* * *

  The brewery’s interior was cool and dim and smelled of dank hops, making my palms sweat and my mouth go dry even as my nose crinkled in response to the sour aroma. How I’d ever found this scent—vaguely reminiscent of cheap weed—to be appealing, let alone tempting, was beyond me. And yet, here I was, swallowing hard for sudden want of it.

  The place seemed deserted, and a quick glance at my phone showed that I was a few minutes early, so I turned the flash on and started taking pictures to fill the time. Considering the Standard didn’t have the budget for more than one full-time photographer—who was busy covering the scandal-plagued dog show, lucky bastard—whatever I got with my phone’s camera would have to do.

  I’d expected a Greek motif, what with the name and the reference to gods, but there were no marble columns, replica Venus de Milos, or bunches of grapes to be seen. Instead, drying herbs hung from the foyer’s low rafters, green candles burned in holders on every available sill and shelf, metal moons in various phases graced the walls, and a pair of wooden-handled brooms hung crossed over the entryway, like props from cheap Halloween costumes.

  “They’re called ‘besoms,’” a soft voice said from behind me as I snapped a photo. Turning, I saw Honey Harrelson standing there, dressed in a black and gold V-necked Bacchanal Brewing T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. A black cord wound its way about her neck and underneath her shirt, so I couldn’t see what pendant might be nestled in her generous cleavage, but I found myself jealous of it all the same. A feeling I quickly smothered; an alcoholic getting involved with a woman who owned a brewery could only end badly, no matter who was writing the story. “An old tradition to keep negativity from entering a space.”

  Didn’t stop me, I thought, but didn’t say. Instead, I pocketed my phone, pulled out my notebook, and dutifully wrote this tidbit down, wondering what ever happened to my big-city, Pulitzer Prize-winning dreams.

  As I did, two other women stepped into the foyer, both brunettes and obviously related, though one was several inches taller and had a cleft in her chin the other lacked. They, too, wore low-cut Bacchanal T-shirts, and if they weren’t Monroe-caliber beauties, they still had a way of moving that drew and held the eye. I suddenly didn’t have as many questions about how they’d acquired the capital to open this place—a smile and a wink from any of them was probably all it would take for me to empty my wallet on the floor at their feet, though the most they’d be able to buy with the contents would be some real brooms to go with the decorative ones over the door.

  “Mr. Woodward,” the taller siren said, sticking out a well-manicured hand. “So glad you could join us today for a tour . . . and perhaps a tasting?” I wasn’t sure if I imagined the sardonic twist to her grin or not.

  As I shook her hand, hoping she wouldn’t notice how much sweatier my palm had become at her words, the other woman—Carrie—spoke.

  “Don’t mind Anne, Mr. Woodward,” she said, casting her sibling a warning look. “She thinks because it’s her birthday, she can take liberties.”

  “Oh? Happy birthday,” I said, wondering why they’d chosen to schedule an interview on a day when they should be downing their product instead of showing it off.

  “Thank you,” Anne said, her smile still bordering on mischievous. “We share that, though, don’t we?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I was born on the summer solstice, and you were born on the winter. We’re both children of the solstice.” At my surprised look, her grin widened, and she winked. “We do our homework.”

  Not very well, I thought, but again didn’t say. Though she wasn’t the first person to make that mistake. My ex had been into astrology, and made a big deal about how compatible our charts said we were—her an Aquarius and me a Sagittarius. Until she found out that since I’d been born “on the cusp” in Arizona, a place that didn’t observe Daylight Savings Time, I was really one of those hard-headed Capricorns who only wanted to stifle her airy creativity.

  It was all bullshit, of course, but if she wanted to blame the stars for our breakup instead of my drinking, I was more than willing to let her.

  “Anyway,” Carrie said, the glance at her sister sharp enough to cut this time, “while we’d normally offer you the opportunity to taste some of our award-winning brews for your piece, your editor made us aware of your particular . . . sensitivities . . . in that regard, so we’ll skip it this time. We’ll take you out to the fields instead, so you can see how our products go from barn to bottle without ever leaving town. A fact we’re very proud of, and one we believe has greatly contributed to our success.”

  “That—that’d be fine,” I answered, taking her hand in turn, using the movement to cover my surprise at both her bluntness and the fact that it seemed like she’d read my mind. The sooner we could move this show outside and into the light the happier I’d be.

  Carrie smiled broadly.

  “Excellent,” she replied. “Shall we begin?”

  * * *

  “The angle Jayne McClure—my editor—wants,” I said, “is how three young women, fresh out of school, have managed to create one of the most popular and profitable microbreweries in the state in such a short time. You attribute your success to your locally grown hops or whatever, so explain that to me. That sort of thing. I’m not writing a hit piece. Think of it as free advertising.”

  “How much do you know about beer, Mr. Woodward?” Honey asked.

  “How it tastes,” I answered. “How it feels going down.” I swallowed, hard. Here, enveloped by the smell of it, those things felt fresh, as if my last drink had been fourteen minutes ago instead of fourteen-plus years.

  I also remembered what it did to my head. I remembered the paychecks that had never made it home, the lost days and nights, the time I’d forgotten a laptop in a bar. A laptop owned by the Boston Globe, containing the only copy of an investigative piece I was writing on Russian gangs—former Soviet thugs, KGB types—taking over the drug and hooker businesses in the Combat Zone. Those had been the days of my Pulitzer dreams. But the farther away those dreams got, the more I drank, and the more I drank, the faster those dreams raced away. The lost laptop had ended my stint in New England and my marriage. When I heard that one of my confidential sources had been found in the Charles River with two bullet holes in the back of his head and his tongue cut out, presumably because in my notes on the laptop his name hadn’t been confidential, it nearly ended my stint on the planet.

  It turned out I couldn’t drink enough to kill myself because I always passed out first. Didn’t stop me from trying, though—first in Massachusetts, then back in the arid wastelands of my birth, and finally here, in the Nothing-But-Big-Sky State. Still, it was touch-and-go a few times, until I finally hit bottom and a drunk named Eddie Kemp reached down for me, pulled me up, and introduced me to his friend Bill W. Eddie’d had to kick my ass a few times to keep me in line, but eventually, it took.

  Yet here I was, inside a brewery, with the aroma digging around under my skin like some kind of invasive parasite.

  I realized Honey had been talking the whole time I’d been inside my own head, and I’d been wandering around half-blind as the women showed me their brewing process. I snatched a couple of words from the atmosphere, where they’d hung while I was barely listening—grain mill, rollers, stuck mash, wort. I blinked, and saw that we’d stopped in front of a shiny silver tank with hoses attached here and there, and various gauges and dials on top.

  “. . . the mash/lauter tun is where we hydrate the grains,” Honey said. “We don’t want any dry spots in the mash. We wet every bit of it down, to draw out all the sweetness, and mix the grains with the liquor. We say liquor, but at this point, it’s just water. Hot water; we go with a steady one-fifty Fahrenheit. We use water temperature to regulate the rate at which the enzymes in the malt convert the starches to sugars. Sweetness is good, but as with most things in life, I’ve found, it’s balance that’s critical.”

  “Can you spell that?” I asked, making my first note since we had left the foyer.

  “C-R-I-T—” Anne started.

  “No, the machine. The tank. It’s a what?”

  “A lauter tun,” Carrie said. “Ours is a mash/lauter tun.” She spelled it out for me, slowly. I appreciated the effort. “We’re a small operation, and we want to keep every batch we brew just like the one before. Bigger outfits use bigger lauter tuns, with automated rakes, but we use stirring blades.” She laughed. “I’m glad you asked how to spell it, instead of just assuming, Mr. Woodward. I was a philosophy major, for a time. Words and their meanings—their true meanings—are important to me. I guess we’re both seekers of truth, you and me.”

  “Please, call me John,” I said. “Just because I’m old enough to be your father doesn’t mean I want to be reminded of it.”

  They all laughed at that, and then continued the quick tour and lesson: sparging to remove the sugars from the mash, boiling the mash in a brew kettle and adding hops to make the wort, spinning out the solids and cooling the wort so yeast could be added. That was when the fermentation began. Bacchanal Brewing had two 2,400-gallon fermentation tanks, where yeast converted the glucose in the wort to ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide, which was continually vented until near the end of the process. At that time, the vent was capped so the CO2 would be forced into the beer, partially carbonating it.

  By the time we had walked through the process, I was desperate for a taste. I swallowed again and again, my mouth as dry as the Sonoran desert in the month before the rains came. My mind was starting to wander once more when Honey grabbed my arm. I’d felt worse sensations.

  “Perhaps a drink?”

  I’m not exactly sure what my expression was on hearing those words—deer in the headlights of an oncoming Peterbilt, probably. Whatever it was, it made her laugh, a sound that sent a not-unwelcome thrill through me.

  “Of water, silly. Infused with herbs to offset the taste from the tap.”

  She waited while I took the proffered glass and downed half of it, then grabbed my arm again, this time linking hers through it.

  “Enough of this,” Honey said. “The real story is outside, in the fields. Let’s go, before we lose the light.”

  * * *

  I had seen the field behind the brewery as I drove up, but paid it scant attention. You didn’t have to live long in Arizona (and I hadn’t, either time, thankfully) to see enough dried out, sun-yellowed grass to last a lifetime, especially in early summer when the whole world was as parched as a drunk . . . well, anytime his hand was empty. Same was true of Montana, most years. But stepping out Bacchanal’s back door, Honey leading the way down two wooden steps and across a small gravel lot at the edge of which the field pressed, as if impatient to march on the building, Carrie and Anne a few steps behind me but present in the sound of their feet crunching across the small stones, the rhythm of their breathing—and it had never before struck me that you could hear a smile in somebody’s breath—with the late afternoon sun sending slanting golden beams across the bristled tufts waving at the ends of long, slender stalks, I knew this was no vacant lot gone to seed, no rancher’s grazing land.

  “Is that . . .?” I began.

  Honey let go of me and stepped into it like a beachgoer venturing into the surf. On the far side of the field was a silo, and beyond that a straight line of pines that might have indicated a road. “It’s barley!” she exclaimed, running her hands across the spiked heads—awns, I think they were called. I had done a little prep for the piece. “Beautiful, beautiful barley!”

  “It is,” I said. “Beautiful, I mean.” I wasn’t sure we were talking about the same thing.

  Honey whirled, arms outstretched, a human crop circle. “Isn’t it? It’s two-row barley. Old World barley, which is part of what sets Bacchanal ales apart. Lower protein gives it more fermentable sugars, sweetens the malt. This particular variety is called Summer Isle. Sadly, the crop this year doesn’t look to be as robust as in years past.” She stopped and looked back the way we’d come, toward the brewery. “Though we think we’ve found a remedy for that.”

  “You’ll have to forgive Honey,” Anne said quickly from somewhere over my left shoulder. “She’s a little in love with barley.”

  I flashed on a tall glass of golden nirvana, foam sliding down the outside. “Who isn’t?”

  “I apologize, John,” Carrie said, coming around to my left side, while Anne stood on my right. “We’re not trying to tempt you, here. We’re enthused about our process and our product, but we know it isn’t for everyone.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, that’s a gorgeous—” I tugged my gaze away from Honey’s lush form. “—plant. It’s a grass, right?”

  “Yes,” Anne said. “It’s also one of the healthiest foods you can find on the goddess’s green earth. The FDA even allows barley-based foods to claim they aid heart health. It lowers blood pressure and can help control blood sugar.”

  I followed the path Honey had carved into the barley. The spikes were sharp-edged, snagging at my jeans and the discount-store dress shirt I could never quite keep tucked in. “I never knew.”

  “There’s probably a lot you don’t know,” Honey said. She was walking back toward me now, her gaze fixed on my face. I wondered if there was something between my teeth, or a bug on my cheek.

  “I have no doubt,” I replied.

  She snapped off a piece, just beneath the head, and handed it to me. “See?” she said. “The long ones are spikes, the little ones spikelets.”

  I glanced at the double row she indicated. “It looks braided,” I said.

  “Take it, John.”

  I reached for it, but as soon as my fingers started to close around the awn, she yanked it free. “Ouch!” I said. I opened my hand. A drop of blood beaded on the end of my index finger—my best typing finger.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. She took my hand and lifted it toward her. For a brief, foolish instant, I thought she would press it to her breast, or place it in that delectable mouth to suck the blood away, but instead she brushed my fingertip lightly with the barley.

  “There.”

  I looked at my hand. The blood was gone. “Let me see that.” I snatched the barley from her hand before she could react. I expected to see a bloodstained spike; maybe a couple of them, the one that had cut me and the one she had wiped away the blood with.

  It was clean. Golden. Not a trace of red.

  “It wasn’t a lot of blood,” Honey said.

  “No. Still.”

  “We told you,” Carrie said. “It’s a miracle grain.”

  “And it knows its own, and approves,” Honey added with a strange, almost hungry smile. “As do I.”

  Was it possible to be sexy and a little creepy at the same time? Because she sure seemed to be pulling it off.

  “Can you show me the rest now, please? You grow your own hops, right?” I looked at the field as I asked the question, not at any of the women. I suspected my cheeks were flushed, with embarrassment and not a little lust. But I could feel Honey’s gaze, boring into me.

  God help me, I didn’t mind it a bit.

  * * *

  “We do,” Anne said, answering my question as we walked deeper into the field. “But we’re more interested in showing you the harvesting process. If you don’t mind?”

  “No, of course not,” I said, blinking against the light, which was suddenly making my head hurt. My eyes were watering now, too, and my vision seemed to be blurring a little. Allergies? Seemed a little late in the year for them, but then I didn’t normally spend a lot of time traipsing through amber waves of grain.

  Honey had moved ahead of us, toward something that looked like a tractor with the blade reel from an oversized push mower attached to the front. I watched her climb into the cab and heard the splutter and roar as she started it up.

  “Is that a . . .?” I began, but found that I couldn’t think of the word. I couldn’t think of much of anything but Honey’s body and the smooth taste of beer sliding down my throat. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted more.

  “It’s a combine harvester,” Anne replied, seemingly oblivious to my mental lapse. “In the old days, all the steps in harvesting barley were done separately, by hand. And while we prefer the old ways for most things, in some cases, the benefits of modern technology are too great to ignore. The harvester reaps, threshes, and winnows, all in a single process, and in much less time than it would take to do each task individually. It’s really quite a sight to behold.”

  It looked like I was going to get to behold it, though, and up close, too, because Anne and Carrie had each taken me by one arm and were guiding me straight toward the thing.

  “Shouldn’t . . . shouldn’t we . . .?” I tried to say, searching foggily for the last words. Move? Out? Of? The? Way?

  “Hush, now, John Barleycorn. It will all be over soon.”

  The sound of the harvester was so loud now I couldn’t tell which of the sisters had spoken, so didn’t know who to correct. That’s . . . not my name.

  Was it?

  I was so confused, and the rhythmic slicing of the harvester blades through the rows of bowing barley were almost like a lullaby, soothing me, making me want to lie down in front of the approaching machine, like an offering.

  Wait.

  Like a what?

  The utter foreignness of the thought pulled me out of what I realized must have been some sort of drug-induced stupor. What kind of herbs had Honey put in that water, anyway?

  And, more to the point, why?

  I yanked my arm from Carrie’s grasp, but Anne was bigger, stronger. She held on.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, shouting to be heard over the whirring blades.

  “Hell has nothing to do with the Craft, John,” Anne said grimly, still lecturing, even now. She grabbed onto me with both arms, a grip I fought to break, especially with Carrie clawing at my head and back to regain her own hold.