Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(77)
“So you associate snakes with dying and panic?” he asked, trying to grasp her fear.
“Mostly, I think I associate it with losing the ones I love. I was afraid they were going to divorce and go away like the parents of some of my friends, and that made me panic even more. I know it’s an unreasonable phobia, that snakes are good for the environment, but I can’t even look at one long enough to identify it. I just freak and run.”
“At least you have good reason. Most people freak without thinking.” Like Tess. Walker tried not to compare, but his mind kept wanting to believe Sam was different, that she might be the partner he needed. But that was loneliness speaking. And good sex.
She swung her stick and stayed silent. He supposed not arguing with him was a good sign. When they reached the cemetery, he concentrated on looking for footprints in the dry ground, but too many people had traipsed this path and dust wasn’t permanent.
“She’s not here,” Sam said abruptly. “I want to check the amphitheater. I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”
Walker fought the protective urge to follow. Sam was an adult. She didn’t need a babysitter. And she’d just told him Valdis wasn’t in the cemetery as if she knew something he didn’t. As if she heard voices in her head?
Clenching his molars, Walker stomped up to the cemetery, alone.
An owl hooted and flapped its wings over her head. Sam jerked nervously. Walking up to the vortex had been different in daylight, or when she’d been surrounded by people she knew. Out here on the rocks, all alone, was a little intimidating. If she tripped, she’d have to scream loudly for help, and she wasn’t even certain anyone would hear.
She tried not to think about snakes and cougars or nasty spider webs.
The trees had been logged long ago. It was just scattered underbrush and rocks—and forces that drew her staff as if iron to lodestone. She wondered if that was part of the magnetism of the vortex—a layer of magnetite beneath the layers of sandstone and granite. But magnetite wouldn’t draw wood. She could swear the staff twitched from vibrations, and the crystal eyes possessed an ethereal gleam. Refusing to believe in the supernatural, she wasn’t afraid, just curious. She followed its direction around the top of the amphitheater, not into it.
She had to assume twitching staffs were ideomotion. She wanted to find her aunt, therefore her brain provided sympathetic pulses so she imagined she was helping. She should be searching with the others. If Valdis was dead or injured, Sam couldn’t send psychic help messages to the universe. She needed real live cell reception.
If the Kennedys wanted to build condos out here, they’d have to build cell towers first. How did one go about doing that?
What if cell towers interfered with the vortex? Not that she believed the vortex had special energy. . . But someone ought to study any possible energy effects before the vortex was lost. A seismograph might give some indication of underground vibrations, but she wished she could use satellites to help find imbalances and measure heat the way climate change was tracked. Differences in heat energy would explain a lot.
The stick twitched to a path leading up another hill, away from the amphitheater and the cemetery, in the direction Walker had called the Ingersson land. Which was when Sam had a horrible thought—what if her grandparents weren’t buried in the cemetery? She hadn’t seen a gravestone for them.
She froze to consider what she was doing. It was dark and getting cold. If she were a snake, she’d be slithering into a warm nest about now, except she had a vague recollection that rattlers hunted at night. She wore sturdy boots, but she had no idea how old the batteries were in her flashlight. A sensible person would go back and ask about the graves—but if anyone knew, wouldn’t they have mentioned it already?
A sensible person wouldn’t be out here paying attention to the frantic tugs of a dead tree branch. She knew she was following this insanity out of fear. Valdis had been out in the heat and cold without water or food for twenty-four hours. How much longer could she last? What if she had a heart condition? What if she’d been bit by snakes?
What if someone had tried to murder Valdis as they had killed Juan?
Instinct and emotion. . . or science and fact?
She’d spent her life with science, enough to know that book learning wouldn’t help her now. The time had come to extend her experience beyond the ivory tower.
She followed the damned twitching stick. Walker would never speak to her again. She regretted that, but he’d never promised more than good sex. He would be going back to LA and his executive position, and she was pretty certain by now that she wouldn’t follow. Her hands belonged in dirt, not on computers.
It tore at her lonely heart to give him up, but maybe she’d find a home in Hillvale. She missed having family. She needed to figure out what kind of life she wanted to make for herself, and what people she wanted populating it. Even if she eventually had to leave to make a living, she would like to think she had a place to come back to, where people knew her.
The staff led her up a crude path through shrub untouched by the fire. She sensed she was heading in the same direction in which they’d found Daisy, but this was higher ground. Surely Valdis wouldn’t have buried her parents way up here? Why?
If she could see below, she was pretty certain she’d see the farm in the distance. This had to be the ridge high above the bluff that had protected Daisy’s little hideaway. She sensed the oddly bad energy on this side of the vortex. If she was into woo-woo and spiritualism the way the other Lucys were, she’d be concerned too. Instead, she wondered about polluted aquifers or an earthquake fault hidden beneath the pines and manzanita.