Moonstone Shadows

by Patricia Rice

  When the shuttle let them off in front of the café, Hannah waited for Aaron to decide if he wanted to go with her to Keegan’s house. She had yet to speak with her cousin, meet his wife in person, or see the new baby, and she was eager to do so.

  Aaron rolled his fingers into fists in an evident internal argument. She waited patiently. At some point, he would have to actually talk to her.

  Not yet, she noted as he stalked toward the lane of cottages. She thought she could find the house without his help. She recalled the hanging computer discs from last night—so much had happened since she’d arrived!

  Her towering geologist of a cousin was waiting for them. “It’s about time. The Lucy grapevine is buzzing. Mariah is about to come after you.” He stepped back to let them in.

  “And hello to you, too, Cousin,” Hannah said wryly, stepping into the small front room made smaller by outsized furniture.

  Aaron was as tall as Keegan, but leaner. Keegan came from a line of sturdy miners and had spent the better part of his life swinging pickaxes and toting boxes of rocks, building impressive muscles in already thick limbs. Aaron’s strength was more sinewy. But they both sported the patrician noses and dark hair of their Ives ancestors.

  The woman emerging from the back hall wasn’t any kind of Malcolm she recognized. Hannah appreciated the furniture size after seeing her cousin and his wife together. Mariah was tall and sturdily built, with Hispanic or Native American heritage, not fair like the American part of Hannah’s family.

  She’d already been informed that Mariah wasn’t a hugger, but neither was Hannah. They’d spent a lot of time together over the internet these last months, so it was as if visiting an old friend.

  “At last!” Mariah cried. “It’s good to finally meet you somewhere besides Skype. Daphne is sleeping. Do you want to peek in at her? But then you need to tell us everything.” She led the way back to a bedroom where an infant slept in a rocking cradle.

  Awestruck by the tiny bundle of life, Hannah stroked Daphne’s tawny-soft cheek and watched, teary-eyed, as the infant’s little pink mouth puckered. She blamed hormones for the sudden urge to have one of these for her own. Wiping back the moisture, she stepped aside so Aaron could look.

  “Cute,” he muttered, staring as hard as Hannah. “I’m polishing some silver spoons for her. I’ll bring them up later, when our schoolteacher isn’t stealing garnets.”

  Mariah socked his shoulder and shoved him out of the room. “Tell. I hate being kept out of everything.”

  “I’m trying to tame her,” Keegan said in amusement, leading the way back to the front room. “But if you don’t feed Mariah constant information, she’ll be digging bunny trails into your computers to siphon them.”

  Hannah held out the stone she’d confiscated. “We found a stash of these and others in Carmel’s safe. It appears a very large stone is missing.”

  Keegan grabbed a towel from the kitchen just off the front room, snatched the stone from her hand, and deposited it in a glass bowl. “If this is one of our ancestor’s rocks, you shouldn’t touch it. He experimented with some pretty dangerous stuff. Wash your hands.”

  “Do we need to call Walker and tell him to put them in a lead box?” Aaron headed for the landline.

  While Mariah hovered anxiously, Keegan ran his hand over the top of the bowl, not touching the rock itself. “Yes, for safety’s sake, lock them up. I’m picking up some of the same vibrations we found in Daisy’s art hoard.”

  Muttering Latin curses, Aaron punched numbers into the phone while Hannah scrubbed.

  “Could the evil in those rocks have polluted Carmel over the years?” Mariah demanded. “That would explain a lot.”

  “Without knowing what else was in that box, we can’t make that assumption yet.” Keegan found a lid for the glass bowl. “We know how to neutralize the paint the artists made from these things, but we still know almost nothing of what our ancestors did to them or where they found them.”

  “These were in a medieval jewel casket, the same one as in that painting in your study at home,” Hannah told him. She glared at Aaron and waited for him to finish leaving a message on Walker’s voice mail before continuing with a hint of spite, “I suspect it’s the same casket as in that painting Aaron went to jail for, although that was a different era and set in Hillvale.”

  Silence descended. When Aaron didn’t immediately respond, Mariah gestured at the living room. “I think we need to sit down and work this out sensibly.”

  “I’ll fix coffee.” Keegan rummaged for the beans.

  Hannah settled into the smallest chair in the room, leaving the large leather ones that were obviously their hosts’ favorites. Aaron looked longingly at the door.

  “Hannah is our librarian,” Keegan called over his shoulder as he filled the coffee machine. “You know damned well that position comes with the knowledge of everything about who we are.”

  Recognizing her knowledge didn’t appear to appease Aaron. He started to pace.

  “Because of Keegan’s discoveries, I had reason to study Hillvale,” Hannah explained. “Most of my knowledge is innate—it isn’t active. It’s just there to be called on as needed. But I have a photographic memory. I sought the original journals on the gems and read them once Keegan started asking questions about crystals. Then I followed every lead I found on Hillvale. Mariah isn’t in our library, but Aaron is.”

  Settled into a recliner, Mariah chortled and began rewrapping her long black braid. “I’m special.”

  “There are people with special gifts who aren’t Malcolms,” Hannah acknowledged. “But you’re married now to a Malcolm descendant, and you should start recording your discoveries and teach Daphne to do the same. Knowledge is half our power.”

  Aaron glared at the stone, out the window, and anywhere but at Hannah. She silenced, allowing him to let off steam and gather his thoughts. She didn’t enjoy being interrogated by a furious man, but this wouldn’t be the first time. She’d been surrounded by powerful men like Aaron and Keegan since birth. The Ives strain of the family had bossiness down to a science.

  “I found the damned painting in a thrift store when I was just a kid,” Aaron finally said in disgruntlement. “I’m originally from the Shetlands, but at the time, my father was working in Oxford, and my mother was doing research for her doctorate. I was missing the hills of home and didn’t know what to do with myself in a city. Because of my gift, I was naturally drawn to antique stores and the like.”

  “I’m thinking of putting radio signals and chains on Daphne,” Mariah said knowingly. “Our gifts are dangerous when not moderated.”

  “The reason for our journals,” Hannah reminded them. “As soon as you discover Daphne’s abilities, I’ll find the books she needs.”

  Aaron disregarded their exchange. He grabbed a mug from a shelf the instant Keegan’s coffeemaker indicated the caffeinated fuel was ready.

  Fortified, he leaned against a cabinet rather than sit down. He looked like a sophisticated Parisian art dealer, Hannah decided. His camel blazer was tailored to good effect on his wide shoulders, falling open to reveal a black silk t-shirt clinging to impressive pectorals. Tight black jeans just needed a codpiece to resemble the leggings of her medieval knight—the one in Keegan’s painting.

  “I didn’t have your Malcolm background,” Aaron said dismissively. “My father was a Null, and my mother pretended she was too. I explored my ability on my own. I had no good way of explaining why I was so excited by the rather ugly piece of American art I brought home. I could tell them it was compelling, but they couldn’t feel what I felt. I just knew the artist had a message he was desperately attempting to pass on, and it called to me.”

  “Even though they didn’t understand, my parents helped me hang it on my wall. My mother wanted me to take art classes. I had absolutely no interest in any art except this piece, which told a story I needed to decipher.”

  “Describe it, please,” Mariah insisted. “Why would American art
be in a Brit thrift shop?”

  He shrugged. “The artist is Malcolm Eversham, a contemporary of Lars Ingersson, one of the commune artists who went on to great fame. Apparently the oil and frame didn’t make enough of an impression for former owners to leave their thoughts on it for me to read. I’d say someone inherited it from the original purchaser, thought it was boring, and gave it away. That’s the usual path.”

  Which, as an antique dealer, he had the experience to know. But that part was irrelevant. Hannah recited from her encyclopedia of knowledge. “Malcolm Eversham was a descendant of the British Malcolms, a distant American cousin to Keegan’s branch, and not along legitimate lines. There are probably some connections to the famous artist Lucinda Malcolm. He was never as well known as some of the other commune artists, but he gained a quiet fame for his historically accurate western paintings. He was one of the commune artists who didn’t die in abject poverty or from unnatural causes.”

  “Eversham must have been a Lucy,” Mariah breathed, almost happily. “A Lucy smart enough not to use the evil stones the others were using.”

  “One who didn’t need drugs to enhance his natural talent,” Hannah agreed. “He didn’t leave a journal, but his work was so accurate that some of his family speculated that he could see the past.”

  Aaron didn’t take a seat. Neither did Keegan. He handed mugs of coffee to Mariah and Hannah, then leaned against the counter between kitchen and front room. “So, Aaron, what did our bastard cousin paint that excited your juvenile soul? Naked ladies?”

  Aaron scowled, drained his cup, and went back for more. “He painted a priest, a Spanish soldier, and a dozen half-naked Native Americans. It wasn’t the subject matter that excited me, but the vibrations left by the artist. He thought the subject matter extremely important and was frustrated that no one listened to him. I’d not received such a strong message before. To a lonely child, it was rather like talking to an adult.”

  “Before you explain what this exotic group was doing, please explain why you’ve hidden the painting?” Hannah asked politely, concealing her own frustration.

  Still holding his steaming mug, Aaron crossed his arms in a classic defensive position. “Because it killed my parents and my wife.”

  Eight

  Keegan brought out a bottle of Scotch and added a large dollop to Aaron’s coffee cup. It was a hot August day with no air conditioning, but the heat of the whiskey warmed the coldness inside him as he faced the tale he had to tell. Aaron despised explaining himself, but at least this audience was receptive. He’d not had that benefit in the past.

  “Your parents died in a plane crash,” the librarian said for him. “Your wife died of cancer. It was during her illness that you sold the fraudulent Eversham.”

  There was no condemnation in her recitation, although there ought to be. Going to jail hadn’t been one of his finer moments, even if his intent had been altruistic. “That’s not the whole tale.”

  He refilled his cup and sank down into one of Keegan’s plush leather chairs. Or Mariah’s. The computer genius had money before she moved up here. Her former home must have been immense to hold furniture on this scale.

  He was procrastinating. “It was right after my parents hung the painting that my father got an offer for a position in New York. He needed to go over for an interview, so they left me with one of my father’s assistants and hired a local pilot to take them to Manchester airport. The plane had mechanical failure and went down in a field.”

  In a way, part of him had perished with his parents—his innocence perhaps. They’d been his entire world, and then he’d learned his world could be crushed in an eye blink. He’d been devastated. And lost. It had taken him years to trust close relationships again. Even when he’d finally married, there had always been the sensation of waiting for the next blow to fall that had put a distance between him and Natalie. Despite insulating himself with distance, her death had flattened him all over again.

  He waited out the protests that the plane crash was mere coincidence. The librarian didn’t say a word, he noticed. She just waited, absorbing and processing. The woman was damned dangerous. No one had ever exposed his secrets as she had, and she had done it with the precision and thoroughness of a surgeon excising a tumor.

  He resented the interference but admired her ability. “After my parents died, I was sent to my maternal aunt in Boston. I took the canvas out of the frame and rolled it up to fit it in my suitcase. At least Nan was more in touch with her roots than her sister. She had a small gift for healing, nothing dramatic, but she acknowledged my psychometry and encouraged it. I left the painting rolled up because the memories of my parents’ pride in me were too fresh and too painful.”

  Mariah got up and began slicing cheese, her knife hitting the cutting board a little too forcefully. She had bad memories in her past as well, Aaron knew.

  The librarian with her secrets was the enigma here. Maybe Keegan knew them.

  “My parents left some insurance and a small trust fund, enough to help Nan raise me on her nurse’s salary. Mostly, I got by on scholarships, but I had no real vocation. Psychometry is a hard talent to sell. I met Keegan in Oxford, and he was the one who mentioned the Malcolm library and suggested I see if it would give me any ideas.”

  “Psychometry is a rare gift even among Malcolms,” Hannah said. “It’s often painful, if you don’t learn to control it. You may be descended from Felicity and Ewen Ives. She had to wear gloves all the time because she was so sensitive to the pain on objects.”

  “The journals helped me learn control,” Aaron admitted. “I’ve kept my own journal since then. And I began to appreciate the history I discovered in museums. When I returned to Boston, I volunteered at the museum and began working in an antique store, learning more about American history and how it related to my British one.”

  “And you kept the painting rolled up?” Mariah asked.

  “Eventually, I almost forgot about it. I’d stored it in Nan’s attic when I left for Oxford. When I opened my first store specializing in American antiques, Nan reminded me of it. Natalie and I had been married less than a year. We were decorating an apartment on a meager budget, so Natalie happily took the painting and had it framed and hung over our mantel as a gift to me.”

  Aaron knew the rest of his story rested on his peculiar gift and not reality as others understood it. He glared at Hannah, who serenely crossed her hands and waited. Her innocent disguise didn’t deceive him. The fool woman would climb into the wardrobe and take the damned thing out if he didn’t make this convincing.

  “I spent a lot of time traveling. Natalie was a writer who worked from home and occasionally did research for me. She’s the one who identified the Eversham and the history of Hillvale, to what extent it’s available. The Spaniards and Ohlone portrayed in the painting didn’t leave much in the way of written records. She took the painting to a western historian and to an art expert. She learned its value but not much else. At the time, western art was hot, and she got a really good offer for it, money we could use.”

  Natalie had been brilliant and loving, and she hadn’t deserved to be saddled with an unfeeling cad like him. Her loss was still an ache in Aaron’s heart that would never heal. Good people shouldn’t die young. The world needed their goodness more than it needed his cynicism. He didn’t think he could explain the beauty of Natalie’s soul.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Hannah said suddenly. “Maybe we could just look at what you have and learn what we need from it.”

  Aaron wanted to let relief roll over him and cave to her suggestion. Instead, he glared. “I’m telling this tale once and once only. Eversham was a real artist, a Lucy with weird abilities. I went to prison for selling a forgery. What do you think is in that wardrobe?”

  “I think your wife let a museum copyist reproduce the painting so she could sell the original,” Hannah promptly replied. “Did the copyist die too?”

  “He did.” Aaron sank deeper into
his chair. “Fell off a ladder and broke his neck shortly after he handed both oils back to Natalie. She fretted over the incident, but by that time, we had even more reason to need the money. She had stage three breast cancer and the cost of treatment would break us.”

  “So she sold the painting for a nice sum, hung the fake on your wall, and then died anyway?”

  Hannah’s soft query eased him past the horror of memories of Natalie curled up and shivering from treatments, her beautiful hair falling out, her chest scarred—and then sucker punched with learning the cancer still grew elsewhere.

  Aaron shut out the pain and nodded. “At the time, her illness had knocked me to my knees. I didn’t care how we were paying for the treatment. I didn’t start putting two and two together until the doctors told me the treatments weren’t working. When Natalie knew she was dying, she confessed she’d sold my painting and hung the copy. That’s when I learned of the death of the copyist. I was almost glad the damned original was out of our house, but once Natalie died, I was compelled to check on the purchaser. He’d died of a heart attack shortly after hanging the painting in his collection.”

  “So you believe contact with the painting caused their deaths?” This time, it was Keegan speaking, his formidable brow drawn into a frown. “So why haven’t you died?”

  “It apparently has a use for me.” Aaron knew he sounded gruff, but he’d been over this ground in his head too many times. “Natalie was ill, but we don’t know if it started before or after hanging the painting or if she might have recovered had the painting not been involved. I can’t bring her back with speculation.”

  “So why did you go to jail?” Hannah asked, pushing. “She didn’t sell a fake.”