Lili let his comment pass. “Please talk, all of you. Conversation is natural and there’s no pressure of anything to happen. You’ll know when it’s time to be quiet.” In one hand she held the Herkimer Victor had given her.
After her invitation, some of them tried to talk, though a bit self-consciously. Not Victor however, and not Oliver. Hayden managed to speak casually to Nona about some problem he was having with a dying rhododendron. Eve asked a question about llamas and that freed Floris’s tongue, so that she told them about a llama baby that had been born that spring and was thriving.
All Christy’s senses were like antennae now—she had no control over them, so that what came to her was a disturbing rush of scattered thoughts, fears, anger, a jumble that seemed to gather in the room around her. Only a few times before had this happened to her, and it was difficult to endure. Lili had often said that her own psychic powers were stronger at night, so perhaps that was happening to Christy now. Her sensitivity was waking up, aware of the warring emotions that lay just below the surface in this room. If Lili wanted a serene, peaceful atmosphere, she wouldn’t find it here.
Lili’s eyes were closed. This would be the moment when she said a short, protective prayer—for herself, and for all those gathered here. One could become too open and vulnerable to restless spirits seeking a doorway into human life—so Lili would always ask for help and protection from a Higher Power, whatever name mortals chose to give it.
Except for Lili, perhaps the one truly serene person in the room was Nona. She would let all negativity flow away from her, so that she could open herself to whatever might happen. She might have moments of scoffing at her sister, but she was one of them, and psychic in her own way, whether she admitted it or not.
The sort of psychic who could dip into people’s minds might have read the secrets in this room, but psychic skills come in all shapes and sizes, and Christy’s own visions were not of others’ thoughts and motives, except as they came jumbled into this senseless bombardment that she longed to escape.
After a little while the talk died away of itself. Lili’s eyes were still closed, and she had drawn her trousered legs up into the lotus position. A hand rested on each knee, with the palms upward, receptive. The Herkimer held winking flames at its heart, where it lay upon one palm.
When Josef began to speak, they were all aware of his presence. The voice was different from Lili’s—a little deeper, and not as resonant. Like the flat tones of one unused to human vocal chords. His speech forms were stilted and a little antique, since he had lived in another time on earth.
“Good evening, friends,” he said.
Christy and Nona responded, knowing the ritual. No one else spoke. Victor seemed immobile, his back to the fire as he stared into shadows stirred by the flames behind him. Thrown into silhouette, he seemed a large and formidable figure. The room was quiet now, and even the turbulence of emotion that had swirled around Christy had grown still, as if in breathless waiting.
“You have pertinent questions to ask?” Josef inquired.
An awkward silence followed, until Nona spoke. “We are seeking someone who is no longer with us. A woman named Deirdre Mitchell. She has disappeared and we wish to find out what has become of her.”
“She is with you,” Josef said.
“You mean in reality? You mean she is alive?” The exchange was entirely between Nona and Josef now.
“Her reality is not your reality.” He elaborated a bit on this, as though he enjoyed the opportunity to be wordy.
“Is she happy, Josef?” Lili pulled him back.
“She is not happy. She seeks release.”
“Can we help her? Can we find a way to release her?”
Josef was silent for a moment. “I do not know. It is not clear at the moment. There is confusion.”
Hayden broke in, his voice harsh, and Nona, on his other side, put a quieting hand on his arm. With an effort he lowered his tone and went on. “I need an answer. A real answer. Is my wife alive or dead?”
“She is both,” Josef said. “It would be better to let her go. There can be danger otherwise.”
“Danger from Deirdre?” Hayden sounded derisive.
“From her captor,” Josef said. “There is hidden evil.”
A stir of movement whispered around the room and Lili opened her eyes as if even she had been startled. The stunned silence that followed was filled with unspoken questions, disbelief—perhaps even fear. The latter came through like a throbbing pulse in Christy’s temples, though she couldn’t detect its source.
Again Lili closed her eyes and began to sway gently from side to side.
“You have other questions?” Josef asked.
Christy spoke quietly. “There is a crystal called a Herkimer diamond that my mother is holding. This stone appeared on a kitchen counter at Redlands this morning. Can you tell us how it got there?”
Lili moved, holding up the stone.
“A malicious spirit is among you,” Josef said, and went on at some length in a discussion of such spirits.
“Does a name come to you?” Christy asked.
“A name . . . yes. The name is Rose.”
“Rose put the stone on the counter!” Christy exclaimed.
“No. There are animals involved.”
Floris broke in. “You mean my llamas? Rose and the llamas?”
“Yes. You will find the answers there, but you must know how to look. Where to look.”
Floris fumbled in her bag and took out the needlepoint. “What about this? How did it come to my llama pen?”
“Guard against malicious spirits,” Josef said portentously. “Do not open yourselves to evil.”
“That doesn’t tell us anything!” Floris cried.
Josef sounded fainter when he answered. “We are not omnipotent. We prefer to offer guidance. Not all can accept.”
Hayden broke in roughly. “This is mumbo jumbo—we’re not getting anywhere!”
Josef had begun to fade out. “I am sorry. It is necessary to find your own way. The channel is growing weaker. We must not ask too much on this occasion. She is very tired.”
Josef was gone, and Christy felt the same impatience with her mother’s mentor that she’d experienced before. Josef could confuse and even misdirect, though Lili claimed that he only intended for them to do their own thinking and create their own miracles.
Now Lili sat quietly with her eyes closed. She was indeed tired, yet she would be aware of all that had transpired. Even though she might not recall the exact words, the purport would stay with her.
Slowly a feeling of desolation and helplessness crept through Christy, shaking her physically. The pounding in her temples was not her own fear but the echo of someone else’s terror. Someone in this room. Fog drifted before her eyes—that thick, pale fog that often came before a vision. Gradually, as it cleared, she saw again that high place of Nona’s painting—the cliff whose foot they had come to. But now Christy stood alone, not on the path below but at the very edge of those high rocks from which Rose had fallen. No one else seemed to be about. The fear now was entirely her own.
A rainbow, rising out of mist, arched above the trees—a band of radiant color across the sky. As the vision grew clearer, the knowledge of her own imminent death was sharp in her mind. When the rainbow faded, she would be gone. An instant later the vision had vanished, and Christy sat trembling, her hands tightly clasped together.
Lili moved, stretched her arms widely, and spoke to them all.
“You didn’t thank Josef,” she said, gently reproachful.
“Thank him for what?” Oliver sounded as indignant as Hayden, yet he had asked no questions, thrown out no challenge. Nor had Eve. “Not one useful word came out of your friend, Miss Dukas. Is this what we were brought here for?”
“Perhaps no one asked the right questi
ons,” Lili said gently.
Hayden stood up, still angry. “I’m going home. This isn’t the way to find Deirdre.”
Victor, who had taken no part in what had happened, still sat cross-legged with his back to the hearth and the dying fire. “Maybe that’s your fault, Hayden,” he said. “When you let the shield come down, you’ll hear what you need to hear.”
Hayden swung around from the doorway. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I think you know.” Victor sounded strangely sad, and Christy, watching with her heart as well as her eyes, was aware of a curious wavering in Hayden Mitchell. He seemed to get himself under control immediately, however, and spoke more courteously to Lili.
“I’m sorry if I’ve disrupted what you’d planned, Miss Dukas. I’m not up to any more right now.”
“Hayden,” Eve said, “Josef spoke the truth when he said to let Deirdre go. Isn’t that what you must do?”
Hayden’s anger flashed in the look he turned upon Eve. She raised her hands in a defensive gesture. “Hey—I didn’t mean anything. Calm down!”
He gave them all a black look and went out the door. What a fiasco this had been, Christy thought, and wondered how her mother, who had roused all these emotions, could remain serenely calm.
Floris, who was paying no attention to anyone else, came to stand in front of Lili. “What did you mean about Rose and my llamas?” she demanded.
Lili shook her head. “You mustn’t confuse me with Josef. I can’t answer any of your questions myself. It’s only when Josef speaks through me that answers may be given. But only as he chooses. He is very wise, you know. Sometimes the words he speaks lead us to think more deeply. He makes us look for answers that may exist close to us—even inside ourselves—but which we don’t recognize. I believe he has stirred Hayden to some very deep and painful thinking.”
“I’ve had enough!” Eve said impatiently, not really listening. “Oliver, please take me home.”
Oliver seemed more shaken than angry. The mention of his wife’s name seemed to have upset him. “Yes,” he agreed, “let’s go right now.” He walked out of the room without a good night to anyone, and Christy heard his footsteps sounding loudly on the wooden planks of the bridge.
Eve took her leave more apologetically. She spoke to Lili, waved her hand at the others, and went hastily after Oliver, lest he drive away without her.
When Floris hurried after them to ask for a lift, only Victor remained. He hadn’t stirred from his place by the fire, and flames, leaping behind him in orange spears, threw his figure into sharp silhouette. Christy noted that from certain angles, and with certain lighting, Victor Birdcall could look like the portrait of some eagle-faced warrior from the past. Tonight the Indian connection was strong, and the words he had spoken to Hayden still puzzled and tantalized Christy.
When Lili stood up to stretch her arms toward the sky beyond the confines of Laurel House, it was as though she asked for help from the invisible heavens.
“The trouble is here on earth,” Nona said wryly. “But Josef was right and you are tired now. So am I. This really wasn’t a good idea. Everyone’s more riled up than ever. Let’s go downstairs and turn in. You staying for the night, Victor?”
He gave her his faint semblance of a smile. “I want to talk to Christy.” He rose with a quick, lithe movement and stood rocking on the balls of his feet.
Nona said, “He’s all yours, Christy. But watch out for redskins! Good night, both of you.”
In contrast to her earlier guise of serenity, Lili’s brightness and optimism seemed quenched, and she looked almost forlorn. Christy went to her mother quickly and put her arms about her, as she seldom dared to do.
“It’s all right,” she told her. “Something will come out of this, even if Josef wasn’t very clear.”
Lili rested her cheek against Christy’s. “Of course. We must be patient. There was too much disharmony tonight. Too much anger and fear.”
“Could you tell who was afraid?” Christy asked.
“No. There seemed a miasma—a sickness.”
“Yes, I felt it too.”
“Perhaps,” Lili said, “that’s what Josef intended—to bring the wounds to a festering that would expose the poison. Then the common good will result.” She held up the Herkimer. “See! Its fires are dulled. You must return it to the Sun Wheel, Victor.”
When he had taken it, Nona said, “That’s enough for now. I’ll go downstairs with you, Lili. Good night, Christy, Victor.”
When they’d gone, Christy opened the balcony door, so that cool, Blue Ridge air could sweep out the smell of incense and whatever synthetic odors had mingled in the warm room. There was no trace of any ghostly heather scent now. When she closed the door and turned around, Victor was waiting for her. He had left his place by the hearth and stretched himself out in a chair.
“Go ahead—ask,” he said.
Both his perception and his abruptness startled her. “You’re such a secret man. You always know how to put a wall around yourself that not even Lili can penetrate.”
His remote smile neither accepted nor denied. “Josef spoke the truth, but who will listen?”
“What was true? I don’t think anything specific was said.”
“What about the connection between Rose and the llamas?”
Christy thought of Donny and the manuscript Rose had left behind. She didn’t want to give away the boy’s secret, so she spoke cautiously.
“I believe that Rose was using the llamas in a book, though her manuscript has never been found.”
“It won’t be,” Victor said. “Not until Donny makes up his mind.”
“He’s told you about this?”
“He left the manuscript with me. He thought I would make a good recipient for his secret.”
Excitement quickened in her. “You’ve looked at it then?”
“Donny asked me not to.”
Christy stared at him, and Victor met her look calmly. In the beginning she had disliked and distrusted him. But she had begun to reject her first careless impressions. She had never really looked deeply enough into Victor. He was secretive, yes, but a sense of respect and liking for him was growing in her. She could understand something of what Nona discerned in Victor Birdcall. He had lived through his own tragedy and found his own path toward healing.
“I’m glad you’ve kept your word to Donny,” she told him. “He said he had those pages and that he’d put them in a safe place. He was going to get them for me, but I think he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to look at them. At least, not yet. Do you suppose they could possibly give any of the answers that Josef didn’t manage tonight?”
“Josef told us a lot. He spoke of Deirdre needing to be released from her captor. That was pretty definite.”
“If we take it literally. But he could have meant it in a more subtle sense—her spirit held captive on this earthly plane, perhaps?”
“That too. Sometimes I’ve almost sensed her about—at least some essence that stands for Deirdre. Not just her perfume or white dress. Those seem pretty obvious.”
“You mean that one of us could have arranged the scent ahead of time?”
“Perhaps. There must have been opportunity.”
Christy sighed. “I don’t understand anything—yet I have an almost mystical sense of Deirdre and what she was like, even though I never met her.”
Victor was silent, as though he moved away into his own guarded thoughts.
“Anyway,” she went on, “it’s Hayden I’m sorry for. I don’t know what he’s fighting—aside from his own terrible loss that he can’t accept.”
“Perhaps he is the captive who most needs release.”
“You told him he needed to let down his shield—what did you mean by that?”
“That’s for Hayden to say. Good night, Christy.”
She stopped him before he reached the door. “Shall I ask Donny to let us both see whatever it is Rose put into her manuscript?”
Victor’s look seemed pitying—as though he had read her better than anyone else. “You need many answers, Christy Loren. Come and sit in Deirdre’s Sun Wheel. You may find guidance there.”
He went out the door, and the empty room closed about her—filled now with silent echoes of the words that had been spoken here tonight. They chattered through her consciousness, tugging, demanding—as though they cried out for an understanding she didn’t know how to achieve.
Her brain, her very spirit, felt utterly weary, and she went downstairs to bed.
It was clever of me to steal that half bottle of Deirdre’s scent. This afternoon, while Dukas was resting—for her big night!—and the others were out wandering around, leaving doors unlocked, I was able to drive up there and walk quite openly into the living room to sprinkle drops of perfume in the incense burners. A fine effect!
It’s necessary to keep Hayden off balance until I can be sure of what I must do. Josef’s cryptic remarks only muddied the waters. Just the same, he came too close for comfort—if someone had been able to translate. Dukas will be gone very soon, and Josef doesn’t come in through anyone else, so that risk will be past.
Victor may have begun to suspect—something. But he won’t act. His own experiences have made him wary. About Christy, I’m still uncertain. She’s exploring too far afield, but she may be more sensitive than she’s willing to accept. I should have acted more forcefully when I had the chance. If intuition really speaks to her, it might be all over for me.
Before I deal with Christy again, there is Oliver. He won’t mean to speak out—he’s too frightened. But if his fear overpowers him, then what? He isn’t the man I thought he was, and his weaker side is disturbing.
Perhaps I have an amusing solution.
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