Silence from the back seat was damning. The Kennedys knew nothing of Sam. Walker could almost feel her pain as Sam took up where Cass’s silence left off.
“I’m damned tired of not belonging,” she said. “But first, we need to know more about the skeleton buried on the mountain. How much do you know about that?”
Walker wanted to pump his fist and cheer. Cass was an intimidating old hag, almost as bad as Carmel, but she had met her match in Sam.
He would have preferred to have had this conversation where he could study Cass’s body language, but an occasional glance in his mirror would have to suffice. He had to take this brief interval of captivity before Cass disappeared inside her weird mansion again.
“A skeleton?” Cass sounded alarmed, but a glance in the mirror showed sadness. “We knew the vortex was drawing on negativity, but a skeleton?”
Sam left the opening to him.
“Do you remember a Michael Walker from almost eighteen years ago? He would have been staying at the lodge and asking questions around town.” Walker knew how ludicrous the question sounded. Cass had no reason to know about resort guests. But she was his only connection to that period.
“The year Geoff died, I vaguely remember the sheriff asking after a missing tourist. But we had no reason to believe the tourist had died in Hillvale.” She sat there sadly, gathering her thoughts. “It must have been his spirit who spoke to us on Zack’s birthday a year or so later. He didn’t give his name. We were trying to contact Zack, to see if he was in a happier place.”
Walker gritted his teeth. He handed his phone to Sam so she could look up the genealogy he’d downloaded. She poked through it, apparently understanding his need to confirm dates.
“What did the spirit say?” Sam asked as she scrolled.
“Mostly, the stranger wanted to express love for his family, but he was too furious to be clear. And we were too afraid to listen. We were expecting Zach’s gentle presence, and this one was just too forceful. We could try again, I suppose.”
“We tried that. Tullah claims he is too far out of reach to speak to us, but her spirit guide warned of evil and fire and said to tell his son to beware.” Sam sent him a guilty look. “I didn’t know she meant you.”
Walker wanted to rage about the non-validity of spirit guides and voodoo and schizophrenic voices, but Sam and Cass were the public he was currently serving, not a family he had to fix. He bit his tongue and played along. “It sounds like Tullah knows something. Was she here eighteen years ago?” He might not believe in spirits, but he’d learned there was a kernel of truth behind every mystery the Lucys produced.
“No, Tullah joined us a year or more after Katrina wiped out her home. She’s the one who told Dinah the café was available. Natural disasters bring out the best and worst in people, and Dinah had been having a hard time in New Orleans.”
Walker was afraid the old woman was wearing out and starting to ramble, but all information was useful. “Who else was there back then?”
Cass hesitated. He had no way of knowing if she was gathering memories or choosing her lies. A little of both, he suspected. “Daisy, of course. She walked through time and found us when she ran away from home. Susan McQueen was part of the commune. She was at the séance, but she doesn’t participate much in the town otherwise. Marta Josephine was probably there. She’s been with us since she left Berkley.”
“What about Valdis?” Sam asked.
“Valdis and your mother are sisters, dear. Their parents owned the commune’s farm, and they grew up in Hillvale. But Valdis left for college, and Susannah left after Zach died. Valdis only recently returned after some tragedy she won’t tell us about.”
“Harvey and Aaron?” Walker asked impatiently. He couldn’t imagine any of those unworldly women hitting his father over the head. Harvey, the long-haired musician, and fastidious Aaron, the antique dealer, were probably too young, but he had to try.
“Oh, Harvey is a friend of Monty’s. He’s not been around long. I’m not certain what brought Aaron up, but it was long after that particular séance. He doesn’t participate in them anyway.”
“So the circle consisted of you, Daisy, Susan, and Marta?” Sam asked. She appeared to be typing notes into his phone.
“Yes, that sounds about right. It probably would have been better if we could have had some men, if the spirit was male, but we didn’t.”
Walker seriously doubted that four irrational women had any idea of what happened to his father. But he had only straws to grasp, so he tried to keep them sorted. “Once you knew there was a spirit floating around, did you even attempt to figure out why?”
“Evil has inhabited the land around the resort for as long as we know,” Cass said as pragmatically as if she claimed the lodge had termites. “We avoid going there. All we could do was try to reach out for the spirit and lay him to rest. If Tullah couldn’t reach him, then we may have at least partially succeeded.”
“Valdis goes up on the mountain,” Sam pointed out.
“Valdis walks with death. She must learn to be strong. But this is why we need you, Sam. The evil must be eradicated before any more are hurt. Daisy sees disaster in the future if we don’t act.”
Cass was so insistent, that Walker would almost have listened—had she said an arsonist was on the loose or tree beetles were destroying the pines. But evil and spirits did not compute. Maybe they were metaphors.
Before the old lady could lay a guilt trip on Sam, Walker intervened. “You drugged Sam and sent her blindly up an unfamiliar mountain into the arms of strangers. I’m thinking she’s better off going far, far away, maybe looking for her mother to get the real story.”
In the mirror, he read a flicker of panic on Cass’s face. Good. Mushrooms had been a damned dangerous trick.
“He’s right, Cass,” Sam said. “It was a horrifying experience. If I have no guarantee that it won’t happen again, I can’t stay in Hillvale.”
“You needed to see it with clear eyes,” Cass repeated, almost angrily. “Your mother sent you to be brainwashed by the most deadly Nulls she could imagine. You would never have opened your eyes to possibilities if I hadn’t interfered. Did you feel the earth? Could you not sense what was happening? Can you understand that Mariah and the others aren’t freaks?”
Sam waited so long to reply that Walker almost missed his turn in anticipation of her answer. When it came, it wasn’t the one he wanted.
“Misguided, perhaps, but not freaks,” Sam said so quietly he almost didn’t hear her. “There’s a difference in the earth energy between one side of the vortex and the other.”
Walker had gone silent after Sam’s admission about feeling earth energy. She didn’t blame him. She’s always been aware of good and bad energies. It helped her know where to plant. She had just never known other people didn’t feel the same—like seeing colors others didn’t.
Letting Walker work it out for himself, Sam continued adding names to his phone as she dragged them out of Cass. Casting aside her whirling emotions, she focused on the here and now, aware of a subtle connection to her great-aunt beneath what was said aloud. If she believed that link—Cass was not telling all she knew.
Given what she already understood about the wily woman, Sam was inclined to believe this odd bond. To Cass, Walker was an outsider. In Cass’s mind, that kept him off the need-to-know list.
But in many ways—despite her hereditary status—Sam was also an outsider. She knew how that felt too well, and her shoulders twitched in discomfort. But in this case, maybe being an outsider was a good thing.
Once Cass insisted she didn’t know any other names for Walker’s list, Sam turned to face her and remonstrated, “You brought me to Hillvale for a reason, Cass. If you want me to be objective about the town’s problems, you have to tell the truth.”
“You are young,” she said with a weary wave of dismissal. “When you reach my age, you realize there are layers of truth, and the world consists of shades of gray. I
tell you what I know, not what I suspect.”
Unexpectedly, Walker agreed with her. “I don’t want speculation. Like Sam, I need to be objective. If you didn’t know my father, I believe you. He would have appeared to be any regular tourist. The question becomes—do you have any idea why a fraud investigator would have been in Hillvale?”
Sam raised her eyebrows at Cass’s silence. Walker slowed down to check the rearview mirror. But Cass was alert—and pensive.
“Eighteen years is almost a generation ago, dear,” she said at last. “We can’t bring your father back. But we can release the evil energy if we stir things up. We have enough trouble without adding to it.”
Can, not may. Sam shuddered. If she believed Cass. . . “The evil has already been stirred,” Sam corrected, before Walker could object. “The security manager at the resort was killed a couple of days ago.”
“Juan? Oh, that’s dreadful.” Cass gave a heartfelt sigh. “His poor mother. She had fourteen children. She was so proud of her son when he took the job at the resort. I didn’t have the heart to warn her that he would be surrounded by evil.”
“He was here eighteen years ago?” Walker asked immediately.
“Yes. Many of the lodge employees have been,” she conceded. “I don’t know most of them. I really didn’t know Juan that well. Juan’s parents moved down the mountain when the bank foreclosed on their little house.”
Cass waved a dismissive hand at Sam’s look. “I know, give me a minute. My memory isn’t what it used to be.” She sat silent, watching out the window as she gathered her thoughts. “The foreclosures started around twenty years ago. That’s about the time that Geoff began talking ski resorts and development and started buying up land his neighbors lost.”
Sam heard her bitterness. “Why did everyone start losing their homes?”
“The usual reasons—recession, the mill closing, a rockslide took out the road for nearly a year so tourists couldn’t get in, an avalanche of bad luck.”
“It happens,” Walker said curtly, keeping his eyes on the narrow switchback up the mountain. “California real estate is a shell game. Mortgage companies, developers, real estate agents promise the American dream. People overextend their finances to buy a piece of that dream in the belief that they’re on the way up in the world. First economic downturn, they’re out on the street. The rich developers sweep in, buy the foreclosed land for peanuts, build a new development, and resell at higher prices to the next fool.”
“Capitalism, dearest,” Cass said with a smile. “The biggest wolf wins.”
“And the sheep get eaten,” Walker countered. “If that’s the evil you’re battling, it’s pretty much worldwide.”
“Which doesn’t make it less evil, but no, this evil is innate. It feeds on souls.”
Before Sam could question this insane conclusion, Walker cursed. She turned back to glance out the windshield. Smoke billowed high above the trees.
The mountain was on fire.
Chapter 16
Morning, June 20
* * *
“Oh dear,” Cass murmured. “Is it the solstice already?”
Walker turned on his radio and hit the gas. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded as he took the curves at breakneck speed, siren screaming.
“Nulls once burned bonfires to ward off evil—like witches—on summer’s eve. The cards warned hostilities would commence on the solstice.” Cass peered out the window.
“I think that’s tomorrow,” Walker said after reporting the fire to the office. “And any fool burning in this drought needs to be horsewhipped.”
Meeting a line of cars exiting Hillvale, Walker flashed his lights and used the siren. They eased to one side so he could reach the parking lot. A line of traffic still streamed down from the resort. On a weekend, the lodge was packed—it was like watching money flow down the drain.
The chatter on the radio indicated the fire had been reported and emergency services were heading up, but Hillvale was a long way from anywhere.
“You ladies need to get out here,” Walker ordered, eyeing the lick of flame through the pines on the ridge.
“Does the resort have any earth movers?” Sam asked, not unbuckling.
“Monty does. He parks them in the town lot.” Cass did unbuckle, but only so she could open the door and hail Mariah. “Tell Monty to move the mountain,” she called.
Mariah signaled understanding and trotted off.
“Get out, Cass,” Walker said between clenched teeth. “I don’t have time to fight you.”
The old witch leaned over and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re not a fireman, dear. Direct traffic, keep Sam safe, and we’ll do the rest. We’re prepared for this.”
He only bit his tongue because she climbed out to join the rest of her coven gathering in the lot, carrying shovels and hoes. His blood pressure probably soared thirty points.
“Sam—” he said warningly.
“They’re going to cut a line between town and the fire. That fire is aimed for Hillvale, not the lodge,” she said acerbically. “Someone is literally and metaphorically trying to burn them out.”
That was craziness. And she believed it? He cursed again, turned the sirens back on, and began forcing traffic to the side of the road so he could reach the lodge. After years of sitting behind a desk, he indulged in the visceral satisfaction of active command again.
Except he couldn’t force the insane woman beside him to follow his orders.
While he maneuvered past hulking SUVs driven by terrified tourists, she leaned over to gaze up the mountain. “Looks as if it started on Menendez land. I don’t remember any tall trees there. I thought it had been logged.”
“Pines all around it.” Pines that would shoot sparks all over the mountain if the wind picked up.
“Water hoses won’t reach that far. How do they fight fire up there?”
He shut the sirens as he hit the parking lot where lodge guests still spilled from the building, carrying suitcases and children.
Children. They had effing damned children in the path of that fire. He watched a curly-haired toddler no older than Davy had been and his lungs ran out of air.
Focus, Walker. Resist the urge to grab the children and run. “Water trucks,” he said curtly. “Planes. They’re on the way. Clearing brush is the best thing we can do.”
He slammed out of the car, fighting his protective instincts. He couldn’t take care of Sam, and he sure as hell couldn’t take care of a hotel filled with people. But he had a job to do.
Walker watched warily as Sam let herself out the other side. Her elegantly boned face was so much like Cass’s it was eerie, now that he’d seen them together. Both women were poised in the face of danger. Sam’s stillness was almost terrifying, akin to a cougar that smells danger and freezes before leaping.
“It’s fueled on evil,” she murmured. “I can feel it flowing through the ground. Cass is right. Someone deliberately set that fire.”
Shit, back to crazy again. “Stay here. Don’t move or I put you in handcuffs.”
Lazy, lanky Harvey, the long-haired musician and wood-carver, hurried across the lot to add to Walker’s escalating fury and anxiety.
Sam was aware that—after all he’d done for her—she’d ticked Walker off, but the primal elements flowing through her were stronger than any need to please him. She felt as connected to the land as she did to Cass. She could feel the stress. It was an odd feeling, stronger than the ones she’d used for planting.
Walker’s stress was of a different sort. He’d donned his concealing sunglasses, and his expression was one of control so rigid that a muscle ticked in his jaw. He was watching the people pouring from the lodge with their belongings as if he wanted to make them all disappear.
A baby cried, a child shouted. He flinched, and his fists curled as Harvey approached.
The musician provided a welcome distraction. Harvey’s height gave him a lean look, but his black t-shirt r
evealed sinew and muscle. For a musician, he took athletics seriously, it appeared.
He held out one of his carved staffs to Sam. This one was a blond wood, slender, the tree branch’s original knobs and curves adding an almost feminine quality to it. The handle had been carved to resemble an antique sailing ship prow—a woman’s face with crystal blue eyes and hair streaming in the wind. Sam instinctively reached for it before he spoke.
“Protect the earth,” Harvey commanded.
Beside her, Walker nearly growled. Harvey loped off to help Carmel’s brother haul his paintings to a battered Land Rover. The stout real estate mogul Grumpy Gump was already loading stacks of small canvases into the vehicle. For the first time, Sam noted gray shooting through the mogul’s thick blond hair.
Kurt and Carmel Kennedy were there, assisting their guests in their departures.
Sam’s staff twitched. She had no idea what that meant, but after being trapped and helpless these last days, she needed her self back. She glared at Walker. “Handcuff me, and you can arrest me for assaulting a police officer.”
“That would be a reverse policy. I mean it, Sam. Don’t be part of the problem,” he ordered.
“I think we’re all part of the problem, but that fire up there is manmade. I can feel the malice burning.” Torn between intellectual obedience and the innate sensation of knowing how the earth felt, Sam’s two heritages battled for control.
Even as she spoke, one of the resort’s uniformed security guards raced down the hillside, shouting, “It’s a cross! The crazies are burning a cross!”
“No, they’re not.” At that deliberate slur, Sam chose sides and started toward the path into the woods. “The Lucys are in town, blocking evil with bulldozers.”
She said it for Walker’s benefit, not the guard, who was too far away. Walker grabbed her elbow and swung her around.
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