If he didn’t show her where it was, she’d traipse all over creation in search of it. Aaron stood and loomed over her, testing his ability to intimidate.
She glared back defiantly and didn’t budge. So much for that hope.
“I’ll show you the boulder—if you’ll take me to meet your insane great-great-aunt.”
He’d had all evening to work out that demand. He still wasn’t entirely certain why instinct said he had to meet a time traveler.
He had the horrifying notion now that it was because he wanted to know more about the stubborn, aggravating, glowing gold leprechaun who’d landed on his doorstep.
Natalie had promised to send him angels. He was pretty certain, despite her unearthly innocence, that Hannah wasn’t one.
Twelve
“I don’t know why you want to waste your time visiting a ninety-three-year-old mental patient,” Hannah griped as Aaron drove his van down the highway the next morning.
She had a nervous feeling that she did understand, but she didn’t want him to take an interest in her or her near-to-nonexistent abilities. And she really wasn’t ready to tackle her family just yet, although she supposed she should. That was the only reason she was in his van right now. She had no other means of visiting the city.
“I don’t either.” Brown hand on the steering wheel, he fiddled with the audio. “But you’re hell-bent on learning things you know nothing about, and that isn’t healthy.”
She could explain why nothing she did was healthy, but that wasn’t any of his damned business. “This won’t help find Carmel’s killer.”
“Let Walker find a killer. That’s not our job. We’ll go in, have a nice visit, eat lunch somewhere that doesn’t include bean sprouts, and then map out a plan on the way home.” He tuned in a classical station from his phone.
Her mouth watered at the thought of good Chinese, or maybe Thai. Positive—she should think positively. “It won’t be a nice visit for you. The home will call my parents. Every relative available on short notice will descend on us. You’ll hate every minute.” That thought made her smile—see that was positive.
“Charming. You could have warned me sooner.” He didn’t turn the van around.
“Tell me more about this plan we’re to map out,” she suggested, cheering up by the minute.
“Not until we see if I come out of this alive,” he muttered. “Do you have a plan for telling your family why you’re visiting a mental patient?”
She grinned at the dozen replies immediately coming to mind. She settled on the easiest one. “I’ll tell them I’m thinking of having myself committed.”
“Oh good, that will do it,” he said sardonically. “I’ll tell them I’m your doctor, and you’ve been behaving irrationally. I’m guessing your family will be happy to agree.”
“They won’t care one way or another,” she said with a dismissive wave. “I’ve been on my own since fifteen. My family accepted that I have an encyclopedia for a brain, and that there isn’t much they can tell me. I have a small trust fund that financed my education and travels. They all have their own interests, so it works out.”
He apparently stewed over that the rest of the way into the city. Hannah directed him to the small, exclusive home Aunt Jia had chosen to live out the rest of her days. Time travel had some benefits. Aunt Jia was not a poor woman.
Aaron said nothing as they presented ID at the gate, parked in the landscaped lot, and wandered a garden path back to a private courtyard where a keypad allowed her to type in her password.
“As the song goes, Aunt Jia can check out any time she likes.” Hannah tried for cheerful, but losing one’s mind wasn’t a cheerful business.
“But she can never leave?” He finished the refrain, showing he was paying attention.
“I’m not certain she knows how any longer. You’ll see.” It had been several years since she’d last visited family. Her great aunt had been spry and bright and had called her Mei.
Hannah opened the gate into her aunt’s cement yard. Potted plants thrived, evidence that her aunt still maintained her gardening skills. A small round table and two chairs offered a place to sit in the sun. The door was open as if they were expected. Hannah pushed a button that emitted the music of wind chimes.
“Come in, come in, I have your teacakes ready,” a faint voice called from the interior. “Your mother is in Portland this week but she sends her love. I believe some of the cousins are coming to make certain you aren’t here to talk me out of my fortune.”
Hannah grinned. “Having one of your mean days, Aunt Jia, are you?” She led the way to the tiny gallery kitchen.
She hadn’t called to tell her aunt they were coming.
Jia may have once been five-feet, at most. Bent and shrunken with age, she didn’t reach that any longer. Still, her gnarled hands reached for the teapot with steady confidence. “Sorry, it happens sometimes. Your cousins don’t seem able to comprehend just how much I know and see.”
Her aunt looked up, and her long, narrow eyes widened. “Ah, your prince has come! It was only a matter of time. I’m so glad you’ve finally found him again. This time, don’t let him slip through your fingers.”
Aaron offered a courtly bow. If he was nonplussed by Jia’s reaction, he didn’t show it. “My lady, it is a pleasure to meet you.”
Jia laughed. “I like this one. Come along, Mei, let us wait for your cousins. Bring the tea tray, please.”
Mei, the name Jia had called her last time. Hannah couldn’t explain any of this to Aaron, so he’d have to just observe.
“We’ve come to pick your brain, Ayi.” Hannah used the easiest term for aunt, to remind Jia who she was. “How did you learn to return from your time travels?”
She didn’t look at Aaron as she set the tea tray on the low table beside her aunt’s chair. Although Jia seemed to accept him as someone she knew, he wasn’t family. He didn’t get to interfere.
“I just do, dear. I’m there, then I’m not. That’s the last of the lotus blossom. Drink while it’s hot.” She poured the tea—which had been made from teabags and not lotus blossoms.
“Don’t eat or drink anything,” Hannah whispered to Aaron, before setting her cup to one side.
“Your tea is always delicious, Ayi. So you simply touch an object and see another time?”
“The missionary is late,” Jia replied. “Check with the maid to see if she can see them.”
Which probably meant her cousins were on the way. Unruffled, Hannah accepted a hard cookie her aunt passed to her. “I am sure they’re coming up the road. Give them a few minutes. What era do these cups represent?” She examined the delicate porcelain adorned with the tiny brushstrokes of hand painting.
“Oh, I just bought these from. . .” Her eyes narrowed and she pushed the cup to one side of her tray. “I don’t remember. You must return to England with the missionaries. It’s not safe here any longer. Your prince will find you there.”
“I shall, Ayi. I think I hear my cousins now. Shall I refill the teapot?” Without waiting for an answer, Hannah confiscated the tea tray and collected the cups. She’d rather not poison anyone if her aunt had decided to medicate the teapot.
The doorbell chimed as she turned on the kettle. She heard Aaron’s rumbling voice, and breathed a little in relief that he seemed to accept the Looking Glass world he’d plunged into.
“I brought tea and cakes,” her cousin called. “We don’t want to poison you just yet.”
“Frannie, I haven’t seen you in ages.” Hannah cleaned out the teapot and heated it with hot water. “Bring me the tea. I’m just preparing a fresh pot.”
Considerably older than Hannah, Francesca was a lithe, athletic airplane pilot—and a psychic, dangerous to be around.
“He’s gorgeous,” her cousin whispered. “Where’d you find him? Will you keep him?”
“That would be akin to caging a wild cougar, don’t be silly.”
“Then may I try? You’re too young for t
hat one.”
“Experience counts?” Hannah snorted. “Open the cakes and pass them around before someone attempts Jia’s biscuits. I hope the home is providing her meals or she’ll poison herself one day.” Hannah accepted the tea Francesca handed her and filled the strainer.
“They’re getting better at learning her plants,” Frannie admitted. “And they confiscate her grocery deliveries before they arrive to be certain they don’t include rat poison. What are you doing here? Couldn’t you call your parents and arrange a real visit?”
“It’s complicated.” She filled the pot with boiling water and carried the newly prepared tray back to the front, where her cousin Jack leaned against a wall. Sturdy, with more Asian DNA than Hannah, he saluted her with a middle finger. Hannah stuck her tongue out at him.
Aaron had abandoned his seat, leaving the chair for Francesca. Hannah made hasty introductions while she set the tea tray beside her aunt.
“I hope you have come to take Mei Ling to the village,” Jia said fretfully. “The king’s men will take her if you do not. Her future is not here.”
“She’s safe with us, Ayi,” Jack assured her. “Let us have our tea, and we’ll take her away.”
“Good. Don’t let her go back to the mountains. Evil lurks there.” Jia bit into her cake.
Hannah grimaced at Aaron’s pointed look. “She can be talking a mountain in China a thousand years ago,” she reminded him.
“And it’s not evil you fear, is it?” Frannie asked.
“Keep your nosy mind to yourself, big cousin.” There were few secrets she could keep from a psychic, but Hannah could hide her walnut. “I have come here to learn from Aunt Jia, not to entertain you. Aaron, was there a specific question you wished to ask?”
“Were you ever in danger when you traveled outside your body?” he asked politely.
Jia snorted. “Of course. Try grabbing a runaway horse and losing yourself in a palace at the same time. You ask foolish questions, my lord.”
Aaron picked up a jade elephant from the bookshelf, blinked in surprise, then put it back. “You were very fortunate to escape when you did. I am sorry your father did not make it with you.”
Hannah refrained from rolling her eyes. Just what she needed, another freak in her freaky family to keep the conversation on cosmic levels. Aaron was reading her aunt’s most treasured possessions. Her British-raised aunt had escaped China at a time of revolution.
Her cousins waited as expectantly as she did. Jia’s wrinkled face expressed confusion, then resignation as she set down her cup.
“He saved us, all of us. None of us would be here today if he had not acted when he did. I go back to see him from time to time.” She nodded her white-haired head and seemed to fall asleep.
Francesca picked up the tea tray this time. “Lunch? There’s a good restaurant right down the road.”
It had not been Aaron’s intention to share Hannah over lunch. Nor had he intended to eat at another rabbit food restaurant. But Hannah and her family intrigued him, and he hoped to learn more, especially after perusing the wine menu. Rabbit food came with a nice selection of alcohol to anesthetize the taste of grass.
“Are you back for good then?” Francesca asked after placing her order.
“Who knows?” Hannah replied gracelessly. Apparently unaccustomed to the choices in a San Francisco restaurant as compared to a pub in the islands, she was still working her way through the menu.
Aaron ordered a bottle of wine and leaned over to point out a selection, catching a whiff of sunshine cologne that stirred senses better left unstirred. “This will work well with the bottle I just ordered. I like to work backward from the wine.”
Hannah intelligently accepted his suggestion and handed her menu back to the waiter. She wore earrings today, apparently her idea of dressing up. Otherwise her outfit merely consisted of jeans and a blue tank top. The swingy little turquoise pendants peeked from beneath strands of silky gold hair and brushed her slender throat—the one he’d probably strangle before the meal ended, if only to put him out of his misery.
“Need a little alcoholic help to imagine holding on to a horse while your spirit inhabits a palace?” she asked tauntingly.
“If I was inclined to imagination, I’d consider much more interesting possibilities,” he said smoothly, before turning to her cousins. “Has your aunt always talked in circles or was there a time when she was more lucid?”
“We were infants when she was still fully functional,” Jack said. “We’ve only known her slow deterioration. But she’s always been able to take care of herself, so it’s no normal disease.”
“She simply inhabits several worlds and times,” Francesca said with nonchalance. “We don’t know how she originally slipped back and forth. Everyone from her youth is gone now.”
“We can’t even know if she’s talking of memories or if she’s still slipping through time.” Hannah tasted the wine the waiter poured and nodded approvingly. “Mei is apparently someone she knew in some life or another. She often mistakes me for her.”
“You planning on time traveling?” Francesca asked perceptively. “Don’t think we failed to notice your connection to the jade elephant, Aaron. Jia brought that piece from China. The story is that her father gave it to her as a symbol of his love the night they fled.”
“I’m a psychometrist, that’s all. I’m not planning anything. I simply want to stay informed.” Unaccustomed to this level of perceptiveness outside of Hillvale, Aaron preferred to keep his thoughts to himself—as much as was possible with a psychic even stronger than Amber.
“Don’t let him touch your ring, Frannie,” Hannah warned, sniffing the soup that had just been delivered. “You really don’t want Aaron to know who you are. Jack is the one you want to know, Aaron. He can find anything. Bit of a nuisance, actually, if one doesn’t wish something found.”
The very normal librarian seemed to fit right into Aaron’s weird world, as his parents and friends never had. The cousins teased and quarreled just as any family might, and he settled in to appreciate the phenomenon.
If he hadn’t appointed himself guardian against Hillvale’s evil, he might enjoy building a world-wide network of eccentrics like himself. It might be even more useful than Hannah’s ancient journals.
Later, edgy and frustrated after parting from the cousins after lunch, Aaron considered helping Hannah into his van just to see what happened when he touched her.
She sensibly grabbed the door and hoisted herself inside. Now that they had cell transmission, she was buckled in and reading her phone by the time he climbed into his seat.
“Keegan says the jewel box from Carmel’s closet has the same date and shield on it as the one in the paintings,” she reported. “How did Carmel get her hands on that box? And why?”
“A box that old has dangerous levels of memories, so I didn’t dare open myself to it. Carmel’s greed overrode everything in that closet. Chances are good that prior owners may have considered it no more than an old box of rocks. But it is peculiar that Carmel would recognize them as valuable.” Aaron studied the road signs and wondered what it would be like to be normal and simply take a route to the beach and a quiet hotel with an interesting woman at his side.
He’d lost all that with Natalie.
Hannah put her phone away and frowned at the road ahead. “Would it take too long to make a quick side trip to Pacifica so I could dip my toes in the ocean again? It’s been a long time since I’ve done that.”
Aaron narrowed his eyes and wondered if she was taking up her cousin’s habit of mind reading, but her request was perfectly reasonable. Even he was feeling the effect of a relaxed meal and sunshine. He followed the road sign that had caught his attention.
“Tide’s in. Doesn’t leave much beach,” he observed as they located a parking spot and wandered the beach trail.
She threw back her head to absorb the sun on her face, letting her golden hair cascade over her shoulders. Her hair was thicker
than it was long, he observed, just right for burying his hands in. He clenched said hands behind his back as they walked.
“I just needed to be reminded of the ordinary world,” she said. “Sometimes, living inside one’s head is stultifying.”
“Stultifying, good word. We become numb to the real world around us when we’re forced to spend so much time dealing with our paranormal abilities.” He’d never really had anyone to discuss this with. Keegan and Harvey were the only other men he knew with odd gifts, and they weren’t exactly communicative.
She took off her shoes, rolled up her jeans, and ran through the sand to let waves splash her feet. Aaron had no particular urge to bare his feet and chill them to the bone, but he enjoyed watching Hannah play with the surf. It struck him that she was considerably younger than he, in more ways than physical age. Or maybe he just felt old.
He bought her an ice cream while she let her feet dry off. “This was a nice break,” he said. “I probably should do this more often.”
“You’d need a better cashier than Harvey or you’d go broke.” She laughed and licked her cone. “Couldn’t you hire help from the next town down? It’s not that bad a commute.”
“Yes, I could hire someone. And no, I probably won’t.” They ambled back to the van. Aaron checked his watch. “We won’t be back until closing. I can’t remember a time when I took a whole day off. It’s a good thing you’ll be teaching soon so you don’t infect me with your bad habits.”
“You’re planning on spending the next thirty-plus years of your life huddled behind a desk in that gloomy cave? You’ll turn into a vampire. Tell me your master plan.” She wiped off her hands with a tissue from her purse.
It took him a moment to remember their morning conversation. “I have no master plan. We’re supposed to discuss your insane desire to dig up evil, and my desire to keep you from doing so.” That put him on firm, familiar ground. He let the sunshine laziness dissipate.
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