Moonstone Shadows

by Patricia Rice

  The instant he released her, she stirred.

  “That was awkward,” she muttered, eyes still closed against the dim interior light of the van.

  “Tell me about it,” he retorted, relieved beyond measure that she was still alive. “Or better yet, don’t. Just find your key so I can see you inside, where you need to call a doctor or I will.”

  “They can’t do anything. Just don’t touch me, and I’ll be fine.” She opened her eyes but wouldn’t look at him.

  Anger followed terror. “Seems to me you say that a lot—I’ll be fine—when you obviously aren’t,” he said in disgust. “Give me your backpack. Can you climb down without my help?”

  She handed him the heavy pack and rewarded him with a look of scorn.

  The look did his jaded heart good. Scorn he could handle.

  He stood back and let her use the door as crutch to climb down again.

  She tried to retrieve the backpack, but he shouldered it. “I’m seeing you to your door. If you want to collapse and die once you’re inside, that’s on you.”

  He didn’t ask if she only fainted on him or if she made a practice of it. She’d said she’d seen doctors. He didn’t want to know anything more personal or intimate than that. But for a very brief moment there, his damned psychometry had kicked in and he’d seen. . . something. He’d trained himself to block any impressions he didn’t want, or shaking hands could raise some really ugly, and occasionally lewd, mental pictures. He didn’t know how she’d broken through his block even for that brief second.

  But she’d left him wondering if the Malcolm librarian had the gift of psychometry too. That could be awkward if she started poking around his store. Because, yeah, he’d figured out that this was the librarian Keegan had brought to Hillvale, curse the damned geologist’s generous heart.

  “I’m not usually given to collapsing,” she said tartly, marching down the dark sidewalk at the rear of the lodge. “But then, I don’t normally meet men with the gift of psychometry either. I’m receptive. I can be affected by psychic gifts but cannot reflect or employ them.”

  “Good to know,” he said curtly, relieved that his touch hadn’t set off a brain bomb. Then he processed the sentence beyond himself and scowled. “There are people who can reflect or employ my gift if I touch them?”

  And how the hell would that work? They saw what he did when he touched an object? Or they could see what was inside his head? That gave him mental shudders.

  “It’s been reported, yes, but passive agents tend to be villains and not journal writers, so I have no firsthand reports, just observations from ancestors.” She entered the brightly lit hall of hotel rooms and stalked down the carpet.

  His need for knowledge warred with his desire to avoid a woman who represented everything he never wanted in his life again.

  She unlocked her door and Aaron held it open so he could throw her backpack in. Before he could think better of it, he asked, “If I buy you a drink, will you tell me more of these villains?”

  She hesitated, casting him a wary look, before shaking her head. “No, I think not. Thank you for the ride. Good night.” She took the door and waited for him to leave.

  Perversely, he didn’t want to be denied. “As librarian, aren’t you supposed to offer us any information to be found in our ancestors’ journals?”

  “Give me your card with your email address, and I’ll send you the volumes and pages referencing the villainy. It’s obscure and not very helpful.” Stone-faced, she continued to wait for him to back off from the door he held open.

  Grumpily, he produced a slim mahogany card case from his jacket and handed her the cream-colored card for his store. “I’d appreciate that.”

  He stalked off, leaving the obstinate female to her brain fits. Deciding he’d check the bar for more congenial company, he headed into the interior. Since Hillvale had started hosting weddings in the garden Samantha had created at the vortex, the lodge often accommodated loud bachelor and bachelorette parties. It sounded as if one occupied the bar now.

  The Kennedy brothers waved him over from one of the more private booths. As partial owners of the corporation controlling the lodge and most of the rental property in Hillvale, the Kennedys had privileges that allowed them to claim prime real estate in the dark, heavily masculine tavern. The low roar dimmed considerably in this sheltered corner.

  “The babe was safely delivered. You can go home now,” Aaron said wryly as he slid into the booth. Their wives had been part of the birthing circle. Well, Fee and Monty weren’t married yet, but the little cook wore the mayor’s ring. Close enough.

  “We’ve been warned,” Kurt Kennedy acknowledged. The taller, darker, more lean of the two brothers, he sipped his drink with an air of resignation. “Once one of the women has a kid, they all want one. Samantha was a natural, of course. She grows things, so growing babies was the next step. Walker is on board with that.”

  “But Kurt and I are still knee-deep in debt and not ready for baby formula and diapers,” Monty said morosely. His muscled bulk reflected the football career he’d abandoned to step in as mayor of the deteriorating town the Kennedys owned. “We’ll have to build a hospital just to handle the population explosion.”

  “Our resident nurse wants an urgent care center.” Aaron ordered a beer and sat back, relaxing. The Kennedys weren’t Lucys, just mortal men with mundane problems. “Can your Hollywood director swing for some fancy equipment? The Lucys won’t willingly go down the mountain to a real hospital.”

  Kurt nodded. “We’ve planned one for the shopping area of the new development. But these things take time. We’ll have to set one up in one of the empty buildings in town, which means complete rewiring and plumbing.”

  “Fee was hoping to expand the café into the building next door, but that’s the most convenient one for an urgent care center. The others are long and narrow or two stories.” Monty’s gloom didn’t lift.

  Their problems weren’t his. Aaron sipped the beer the waiter delivered, then cautiously delved into the newcomer. “Where are you putting the school now that the new teacher has arrived?”

  “We can use one of the two story buildings for the school, no problem. We thought the old place next to the ice cream shop would be good until the new school is built. We’ll have to run cable and stronger electric boxes for the computers, but there aren’t enough kids for the plumbing to be a problem yet.” Kurt sketched idly on a napkin. “We’ll need to talk to the teachers, but it seems logical to put the young ones downstairs and the older students upstairs for now.”

  “You’ll need to find a place for the new teacher,” Aaron warned. “Your mother has taken an instant dislike to her. I understand there was an altercation involving Cass earlier.”

  In identical gestures, both Kennedys ran their hands through their hair and rubbed their temples. That was their usual reaction to their mother’s volatile behavior.

  “Her docs won’t talk to us,” Kurt explained. “After Fee forced her into the hospital, Mom claimed the doctors found lumps. But she checked out and went to our condo in Hawaii. If she had any medical procedures done while she was there, we don’t know about it.”

  “Personally, I think the lumps are in her head,” Monty growled. “But we’d have to go to court to claim her incompetent so we can take control of the corporation and obtain power of attorney to talk to her doctors. How do you do that to your mother?”

  Aaron shrugged. “Mine’s long dead, so I wouldn’t know. What does Fiona say? She’s the one diagnosing her as ill.”

  “Fee says she smells decay, which isn’t exactly useful. I swear, Lucys make life more difficult,” Monty complained. “They can point out something wrong but can’t fix it.”

  Aaron refrained from mentioning that he was one of the Lucys. The Kennedys knew, but he generally didn’t discuss his psychometric knowledge. “That’s why we have the librarian. Fee needs to ask our newcomer if there have ever been any references in the journals to smell
s of decay. Hannah will be able to refer her to the right books. Whether or not they’ve been scanned and are accessible may be another problem.”

  “Thanks. Fee knows nothing of her heritage, so it’s good for her to have a cookbook of sorts to follow instead of relying entirely on her own observations. I wish I knew a property convenient for our new teacher, but the cottages are all booked through most of the year. I guess we can offer a discount on her room at the lodge—or include it as part of her salary.” Monty pulled out a notebook to jot down the thought.

  “That won’t solve the problem if your mother doesn’t want her here,” Aaron warned. “You’ll have to tell Cass to open her doors for a change.” He finished his beer and stood up.

  “Have you ever been inside Cass’s place?” Kurt asked with a wry intonation. “You do not want to send our new teacher into a different dimension.”

  There was that, Aaron supposed, but he wasn’t interested in Cass and her machinations, not any more than he was interested in Carmel and her brain rot. He simply did not want the new teacher moving into the empty room above his shop. “You don’t want her polluted with evil, either,” he warned. “We found her wandering in your woods earlier. She apparently doesn’t have the Lucy ability to sense evil.”

  He walked away before the Kennedys protested. As Nulls, they simply didn’t understand—or believe—in the spiritual. They’d accept the danger of lions, bears, and snakes as well as landslides, earthquakes, and sinkholes to which the area was susceptible. They might even believe the ground was chemically polluted. They would not believe in the blood of innocents or souls of evil polluting dirt.

  Aaron did. He’d felt the grip of malum before.

  He’d better do a quick patrol of the lodge, just to be certain the new teacher was safe.

  Hannah took a hot shower and tried to scrub away the interposed images of dark knight and sophisticated crook twisting in her deformed synapses. Just touching Aaron’s palm had nearly allowed her to slip away again. The doctors hadn’t been able to explain the brain lapses. She knew of nothing in Malcolm journals that fit them. She simply had to accept that the inoperable mass in her head was creating hallucinations.

  How could she teach when she never knew if she’d have another fit?

  Which was why she needed to find the painting showing the Healing Stone—the artwork Aaron had stolen and presumably sold to some unidentified customer, if he hadn’t kept it for himself.

  She wrapped her hair in a towel and, wearing a hotel bathrobe, padded out to the tiny desk beside her bed where she’d set up her laptop. She should let her family know that she’d arrived safely. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to face a huge family gathering, so she’d just have to let them think she was buried in work setting up the new school. Not that she had a clue as to how to start a school, but she ought to be able to manage a classroom of one.

  After sending emails, she remembered Aaron’s card. She looked up his website—it rivaled anything she’d ever seen in the UK, where priceless antiques cluttered warehouses across the countryside. Judging by the images he seemed to specialize in furniture and paintings, although from what she’d seen of his cluttered shop, he had a lot more than that. He was definitely no flea market dealer. If they were genuine, the value on some of these pieces. . . would buy a mansion or three, even in California, where real estate was ridiculous. Of course, he’d have to sell them first, so cash flow might be a problem , hence the art fraud. That had been years ago.

  She entered the Malcolm website she and Mariah had been working on, looked up the passages she’d promised, and sent him the links. Mariah’s generous gift of an expensive scanning machine had made Hannah’s job immensely easier. Keegan’s hiring of an expert to scan the delicate older books had given her freedom. With a solid understanding of the library, she no longer needed the actual volumes—but she needed to do something.

  She’d loved hiking in the wide-open spaces of Scotland, away from the pressures of family and expectations. She’d always wanted to be a librarian and teacher, not the university professor her family had expected. She was good with that. Fine, she added defiantly, remembering Aaron’s contempt.

  Completing her correspondence and still feeling restless, she debated whether she could sleep after spending half the day napping. She needed to adjust to the time change somehow. Maybe she could use the pool.

  She stuck a clasp in her damp hair, pulled on her bathing suit, and covered it with a sarong and loose knit top. Donning sandals, she slipped down the hall, following the direction of the signs. To her disappointment, a sign said the pool closed at ten, but she heard laughter emerging from behind the curtained windows. She peered through a slit between frame and cloth and saw the voluptuous, sunset-haired, tarot reader climbing out of the water. With her was a movie-star handsome male who watched Amber with such obvious adoration that he had to be her new husband.

  Hannah felt the pull of melancholy, probably brought on by the birthing earlier. She normally thrived on her lonely book life. She was too boring and plain to attract serious boyfriends. Her head had always been too full of duties to see if her occasional hook-ups could develop into more. And now it was too late for that as well—probably for the good of all.

  Music played in the bar, so she turned in that direction. Perhaps she could ease into her new time zone gradually. As she walked through the sprawling lodge, she stopped to admire the ghostcatchers Mariah created. Hanging near the ceiling, the stringy nets dangling with crystals and feathers swung and spun even when there was no breeze. Mariah claimed they halted the poltergeists who haunted the area.

  Hannah wasn’t certain that ghosts were any better than loud wedding parties, but the one in the bar had mostly broken up and gone to their rooms by the time she arrived. A few well-dressed members of the group were getting snockered together. The music apparently came from loudspeakers. She didn’t see any musicians. Oh well. She couldn’t really expect a pub experience here.

  She probably shouldn’t tempt fate by wandering the halls where Carmel might see her. Maybe she should study on how to set up a school. She’d had too much stimulation for one evening anyway.

  She turned away from the bar, took the corridor back to the lobby, and headed down the back hall to her room—where she heard loud voices raised in fury. Shoot. Maybe the walls of her room would block out the racket?

  A woman’s furious screech cut through the empty hall. Hannah panicked, freezing where she was. Another loud cry abruptly cut off. . . and then, silence.

  Were those running footsteps?

  She swung around and fled for the front desk. She’d recognized that ugly screech.

  Carmel.

  Hannah felt like a fool telling the desk clerk someone was being murdered. Carmel wasn’t rational, she recalled, so she simply told the employee that she heard screams. The clerk started making calls. Clenching her fists, feeling helpless, Hannah watched as uniformed security raced from outside in response to the calls. An older, portly man in a business suit strode from a side hall, looking grim at the security rushing past. He nodded curtly at Hannah, then followed in their path. Several people who had entered the lobby from a side door seemed confused and lingered. A handsome younger man emerged from the bar, walking rapidly. Deciding he looked wealthy and worried enough to be Carmel’s son and one of the lodge owners, Hannah followed.

  Murder on her first night in town would not be auspicious.

  Four

  Patrolling the grounds of the lodge, Aaron nodded briefly at neighbors he recognized strolling the walks. His walking stick lurched abruptly as he approached Carmel’s suite, indicating a violent change in the resort’s vibrations. Alarmed, he increased his pace.

  Reaching the lighted pathway to Carmel’s private entrance, he lifted his staff to test the air—and saw a body spilling golden hair sprawled across the threshold.

  Aaron hated approaching. He had no particular reason to despise Carmel Kennedy. She’d been a beautif
ul woman any red-blooded man could appreciate, even at twice his age. He ought to take her pulse, verify what his stick had already told him. But even when she’d been vibrantly alive, Carmel had oozed a malevolence that could be seeking a new victim as her dying breath departed.

  Running footsteps approached.

  Standing above a dead woman holding a knobbed walking stick didn’t look good, but Aaron saw no reason to cast his staff into the bushes. Everyone knew it belonged to him.

  When Harvey arrived, Aaron was forced to act. He held out his walnut staff to stop the younger musician. “No. I’ll do it. Aim your crystal toward us and call up any prayers you know.”

  Raising his staff, Harvey began a Latin prayer reflecting his half-Catholic origins. The long-haired musician could play any instrument, but he had a voice like a frog, Aaron noted as he approached the body in the half-lit doorway.

  Kneeling near Carmel’s sprawled arm, Aaron verified she had no pulse. Voices and pounding feet approached from around the outside corner.

  Someone was already knocking on the interior door.

  Blood seeped from the tawny hair of the Kennedy matriarch. Whoever had done this hadn’t removed the fortune in gold she always wore draped on her neck, wrists, and fingers. This had not been a robbery but an act of rage.

  Satisfied there was nothing he could do, Aaron stepped away as a uniformed security guard ran up swinging his flashlight. Lights flipped on inside the suite a moment later as one of the Kennedy brothers shouted, “Mom?”

  Aaron wondered if her sons would suffer grief or relief that someone had taken a decision out of their hands—until he caught a glimpse inside of the schoolteacher arriving like an avenging angel in the company of Kurt and the lodge manager. Faex.

  What the hell was the damned woman wearing? She looked like an exotic dancer with that sarong hanging on her narrow hips and her pale belly partially bared beneath a top that revealed more cleavage than he’d expected. He forced his gaze upward, which didn’t help.