At first, Hannah smiled. Then she laughed out loud as the images kept changing. Then, without warning, tears began running down her cheeks.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry.” Zach patted her shoulder awkwardly. “They’re funny, see. They’re supposed to make you laugh.”
Hannah put her face in her hands and sobbed uncontrollably.
“Gamma!” Zach bawled at the top of his lungs.
He heard a plate clatter to the floor in the kitchen, and his ancestor rushed into the room. She took one look at the situation and stared at him accusingly. “What on earth did you do to her?”
“Me!” he exclaimed with injured innocence. “I was showing her a video of some LOL cats, and she freaked.”
Faye sat down in the chair on the other side of Hannah. The girl buried her head in the old woman’s shoulder and continued to sob.
“There, there, dear. Everything is alright.” Faye patted her back and smoothed her hair. “LOL cats?” she asked pointedly.
“They’re funny,” Zach protested. “She was laughing at first and then...” he spread his hands out expressively. “This started. I swear she must be some kind of sleeper agent and LOL cats are her trigger.”
“And her lethal power is crying uncontrollably at the sight of felines?” Faye retorted archly.
“Don’t ask me!”
“It’s not his fault,” Hannah sniffed and shifted her position to sit up straight. “Please don’t be angry with him. It’s just one of the cats in the movie...” her eyes welled up again.
“Oh, I see,” Faye said knowingly. “You once had a cat that looked like it, didn’t you?”
The girl seemed to nod and shake her head simultaneously. “Yes, I had a black and white cat called Sparkle when I was little, but that’s not why I’m crying.” She dashed the tears away. “When I was still at the compound in Missouri, an order came down from the diviner that no one was allowed to have pets. He said they were tools of the devil meant to distract us from our prayers. My father was the archwarden in charge of the compound where we lived, and he tried to get the animals away safely. But...” she paused to wipe away more tears. “The diviner must not have trusted that my father would carry out his wishes. He sent some men of his own with guns. They collected all the pets and shot them in the middle of the square. Sparkle was still a kitten when she died.”
“Oh, my dear,” Faye wrapped her arms around the girl. “How terrible to have to witness that.”
At first, Zach sat utterly still. He felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him. The image that Hannah had conjured was too horrific for his animal-loving nature to stand. Rage shot through his veins. “What kind of a sick freak is gonna slaughter innocent pets like that! You give me ten minutes in a locked room with that son of a—”
“Language, Zach,” his ancestor reprimanded him sharply.
“But Gamma, this is insane! It’s evil, and she needs to know that!” His tone became more insistent. “It’s bad enough that one crazy idiot orders them to be killed. But then a whole bunch of other gun-toting crazies carry out his orders. Not one of them stops long enough to think it might be wrong! You make sure she knows that the people she comes from are evil! Nobody with a conscience could do something like that!”
Hannah sat up again, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. “It wasn’t just the kitten I was crying about. First, I lost her, then my father was taken away, and my mother was reassigned to another man. And now the baby is gone. Everything and everybody I ever loved is gone. They’ve all been taken away from me, just as quick as that.” She snapped her fingers. “No warning.” She stood up hastily. “I’m sorry. I need to be alone for a while. Maybe I better lie down again and sleep some more.” Abruptly, she bolted from the table and pelted up the stairs. The slamming of her bedroom door echoed down the hall.
Zach and Faye stared at one another in silence for a few moments.
“That might have gone better,” the old woman said ruefully.
“Jeez! She’s like a Raggedy Ann time bomb!” Zach muttered. “What else is gonna surface?”
“I don’t know, dear.” Faye sighed. “She may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s impossible to guess what might upset her or when. If this is too much for you—”
“I didn’t say that.” He cut her off. “If she is a human time bomb, then we’ve just gotta figure out how to defuse her, that’s all.”
“A delicate operation requiring patience,” Faye observed pointedly.
Zach rose to leave. “There’s nothing we can do about it today. Like she said, she wants to be left alone. I should go anyhow. I feel a sudden urge to get home and hug Ralph.”
“Ralph?”
He retreated down the hall toward the back door. “My dog.”
Chapter 36 – The X Factor
“I think Erik is going to have better luck than we will,” Cassie said to Griffin as they walked through the rental car parking lot to pick up their vehicle. The Arkana team had decided to split up to cover more territory. After landing in New York, Erik had gone to New Hampshire to interview the Algonquin trove keeper. Cassie and Griffin had flown to Syracuse, New York, the heartland of the Iroquois tribe. The pythia and the scrivener were planning to rendezvous with the trove keeper at an archaeological dig several miles outside of town.
Cassie walked over
