"Please, Pierce, just take me home," Riley-Ann gasped when she could speak again. Pierce put his arm around her and helped her back to her parents' house.

"My God, Riley-Ann! What on earth happened?" Micki exclaimed when she saw her dripping-wet daughter.

"Someone tried to kill her, Mrs. Dallion," Pierce said soberly.

"I...I ran into the pond after a baby carriage..." Riley-Ann tried to explain.

"Oh...my...God..." Micki could barely get the words out. "The Kents...the cradle...it's all happening again, just like it did all those years ago..."

Riley-Ann went to her room to change out of her wet clothes, and Pierce went back to his own home.

When Ryan got home that evening, Micki thought she'd never been so happy to see her husband. "The Kents almost drowned Riley-Ann today!" she told him.

"The Kents?" Ryan looked puzzled for a moment, then remembered and understood. "The couple who bought the cursed cradle..."

"They came back, Ryan. And they tried to kill our daughter!"

Ryan held his wife as she sobbed. "The cursed cradle," he mused. "Next came the urn...then the mirror...then the voodoo mask...then the radio...then..."

"No!" Micki screamed.

1988

"Welcome back. Wouldn't want to go on doing this without you," said Ryan. He smiled at Micki, and she suddenly saw him in a whole new light. Before this moment, she'd always considered her co-worker to be kind of an overgrown little boy, cute and loveable but definitely not the type of man who inspired passion in her. Yet tonight he'd literally brought her back from the dead.

Ryan and Micki and their older colleague, Jack, had been attempting to retrieve a cursed coin from its current owner, a Satanist who planned to use it to resurrect several long-dead sorcerers. The evil magician had used the coin to kill Micki, then planned to use the coin to resurrect a witch who'd been hung in the sixteenth century. Ryan had constructed a clay mask to resemble the dead witch's face, then placed it over Micki's face, thus tricking the magician into bringing Micki back to life instead.

Micki knew she'd never forget the feeling of utter terror she'd felt as she'd watched the tossed coin rebound and fly up toward her forehead. She'd felt the coin strike her forehead, then...nothing at all, until she'd suddenly found herself arising in the middle of the unholy ceremony.

Jack and Ryan had explained to her what had happened, then left her to rest after her ordeal. Ryan held her hand for perhaps a bit longer than necessary, and she saw the familiar longing in his eyes. She'd seen it there before, many times, but ignored it, thinking that she didn't feel the same way he did and not wanting to get his hopes up. Now, all of a sudden, she found that she did feel that way about Ryan, after all. Yet how to tell him? She couldn't just go to him and blurt it out, could she?

Pondering possibilities in her mind, Micki soon drifted off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

Ryan was especially kind to her for the next few days, and Micki wondered whether her new feelings for him showed. If they did, he didn't give any indication.

Then came the night Ryan and Micki attended the symphony together. The night that would change both their lives forever.