Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(47)

“You scared the heck out of me,” Sam said angrily. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to not know who you are?”

“My friends took care of you, didn’t they? They only had to look at you to know who you are. That’s the reason Susannah insisted you be sent away. The girl is paranoid.”

Diverted, Sam’s anger turned to interest. “You know my mother?”

Walker recognized the old lady’s tactic. Cass had no intention of accepting responsibility for these last days of horror. And since he wasn’t even certain a crime had been committed, he grudgingly accepted her change of subject only because it was one Sam needed to hear.

“So Sam’s mother is still alive?” He had already done the math and knew her father had been dead and her mother had moved on before his father had gone to Hillvale, but he knew Sam’s curiosity burned.

“As far as I’m aware,” Cass said airily. “Susannah ran the opposite direction to Jade. She could be in China by now. They were good friends.”

“My birth mother is alive?” Sam almost shouted. Walker was afraid to glance over to see her expression.

“Happily remarried and mother of three, last I heard, which has been a while,” Cass admitted, apparently oblivious to her effect on Sam.

“Cassandra,” Walker said warningly. “Sam is just learning all this. There’s no need to hit her over the head with a baseball bat.”

Sam gave an ungraceful snort but didn’t argue.

“It’s all old news, dear,” Cass replied with a wave of her bony hand. “The important part is that we have you back. You’ll complete the circle, and we can begin turning things around.”

“No,” Sam said quietly. “The important part is that my mother thought it necessary to send me far away from Hillvale to an environment exactly opposite of the one I was born in. And then she ran the reverse direction. That doesn’t sound as if I belong in Hillvale or that she wants me there. Do my uncles even know I exist?”

Silence from the back seat was damning. The Kennedys knew nothing of Sam. Walker could almost feel her pain as she 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 lodge 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 his family. 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.”