Ruby sees that the clock on the wall has whirled ahead again. But instead of correcting it, she gasps and points. “Oh, gosh, just look at the time! It’s nearly two! I had no idea it was so late. I promised Sophia D’Angelo that I’d drive out to Wimberley and see her this afternoon.”
Ramona sighs and withdraws her hand. “I’ll go with you,” she offers. She and Sophia have met at the shop several times, and once at Ruby’s house, when Sophia was talking to Ruby’s Wicca group about ways to strengthen intuition. “We could tell her about the business we’re planning. I’m sure she’d be enthusiastic.”
“Today would not be a good day for you to visit,” Ruby says firmly, wincing at the thought of Ramona’s finding out about Allison. She would probably want to saddle up and launch her own psychic investigation into the kidnapping, which would cause all kinds of trouble. Ethan Connors had a problem with psychics. Ramona would give him nightmares.
“Too bad.” Ramona sighs. “Well, another day.” She pauses, tilts her head, and gives Ruby a long, considering look. “You seem a little . . . wrought up this afternoon, Ruby. Is something going on with you? Something—”
She stops. Her eyes widen, and Ruby knows what’s coming next. “What happened to Allison?” she asks breathlessly. “And that man you were with this morning. He’s a cop?”
That does it. Not only is her ditzy sister pestering her with this idiotic psychic consulting thing, now she is poking around in Ruby’s head. She hasn’t done that for a very long time, and Ruby definitely doesn’t want her doing it now.
Pointedly evicting her sister from her thoughts, Ruby gets up from the table. “I hope you don’t think I’m trying to get rid of you, Mona. But I promised Sophia I’d be there. I hate to keep her waiting.”
“Okay.” Reluctantly, Ramona drains her iced tea glass. “Once you’ve had a chance to think about the possibilities of Psychic Sisters, I know you’ll see just how brilliant it is.” She pushes her chair back from the table and stands. “Tell you what. I’ll draw up a business plan that we can go over together, including marketing and the website. You’ll be impressed.”
“Have a good afternoon, dear,” Ruby says, and steers her toward the door.
Ramona keeps right on talking. “I’ll get the plan done as soon as I can. There are all kinds of amazing promotion possibilities here. The sky’s the limit, Ruby. Why, we could—”
“Bye, Mona,” Ruby says, and pushes her out the door.
When Ramona has gone, Ruby turns to look at the clock. Obediently, it resets itself to the correct time.
She won’t be so terribly late to Sophia’s after all.
Chapter Ten
Wimberley is a village of about three thousand people, twenty-some miles northwest of Pecan Springs on Route 12. It began as a trading post and gristmill back in the 1850s, when the area around Cypress Creek was home to Native Americans and a host of whitetail deer, buffalo, Rio Grande turkeys, cougars, and coyotes. Now, it is known especially for the scenic beauty of the cedar-covered hills that surround the little town, and for the clear Blanco River that flows through it. And—sadly—for the flood that caused such terrible destruction just a couple of years before.
Fed by springs that rise out of the limestone hills of the Edwards Plateau, the Blanco River is usually clear, cool, and ankle-deep. But one recent Memorial Day weekend, there was a sudden cloudburst upstream. In less than three horrible midnight hours, the shallow river rose to thirty feet above flood stage, a roaring torrent laden with trees, vehicles, and the debris of wrecked houses and barns. Almost a dozen lives were lost, hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed, and bridges and roads swept away. Wreckage was strewn for miles in the wake of the flood.
But Wimberley—home to a dozen art galleries and many more artists—is a village of indomitable spirit. After the catastrophic flood, the members of the Wimberley Valley Arts and Cultural Alliance put their heads together and came up with a unique public sculpture project: thirty six-foot-tall fiberglass cowboy boots, each one painted with an original design by a Wimberley artist and installed at thirty locations around town. You can see one at the Taste Buds Market, another at the Wimberley Pie Company, a third at Brewster’s Pizza, others almost everywhere you look. One is painted with local birds, another with cactus and bluebonnets, another with flowers and butterflies, and so on. There’s nothing that says “Texas” better than a cowboy boot, and each of these boots tells a chapter of Wimberley’s unique story. They were just what Wimberley needed to reboot its optimism after the flood.
The kids have already gone back to school, but as Ruby drives through the village, she sees squadrons of vacationers wandering the streets. Most are briefly clad in halter tops and shorts and sandals, appropriate to the sultry heat. Seeking shade, they sip iced lattes on the tree-shaded deck of the Leaning Pear, or linger under the awnings on the Square, where the shops and galleries and antique stores are displaying festive flags and red-white-and-blue bunting in anticipation of the upcoming Labor Day holiday. The Old Mill Store and the Wimberley Café are both crowded with customers, and tourists are clustered around a couple of fiber artists—a spinner with her wheel and a gray-haired man with a wooden lap loom—in front of Ply, which sells fiber, fleece and yarns of all kinds. Ruby is tempted to park and drop in, but she doesn’t want to be late.
The morning’s bright blue sky has clouded over, and a thick stratum of darker clouds is settling just above the western horizon. Visitors are likely to find themselves seeking shelter from a thunderstorm before the afternoon is out, and townspeople will be keeping a wary eye on the Blanco. It’s been a dry summer and the river is probably too low to flood. But there’s no telling with a gully-washer. It can take you by surprise. All Texans know (or should know) the phrase “Turn around, don’t drown.”
Sophia D’Angelo lives in a rustic log house with a forest-green roof on the bank of Cypress Creek. She was widowed years ago, has never remarried, and has no children—except for the students and clients and friends who are her extended family. She is generous with her time and attention, although there is a private part of her that seems to remain remote and just out of reach. Whatever her story, she keeps it to herself, and not even those who are closest to her know who she was before she moved to Cypress Creek about ten years ago.
Sophia’s log house has the same feeling of remoteness and mystery. It is located a quarter-mile off the highway, at the end of a narrow lane that twists between dense, dark-green cedar brakes and open meadows laced with goldenrod and snow-on-the-prairie. The front porch looks out across a sweep of late-summer wildflowers to a stand of cypress trees along the creek, where, in the evening, the whitetail deer gather to drink, does with their tawny fawns and bucks showing off their racks of antlers. The house—a cabin, really—is compact, just right for one person. But Sophia has built an addition at the back: a screened-in porch, a room for her classes, and a smaller, more intimate room for readings and consultations.
In her mid-sixties, Sophia has a mane of long, silvery-gray hair that she usually wears in a single braid down her back or coiled up on top of her head. Today, when she meets Ruby at the door, it is loose and wildly curly, a gray cloud around her face. She is wearing a gauzy ankle-length green cotton dress, and she’s barefoot. She’s not conventionally pretty and she spurns makeup. But her bright, fearless eyes are deeply set under dark brows in a finely boned, unlined face. It’s not a face you forget easily.
Sophia has always been straightforward about her abilities. She is clairvoyant and has the telepathic ability to pick up thoughts from those around her and—in the right circumstances and with the right person—at a distance. But in her classes, she often reminds her students that there’s nothing at all remarkable about being psychic. In fact, she says, everyone is innately, inherently, naturally intuitive.
“All of us possess truly psychic abilities,” she says. “Your sudden hunches, those flashes of insight and moments of inspiration—they’re all coming from your thr
ee-pound universe, your brain.”
The problem is, she explains, that Western society rewards us for using the logical, rational, thinking mind—the brain’s left hemisphere. We’re taught to discount anything that comes from the perceptive, creative, feeling part of the brain, the right hemisphere. But that’s the part of our minds we need to encourage, she says. Cutting off that part of ourselves is like cutting off an arm and a leg.
“Listen to the voice of your own inner wisdom,” she urges. “Trust yourself. Trust yourself. You know more than you think you know. You are more than you are.”
When Ruby phoned to arrange the visit, she didn’t say what was on her mind, but Sophia has obviously tuned in. Now, as they walk down the hall toward the back of the house, the older woman says, “You’ve been having quite an experience.”
“The morning was . . . difficult,” Ruby replies ruefully. “Nothing like that has ever happened to me. That’s what I’d like to talk about.”
The house is cool and pleasantly shadowy. To the right, the living room is uncluttered and sparely furnished, with a handsome handwoven Indian rug on the polished wood floor and a few hassocks and benches and seating cushions scattered around. To the left is the kitchen, where Sophia conjures up the delicious food she often serves to students and clients. The hallway is lined with the work of psychic artists, most of it gifts from students and friends. A George Winston piano album is playing in another room, its ethereal melodies just audible.
Two glasses and a frosty pitcher of iced tea, garnished with mint leaves and fresh orange slices, are waiting on a low table on the screened-in back porch. Sophia chuckles as she sits in one of the white wicker chairs and gestures to Ruby to take the other.
“I imagine that nothing like that had ever happened to your policeman, either.” Her voice is soft, husky, melodic. “It must have been a major challenge to his belief system.”
Sophia’s psychic ability can be unnerving for people who don’t know her well, but those who know and trust her find it intimate and somehow comforting. You don’t have to tell her what’s been going on. She already knows.
“Detective Connors isn’t ready to admit that something has happened that he doesn’t understand,” Ruby says, pulling down her mouth. “Not that I do, of course. I don’t have a clue.”
Sophia picks up the pitcher and fills their glasses with tea, but she frowns a little as she hands Ruby her glass. “Are you really all right, my dear? An experience like the one you’ve had can be exhausting—especially after that bike accident. I hope your headache is better.”
“I’m fine, although I intended to lie down for a half hour,” Ruby says, taking the glass. “Ramona came over. Which is a whole other story.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Sophia replies ruefully. “Psychokinesis is a skill that’s easy to flaunt but requires a great deal of discipline to master. Not everyone who possesses it is able to use it wisely. Too often, it’s just annoying. And disruptive.” Her voice is calm and uncritical.
“Do you think I should try to talk Mona out of this psychic business idea?” Ruby asks seriously. “Most of what she does is meant to be playful and entertaining, not intentionally troublesome. But she’s capable of causing serious chaos when she’s in one of her moods. I worry about the damage she might do if she actually tried to work with clients.”
Sophia tucks her bare feet under her. “I don’t think you can talk her out of it. Ramona is following her own path.” Her eyes are dark, and Ruby has the feeling that she sees where Ramona is going and is troubled. “If your sister has never listened to you in the past, is she likely to start now?”
Ruby sighs, knowing that Sophia is right. “I just wish I could keep her from being hurt.”
“But you can’t. There are things in the future that you can change, and things that are going to happen, whatever you do. It’s not within your power to keep Ramona from being hurt—or hurting herself.”
Sophia pauses, deliberately allowing Ruby to hear what she’s thinking. Much as I might wish, it’s not within my power to keep you from being hurt, either, my dear. After a moment, she adds, aloud, “And Ramona’s issues aren’t as urgent as the other thing you’re concerned about. That’s where you should place your attention.”
Ruby nods, agreeing. The iced tea is refreshingly tangy with fresh mint and orange, and both of them are silent for a moment, savoring it. The porch looks out on a small, neatly mown square of grass surrounded by dense green woods—live oak, Ashe juniper, hackberry, redbud. A bird feeder hangs from a low limb, and a bright red cardinal and two black-capped chickadees are feasting on sunflower seeds. A mourning dove calls plaintively, and the air is rich with the scent of honeysuckle. The sky is growing dark, though, and it looks like the threatened storm is almost on them. In the distance, thunder growls.
A Siamese cat appears at the door with an inquisitive meow. “Come, Pyewacket,” Sophia says, and the cat leaps effortlessly onto her lap. Stroking his charcoal ears, she says, “I have the general gist of this morning’s events, Ruby. But why don’t you fill in the details for me? I might have missed something.”
So while they sip their tea and watch the birds come and go—a pair of neatly coiffed tufted titmice and a male painted bunting, splendid in blue, orange, and chartreuse—Ruby tells Sophia the story from start to finish, beginning with the malignant dream and ending with the incident on the trail.
She adds, “I hope that finding Allison’s car and her cellphone and earbuds were enough to convince the detective that she was truly abducted. Which would mean that he will open a full-scale investigation.” She makes a face. “But I’m afraid he still believes that she just went off somewhere without telling anyone, or that the two of us are collaborating on some sort of scam. He’s all too eager to drop her into his no-body file.”
“His nobody file?” Sophia is stroking Pyewacket, whose purr is a throaty rumble.
“No body,” Ruby says, separating the two words. “Unless it’s a child or an elderly person, the police don’t open an immediate investigation when somebody disappears. When there’s no dead body.” Her mouth tightens. “The cops need something to prove there’s been an abduction—a witness or a ransom note or something. Otherwise, it goes into the no-body file.”
“Ah,” Sophia says. One eyebrow goes up. “It must have come as a surprise when your detective understood that you witnessed the kidnapping—psychically. When you led him to the car and the cellphone.”
“He’s not my detective,” Ruby says, and adds, almost automatically, “and I’m not a real psychic. I just have a few strong intuitions—”
“Stop.” Sophia breaks in with unusual abruptness. “You are psychic, Ruby, and it’s high time you stopped denying it.” She regards Ruby intently. “I’ve told you before that I think the mild concussion you suffered in that bike accident may have sharpened your psychic abilities.”
Reluctantly, Ruby nods. Sophia has mentioned this several times, pointing out that some researchers believe that psychic experiences may be more common after brain injuries, especially to the right temporal lobe—and especially for people who have previously shown psychic aptitudes.
“You were already exceptionally empathic,” she has said. “You had a high degree of telepathic awareness. Even a slight brain injury could have boosted that power in substantial ways, making you even more sensitive to all kinds of energies, positive and negative.”
Ruby isn’t sure she believes this, or that she wants to believe it. But she has to admit that she’s noticed changes. Since the accident, the visual auras that used to be dim and diffuse have grown stronger and more luminescent. Her hearing seems to be more finely tuned, and her sense of smell . . . well, odors that to others seem faint can sometimes be quite distinct.
“I also have the sense,” Sophia continues, “that this situation with Allison Montgomery can be an important turning point for you. That from now on, you’ll be able to focus your psychic skills, to use them with greater awar
eness and a more powerful effect. And that you will find new ways to use them.”
“A turning point?” Ruby asks uncertainly. “But things are already difficult enough. I don’t think I want to—”
Sophia waves her hand impatiently, dismissing Ruby’s objection. “This can be a point from which you can begin to grow into the potential your abilities and aptitudes offer. Begin using them to solve a problem, to help someone.” Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “The Ouija board is an amusing and clever tool, my dear. But it won’t take you where you need to go.”
Ruby bites her lip, feeling hurt. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I buy into Ramona’s psychic consulting scheme.”
Sophia shook her head. “That’s her version of ‘helping,’ which is mainly about helping herself. That’s as far as your sister can see. You already see further and you can do more—as you did this morning. You went to the police because you wanted to prevent a crime.”
“But I was too late,” Ruby reminds her. Her stomach knots painfully. Too late. Too late to help Sarah, all those years ago. And Ellen Hunt, in Indigo. And now, too late again.
Sophia smiles, a real smile now. “I know it hurts, Ruby. But when you learned that you were too late, you stuck with it. You chose to help, even though you were afraid. Am I right?”
Ruby thinks that it wasn’t exactly a matter of choosing. But she nods, slowly.
“And choosing took courage. It also took courage to go out on that trail with the detective this morning. He’s a self-assured man who doesn’t believe he can learn anything from you.” She pauses, thinks for a moment, then adds, “But he will. More than he can begin to guess.”
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