Women can get you in a lot of trouble. OK, maybe I shouldn't have gone home with the boss's daughter. But seven weeks of journalist purgatory is totally overreacting. So when the wealthy Ms. Adeline Foster offered me a job to find out what happened to her father-who's been missing for six years-I figured, what the hell, it's gotta be better than the high school sports desk. Women can get you in a lot of trouble. When will he ever learn? My search led me straight to this tiny, mysterious islet that doesn't show up on the charts, and the fog is so thick you'll miss it unless you know right where it is. But it's real, all right. George Foster painted it and named his painting Avalon. He also painted the golden-haired woman who is haunting my dreams. And the fishing guide knows it's real-he's faced gunfire in Vietnam, and the island still unnerves him. He showed me the bonfire that burns there on Halloween without leaving any ashes. But the raw power of the island calls to me. And it calls to Chai Fox, the self-proclaimed witch who tries to capture the island's essence in the ancient, carnal, time-honored ways. Women can get you in a lot of trouble. Rick can't get that through his head. Trouble is, I'm much more attracted to Sabrina, the sassy waitress with the fastest wit in back-water South Carolina. Except she has this abusive, stalker-ish boyfriend that she can't seem to get rid of. So I'm taking her along when Ms. Foster and I go out to Avalon on Beltane, the night the boundary between our world and the Otherworld is the weakest. Maybe we'll meet the gold-en-haired woman in person. We might even find out what happened to George Foster. But whatever else we find, on Beltane the fertility of the land is renewed with uninhibited sex. My name's Rick Whittaker. Wish me luck since I'm gonna need it-'cause women can get you in a lot of trouble.