Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(94)

Daisy gestured at her dwindling collection of sticks and stones. “The hills are not safe. The village is hungry. They have sent their bravest warriors to hunt the Great Bear, but the warriors do not return. The women dance in mourning around the fires, and the children cry.”

Listening to Daisy’s chanting voice, Sam could almost travel with her through time, smell the campfires and see the shadows of long lost huntsmen tracking grizzlies with bows and arrows. In a place this isolated, the spirits just might linger. “And then the Spanish came, I guess.”

If she couldn’t get sense out of Daisy, she might at least hear some history. In comfortable silence, she gathered stones and lined them up by size.

“The men with spears took the people as slaves,” Daisy said sadly some while later. “The women weep for their homes and the sons who lived and died here.”

“The grizzlies are gone, aren’t they?” Sam thought Daisy was getting too heavily into doom and tried to bring her companion back to better times.

“The Great Bear hunts us all. White men bring evil and the wrath of the gods. You should leave.”

Sam quit asking questions and wandered further afield, searching sticks and stones. When she heard the sputter of an engine, she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t want to leave Daisy alone, but she didn’t know how to talk to her either.

Daisy heard the sound and gestured dismissal. “Take Valdis back with you. Don’t make the Evil One’s job easy. Go far far away.”

Arguing with Daisy was wasted effort. Sam stood up to welcome the new arrivals.

Mariah had indeed brought Valdis. Wielding her walking stick like a cane to keep her weight off her injured ankle, Sam’s aunt lurched across the yard.

“Valdis, go home,” Daisy cried from behind the hedge.

“You can’t stop Death,” Valdis called back.

Behind her, Mariah caught Sam’s eye and shrugged. It was good to know she wasn’t the only one thinking she needed to learn the Lucys’ language.

“Monty and Kurt were about to come to blows in the parking lot when I left Dinah’s,” Mariah whispered, letting Valdis limp ahead on her own. “If only cell phones worked, we might have heard them yelling at the real bastards. But that slime ball Gump apparently wasn’t within shouting distance.”

“He was in the café earlier with his sales team, remember? What does Gump have to do with anything?” Sam helped Val over the stone foundation.

“Don’t know. His name just kept coming up. And he’s an asshat who needs to be yelled at. He agitates the universe. And I think he’s harming Xavier.” Mariah pushed through the hedge with her sack of food.

“How is he harming Xavier?” Sam followed her.

“He just busted him out of rehab.”





Chapter 30





The sheriff threw a file on Walker’s death. “Wasn’t much of a cross to set a mountain on fire. It wasn’t more than a dead sapling nailed into a dead tree trunk.”

Walker flipped open the file and scanned the arson team’s report. “If it was Xavier who nailed the sapling. . .” Walker shoved his hand through his hair. He knew a little too much about these people. “He probably only meant to ward off evil spirits with a Christian symbol. It makes no sense that he’d rub that kerosene can free of prints, then incriminate himself carrying it around.”

The sheriff shrugged. “The kerosene was poured on the base of the tree in pine debris. The team has no proof your clown ignited it.”

Who else would want to burn down the Kennedy’s mountain? The Lucys seemed the only likely suspects, but they were tree huggers, not arsonists. At least, that’s what he’d thought.

He’d had enough for one day. He needed to get back to Sam before his brain burned out. He strode out to the sheriff’s parking lot and almost ignored his phone when it rang. Sam wouldn’t be calling it. But his office might. With a sigh, he punched the button.

“Gump had Xavier transferred to a rehab in Vegas,” Sofia said curtly into his ear.

“What?” Walker shouted, hurrying toward his car. “Gump? How the hell do you know that?”

“Earlier, I asked one of the nurses to let me know if there was any change in his condition, and she gave me a call.”

“Have you located him yet?”

“It’s private information. I’d need to lie or hack their computers,” Sofia said stiffly.

“We’re legal. We don’t do things like that,” Walker assured her. Looked like his burned-out brain needed another workout. “Unless we have a case against Gump, even the sheriff can’t act. Go home. It’s late.”

“You should, too, dear. Your father wouldn’t want you to work yourself to death.”

But if he didn’t follow up the links to the killers, other people might die. He didn’t want one of them to be Sam. If he couldn’t talk to Xavier, maybe he could get some sense out of Francois. He sure as hell wouldn’t persuade a moneymaker like Alan Gump to even look at him without a warrant and a raft of lawyers.

Walker pulled out his cell phone and the file on Francois and punched in the numbers while he was still near a tower.



“Having us both in this place is what Susannah feared most, I think,” Valdis said unexpectedly, as she settled onto a rock seat and reached for Daisy’s sticks and stones.