Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(5)
“Like the deputy?” Sam unlocked the car doors, not certain whether it was safe to open the back door to re-cage the cat. Was Emma an escape cat? And how did she know some cats liked to escape?
Mariah solved the Emma problem by opening the passenger side, finding the cat on the front floorboard, then settling down with it in her lap. Emma seemed to accept that position. “Walker is a decent guy, but he’s here for a reason he’s not telling us. There’s more to him than meets the eye, so watch out.”
Well, so much for asking for a license plate trace. She’d wait for desperation to set in—which could be right after she’d had a few hours of sleep. It belatedly occurred to her that since she had no purse, she had no driver’s license or insurance card. Shit.
Apparently, she was someone who used foul language. She backed the car out and turned south, as Mariah indicated.
“Does everyone here have something to hide, then?” she asked, wondering if that included Mariah and afraid to find out. She’d like to think she had one friend.
“Nah, the mayor and his family own half the valley. He’s been here all his life and is as straight as they come. Boring, arrogant, and a bully, but he doesn’t try to hide it. There are a few other people who were born here, not many. Everyone knows the entire past of the locals and some of everyone’s future, if you believe in clairvoyance.”
“I don’t think our fates are carved in stone, so fortune-telling doesn’t make sense to me,” Sam said, thinking it through as she drove. It wasn’t as if she knew what her former self thought. If her memory didn’t return, she might have to become a whole new person.
“But it might be possible to predict a future based on current paths,” Mariah argued. “Let’s face it, if a con man keeps on conning, then eventually he’ll get caught. That’s not hard to predict.”
“All right, that makes sense, so the trick would be knowing the person was a conman in the first place.” Sam studied the towering redwoods—how did she know they were redwoods?—lining the road. The fog hadn’t lifted so much as the sunlight had reached over the mountain. Again, she wondered what month it was.
“And that’s the whole basis for fortune-telling,” Mariah said in satisfaction, “Knowing your clientele. Cass’s drive is right up here, on your right. The cemetery is only a few hundred yards further on.”
They hadn’t driven far from town. She could easily walk it, if needed—avoiding anything that might require a license. The driveway was distinctively marked by a bright red barn of a mailbox sitting on a rusted hand-held plow post. That didn’t look very scary.
“Crazy Daisy built that mailbox,” Mariah said as they turned up the rutted, once-graveled drive. “She said Cass’s black monstrosity spooked her.”
Oh well, live and learn. “Crazy Daisy?” Sam asked politely, searching for some sign of a house amid the trees and overgrown bushes. With excitement, she recognized bay laurel saplings among the redwoods. How did she know these things?
“Daisy is too weird to pry anything sensible out of her. Artistic as heck, though. Creates cool sculptures of twigs and wood and stone, and recycles junk into usable stuff like the mailbox back there. She’d probably be homeless elsewhere, but here, we pay for her talent, if only in food and shelter. It’s easier for people who aren’t capable of living in normal society to find a place with us. We need all kinds.”
A silhouette of a building appeared through the mist, and Sam didn’t reply. Cassandra’s house was tall, much taller than she’d imagined when she hoped she was coming home. As they approached, she made out a huge Victorian with turrets and wide porches, and if she was seeing correctly, gargoyles on the gutters. “Wow,” she murmured.
“Cass calls it a B&B and rents rooms when any of us have guests, but she doesn’t advertise. I don’t know how she lives out here all alone in this spooky place. She travels a lot, so she leaves me the keys. I’ll put you in the guest house. It’s more modern and comes with a small kitchen and everything.”
“A bed would be good right now,” Sam admitted, feeling the stress catching up with her, grateful that Mariah accepted that the invisible Cass wanted her here. “Will Emma be all right in the guest house or does she prefer her own home?”
“Emma is a slug who will do whatever she likes. She’s familiar with the territory and comes and goes at her leisure. Don’t worry about her. As long as there’s food and water available, she’s good.”
As if in agreement, Emma finally spoke a loud meow. Maybe she knew she was home.
Mariah pointed at a side drive to the back of the house. “Cass had a studio built over a the garage.”
Sam took the side drive and pulled up to a two-story white-washed stucco building—a far cry from the painted lady beyond the manzanita and service berry hedge. A pot of orange-red geraniums spilled color at the foot of a tiled entry way—a bright spot of light against the gray fog. “This is lovely. Are you sure Cassandra won’t mind?”
“Not if she sent you up here with Emma. I’ll carry the cat if you want to take your suitcases.”
Terra cotta tile lined the stairs up to a small balcony overlooking the mountain ridge to the east. Inside the heavy timber front door was an open-floor-plan studio with more tile, artwork, and windows with a panoramic view of a mountain of trees and scrub tumbling down—presumably toward the sea. Sam gaped at the vast horizon.