“I’ll wait in the car.”
Diego took the manila envelope he’d gotten from the fairy/possum, trotted up to the door and knocked. The woman who answered the door wasn’t Juliana. I thought she was probably the housekeeper. Diego handed her the envelope and headed back toward the car, pulling his cell from his pocket, and answering a call as he walked.
He stopped, bent his head, and listened hard to whatever was being said. He nodded and pressed the call off.
“That was Tyron on the phone,” Diego said as he slid behind the wheel and closed the driver-side door. “This sounds a bit like a game of telephone: a friend of Brad’s called Mr. Keel, who called Tyron, who called me. This friend of Brad’s wants to talk to us.”
“Us?” I said.
“According to Tyron, yes—both of us.”
A shiver of nerves shot through me. My head began to ache. I had one of those sudden and clear realizations I get from time to time. The knowledge—information that came unbidden that I had no logical way to know. Over the years, I’d learned to trust the knowledge when it showed up.
“The friend is the killer,” I said softly, sure of it. “Drive fast. He’s desperate.”
“If this guy is the killer,” Diego said, “you can’t go waltzing up to him, not if he has some sort of thing for you.”
He had a point, but the desperation I felt wasn’t aimed at me. It was turned inward.
I shook my head. “I’ll be all right. If it feels dangerous to either of us when we get there, we’ll turn around, okay? But right now, we need to hurry.”
Diego’s mouth drew into a tight line, but he nodded.
* * *
When we reached the address Tyron had given Diego, I felt around for the killer’s signature but didn’t find it. Diego must have not sensed any danger either, because he pulled the car to the curb and shut off the engine. A tall, rangy man about my age with a mop of brown hair stood in the driveway of a small, white, 1950s tract house. An older burgundy Camry was parked on the street in front. There was a three in the license plate.
“I’m Eric,” he said as he led us to an even smaller back house that still left room on the lot for front and back yards. “Thank you for coming.”
“No problem,” Diego said. “I’m Diego.” He glanced my way. “This is Oona.”
“I know who you are,” Eric said as he opened the front door. His vibe was a mixture of tension and relief.
I felt again for any danger to Diego, or me, but there wasn’t any. As to how he knew who we were, I supposed Mr. Keel had given him our names.
But who was he? The knowledge said Eric had drawn his skate blade across Brad’s throat, but he didn’t feel like the killer. That didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.
We followed Eric inside to a sparsely but nicely decorated living room. The gray-tweed couch facing the television looked new. I figured the slightly scratched bentwood rocker was a family hand-me-down.
“I don’t have much to offer you,” Eric said when we were settled on the couch. “You wanna Coke? Or some water?”
Diego and I both shook our heads.
Now that we were in the house, Eric’s distress poured off him in waves. I felt his guilt and remorse deep in my stomach. Diego and I waited him out in silence, letting him pick the time to speak and the words to use.
Eric sat on the edge of the bentwood rocker, popped the tab on a can of Coca-Cola and took a deep drink. I watched his throat work as he swallowed. He set the can on the floor by his feet.
“I know you know,” he said, his eyes locked on us.
Diego nodded slightly, a motion that seemed to indicate we knew a lot more than we actually did.
The torrent of emotions that flew from Eric threatened to give me a migraine. I clasped my hands tightly together in my lap. A long silence stretched out between us.
“I didn’t do it,” Eric said suddenly. “I mean, I did do it, but it wasn’t me.”
Diego leaned forward, his hands between his knees, and waited for him to go on.
Eric’s gaze darted around the room before settling on us again.
“It was like being possessed,” he said, his voice a thick whisper. “My hands on the hockey stick, my feet inside the skates, but it wasn’t me who killed him. It wasn’t me. Does that make sense?”
Diego nodded slightly again.
My stomach was twisting itself into knots from the remorse coursing through Eric. All the extra magic Diego had poured into me last night had heightened my normal sensitivity without providing any sort of filter. The threatened migraine hammered in full force. Spots danced in front of my eyes.
“He was my friend,” Eric said. His eyes filled with tears. “Why would I kill him?”
Diego reached a hand toward the distraught man. “You need to call the police. You need to tell them what happened.”
Eric swallowed hard. “I know. I just wanted to tell you guys first. ‘Cause you knew Brad. Mr. Keel told me you found him, and you knew him, and you were looking for the killer. I lied to Mr. Keel. Told him I had some information about Brad’s death and I’d only tell it to you.” He laughed without humor. “I guess it wasn’t such a lie.”
His voice broke on the last word. I wished Diego would pump a little magic into Eric to ease his pain, but he didn’t seem inclined to.
Eric sniffed and cleared his throat. “Anyway, yeah. I wanted to tell you first. Sort of practice before I call the cops. Mr. Danyon said I could trust you.”
“You can,” Diego said. “We won’t turn you in if you don’t want to go to the police. But you should. They’ll find you eventually. It’s better if you go to them.”
Eric picked up the Coke can and squeezed it between his hands. “You want to know something bad? Even while I was hating myself for what I was doing, I was enjoying it too. That’s the part I can’t stand. That I liked doing it.”
His words hit me like a physical blow. I put my hands over my heart, for protection.
I knew Diego saw my motion from the corner of his eye, but he kept his focus on Eric. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
“How about I call the cops for you,” he said. “We’ll stay until they get here.”
Eric nodded in a bobblehead sort of way and stood.
“I gotta take a leak,” he said and headed for what I assumed was the bathroom.
The door shut with a solid click.
Everything in the room turned suddenly red. Red walls. Red furniture. Red air.
“Diego,” I said, pushing his back to get him moving. “Go after Eric. Hurry.”
Diego was halfway there when the shot tore the air.
* * *
Evening had long since turned to night by the time we started the final leg back to my house. We’d been hours with the police, and a small time with Brad’s father and Tyron at Mr. Keel’s hillside house in Palos Verdes.
Not that having a name for his son’s killer and knowing that person was now dead soothed the loss for Mr. Keel. In a perfect world, our children outlive us. It seems the natural order of things. In the real world, fate can be a complete bitch. We left Mr. Keel staring out the big plate glass slider that offered an ocean view below and a sky view above. It was a beautiful night, the air clear, the sky star-filled. I don’t think Mr. Keel noticed.
The hum of the engine and the wheels turning on the road were the only sounds as we came down the hill, the lights of the flatlands twinkling below. A sight that usually cheered me. Tonight, it made me sad.
Sorrow followed us into my house. Deaths like Brad’s, like Eric’s—stupid, senseless death—could only bring sorrow to everyone it touched. Eric had a family just like Brad did. A pair of cops would be showing up at Eric’s parents’ door with the news that their son was dead. Would they tell the parents they also suspected their son had murdered his friend or would they save that for later—a double whammy of grief?
“You want a beer?” I asked Diego once we were back in
my house and I’d turned on every light downstairs.
He sat on the sofa in the parlor and shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
I sat beside him, the sides of our thighs barely touching. I hadn’t known him long, but this was the first time he seemed not in complete control of the situation and himself. I laced my fingers together lightly and rested my hands in my lap.
He smiled thinly, put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him. There was nothing romantic about it—just two profoundly shaken and sad people finding comfort with the other.
“Eric was so unhappy,” I said. “He could face admitting what he’d done, could face prison, but he couldn’t face himself.”
“Because part of him enjoyed it.”
I nodded, my head against Diego’s chest. “The one pain he couldn’t bear.”
I sat up. “Or maybe not part of him. In my vision, there was this weird doubling sense I had of the killer. What if Eric was right when he said he’d felt possessed? That it wasn’t him who killed Brad. Eric wasn’t a base-shifter. Is it possible that someone or something else had taken him over?”
“Sure,” Diego said. “It’s possible. A malevolent spirit could do it. Some of the creatures in the Brume can take over another entity. Either could be a base-shifter. That’s what you feel happened?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know who, what, or how. My sense is that Eric is gone, but the killer isn’t.”
I opened my third eye and let words spill out as sensations and knowledge rippled through me.
“I feel the killer,” I said, “but I can’t describe him. No, not him. It. Something alien, something you might run into on another planet or in the dark deep of the ocean. It’s not like anything I’m familiar with to make a comparison. Alien. That’s all I can tell you.”
Diego nodded. “Probably something from the Brume then.”
I cocked my head.
“The Brume,” he said again. “The place of murk and fog.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s our world,” he said, his hand sketching a vague circle in the air, “and there’s the place where the happy dead go.” His other hand sketched another small circle in the air. “The Abyss is where the unhappy dead reside—ghosts, ghouls, vampires, and the like. There’s Wonderland, home to fairies, garden sprites, elves, brownies, all the good beings that fill our fairytales.”
He stopped and regarded me. “You’ve never felt these parallel worlds?”
I hiked up one shoulder. “I seem to be grounded in our world. Tell me about the Brume?”
His face clouded. “It’s where monsters are born and live. Some are made by black arts wizards and witches. Some come into being spontaneously. Everything there is filled with anger and hatred. It’s a very unpleasant place.”
A tremble ran across my shoulders. “So, one of these creatures could get into our world and take someone over?”
“It’s rare, but it can happen,” he said. “The walls between worlds aren’t walls at all—more like membranes that thicken and thin over time. Black magic practitioners sometimes thin the membrane more, to bring across whatever they’ve called. Sometimes other things slip through.”
“That’s what you think this thing is, something evil that slipped through?”
He nodded. “Because you said it felt alien. The beasts and beings of the Brume are so completely different from us or anything in our world that alien is the only word for them.”
Diego steepled his fingers in front of his lower face and let out a long breath.
I bit my bottom lip. “This is something bad, isn’t it? Something really bad.”
He stood. “I’m going to check the wards again. Then we should both get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll go see a friend of mine who’s an expert on shadow beasts. Maybe he can help.”
11
Some nights a boatload of brilliant stars shine above the ceiling window in my bedroom. Tonight, a wet, gray fog filled the night sky.
I’d punched up a YouTube video on my phone of mediation music, the drone-y kind that seemed to work best for me when I had trouble sleeping. There were mandala visuals, but I’d shut my eyes against them and focused on my breathing: deep breaths in, complete breaths out. Reaching for that relaxed state and those slow theta brain waves that can bring creativity. Because I needed all the creativity I could muster to dream up a way to build a defense against other people’s emotions.
We humans are silly creatures sometimes, but here’s the thing about being an empathic psychic: even when you don’t rummage around in someone’s mind, you can’t help but be aware of feelings. Not just the strong ones—love, hate, jealousy, rage, desire—but even the little things. Even when the emotions didn’t shout, they were there, tiny pinpricks wanting attention, small wants, small disappointments. It was exhausting—and the reason I hadn’t had a boyfriend in three years and only one or two close friends at all. It was better to be alone. Easier.
I wanted to drown out those persistent voices. I wanted it to be easy to be with people. A way to let me live in the world almost like a normal person.
Ironic that the tool for giving me that normalcy was magic.
I felt the new magic in me slow as my breathing slowed, flowing through my body like a lazy river. It felt a natural part of me now, as if it had always been there. Magic that had been a gift given with no expectation of anything in return. I’d find a way to thank him though. Something would present itself. Life seemed to work that way.
Deep breath in. Complete breath out.
It was useless. Thoughts zipped and zinged inside my skull. Brad. Eric. The killer. The Brume. Diego.
And my immediate, personal problem: how was I going to turn raw magic into a shield for my psyche?
I pressed my phone open, shut off the meditation music, and stared into the dark.
* * *
In the morning I whipped up scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions, added cream cheese for richness, and made cinnamon toast while Diego walked the perimeter of my property making sure the wards were strong.
I’d thought about him a lot through the long night and watched him now as he ate. It was better to think about him than Eric and Brad. Much better than thinking about a base-shifter killer or the Brume. Diego Adair was beginning to grow on me.
Or maybe I was just lonely in the face of all this death.
“Who are we going to see today?” I said. “Some friend of yours who knows about shadow beasts?”
He nodded, his mouth full. He swallowed and wiped a napkin across his lips.
“Maurice,” he said. “He’s an expert on metals and on the creatures of the Brume. If there’s anyone who might know what possessed Eric, it’s Maurice.”
“I’ll drive,” I said, because my life had fallen into crazyland with murders, suicides, and things from the Brume. I needed to feel capable and in control of something at least.
We went out to the garage and I slid behind the wheel of my little yellow Subaru. I pressed the button on the garage door opener and backed into the alley behind my house.
“Where to?” I said.
“Just up Pier Avenue.”
I took Fourth to Hermosa Avenue and then to Pier and made a right. Traffic was always bad on Pier Avenue where it ran through our cramped downtown. There are several four-way stops on the road and always a line of people in cars waiting their turn to go. Traffic was one of the few downsides of living at the beach and the reason I walked whenever I could.
We were almost to Pacific Coast Highway when Diego said, “Turn in here behind the Civic Center. Go down and all the way to the back of the lot.”
I followed his directions and pulled into a spot at the back. I thought Maurice must work in one of the buildings, but Diego got out and walked to a little patch of weedy greenery near the vacant tennis courts. What was it with Diego’s friends hanging out in the shrubbery? I slid out from behind the wheel and stood near him.
A huge gra
y rat trotted out from the plants and headed straight for us. I jumped and gave a small yelp.
Diego grinned. “Did I forget to mention Maurice was a rat?”
The rat stood on its hind legs and bowed.
“Nice to meet you,” the rat said, and then laughed. I’d never heard a rat laugh but the high-pitched sound couldn’t have been anything but laughter.
Maurice didn’t feel like Diego’s fairy-shifter friend who wasn’t the animal he’d first appeared to be. Maurice felt like a rat.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, trying to sound as if I spoke to talking animals every day.
Diego sank down and sat cross-legged on the asphalt. I shrugged and followed his lead.
“Did you bring me something?” Maurice asked.
Diego pulled a bit of napkin from his pocket, unfolded it, and offered its contents to the rat.
“Cinnamon toast!” Maurice said. He picked up the bit of bread with his front paws and set to nibbling.
“It’s polite to bring a gift of sweets when coming to Maurice for help,” Diego said to me.
The rat stopped eating. “Damn right. This is pretty good, too. You make it?”
Diego tilted his head in my direction, giving credit where credit was due.
“Good toast, lady,” the rat said.
“Oona is a psychic,” Diego said. “She has a sense about a creature that might be around town, something from the Brume. I hoped she could describe it and you might know what it is.”
Maurice stopped nibbling. If a rat could look suddenly somber, Maurice did. He set down the crumb of toast and focused on me.
“When did you first notice the creature?” he asked.
I told him the story of finding Brad dead and the sense of doubling I’d had in my vision of the murder. I talked about Eric, how he said he’d felt possessed. I told the rat how Eric was dead, but I was certain the killer was still around. I told him how I perceived the killer.
“Alien and formless isn’t much to go on.” Maurice said when I’d finished. “Besides, I don’t know of any creature without a shape. Everything’s got a figure of some sort. Even base-shifters have a basic form.”
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