Sacred Ground Read online

  She pulled up at a traffic light, and began tapping her fingers on the steering wheel in a drum pattern. The Little People would be handicapped if they were operating against someone who not only was not Osage, but wasn't even a Native American. Still, if this particular lot was very old, and very powerful, they might be able to work right through that nonbeliever resistance. And every time they succeeded in pulling something off, it would make the next strike easier.

  And potentially a lot more deadly.

  If this line of reasoning was true, well-it meant that the explosion was not the end, but was only the beginning. There would be more incidents, unless she could pacify them. More things for which mortal humans might be blamed.

  Now she was very glad she'd smudged Larry Bushyhead down. If the mi-ah-luschka were on the trail of his boss, they might be inclined to take out Believer targets first. If they had picked up the magical"scent" of Calligan when the first dozer unearthed the relics, they would not let go of the trail. His workers, his wife, his family, they would all be fair game. They would have his scent as well, and as arbitrary as they were sometimes, the Little People might just start sniping at random.

  Honking behind her jarred her out of her reverie; the light had changed, and she was still sitting there like a dope. Flushing furiously, she tapped the accelerator and moved into the intersection.

  Shoot, the Little People could be causing all kinds of "accidents" that I don't even know about! Things like-making a driver see a green light when it's actually red. Or, Wah-K'on-Tah give me patience, sending David here to get those poor guys into more trouble by thinking he's getting them out of it!

  That would be like the mi-ah-luschka too, she thought sourly. Get everyone entangled in a big mess. What would be worse; going to jail for something you didn't do-or getting flattened at an intersection? And which would those construction workers pick?

  Me, I'd prefer to get flattened. The idea of a prison cell gives me the creeps.

  She turned down her own street, several blocks earlier than she usually did. The stop signs were all facing her direction along here, and if she was going to go all fog-brained, better to go along here than on the busier street.

  Small brick-and-frame houses lined both sides of the street, set back under trees that dated back to the thirties. The street looked very safe and suburban without the sterility of the modern subdivisions. Little porch lights gleamed warmly down on curved sidewalks and small porches with a chair or porch swing waiting. No kids out tonight; just as well, given her inattentiveness right now.

  If I want to see if there's Little People out there on that site-damn it all, I'm going to have to go out there at night. I don't want to see, but I have to find out. I might as well go tonight or tomorrow, before the full moon. If they catch me while they are not at full power, I can probably convince them I'm on their side.

  But she had no intentions of prowling around a place where the Little People had any chance of appearing without some special preparations. Momma didn't raise any stupid children, oh no. Besides, what was the use of being the student of a Medicine Man if you couldn't ask his advice?

  The driveway loomed up much faster than she had expected it to, and she overshot. She backed up slowly, making certain there weren't any kids playing in the street before doing so, and pulled the truck in as neatly as she could.

  The unmistakable scent of pizza greeted her nose as soon as she opened the door.

  "Don't try to hide it; I already smelled it!" she shouted, closing the door behind her and walking into the living room. As she had expected, Grandfather sat in front of the television watching CNN, a Domino's box in front of him, and a half-eaten slice of pepperoni still in his hand. He looked up at her with his beady black eyes, and grinned without a trace of guilt.

  "You know very well that my cholesterol count was fine, the last time we had it checked," he said. "And besides, I was hungry, and you weren't here to fix me anything."

  "As if you aren't a better cook than I am," she retorted, then threw up her hands in defeat. "All right. I give up. I just hope you saved me some of that."

  He smiled again, affectionately. "I knew you'd be hungry too; the past two days you haven't had a single proper meal. You work too much and eat too little." He picked up the first box to reveal a second, and opened it up, tilting it to show her another intact pizza. "Mushrooms and black olives, your favorite. All for you. And I made apple cobbler, for later. You're never going to find a husband if you look like a stick."

  She helped herself to napkins and a fat slice; he was right, she was starving, and right now she would have eaten the cardboard if there'd been cheese on it. "What are you, Jewish now?" she jibed, and mimicked a thick New York accent. "Eat, eat, eat, you're too thin, how you gonna get a husband, you so thin-"

  "So? Maybe they've got the right idea about some things." He chuckled, and put another couple of slices on a paper plate for her. "There's French Vanilla ice cream to go with that cobbler."

  Jennifer suppressed a groan; she was never going to be able to resist that combination. She had been even hungrier than she had thought; she inhaled the first slice and looked longingly at the rest before licking her fingers clean and opening the mail.

  It was a Good Mail Day; two checks. One from a divorce case, and one from a client whose steakhouse was. being pilfered. That would take care of a couple of bills, while she worked this thing. . . .

  This thing.

  She picked up her second piece of pizza and cleared her throat, and Grandfather looked up quickly.

  "The insurance case," she began.

  "You smudged someone," he replied, before she could find the right words. "I smelled it on your clothes when you came in. So it isn't just.an insurance thing anymore, right? Now it's a Medicine Thing, too."

  She sighed with relief. He had gone completely serious on her, every inch the shaman. "Right. Exactly. Let me give it to you as I got it, so you can see the path I was following-"

  He kept quiet as she related the entire story from the beginning, only pursing his lips from time to time without interrupting her.

  "So." He sat quietly, thinking for a moment. "I have to admit that I have never heard of that particular place being a burial site before. Of course, I don't know everything, and there have been plenty of things lost to us besides the locations of burial grounds. Still. I think you're right; I think that this business with the relics is very bad, and I would not be in the least surprised to find that the mi-ah-luschka have been aroused."

  "Oh, hell. I was afraid you'd say that." She finished her meal and wiped her fingers clean, before settling back in the chair. "I wish I knew what else to make of this. Half the facts I have make Calligan look like a bad guy, and the other half make him look like some bozo who was just doing something stupid and incredibly selfish. Stupidity on one person's part shouldn't be punished by blowing up other people; selfishness is generally its own punishment, sooner or later. On the whole, if Calligan did plow up a burial ground and order the relics destroyed, I think a hefty fine from some kind of government agency and a bad mark on his record would do everyone a lot more good than setting the Little People on him. And where the devil did that bomb come from? The Little People never went around planting bombs before that I ever heard of!"

  Grandfather shook his head. "I don't know what to make of that, either. If you are thinking that you need to get deeply involved in this because of the blood spilled, though-well, you are right. It is your duty, and not only to your own people. Murder must be balanced." He tilted his head to one side, and continued, very gently this time, "I am afraid that you made some very serious mistakes in the way you handled young David, though, little bird. You may have made an enemy out of him; you certainly shamed him before the other young men. He was never very good at dealing with blows to his pride before, and I doubt that he has improved with the passage of time. The young men he has taken as his mentors have the towering pride of most young hotheads, and it bruises
easily."

  "I didn't make him my enemy," she said, rather sourly. "He did that all by himself. He'd already made up his mind before I ever got there, and he never was one to let facts get in the way of a good opinion."

  "True." Mooncrow nodded. "I suspect that you are going to have to go to this construction site yourself, either tonight or tomorrow night, to see if the mi-ah-luschka really are out there. I would suggest tomorrow night, very, very strongly. You will need a ceremony to prepare and protect you, and it will take more time than we really have tonight. I think that tonight you should simply cleanse yourself. You have had many stresses today, and you are not thinking clearly."

  He had been very serious right up until that moment, but suddenly the impish twinkle in his eye warned her that he was about to zing her.

  "You know, I could show you the Osage Blanket Ritual." He leered. "It would help you, the way you are right now."

  "Thank you, O Wise One, O Wisest of the Little Old Men," she said with heavy irony. "Just like a man. Suggesting that the cure for all my problems is a good medicinal fuck."

  In a way she had hoped to shock him a little with the vulgarity; she was doomed to disappointment. He chuckled, and continued to chuckle as she made her way back to her room.

  Just as she reached it, the phone rang. She reached for it automatically, before Mooncrow's warning "It's David" could stop her in time to let the machine get it.

  "Talldeer," she said, in as neutral a voice as she could. She didn't bother to wonder how Grandfather had known who it was; that was why he was the shaman and she was the apprentice.

  "Home already?" David said, in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "Or couldn't you find anyone who'd fink for you?"

  "Grow the hell up, David," she replied wearily, and hung up before he could launch into a tirade or a threat.

  She sat down heavily on the side of her bed, and took the phone off the hook for a moment while she thought. He was not going to leave her alone. Maybe he had to keep coming at her until she conceded defeat; maybe it was more than just pride. Maybe he'd do anything just to renew the contact; maybe the hormones were getting to him as badly as they were her-

  "And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt," she muttered.

  Still, she knew that he was not going to give up tonight; she'd rattled his cage, and he was going to have to try to reassert his masculine superiority. He was either going to keep calling until he'd delivered his threats, or he was going to come over in person to deliver them. Probably on the front lawn at the top of his lungs if she wouldn't let him in the house.

  All right, you jerk, I'll force your hand. If you're going to play games, you're going to do it on my turf.

  She replaced the phone in its cradle, then dialed one of her clients quickly. This was a child-support case, and while she didn't strictly have to call Angela with the information she'd gotten two days ago, since she'd already turned it over to the state's attorney and to Angela's own legal-eagle, it would make Angela feel better to hear it from the source.

  Besides, Angela was a regular one-woman talk show. She was good for tying up the line for at least forty-five minutes.

  "Hello, Angela?" she said as her client came on, after being pulled away from "The Golden Girls" by her daughter. "Listen, this is just a follow-up, but I thought I should let you know what I dug up on Harry so you can go bug your attorney and the state about this, okay? . . . Yeah, I sent the copies to them yesterday, so tomorrow or the next day at the latest they should have all the files-"

  Just as she had figured, Angela was only too pleased to have someone to talk to; there were at least six "call waiting" beeps as someone-David-tried to ring through. She ignored them gleefully.

  Finally, when there hadn't been any more beeps for at least ten minutes, she exited the conversation gracefully, reminding Angela that they both had to work in the morning, and hung up.

  She glanced over at the clock on the nightstand; it was 10:18. She watched the minute-hand move. At 10:22, the doorbell rang.

  She got up, but only went as far as the living room. Grandfather gave her an inquiring look, and went to answer the door at her nod. They both knew who it was; David was being David so hard that the walls might just as well have not been there. So-first get him off-balance, by having Grandfather meet him. The bunch of activists he was working with at least had respect for the elders drummed into them three times a day by their leaders. Seeing Grandfather here would probably set him back a peg or two. He wouldn't want to be rude around Mooncrow, and he wouldn't know why Mooncrow was living with her, when he was obviously able-bodied enough to be on his own.

  She hadn't told David anything about her medicine-training; she'd been very reluctant to talk about it for a long time-and then, when he might have been interested or at least impressed, it had been too late to tell him.

  Mooncrow led David into the living room, playing the herald, with every iota of his dignity and power wrapped around him like an invisible blanket. From the odd look on David's face, she knew that their first trick had worked. He had been startled to find Grandfather here. He had been even more impressed by Mooncrow's aura of authority; his posture and the way he moved told Jennifer that Grandfather had asserted himself without saying a single word.

  "David Spotted Horse is here to see you, Jennifer," Mooncrow said formally, then moved around behind her, leaving David standing on his own at the entrance to the hallway. As Mooncrow faced away from David, he gave her a slight wink; she took her cue from that, and used her own Power to augment her presence, just as he was doing. Then Grandfather was behind her, deferring to her, which should have told David that he was walking on dangerous ground.

  But he seemed oblivious to the nuances; or else he had made up his mind and was resisting anything that might change it. He took another pose, scowling, trying to intimidate her.

  On my own ground? I don't think so.

  "I think you said everything you needed to, earlier this evening, David," she said calmly, before he could start in on whatever speech he'd memorized. "Unless, of course, you are here to apologize for misjudging me."

  That triggered an explosion of temper. The scowl turned into a glare, and the warrior lost his cool. "Apologize? For what! Look, woman-I came here to give you one warning-"

  She pulled her head up, and stopped him with a look. Behind her, she sensed her Grandfather doing the same- but this was her show, most of the Power was coming from her. What Mooncrow was doing was only enough to show solidarity.

  And later, when David thought all this over, that might shake him up some, too.

  Enough to make him really think? Not likely. But I'll have given him his chance.

  "First of all," she said into the heavy silence, "I am not the enemy. I do not know what is going on over there. That's what I was hired to find out. I am neither judge, nor jury; I am impartial investigator. If the men working for Calligan are innocent, they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by talking to me. I am trained in investigation-you aren't and neither are they. I may see or hear something with their help that will allow us to find whoever did cause that explosion. What's more, you seem to be operating under some assumption that I'm working for the police or some other investigative organization. I'm not. The insurance company that hired me doesn't care if those men are innocent or guilty; all they want to know is if Rod Calligan concealed evidence that his company had been threatened before any of this happened."

  That obviously took David aback. "They don't care? They-I get it, if Calligan was concealing threats, it would invalidate his claim, right?"

  Jennifer had to give him credit; David could pick up on things quickly if he chose to. "Exactly. But there are plenty of people in Tulsa who would like to get an easy conviction. And if those workers are innocent, I might be able to convince some of the cops who are on the case that Calligan's men had nothing to do with it."

  David's face hardened at that. "If?"

  She let her own face assume the mask
of the warrior. "Just what I said. If. Because if they're not innocent, they'd better truck their asses out of town as fast as they can, because sooner or later either I'll find out what happened or the cops will-and if it's me, I'll turn them in. I won't lie to you, David; I'll turn in anyone else who uses terrorist tactics and death to make a point."

  His eyes narrowed, and his teeth clenched as his temper rose again. "That makes you a traitor, in my book-"

  She cut him off, this time using the Power to choke the words in his throat. His mouth worked, without anything coming out. He was, however, so angry that he hardly seemed to notice.

  Her own temper had reached the snapping point. "Just who the hell am I being a traitor to, David Spotted Horse?" she snarled. She couldn't help but think, perhaps with some conceit, that her temper was the trained warhorse-and his the wild mustang. "Why don't you go take a quick trip over to the morgue before you start on me? So far there are four people dead. Go look at what's left of the damn bodies, if you have so much courage! I did! A fair share of those dead bodies are our people, and red or white, their blood demands retribution!"

  He continued to fight her control of him. She released her hold on his words before he really did choke. He spluttered for a few minutes before coming out with something coherent.

  "Your problem is that you've forgotten that you're Indian-"

  She choked him down again, reined in her temper to a walk, and gave him a Mooncrow Look from half-lidded eyes. "Oh, no. I haven't forgotten. But your problem, David Spotted Horse, is that you have forgotten the words of the greatest spiritual leaders of all our nations. You have forgotten that we are all human. You are Cherokee first, then Indian, then human." She finally let her temper show, just a little. It was enough to make him back up an involuntary step. "When you get your goddamn priorities straight, and figure out that it should be the other way around, you can talk to me. Until then"-she gathered her power, and sensed Mooncrow following her lead- "get out of my house."