Orin Coleridge had six months to live. He regarded the prospect with little fear, but with a whole lot of impatience. Six months wasn't long enough for what he needed to do, especially when his strength was failing, and treatments were only going to make him weaker.

The only thing he feared was that his daughter wouldn't outlive him. He watched her sit in a corner, rocking endlessly and staring out the window at the brilliant Florida days as if she couldn't even see them.

A man had done that to her. Her husband had done that to her. Orin looked down at his frail, trembling hands and wished they had the strength to strangle Larry Hauser.

The bright candle flame that was his daughter had nearly been extinguished, and months later it showed no signs of leaping to life again.

She was too thin. Too withdrawn. Counseling had been useless because she wouldn't speak. Her once raven black hair now had a silver streak in it, speaking of what she had endured. Of what Larry had inflicted on her.

Orin sighed heavily and went to stand beside her, looking out through the filtering leaves of an ancient live oak at the sunbaked street beyond. He didn't care what happened to him, but he needed more time, time enough to find a way to put the spark back in his daughter's eyes. A way to give her back her life before he gave up his own.

Reaching out, he touched Veronica's shoulder and felt her shrink away. His heart breaking, he withdrew his hand.

There had to be a way to reach her, he thought, as tears burned in his eyes. Some way to reach the little girl who had once grasped life with both hands, hungry for experience. Some way to reach the woman who had followed in his footsteps, becoming a professor of archaeology.

He had so many memories of her, all of them full of light and life from the time she took her first steps to the time she had come to him with sparkling eyes and showed him her first published monograph. Surely that woman couldn't be gone forever.

There had to be a key to the lock of silence and despair that imprisoned her. There had to be a way to fan the spark back to life.

Closing his eyes against a swelling surge of grief, he tried, as he always had, to focus on the problem at hand.

Then, to his amazement, for the first time in twenty-five years, he heard the sound of his late wife's voice. It seemed to waft to him on the air, carrying the mysterious lilt that had first drawn him to her.

"The mask of the Storm Mother."

A chill went through him as he recalled all the trouble that quest had brought into his life. And yet, looking at his daughter as she slowly faded away from lack of will to live, he wondered if renewing the quest could possibly be any more costly.

The answer was plain. He just hoped the mask wouldn't bring his daughter back to life only to take her away again. Because, to this day, he was convinced his wife's death was no accident. Whenever he let himself think of it, her loss filled him with anguish and rage.

And fear.