Vermont, January 2006

Celie Favreau muttered an impatient curse and dragged her fingers through her short brown hair. Trees, trees and more trees: beech, ash, birch, the occasional startling green of a pine, and maples, always maples, as far as the eye could see. Sugar maples, Vermont's state tree.

She'd always adored maples. Too bad she hadn't come to the state in the autumn, in time to see the legendary wash of glorious color. Instead, she saw the flat brown and white of a dormant winter landscape. Of course, she knew it wasn't really dormant at all, not in late January. Already the drumbeat of spring was beginning to pulse in the trees as the sap gathered for the rise that triggered rebirth.

And already the threat was stirring.

Celie squinted at the page of directions in her hand and checked her odometer again. When she'd fled Montreal for a career in forestry, she'd done it partly out of a desire for open space and a conspicuous absence of concrete.

She hadn't thought about the conspicuous absence of road signs.

Of course, she should have been used to it by now. In the past four years she'd been sent to hot spots in seven different states, always moving around. Living somewhere new every few months wasn't a hardship — generally, she enjoyed the variety, she enjoyed a chance to get out of the same old rut.

These days, though, a rut didn't seem like such a bad thing. The sign by the building up ahead read Ray's Feed 'n' Read. It made her grin. She couldn't pass that one up without a look. With luck, she could also get directions to the Institute.

When she opened the front door, the blast of heat made her forget the winter c