ways more vital, but they have fewer followers. The rada loas, with their multitudes of worshippers, are able to keep them in check.

      "At the First Church of Caribbean Mysteries, we commune with the members of the rada pantheon, of course. For more than five years, things relatively peaceful. But now it seems as if someone is worshipping the petro loas, making them powerful and unruly."

      Alison remembered the bizarre ritual at the Crossroads Center. She wondered what she might have seen if Joey had not been sick. She asked, "How do you know that?"

      "Last week, three petro loas, Baron Samedi and his brothers, wrecked my temple, hurting some of my people badly. Unless the balance between rada and petro is restored, there will be more destruction and death."

      As the scotch swirled in her stomach, calming and warming her, Alison wondered just how much of Baribeau's story she could afford to believe. Voodoo gods at war in Berkeley? It was too crazy even to contemplate. Yet after spending time with Joey, Brad and the lunatics at Crossroads, Claude Baribeau was the sanest person she had met all night.

      It was obvious that Baribeau believed everything he told her. He presented his argument without histrionics, without spittle-at-the-corner-of-the-mouth fanaticism. There was an odd sense of solidity about this man.

      Or was she just exhausted and half in the bag from too much scotch drunk too fast?

      Alison mustered her critical faculties and said, "OK, let's suppose I believe you. What does this have to do with Joey and me?"

      Baribeau poked at the dessicated lime in his glass. "I'm not certain. All I know is that I dreamed of us meeting at a crossroads."

      "What? You dragged me out tonight because of a dream?"

      "I saw you and your friend Joey in my dream before I ever laid eyes on you in the waking world. I had no idea who you were until this afternoon, when I saw you outside your office. I followed you home and learned your name from the mailbox. I still haven't met Joey."

      The waitress came by, inquiring whether they needed refills. Both Alison and Baribeau shook their heads. Baribeau reached into his back pocket and took out a tightly folded, yellowed newspaper clipping. He spread it on the tabletop and pointed to a photograph of a thin, elderly white man in a panama hat. "Have you ever seen him?"

      Alison studied the picture intently. The old man had been captured walking through a crowded marketplace. The shadow from his hat partially obscured his bony face. The image rang no mental bells.

      "No. I don't think so."

      "Has Joey ever mentioned such a man?"

      She recalled Joey's account of his visit to the Hot Spot. "Joey mentioned running into a silver-haired old man one night at a North Beach strip club. This guy matches his description." She picked up the clipping and inspected its folio line. Port-au-Prince Times-Tribune. November 23, 1962.

      "It can't be the same person," she said. "The man in the photo is eighty if he's a day. Joey said the guy at the club was about that old."

      Baribeau pocketed the clipping. "It's the same man, all right. His name is Henri Concasseur. He is a bokor, a sorceror, one of Haiti's most feared. I've been dreaming about him, too."

      This conversation was getting too weird. Maybe the thing to do was just let Joey sort it out. She said, "Claude, you seem like a sincere person, but I'm in over my head here. I'll trust you enough to give you Joey's phone number. Let him get some rest, then call him tomorrow afternoon. The two of you can work this out between yourselves."

      Baribeau shook his head. "That is not good enough. I must see him tonight, if what you've told me about his seizure is true."

      "I don't want to disturb him. He was pretty shaken up."

      "It is very traumatic for a horse when a loa mounts him for the first time. Still, I must insist. Concasseur is an evil man, Alison. I don't know what he wants with your friend, but it can't be good. I must try to protect Joey. And you as well."

      He reached beneath his collar and lifted a necklace, previously hidden by his shirt, over his head. It was composed of a strange assortment of objects: rosary beads, silver balls, and shells. From it dangled the tooth of some reptile. Alison guessed an alligator.

      Baribeau slipped it over Alison's head before she could protest. "There," he said, "this amulet will keep you safe from all but the strongest occult powers. Wear it at all times."

      "Uh, thanks. It's very nice."

      She could not have rationally explained it, but as soon as Baribeau put the necklace on her, Alison felt the full force of his urgency. The jewelry, though cool against the skin, seemed to vibrate with barely restrained energy. She wasn't some ditzy New Age dupe getting off by stroking quartz crystals, but she instinctively understood that this charm was the real thing, that it had real power not to be trifled with.

      She stood and tossed some bills on the table. Gathering up her coat, she said to the hungan, "Let's go call Joey. At least give him some warning before we show up on his doorstep."

      In the hotel lobby, Alison pumped the pay phone full of change and listened as Joey's phone rang repeatedly. "C'mon, c'mon. Answer, answer. Please, Joey, pick up the phone!"

      Joey's phone continued to bleat. Maybe he was in a deep sleep, too groggy even to answer the phone. Maybe he had unhooked the phone for the night.

      Baribeau watched her, his face creased by a frown. Feeling her composure cracking, Alison whispered into the phone, "Answer me, damn it."

      She let it ring at least 15 times. Finally, someone picked up the phone on Joey's end and said nothing.

      "Hello? Joey?"

      "I'm sorry. You have the wrong number." Click.

      She dialled again. After five rings, someone picked up the phone and immediately hung up again. Her drinks threatened to come back up. She banged the receiver down and turned to Baribeau. "Joey's in trouble. We'd better go. We'll take my car."