by Jane Toombs
“We were looking for Amy,” Evan said. “She’s here somewhere. I know you wouldn’t have wanted her to miss the fire.”
The man shrugged. “I don’t like to push Amy,” he said.
“But Melantha…” Evan broke off. “Sorry. I forgot why I’m here. This is Danica Linstrom, Galt.”
Galt Anders, the director of Star-Fire. He moved toward her, an olive-skinned man with straight black hair worn above his collar. She looked into slanting brown eyes and suddenly recalled her mother speaking of a boy the teenaged Danica had begun to date.
“Beware of those dark Swedes, Danny. Tartar blood makes them different.”
“What do you mean, different?” Danica demanded of her mother.
“They can be cruel,” her mother said. “Be careful.”
Danica had ignored the warning, passing it off as another of her mother’s odd reactions to people, but she had lost interest in the boy and never did know him well.
Galt Anders was a similar physical type.
“I’m pleased you decided to visit us,” he said to her.
“I hope I’ll be able to fit in,” she said.
There was a silence. Have I said something wrong? Danica wondered. Surely Evan told him I was interested in working here.
“I—I told her about the horoscope.” Evan’s voice was uncharacteristically hesitant.
“Melantha Cross usually does the recruiting,” Galt .aid. “She seems to have a knack for finding the right people for Star-Fire. Melantha considers a horoscope absolutely essential for her evaluation.” He smiled. “I must admit she’s almost always right.”
“I don’t mind,” Danica said.
Galt headed for the living room and they followed. There were lights on now in the A-frame below, but the bonfire was gone, completely quenched so that only darkness remained.
Galt gestured toward the chairs, and as they seated themselves the door opened and a woman came in. Danica thought she’d never seen such a beautiful face. She found herself staring at the pale skin, so white as to appear bloodless, the huge golden eyes, the tumbled mass of dark curls cascading down. The woman wore a black cape with the hood thrown back and she stood in the doorway, striking, dramatic, not quite real.
“Come in, Melantha.” Did Galt’s voice hold a trace of irony?
“Where’s Amy?” Melantha asked. Her voice was low, husky, as attractive as she was.
“Hiding,” Evan said.
“Melantha, this is Danica Linstrom,” Galt said. “She’s heard of Star-Fire and Evan has told me she’s already working with the energies. Perhaps you…”
“We don’t need anyone else,” Melantha broke in.
“That’s not true,” Galt said calmly. “You’ll have a chance to interview Miss Linstrom tomorrow.”
Galt and Melantha stared at one another until Melantha made a slight gesture of acceptance with her hand. She still stood by the door, although she had closed it behind her.
“I’ve come for Amy,” she repeated.
Despite Melantha’s beauty, Danica was reminded of a bird of prey, imperious and demanding, and Amy’s fear came back to Danica again as though the child herself was seeking sanctuary.
“Amy’s afraid.” The words came from Danica involuntarily.
“Of me?” Melantha laughed. “Of Galt? Evan?”
“She—she’s just afraid,” Danica said, now defensive.
Melantha began to speak, stopped, and drew in her breath. Danica shifted uncomfortably under her stare. They were all looking at her, the three of them. The room was quiet; Danica waited. Was it she they watched or was it something behind her? She began to turn her head, then felt a gentle touch, felt fingers moving through her hair.
Slowly, carefully, she shifted until she could see the child standing beside her chair. Amy. A small girl, of slight build, with grey eyes. Eyes that didn’t meet Danica’s. Amy’s entire attention was fixed on Danica’s red hair. With a quick movement, the child bent her head to rest her cheek for a moment against the hair, then she resumed her careful fingering, holding a strand between her palms, letting them slide back and forth. Danica said nothing, not moving.
“Red hair,” Evan said softly.
Melantha swooped toward the child and gathered her into the folds of the cape. Danica half rose in her chair, words of protest forming in her mind. But Galt nodded.
“Goodnight, Amy,” he said. “Come and see me again.”
Danica saw the little girl didn’t struggle, seeming to accept being carried off by Melantha, and so she remained silent.
“I’ll take Danica to a guest room,” Evan said. “Lydia’s?”
Galt got to his feet. “Yes, of course.” He waited until she rose and then took her hand, turning it over so the palm was uppermost. Danica had the impulse to close her fingers, hide her palm lines from him, but that was silly—he was no Madame Rena.
He dropped her hand. “You must be tired from your drive,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Outside, Evan didn’t climb back down the steps, but led her along a path that ran at a slight upward angle from Galt’s house and then straightened. She saw another round house outlined against the stars but they passed it, then another.
“She doesn’t like me,” Danica said to Evan.
“Who?”
“Melantha.”
He made a noncommittal sound.
“She said you didn’t need me here, didn’t need anyone.”
“Well, we’ve been getting along all right.”
“Then why did you tell me…?”
Evan squeezed her arm. “I liked you. I mean—well, I didn’t think you’d actually show up here…”
She couldn’t pull away from him or she’d lose the pathway, but Danica withdrew mentally. He’s lying, she thought. In L.A. he told me outright there was a staff shortage here; he urged me to apply. And when he got back here from the seminar he told Galt Anders about me, he admitted that. What’s happened between then and now?
“Have you hired anyone new lately?” she asked.
“No. But as Melantha said, we’re getting along fine.”
“How long has she been with the group?”
“From the beginning. I’m the latest recruit who’s stayed on and I’ve been here two years.”
“How about Amy?”
“Amy? She’s just come to stay with us.”
“She’s disturbed.” Evan stopped at the next house and opened the door, the light from inside slanting across his face. It had the hard look she’d noticed earlier.
“Many of the children are upset when they first come, it’s a change, they take time to adjust. For the most part they’ve done so quickly. Of course, some of them come here in bad shape emotionally.” He said the phrases mechanically.
“I realize that, but…”
“This is where you’ll sleep,” he said.
The bedroom was small but cozy. Evan left her quickly, saying he was next door, he’d see her tomorrow. Danica brushed her teeth in the bathroom and decided to shower in the morning. The bed covering was a velour spread of intricate design in oranges and yellows. Danica folded the spread back and reached to turn down the sheets. As she did so something scuttled from under the pillow and hurried across the blanket, the legs making a dry, rasping sound as it moved toward her.
Danica jerked her hand away and stepped back from the bed. It was grotesque, menacing. She’d never seen one before, but she knew this was a scorpion, with a poisoned stinger in its tail.
Chapter Four
Danica shrank against the dresser, staring at the scorpion in her bed. It seemed to move sideways, the barbed tail curved over its body. She looked quickly about her for something to smash it with and finally took off her shoe, then realized the bed was too soft a surface. Gingerly she prodded at the scorpion with the shoe held in her hand until the insect dropped onto the floor, then she stepped on it with her still-shod foot, grinding the scorpion into the pile of the carpet.
&
nbsp; She took a deep breath before she lifted her foot and examined the dead scorpion. Using tissues, she cleaned the rug, flushing the remains down the toilet. Then she flung the bed covers back and examined every inch of the bed. There were no other insects, poisonous or not. Her eyes traveled around the room, up the walls, across the ceiling. What was it her roommate had once said about scorpions?
Angie was from Texas, which, according to her, was the home of more poisonous insects and animals than any other state in the union. “Always look for black widow spiders when you find a scorpion,” she’d said to Danica. “They prey on each other and where you find one…”
Or, “Scorpions crawl along the ceiling, then all of a sudden, plop, into your bed…”
Danica shook her head. She wouldn’t remember any more of Angie’s Texas lore. There were no more insects in this room and she was going to get into bed and go to sleep without worrying.
But once in bed, she lay on her back, rigid, waiting to feel something land on her face, the sting of the barbed tail. With an effort, she gathered awareness into her brain, as the instructor at the university had taught her. Then she thought of her star of light energy and imagined that energy coursing through her, washing away anxiety and tension, making her relax.
She awoke to daylight. Sitting up in bed, she listened for the sound of activity outside her room, but heard nothing. She got up and showered, then dressed in gold pants and a yellow sweater. As she was brushing her hair, a tap came at the door.
“Come in.”
The girl who entered was about her age, with short brown hair and blue eyes. She smiled nervously. “I’m Lydia Jenkins,” she said. “This is my house and we’re about to have breakfast if you’d like to join us.”
“Thank you,” Danica said. “I’m…”
“Oh, I know who you are, Galt told me. I hope you like oatmeal because this is the morning I fix oatmeal.”
She acts uneasy, Danica thought. Defensive. Certainly she can’t be afraid of me.
“Oatmeal’s fine,” Danica said. “I’ll be right out.”
In the modern kitchen two children sat around a Formica-topped table while the third sat underneath.
“Maxwell, you come out of there,” Lydia said. “If you don’t want to eat with us you don’t have to, but you’ll miss meeting someone new. She’s a surprise for this morning.”
After a moment a blond head poked out from under the table and pale blue eyes peered cautiously at Danica.
“Hello, Maxwell,” she said. “I guess I’d better be careful or I might sit in your place. I wonder which chair is yours? If you were sitting there then I’d know which chair it was.”
The blond boy inched out farther.
“I wonder where Maxwell’s chair is?” Danica went on. “Is it this one?”
In a rush, the boy got to his feet and threw himself onto one of the chairs, then stared triumphantly at Danica.
She smiled at him, then at Lydia and the other two children. Lydia’s lips twitched into a partial smile.
Doesn’t she like me? Danica wondered. What’s the matter with her?
“Do each of the houses have three children and an adult?” she asked.
“It varies. Galt doesn’t have any permanent children, but any of them can be guests there if they want.”
“Like Amy?”
“Oh, Amy…” Lydia’s words trailed off. “You’ve met her already? She’s, well, she’s different.” She looked around the table. “You know Maxwell. And this is Rosa and Dennis.” Lydia nodded toward the children.
“This is Danica,” she said to them.
Danica greeted them one at a time, by name. Only Rosa answered. Rosa, she could see, had Down syndrome.
“Stay?” Maxwell asked.
“Stay?” Lydia repeated. She glanced at Danica. “Well, I don’t know. We’ll see.”
Danica talked to the children as she ate her breakfast, eliciting a smile now and then and an occasional word. They were between eight and twelve years of age, she decided. With mentally disabled children, age was often difficult to judge.
Breakfast over, the children began cleaning up the kitchen according to their ability to do so, but when Danica started to help, Lydia stopped her.
“I think you should go see Melantha,” she said.
“Why? Oh, you mean for the horoscope?”
Lydia nodded. “She’s in the house on the other side of Evan’s, next to Galt’s, two houses away from this one.”
Danica felt she had no option but to do as Lydia suggested. She was disappointed that Evan hadn’t come by. Of course she wouldn’t expect Galt Anders to take any further interest in her unless she qualified as an employee, but Evan might have.
She suddenly remembered moving to a different neighborhood in Santa Barbara when she was nine years old. This was how it had been, the children on the new street eyeing her, waiting to see if she would turn out to be the right material for a friend. She was on trial here, too, not accepted at all until she proved to be compatible. But—a horoscope? What could that tell them about her?
Outside, she stood looking at Star-Fire. The round house snuggled into hills that curved in a semicircle around the A-frame Chanting Room below. She counted twelve houses, seemingly identical in construction, not perfect circles, because the back of each house fitted into the hillside and the roof lines came to a shallow peak, the chimneys reminding her of the stems on jack-o’-lanterns.
Danica began walking toward Melantha Cross’s house. There were no trees along the hills, but some bushes had been planted around each house, and some native shrubs grew along the path that had been cut into the hillside leading to each of the houses, up around the back, then on to the next. As she skirted Evan’s house, a large cat with charcoal fur darted onto the path ahead, stopped, and turned to stare at her with yellow eyes. It yowled once, a high-pitched, unpleasant sound, then marched ahead of her as she came to Melantha’s.
Then the cat sat in front of the door, waiting for her. When she came near, it yowled again and the door opened.
“Have you brought me someone, Dido?” Melantha’s husky voice was caressing as she addressed the cat. She looked at Danica.
“What are you?” she asked abruptly.
“Why—I—I’m a nurse. I…”
Melantha waved her hand back and forth. “Not that. What sign? When were you born? I can usually tell, but you’re blurred.”
“Oh. I’m a Sagittarius. I was born November twenty-sixth.”
Melantha frowned. Danica watched the perfect face and thought again how beautiful she was. Thirty? Thirty-five? Impossible to tell.
Melantha stepped aside. “Please come in,” she said. She led the way down a short hall to a closed door which she unlocked. “The children are so curious,” she murmured.
Inside was a room with no windows. Painted a deep blue, it seemed to close around Danica as she entered, and yet also gave an impression of being a larger room than it was. There was no furniture except for two chairs and a wide oak table, the top of which was covered with charts. Maps of the earth and of the heavens hung on the walls. There were two doors besides the one in the hall, but one was painted black.
Melantha indicated a chair. After closing the door, she sat in the other chair. “You’re sure of your birthdate?” she demanded.
“Yes. It’s on my birth certificate.”
The dark woman shook her head. “A Sagittarius,” she said. “I can’t understand…”
“Well, I was an eight-month baby,” Danica offered. “A month premature, according to my mother.”
“Yes, of course, that explains it,” Melantha murmured. “You were meant to be a Capricorn. There was interference, I can feel the interference.” She brought her head up and looked into Danica’s eyes. Melantha’s irises were golden like her cat’s, but they didn’t resemble a cat’s eyes. Once again Danica thought of the brutal, bright gaze of a hawk, an eagle.
“Do you know the exact hour of your birth, so I
can erect a horoscope for you?”
“Midnight.”
“Exactly?” Melantha frowned again.
“Yes. That’s why I remember.”
“Where were you born?”
“In Arizona, south of Phoenix.”
“I need an exact location.”
“On the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation,” Danica said. “At Gu Vo. It’s practically in Mexico.”
“You’re Indian?”
“No.”
Melantha’s gaze sharpened, but she said nothing more. She looked down to busy herself with the charts in front of her. Occasionally she glanced up at the star maps on the wall. At last she looked at Danica.
“That’s all,” she said.
“You don’t need any more information?”
“I’m a Scorpio, you know,” Melantha said obliquely.
Danica could think of no reply.
“I see you don’t understand. Scorpios are often able to perceive more than the other signs.” Melantha inclined her head toward the black door. “My meditation room,” she said. “Once inside I’m insulated from all stimuli. I learn much from meditation.”
Danica smiled politely, then rose from her chair. She felt at a loss to know what to do next, but she didn’t want to ask Melantha. The older woman seemed to operate on a different frequency from Danica’s and Danica didn’t understand her. Dislike was perhaps too harsh a word, although she’d felt last night that Melantha didn’t like her.
A Scorpio, she thought. The Scorpion was the symbol of the sign as the Archer was for Sagittarius. The thought of the insect in her bed came into her mind.
Melantha smiled, a knowing, unpleasant smile as though she saw what Danica was thinking.
“When will you be finished?” Danica said.
“My report goes directly to Galt,” Melantha told her. “He’ll let you know sometime today.” She looked down at the charts again and Danica let herself out of the room, then out of Melantha’s house.
She retraced her steps back toward Lydia’s house. She was passing behind Evan’s when the sensation of being watched crept over her. Hidden eyes following her. Why? Danica glanced all about but saw no one.