Angel's Touch (8 page)

Megan pursed her lips, obviously seeing right through her bullshit. “The ancients knew how to use stone to harness this energy. We don’t. Please don’t build anything here. It’s a powerful site and it would be a shame not to preserve it.”

“Look, I’m sorry you’re not happy with what I’m doing, but we’re not talking about an endangered bird—we’re talking about something that most people would agree does not even exist.”

Megan’s face went blank, her emotional armor sliding into place.

Kira’s heart clenched. What was it about this woman that she couldn’t stand to hurt her feelings? She hated how Megan was looking at her, but it was impossible to do what she was asking of her—to cancel construction of the spa and throw away her investment in the land. If Kira were her father she wouldn’t even waste time arguing about it.

“I need to go home.” Megan turned and headed for the fallen tree that marked the way out.

“I’m heading out, too.” Kira joined her, matching her stride for stride. She turned her head to look at her, but Megan stared straight ahead, shutting her out. As they stepped around a tree, Megan pushed a low-hanging branch away from her face and winced as it ricocheted behind her.

“That branch didn’t hurt you, did it?” Kira touched Megan’s arm and pushed her wild hair out of her face, searching for scratches.

Megan stared at her with luminous eyes. Her hairline was incredibly soft and warm and… Whoa. Okay. Stop. Take a step back.

“No scratches,” Kira mumbled, explaining what her hand had been doing lingering on Megan’s sweet, delicate face.

“The branch didn’t hurt me.” Megan turned away and continued along the rough path.

“You looked like you were in pain.”

“I’m fine.” They reached the fallen tree and Megan paused. “You first.”

Kira clambered over and waited for her. Megan followed more slowly, using her legs to haul herself up. It was clumsy, and yet last time she’d seen that Megan was quite capable of climbing over that tree—and of looking damn good doing it. So why was she having so much trouble now?

“Would you like a hand?”

“I’m fine.” Megan jumped down. She stumbled when she landed, almost pitching into her. Kira held out her hands to steady her, but Megan angled her body away from her, and Kira, rebuffed, pulled away.

“Are you hurt?”

“I didn’t fall,” Megan protested.

Kira persisted. “Not from your jump. Are you hurt from something else? You’re moving like something’s wrong.”

“I’m fine.”

“Would you stop saying you’re fine? You don’t look fine. You look like you’re in pain. Let me take you back to the hotel. I have painkillers and a first-aid kit if that’ll help.”

“I’m
fine,
” Megan insisted.

Kira threw her hands in the air and let out a growl of exasperation from the back of her throat. “Fine.” Some people just couldn’t accept help.

They walked the last few yards back to the parking lot in silence.

“Back in the office I have a box full of sample products that people send me,” Kira said. “They want me to sell their stuff at the spa. Mostly skin care, but there’s other cool stuff in there, too. I know I saw some pain-relieving gel. Maybe you could take some of it home with you and test it out, see what you like.”

Megan laughed, then pressed her hand to her chest and grimaced as if laughing had dislodged a rib. “You never give up, do you?”

“I know—you’re fine.”

“I am.” Megan rubbed her breastbone.

So it was her chest that hurt. From the way Megan had gotten herself over that fallen tree she’d suspected it was something in her upper body, maybe her shoulder. “Can you please tell me what happened to you?”

“I think I sprained something.”

Kira gave her a puzzled look. How did a person sprain their breastbone?

“I thought at first I might have broken my clavicle—my collarbone,” Megan explained. “But the X-rays didn’t show any fractures. So that’s positive, I guess.”

“Did you put ice on it?”

Megan traced the edge of her breastbone with her fingertips and dug in again and again, making herself flinch each time. “Yes, and it was a horrible place to put an ice pack.”

“It looks like it hurts.”

“It kills,” Megan admitted.

“Maybe if you stopped pressing on it so hard…” Kira fought the urge to take Megan’s hand in her own and kiss her fingertips until they relaxed so she’d stop hurting herself.

Megan continued the aggressive self-massage. “I had to cancel a week of clients, and I’m worried a week might not be enough.”

No wonder she was upset. How badly hurt was she?

“I said before that I’d be happy to pay you for the advice you’re giving me. Hire you as a paid consultant. If you’re not able to do any physical work for a while, you might want the money. So please, let me pay you.”

“I appreciate it. I really do. But I don’t want you to pay me. I have some money saved. I’ll be okay.”

“I
want
to pay you.”

“Look, if you really want to, you can pay me back by referring your friends to me when I recover. I might have lost some clients.”

Kira had to smile at Megan’s twisted offer. Maybe there
was
a spark of competitiveness inside that generous heart.

“What I’m more concerned about is the people who are in pain who depend on me,” Megan said.

“There are other massage therapists.”

Megan stared at her, probably wondering if she’d just been insulted, then nodded. “Good point.”

“Come on inside with me and I’ll get you that gel.”

They headed back to the hotel and into Kira’s office. She pulled out her big cardboard box of sample products, squatted next to it on the floor, and dug around for the sample tube of pain-relieving gel she’d tossed in there when it arrived in the mail a couple weeks ago.

Megan waited in the doorway. “What’s in there? Scented soaps?”

“You can smell that?”

“You can’t?”

“Sure, but my head is practically inside the box. They’re candles, by the way, not soap.” She looked up and saw Megan take a step back. “They’re wrapped in plastic…”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You don’t like the smell.”

Megan wrinkled her nose.

Kira pulled the candles out to identify the source of the problem and read the labels aloud. “Pine, lavender, sandalwood, vanilla…”

“It’s a little much,” Megan said.

“So much for my idea of you taking this whole box home with you, then.”

“Don’t you want to try out your freebies yourself?”

“It’s not really my thing.” She rummaged some more in the box. “Oh, look, here’s the gel.” She pulled it out and also snagged another item that caught her eye. “You might like this beanbag pillow thing. I think you heat it up in the microwave like a heating pad. For later on this week, when you’re done inflicting that ice pack on yourself.”

“Thanks.” Megan stepped into the office and leaned over to take the two items from Kira’s outstretched hand, unsuccessfully stifling a small squeak of pain.

The sound made Kira’s gut hurt. She wanted to wrap Megan up in a blanket and take care of her until the pain went away. “The pillow doesn’t smell too much like perfume from being in with all the scented stuff, does it?”

“No, it’s okay.” Megan started backing toward the door.

“Watch your step.” If they were going to continue to meet in her office, she was going to have to organize some of the junk she had piled on the floor and find somewhere else to put it.

“I should get going,” Megan said.

“If you need to take the week off to rest, we can postpone our next powwow. We don’t need to meet until you feel up to it.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She was fine, huh? Now there was a surprise.

Megan leaned against the doorframe. “I’ll actually have plenty of extra time to meet with you this week, since I won’t be seeing clients. We can talk about alternatives to your building a spa on that land.”

Kira rocked forward onto her toes and pressed through her thighs to stand up. She sighed. “You’re going to tell people about the energy, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to be overrun by woo-woo types.”

“Maybe they’ll want to stay at your hotel,” Megan suggested. “You could turn this into a tourist attraction.”

“I bought that abandoned lot so I could build a spa on it.”

“It could be a real draw. There’s no other lesbian hotel in the country that has what you have right here, if you don’t cover it up. There are tons of crazy women like me who would love to come here and experience this energy.”

“I never said you were crazy.”

“You said you were worried I would tell all my woo-woo friends about this place.”

“Woo-woo’s not crazy.”

“Right.” Megan rolled her eyes.

Kira couldn’t help but smile. “It’s not crazy. It’s…different.”

“You don’t have to be polite.”

“I’m not being polite. I’m going to bulldoze your rock and that’s not going to be polite at all. I just think we have a different way of dealing with the world. Your way is charming.”

“Not charming enough, obviously,” Megan muttered.

“Interesting?” Kira ventured.

“Uh-huh.”

“I wish you would believe me.”

“I’d like to, but it’s been my experience that people who use the word ‘woo-woo’ generally think I’m deluded when I talk about energy fields. But it’s okay if you do. I’m used to it.”

“It’s not okay.” If she didn’t feel so comfortable around her, Kira would have been more careful not to annoy her. Although she was kind of cute when she was annoyed.

“Then you won’t build your spa on this spot.”

“That would be financial suicide. It’s not an option.”

Megan turned away, stumbling over one of Kira’s piles of junk. “Yeah,” she muttered. “You definitely find my point of view interesting.”

***

A sliver of moon shone through the pine trees behind Kira’s hotel, peeking out through passing clouds. Megan clicked off her flashlight and let her eyes adjust to the dark.

Without the ley lines, this was nothing more than a neglected, overgrown, wooded lot. That was how Kira saw it—as a nothing-special plot of land waiting for her to build something. A place that Megan was a fool to care about. In the dark it was easy to believe the rumors about that poor woman who was murdered, or that bad guys hung out here waiting for girls to wander into the shrubbery where no one would see them being attacked. Mr. Creepy was there again, breathing down her neck.

Megan sank to the ground next to the standing stone. The cushion of pine needles that blanketed the sandy soil released the faint scent of pine, so different from the overpowering smell of Kira’s sample candles. She crossed her legs and leaned back against the stone.

Energy from the stone flooded her the instant she touched it, and the uneasy feeling of danger vanished. How could she possibly be afraid of anything when she had the strength of the lifeblood of the earth flowing through her? The power was unbelievable. And this time, Kira was not going to interrupt. This time she was alone, and she had all the time in the world to see what this energy could do.

Consciously she merged her inner light with the energy of the standing stone, then channeled it all into the cause of her chest and shoulder pain, whatever that cause might be. The thing kept moving, evading her, slipping away each time her beam of energy touched it.

Eventually her legs grew stiff. She massaged the feeling back into them, adjusted her position, and became still again. The leys weren’t helping as much as she’d hoped. She could feel their power, but either that power wasn’t enough to release the karma causing her pain, or she didn’t have the skill to channel it, or she wasn’t able to reach the requisite level of deep surrender.

She opened her eyes, pondering what to do next. And blinked. Hundreds of twinkling pinpricks of golden light glowed in the darkness like drifting bubbles lit from within. Angels. Hundreds of them. She’d never seen so many in one place before. One by one, the bubbles popped and morphed into glowing female forms, some as small as butterflies, some twice the size of a person.

They were beautiful.

Magical.

She stared until their brightness hurt her eyes. Her sternum throbbed. Was it possible they had come to take away her pain?

She pushed that thought from her mind before the angels could pick up on it and be offended. Of course they weren’t here for her. They were here for their own angelic purposes, and she just happened to be lucky enough to witness it. She craned her neck upward, taking in the beautiful enormity of it, and noticed something she couldn’t believe she’d missed. Behind her, a silvery thread of energy extended from the top of the standing stone up into the sky, disappearing into the night. It glowed faintly in the dark, and angels were shooting down it like they were going down a water slide, joining the others. Soon she realized the arriving angels were not drifting around randomly, but were lining up along the two leys, hovering a few feet above the ground.

Eventually the funneling of angels from God knew where slowed to a trickle and one of them spoke, although it was impossible to tell which one it was—the words seemed to come from several directions at once.

“Don’t let anything happen to this crossroads.” The sound was like a glass harmonica—or were they called glass harps?—where a table of wineglasses filled with different amounts of water made music when the rims were rubbed—except someone forgot to tune this one. And broke a glass. And plugged it into a guitar amplifier. Megan fought the urge to clamp her hands over her ears to block the painful vibration.

She’d never heard an angel speak before. Had the energy of the leys unlocked some hidden potential in her? Fine-tuned her psychic hearing? Or was it standing on the leys themselves that allowed her to hear them? Her friend Gwynne—the only person she knew who could hear angels—had never mentioned how disconcerting their voices were. If the whole choir of angels thing was for real, then she hoped to God that was not what they were gathering here for, because that much sound just might make her lose her mind.

The angels continued to hover over the leys, silent now, and gradually the shock wore off and the words sank in.
Don’t let anything happen to this crossroads.