(30-thousand word novella) Imagine you are in San Francisco on a chilly December night. A dark-haired woman you've never met urgently presses a gorgeous ring into your hands. "This ring could change your life," she tells you. "You'll just have to trust me." It is an ancient Irish Claddagh ring, forged on the Emerald Isle's Galway Bay, and opera singer Veronica Ballard will discover, to her amazement, that it possesses magical powers. For...