But the matter was more important than feuds or grudges. She sat across from Ripley, leveled her gaze. “There’s blood on the moon.”

“Oh, for—”

Before Ripley could finish, Mia’s hand shot out, gripped her wrist. “Trouble, bad trouble is coming. A dark force. You know me well enough to be sure I wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t tell you, of all people, unless I was sure.”

“And you know me well enough to know what I think of portents and omens.” But there was a cold chill working up her spine.

“It’s coming, after the leaves finish dying, before the first snow. I’m sure of that, too, but I can’t see what it is, or where it comes from. Something’s blocking it.”

It disturbed Ripley when Mia’s eyes went that deep, that dark. It seemed you could see a thousand years in them. “Any trouble comes to the island, Zack and I will handle it.”

“It’ll take more. Ripley, Zack loves Nell and you love him. They’re at the center of this. I feel it. If you don’t flex, something will break. Something none of us can put right again. I can’t do whatever needs to be done alone, and Nell isn’t ready yet.”

“I can’t help you that way.”

“Won’t.”

“Can’t or won’t comes out to the same thing.”

“Yes, it does,” Mia said as she got to her feet. There wasn’t temper sparking her eyes; that would have been easy to fight. There was weariness. “Deny what you are, lose what you are. I sincerely hope you don’t regret it.”

Mia went downstairs to greet her book club and deal with the business at hand.

Alone, Ripley rested her chin on her fist. It was a guilt trip, that was all. When Mia wasn’t shooting out spiteful little darts, she heaped on layers of sticky guilt. Ripley wasn’t falling for it. If there was a red haze over the moon, it was due to some atmospheric quirk and had nothing to do with her.

She would leave the omens and portents to Mia since she enjoyed them so much.

She shouldn’t have dropped in tonight, shouldn’t have put herself in a position where Mia could try to pin her. All they did was annoy each other. It had been that way for more than a decade.

But not always.

They’d been friends, next to inseparable friends, until they’d teetered on the cusp of adulthood. Ripley remembered her mother had called them twins of the heart. They’d shared everything, and maybe that was the problem.

It was natural for interests to diverge when people grew up, natural for childhood friends to drift apart. Not that she and Mia had drifted, she admitted. It had been more like a sword slash down the center of their friendship. Abrupt and violent.