Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(48)

“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 lodge 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. But Jade and Wolf had made it understood that this wasn’t normal. They’d said she was imagining things. So she’d quit telling anyone—until now.

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.”