Topaz Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  Holding onto the car, her landlord groped his way to the passenger side and let himself in. “Why the van, Miss Baker? It doesn’t look like your sort of vehicle.”

  Because it hid the kids, offered a place to sleep so they didn’t have to check into hotels. Because she bought it for cash in a transaction even cops couldn’t trace. Not that this uptight grunt needed to know that.

  She leaned over to check on the kids in the back. Even Mia had fallen asleep. Teddy removed the book from her little chest and tucked it into a backpack. Only then did she reply. “Sentimental reasons, Mr. Kennedy. My parents owned one. And please call me Teddy.” She rather liked that he assumed a rolling wreck wasn’t her style.

  “Then call me Kurt. I can’t promise those stairs will be fixed or that the utilities will work by tomorrow. Let me have my secretary look for an apartment, or Xavier can work out the details for one of the empty storefronts.” He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.

  “We’ll camp in the house, if necessary, Kurt. It’s mine, and I mean to turn it into a destination that will bring tourists flocking.” Teddy was pretty sure she’d said that just to antagonize.

  It worked. He groaned.

  Samantha

  June 25: late afternoon

  * * *

  Samantha Moon checked that Prince Hairy’s water bowl and food were filled. The lazy creature wagged his tail in appreciation but didn’t move from the late afternoon shade in the fenced backyard. She scratched his head, then reluctantly rejoined the others inside the house.

  As instructed, she held a feather duster while her Aunt Cass and the other Lucys chanted and lit their bundles of sage and sweet grass at a candle on the kitchen counter. As they swept the room, she wafted the smoke toward the east first, then counterclockwise.

  She supposed the nickname for the Lucent Ladies—the Victorian spiritual society that had spawned Hillvale—was a better name than witch. But her scientific education had a hard time buying smoke as a defense against a force strong enough to shove a man downstairs.

  “I still think we need an engineer to determine if the house’s foundation hasn’t shifted,” she murmured to Aaron Townsend, who watched but didn’t participate. He looked enough like the university professors she was used to that she felt safe in offering her non-Lucy opinion.

  The antique dealer shrugged his broad shoulders and ran his palm over the kitchen walls and counter. The Lucys claimed he practiced psychometry—feeling emotions or events on objects. He wasn’t very forthcoming on what he found.

  “This is an old building, so it wouldn’t hurt,” he agreed. “Who knows what slippage may have occurred over the years?”

  They’d smudged the shop area earlier. Sam almost had the routine down. She continued waving her feathers in the proper direction, concentrating on corners. She would feel ridiculous except the scent did clean the musty air, and she could knock out a few spiderwebs while she was at it.

  Mariah climbed up on a stepstool to replace the tattered ghostcatchers in the corners with new ones. The beads and crystals shimmered and shook in the candlelight.

  “There may even have been minor quakes,” Mariah suggested, tuning into their discussion.

  Sam never quite knew how much of Lucy superstition Mariah believed, but she assumed it was like the differences in religion. Mariah believed her intricate nets caught ghosts. The Lucys thought smudging would chase them away. Earthquakes might fit into both belief systems.

  Dousing her burning bundle in a bucket of sand, Sam’s Aunt Cass shook her head. “No earthquakes in the last forty years that I’m aware of.” She started up the staircase toward the building’s living quarters, carrying the sand.

  Sam’s aunt was built much as she was—tall, slender, with thin bones. Except Cass was nearly seventy and would break into a dozen pieces if a ghost shoved her. Or the earth slipped.

  Aaron apparently had the same thought. He stationed his much more muscular frame at the bottom of the stairs to catch Cass if she fell. Younger and leaner than the antique dealer, Harvey, the musician, emerged from the front room to push past Aaron and take Cass’s back. Cass might be on the weird side of rational, but she commanded respect for her knowledge of Hillvale and its eccentricities.

  Everyone carried the carved walking sticks Harvey had created. The wood in Sam’s stick vibrated nervously. Or she did. She hadn’t decided if ideomotion or the supernatural or just weird energy caused the odd dowsing rods to activate. She anxiously watched her aunt and Harvey as they climbed the narrow steps.

  “She’s definitely angry,” Cass called back. “If she didn’t knock the Baker woman down, I’ll assume we’re safe. It appears she objects to Kennedys.”

  “She didn’t like me when I moved in,” Amber reminded her, lingering at the bottom of the stairs with her smoking bundle. “She may have just worn out her energy.”

  Since Amber believed in tarot cards, Sam could have dismissed them all as superstitious eccentrics—if she hadn’t felt the weird energy forces around Hillvale herself. Even now, her staff was swinging back and forth, quite of its own accord. But Amber was right—Cass was showing her prejudice against the Kennedys by blaming the incident on Kurt’s presence.

  The bad history between Cass and her half-brother’s family dated back half a century, like any good small-town family feud. Sam didn’t try to understand it.

  Once Cass and Harvey reached the top of the stairs, Amber and Tullah followed, swinging their smudge sticks along the walls. Grimacing, Sam climbed after them, using her duster to spread the smoke. Mariah sprinkled herbs and salt. Aaron took up the rear until they were all stationed upstairs.

  “It’s not much to look at,” Cass said with a sniff, setting up the candle and bucket at the top of the stairs. “I have some old curtains I can bring over, freshen up the bedrooms a little better. Sam, you need to tell your tightwad uncle to bring over fresh bedding from the lodge. More than ectoplasm can be in those beds.”

  Cass and the Kennedys didn’t speak to each other. Sam had only been in Hillvale for a few weeks, but if she meant to stay here, she was determined to open communication between the warring sides of her family.

  One of the reasons she meant to stay in Hillvale shouted from the shop, “Do I need to call the fire brigade?”

  “My very favorite Null,” Sam yelled back. “You’re interrupting a smudging. Be quiet and stay down there until we’re done.”

  Chen Ling Walker appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Tall and lanky, with surprisingly hard muscles hidden beneath his loose denim shirt, her deputy boyfriend frowned, not necessarily in disapproval. His Chinese mother had superstitions similar to the Lucys, which made him more accepting of their oddities than the other non-believers in town, like her Kennedy uncles.

  But Walker’s detective instincts belonged entirely to his Irish father. He’d want explanations.

  Sam waved her duster at him, then dutifully followed her aunt and her cronies. Aaron and Harvey weren’t actually participating in the ceremony so much as doing their own things. She didn’t know Aaron well enough to know how real or strong his gift was, but he was frowning in puzzlement as he ran his hands over the walls. Walker had claimed the antique dealer was well known in high-end antique circles and was often called to authenticate valuable pieces, which could indicate some talent for either research or reading what he was looking at.

  Wearing his usual black t-shirt and jeans, with his dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail, Harvey played guitar, wrote songs, and crafted walking sticks that weirdly behaved as dowsing rods for the energy forms that haunted the town. So far, Sam had learned the sticks could trace people, negativity, and water. She didn’t really want to believe they might also track ghosts, but Harvey’s stick was bouncing like crazy.

  As the Lucys returned to the sand bucket to extinguish their smoking bundles and murmur their final chants, Sam gestured for Walker to come up.

  “A ghost pushed Kurt down the stairs,” she whisp
ered when he reached her. “Although I think the newcomer who was with him probably wished she could have done it. Word is, he was being particularly obnoxious.”

  Walker kissed her forehead. They’d only been together a few weeks, and the thrill was even stronger as time passed. She leaned into him for the reassurance he always provided.

  “Is that a way of saying I should talk to the new arrival? Where is she?” He wrapped his arm around her waist and watched with interest as Mariah attached the final ghostcatcher at the top of the stairs.

  “Are you our new sheriff?” Harvey asked, emerging from the smaller bedroom. He’d tucked his staff under his arm so it no longer vibrated.

  Everyone turned in anticipation. Hillvale had been paying the county sheriff for a part-time patrol, but the deputy job had turned into a full-time one recently. Walker had only taken the deputy job to locate his long-missing father. Now that he had the answers he’d been seeking, he had an investigative agency in Los Angeles to return to.

  Sam held her breath, waiting for Walker’s answer. He’d said he was interested in staying here, with her. But a man like Walker needed intellectual challenges. A small town law enforcement job would keep his talents occupied, but still allow him to run his company as needed.

  “Monty and the sheriff have pounded out an agreement, yes,” Walker said, squeezing her tighter. “But there can only be one sheriff in a county. I’d have to be Hillvale’s chief of police. Bureaucracy now comes into play while they negotiate. But I’m still the law around here, so if I need to talk with our newcomer, I will.”

  “Talk to Kurt,” Cass said with a sniff, stabbing her walking stick against the wooden floor and pushing her way back to the stairs. “The girl claims she owns this building and has deeds to prove it. Kurt’s threatening to charge her insane rent for this dump. I don’t blame the ghost for shoving him downstairs.”

  Walker stepped aside so she could pass. Aaron pushed past first, preceding Cass down the stairs. . . just in case.

  Walker sent Sam a questioning look, and she shook her head. “Later,” she whispered. She was theoretically an environmental scientist, but recently, she felt as if she should have majored in communication.

  “Aaron, did you pick up any information on our poltergeist?” Cass asked as they all trooped to the front shop area.

  Outside the plate glass window dark had descended and the lone street lamp in the parking lot had come on. Sam couldn’t see Dinah’s café further down the block, but across the street, on the other end of town, she saw a light in the mayor’s office.

  “It’s an old building. I picked up echoes of children and happiness and love, but they were faded almost to nothingness.” Aaron ran his fingers over the counter and an old oak table as if unable to stop himself. “The good is overwritten by rage, fear, great pain—and evil. We probably ought to look into former tenants. I feel violence, but it’s. . . I’m not sure how to explain. The violent spirit permeated the wood, but the wood was not directly involved.”

  “Nothing here was used as a murder weapon, and no one knocked their brains out on the counter,” Walker translated for him.

  Aaron gave him a grateful nod. “I didn’t think you believed in our gifts, deputy.”

  “I can believe in some kind of force called God and an energy my mother calls chi without having to see or experience them,” Walker said. “Or maybe I should say, I can’t not believe in them because there is no conclusive evidence of their existence, one way or another.”

  “You’ll fit right in here, young man,” Cass said in approval. “I’m glad the mayor is smart enough to see that. Tullah, you’re silent. What are you experiencing?”

  Sam wasn’t entirely certain what Tullah’s abilities were. Owner of the thrift store, she often acted as a medium in Lucy séances, so she had some psychic connection to spirits.

  “Old haunts,” Tullah replied thoughtfully. “I’m not as gifted as Cass, but there’s one very strong entity. I don’t think smudging and catchers will help. And I agree that evil has inhabited the place. If we investigate former tenants, we may find one worked at the lodge.”

  “And so we’re back to my evil uncles,” Samantha said in amusement. “We just sent Miss Baker to stay there. Would she be safer here?”

  “Kurt and Monty aren’t corrupt, yet,” Cass conceded, opening the door. “But if we don’t find the source of the negative energy, they’re likely to turn into their father. I’m not certain we can recommend that Miss Baker stay in either place.”

  “Especially with children,” Amber said, rubbing her bracelets thoughtfully. “They’re adorable and not at all what they seem. I think Miss Baker is hiding up here. She won’t leave.”

  No one disagreed.

  Three

  June 25: evening

  * * *

  Using the lodge’s business office, Teddy sent her sister an e-mail through the convoluted network they’d set up—just in case Butthead had figured out Sydony’s computer password. If the law had any sense, they’d have kept him locked up. Instead, he was probably holed up in Syd’s apartment now that she’d been forced to abandon it. But Butthead was a cop, and they protected their own.

  Teddy really wasn’t accustomed to hiding. As head of Theodosia Devine Designs, her job required that she hit the road and work public appearances. Only she was so fatigued and nervous, that a shadow passing in the lodge’s hall almost caused her to duck.

  She relaxed when the lodge owner entered the computer room. “You look worse for wear,” she told him, too tired to be polite. Kennedy had left off his suit coat and tie and his hair was rumpled, as if he had just woken from a nap. His five o’clock shadow accented his carved jaw, however, giving him a movie star sexy look. She liked that he didn’t tower over her by a foot.

  He gave her a disgruntled look. “What did you do with the kids?”

  “They fell asleep in front of the TV. You have a marvelous staff. When I asked the maid if there was a babysitting service, she called her niece. Do they all live around here?”

  He shrugged and parked his rather attractive posterior on the corner of a desk. “It’s a long drive down the mountain at night. We offer lodging for those who want it. The ones with families live elsewhere and only work days. You probably talked to Maria and hired Serena. They’re both single and live here.”

  “Rotten social life.” Teddy cleared out the computer cache, hoping she was wiping any trace of her activity.

  “That’s why I encourage you to settle elsewhere,” he said dryly. “This is a great place to visit, or was, before half the mountain burned.”

  “I saw that. Lightning?” She got up and confronted his aggressively male posture. She’d had enough real world experience to face down men who wanted to tell her what to do.

  “No, one of the crazies set fire to a cross.” He stood up and opened the door.

  “One of? How many do you have?”

  “Half the town, at least,” he said with grim humor. “Usually, though, they don’t set fires. Tensions have been escalating, unfortunately. How long has it been since your family lived here?”

  Half a town of crazies? With escalating tension? She hid her unease and accepted the easier question. “I was almost seven when we moved, so a little over twenty years.” She eased past him, aiming for the lounge. “Walking into your lobby reminded me of your birthday parties. I wasn’t allowed to go until I turned six, and I was absolutely thrilled to my childish bones to finally attend one.”

  He fell in step with her. “My mother wanted us to have normal childhoods. She seemed to think normal meant inviting every child related to the town or lodge to an enormous event that left them all hyper and crying by the time they went home.”

  Teddy laughed. “I didn’t cry. I loved it. I got brand new sparkly socks and shoes and a bouncy dress and helped my father make gifts for you and your brother. I took home balloons and candy that I was never allowed to have otherwise and thought it fair trade. And I got to see you
wear my sword in your belt as if it were a pirate sword.”

  Which might be why she felt so at home with this man she ought to consider as the enemy. He’d been a lonely little boy once, and she’d made him happy.

  Kurt placed a hand at her back and steered her into a quiet corner of the lounge. He almost smiled. “I remember that sword! It was the only gift I can remember being allowed to keep. All the rest were given to charity, but my mother didn’t think a handmade sword was appropriate. I still use it as a letter opener. You were a talented six-year old.”

  “I’m still talented,” she countered, but her mood had improved at the notion of him keeping one of her first efforts. “And if you have a concussion, you shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “I don’t drink on the job, and I’m always on the job. Harry knows to bring me seltzer. Chardonnay for you?”

  “A small glass, to help me unwind. It’s been a long day or I’d go down and see how the Lucys are faring at the shop. I’m starting to remember some of the local slang. They called you a Null. How did people ever come up with that sobriquet?”

  He placed their order and settled on the stool beside her. “It’s been around longer than I have. I always just assumed Null and Void was the opposite of Lucent Lucy. I’m sure someone had a sense of humor in years past.”

  “Null, as in you have no extra-sensory gifts?” she asked, relishing this break from her recent routine of worry.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You believe in ESP?”

  “I’m one of them, yep,” Teddy agreed, enjoying the heck out of this conversation and feeling safe enough to open her Inner Monitor and test him. As before, he blocked her, but she could read his facial expression well enough. “You’re shocked, disgusted, and just a little intrigued.”

  He snorted and sipped his seltzer. “That’s an obvious conclusion. So you turned to warn me on the stairs, not push me, because you felt a ghost?”