“Well, we could look for whoever stole Carmel’s stone, I suppose,” she said with what sounded like sincerity. “But that means looking for a killer, and you said to leave that to Walker.”
“Why don’t you just help set up the school?” he asked in exasperation. They were right back where they’d started.
“Because the real teacher they hired to teach the little kids knows far more than I do. I will be little more than a glorified babysitter. I have a massive encyclopedia in my head, but Google will be more useful to Zeke than I am. I am tired of collecting dust. You should be too.” She glared out the windshield.
“There have to be ten thousand better ways of shaking off dust than directly defying evil,” he grumbled. She was making him feel older by the minute. “You have your entire life ahead of you. Learn to be a teacher. Help kids.”
She sulked in silence for a few blessed minutes. Or maybe she was just plotting.
“I don’t want to drop dead in front of kids.” She broke the silence with a bombshell.
“I knew it.” Aaron pounded the wheel in frustration. “When I first saw you, you said you were dying and told me to go away, so I did. But you haven’t said anything since, so I assumed you were dreaming.”
“As if you would mention it if it were you,” she scoffed. “I don’t want people pulling the poor, poor, pitiful Hannah act. I’m fine. I could live to be a hundred. But I apparently have a time bomb in my brain.”
“An aneurysm? Can’t they fix that?” he asked in alarm.
“They don’t know what it is. They can’t touch it. It’s apparently smack in the middle of neuron central or something. If they operate, I could turn into a turnip. Not being fond of turnips, I refused to let them probe. I get weird spells, big deal. But living with a time bomb means I want to accomplish what I can now. Why should I be superstitious and refrain from researching the Eversham painting if I might die tomorrow? It’s patently ridiculous.”
She was quite vehement in her argument. Aaron could understand that. He was just too shattered for a comeback. She was so damned alive. For a few hours, he’d entertained notions he hadn’t entertained in years. And now. . .
He cursed loud and long and apparently effectively because she shut up.
When he wound down, she looked at him with interest.
“Huh, even my Latin couldn’t keep up with all that. You’ve had practice. Re-living our Roman ancestry, are we?”
Only Hannah would consider that. He sighed and beat his fist against the wheel again before speaking.
“I collected Roman artifacts when I was a kid, along with roaming the antique stores. I picked up strong impressions from the soldiers, including words. That made me want to know what they were saying or thinking. It gave me something to do while I sat around the house waiting for my parents to come home.”
There, he’d said that without screaming curses at the universe.
“Did you ever figure out what the coins were saying?”
She looked sad as she leaned her head against the window. He wanted her laughing and turning her face to the sun again. He understood why that wouldn’t happen.
“Mostly, the soldiers were counting the days and the coins until they could go home. As an adult, I would have figured that out on my own. Back then, I was still learning. How did you learn about the brain thing?”
She shrugged. “I was having dreams or visions, even in daylight. They had a very real quality different from any other kind of dream I’ve ever had. I went to a neurologist who called for an MRI. I’m almost sorry I did.”
“That explains why you faint on me occasionally?”
She frowned as they pulled into the Hillvale parking lot. “Maybe. It’s never happened when I touched anyone else.”
He climbed out and deliberately walked around to help her down, holding up his hand in challenge.
She took it, and he fell into her dream.
Thirteen
Her bare fingers held the rough grip of a knight in dusty metal. Hannah glanced down. Their touching hands didn’t seem translucent. She looked up again, into a face so much like Aaron’s that she searched for the small mole he had near his ear. If it was there, she couldn’t tell because of the helmet.
He seemed a little stunned as well. He traced a rough brown hand down her cheek, brushing her headpiece back to study her hair.
The touch was brief, too brief. A small brown dog ran up, barking. She turned to hush it, and the spell broke.
She was leaning against Aaron’s van, no longer holding his hand. She clung to the moment, hoping for that simple caress one more time. It didn’t happen.
“You didn’t faint.” He closed the door and locked it, not giving any indication he’d shared the vision.
“I might yet. This time was different.” She didn’t let go of the van just yet but refused to let him get away with stonewalling. “What did you see?”
“You fell into Keegan’s medieval knight painting,” he stated coldly.
“No dog in the painting.” Idiotically relieved that she hadn’t been the only one suffering that weird vision, she straightened to test her balance. Deciding she wouldn’t fall over, she headed for the antique store.
He followed her across the lot as if she might tumble over at any strong breeze.
“The painting started the visions, I think. It hung right over my desk. I had to get out of there.” She needed to re-orient her universe.
“You need to get out of Hillvale,” he muttered.
Yeah, maybe that, too, but not yet. “I’ll ask Mariah how to find the boulder. Or look for it myself.”
Still shaken, Hannah waved at Harvey as she entered the gloom of the antique shop. If she was going to end up like Aunt Jia anyway, she may as well attempt to accomplish the impossible.
Aaron was on her heels as she climbed the stairs. She ignored him as much as she was able.
If she wanted to believe a dream or a painting, they’d known each other in some prior life, and she thought it might have been a Biblical knowing. She could feel him in more ways that she thought credible.
She pulled her hiking boots out of her backpack, put them on, and tied a flannel shirt around her waist in case she stayed out until dark.
Aaron glowered. He’d probably pace, if there’d been room for it. She couldn’t honestly blame him. She’d sucked him into her world.
“You should relieve Harvey,” she told him, picking up her walking stick. “If he was up wandering all night as usual, he’s probably operating on two hours sleep.”
Aaron eyed the walking stick, then set out down the stairs. “Harv, close up for me, will you? Miss Persistence wants to play with the devil.”
“I want to play archeologist,” she corrected, following him down. “Where can I find shovels and gloves?”
“You’ll lose light before you can dig. Stake where you want to dig first.” Aaron disappeared into his back room, returning with short sticks and a mallet.
Harvey watched as if they were an entertaining TV show.
Aaron unhooked his walking stick from the wall. “If we’re not back by dark, search the old church. And if we glow after we return, stake us.”
Harvey’s lips twitched as he handed Hannah a pair of work gloves. “Irritate him some more. I like it.”
“He’s too easy,” she scoffed. “Just tell him no.”
“You didn’t tell me no,” Aaron shouted from the front of the—fortunately—empty shop. “You just insist on getting yourself killed.”
“He’s a guardian,” Harvey said. “He can’t help himself.”
Guardian? Hannah ran that word through her extensive library as she hurried to follow Aaron. Knight—lord—soldier—all showed up with some frequency in Malcolm annals, not always in congenial terms. Women taking risks attracted a certain masculine element, apparently.
Aaron might be the modern equivalent—with the added twist of paranormal DNA. Dangerous.
Instead of taking the steep
drive up the hill to the lodge, he took a beaten path out of town and down the mountain. Hannah actually needed her stick for balance to keep up with his long strides. Aaron was obviously familiar with the path. She wasn’t.
Just as the trail veered out of rocks and boulders and toward a stand of evergreens, Aaron pointed at a side track. “My place.”
He walked on. Hannah halted to study the wood-sided and glass structure hidden behind a grove of trees that appeared to have been deliberately planted to conceal. “Nice,” she called after him.
He didn’t acknowledge the compliment.
Aaron had channeled his talent into wealth, she remembered. He could have built a palace in the woods. It appeared as if he’d remodeled a sprawling 70’s style California ranch house instead.
Using her stick, she hurried to catch up. The ground here was a little more level, but she could sense it was climbing again. The lodge sat on top of the bluff overlooking the town valley. They seemed to be circling around it from the opposite direction of the public entrance.
They crossed more dust, rocks, and sage. “Have you told Samantha about this path? It could use a few roses.”
He grunted. Maybe she could smack him across the back of the skull with her stick.
Of course, she’d revealed her death warrant to him pretty crudely. She wasn’t entirely certain why she’d told him at all.
Yeah, she did—because she’d wanted to warn him. Their day had been too pleasant. They’d been in semi-danger of falling in like. With his history, he deserved better.
He had a really rotten history if he was the rejected knight in the painting. She must have been a nun in a prior life. No, that wasn’t right, not if she’d known the knight intimately. Maybe she imagined that part. Maybe she imagined everything.
They passed a clump of cottonwood that seemed better suited to valleys than a place where cactus grew. How did she know that was cottonwood?
Rummaging through her memories for trees, she nearly ran into Aaron’s back when he abruptly halted.
Dry grass rippled in a breeze across a clearing—she remembered this place. She’d fallen asleep here—right in the middle of an evil cemetery?
The boulder was on the left of the grassy clearing. The cottonwood grew on higher ground to the right.
Cottonwood—she finally found the reference. It grew where there was water—the well.
“Harvey thinks water gathers up the mountain and flows underground through here. He’s been trying to find the source, hoping it’s clear of whatever pollutes this area.” Aaron held his stick up over the trail. “The malum is strong today. I’m not sure we should continue.”
Hannah examined the crystal-eyed guardian angel knob on her stick and waited for the signal other Lucys experienced. “I don’t feel anything.” Accustomed to disappointment on the magical end of things, she studied the shady grove where the well must once have been, and its distance from the sun-drenched boulder. This had to be the area from the painting. If the rock the priest had been blessing was still around, she couldn’t tell from this angle. “Where was the church, can you tell?”
He pointed uphill from the cottonwood grove. “Right where you were sleeping. Until you woke up, I had to wonder if you were an angel fallen from the sky.”
“Fanciful. Angels wear backpacks? I was jetlagged and looked like hell.” Dismissing his superstition, Hannah set off toward the cottonwoods.
“I was tired and the sun was setting.” He loped alongside her, keeping pace. “I’m entitled to hope the veil had spit out a little heavenly help in beating back whatever pollutes this ground. Personally, I’m thinking the old well was a portal to hell.”
“I don’t believe in angels and demons,” she said flatly. “I can believe in Mariah’s ectoplasm theories easier than I can believe in evil and benevolent beings who aren’t just us.”
“Live here long enough and you’ll broaden your horizons.” He halted again, this time grabbing her arm to hold her back.
She weaved, feeling the air go blurry again. With resolution, she yanked her arm from his grip. Aaron looked a bit dazed as well, but he shook it off as she did.
“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Look.” He pointed his staff in the direction of the cottonwoods.
Crumpled navy lay among the long grasses. A homeless person all the way out here? She caught a glint of gold on the rags. She instinctively took a step to see better. Aaron shoved his stick in front of her.
“Don’t. With our luck, we’ll be disturbing a crime scene. I need to see if he’s alive.”
Hannah widened her eyes and stood on tip-toe as Aaron walked closer, waving his staff in the direction of the blue. Was that a shovel sticking out from under the blue? And over-turned dirt? She covered her mouth and tried not to shout at Aaron to get back here now.
He stooped down, touched the shovel, but didn’t linger over the crumpled blue. Looking as angry as he did sad, he got up and marched past her, back down the path, evidently expecting her to keep up. She did, half-running to match his pace.
“What?” she demanded.
“Francois, Carmel’s chauffeur. He loved his gaudy uniform.”
“Her chauffeur? Was that a shovel? Was he digging at the well?” Hannah couldn’t decipher the mix of horror and shock whirling her around. She’d never met the man. He was nothing more than blue rags to her. But he was dead? Right where she’d wanted to dig?
“Could have been a heart attack,” Aaron said. “As far as I’m aware, the man never lifted a hand to so much as change a tire. It’s where he dropped dead that concerns me.”
And her. This was not a normal coincidence. “And you know for certain he’s dead?” she asked in horror. “Couldn’t we try CPR?”
“Flies are buzzing,” he said curtly. “He’s been there a while.”
She wanted to vomit. “We need cell phone towers,” she muttered instead.
“Not in Hillvale. Watch. I’m amazed they’re not here already. Cell towers would interfere.” He hurried up the trail, looking determined.
Hannah heard them before she saw them—a low humming chant, a dirge, like the one the Lucys had sung over Carmel. “How?” she demanded.
Aaron shrugged. “Val says she knows when a spirit departs the body. She should have been here hours ago. The others—hell if I know. I figure it’s Cass. Maybe it’s our sticks. But I triggered it the second I waved my staff near the body.”
“Val didn’t come when Carmel died,” Hannah reminded him. “Wasn’t there something about Carmel having no soul?”
“I’d like to say superstitious poppycock, but there could very well be something to it. But first you’d have to believe in selling souls to the devil.” He stopped in a narrow place along the trail, placing himself between the approaching women and the body on the other side of the hill.
Cass led the way. Tullah was close behind her, along with Brenda the nurse. Samantha, Teddy, and Fee held back, ambling along with Mariah, who probably shouldn’t be out of the house at all. Val drifted off to one side, through the evergreen shadows.
“It’s Francois, and it’s too late,” Aaron told them. “Someone needs to call Walker. If you want a ceremony, do it here. The malum is agitated.”
Cass glared at him before ordering her troops. “Hannah, if you’ll lead the way, take Mariah and her friends to Aaron’s place to make your calls. The rest of us will stay here to properly send off any lingering spirit. Even if he has departed across the veil, he could be lingering in confusion. All souls deserve a farewell.”
Hannah glanced at Aaron for approval of this authoritarian command.
He merely handed her his keys and continued blocking Cass. “Do you remember the trail?” he asked, keeping his eye on Val in the distance.
“I think so.” She pushed past him, thinking Mariah should be sitting down and not out here singing at missing spirits.
The others didn’t argue over Cass’s command. More Hannah’s age, the ones told to turn around possessed
Hannah’s skepticism, she could tell from their murmurs as they hiked back the way they’d come.
“I can’t imagine Francois ever had a soul,” Mariah said. “I could hang ghostcatchers all over the clearing and they’d come up empty.”
“Cass isn’t taking chances with us,” Samantha said serenely. “I’m carrying a child who could be affected, much as you may have been affected by Daisy.”
“Affected or infected?” Teddy asked with decided irreverence for Malcolm beliefs.
Val’s soaring soprano rose over the low conversation. Hannah wanted to stop and admire the beauty of her song, but the others hurried on.
“Walker is still with the sheriff down the mountain,” Sam said worriedly. “His phone works there, but it will take time for him to drive up.”
Hannah indicated the less battered trail leading toward Aaron’s house. “Aaron said Francois could have died of a heart attack. There’s no urgency in that case.”
“Aaron sent us all back together and is standing out there guarding Cass,” Teddy pointed out. “He’s afraid there’s a killer lurking.”
“The air reeks of must and mildew,” Fee said sadly, finally speaking up. “Some of that is Francois. He smelled like a dead rat who dried up in the walls.”
The usually unobtrusive cook drew looks of shock and disgust as they hiked through the stand of trees concealing Aaron’s house. Hannah shuddered and tried to concentrate on the beauty of the architecture hidden from public view.
“You think there’s a killer out there who reeks of mildew?” Mariah asked.
Fee shrugged. “I don’t know. But the smell is stronger than Francois in life.”
Hannah listened as she applied the keys to an expansive glass patio door. Finding the right one, she unlocked it and slid the panel back to let everyone in.
“I didn’t even know this was here,” Sam admitted, looking around as she entered. “Aaron never brings anyone home.”
“Except Harvey,” Teddy reminded her. The jeweler immediately gravitated toward a crystal chandelier—not the Victorian kind but a modern-art design.
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