I frowned. Need help? Why should she need help? “You wouldn’t back out just because of a problem with your cell phone, would you?” I pressed. “It sounds like a great adventure. Anyway, surely there’s no place so remote these days that it isn’t serviced by one carrier or another.” I paused, then added teasingly, “Or maybe it’s Claire’s ghosts that are jamming up the signal. Maybe they don’t want anybody messing with their haunted house.”
Ruby hadn’t told me the whole story, only a few tantalizing bits and pieces. The gist of it seemed to be that her friend Claire would like to get the Blackwood mansion (the place she had just inherited) named to the National Register of Historic Places. Then she would turn it into a bed-and-breakfast and cash in on the tourists who visit the area. Round Top itself may be a tiny town, but it plays host to a large, twice-a-year antique fair; to the Round Top Festival Institute, which provides summer educational programs for young musicians (Caitlin is signed up for a violin clinic in July); and to Shakespeare at Winedale, a performance study program sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin.
But the old Blackwood mansion has something quite different going for it: an odd history and a persistent local reputation for being haunted. And although Ruby hasn’t confided the details—in fact, she has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about it—I’ve gathered that she has some sort of personal association with the place. She and Claire apparently visited there when they were girls. Ruby hasn’t said it in so many words, but I suspect that she might have been invited for a reason: to persuade the spirits to pack up and go somewhere else so Claire can live in the house without fear of…whatever it is she’s afraid of.
Now, if you’re acquainted with Ruby, you’re likely thinking that this is a natural mission for her, since she is adept at communicating with the Beyond. You’re imagining that she should be looking forward to the visit, like an eager-beaver bargain hunter suiting up for Black Friday. But I know Ruby pretty well, and I could read the signs. Whatever her reasons, she was not thrilled down to the tips of her red-painted toes at the idea of a ghost-busting holiday. Did she think there was something going on in that house that she should be afraid of?
“Jamming up the signal?” Nervously, Ruby fished in her bag for her sunglasses. “Don’t make fun, China. It’s not a good idea to laugh at things you don’t understand. You might antagonize…whatever’s in that house.”
“I’m not laughing,” I protested. “I would be the last one to aggravate the spirits.” That’s not true, of course. I was laughing because I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in haunted houses, either. But Ruby does, so I keep my heresies to myself. Still, it sounded to me as if Ruby was looking for a reason not to go. I could help with that.
“You know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” I remarked judiciously. “Claire is a big girl. Since it’s her house, she has a certain responsibility in the matter that you don’t have. And didn’t you say there was somebody else living there?”
Ruby nodded. “On the property, but not in the house. A man and his wife, I think. Caretakers. The woman told Claire they’d be glad to help if—” She broke off.
“Well, there, you see?” I replied brightly. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Claire and these people who live on the premises ought to be able to arm wrestle any ghosts who get out of line.”
Ruby gave me an oblique glance. “It’s not as simple as that, China. This thing with the house—it goes back a long way with me. Back to when I first began to understand that I could…that I wasn’t…” She gave me a smidgeon of a smile. “Wasn’t like other people. I didn’t know how to deal with it then. To be honest, I’m not sure I can handle it now.”
“Ah.” So that was it. It wasn’t just somebody’s haunted house, it was Ruby’s haunted house. And it wasn’t just one or two abstract ghosts lurking at the bottom of this, it was her very own personal dragon.
I’ve known for a long time that Ruby isn’t always comfortable with her psychic talents. She prefers to use her intuition to fool around with the easy stuff, like the readings she offers with her Ouija board or the I Ching. She’ll tackle the more intense stuff if she has to, but she’d really rather not—unless she feels absolutely compelled. Which she doesn’t, very often. In fact, she goes out of her way to avoid it. She deliberately tries not to intrude into people’s thoughts. (If she looked into mine, for instance, she’d see that while I sometimes think of her as a flake, I secretly admire her intuitive abilities, especially her skill at reading people’s fears and motivations.) And she doesn’t like to be pulled into scary events or places. I remembered once, when her intuition—or her gift or her sixth sense or whatever it is—led the two of us to a dead body stashed in the basement of an abandoned school in the little town of Indigo. After that, she swore off psychic stuff for months.
Now, I’m not psychic myself, not by a long shot, and I don’t pretend to understand how Ruby’s intuition operates. She doesn’t talk about it, and I don’t like to pry. But I’ve seen her in action often enough to know that she has an impressive talent. Whenever she uses it in a serious way, to deal with a serious matter, it’s a huge drain on her energy resources. It’s like she’s suddenly powered up by a massive electrical charge, and when it’s turned off, she’s limp and listless. Nobody wants to go through life like that: pumped up by something you can barely control, debilitated when the energy abandons you.
“Listen, Ruby, maybe you shouldn’t go,” I said. “If you’re at all apprehensive about this—”
She looked as if she were glad for my support. “You’re probably right. I think I shouldn’t. But Claire needs me. And if I don’t go, I’ll never know—” She pressed her lips together.
“Never know what?”
Her glance slid away. “Nothing.”
Never know what really happened in that house? Never know whether what she saw was actual or imaginary? Never free herself from this particular dragon? Never what?
But Ruby wasn’t going to tell me. “Just…nothing,” she said again. Her voice was thin.
I gave her a compassionate hug. “Stay here, Ruby. There’s always plenty to do.” This is true. If we aren’t waiting on customers or working in the tearoom or catering a party, there’s the bookkeeping, the inventory, the herb gardens, the classes. Being a small business owner is a full-time job and then some, with no overtime pay for nights and weekends.
She squared her shoulders with her Ruby-the-Brave smile. “I’m going,” she said, putting on her sunglasses. The yellow plastic rims added to her retro look.
“Okay, then go,” I said agreeably. “Have fun. Bust those ghosts. Purge those poltergeists. Get rid of those ghouls.” I was beginning to giggle. “Banish those banshees.”
“I’m gone,” she said, heading for the door.
“Exterminate those entities,” I chuckled. “Spook those specters.”
BANG. She slammed the door in my face.
I pulled it open and went after her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really, Ruby, I apologize.” I bent over to pick up a pot of mugwort and plucked a couple of gray-green leaves. “Here,” I said contritely, catching up to her and holding out the leaves. “Put these in your sandals. And when you get where you’re going, stick them under your pillow.”
Ruby pushed up her sunglasses and frowned down at the leaves. “Put them in my sandals? What in the world for?”
“Don’t you remember what Kathleen said at the workshop? About mugwort, I mean. It was one of the plants she talked about.”
The previous Saturday, Kathleen Gips had led a workshop for us on plant symbolism. Kathleen owns the Village Herb Shop on East Orange Street in Chagrin Falls, Ohio—and if you haven’t visited there, you really must. She is the leading American authority on florigraphy, the traditional vocabulary of herbs and flowers, and she speaks and lectures all over the country. She has done a couple of workshops here before, and it’s always standing room only for her program.
> “Mugwort.” Ruby thought for a moment, then rolled her eyes. “Okay, China, I give up. Maybe I skipped out to help Cass with the sandwiches when Kathleen was talking about mugwort. What did she say?”
“She said it symbolizes safe travel,” I replied. “During the Middle Ages, no traveler would ever start off on a hike without mugwort in both sandals and a poultice of mugwort leaves wrapped around his legs. It protected him from wild animals, sunstroke, and goblins.”
“I don’t know about wild animals, but where I’m going, goblins might be an issue.” Ruby took the leaves, pulled off her sandals, and inserted one leaf in each. She straightened, frowning. “What’s the deal with the pillow?”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’m surprised at you, Ruby. With all your witchy research, I thought you’d know about that. It has to do with astral travel, out-of-body experiences, that sort of thing. Mugwort under your pillow is like mugwort in your sandals, except for the psyche instead of the physical body. It’s supposed to protect you while it enhances your receptivity. Something like turning up the volume on your dream receiver, with a surge protector in case of lightning strikes.”
Chuckling, I held out the pot. “In fact, maybe you should just take the whole plant. If Claire’s ghosts are sending signals from the astral plane—”
Ruby snatched the pot. “Good-bye,” she said firmly, and started for her car, a yellow Chevy Cobalt parked at the curb. The gangly mugwort nodded over her shoulder.
“Good hunting!” I called, laughing as I waved. “Extinguish that ectoplasm!”
Had I but known, I would not have laughed.
Had I but known…
Chapter Two
Oleander. Nerium oleander. Oleander is considered to be one of the most toxic of commonly grown garden plants, its cardiac glycosides making it dangerous for both humans and animals. Despite its toxicity, however, ancient Mediterranean and Asian medical texts describe a variety of medicinal uses. It served as a folk remedy for skin diseases, asthma, epilepsy, and malaria, and was employed as an abortifacient, a heart tonic, and a treatment to shrink tumors and hemorrhoids. In China, the same cardiac glycosides that render N. oleander toxic also made it an important traditional treatment for congestive heart failure. A non-FDA-approved extract of the plant is currently being used as an experimental cancer treatment, with reported success.
Galveston, Texas, is known as the “Oleander City.” The first plants were brought from Jamaica by Joseph Osterman in 1841 as a gift to his wife. They flourished in the subtropical climate, the alkaline soil, and the salt spray of the Gulf of Mexico. The city is home to one of the most extensive collections of N. oleander to be found anywhere in the world
In the language of flowers, oleander signifies warning: “Act with caution. Be careful. Beware.”
China Bayles
“Herbs and Flowers That Tell a Story”
Pecan Springs Enterprise
Ruby turned up the car’s air-conditioning another notch and settled back in her seat. It was nearly eleven, and the morning traffic on Highway 290 had all but disappeared. The drive from Pecan Springs to Round Top took only two hours, and the day was glorious. The grass and trees were warmed by the bright spring sun in a clear, blue sky, with only a few storm clouds piled up along the eastern horizon. The bluebonnets had already bloomed and faded, but the roadsides were decorated with cheerfully variegated blankets of blue widow’s tears, purple verbena, burgundy winecups, bright yellow wild mustard, pink phlox, white prickly poppy, yellow-orange coreopsis, and the blossom-cloaked towers of Spanish dagger. Along the grassy median between the eastbound and westbound lanes, clumps of blooming oleander shrubs were shrouded in translucent clouds of pastel pink, red, and white. The radio was playing an old Frank Sinatra song, “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and Ruby hummed along.
As she drove, Ruby thought of what China had said—and what she hadn’t. Ruby knew, of course, what China had been thinking: that it was time she buckled up and stopped mourning for Colin. They hadn’t been married, for crying out loud—she wasn’t a widow. She should learn to love Hark the way Hark loved her. She should get on with her life. And all of it made perfect sense. China was right, as usual, her logic perfectly indisputable.
Like nobody’s loved you
Ruby sighed. Except that it didn’t work that way. Her grief for Colin (it didn’t matter that his name was Dan—she would always think of him as Colin) couldn’t be turned on and off like a stupid faucet. Most of the time, she managed to keep it hidden from everyone except China, but it was always there, come rain, come sun, a permanent sadness shadowing her heart. She valued Hark’s affection, and she appreciated his intelligence and his quiet kindness. She even enjoyed the occasional cowboy who found her attractive and sexy and with whom she had a brief and gratifying fling.
But Colin, dead, was as unrelenting as he had been in life. He haunted her still, just as if they had been married. Cloudy days, sunny days, he was always in her thoughts, a spirit who refused to be exorcised. And until he was gone, there was no room for Hark. Oh, she could pretend, but that’s all it was—just an act.
A slat-sided cattle truck passed her, an eighteen-wheeler loaded with a half dozen forlorn steers on their way to market, and Ruby slowed to let it move into the right-hand lane ahead of her. There was something else on her mind, something that China had not managed to guess—not yet, anyway. She was wondering whether it might be time to sell the Crystal Cave and her interest in their partnership. She had rejected the idea when it had first tiptoed into her mind, but it had returned, then hung around, and now seemed to be making an attractive nuisance of itself. Maybe, if she moved on to somewhere else, did something else, she could leave Colin’s ghost behind.
The truth was that, while she liked what she was doing, she had painted herself into a corner. There was simply too much administrative stuff, which was satisfying in its own way but was eating her alive. The irony of this, of course, was that she was the one who had proposed the tearoom and the catering service and had been eager to jump on Cass’ idea for home deliveries of gourmet meals. But while their three-ring circus (as China liked to call it) was still fun and interesting, it simply consumed too much time. She’d had to cut back on her teaching, for instance, which had always given her so much pleasure. When was the last time she had offered an I Ching class?
And she was neglecting her quilting and yoga and meditation—things that she especially loved to do, that energized her and kept her healthy and focused. She didn’t have to be psychic to recognize the signs and symptoms. She was trying to keep too many balls in the air at one time. She was on the slippery slope of too-much-to-do. At the bottom lay an arid desert littered with dried-up dreams. Burnout.
The radio DJ must have been theming his choices around rain songs, Ruby thought, for the next one he played was the old 1960s calypso piece, “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down.” She slowed, then swung off the four-lane highway and onto the asphalt road that headed south across green meadows and low, wooded hills.
She had been thinking about this problem—the threat of burnout and what to do about it—for several months now, as the feeling became more urgent. But selling the shop was problematic. The economy wasn’t all that great, and she didn’t know anybody who had the money to buy her out. And it had to be somebody she knew. The Cave was as dear to her as a child. She couldn’t bear the thought of handing it to a stranger. And it had to be somebody who understood what the business was all about, and who could teach the classes that brought people into the shop. Who did she know who could teach astrology, for heaven’s sake?
And then her sister—three years younger—had come back into her life. As kids, she and Ramona hadn’t been especially close, partly because of the age difference but mostly because they were just plain different. Sure, they had the same frizzy red hair and freckles, although Ramona was short and plump as a dumpling and Ruby was tall and pencil-thin. But the most significant difference had to do with something that wasn’t
visible to the ordinary eye: the share of Gram Gifford’s gift that each girl had inherited. Ruby had gotten almost all of it, although, when Ramona paid careful attention, she could sometimes tune in to what other people were thinking. And she could sometimes make weird things happen, moving things around and turning them upside down.
As they got older, the differences multiplied, Ruby becoming more laid back and easygoing, Ramona more competitive, especially when they were together. They had mostly gone their separate ways—until the previous autumn, when Ramona divorced her philandering husband, left her Dallas career in advertising, and moved to Pecan Springs. She had her own place now and pots of money (the divorce settlement had been a liberal one), and she was looking for a business to invest in. For a while, she had thought she might buy into the Hobbit House, a children’s bookstore next door to Thyme and Seasons. But she and Molly McGregor, the owner, hadn’t been able to come to terms. So she was still looking. And last evening, over dinner at Beans’ Bar and Grill, she had brought up the idea of buying a half interest in Ruby’s business.
“Or maybe more than half,” Ramona had said, popping a french fry into her mouth. “I have a hunch that you’re thinking of getting out of it altogether. Correct?”
Ruby didn’t answer directly. “Do you really think you’d like it, Mona? I know you could manage the business side of things—the inventory, the ordering, the bookkeeping. With your skills and experience, I’m sure that part of it would be easy. But you’ve never seemed very interested in…well, the occult.”
Ramona was intrigued by the tarot, she showed some promise with the Ouija board, and she knew her rising sign and what it meant. But that was the limit. And she definitely wasn’t a teacher. Even if she’d had the knowledge, she didn’t have the patience.
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