That one was easy. She knew Gary. The House knew Gary, he'd been here many times. His sisters, both sides, had lived under this roof. Spirit bond, DNA trace, whatever. "You want to find Gary, Caroline would be the better bet. Not just those Dragons they wear. I think they share about half their souls."
Daniel nodded. Still, she could use a focus. She opened the old china cabinet and pulled out a massive chunk of sea-green tourmaline. Haskell women had been finding visions in its crystal depths since a glacier peeled it out of some rockface and dumped it alongside the bay far back in the aboriginal dreamtime. It pulled your eyes into its endless heart and cast your thoughts free to wander.
Wander.
Wander.
Alice shook herself loose and found the parlor around her again, no clue how long she'd stood there lost. "He's alive. He's hurting, I can't tell if it's physical or mental, but he doesn't think he's in danger. He does not want to be found."
Daniel nodded again, looking grim, and stared out through the plaster walls. She put the crystal back and returned to the parlor, sitting across from him. Going by his face, Gary wasn't the worst puzzle he wanted solved. She waited.
Finally he took a deep breath and focused on her. "Second thing is this. Like I said, Ben's been acting strange." Daniel handed her a photo he'd pulled out from inside his jacket.
"We had someone prowling around Morgans' Point, before and after that body showed up. We moved stuff out of the house and tunnels, in case people started poking noses where they shouldn't be poked. Including that.
"Then someone followed me out to the . . . where I've been staying. Stole that. Didn't take anything else. Makes me wonder if the someone was following me, or that. That thing has a strange feel about it. As if it's in your territory. Witch territory."
Alice stared at the photo in her lap. It was a beautiful photo, as sharp and detailed as the object it portrayed. And the object was beautiful, delicate, a priceless masterpiece of pre-Colombian art. Mayan, she'd seen its cousins in Caroline's Anthro texts. She could almost touch it. She felt it. Felt the menace of it, chilling her spine and waking the memory of hot red blood on hungry stone. Her stomach clenched with fear, and her fingers trembled and plucked at her jeans rather than hold the photo of the thing.
There sat the jaguar out of her dreams.
"You fools. You damned, larcenous, blind fools. I thought Ben had learned when he brought me that Kachina, so I could send it back to the People where it belonged. These things have power. These things live. You don't own them, they own you. At least that one helped her People. This one ate them. I can't even begin to guess how much blood this thing has drunk, how many lives."
Photos captured the soul. That thing held an evil soul. She didn't want to touch the photo. She tore her eyes away from it and stared off into nothing, afraid.
"You broke it, you bought it. You have to get that damned thing back. Don't let your damn fool brother anywhere near it, either. It owns him. He wouldn't do what it wanted, so now it has found someone who will. Pray to God and all His saints and angels that Tupash doesn't have the strength to rule it yet. If he does . . ."
Alice shook herself, trying to work off the chill. "Sometimes you damned Morgans are more trouble than you're worth. I'll see if the bats can find it. Take the picture. Take it and get the fuck out of here."
The witch tells you to leave, you leave. Daniel left, with the photo. The House told her that, told her the door wouldn't open again for man or beast unless she willed.
Jackie. Tupash. That thing, Jaguar. She had to find Kate.
Jaguar was out there. Jaguar hunted blood to slake the thirst of dry centuries. Alice tried to calm her shaking hands. She was safe inside the House. Pass through the door . . .
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou are with me . . .
The Valley had come to Stonefort, and Alice felt fear in spite of King David's bravado.
Our Father, who art in heaven . . .
Chapter Twenty
Caroline sank into airline hell, a three-hundred-pound woman overflowing the aisle seat next to her and a Hispanic family with five young children yammering a mile-a-minute ahead and behind and around her ears because the dinky noisy shaking turboprop only had two seats per row. And the fat lady smelled like she hadn't bathed in at least a month. Soaked herself in cheap cologne instead.
No, "fat lady" is rude. Not acceptable language. She's "gravitationally challenged" or some such euphemism. Airline still should have made her buy two seats instead of giving her half of mine for free.
Caroline was feeling bitchy. Grandmother Loon hated takeoffs and landings.
She faced at least twelve hours of airline seats and terminals, Flagstaff to Phoenix to Charlotte to Philadelphia to Naskeag Falls, with a half-hour dash between gates in Charlotte where she would probably miss her connection. And if she made it to Naskeag Falls in one piece, odds were that her baggage would wind up waiting on the unclaimed rack in Vladivostok.
Well, she had underwear, sweaters, and another pair of jeans in her carry-ons. And all her research stuff and laptop. She'd learned. The hard way.
She leaned against the cool plastic of the cabin window and tried to blank her mind. The sere brown tortured landscape wheeled under her as the plane banked from takeoff, snaky lines and tufts of pinyon and lodgepole crowning the mountains, sketching the ridges, and she let herself sink back into the canyonlands where she only had to worry about dying from
