Chapter 1

The air-conditioned newsroom was a welcome relief after the relentless heat of the afternoon sun. Cub reporter Tara Trent headed straight for the water cooler.

“Hey, Tara—Red Sonya’s been looking for you.” That came from Kevin, the Boston Bugle’s showbiz gossip columnist. “You better get your pert little ass into her office right away.”

Tara scowled at him. “What does she want now? No, don’t tell me—I can guess. It’ll be another of those wacko silly-season stories. For some reason she thinks they suit me.”

Kevin glanced at her short spiky hair, which she’d recently dyed electric blue, and at the skimpy boho-chic mini-dress she was wearing. “I can’t imagine why,” he observed.

“Last August she sent me up to Vermont to chase non-existent Bigfoot sightings.” Tara pouted. “That was my first solo assignment, and I did a great write-up even though there was nothing to write about. Since then Red Sonya has had me down as the paper’s resident fruitcake expert.”

The “Red Sonya” she was talking about was not the towering barbarian of popular culture, but the Boston Bugle’s editor-in-chief, Sonya Gale. Nevertheless, she was a big, powerful redhead, every bit as formidable in her own way as her comic-book namesake. As one of the paper’s most junior reporters, Tara had learned early on that it was a good idea to do exactly what Red Sonya told her to.

She headed to the editor-in-chief’s office, knocked on the door, and went in.

Red Sonya looked up from her keyboard, then did a double-take. “Your hair! You’ve, ah, done it differently.”

“I dyed it electric blue,” Tara explained patiently. “It matches the wall-to-wall blue skies we’ve been having lately.”

The editor rolled her eyes. “Very logical. And it’s not just dyed blue, it’s, ah…”

“Spiky,” Tara offered. “Spiky and electric blue. Don’t you like it?”

“I love it.” Red Sonya’s facial expression didn’t quite match her words. “Anyhow, it’ll be perfect for your next assignment. You’ll blend in with all the other kooks.”

She stood up and stepped out from behind her desk. She towered over Tara by several inches, even though Tara herself was a tall five-eight. Tara, however, was slender and willowy, while Sonya was bigger in every dimension. Tara had often daydreamed about what it would be like to have sex with Sonya. She suspected that some of her more submissive male colleagues might be able to tell her. Red Sonya was not really her type, though. Tara preferred her women compact and petite.

The editor-in-chief went over to the wall map and planted her finger on a spot on the coast a short distance north of Boston.

Tara recognized the location immediately. “Salem! The place with all the witches?” Her heart sank at the thought of another crackpot assignment.

Sonya nodded. “You got it in one. There’s a big event there tomorrow called the Salem Spiritual Consciousness Festival. When it comes down to it I guess that’s just another way of saying modern-day witches.”

She picked up a glossy leaflet from her desk and passed it over. Tara flicked through it, and her initial reluctance about the assignment quickly turned to enthusiasm. The bullet-point list of activities included nude body painting, Tantric massage lessons and skyclad goddess meditation…a footnote in small print explaining that “skyclad” meant naked. The photographs, presumably taken at last year’s event, showed the attendees to be overwhelmingly female. Tara was forced to admit that, as silly-season assignments go, this one looked pretty promising. With weekend temperatures forecast to rise into the high nineties, there was going to be a lot of hot, sweaty female flesh on show.

Red Sonya returned to the plush executive chair behind her desk. “There’s something else you need to be aware of. There may—just may—be another, more serious, angle to the story.”

“Oh?” Tara’s ears perked up. Anything more serious than a wacky New Age witch-fest had to be a good thing, career-wise.

“The paper’s received a number of anonymous text messages. Three of them, to be exact. They appear to refer to this gathering in Salem. Here, look…” She picked up her smartphone, bringing up the messages in question before handing it over to Tara.

“Witch-sluts burn in hell,” Tara read out loud. “Then Salem’s gonna get hotter’n hell, and finally: Burn, witch, burn!Sounds like a typical religious fanatic. Have you told the police?”

“What, and spoil a potential exclusive?” Red Sonya grinned broadly. “The cops wouldn’t do anything anyway, not without a more specific threat. They’d say it’s just another woman-hating loser letting off steam. They’d probably be right. God knows the world is full of people like that. But if there’s a story here, I’m darned if I’m gonna let it be anything other than a Boston Bugle exclusive.”

“A Boston Bugle exclusive with a Tara Trent byline,” Tara added. She paused thoughtfully, then looked back at the glossy leaflet. “It says the event runs for twenty-four hours, from dawn tomorrow morning until dawn on Sunday. There’s campsite accommodation overnight on the Friday—tonight, in other words. Well, you can forget about that. It’ll be much too hot and humid to sleep in a tent. You can put me up in a nice air-conditioned hotel.”

Red Sonya stared at her. “You only live in Quincy, don’t you? You can drive up there in the morning.”

Tara dug her heels in. “Not if you want me to be fresh and alert and all set to get your exclusive. It’s a long day, remember—twenty-four hours from dawn to dawn. Nope, I need to travel up to Salem this evening and stay in the best hotel you can afford. I’ll put in some local research while I’m there, too.”

“A prima donna, already!” Red Sonya sighed. “Okay, a hotel it is—but we’ll make it a two-star one. Even a two-star will have decent aircon.”

“Thanks!” Tara turned to leave, then had an afterthought. “Say, can you forward those wacko text messages to me? And any others you get?”

“Will do,” Sonya nodded. “Now get your ass up to Salem and come back with a blockbuster story for me.”

* * * *

The hotel room was small, and the window looked out onto a narrow back alley, but at least the place was clean and the aircon worked. Tara set it to seventy-five degrees so she could comfortably walk around in the nude. She liked being nude. After showering and carefully removing any last vestiges of body hair from her legs and pubes, she stood and admired herself in the mirror.