Moonstone Shadows

by Patricia Rice

  “Sure, why not?” Teddy came over with her hand shovel to dig around it.

  “Because it takes water to round a rock. Keegan said the ocean once flowed through the canyon, which is why they found round rocks there. If this is debris from the earthquake, shouldn’t it be chipped shards? Or flat slabs? I want to take back something that will force Keegan to come out and help us.” Hannah stood and jabbed her shovel in again.

  “Wait, wait,” Teddy said excitedly. “Archeological methods, please. I sense. . . something similar to crystal. It’s not deep. Let’s do the surface.”

  They were sweaty and filthy and digging excitedly in a shallow trough by the time Kurt and Aaron found them.

  Sixteen

  Aaron held his staff over the hole the women were digging, cursed at the strong vibrations, and shoved the wood into Kurt’s manicured hands. Without thinking, he crouched down to pry loose the dirt remaining around the set of stones already uncovered.

  The instant he brushed the stone Hannah was touching, he disconnected.

  “If setting the stones brings peace, let them cover the whole cursed graveyard.” The sour thought curdled his stomach in the same way the bloody battlefield had.

  The woman inhabiting his head replied by whispering prayers to the ill and slaughtered, both soldiers and natives alike. He hated when she did that, but he would have hated having her here even worse. The land was a killing field.

  In the distance, smoke boiled up from the remains of the mission.

  “Add the crystals,” she commanded. “They will absorb the evil that has been done here so later generations will not be affected.”

  She was gone from this life, but not gone from his heart—or his head. In this, he would heed the voice of the angel and not the hardened doubt of his battered soul.

  He crouched to take crystals from the trunk for the shaman to add to the rock guardians he was creating. Touching the shiny rock. . .

  Aaron jerked backed as if burned.

  Beside him, Hannah looked pale as death. She braced herself with one hand on the ground. He’d been dreaming in Spanish? Had Hannah heard what he heard? She looked shell-shocked enough to have seen something.

  “You two okay?” Kurt asked with concern. “Maybe it’s time to go back and get some lunch. We don’t want you suffering heatstroke. You’re looking dehydrated.”

  Aaron had no reason to be dehydrated, but Hannah’s pale skin was showing signs of sunburn. He handed his bottle of water to her, and she swigged gratefully. “You’ve uncovered a lamassu,” he said. He waited for her to confirm it.

  She nodded. “That vision was really weird. I wasn’t even there.” She glanced into the hole. “This just looks like a pile of rocks, nothing remotely like Daisy’s guardians. Does anything look like a crystal?”

  So she’d not only heard the voice, but understood. Intrigued despite himself, he worried about Hannah and how any of this affected the knot in her brain.

  Teddy sat back on her heels. “Explanation, please? You two go all weird, and now you’re hunting crystals?” She drank from the bottle Kurt handed her.

  “I apparently enhance. . .” Hannah glanced at him. “. . .or aggravate, Aaron’s psychometry. Apparently I’m too weak to hold up for long though.”

  Without explaining how she’d been inside his head, Aaron scraped at the rounded stack of rocks they’d uncovered. “I think the natives buried stone guardians, maybe lamassu like Daisy’s, only larger. And the Spanish soldier used crystals from his box to absorb evil. This was in mission days. And the reason a mission was never established here was because the natives fought back rather than be enslaved. Or that’s the impression I’m getting. A lot of people died of illness, blood was shed, Spanish and native, and the mission was burning while they raised these stones on top of the dead. Or their ancestors. They could have been adding to an ancient burial ground or battlefield. It’s not clear.”

  “Keegan told me Mariah’s story about Daisy.” Hannah sat back, her expression sad as she surveyed the rocky field. “He said when Daisy time-walked, she talked about native women waiting for warriors who never came home. We could be digging in a burial ground.”

  “We need to find that crystal,” Teddy insisted, ignoring history for their current dilemma. “Crystals that absorb evil are damned scary. Keegan should be here.”

  “There could be a whole field of lamassu here,” Hannah warned.

  “Full of crystals absorbing evil?” Kurt sounded dubious. “Teddy, do you sense any crystals?”

  “I sense wrong vibrations.” Teddy ran her hand over the round rocks. “Plus the absence of crystal? That doesn’t even make sense to me.”

  “Sit back,” Aaron ordered Hannah, who intelligently scooted away. The original statue had evidently toppled, possibly during the earthquake. The ones in his vision had been standing, but this was mostly flat. He couldn’t tell front from back.

  He ran his hands over the uncovered granite, seeking anything unusual. The images his other sense picked up were ancient and fading. Hannah’s ability to enhance his vision was disturbing. Why had he seen the soldier and not the shaman who had placed the stones?

  There, the indentation on the smallest stone. The soldier had touched it there, saying a prayer, although he apparently believed his angel more than the power of words. Aaron scraped off more dirt. “The stones were evidently bound with vines, the way Daisy used to bind them with wire. She used to put crystals on the top stone for eyes. Here’s where they were secured.” He pointed out the two shallow indentations—now lacking crystals.

  “Someone took them?” Hannah asked, worry in her voice.

  Aaron gauged the stone figure as roughly three feet in height, had it been standing. Daisy’s statues were measured in mere inches. Perhaps her time-walking had shown her these local guardians? “Floods over the years, as well as the earthquake, may have toppled the statues. Running water could have buried and unburied the stones dozens of times over the centuries.”

  “Leaving the crystals uncovered for scavengers to find,” Teddy finished for him. “But I can still sense the power of those crystals, even in their absence. Those weren’t any ordinary stones.” She traced her fingers over the empty holes.

  “Raw crystals?” Hannah asked hesitantly. “Like sparkly quartz rocks, not gems?”

  “Like the ones Keegan is digging out of his cave or the ones in the medieval painting, yes,” Aaron said.

  “Do we know how many of these statues might be buried here?” Kurt asked. “And why Francois was digging around?”

  Aaron looked at Hannah. She shrugged. There had been nothing in their shared vision except the one statue the shaman worked on. The ceremony could have gone on for days. There could have been other statues not visible in their vision. Or they could have dreamed the whole thing.

  He grimaced and shook his head. “No notion.” He got up to examine the hole Teddy had been enlarging, the one Francois had been working on. Holding his hand over the dirt, he opened his extra sense. “I’m picking up desperation and seeing rocks. I might get more if I had his shovel.”

  “May I?” Hannah asked, quietly crouching beside him and holding out her hand. “Francois isn’t the same deal as the paintings. And I haven’t fainted recently. Maybe I’m becoming accustomed to your ability.”

  Aaron’s first instinct was to reject her offer. But logically, it made sense. Francois’s memories were too recent to cause time-walking. And if Hannah was right, what they did together wasn’t time travel, but enhanced psychometry. He didn’t want to hope or get excited about this expansion of his ability. It was still dangerous on too many levels.

  Deliberately allowing Hannah inside his head. . . was a step well beyond anything he was prepared to accept. But the urgency of the situation caused for desperate measures. If they had the ability to trace guardian rocks. . .

  “Sit down so you won’t fall,” he instructed. “Brace yourself. Shut out your own thoughts and center your mind on the wi
nd or the hard ground or anything neutral.”

  She sat cross-legged next to him, closed her eyes, and turned her palms upward.

  Aaron placed his left hand on the dirt Francois had been digging, then lay his right palm across Hannah’s.

  Visions crumbled like the dirt he touched. The shovel hitting rock. Tearing excitedly at the hole with his hands. Disgust at uncovering the bone. An image of Carmel’s box and the stones inside. Then pain, great pain.

  Aaron yanked his hand back.

  Hannah was staring at her own hand in incredulity.

  “Not liking this,” he muttered, shoving upright.

  Kurt and Teddy waited expectantly. He shook his head at them. He wanted to hold out his hand to help Hannah up but figured that was a really bad idea. She stood and dusted herself off.

  “Francois was most likely delusional,” he said. “I get the impression that someone had told him that Carmel found her rocks here, and he meant to find his own.”

  Aaron bit his tongue and waited for Hannah to spill the rest. She said nothing. Had she felt what he had? She merely picked up her water bottle and guzzled—a portrait of non-engagement.

  The impression of Lance, Carmel’s brother—and Kurt’s uncle—had been strong in Francois’s muddled mind as he dug.

  To Aaron’s relief, they all agreed it was time for lunch. Aaron shouldered Hannah’s heavy pack, and without looking at the face of an angel, led the way back to town.

  Hannah hadn’t recognized the lanky, pony-tailed man in Aaron’s vision of Francois’s thoughts. Her habit of noninvolvement won out when Aaron didn’t mention him either. She was still processing her frightening ability to aid Aaron’s psychometry.

  She had a gift besides lugging a library inside her head? Was it her task to communicate what Aaron saw or was she only there to help? What else might she do—if this wasn’t really time travel?

  She was beginning to realize the limitations of her library—every gift was individual and unpredictable, molded by DNA and the environment, in the same manner that shaped their bodies and other talents.

  Could she help Keegan or Teddy with their crystals? Not that she knew anything about crystal energy or how it worked. Maybe she could enhance Amber’s psychic readings? Hannah had difficulty imagining hiding under the table, touching Amber’s toes while she read tarot cards for her customers—but she ought to try.

  Kurt spoke as they reached town. “I need to pick up Uncle Lance and take him to the city. The lawyer is reading Mom’s will, and she apparently did something right for him for a change.”

  Aaron squeezed Hannah’s arm—briefly. Not long enough to get dizzy but enough to know she shouldn’t speak. Lance? Was that the man she’d seen in his vision?

  Teddy returned to her jewelry shop. That left Hannah to pick up something at the café or the grocery—alone.

  “We need to talk.” Aaron didn’t walk off as expected.

  “I need to shower,” she countered in self-defense. This seeing inside the heads of others was a little too intimate and left her vaguely queasy—and understanding why gifted people questioned their abilities or abandoned them entirely. With great gifts came great responsibility—and utter confusion.

  Aaron’s responsibility scared her half to death.

  “I’ll pick up lunch at the café.” As if she’d agreed to share it with him, he strode off and left her to enter the antique shop alone.

  Already shaken, she almost backed out as soon as she opened the door, fearing she’d entered another time zone.

  Sunlight caught on the sparkle of water and the pleasant bubble of a fountain that hadn’t been there earlier. A thick, zebra-striped rug welcomed her feet to trod on it. A rainbow of prisms beckoned the eye to the right, where the now-empty shop window spilled more light.

  She missed the medieval cuirass, but the prisms were enchanting.

  Soft light glowed in every corner of the high-ceilinged shop from fixtures that had once sat empty.

  The magic fairy dispelling the gloom sat on a stepladder, dusting a fiery red porcelain teapot and humming. Wan Hai didn’t even look over at the opening door. Hannah could have been a thief and robbed the place blind for all the feng shui expert would notice.

  She wanted to see Aaron’s face when he entered his cave, but she really needed that shower too. Greeting Wan Hai, who just vaguely waved, Hannah hastened up the stairs.

  She showered, donned a denim dress that hit just above her knees—probably her sexiest outfit—and was sitting on Aaron’s desk, facing the door, drinking a refreshing glass of iced tea by the time he returned.

  She waited expectantly. He halted just inside as she had done. Hands full with bags redolent of Fee’s cooking, he glanced down at the rug and over at the window, just as she had. His brow drew down in a glower. He studied the gleaming light fixtures, then glanced over at Hannah. His gaze instantly dropped to her swinging legs, then deliberately swerved back to scowl at the rest of her.

  She rather liked the interest, and the scowl put her in a better humor. She was tired of His Arrogance ignoring her.

  He stalked toward his desk. “Hai, get down from there and eat some lunch.”

  “In one moment,” Hai said contentedly. “I am to meet Pasquale at one.”

  “Hai, didn’t I hear you and Pasquale were at the lodge when Carmel died?” Hannah asked, watching Aaron squirm with impatience. “Who else did you see that night?”

  Wan Hai frowned down at her. “Many people. We had dinner with the dog doctor and Nurse Brenda. Mr. Roper gave us discount. Mr. Aaron was there with the Kennedys. Everyone there.”

  “Even I was there,” Hannah said with a shrug. “Way too many people.”

  Enjoying Omniscient Man’s discomfort a little too much, she leaned forward to take one of his sacks. “Tell her the shop looks fabulous,” she whispered.

  His dark eyebrows raised. He frowned at the brightly lit shop. Then with visible effort, he said, “Wan Hai, you’ve done a great job in here, thank you. I feel better already.”

  The feng shui master beamed and returned to polishing.

  He rolled his eyes and hissed, “Satisfied?”

  Hannah grinned and hopped off the desk. “I’ll wager you didn’t have a single sale all morning.” She took the other bag from him and carried both to the back while he checked the register.

  “It’s a good thing I don’t have to live off shop sales,” he muttered a moment later, joining her and helping to unpack the bags.

  “She’s a fabulous housekeeper.” Hannah retrieved a cold beer from his small refrigerator and handed it to him. “And if you had a real sales person, you might make a living. People need jobs.”

  “No one else knows what I do about my inventory. Nor would they want to.” He took cartons and napkins out of the bags. “Utensils in the third drawer down.”

  Okay, from the way he said that, she probably didn’t want to know either. She regarded what appeared to be a filing cabinet of shallow drawers, selected the third, and revealed a mismatched collection of real silverware. It was her turn to roll her eyes.

  She was comfortable like this, rummaging through old drawers, doling out meals, conversing casually.

  She was distinctly uncomfortable—make that terrified—of crawling around in other people’s heads. Especially Aaron’s. How did she communicate that?

  “I am a librarian,” she announced in the only way she knew how, directly.

  “Yeah, like I’m an antiques dealer.” Aaron swigged his beer and propped his hip against a secretary desk, looking sexier than 007. “You just keep telling yourself that, kid, leave the hard work to the rest of us.”

  She flung a napkin at him. It fluttered to the floor. She wanted to be able to levitate it back to the counter, make it disappear into another dimension, something useful, like in the journals. She picked up the trash and debated walking out, but she was hungry, and Fee’s food shouldn’t be wasted.

  And maybe just a little of her fear was of Aar
on’s attractiveness—not just physical, although that was a given. But if being inside his head told her anything at all, the man really did believe he stood between Hillvale and evil. How did one deal with that kind of magical thinking?

  Not well, if the painting visions were to be believed. Knights and soldiers made bad domestic companions.

  “Go ahead,” he taunted. “Whine that you don’t like fainting, that you don’t know anything, that you might die any minute. Let it all out.”

  “You really are the most obnoxious toad on the face of the earth.” She gnawed her way through the delicious lamb-stuffed pita bread. Apparently Fee thought she needed spice and protein today.

  “And I like it that way. If I’m supposed to find a killer, it’s probably best if I’m not a charming salesman.” He bit into his steak sandwich, after peeling off the tomatoes.

  Damn, but he had a way of cutting to the chase. “You don’t think that gray-haired man is the killer, do you? Did it feel as if Francois was afraid of him?”

  “That gray-haired old man is Lance Brooks, Carmel’s brother, the one Kurt was taking to the lawyer’s office because she left him something in the will.” Aaron swigged his beer, looking thoughtful. “Speculation will get us nowhere. Francois was a disgusting excuse for a human being, a sniveling worm lost without Carmel to protect him. He could have been afraid Lance would heave him out. I don’t want to imagine how his mind worked.”

  “What did you find in Francois’s room?” Reluctantly dragged back into the mystery, Hannah listened as Aaron explained, not in detail, what they’d uncovered.

  “So Lance might have had motive for killing the worm,” Hannah concluded thoughtfully. “And I can’t say I’d blame him a lot. But I gather Carmel was not alone in those photos and Francois could have blackmailed half the state’s married male population of a certain age.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it. Did Francois panic after Carmel died and increase his blackmail demands? Or did he know something about Carmel’s killer that made him dangerous? And how does any of this tie into the rocks we found in her closet and that Francois apparently wanted to dig up?” Finishing his sandwich, Aaron crossed his arms and waited.