“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 herdisposition.
“So all of you know something I don’t?” Mariahcomplained.
“You’re a fine one to talk. How long haveyou and my mayoral uncle been holding secretmeetings?”
The shade of an old pine tree hid Mariah’s color, but Sam thought heat darkened her friend’s brownskin.
“Monty isn’t like Kurt,” Mariah protested. “He may not believe in ghosts, but he accepts that I can send themon.”
“Like the Grim Reaper?” Sam asked, justbecause.
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 thesubject.”
Ectoplasm? Sam tried to piece that into the world as she knew it andfailed.
“If Mariah is consorting with the enemy, it’s better you don’t tell her everything just yet,” Cass warned. “Too many peopledied last time. I don’t think I can bear to losemore.”
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 totheland.
“I don’t think Monty and Kurt are like their father,” Sam said tentatively, trying to sound Cass out. “Things havechanged.”
“They consort with Evil,” Valdis chanted in her banshee voice. “It infects the land and the people who dwell onit.”
“Short of an earthquake, I don’t think you can eliminate the mountain,” Sam said gently. “Are you saying the farm containstoxicchemicals?”
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, goahead.”
“Greed,” Valdis intoned. “Greed infects the land. Greed and ambition and unhealthydesires.”
Sam exchanged glances with Mariah and refrained from snickering. Did Valdis even know what unhealthy desirewas?
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 backhere?
