Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  She probably hadn’t seen someone’s aura so clearly since she’d been a chubby little toddler who’d batted innocently at the prismlike halos she’d seen and thought that everyone else could see too. Once her mother had pointed out that this was rude behavior she’d stopped, and since then she’d been for all intents and purposes blind to auras. Why and how, she wondered, had she been able to read the one around Gage Roundtree? Perhaps because his anger and grief were so intense? Interesting, she thought. She’d have to mention it to Doc Fitz.

  At the creaking of rusted hinges behind her Eslin turned around. Ethan Roundtree stepped through the barn door and tucked himself under the eaves beside her.

  “I do apologize for Gage,” he said with his best smile. “He usually isn’t hostile—usually he’s just rude.”

  “I think you ought to apologize for yourself,” she told him flatly. “You didn’t tell him you’d invited me for the weekend, did you?”

  “I tried, Eslin—”

  “No, Ethan,” she broke in firmly. “You didn’t.”

  He blinked at her, once, twice, then frowned. “You promised you wouldn’t read my mind, Eslin.”

  “Sorry,” she said, even though she wasn’t, and tried not to smile at his unease. “But sometimes you think so loudly, Ethan, that I can’t help but hear you.”

  “I meant to,” he corrected himself hurriedly, “but the right moment just never came. As you can see, we’re not on particularly good terms right now.”

  “Yes,” she agreed dryly. “I noticed that.”

  “Gage’ll come around. He’s already invited you for lunch.” His smile returned as he cupped his left hand around her elbow and squeezed gently. “Trust me, Eslin.”

  Those were Ethan’s favorite words—trust me. Eslin was certain he’d said them to her at least a hundred times since the Tuesday afternoon three weeks ago when he’d strolled confidently into her library at the Harwood-Fitzsimmons Research Hospital. If he says them one more time, she thought, so help me, I’m gonna slug him.

  “I did trust you, Ethan,” she replied, emphasizing the past-tense verb, “and I can see now that my trust was misplaced. Furthermore, I have my doubts that your brother will come around, but I’ll tell you what.” She paused for effect and lifted her elbow out of his grasp. “If he does, call me.”

  Eslin started past him, but Ethan’s hand caught her arm again. She stopped and looked at him over her shoulder.

  “You gave me your word, Eslin,” he reminded her. “You agreed to help find Ganymede. It’s taken me damn near a month to talk you into it, and I have no intention of letting you back out this easily.”

  “I agreed to discuss it as long as your brother approved of the plan. Until he does, I refuse to be the cause of further dissension between the two of you, Ethan. He owns half interest in Ganymede, and I have to respect that—whether you choose to or not. It’s a matter of ethics.”

  This time he heard her, and the twitch of his jaw muscle as he fought to retain his smile told her he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  “You’ve heard the word, I’m sure,” Eslin added wryly. “You know, ethics—a system of moral principles?”

  Abruptly he grinned and laughed.

  “Never offer me a challenge, Eslin.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I had.”

  “Oh, but you have. I’ve either got to change your mind or my brother’s in order to get what I want—and I always get what I want. Besides, you did agree to stay for lunch.”

  He laughed again, and although he was infuriatingly arrogant, Eslin found herself smiling. Somehow, she thought, you have to admire a man who’s so open about his lack of scruples.

  “All right, I’ll stay,” she acquiesced, “but just for lunch.”

  “Good. Come on, then,” he said as he hustled her toward the big gray Lincoln parked near the barn. “Let’s get you out of this rain.”

  Actually, the rain had stopped, but an occasional wet gust of wind was haphazardly blowing the mist out to sea. Already the clouds were lifting, and patches of blue showed through their gray, weepy edges. Still, it was chilly, and Eslin appreciated the fact that the crushed velvet front seat of the Lincoln was warm and dry.

  As Ethan turned the big car up the wide, blacktopped road, Eslin looked out her window at the long rows of white-painted barns. On the drive down from the house he’d pointed out the foaling barn, the breeding barn, and several others, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember which was which. They were identical, all except the stable office, a low, winged structure with a columned front entrance and custom-draped windows.

  Roundtree Stables was large and sprawling and smacked of money, money, money, wherever Eslin turned. The house—rather the mansion, she corrected herself—made her own shingled two-bedroom house in a pleasant section of Santa Barbara look like a tar-paper shack. The Roundtree mansion stood at the top of the road about a mile from the stables, its red-tiled roof and grilled, second-story balconies just visible above a stone-walled garden that circled the impressive structure.

  A stucco six-car garage lay a few dozen yards behind it, and Ethan frowned and muttered as he steered the Lincoln around a right-hand fork which joined the curved drive in front of the house. He parked behind Eslin’s blue Toyota and came around to open her door.

  “I’m sorry your car hasn’t been tended to yet,” he said, holding the car door for her. “Ramón—he’s our housekeeper Josefina’s son—wants to be a jockey, and he sneaks off to the barns every chance he gets.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Ethan,” Eslin replied as she got out of the car. “I’m not staying the weekend, remember?”

  “So you say.” He smiled as he led her across the drive toward the ornate front doors beneath a columned portico. “But I’m counting on Mother to change your mind.”

  Ah, yes, Rachel Roundtree, she thought, remembering Gage’s question, “Do you know my mother, Miss Hillary?” and Doc Fitz’s vague answers to her questions about “dear, dear Rachel.” He’d had so much to say about her sons, but precious little about her, and as Ethan opened one of the two intricately carved oak doors and ushered her inside, Eslin again wondered why.

  In the middle of the red-tiled foyer a marble stallion spurting water from his mouth reared in the center of a pool dotted with blooming lilies. Two palm trees rose on either side of the fountain, their frothy crowns reaching toward domed skylights. Beyond the trees, a black iron-railed staircase curved upward to a gallery screened by a magnificent Spanish grill.

  So this is how the other half lives, Eslin thought, as she looked around what she realized was an atrium, not a foyer. Behind the pool were big, decorative flowerpots holding monstrous figs, ferns, rubber trees, and scheffleras. Over the sound of the fountain’s gurgling water Eslin could’ve sworn she heard crickets and a frog.

  “We usually come in through the back of the house,” Ethan explained, “but I thought you’d appreciate the atrium.”

  “Oh, I do, it’s beautiful,” she murmured, casting a frown at the fountain as he led her across the red-tiled floor.

  The wildly splashing water set her teeth on edge. Waterfalls affected her the same way, like fingernails scratching a blackboard.

  The grating sound of the fountain fell away as they walked through a wide, open archway beneath the gallery and into a sun-room. Dead ahead, a solid wall of glass revealed a paved courtyard and the lush sprawl of the walled garden Eslin had seen from Ethan’s car. Plain gold rugs covered the tiles beneath heavy Spanish furniture.

  The wall on Eslin’s left was built of stone and the fireplace in its center looked big enough to roast a whole steer. Through the flames licking at tree-sized logs she had a glimpse of another room beyond the shared hearth; then Ethan’s grip on her elbow tightened and directed her attention to a leather-topped octagonal table in the far right corner of the room.

  A raven-haired woman sat at one of four black leather chairs, and as she rose and came toward them, Eslin knew why Doc Fi
tz had kept quiet about Rachel Roundtree. The black silk caftan she wore was heavily sequined with six-pointed gold stars and silver crescent moons. Eslin hoped it was supposed to be a joke, yet she had a sickening feeling….

  Abruptly, Rachel laughed, reached behind her neck with both hands, and whisked away the caftan. Beneath it she wore sensible, albeit very elegant, rust-colored slacks and a vest and sweater in shades of gold.

  “Oh, Mother,” Ethan moaned. He didn’t add, How could you? but it was implied.

  “Oh, Ethan.” Rachel mimicked his horrified tone, and rolled her eyes as she flung the caftan over the back of a sofa. “Hello, Eslin, I’m delighted to meet you. Fitzie has told me so much about you, I feel that I’ve known you for years.” She smiled and offered her hand. “I hope I haven’t offended you.”

  “Not in the slightest.” Eslin smiled back as she shook her hand, and silently vowed to throttle “Fitzie” for not warning her about Rachel’s interest in the occult.

  She wasn’t much taller than Eslin, about five foot four, and very slender. Almost too slender, Eslin decided, watching the big diamond and topaz rings on her fingers slip and slide as she waved dismissively at the caftan.

  “I wear that now and then just to infuriate Gage,” she confided with a wink. “He thinks my saddle has a loose cinch, you know. So does Ethan.”

  “I do not, Mother,” he replied testily.

  “You do too, and don’t contradict me.” With a triumphant smile she slipped Eslin another wink. “Buzz Josefina, will you, Ethan? We’ll have coffee now.”

  In a way Rachel reminded Eslin of her Granny Rose. How many times had she seen her mother’s mother from County Cork, Ireland, manipulate people and situations with the same tactic? At the first hint of quarrel or whenever she’d felt slighted or overlooked, Granny Rose had threatened them with one of her “attacks.” Her ploy for attention had been asthma, and Eslin was willing to bet that Rachel’s madwoman-in-the-mansion act was hers.

  Now she understood Gage Roundtree’s hostility and why he had asked her if she were a friend of his mother’s.

  On the mantelpiece an old, yellow-faced Seth Thomas clock chimed eight-thirty. Ethan helped her slip out of her coat and pulled back a chair for her.

  “What an ungodly hour.” Rachel stifled a yawn as she sat down across the table from Eslin. “But you picked the best possible time to take a peek at Ganymede’s barn. Gage won’t finish morning workouts for another half hour at least.”

  “Unfortunately, Mother,” Ethan corrected her as he sat down between the two women, “he finished early this morning.”

  “Uh-oh.” Rachel frowned. “How awful was he?”

  “No more than usual,” Ethan replied mildly. “But Eslin handled him very well. I was impressed, and so was he—particularly when she found his good-luck piece.”

  “Did you? Where?”

  “In Ganymede’s stall,” Ethan answered for her. “I wish you could have seen the look on his face when she said the neck chain belonged to him.”

  Rachel chortled gleefully. “Oh, Eslin! How did you know? He lost it weeks ago—just before Marco Byrne stole Ganymede.”

  She would’ve gladly let Ethan answer this question because she couldn’t. Along with auras, an affinity for objects had never been one of her fortes, yet she’d been drawn unerringly to the corner of the stall where she’d knelt, dipped her fingers into the deep straw, and pulled out the neck chain. It had been exactly like finding a needle—or in this case a nail—in a haystack. Eslin had never done such a thing before, and her right palm still tingled where the chain had lain warm against her skin.

  “Trade secret, eh?” Ethan prodded.

  “Oh, no,” she said with a laugh, and surreptitiously scratched her palm beneath the table. “It’s just that—well, I knew, that’s all.”

  “Ahhhh.” Rachel sighed reverently.

  The beatific smile on the woman’s face made Eslin wish she were back in the barn with Gage the cynic. She was just an ordinary person with an extraordinary sensitivity—and very human flaws and failings. An oracle she was not—and the sooner she made that clear to Rachel the better.

  “Actually,” she began, wishing she’d read the paper on psychometry that Doc Fitz had recently published, “it’s no great mystery—”

  The screech of rubber wheels on the tile floor interrupted Eslin. She turned her head slightly and saw a reed-thin Mexican woman with skin the color of creamed coffee pushing a serving trolley into the room. She wore tiny gold bells in her pierced earlobes that tinkled like wind chimes as she stopped the cart beside the table.

  “Thank you, Josefina,” Rachel said. “This is Miss Hillary.”

  “Hello.” Eslin smiled.

  Politely, the housekeeper nodded; then, as she backed away from the trolley, her dark eyes focused on the deck of tarot cards in the middle of the table. Swiftly, her right hand moved through the sign of the cross and she hurried out of the room.

  “I’ll leave this to you and Mother,” Ethan said, nodding at the china service on the cart as he rose from his chair. “I’m not much for coffee—or klatching, for that matter. Gage and I have some sale lists to go over, so I’ll see you at lunch, Eslin. You, too, Mother.”

  Once he’d left the sun-room, Rachel lifted the Wedgwood carafe and two cups and saucers onto the table. As she filled them, she smiled at Eslin across the table.

  “Ganymede was a breech birth, you know; we almost lost him. Gage helped turn him. He was only nineteen then, and the original ninety-seven-pound weakling—he shot up to six three by his twentieth birthday—anyway, he was the only one with small enough hands and we couldn’t wait for the vet. Ganymede used to follow him around like a puppy. I have pictures—I’ll show them to you if you’d like.”

  “I would very much,” Eslin smiled.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Both, please.”

  Rachel replaced the carafe on its tray, doctored one cup, and passed it to Eslin. She then reached for a leather-bound album on the corner of an oak credenza, instead of the tarot cards as Eslin had expected.

  “Ganymede’s baby book,” she said as she handed it to her. While Eslin sipped her coffee and looked through the album, Rachel picked up the cards. She didn’t shuffle or lay them out, she simply held them in her left hand.

  Most of the photographs were candid shots, some out of focus, others clear and sharp, and every one of them revealed as much about Gage as they did about Ganymede. The short, skinny boy with his arms around a fuzzy, spindly-legged foal in the first black-and-white snapshot, grew and matured along with the colt as Eslin turned the pages. Together they ran across a green slope, a shirtless Gage in cutoffs just slightly ahead of the gawky yearling Ganymede. Under an acacia tree in midsummer they swatted flies, Ganymede with his tail, Gage, grinning at the camera, with a horsehair switch. Last, they posed by a white-railed fence, a tall, handsome man in a plaid shirt offering a cigar to the magnificent blood-red stallion beside him. The caption read, IT’S A BOY! and the subtitle noted, GANYMEDE AT STUD, ROUNDTREE.

  Gently, Eslin closed the album and looked across the table at Rachel. A fragile smile touched the older woman’s lips and heartbreak etched the lined corners of her misty eyes.

  Eslin caught her breath on a sharp stab of recognition. How well she knew that look. A lump formed in her throat as she remembered Granny Rose hovering over her daughter’s hospital bed—a mother grieving for a sick child.

  “As you can see, Ganymede means a lot to Gage.” Rachel lifted the carafe and refilled Eslin’s cup. “That’s why,” she added, as she passed the cream and sugar, “we make allowances.”

  Their eyes met for a moment and the unspoken plea in Rachel’s eyes sent a shiver down the back of Eslin’s neck. He’s suffering, the look said, but because we love him we overlook certain things. Please, won’t you too?

  Rachel might be eccentric, but she’s cagey, Eslin thought. I couldn’t walk away from this now if I wanted to.

 
“May I take the album to my room with me later?” she asked, wondering if Ethan’s confidence that she’d stay the weekend had anything to do with the fact that he knew Rachel would show her Ganymede’s baby book. “I’d like to look at it again. It might help.”

  “Of course!” Rachel exclaimed, her emerald eyes suddenly radiant. “I’ll help any way I can. In fact”—she deftly cut the tarot deck and shuffled the halves together—”I thought we might do a reading and see what the cards have to say.”

  Eslin would have preferred a game of pinochle, but smiled brightly as she sweetened and stirred her coffee. “Why not?”

  “Would you…” Rachel began and offered her the cards.

  “Thank you, but no,” she replied. “I’ve never read the tarot.”

  “You haven’t?” Rachel looked surprised. “Well, in that case, let’s begin at the beginning.”

  And she did, too, in fifth-century B.C. Egypt as she related the history of the tarot. Eslin had heard it all before, but graciously did not say so. It took Rachel nearly an hour to get to the cards themselves, and another hour to lay out all seventy-eight and give an explanation of each one before she began the actual reading.

  Pinochle, the dreariest game in the world in Eslin’s estimation, was looking better all the time, but she took the deck from Rachel and, at her direction, tried to concentrate a question into the colorfully illustrated cards while she shuffled and cut them three times. When she finished, Rachel combined the stacks, pressed the deck to her forehead, then turned over eleven cards in a Celtic layout, which Eslin knew was so named because it roughly duplicated the shape of the Celtic cross. From the remaining cards Rachel asked Eslin to draw one to represent herself, then set the deck aside. With her arms folded on the table Rachel studied the cards for several moments.

  “How interesting,” she said thoughtfully, and glanced up at Eslin. “The significator, the card representing you, the querent, is the Fool—the symbol of the dreamer and the mystic. The first card describes the general atmosphere surrounding the question and the Seven of Swords here indicates an unwise attempt to make away with that which is not yours. The forces opposing the question, the King of Swords, is a dark-haired man sitting on a throne of judgment. The Hanged Man in the third position shows that the basis of the matter lies in wisdom and prophetic power….”