Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(89)

“She’s back at the farm, making more lamassu.” Valdis didn’t seem any worse for her ordeal. The black gown she wore looked as if it belonged in a Spanish Do?a painting—all black embroidery and heavy rustling damask. She’d thrown her veil off her face so she could sip from her glass. All the black made her fair complexion even paler and the scar on her jaw more livid.

Sam searched for some sign of the beautiful woman from Lance’s portrait, but Valdis had done all she could to erase her past, even using dark eye make-up to enhance the paleness of her fair skin. After the prior night’s ranting, though, she seemed almost normal.

“How are you feeling?” Sam asked.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Valdis said politely. “How did you find me? I thought my time had come.”

“Harvey’s walking stick.” She ought to feel like an idiot admitting that, but oddly, a dowsing rod that found people made insane sense here. “It would have been a lot easier if I’d been told earlier that your parents weren’t in the cemetery.”

Mariah looked surprised. Cass didn’t.

Valdis shrugged. “Their spirits belonged in the land they polluted. Their mortal remains are irrelevant. They were both cremated and their ashes scattered on Bald Rock.”

“It’s no matter,” Cass said, passing a tray of shortbread cookies. “What matters is who else knows that Sam is an Ingersson? The name alone makes you a threat to the Nulls.”

“I wish everyone would quit calling them that,” Sam said irritably, probably because she shivered at the perceived threat. “Name calling does not lead to rational discussion.”

“Sorry, a bad habit, you’re right. But the land destroyed us before and will do so again, unless we exercise caution.” Cass rocked in a golden Bentwood rocker piled with red pillows.

“Explain why being an Ingersson is a bad thing?” Mariah asked from her seat on the steps. She worked one of her nets as they talked.

Valdis remained silent. Cass looked to Sam and asked, “You know, don’t you? That nosy cop of yours knows everything.”

“If Walker knew everything, he’d go back to LA. I keep telling you that secrets can only hurt. If we’d known the Ingersson graves were on the mountain instead of in the cemetery, we could have found Valdis sooner.” Sam bit into her shortbread in hopes it would sweeten her disposition.

“So all of you know something I don’t?” Mariah complained.

“You’re a fine one to talk. How long have you and my mayoral uncle been holding secret meetings?”

The shade of an old pine tree hid Mariah’s color, but Sam thought heat darkened her friend’s brown skin.

“Monty isn’t like Kurt,” Mariah protested. “He may not believe in ghosts, but he accepts that I can send them on.”

“Like the Grim Reaper?” Sam asked, just because.

Mariah snorted and took a sip of her punch. “A scythe would be wonderful. I could try carrying one if it would help. But no, I just see ectoplasm and have the ability to zap it beyond the veil. And you’re diverting the subject.”

Ectoplasm? Sam tried to piece that into the world as she knew it and failed.

“If Mariah is consorting with the enemy, it’s better you don’t tell her everything just yet,” Cass warned. “Too many people died last time. I don’t think I can bear to lose more.”

Last time—as in twenty-five years ago when the nephew Cass had raised as her son had died, along with the Ingerssons. And the Ingersson daughters had fled Hillvale and not returned. But now Valdis and Susannah’s daughter were back—and it was all about the land somehow. Evil and ghosts and even water rights and fire all led back to the land.

“I don’t think Monty and Kurt are like their father,” Sam said tentatively, trying to sound Cass out. “Things have changed.”

“They consort with Evil,” Valdis chanted in her banshee voice. “It infects the land and the people who dwell on it.”

“Short of an earthquake, I don’t think you can eliminate the mountain,” Sam said gently. “Are you saying the farm contains toxic chemicals?”

Cass gave a curt laugh. “That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. Who knows what the crazies mixed into their paints and hallucinogens? And sanitary conditions weren’t the best. They used chemicals on the marijuana they grew. If it makes you feel better to call it pollution, go ahead.”

“Greed,” Valdis intoned. “Greed infects the land. Greed and ambition and unhealthy desires.”

Sam exchanged glances with Mariah and refrained from snickering. Did Valdis even know what unhealthy desire was?

Then she sobered. If Valdis once had a real life in the theater, she had once been young and alive and extremely talented, if Lance was to be believed. What had brought her back here?





Chapter 29





Walker was patrolling the roads, boring himself by looking for DUIs and speeders, when his personal cell rang. He was far enough down the mountain for reception, so he pulled over and answered.

“I may have found something, boss,” Sofia said.

“I’ll be off duty early. Just shoot me an email,” he advised. Being a deputy might be the world’s dullest job, but he wouldn’t take the county’s money and shirk his tasks for his own personal gain.