Bloodstone

by Gwen Hunter

  “I’m not familiar with that method, but I’ve heard of it, from the old people talking when I was growing up. There may be ways to focus on stone, on its crystalline matrix, its natural order and chaos, to open the mind to its gifts.” She glanced at Jane and then at me. “I am willing to do some research in the older tomes of family lore. If you would be willing to try.” Her voice was half-pleading. “I want the chance to make up to you, if only in some small way, for abandoning you when you came into your gift. Alone.”

  “I…” I remembered Mama, her gentle face by the light of a candle, telling me the cards were evil. But she hadn’t said the gift itself was evil. One could use anything for harmful purposes—take any gift and use it for evil. Or for good. “I’ll think about it.”

  Aunt Matilda smiled and turned her face back to the hallway light. “But you’ll have to leave that dreadful cell phone at home. I’ll not have it in my house. It gives me hives.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, careful to screen my amusement from her. But I had a feeling I didn’t do a good job of that. Her lips twitched.

  Saturday, 1 p.m.

  I turned from the sink to find Davie’s eyes on me. He was sitting on my sofa, wearing his own clothes, his feet on the ottoman he had insisted be brought from his home when Isaac made the trip to pick up his personal items. He was still weak but the fever had gone down. His hand was bandaged where his finger had been sliced off with a boning knife. His bruises were fading. He was breathing easier, though I could still hear the pneumonia that had clogged his lungs for a time after we found him. We had nearly lost him to fever and infection. But this morning he had shaved and showered all by himself and the hospital had released him to my care. He was still gaunt, eyes full of shadows, but he was alive.

  “Yes. I am.”

  We shared a smile. Since finding him in the middle of a blizzard, I had found it impossible to raise my wall against his thoughts. In fact, I couldn’t wall out any St. Claire. None of them. For the first time, we inhabited each other’s minds like all St. Claires did. It took a little getting used to, especially when there were more than two of us together. Then it was a jumble of hopes, impressions, scents, memories, fears. Too much for me to handle for an extended time.

  I had learned how to shield a little, which was a mental exercise very different from my wall, but I was a novice. I had a lot to learn about being a St. Claire. After the spring line was finished, I was going to stay with Aunt Matilda for a while. Jane and me together, to learn about our gifts and how to be real St. Claires. And I was going to explore the old ways of teaching the St. Claires, with an emphasis on using stone to focus my gifts and learn how to build a shield that would give me privacy.

  One little, two little, three little St. Claires, sang in my mind. Four little, five little, six little St. Claires… Davie grinned at me. Seven little, eight little, nine little St. Claires…

  Ten little St. Claire psychics. I finished the song for him. So, how many St. Claires would it take to rule the world?

  One, if you could find one in his right mind. But there are no psychics in their right minds. They’re too busy sitting in other people’s minds.

  Ergo, no St. Claire will ever rule the world. Old joke. “You were telling me about Daddy,” I prompted him.

  “Sorry. I have these moments…” He looked around the loft, amazed to be here, alive.

  “Me, too. A lot of these moments.”

  Davie rubbed his stump beneath the bandage, a mound where his finger used to be. It itched. I could feel the sensation in my own hand.

  “Dad was enticed to New York City by a man who offered him a job, one with a big salary that would allow him to move us all away from the St. Claires. He didn’t know it was Q Core, I don’t think, though I’m not sure. He wanted a real life, I guess, away from the family, a private, normal life. At least, that’s what I’ve always surmised,” Davie said, to my unspoken questions.

  “At the time I got to Q Core, Adam Wiccam was second-in-command of the department, but when Dad disappeared, Wiccam was the new head of acquisitions. That’s what they called the people who went out and found and recruited new talented people to Q Core. So he was responsible for getting Dad, if he could be brought to work for them.”

  The cat jumped to the couch and walked across Davie, stopping to sniff the bandage. She sneezed at the smell and pawed it once, curious. Davie stroked along her head and down her back and she arched for him, purring. Liking the sensation, she settled in his lap.

  “I learned that Wiccam had intended to lure Dad to New York, kidnap him, and bring him to Q Core in D.C. They had already used that method to force people to work for them, and figured they could do it again, though I never understood exactly how they did it. Dad was strongly gifted. They shouldn’t have been able to convince him to leave home, shouldn’t have been able to fool him, but somehow they were. They must have used someone who truly believed what they were telling him, to convince him the job offer in New York was real.

  “Who knows, maybe they set up an office there and hired real people, head-blind people, to run it. His first day in New York, before Wiccam could even get to him, Dad was killed by a mugger.” Davie’s face was expressionless, immobile as old rock, yet I tasted his emotions, the futility, the chaos of chance. “I never did understand how someone got to him. Maybe they were stoned and he couldn’t sense them clearly or Dad was distracted.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Then again, I got mugged, so I guess it can happen. I found records of Wiccam claiming the body, taking it to D.C.” He scratched the stump again. The itching was driving me crazy, and I tried to shield myself from it. The cat rolled over and swatted at the bandage, playing. Davie swatted back, his actions gentle, as if the cat paws didn’t cause him pain when they bumped his stump.

  “They autopsied him.”

  I turned away, refusing to see the pictures that Davie had seen. Pictures of the autopsy. I didn’t remember my father and I didn’t want to remember him like that. “What did they find?”

  “Nothing. They never did, in any PM they ever performed on a psychic. Nothing about the physical brain of the gifted is any different from the nongifted. At least not in a post mortem.”

  “But?”

  “With the development of MRIs and PET scans, positron-emission tomography, they discovered that when a psychic is sending or receiving images, there is increased frontal-lobe activity. A lot of activity. It looks like a lightning storm in there. Our brains are normal, but we can access them in different ways. We use them differently.”

  “Better? Like Superman?”

  He chuckled, as I had intended him to. “No. Just different.”

  “And Adam Wiccam. What about him?”

  Davie’s smile faltered. “Jane didn’t kill him. She didn’t,” he insisted when the doubt formed in my mind. “He froze to death.”

  “Yeah. After he ran out onto the rooftop garden and fell into the alley. After he was blitzed with something that shot from Jane’s fingers. Something like lightning. Something that left a burn mark in the center of his chest, but not on his clothes.” I remembered the feel of the pick buried in Gail’s flesh, the sense of power as I forced her to recall specific memories.

  “Stop. You did what you had to. We’ll train Jane to use her gift responsibly. Train you to use yours with a bit more restraint,” he said with a tender smile.

  “It’s a useless gift. It brings more headaches than help.”

  He sent me an image of the inside of a trunk. “Sometimes it helps.”

  “Like it helped you to know you were about to be attacked in the alley?” I said, unable to stop playing devil’s advocate. “That’s what started all this, the fact that the amazing, spectacular St. Claire gift didn’t warn you in time.”

  Davie’s smile widened and he rocked his head against the sofa. His lids slit with amusement. “Shall I tell you what had my attention so absorbed that I didn’t sense them?”

  “Let me guess,” I
said, unable to rein in the sarcasm that laced my words. “You met a new woman.”

  The sensual smile stretched Davie’s mouth. “She’s really something. I want you to meet her. I invited her and her aunt to dinner tomorrow night. Hope you don’t mind cooking for two extra people.”

  I caught the humor behind his words—me, cooking—and an image of two women. One was Abby Marshall, the older woman I had heard speak at the county council meeting. The other was a younger, softer version of the tough-as-leather woman.

  “Her great-niece, Naomi. I think you’ll like her. And better than that, I think Jane will like her.”

  From within his mind, I studied the image of the young woman. She had a pretty face and a winsome smile. I had glimpsed her at the county council meeting. Ashes and spit. You’re in love again. Suddenly I knew that the girl didn’t know him yet. They hadn’t even spoken. He had seen her across the room and fallen headlong in love with her. Just like he had fallen for Jannetta. I stopped my scathing retort before it could begin.

  This was the first time Davie had ever brought a girl to meet me or Jane. And he was bringing her great-aunt, too? It must be serious. Very serious. Not willing to let the beginning of the argument go yet, I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “And the gold?”

  Davie looked innocent, splaying his hands out in a shrug. “What gold?”

  I laughed. “Right. I forgot. There never was any gold. All four boxes are missing, never to be seen again. Therefore, the gold never existed.”

  “Right. I have a habitat to protect, and a plan for the environment to put before the governor. There is no gold in them thar hills. None at all.”

  “And we may never know who shot Jubal. Isaac finds that difficult to accept,” I said. “He still needs closure. He needs someone to beat up.”

  “Don’t we all. It had to have been Madison or Boone, or maybe Feaster. All of them hunted. All had rifles. Unfortunately, all of them are dead. If the cops figure out which gun fired the shots at the scene, maybe they’ll tell us. Someday. Especially as we seem to have personal access to the local cops. Is he taking the job?”

  “I don’t know.” I could feel Evan climbing the stairs, transporting something heavy, his steps lagging behind Jane. The usual warmth flooded my limbs, settling deep inside me.

  My brother grinned. “When are you going to act on those urges? You’re running out of excuses. Aunt Matilda is gone, Jane and I will be heading home soon. You won’t have an excuse at all then. It’ll be poop or get off the pot.”

  “Now that is a truly disgusting image.”

  His grin widened. Dyno rolled to her feet, clambered over him and jumped to the floor. She sprinted to the door to meet Jane, tail upright, tip waving. The door opened. Because she didn’t rush down the stairs, the cat got a treat, a morsel of salmon, which Jane bent and gave her from a Ziplock pouch kept in the cold hallway. Already the cat had learned the value of sticking around the top of the stairs.

  Dyno fed, Jane sped to the sofa and fell on her father, who gathered her up in his arms and kissed her head. Bliss spread across her face and through her soul. But a hint of darkness welled up in my own mind. What must it feel like to know one was loved so utterly and completely? How safe a childhood St. Claires must have to know that kind of love. Davie and I had never had that, as St. Claires raised among the ungifted.

  Jane placed a hand on her father’s cheek and said, “You’re not cold as ’lasses or hot as a pancake, either. Better and better.” Swiveling, she kissed his cheek beside her hand.

  Evan appeared in the doorway and stopped, his eyes seeking mine first. A slow grin stretched his lips. His green eyes danced like spring leaves in a torpid breeze. I felt myself grow warm and busied my hands at the sink. Not in front of Jane.

  Why not? she wondered. Not what in front of me? She looked back and forth between us, curious.

  “Go to Isaac and Jubal’s and practice some moves,” Davie said.

  “More grown-up stuff,” she groused. “What’s the use of being able to read minds if you keep getting sent away to play when the good stuff starts?”

  “Go.”

  “Okay. But I want to know when Aunt Tyler is going to do the big dirty and jump Uncle Evan’s bones, too.” Evan and Davie howled with laughter. I blushed hotly. Satisfied with our reactions, Jane ran outside and crossed the sunlit rooftop garden, banging on the door to her best friends’ house.

  The tenor of Davie’s thoughts changed. A pliant dread whispered through him. I stepped away from the sink and looked at Evan. He was standing at the door watching us. At his feet was a wooden crate. A box just like four others that once had rested in the storeroom downstairs. It had been opened. Evan looked down at the box, his cop face on. He bent and lifted the crate. Davie’s fear slithered its way into my brain and coiled there. We watched Evan as he crossed the room and set the box on the floor at Davie’s feet.

  “The fifth box?” Davie asked. When Evan nodded, he asked, “Where did you find it?”

  He looked at me, expression sober. “In Noelle’s car.”

  The viper of fear lifted its head, watching my soul with unblinking obsidian eyes. I shook my head in denial. “Not Noe.” But the final puzzle piece fell into place.

  “Your regular postman has been on vacation. Ten days in the Bahamas. This box came a day before the other four. He remembered it specifically because he pulled his back when he dropped it off and it put a damper on his trip. Noe accepted the box from him.”

  Tears gathered in my eyes. I turned away and took the kettle, turned on the water, hearing the echoing rattle of water on copper. The lop-eared bunny stared at me from the high window ledge. I had rescued Uncle Will’s carving from the corner of the trunk and placed it here, where I could remember the man who whittled it for me. I touched the satiny smooth wood.

  Evan placed the box on the ottoman at Davie’s feet. “So far as we know, Hornsburn didn’t plan, or even know about David’s kidnapping. He had been after David to sell his land and call off his plan for the animal refuge. David had been talking to Julian Rakes Mining to see if there was any way to safely remove the gold without harming the environment.”

  “There isn’t,” Davie said. “No way.”

  “Roman Trio, its underworld leaders and its money-laundering plans were never involved with David or his kidnapping. They were after Hornsburn, who owed them money and hadn’t paid, and they finally caught up with him inside Rakes’s headquarters.”

  Evan watched me, wisely not coming near. Giving me time to process the betrayal that was coming at me, flying at me, a hammer of broken faith. “Noe knew about the gold before you did. She must have opened all the boxes and seen the gold, read the papers. Enough to know she couldn’t find it on her own. So she called in her girlhood friends, Eloise and Gail. And she knew Harry Boone would do anything to get back at you. She kept one box for herself. Set up the kidnapping. She ran it all from the shop.”

  And I never knew…. I turned off the water, put the kettle on the burner, and turned on the flame, my movements slow, deliberate and oh, so careful. The kettle sizzled, a soothing sound. I braced myself against the cabinet top, the sharp edge digging into my palms. “Where is she?”

  “She’s being processed now, charged along with Eloise and Gail, probably with conspiracy, kidnapping. Murder, if the evidence in Blythe’s or Quinn’s death warrants it.”

  I turned to him. At my puzzled look he said, “Blythe. Your brown man. Though it’s possible that all the deaths point to Roman Trio, not your friend.”

  My friend.

  “Noe will be housed here in town until bail is set.” He paused. “I don’t recommend that you visit her.”

  Feeling as if I had been punched in the gut, I went to the far door and looked out at the rooftop garden where Jane was sparring with Isaac, both of them bundled against the cold, laughing like maniacs.

  So much for the St. Claire family gift. Psychics-R-Us fails me again. As usual, being a receptor for t
he mental and emotional feedback of others hadn’t saved me from danger or prevented bad things from happening. It hadn’t let me see the evil in the heart of my friend because I hadn’t known to look. Hadn’t let me save my brother before he was tortured because I hadn’t suspected Noelle. My St. Claire gift hadn’t let me do much of anything useful.

  You got me back. Alive.

  I smiled without turning around.

  And Jane is safe. That’s enough for me, Brat.

  Evan came around behind me and slid his arms through mine, pulling me close. I felt his warmth, his solid goodness. I rested my head back against him. Carefully I opened myself to him. His mind met mine with a soft tone of joy, the color of a rising sun, golden and full of hope.

  On the rooftop garden, Jubal emerged, balancing a tray with one hand, carrying a pitcher, six glasses and a plate of cookies. He looked up and nodded his head from me to the table in the sunshine. Suddenly I remembered my wistful thought, when I saw Jane with Davie, basking in his love—it would be wonderful to know I was loved like that, so completely.

  I hadn’t realized it, but I was.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-6253-2

  BLOODSTONE

  Copyright © 2005 by Gwen Hunter.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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