It had been so damned long. . . Kurt covered her screams with his mouth as release rocked her soul. Before the final ripples slowed, he drove into her.
Madness, sheer beautiful insanity. If this was the result of pixie dust, bring it on! She wrapped her fingers around his on the bar while he sent her up and over the top again. With their mouths meshed, her leg around his back, and all that. . . studliness. . . filling her, she understood the cliché of feeling as if they were one. She couldn’t remember ever experiencing such an intense sensation.
Teddy bit Kurt’s lip when he started to shout his release. With the water pouring over them, he yanked out, laughing and groaning. He crushed her breasts in his hand as he exploded as wildly as she had.
They’d barely had time to recover their breath before Walker pounded the door and shouted over the roar of heavy duty machinery. “Hurry it up in there. We could turn purple while you’re using up all the hot water.”
“Oh darn sugar heck,” Teddy muttered into a broad, naked, wet shoulder.
“Darn sugar?” he asked, not releasing her.
“My mother’s teaching. She wouldn’t curse in front of us. With the kids around, I’m practicing.” She lowered her legs. “It keeps my creativity employed.”
“They’re not around now, thankfully, but darn sugar heck sounds about right.” He rubbed her nipple into arousal.
“We can’t do this again. It will kill me,” she warned.
Without releasing her, Kurt kicked off the water faucet. They hadn’t used shampoo but their hair dripped into their eyes. Shoving hers out of her face, Teddy could feel him assessing her, but she’d shut down her Inner Monitor as well as her brains apparently. Gratefully, she accepted the clean towel he handed her.
“Pixie dust,” he said with more cynicism than question.
“Truth serum, whatever. We’re never going to get this stuff out of here. It’s all over the floor.” She rubbed at her hair and surreptitiously watched Kurt do the same. Damn, but he must spend time at the beach. Or on a yacht. He was brown almost all over.
“Bring mops,” Kurt shouted back at Walker. “We can’t get out of the tub without contamination.”
That put the others off long enough for them to dress in the clothes from the laundry bag. They were ready except for shoes by the time the others knocked again.
“Don’t touch anything,” Walker warned as soon as he opened the door, wielding a mop. “The crew has to wash all the clothes and linen stored up here.”
Outside the door, people wearing face masks and gloves scrubbed at the floors and walls. A roll of industrial carpet had been thrown over the hall and down the stairs, presumably to catch any stray dust.
“How much is this going to cost me?” Teddy muttered after the floor was mopped and they were allowed to ease past people extending long hoses into the attic and others scrubbing the walls of the stairwell.
“Insurance,” Kurt suggested. “Although I’m not sure a policy covers asbestos much less pixie dust.”
“Quit calling it that. You make it sound harmless.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you think we would have done what we just did without it?”
“Absolutely,” he said with assurance, placing a proprietary hand at her back as they reached the crowd waiting at the bottom.
Teddy didn’t know how to take that, so she didn’t punch him for pushing her around.
“You can’t bring the children back here until Walker tells us the dust isn’t toxic,” Cassandra said the instant they entered the shop.
The regal older woman appeared to be the local authority on all things weird. Teddy’s nature was to rebel, but she couldn’t subject her sister’s kids to risk.
“You can stay with me,” Cass continued. “Sam is moving out of the studio, if you prefer your privacy.”
“Teddy and the kids are going to the lodge tonight,” Kurt replied firmly. “We have internet and cable and they’ll be safer.”
“Surrounded by evil?” Cass scoffed.
As much as she wanted to be anywhere but around Kurt, he had a point, and evil was a subjective topic. Before the argument could escalate, Teddy intervened. “One more night at the lodge won’t hurt. The kids are at least familiar with it. I can’t keep disrupting their lives.”
“Keep his mother away from them,” Cass warned.
Kurt practically shoved Teddy out the front door.
Samantha
June 26: afternoon
* * *
“Pixie dust.” Black braid swinging, Mariah slid into the booth across from Walker and Sam after the dinner rush. “Clarify. Whatever you did, the ghosts are congregating again, even after I’ve cleaned the town.” She nodded at one of her beaded nets in the corner of the café’s ceiling.
Sam studied the shivering net with scientific interest. “I feel no wind or earth movement, and I see nothing ghostly clinging to your strings either.” But she’d been working here daily and had never seen the nets move before.
“It could take the lab weeks to determine the origin of the purple dust.” Ever the proper police officer, Walker intelligently stuck to the practical while eyeing the swaying nets. “Weights hung on invisible threads might cause that motion.”
“And so could loose ectoplasm,” Mariah countered, before biting into her cinnamon roll. The feathers threaded into her braid seemed to have a life of their own—like her nets.
“We can’t argue over an unprovable subject, unless someone wants to develop a test for ectoplasm. The more relevant question is whether or not purple dust has caused any testable effects,” Sam said, revealing the direction of her thoughts these last hours.
“Such as?” Mariah raised her eyebrows.
Sam blushed. She wasn’t about to mention that inhaling dust had raised their lust quotient into the stratosphere. “We would have to test to see if the adrenaline rush of the accident or the dust were factors in any unusual behavior.”
“It isn’t unusual for Kurt to be bossy or Teddy to think of the kids first. And you two looking pie-eyed at each other has nothing to do with adrenaline,” Mariah stated, wiping crumbs from her mouth. “The two workmen were carted off before the dust hit. So basically, I see no effect except in my ghost catchers.”
Sam chewed at her thumbnail. “Teddy sent me a cryptic message about truth serum. Maybe we should talk to her.”
Walker frowned at his coffee cup. “Sodium pentothal is a barbiturate that causes people to lose inhibitions, but there’s no guarantee that what is said is actually the truth. And it doesn’t come in crystal sparkles.”
Mariah ignored his scientific analysis. “I’ll call the lodge, see if Teddy is available. She’s fire to Sam’s earth and my wind. Together, we might work this out.” She slid from the booth and headed for Dinah’s office.
“Fire? Earth?” Walker asked, holding Sam’s hand beneath the table.
“More superstition, like the number thirteen and tarot cards,” Sam explained.
“I’m worried about that truth serum business,” he admitted. “Being with you in the shower felt honest and right, better than it’s ever been for me. It was like some part of my gut finally opened up and allowed you in,” he said, almost reluctantly.
Knowing the death of his wife and child hung heavy on his heart, Sam rejoiced, understanding and loving the large leap of faith he’d just made. “Pixie dust makes us face our innermost fears? Feelings? It scared me half to death,” she confessed. “I had this sudden wild desire to make babies, even knowing you’re not ready and having suffered the consequence of my father’s illegitimacy.”
“Earth mother.” He laughed and kissed her hand, dismissing the woo-woo connection.
Sam wasn’t as certain that psychic influences didn’t exist. But for now, she’d have to bury the certainty that she wanted children. Walker wasn’t ready, and she shouldn’t be.
Nine
June 26: evening
* * *
Stepping over the snoring Prince H
airy, Teddy checked on her sleeping Goths. Mia was adorable in her pink princess nightgown and Jeb in his blue superhero pajamas. Teddy thought they ought to mix it up occasionally and let Jeb wear the pink and Mia the blue, but she was fractured like that. Sydony wouldn’t appreciate it.
Kurt had provided her with a suite this time—payment for services rendered? Or hope that she’d welcome him for another round? She shouldn’t be so cynical, but she’d earned her pessimism the hard way. Men always wanted more than she was willing to give and occasionally figured she was a lightweight and tried to take what she didn’t offer.
Desperate to find an emotional connection, she’d denied her Inner Monitor for years. She’d kept it shut down through way too many failed relationships. That had been a massive mistake she couldn’t afford to repeat. No matter how lonely she was or how painful honesty might be, she wasn’t falling blindly into any more affairs.
She’d put the kids in the bedroom. As much as she enjoyed sex, she’d learned the hard way that she preferred emotional stability. She was taking the couch.
That worked out well after she took Mariah’s call. Company would be welcome. Maybe talking about what had happened would clear her head so she could sleep.
Teddy had room service bring up wine and munchies. Sam and Mariah arrived bearing cheese, grapes, and sangria. Walker followed with a six pack. The room was barely big enough to hold everyone. She hoped Hairy wouldn’t decide to wake and bark. She was pretty certain the lodge didn’t normally accept pet guests, but she wanted the kids to have their furry security blanket.
By the time she’d set up a table and poured drinks, her landlords, Monty and Kurt, knocked on the door.
Teddy leaned against the jamb and didn’t let them in. “Need something?” she asked rudely. She couldn’t help it. They were rich studs and men like that either wanted something or took control.
“She’s a Lucy,” Kurt explained to his brother. “I warned you.”
“Mariah and Sam are Lucys. I can talk to them.” Their surfer dude mayor shoved open the door. “We have to talk to them if we don’t want this town divided right down the middle.”
Deciding that almost sounded reasonable, Teddy let him pass.
“Lucy?” She met Kurt’s eyes. “Are you calling me nuts?”
“Just weird,” Sam called from inside the room. “Get used to it. Call them Nulls. Stereotypes work.”
“Stereotypes divide,” Kurt corrected, shoving past Teddy as his brother had done. “I am nothing like Monty or my mother. If anything, I’m more like my Uncle Lance.”
Everyone in the room stared. Teddy closed the door and waited for an explanation.
“Lance is an absent-minded artist,” Mariah said, helping herself to the grapes. “There couldn’t be two more different people in town.”
Kurt poured wine and swirled it, apparently comfortable with being called a liar. Teddy had to admire his aplomb. Mariah was something of a loose cannon.
“Kurt is an architect,” Monty explained, perusing the spread on the table and then taking in the paucity of chairs. “He just didn’t fry his brain on drugs the way our uncle did. Lance was an architect once too. He and Kurt were supposed to go into business together.”
Without comment, Kurt picked up the phone and ordered his staff to bring more chairs. Teddy shivered. Even with her inner sense turned off, the concentration of strong power and temperament pushed the room to the brink of implosion. That’s when she noticed the ghostcatchers swinging on the ceiling above the lamplight.
Conversation died as her guests followed her gaze. The crystals shimmered, the beads clacked, and the string drew taut.
“That’s why we’re here,” Mariah said, popping another grape. “You’ve apparently unleashed evil that I thought we’d expunged from the town.”
Mariah climbed up on a chair and ran her fingers over the ghostcatcher in a corner of the room. “I can see the shredded bits of ectoplasm on here,” she informed them. “My granny taught me how to absorb the sorry remains of life and send it on to whatever waits beyond.”
Teddy tried to see what she was doing but could only tell that the net hung straighter now and no longer moved.
“The lodge is built on evil,” Mariah continued matter-of-factly, climbing down. “The pixie dust is causing some kind of reaction that I don’t understand.”
“I thought it was the cemetery that held ghosts,” Sam said. “Isn’t that what you told me?”
“No, the cemetery is old, but it’s a consecrated burial ground, not evil. Of course there are ghosts there. The whole valley contains the spiritual impressions we call ghosts from the time man first walked it. But the lodge was built on ancient evil that we don’t understand, and the spirits here are real and not just impressions. This is where the original ranch was built, until it burned and the spiritualists told the ranchers to move into town. This land should be left empty.” Mariah grabbed more grapes and her glass of sangria and sat cross-legged on the floor, ignoring the empty chair that had been delivered within instants of Kurt’s call.
“Those are all old folk tales,” Kurt insisted. “People have been making up stories about the town since its inception, drumming up business for their gypsy trade. I am not closing a profitable business because you make strings jiggle.”
“Sam, when is your art dealer coming up to have a look around?” Mariah asked, deliberately averting the argument.
Teddy recognized that she directed the conversation to a subject the Kennedy brothers would appreciate.
Sam brightened. “Elaine said she’d be up tomorrow. I’m hoping she can tell us if Lucinda Malcolm painted the mural in the cafe. Do you think she can tell us about the crystals ground into the Ingersson paintings?”
Teddy held up her hand. “Explanations, please.”
“Apparently the artists who used to live up the mountain ground crystals into their paints—maybe like the dust you saw today?” Mariah gestured for Sam to do the honor. “Sam was raised by artists. She knows the lingo.”
Sam sipped her sweet drink. “Some of the oils haves been turning red—but only in the eyes, as far as we’ve noticed. Daisy keeps them in a hidden cache, but I saw one of a man I recognized, one who owned a real estate company. The portrait had red eyes, and it turned out that he was about as evil as a man can get.”
Mariah continued without expression, “But another man whose eyes had been red in his portrait, gave up drugs and turned in the evil guy to the authorities. After that, the eyes in his painting returned to normal. So we think there’s something weird going on with the artwork around town.”
“OK, red eyes are beyond my scope, but what about Lucinda Malcolm?” Teddy asked. “Isn’t she a famous painter? Was she one of the hippie artists?”
“Not that we know.” Sam picked up the conversational thread. “We heard she had visited in the glory days, when the artist colony was famous. But that was the 70s, and she was quite old by then. The hippie lifestyle wouldn’t have suited her. Still, we’re hoping we’ll find examples of her art to see if she used the crystals the others did.”
“The spirit in the séance said to find the art.” Teddy said, looking thoughtful. “I don’t know anything about art, but I know crystals. Do you know what kind or where they got them? ‘Crystal’ can mean anything from diamonds to agates. I wouldn’t think too many would occur naturally in these mountains, but I’m no geologist.”
Teddy avoided mentioning the power of crystals, but that’s what this session was really about. The Nulls wouldn’t appreciate that kind of talk though.
“My background is environmental,” Sam acknowledged. “I know a little about the geology of the area, and you’re right, there’s nothing particularly exciting or unusual about the crystals normally found here. There might be geodes of common quartz, surrounded by agate stone, maybe an occasional amethyst. That’s the most to be expected.”
“Because scientists don’t understand evil,” Mariah insisted. “You boys might as
well leave for the bar now, because you definitely won’t understand.”
Monty crossed his arms and didn’t move. Kurt poured more wine and laid a possessive arm over Teddy’s chair back. She pried it off.
“Indulge us,” Deputy Walker ordered, crossing his ankle over his thigh. He massaged the weak thigh muscle that caused his limp, but the position also tilted him closer to Sam on the couch.
“His mother believes in chi energy,” Sam explained. “He doesn’t believe, but he doesn’t laugh either.”
“I don’t like theory,” Mariah stated flatly. “I know evil exists because I can feel it. Sam feels it, too, although she calls it negativity. We feel it most on lodge lands, but it’s on the Ingersson farm as well. It’s not theory that I can see the ectoplasm of the dead. But what I see does not prove evil is centered at the lodge.”
“I felt the evil in the pixie dust,” Teddy offered. “I’m not entirely sure how or why. I work with crystal all the time, but I never noticed that negativity before now. The dust just felt. . . toxic. I think I noticed it the same way I notice how people feel. It’s intuitive.”
“Then I advise you not to spend much time on lodge land,” Maria said. “There are spots that aren’t polluted, and places more polluted than others, but it’s not a healthy experience. We’re afraid those of us with extra senses who spend too much time around the resort could eventually go mad, rather like Lance and the artists in the commune.”
“That was drugs,” Kurt said dismissively. “Snort enough cocaine, mix it with LSD and mushrooms, and anyone would be polluted to the brink of insanity.”
“Crystal meth,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Did they have that back then? Or could it be some variant? I’ll need to look up the formula.”
Walker patted her on the head. “You lead such a sheltered life. The basic ingredients for meth can be bought at the drugstore.”
Topaz Dreams Page 8
