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into their business, and had taken out pretty large loans, too.
    â€œ. . . and of course Chief Worthy wants Sienna to give an accounting of what may have been stolen, but she says theplace is such a mess that it’s going to take hours for her to straighten out the inventory to figure out what’s missing.” Damon put his hands to his head and moaned. “We’ll have to cancel the tour and I just don’t know how we can focus on making this fair a success with this . . .”
    â€œDamon, you’re not really going to cancel the tour, are you? I was really looking forward to it,” Skylar said. “Everyone was . . .” She trailed off as we all looked at her. “I’m sorry. I know how that sounds.” She looked at Damon. “I’m really sorry that happened to your business. But to miss Serpent Mound . . .” Skylar shook her head sadly.
    â€œSerpent Mound is an important spiritual site. Visiting it was part of the draw for coming here for several of the psychics, especially Ginny Proffitt,” Damon explained to us. “We were all looking forward to attuning ourselves to the wise spirituality of the ancient ones who created it.”
    Cherry started to giggle, but I elbowed her before Damon noticed.
    â€œEveryone’s going to be so disappointed,” Damon concluded, looking sad, in a little-boy-who-lost-his-puppy sort of way. It made me feel sorry for him, even though I wasn’t quite sure what to make of his “attuning” and “ancient ones” talk.
    Apparently, his sad face got to Sally, too, because she said, “Aw, hell, Damon, why don’t you have Josie here lead the tour. She knows all about Serpent Mound.”
    â€œWhat? What are you talking about?” I cried. “I don’t know more than anyone else who’s from around here.”
    â€œDon’t you recollect the project you did on Serpent Mound for eighth grade local history class?” Sally turned to Damon. “She even did a to-scale clay model.”
    â€œHey—I think I remember that,” said Cherry. “It was really cute. With little flags and all, identifying the important parts . . . like, you know. The head. The tail. The middle.”
    I flinched. How had Cherry managed to pass anything other than beauty-school braiding?
    â€œYeah,” Sally said. “It even impressed old Mrs. Oglevee. And Josie never impressed her.”
    I flinched again—this time at the mention of Mrs. Oglevee. “Well, I was always fascinated by Serpent Mound . . .”
    â€œAnd still are,” Cherry said. “We were on the bookmobile last week at the same time and I was getting the latest issue of Elle , and Josie had all these books about Serpent Mound, which Winnie had gotten especially for her from some other library.”
    Winnie Porter is our bookmobile librarian and a good friend. She’d wanted to come on this tour, but had been called into a special meeting at the main Masonville library branch.
    â€œWell, now,” I said, “I do have an interest, but my knowledge is pretty general. I’m sure Skylar and everyone else would want to know pretty specific things,” I said.
    Skylar sighed. “Oh, yes. I’ve always heard that part of Serpent Mound’s power comes from the unusual shape of the land it’s built on, but I don’t know much more than that.”
    â€œWell, the rocks underlying most of Ohio are flat, but a five-mile diameter of land on which the Fort Ancient people built Serpent Mound has an unusual underlying topography of folded-up bedrock. Usually that’s caused by volcanic activity or a meteor strike, but that’s not at all the case at Serpent Mound. It was caused by a cryptoexplosion, which means an explosion of gas from within the earth,” I said. “The gases built up and finally exploded, forming underlying layers that make up some