Evans to Betsy

pay me very well and they don’t work me to death.”

“I’m glad you’ve landed on your feet,” Evan said.

“I have to get back to cleaning the steam rooms,” the other girl said to Betsy in Welsh. “See you later, Betsy.”

“I’m coming, Bethan.” Betsy smiled sheepishly at Evan. “Sorry if I yelled at you just then. I thought you’d come to convince me to come home again. I’m really happy here. Honestly I am. I can’t imagine working at a lovelier place and they say all kinds of celebrities come here. I might meet someone famous!” Her eyes were shining. “Got to go then. See you around, Evan.”

She ran back into the spa building. Evan continued on up the path and through the archway to the main exit. Something wasn’t right here, he decided. The place seemed almost deserted and yet they’d hired Betsy to do very little work. If they had no customers, who paid all the staff it took to run this place?

Blaine was still unsmiling as he nodded to Evan and pressed the release button on the electronic gate.

Betsy found Bethan had gone into the steam room and was already wiping down the walls.

“Nice-looking bloke,” she said as Betsy put down her pail and took out a sponge. “Friend of yours, is he?”

“That’s right.”

“Dating, are you?”

“If I had my way, we would be,” Betsy said, giving the wall a savage scrub. “He seems to prefer the local schoolmarm, but I can’t think why. She never tries to make the best of herself, you know—no fashionable clothes, and no makeup, and her hair in a plait. Dull as ditchwater, if you ask me. What can he possibly see in her?”

“It’s always the way, isn’t it?” Bethan said. “The good-looking blokes always seem to go for the plain women. I have the same trouble myself.”

Betsy looked at Bethan’s large, cowlike face with its mournful brown eyes and said nothing.

“You know it’s a funny thing,” Bethan went on, wiping the last of the wall with a grand flourish, “but I think I’ve seen that girl before. You know—the one on the poster he was carrying.”

“You have—where?”

“She looks a lot like a girl who worked here earlier this year. She was only here for about a week, so I can’t say I got to know her, but it does look a lot like her.”

Chapter 9

Excerpt from The Way of the Druid, by Rhiannon

What Druids Believe

The ancient Celts perceived the presence of supernatural power in every part of the world. The sky, the sun, the dark places underground, every mountain, river, spring, marsh, tree, were endowed with divinity.

They believed in the concept of AWEN—the liquid life force, essence, inspiration that flows through all living things.

They also worshipped the triple Goddess of the waxing, full, and waning moon and the Horned God of forest and animal powers. We, the heirs to the Druid religion, still hold these beliefs today. We see the Goddess as the fertile Earth Mother and the Horned God as the life-giving sun father.

We Druids feel more than a kinship with nature. We are part of nature. Nature is part of us.

We are a link between past and present.

We believe in the equality of all things and a balance between male and female.

We believe all life is sacred and worthy of protection.

If we have a creed, it is “Do what thou wilt but harm none.”

It was ten o’clock on a perfect spring Sunday morning as Evan wheeled the motorbike from his shed. Worshipers were filing up the village street, the older women in their hats and black lace-up shoes, the men in their stiff Sunday collars and dark suits, on their way to one of the two chapels. As they got close, they veered either to the left into Capel Bethel, or right into Capel Beulah, sometimes looking back across the street to give a disapproving stare to those going to the “wrong” chapel. They had also given a few disapproving stares to Evan, who was obviously going off on his bike when he should have been singing hymns.

The first hymns started, the lovely notes of the old hymn “Hyfrydol” echoing out from Capel Bethel, while Capel Beulah competed with “Cwm Rhondda.” Evan stood for a moment and glanced up at the mountainsides. The first spring flowers were dotting the grass with splashes of yellow and white. Another great day to be climbing and instead he would be spending it down at the Sacred Grove. Betsy had reported her conversation to him the evening before and he had duly reported it to HQ. Now he was to meet Glynis Davies in Caernarfon and drive her to talk to the people he had interviewed yesterday. He couldn’t help seeing this as an insult. Now that there was a real mystery, he wasn’t trusted enough to gather evidence without a member of the CID present. He reminded himself that this was just normal procedure. Glynis was not trying to pull rank, just do her job.

The hymns finished and from Capel Bethel came Reverend Parry Davies’s powerful voice. “A great evil has come among us, my dear brethren. We Christians have fought for twenty centuries to stamp out the devil and pagan worship. Now it has sprung up again in our midst. It might call itself a center for healing and spirituality, but do you know what it really is? A place of devil worship—that’s what it is! So-called Druids calling up evil spirits! Do we want this kind of corrupting evil in our midst, my dear brethren? What are we going to do about it?”

Evan smiled as he mounted his bike. So one of the ministers had heard the gossip about the Sacred Grove. He wondered what would happen when the other, more extreme minister also heard. And the other minister’s wife— how would Lady Annabel fare against the power of a Mrs. Powell-Jones? He’d love to see that confrontation someday.

He started the engine and rode carefully down the pass.

“It looks rather fishy, doesn’t it?” D. C. Glynis Davies sat beside Evan, who was driving the squad car. “I mean, why deny the girl had ever been there unless they had something to hide?”

“Exactly,” Evan said. “Of course, the other girl, the one who spoke to Betsy, might be wrong. Betsy says she’s not the brightest specimen in the world. And the photo on the flyer isn’t exactly clear.”

“I must say, I’m curious to see the place now,” Glynis said.

“You won’t believe your eyes.” Evan chuckled. “It will make you realize that some people have more money