“Hm,” Sylvie said. Then her eyes widened and a dismayed look crossed her face. “Oh. Oh my.” She looked at us with a guilty expression. “I think I know what stone.”
21
“There.” Sylvie pointed to a rock in her garden. “I can’t believe it’s still here.” She looked at me, Lilac, and Tamara. Tamara had won a short reprieve, but I doubted Sylvie would so easily forget or forgive the incident. Tamara had shown an appalling lack of judgment—by human standards, in any event.
I’d detoured by my house to drop off Clarence. He’d been relatively quiet during the meeting, and when I’d commented, he’d complained that hunger was making him lightheaded and a single piece of bacon didn’t go very far.
Completely absurd—the lightheaded part, not the bacon part. One could never get enough bacon. Then again, he had agreed to munch on kitty kibble till I could get home and cook up something more appetizing. Clarence normally had very strong and decidedly negative feelings about kitty kibble, so I knew he was ravenous.
The ladies had been kind enough to wait the three or four minutes it had taken for me to run across the street and unlock the front door for Clarence.
And now we were all staring at a rock.
A decorative rock in a garden.
“It’s beautiful?” Lilac said tentatively.
And it was. It was an unusual combination of green and red. I could pick it up with one hand, but it wouldn’t fit in my palm.
“Dragon blood jasper, Australian in origin.” Tamara looked at Sylvie. “Are your people from Australia?”
A tiny wrinkle appeared between Sylvie’s eyes. “I can’t be sure. My mother’s family is from Italy. My grandmother’s from the UK, but she would never say who Dad’s father was. It was a huge family scandal at the time.”
“Really?” Lilac wrinkled her nose. “I mean, I get it’s different now, what with sperm donors and adoption and all the options available—but people have always had affairs.”
“Certainly. They just didn’t get caught, not without society frowning mightily,” Sylvie said. “Or so my mother used to say when she wasn’t feeling charitable toward my grandmother.”
“Hm.” Lilac shrugged. “My mom was a hippie and a single mom. Different worlds, I guess.”
Tamara patted Lilac on the shoulder. “Different times.”
We all turned our attention back to the rock.
“You’re sure this is the stone?” Lilac asked. “It looks pretty innocuous.”
“So does your gargoyle,” I reminded her.
Tamara looked at me curiously, so I briefly explained: “Lilac knocked out the construct with an iron gargoyle her father gave her.”
“Ah. Keep that close until we’ve sorted this all out,” Tamara said, echoing my sentiments from the night before. When Lilac agreed—and even produced the little guy from the depths of her monstrous purse to prove she already was—Tamara returned her attention to the rock. “Now, about this stone—Sylvie, do you know where it comes from?”
“My grandmother left me some things. A few boxes, some furniture. It was right after I moved into this house. There wasn’t a place for everything, and it was also a difficult time. I’d finally changed my name back after the divorce because I’d foolishly kept Bobby’s name.” A hint of bitterness crept into her voice, the first sign I’d seen of any real animosity between her and her ex. “I’d also waited so long to buy my own house, so that was quite emotional for me, though in a different way. And then to have my grandmother pass . . . It was all so much in such a short time. The furniture was a reminder I didn’t need.”
Something about that story wormed its way into my brain and set tiny alarm bells ringing—but which part?
Sylvie stared at the shed. I thought for a second that she might cry, but she turned back to us dry-eyed.
Lilac looked uncomfortable, like she didn’t know where to put her hands. “I’m sorry. About losing what your grandmother left you.” Then she shot Tamara a disappointed look.
“Thank you. Although I think I still have what my grandmother most wanted to leave me.” Sylvie looked back at the rock. “It was in one of the drawers. I thought it was pretty and that it would be a nice complement to Clive, so I put it in the garden.”
“Clive?” I asked.
She pointed to a garden gnome with a shovel. She’d placed the rock near the shovel.
“Oh! That’s cute.” Lilac grinned. “And I’m not one for gnomes usually, but he’s a good one.”
The two women shared a moment of admiration for Clive, which broke the emotional tension somewhat.
“I suppose I should retrieve it.” But Sylvie remained firmly planted a few feet away. “I’m reluctant to touch it. It sounds silly, even to me, since I didn’t have any problems moving it from the shed to the garden.”
“That’s not strange at all. Magic is part perception and part belief.” Tamara pointed at me. “This one knows. His job was dependent upon convincing the dead to believe they’d passed. Without an acceptance of death, the soul lingers.”
I nodded. True.
“So now that I know it does something, it can actually do that thing. No, that doesn’t make any sense.” Sylvie clasped her hands together. “Never mind. I just need to retrieve it, and then we can stash it somewhere safe, right?”
The question was rhetorical—she was already leaning down to pick it up. I looked away after getting an eyeful of her heart-shaped derriere. I hadn’t noticed the capris and figure-hugging T-shirt earlier, but they were impossible to miss now.
By the time I’d distracted myself from a variety of less-than-gentlemanly thoughts, Sylvie was standing, but without the rock.
She said to Tamara, “And you’re sure you don’t know what it does?”
“I’d have told you, I promise,” Tamara replied. “I can’t detect any
