There had been other indications that were seemingly like Deirdre—or, as she’d thought before, someone who was imitating her.
“Let’s go back,” Hayden said abruptly.
He looked so sad and remote that she longed again to offer some touch of comfort. But she couldn’t know how such a gesture might be received, and she didn’t dare risk it.
They returned together to the road, and there was no touching between them, Christy suffering her own silent despair. So much seemed to hang on what Lili might accomplish tonight, but Christy’s belief was not as strong as she wished it could have been. Lili refused to recognize the power of evil, and if one didn’t recognize something wicked, how could it be vanquished and dispelled?
They walked back to Laurel House in a silence that set them far apart, and Christy knew she had failed him.
Laurel House was a good choice—out there on top of nowhere. It will be interesting to see what nonsense develops there tonight. Dukas and her idiot Josef! As if they could be a match for me.
That was a good touch on my part—leaving the Herkimer stone for Victor to find. I need to mislead him at every turn. Otherwise, he might be sensitive enough to find answers—before I am ready. I should have been ready before this, but Dukas’s coming has stirred the pot too much. There is a lot of fear around now—and fear can lead to foolish actions. Of them all, Victor could see the truth, if he really looked. Fortunately, his own torments keep him blind.
Deirdre cried when I took away her needlepoint. I’d brought it to keep her happy—give her something to do. To pretend to do. Of course she couldn’t work at needlepoint, any more than she can cry real tears. How can a spirit woman cry or work at embroidery? She must stay that way, and materialize only when I say. Of course, I allowed her to take the Herkimer diamond to Victor’s cabin herself. She hoped he would find it and understand—perhaps come looking for her. She still isn’t sure which world she’s in. I went with her and brought her back again.
Is Hayden becoming interested in Christy? I wonder. That would not be a good idea. So far, she’s been harmless enough. Of course she has probably fallen for him—women often seem to. I wonder what he has to draw them to him? If I were in Christy’s shoes, I would never look at him twice. But then, I never understood why Deirdre married him in the first place. At least, she’s still afraid of me, and under my control. I’m the only one who can reach into that other world for her.
It was a clever idea to leave the rainbow needlepoint in the llama pen. No one will ever know I put it there. It’s too unlikely.
There are those, of course, who would say that I am mad. I can laugh in their faces because I know better. I’m wiser than any of them, except perhaps Victor. I must watch Victor. How I would like to destroy the Sun Wheel—but it’s not time yet. I wonder what Victor did with the Herkimer when he found it? My trick with the crystal that I left in a drawer at the nursery office must have puzzled them.
11
Dinner at the Coppermine was a strange affair. Christy found herself more observer than participant, and Hayden Mitchell, seated on Lili’s right hand, seemed lost in himself and hardly present. This could be no lighthearted social occasion, as Lili had suggested. Not considering what might lie ahead for them tonight.
They had all met at the Mountain Inn and walked through the lobby concourse to the open flagstone area beyond. Here rustic architecture made a half circle two stories high, with miles of valley view opening on one side. Once, of course, there had really been copper mines up here, and the entrance to the restaurant suggested the entrance to a mine.
Inside the big dining room, with its beamed ceiling and mountain lodge aspect, a large round table had been reserved for the Dukas party. While there could be no head to the circle, wherever Lili sat was obviously the center. Tonight she looked stunning in her black crepe trousers and embroidered green Chinese jacket. Dangling jade earrings beneath her dark, upswept hairdo reminded Christy of the times when she’d been allowed to touch those earrings.
Beautiful as Lili looked, however, she couldn’t match Nona for dramatic elegance. Nona’s pearl-gray chiffon gown showed touches of autumn flame in its folds when she moved, and her garnet choker and earrings added a darker fire. Tonight her hair was hidden by a flame-colored turban knotted with an imaginative twist. Under the flowing gown her spare boniness had disappeared, and she always held herself with a special dignity. Lili could be commanding and exuberant, and she could carry everyone along on her own tide of energy—but she was never as grand as Nona when her sister really made the effort. As she had tonight.
As always, a subtle rivalry existed between the two, and Christy knew very well that she was the center of their conflict. Though Lili had given her daughter over to Nona years before, she expected to return on any one of her flying visits and claim her child completely. Christy had learned to remove herself from this tug-of-war. She loved Nona, and she was on her side—but then there was Lili in all her enchantment, behaving like a loving mother, and hard to resist.
As she grew older Christy had learned to recognize that Lili had her own special reality. She possessed a talent for healing that reached out widely and that she could never deny. This had been hard for a child to understand, and even now the grown-up Christy sometimes felt old resentment creeping in.
At the table a large menu folder was brought to each diner, and when Christy, feeling indifferent to food, had made a choice of something light, she studied the rest of the group Nona had gathered here.
Floris still looked edgy and had clearly been unwilling to dress for an affair she didn’t want to attend. Her plain brown pants suit and windblown hair flung a certain defiance at her hostess. Eve, who was also more comfortable in jeans, wore a pink-flowered print that didn’t flatter her, and she looked uncomfortable. Oliver’s presence seemed to absorb her, and she watched him covertly much of the time.
Oliver looked handsome in a gray jacket over a blue turtleneck, with well-cut gray trousers. His manner was remote, as though he too wished he were somewhere else.
In this country atmosphere, Hayden had come as he pleased in dark slacks and a Norwegian sweater with reindeer running diagonally across the front, but he seemed anything but relaxed. Later on, Lili was going to have her hands full with these crosscurrents ready to surface.
Christy had put on a slim black frock with a single strand of pearls that had belonged to Lili’s mother—the Hungarian grandmother Christy had never known. She’d learned long ago never to dress in competition with her mother. Lili must always play center stage—a position she took gracefully as her natural right, ignoring Nona’s dramatic presence.
Perhaps of them all, Victor Birdcall seemed most in character. His fringed western shirt with a turquoise bola tie, black strings tipped in silver, and hand-tooled leather belt with a beautifully crafted turquoise buckle, all suited him. Victor seemed the calmest, and most in control of his feelings. Perhaps only because he knew how to hide his emotions successfully?
When they’d ordered and the appetizers were served, it was Victor who threw a rock to stir the already ominous waters. Literally a rock! Hayden had apparently returned the Herkimer diamond to him, and he took the chunky stone from his shirt pocket and rolled it into the center of the table. It landed on a flat plane, its heart fires winking at them beneath its surface.
Lili was delighted—or pretended to be. “A Herkimer diamond! And such a large one! Where did it come from?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Victor said. “It belonged to Deirdre, and she’d put it among the rocks in the Sun Wheel she built out behind my cabin. But this morning that stone turned up on my kitchen counter.”
“May I see?” Lili held out her hand.
Nona reached for the stone and passed it to her. Lili turned it about in her long-fingered, ringless hands, as though she drew some physical impression from it. Watching her mother,
Christy sensed Lili’s sudden rejection of the Herkimer. She set it down quickly, as though it had told her something she didn’t want to know. It was a gesture Christy recognized—a movement away from anything distasteful. As far as possible, Lili wanted only sweetness and light around her, and Christy wondered sometimes if her mother held some deep-seated fear of the evil she always rejected as non-existent.
“What did you feel?” Christy challenged.
Jade earrings caught the light as Lili shook her head. “There’s confusion. Too many people have handled this stone, and I can’t tell anything about it.”
Christy persisted. “This afternoon when Hayden showed me that stone and I held it, I felt that someone good had owned it. So what do you feel that’s different?”
Lili went down another road, speaking to Hayden. “If this belonged to your wife, do you know where she got it?”
Oliver, who clearly wished himself somewhere else, seemed startled by the question—and he answered before Hayden could speak. “I know where she got it. Rose—my wife—gave it to Deirdre a long time ago.”
This seemed to mean nothing to Lili. “The stone has been contaminated. It should be bathed in spring water, with a pinch of sea salt, and then allowed to dry in the sun and air. But not where small animals can find it, or it will be stolen.”
Oliver snorted impolitely, and Eve, following his lead, laughed.
“I think you should wait,” Victor said quietly. “Let the contamination, if that’s what it is, remain until it can tell you something. Perhaps there’s meaning here that shouldn’t be erased. Different people seem to have different reactions to the stone.”
“I’ve always been interested in Herkimers,” Nona said. “Do they have the same healing power as crystals?”
“I’ve never used them for healing,” Lili told her sister. “But I have found that they bring peace to those who are ill. When death is near, a Herkimer can help make the passing easy and welcome.”
Christy glanced at Victor, remembering what he had said about Deirdre sitting in the dark north quadrant of the Wheel.
He took the stone back, and spoke as quietly as before. “Perhaps you can ask about this crystal tonight, Miss Dukas.”
Lili nodded agreement, but Floris, who had been attacking her salad with apparent indifference to what was going on around her, suddenly broke in.
“I had a dream a couple of nights ago. I saw Deirdre standing beside my bed—just as real as could be! She was wearing one of those white things she liked to drift around in, and she had a sparkling diamond in her hair. It just came to me that it looked like that Herkimer stone. I don’t usually remember dreams, but this hung on afterward. I haven’t got a notion what it can mean.”
Lili drew them all away from discussion of the stone. “Let’s forget this now and enjoy our dinner. Tonight I will certainly ask Josef if there is anything we should know about this particular stone.”
Oliver pushed his plate aside as though he’d lost his appetite. “So this isn’t to be the friendly get-together you promised, Miss Dukas? Now it seems we’re to have a séance after all.”
“Please, Oliver—not that word!” Lili remained unruffled. “Few psychics hold séances any more. If Josef chooses to come in there are questions we can ask him. If he doesn’t, they will go unanswered. There’s no table-tipping, no ectoplasm floating around. All that belongs to a time in the past when our friends from other planes were having difficulty reaching us. Now the channels are open, and they come in easily.”
Oliver looked as though he wanted to get up and leave, yet he was also torn by a desire not to miss whatever might happen. Eve watched him anxiously, and followed suit when he seemed to give in and relax.
By the time the entrees were served, the dinner conversation had turned guardedly polite, with everyone slightly on edge. Laurel House and whatever would happen there hung over them like a threat as the time drew near.
Just before dessert and coffee could be served, however, Lili suddenly pushed back her chair. “I’m sorry. A message has just come through. An urgent message. We must leave at once.”
Since no one had approached the table, there was no doubt about her meaning. One of her “guides” had spoken. Oliver looked more skeptical than ever, and Eve, who had come with him, stayed close as they all went out to their cars. Sometimes she behaved almost protectively toward him, Christy thought. But what did Oliver need to be protected from?
In any case, there seemed to be enough dry kindling here to set off a fine blaze, and she wondered how Lili could possibly keep everything cheerful and bright—and good. Yet Christy still couldn’t tell the source of the hostility that seemed to lie just below the surface. It wasn’t necessarily emanating from Oliver, but possibly from unseen energies that hovered around them all.
Nona led the way to Laurel House in her car—a drive of only a few minutes. Lights burned in the upper living-room windows—as Lili had left them—and it was she who was first across the short wooden bridge from “the mainland to our island,” as she put it. The door she’d left locked stood open, though this didn’t seem to surprise her.
“We’ve had visitors,” she said. “That’s why I was called. Let’s see if they are still here.”
The living room was empty, and nothing seemed to have been disturbed.
“I’ll look downstairs,” Hayden offered, but Lili shook her head.
“There’s no need. It’s only this room that has been visited. Please be quiet, everyone. Let me see what I can sense.”
Floris sniffed her distaste for such nonsense and sprawled into an armchair. Eve had grown uncertain and uneasy, and she put a hand on Oliver’s arm. Nona glanced at Christy and touched a finger to her lips. Clearly she wanted to give Lili every chance to do her thing. Of them all, only Victor seemed comfortable and not ill at ease. He had remained near the door that opened from the entryway into the living room, so that he would have blocked anyone who might have wanted to leave. Now he spoke directly to Lili.
“She has been here,” he said.
“Yes,” Lili agreed. “It was Deirdre. But we didn’t arrive in time. She’s gone now.”
Hayden looked angry. “What are you talking about? You’ve already claimed she was dead.”
“There are different kinds of death,” Lili said. “Tell them, Victor.”
Victor fingered the strings of his tie. He never liked the spotlight, but Lili must be answered.
“Deirdre’s perfume,” he said. “That heather scent she always wore. I caught it the minute I came into the room.”
“I did too,” Lili agreed. “Haven’t the rest of you noticed?”
Hayden was still angry. “I know her perfume very well, and there’s not a trace of it in this room. You’re imagining it! Or else you’re leaning on suggestion.”
“I agree,” Oliver said. “The house is so full of incense you must have burned earlier, Miss Dukas, that something as faint as Deirdre’s perfume couldn’t possibly be caught.”
Lili smiled, dismissing his words, and waited for the rest of them. Christy had closed her eyes to let all her senses turn inward. Yes—the heather scent was there, even if only because Lili had suggested it. Under the sandalwood something else lingered—but perhaps only to the sensitive nose, like her own. Odors of plastic and foam rubber, the smell of new rugs, all could be filtered out when she concentrated, leaving only that slight trace of Deirdre’s outdoor scent.
Christy met her mother’s eyes in agreement, aware of the tenuous bond that existed between them. Of the others, only Victor had shared the experience of catching Deirdre’s perfume. He took out the Herkimer diamond and gave it to Lili.
“Perhaps you can call her back with this. Perhaps she will speak to you now.”
Hayden stirred restlessly, but he didn’t object. Christy watched her mother turn into Liliana Dukas as she chose the central
armchair in the half circle about the fireplace. Without being asked, and perhaps to conceal his own indignation, Oliver knelt to light the fire, not looking at the others. Nona knew what her sister wanted, and she went about relighting the sticks of incense that had been placed in brass holders around the room. She also turned off all but one of the lamps, so that the room was illuminated mainly by the new fire, whose flames were reflected in the black glass of the windows.
“Thank you, Oliver,” Lili said. “Thank you, Nona.” Then she gestured to the chair beside her, speaking to her daughter. “Please sit here, Chrystal.” And to Hayden, “You on my left, if you don’t mind. The rest of you may sit where you like. There’s no special formality about this. I really don’t know what will happen. We merely invite, and a quiet, peaceful setting helps.”
“And as dark as possible!” Oliver complained.
“If we can all relax, everything will happen more easily.” Lili told him calmly. “Bright lights are a distraction.”
Each one found a place, except Victor, who seated himself cross-legged on the floor, with his back to the fire. Christy remembered what Nona had told her about Victor liking to “play Indian.” Only she didn’t think he was play-acting now. Perhaps something old stirred in his blood to make this strange Blue Ridge Mountain scene familiar, and the position he’d chosen on the floor was the one most natural to him.
Hayden remained irritated, as though his own hurting stirred an exasperation that he was barely able to contain. “Perfume!” he repeated. “There wasn’t a trace!”
Oliver laughed. “They’re talking about a psychic scent, Hay. Ordinary mortals like us wouldn’t catch it.”
“You’re quite right, Oliver,” Lili told him. “Though you are far from ordinary. I have a strong feeling that something is troubling you that you may want to bring into the open tonight.”
“That sort of remark”—Oliver turned on her sharply—“is cheap and easy. Those words would apply to anyone here.”
He would have liked to stalk out of the room and turn his back on whatever might happen here, Christy thought. But nevertheless, he stayed—perhaps because he was afraid to leave and miss what was about to take place?
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