Walker’s stress was of a different sort. He’d donned his sunglasses, and his expression was one of control so rigidthat a muscle ticked in his jaw. He was watching the people pouring from the lodge with their belongings as if he wanted to make them alldisappear.
A baby cried, a child shouted. He flinched and shoved on his mirrored sunglasses. His fists curled as he watched Harveyapproach.
The musician provided welcome distraction. Harvey’s height gave him a lean look, but his black t-shirtrevealed sinew and muscle. For a musician, he took athletics seriously, itappeared.
He held out one of his carved staffs to Sam. This one was a blond wood, slender, the tree branch’s original knobs and curves adding an almost feminine quality to it. The handle had been carved to resemble an antique sailing ship prow—a woman’s face with crystal blue eyes and hair streaming in the wind.Sam instinctively reached for it before hespoke.
“Protect the earth,” Harveycommanded.
Beside her, Walker nearly growled. Harvey loped off to help Carmel’s brother haul his paintings to a battered Land Rover. Helping empty the studio, the stout real estate mogul Grumpy Gump was collecting the smaller canvases, leaving the big ones to skinny Lance. For the first time, Sam notedgray shooting through the mogul’s thick blondhair.
Kurt and Carmel Kennedy were there, assisting their guests in theirdepartures.
Sam’s staff twitched. She had no idea what that meant, but after being trapped and helpless these last days, she needed herselfback. She’d always craved an accepting community, but she’d learned early to defy bullies who kept herout.
She glaredat Walker. “Handcuff me, and you can arrest me for assaulting a policeofficer.”
“That would be a reverse policy. I mean it, Sam. Don’t be part of the problem,” heordered.
“I think we’reallpart of the problem, but that fire up there is manmade. I can feel the malice burning.” Torn between intellectual obedience and the innate sensation ofknowinghow the earth felt, Sam’s defianceescalated.
Even as she spoke, one of the lodge’s uniformed security guards raced down the hillside, shouting, “It’s a cross! The crazies are burning across!”
“No, they’re not.” At that deliberate slur, she chose sides and started toward the path into the woods. “The Lucys are in town, blocking evil withbulldozers.”
She said it for Walker’s benefit, not the guard, who wastoo far away. Walker grabbed her elbow and swung heraround.
“That part, I almost understand,” he said. “But you can’t put out the fire. Stay here and keep the Kennedys in line or they’ll be rounding up your friends and shootingthem.”
Startled, she studied his expression, but wearing his mirrored sunglasses, he played his inscrutable card. Last night, in his arms, she’d thoughtshe understood him. Today, not somuch.
Remembering Carmel at the graveyard at midnight, she had to consider his conclusion, but she shook her head indisagreement.
“The Kennedys are not thewrongnessseeping through this soil. I guess you’re right, though, I’m new to this. I’ll hold them off with my new stick.” She gave him a blindingly insipid grin that she figured he didn’t buyfor an instant, but he releasedher.
Last night had been a moment out of time, one she’d never have again, she feared. He was the Null voice of sanity and authority, and she was just a crazy Lucy, apparently. She stalked off toward thelodge.
She discovered the walking stick had a belt that she could strap around her arm or waist or anywhere that suited her. She fit it to her waistand hefted a toddler wandering after his father, who was bogged down in bags of toys andcoolers.
“People are more important than things,” she warned the mother racing up to fling diaper bags in the back of their van. Sam handed her the kid. “Get out now, before the firespreads.”
Both parents glanced in alarm at the flames licking down the hillside. Thank all the stars, the windwasn’t blowing hard, but it would take only one gust... Following Sam’s advice, they fastened the kid in his seat and climbed in without going back forsuitcases.
Turning around, Sam came face to face with Carmel. The older woman looked as if she’d like to spit in her face. “Out,” the older woman said in a threatening tone. “Get out of townnow.”
“And hello to you, too, step-grandma,”Sam said. “I’ll invite you to tea sometime, but right now, you have a bigger problem we should addressfirst.”
That wasn’t like the old her to talk like that. She now knew she was normally cautious and determined, hunting for niches where she might fit in. She wasn’t comfortable with this new aggressiveness, but maybe she shouldlearn.
Carmel looked so stunned, Sam couldn’t regretthe wild freedom surging through her. Turning her back on the lodge, she threw caution to the winds and jogged over to where Harvey strode up the path toward the exorcismclearing.
Behind her, the Nulls were being sensible. Walker was directing traffic. HerUncleKurt was helping the last few straggling guests. She could hear fire engines screaming up the road, and a plane flying over themountain.
She refused to watch helplessly if there was any small part she could play in saving a town that had taken her in. But she didn’t have bulldozers or even a hoe. All she had was a pulsating stick and the Lucys’ foolish superstition. If she wished to be an objective, open-minded scientist, shouldn’t she at leastexperiment?
She unclipped the carved staff and held it in herhand, not like a dowsing rod this time, but as a walking stick. It seemed to amplify the vibrations she’d sensed when she’d climbed out of thecar.
“What the hell am I supposed to be doing?” Sam asked as she caught up withHarvey.
