Itsy-Bitsy Spider by Dale Mayer (21)

Lacey, intent on capturing the photos she’d been asked to take, jolted when she heard Sebastian approach—that deep rumbling growl of his in the background.

He didn’t fit her concept of an archeologist in any way. Yet, he seemed just as comfortable here among the rocks as he did as an angry overlord at the airport when he had first arrived. She could imagine him commanding a big company. It had something to do with his presence, that sense of power which emanated from him.

Heavy footsteps sounded the team’s approach. Trying not to make it obvious, she quickly took photos as they studied their vandalized tools, very much needed to do this job properly.

His striking voice was hard as he demanded, “Are you sure you locked everything up, put everything away?”

Her cousin Chana said, “Yes. We have a routine. We do it every night.”

He straightened and pivoted slightly.

Lacey pointed her camera and caught that jaw, the nose, the aquiline cheeks. Click. Click. Click. Then catching Chana’s gaze, quickly Lacey turned away. Chana stared and then frowned as she understood what Lacey had been doing.

Feeling the heat roll up her neck and cheeks, Lacey hid behind the camera. She changed the angle ever so slightly to get a panoramic view. She slowly, methodically took pictures of the entire circle around her. If nothing else, it would provide a hell of a memory afterward.

Finally the group walked toward him, standing still. Lacey stayed behind, taking pictures of the broken tools and footprints. It was so fascinating to see where people walked now versus where they had walked thousands of years ago. She couldn’t help it. She bent close and took photographs of one shoe imprint and then another and then another.

“What are you, a detective?”

She gave a shriek and spun around to see Sebastian glaring at her. She took a deep breath, trying to stabilize her shaky hands. “I was thinking of the contrast,” she said steadily but had enunciated very carefully, so there was no misunderstanding. “Of footsteps today versus the footsteps of a thousand years ago.”

He stared at her suspiciously for a moment before he relaxed and gave her an approving nod. “That actually could make quite a story.” He turned and strode away.

She let out her pent-up breath, only to suck it in again as Chana whispered angrily in her ear, “What are you doing?”

“Taking photos,” Lacey said, hating her defensive tone. “What was I supposed to be doing?”

“You don’t need to be taking pictures of the boss.” Chana spun on her heels and followed Sebastian.

Lacey stayed where she was, needing a few minutes away from the group and Chana’s prying eyes.

Lacey wandered the section, seeing stairs appearing out of the dirt. No way to know how far down they went because the ground met the seventh step midway. They hadn’t excavated any farther. She walked to the top of the stairs and snapped a photo as she took every step down, thinking about the people who had walked these stairs, carrying burdens, holding children by the hand—the old, the young, the weak, the pregnant. She moved carefully, and, where the stairs stopped, she bent to capture that partially buried step from many angles. The wonder of the past meeting the present flowed through her.

She gave a happy sigh and slowly straightened to realize she wasn’t alone. She looked up to find Sebastian staring at her, an odd look on his face. She frowned and asked in a low voice, “Have I done something wrong?”

He shook his head and pointed to where she’d been crouched. “What is it you see?”

“I see where the past meets the future,” she said quietly. “And I guess that probably sounds frivolous, but I look at it from behind the camera. I see the collision, not of the past with the volcano, but as the future reaches deep into the past.”

That odd look crossed his face yet again. His gaze intensified as if probing into her psyche, holding her captive by his will alone. She stood uncertainly, her fingers fidgeting on the camera. And then, as if she had been finally released from his hold, he gave a quick nod and spun away again. Shaky, she sat down on one of the steps and took several deep breaths. What the hell just happened?

*

He would have to find out more about his new photographer. Something about her was … familiar, … odd, … insightful. She was a puzzle. He loved solving puzzles of the past. Puzzles of the present never interested him. They were too young, held no mystery, no depth. But something about her went beyond deep.

He really liked the answers she’d given to his questions. He could see an old soul reaching through the centuries. Did she realize she’d been drawn here and why?

He glanced back to see Lacey sitting, taking several deep breaths as if he’d unnerved her. Fine if he had. She’d unnerved him too. He walked toward Chana, seeing her stiffen, waiting for his condemnation. “If anything else happens, no matter how minor it may seem to you,” he said in a stern voice, “I want to hear about it, and I want to hear immediately. Do you hear me? You don’t call anybody else, including the rest of the team. You pick up your phone, and you dial me.” He leaned forward just a bit, satisfied when she leaned back reflexively. “Do you understand?”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “I am sorry.”

“I know you are,” he said absently. His mind had already moved forward. “I’ll be in Pompeii for the next week. We have lots of fundraising and a board meeting. I’ll be on-site a lot. So, when you least expect me, I’ll be here.”

And with that warning and a hard look at the rest of the group, he turned and walked away, satisfied the team would follow his orders. Still, there was nothing like seeing things from his own eyes too. What he really wanted was to see what Lacey saw. He stopped at the edge of the dig, turned and called back, “Chana, come here please.”

She raced over.

“What’s the deal with Lacey again?” He watched the color blanch from her face. He shook his head. “It’s fine that she’s here. I just don’t remember what the arrangement was.”

“She’s a middle-school history teacher, out for the summer holidays. I told her how we had lost our photographer, and she volunteered to come. She’s really, really good. But she’s not a pro, and we’re not paying her,” she said very clearly. “But we are covering her costs.”

He shot a glance toward the woman who, even now, was absorbed in a pattern of rock on the ground just off to the side. The mystery of what it was, what it had been, remained buried beneath the ground. Her aura was cream-colored and glowing brightly, even from a distance … “Okay, that’s fine.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Chana said quickly. “She’s my cousin. She’s really doing this as a favor for us.”

He nodded absentmindedly. “I said it’s all right. I do want to see the photos she takes.”

“I didn’t get her to sign an agreement,” she said quickly. “If that’s something you want, then we have to give her a contract.”

His mind contemplated the issue. “I’ll think about it. Depends on how willing she is to share her photos.”

“She does this for joy,” Chana said. “For the love of the world around her. She has a very unique insight into everything.”

“And why is that?”

Chana lowered her voice. “I honestly think it’s because she spent years caring for her dying mother—tried to make each moment count before she lost her. No treatment was working, so they knew the end was inevitable, and yet every day they tried to do something to make that day special. After her mother passed away six months ago, Lacy continued the practice. And coming here has been a dream of hers since forever. All I ever heard from her was how she wanted to come see Pompeii.”

He’d just taken a step away when he heard that last bit. He spun around and looked at Chana hard. “What do you mean?”

He watched as his team leader shrugged her shoulders. “Honestly? She saw a documentary when she was young, like six or seven. Since then it’s all she’s talked about.”

“And this is her first time here?”

Chana nodded. “I really want to make it a good visit for her. She deserves that. She’s a good person, and she spent a lot of years of her life making her mother’s life easier every day.”

He kept his thoughts to himself, but he couldn’t keep his gaze off Lacey. What did she see behind that lens of hers? Did she see the people of the past? The death and disaster? The good? The evil? Did she see the masks?

Voluntarily taking that walk of grief was hard. He’d only seen one person do it well—his own mother had nursed his sister to her early end. It took a lot of spirit, a lot of heart, but it could also break someone. And the breaks could be hidden inside where no one knew. That could make them weak, make them easily accessible, make them susceptible to all kinds of dangers.

He could admire what she’d done, but she needed watching.

A lot was going on here that nobody knew about, that nobody understood because they couldn’t relate to the dark forces underneath. But anybody who had been called from halfway across the world, with a need instilled at such a young age—well, that meant that person needed to be here. He just didn’t know why. But he’d find out. His visit just became open-ended. He didn’t dare leave the site and Lacey alone …

Things happened here. People were doing things they weren’t aware of. He’d seen the anomaly before—once, as a young man, just starting out at a Mayan ruin dig, where there’d been similar incidences to what he saw here. Only back then, they got much worse… ending with several deaths.

Deaths that had haunted him ever since.

This time he had to figure out how to stop it. When he’d heard about incidences on this site, his heart had damn near exploded in his chest. That was partly why he’d been so angry that they hadn’t contacted him. They didn’t understand the danger. And they definitely didn’t understand how the darkness underneath was attracted to the light above.

The darkness especially loved the innocence, the energy, the purity of someone like Lacey. More than liked—it fed on it …

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