Moonstone Shadows

by Patricia Rice

  She hadn’t meant to throw the Eversham out there.

  “The Eversham oil was always meant to be mine,” Cass said serenely. “It’s a dangerous artifact. The artist had nightmares while he was here and was much happier after he left. The painting was meant to be a warning.”

  Sam and Mariah sipped their drinks and left the ground open for Hannah.

  The wily old woman had apparently stolen the painting as soon as word got around that Aaron had it. Hannah had known Cass was dangerously gifted. She pushed the swing with her toe, warding off the force of Cass’s personality. The painting no longer concerned her now that she’d seen the subject. The books did. “It’s not a warning if it’s hidden, by you or by Aaron. It is a slice of Hillvale history—Aaron confirmed that when he touched the crystals from the jewel casket depicted in that painting. Your journals could tell us more.”

  “You may peruse the journals, if you wish,” Cass agreed with a regal nod. “I do not want them hauled off and lost to a musty old fortress in Scotland. I have a temperature-controlled vault suitable for our American library.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said with genuine gratitude and relief. She’d been afraid her courage would fail her—but she’d succeeded in bearding the lioness in her den! “They ought to be accessible to everyone. The scanner needed to digitalize the journals is expensive. Perhaps a university would be good enough to allow me to use theirs.” Before she returned to Scotland went unsaid, because sadly, she knew she had to leave. She couldn’t torture Aaron much longer.

  “If we can’t have our own librarian, then digital scanning is an alternative I had not considered. I’ll make a few calls. I still have connections. I’d advise only taking out one volume at a time. There aren’t many, but they’re fragile.” Cass placed her hand on a leather-bound book half-hidden by her skirt. “This one belongs to my several-times-great grandmother.”

  Success! Reverently, Hannah accepted the aging journal, praying the secret of the moonstone lay within.

  “There are so many words in my brain that’s it good to have my hands on them too. They become more concrete that way.” Holding the book, she absorbed as much knowledge as she could from just cradling it in her palms. She’d never found her ability to assimilate Keegan’s magical library odd. It had been there even when she was an infant, words that came from nowhere until she understood her heritage.

  She sat silently ingesting the writing, flipping pages, while Sam and Mariah discussed their plans for the fumigation festivities and reenactment. Hannah’s gift couldn’t pick up the emotion of the written words, just the neat pen-and-ink of a woman with a scientific bent. When she reached the part about the moonstone, she halted to read more carefully.

  She hadn’t realized conversation had died down until she finished reading. She looked up and blinked to return to the real world.

  Guessing they were waiting on her, Hannah explained, “The Victorian writer says family legend relates that the moonstone has worked in conjunction with the other stones, but she has no understanding of how. She had hoped to use it to rid the ranch of spirits, without success.”

  “Which is why they ended up moving into town and starting a dry goods store to supply the miners and ranchers,” Cass said matter-of-factly. “No one knows how to properly use the crystals.”

  “It should be in some journal somewhere,” Hannah said in frustration.

  “Your medieval nun is all we have,” Mariah said. “I’ve run every search through every journal that’s been uploaded and called for more, but fear of witchcraft drove all knowledge underground.”

  “If we had the moonstone, Aaron might be able to learn from it.” Pushing a swing was no longer enough. Hannah needed to do something. She paced the porch—just the way Aaron did when he got restless. She was practically inside his skin now. “Maybe there’s something in the Eversham. . .”

  “No, dear, you’ve already learned as much from the painting as you can. The lamassu will tell you the rest. It’s the moonstone you need. I don’t believe Carmel would have sold it. It was almost worthless in terms of money, but priceless in terms of power. She simply didn’t know how to wield it.”

  “But if it wasn’t in her safe, then she’d taken it out for a reason. We just don’t know how long ago.” Mariah expressed the same frustration as Hannah, causing her infant to twitch and flail a tiny hand.

  “You are welcome to stay and see the other books, but they’re not as informative in terms of crystals. My mother’s family became very traditional and didn’t explore their gifts, although they kept their thoughts in their journals. They’re not very enlightening,” Cass added dryly.

  “Thank you.” Hannah returned the book to Cass. “I’ll come back. Every little bit of knowledge is useful in some way. But it’s the moonstone and finding a killer that’s on my mind at the moment.”

  And hoping the stone really could heal was right up there with finding a killer, but even she knew that was like wishing on a star.

  “Telling Aaron that everyone must die someday isn’t helpful,” Cass said sympathetically, standing to see them off.

  Despite Cass’s out-of-the-blue response, Hannah understood. And it bloody well wasn’t helpful at all, especially if Cass thought Hannah was actually going to die.

  “Francois hid his stash in the walls,” Aaron reported that evening, when he finally had Hannah to himself again. “He hid everything he ever stole somewhere in that room, under the carpet, in the ceiling. No wonder the place reeked.”

  “Anything that someone might have killed him for?” she asked, rightfully dubious.

  “The blackmail photos alone would justify that, especially if Francois suddenly demanded more. Walker is investigating the men in the photos to see if any of them were at the lodge that weekend. Carmel had wealthy lovers, so any of them could have hired killers.” He set out the cartons he’d bought at Dinah’s restaurant.

  Hannah emptied them into bowls to nuke them. “And they could have taken the moonstone with them,” she said sadly.

  “You aren’t still thinking the wretched stone will cure you?” he asked incredulously. “I have money. I can pay to have your head examined by the best physicians in the world.”

  She shot him a look he couldn’t interpret. “And I told you I refuse to become a vegetable. But the moonstone might help cure Hillvale of whatever evil lurks in the soil.”

  Despair whirled through him at her denial. He would have to harden his heart again to prevent sinking into that quagmire, and he didn’t know if he could do it. “I prefer to believe that once we clean out the rotten core, Hillvale will heal again.”

  Aaron watched uneasily as Hannah drifted around his kitchen, gathering utensils as if she were a natural extension of himself. He knew he was building up to disaster and couldn’t seem to prevent it. “Francois never allowed anyone in his room except the maids. There was a leak in his roof running down between the walls. The place smelled because the whole back wall is covered in mold. They had to call in a mold mitigation company. Roper is beside himself.”

  She flashed him an absent-minded smile. “So no one is really lying when we have a fumigation festival tomorrow. They’ll just be fumigating mold and not bugs.”

  Unable to help himself, Aaron wrapped his arms around her waist and held her close before she flitted away. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to feel. . .

  She was practically vibrating with worry—not a good sign. He should back off, but he didn’t want to. Feeling again felt right. He steeled himself against the inevitable pain. “It’s entertaining to think we might cure all Hillvale with a stone, but that’s what modern medicine is for. We have to do some things ourselves.”

  She relaxed against him for a brief moment and then shoved away. “You’re not guardian of the world, and money can’t fix everything. What are the Kennedys doing with their mother’s rocks?”

  Rebuffed, Aaron closed up again—where he was admittedly more comfortable. He’d done
remarkably well without people all these years. He needed to consider he might be hurting her worse and keep his hands off. How well would that work when she lit his kitchen with an incandescence that sucked him in like an illuminated manuscript?

  He poured wine and let her busy herself with putting dinner on the table. “Keegan is still examining the casket. Unless he finds something valuable or harmful, the Kennedys have agreed to let Mariah play her games with the crystals and Daisy’s lamassu. Her ghostcatchers have worked well these past years to stop the poltergeists. She’s hoping the raw crystals can absorb the negative energy afflicting the lodge. It’s not as if we can bulldoze the field and retrieve the original statues, even if we knew they worked.”

  She nodded and took a seat in the chair he held out for her. “Okay. I think I’m just a little overwhelmed. I should get out of the library more often. I’d really hoped Cass would be more helpful.”

  “You have a right to be overwhelmed. We’ve thrown a lot at you in the week since you arrived. It’s. . .” He reached for a bowl and stopped in mid-sentence, before he said anything ridiculous, like It’s as if you’re a fresh breeze sent to clear out the rot. Or worse. The image of the saintly nun and the courageous knight was now engraved in his brain.

  She glanced at him quizzically, waiting for him to finish. When he didn’t, she acknowledged his reticence and raised it a notch higher. “We didn’t touch the medieval casket together. Shouldn’t we try that? It contained the moonstone at some point. There could be knowledge there.”

  “Faex, no,” he said without giving it a second thought. “You nearly passed out examining a single pebble. My brain would probably explode going through five centuries of actual people instead of geological events. I touched the casket enough earlier to assume there’s nothing new we can take from it.”

  “But I didn’t touch it with you,” she argued. “Maybe you’ll see what you need to see instantly. We can’t know how deep the knowledge is buried.”

  There it was—the crisis of decision he’d been trying to avoid. Aaron shook his head. “No, we’re not doing that anymore. I saw how weak you got that last time. Psychometry drains you—that’s probably the reason you fainted when you touched me and the Eversham. No more enhancing.”

  His angel glared at him. “I’m an adult. I get to make my own choices. If this is the way I wish to spend what’s left of my life, that should be my decision.”

  He flung down his fork and glared back. “I refuse to be the instrument by which you kill yourself. I’ll leave Hillvale before I allow that to happen.”

  “Fine.” She flung down her napkin. “Be the damned knight and soldier and put saving the world before saving yourself. I’ll leave. I want to go back to my room now.”

  “I don’t need you to save me from myself,” Aaron retorted, rising with her.

  But she was painfully right about one thing—they had to be separated so neither of them would be tempted to use her enhancing abilities again. Her brilliant mind should be safer that way—and he’d learned to survive with a broken heart. He’d simply have to go back to living a half-life again.

  Twenty-eight

  Feeling like crap after a lonely night of tossing and turning in her lonely bed, attempting to rework her argument with Aaron, Hannah tried to find interest in the town’s re-enactment of Carmel’s murder. Deciding she had to leave after it was over wasn’t making life any easier. She’d spent most of the day in her room, scouring a library she knew by heart, looking for information on enhancing psychometry, with little success. Old texts didn’t cover modern science.

  “Don’t you feel a little foolish doing this?” Hannah whispered to Keegan as they set small stone statuettes around the perimeter of the lodge.

  Mariah and her friends had devised a means of wiring the Spanish soldier’s stones to Daisy’s small lamassu. The stacks of three rocks with glittering crystal eyes now had wired arms bearing a pebbly burden, rather like a basket. Having no ability to sense vibrations or energy on her own, Hannah felt as if she were decorating with particularly eccentric garden gnomes.

  Aaron had distanced himself all day, rightfully so. He didn’t need another dying wife, or lover, on his hands. And she refused to put him—or herself—through that pain.

  She’d finally decided that she needed to return where she belonged—to Keegan’s library.

  “The rocks are nae normal, lass,” Keegan said, humoring her with dialect. “There’s no harm in testing.”

  “I wish I believed we’d trap a killer this way, but I think he’s long gone. Or maybe the sheriff is right and Francois did it, then keeled over from exertion.”

  “Except Francois did not try to burn Aaron out,” Keegan reminded her.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. What if someone wanted to burn the Eversham? Or some other evidence in there? Although that doesn’t explain the pile of rocks.” She tucked a statuette under a rose bush.

  “We just keep trying until we learn more,” Keegan said patiently. “Nothing is ever written in black and white except your books.”

  Maybe that was her problem. She expected life to be as clear and complete as a story in a book. But it wasn’t. Life was messy and unfinished, and it was up to her to make her own story happen. As a dedicated observer, she didn’t have much experience at making anything happen.

  Walker and Aaron, on the other hand, had spent hours planning this experiment. The plans were so detailed that they almost didn’t have enough people to oversee the reenactment, plus entertain the guests in town. The lodge was large and sprawling, and they couldn’t possibly watch everyone, so Walker had his security firm install cameras from his own funds to catch every angle that observers couldn’t. She didn’t know what they hoped to see.

  Once Daisy’s lamassu were distributed, Hannah joined the others who had been inside on the night Carmel died. People who hadn’t been there were assigned as observers or left in town to run the festival.

  Hannah hadn’t known Aaron that fateful night. It seemed weird that they’d been strangers when she was half convinced they’d known each other for eternity—unhappily, apparently.

  Looking his sexy, professorial best, Aaron was wearing his tan, tailored blazer over a black silk polo and tight black jeans as he choreographed the milling crowd. Her foolish heart longed for him to turn and smile at her just one more time, but he deliberately kept his back to her.

  “We’re starting from the moment we heard Carmel raise her voice,” he told the crowd. “You’ve each told Walker where you were at that moment. If you’ll all find that place, we’ll have someone verify your position in a few minutes. You’re all on candid camera, so don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  That produced a few nervous titters as everyone scattered.

  “We were drinking,” Monty Kennedy called as he and Kurt headed for the lounge. “Should we be faithful to history?”

  “Let’s not,” Walker said dryly. “Last time, someone died.”

  Hannah headed down the hall to the room she’d been assigned that night, trying to remember precisely at what point she’d noticed the loud argument.

  Amber and Josh had been in the swimming pool, she remembered. She was tempted to sneak down that corridor to see how faithful the couple was being to the moment. With the heavy door closed and the distance, they’d said they hadn’t heard Carmel’s screams.

  Hannah waved at one of the newly installed cameras as she reached the point where she thought she belonged. It was earlier in the evening than the night of the murder, but this area had no windows. The lighting left a bit to be desired, she noted nervously.

  If the killer was a local and not a guest, they were re-enacting this scene with a murderer in their midst.

  The recording of Val emulating Carmel’s shouts of anger reverberated down the hall. It wasn’t as frightening as the reality had been, but Hannah still hesitated as she had that night. The one-sided argument had been loud and ugly and probably not sane. Whoever Carmel
had been yelling at hadn’t been audible.

  Hannah slowly walked down the hall as she had that night, until the shouts became screams that abruptly halted. She had no idea if the timing was correct, but she thought she was in the approximate position she’d been then.

  She hesitated as she had at the time, then turned in the ominous silence and fled back to the safety of the well-lit lobby.

  She passed the long corridor leading to the swimming pool. This time, she glanced down it to see if anyone else was there. No one.

  She remembered there had been running footsteps. She didn’t hear those this time. That put her off kilter a little. She’d been running from the footsteps as much as the frightening lack of screams.

  Hurrying, she ran into the lobby. There was the desk clerk, looking surprised at her abrupt entrance. He’d said he hadn’t heard the argument. She gabbled about the screams, not making much sense. The clerk called for security. There had been inn guests wandering in from the restaurant, she remembered, but there was no one emerging from that direction now.

  Roper popped out of his office, signaled by the clerk. Uniformed security raced in through the front door and from the restaurant. At the clerk’s direction, they hurried down the hall Hannah had just traversed. Roper followed them. Kurt came in from the direction of the bar. She hadn’t known him then, but she’d assumed him to be someone important. As she had that night, she turned to follow the others—

  That’s when she realized it wasn’t just the missing sound of running feet that was off.

  Hannah halted to glance from the lobby down the hall that contained the door Roper had just used. If that was his office on the right—he hadn’t emerged from his office that night, as he’d said. She hadn’t known the layout of the lodge at the time, but she could swear he’d come from further down the hall, on the left. She could see now that was where the guest business office was, not Roper’s private one.

  There was no other door except for that computer room on the left side. Abandoning the reenactment, she tested the door, but as with most hotel guest offices, it was locked to anyone without a room key. She held her hand to the window to look in. In the back was a door labeled Storage.