The Calling (Mae Martin Mysteries Book 1)

by Amber Foxx

  “I heard back from that infertile couple, do you remember them? You were right about their problem. They were really impressed. And Margaret, of course. She’s here for a lot of meditation classes, a lot of massage. You kept her from dying in some strange place. I have their letters. They gave me permission to use them as testimonials about you, names removed of course.”

  Mae felt a pang of sadness for this client. “Is Margaret dying?”

  “It’s hard to say ... But she’s living. That’s what you did for her. Let me show you your room.”

  Deborah led her down the hallway, turning right past the pink and purple room where Mae had been before, and opened the door to a very small room. It looked like it might have been a closet once. Stepping in, Deborah turned on a lamp to illuminate the forest-green walls. Darker green tree-shadows were stenciled on them, and gold trim. The stained-glass lamp was shaped like a leaf. Three chairs with brown velour upholstery sat in a triad, like mossy rocks in a stream, and a few blankets were stacked in a corner. A CD player on a set of dark wooden shelves played soft piano music. The room smelled like paint, but Mae wasn’t about to complain.

  “This is really pretty, thank you.”

  “I had fun with it. It used to be where we kept the copier and the paper, but I moved all that to my assistant’s office. Tammi’s the one that uses it all the time anyway. So, here’s your key.” Deborah handed it to Mae. “You and I, and Tammi and the custodians will be the only ones going in. You’ve got your clean energy space. Unless the copier left some bad vibes in here. It might have.” She smiled. “Tammi will be working until you leave. You can see her about setting up a regular schedule after tonight. You have three clients tonight, and they all wanted the psychologist’s hours—you know, fifty minutes.”

  Mae had gotten what she asked for and more. Longer sessions for better pay, this private room, testimonials promoting her gifts. Now that she had it, she didn’t know what to do with it. She looked at her watch. She had fifteen minutes before her first client. Was she really up to this? Had she been overconfident? “I guess I’ll take a little time to get settled, then.”

  Deborah wished her well and glided back down the hall. Mae gazed at the space. It seemed to have been designed for her, a color scheme to make her look good. Deborah would think of that, of course, she noticed things like that. Mae didn’t think about making places pretty or decorating. She’d never had a place of her own, either a place to live that she could say was really hers, or a place to work that she felt was truly her own. Until now. It might be the copier closet, still paint-smelly and small, but it was beautiful, quiet, private, and it was hers.

  Walking to the water cooler near the restrooms, Mae got a little pointy paper cup of water, drank it, and returned to her room. She closed the door almost all the way, as much as the fumes would allow, knelt on the floor, laid all her crystals on one of the green and brown Mexican blankets, and took a few slow breaths.

  Trust yourself. She had to stop worrying and let the gift flow, the way she had when Bernadette said it was only an experiment. Trust herself the way she would as an athlete in a game, not psyche herself out of connecting with the ball when it flew to her. Closing her eyes, she held her grandmother’s amethyst to her heart and spoke to Granma Jackson and to whatever God or creator might be out there. Keep me safe. Don’t let me mess up for these folks. Or for myself.

  Feeling calmer, if not perfectly confident, Mae moved the crystals to the shelf below the CD player and noticed Deborah had provided a selection of music for her. All this special treatment. It was something to live up to.

  A light tap on the door called her attention to the time. Seven o’clock. “Hey, come on in.”

  Dana, looking smaller and more delicate in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt than she did in her uniform, stepped in, followed by Randi. Dana. She wasn’t giving up. And here, Mae had to take her money and give her the time.

  “Wow. Nice.” Randi looked at the walls. “I love the stencils. This is so cool. It’s like being out in the woods in the mountains or something. Last time I had a reading done here, some guy with tarot cards sat at a card table in that tacky pink room and made stuff up, I swear.” She looked at Dana. “Why don’t you go first? I’m going to go down to the bookstore and look around.”

  Dana had not yet said a word, but she nodded and gave Randi a tight attempt at a smile, then watched her leave.

  “Have a seat.” Mae took one of the chairs, and Dana perched on the edge of another, both hands squeezing the top of her purse. “How are you?”

  “Undecided.” Dana glanced back at the door, and Mae rose to close it as far as she felt she should for their health. Dana seemed to relax slightly as Mae sat opposite her again. “I have a lot of questions I hope you can answer. I need to make some big decisions soon. A lot of them.”

  “Okay.” Mae felt an urge to do something that she didn’t quite understand, but it was a strong impulse. Like someone or something, maybe Granma’s spirit, was guiding her. “Before you ask them, I’d like to do a kind of—” She felt funny saying it. “Ceremony.” But Dana looked relieved rather than disturbed by the suggestion. Apparently Charlie had indeed converted the skeptic.

  Laying one of the blankets on the floor and moving her chair aside, Mae asked Dana to lie down and close her eyes. As Dana followed this request, Mae brought over several crystals, the clear quartz, turquoise, and amethyst, and sat beside Dana and closed her eyes, too. What next? This was not like anything she’d done before. Unlike the healing she’d done with Bernadette, Mae wasn’t trying to find any lost part. After a minute or two of stillness, she felt moved to pass the crystals over Dana’s body, and then to sit. The energy between them seemed to shift, some of Dana’s anxiety to coalesce into something firmer, less fearful. Once the process felt finished, Mae asked Dana to sit up, and said they could talk now.

  “Thanks. That helped a lot.” Dana returned to her chair. Mae set aside the crystals she had used, laying them on the empty bottom shelf. She needed to remember to have a salt bath in here for cleaning them. She could use the sight without them, but it was less reliable under pressure without the crystals, and she was under a lot of pressure tonight. “I need to decide if I should reenlist or separate from the Air Force.”

  Mae sat opposite her. “That’s one question.”

  “It depends on the other questions, I think.” She looked into Mae's eyes. “I’m having doubts about my marriage.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s been coming for a while.” Dana sounded and looked resigned. “Dave and I were high school sweethearts, but I’ve been dragging him around wherever I’ve been stationed, and we’ve been apart whenever I’ve been deployed. It hasn’t been good for us as a couple or for his career. The questions ...” She drew her shoulders back, twisting one thumb in the other hand. “The questions about us, are about Charlie.”

  Mae tried to hold back judgment, but it bothered her. Dana was checking out Charlie while she cheated on Dave? “About your relationship with him?”

  “No. About his other relationships. Like Bernadette. I still want to know where he was those days that she was gone. There has to be some reason she’s got it in for us. I’m sure she’s the one that told the dean—which has made things really tense for Charlie. Unnecessarily. I mean, we’re adults. It’s not like I’m eighteen. I can see not wanting professors to get involved with kids. But I’ve been in a war, for God’s sake. I don’t need some rules protecting me from who I fall in love with.”

  “You kind of hope not.” Mae had to steer carefully. “How’d you meet Charlie? How long have you known him?”

  “Just this year that I’ve been stationed at Langley. I’ve been working on fragments of my degree for years at different places. I’m actually in business administration, but I took some health care administration courses as electives, and, well, you know what Charlie’s like.” She smiled. “He swept me off my feet. I know he’s a lot older, but ... I spend s
o much time being one of the guys, and Charlie knows how to treat a woman like a lady. He’s just magic.”

  “I reckon you may have nailed it.” It wasn’t yet time to talk about Charlie being a witch, though. “You sound like you’re happy to be with him, but you seemed real nervous when you first got in here. You have questions about him?”

  Dana nodded. “He wants me to separate from the Air Force. I don’t want to, but he worries. I’m a C-130 Load Master. I’m not a pilot, but I’m on the planes, and I’ve been on supply missions in Afghanistan. I’m due to go back. Charlie’s fifty-six—we’re not going to have as many years together as I would with a man my age. He doesn’t want me overseas. And, he doesn’t want me in a combat zone. My six years are up in May and I have to decide—reenlist or separate.”

  “What do you want?”

  “My pilot’s license.” Dana exhaled a half laugh. “I always thought I’d be career Air Force. Thought my degree would help me if I was to be an officer. I feel more real when I’m in and around the planes. I feel—I know this sounds crazy to a civilian, but I want to go back to Afghanistan. I’m not done. The job’s not done. I’m part of it.”

  “Charlie has to see that, then.”

  “It’s what’s killing my marriage with Dave. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

  “I can see it’s a tough choice. But I’m not sure how I can help you make it.”

  “I hear rumors I don’t believe, about Charlie. They’re probably not true. But if I move in with him, I’m giving up the Air Force. And I’m giving up custody of Paddy if I leave Dave for Charlie. We’re trying to keep this quiet until I decide.”

  Mae felt a shadow cross her heart. She was about to do what she most didn’t want to do with the sight. It felt utterly wrong. But she felt cornered. This was her job. With a client who could complain to Deborah. “So I’m checking out the rumors.”

  “Yes. I need to know for sure. For one hundred percent sure, that I can count on Charlie for the rest of my life, before I leave my family and my career for him.”

  Count on him to make you miserable. How could Dana see anything in Charlie to love? What she asked of Mae sat on the border between right and wrong ways to use the sight, leaning towards wrong. But making sure Dana didn’t give up her son and her career for that man leaned towards right. Or was Mae trying to convince herself of this because she needed the money so badly? Uneasily, she edged into the work. “Tell me the rumors. I’ll see what I can do. But unless you have something of his I can use for the search, I may not be able to do it tonight.” She almost hoped Dana had brought nothing.

  Dana picked up the large purse she had been clutching earlier, unzipped it, and brought out a small tablet computer. “I remembered how you worked. This is his favorite toy. I told him I wanted to try this out to see if I wanted one of my own.” She handed it to Mae.

  “Thanks.” Taking the tablet felt like a betrayal of her principles. Who would have thought that what should be spiritual work could feel so ... so hypocritical? “What are the rumors?”

  “That Charlie has had affairs with students, like one a year or something like that, for his whole career. Somebody even said Dr. Hart had been his girlfriend when she was a student and that’s why he got her hired. I just can’t believe that. Charlie laughs it off, he thinks it’s hilarious. He says he’s been practically celibate for years. That students get crushes on professors all the time. He thinks it’s funny that anyone would—he doesn’t think he’s that attractive. But it happens. He’s powerful, he’s charming, and girls chase him. They always have. But he says he’s been faithful to the few women in his life, and I want to believe that. He’s a very spiritual person. I can’t picture him as some academic Lothario.”

  “If I find out he has been, are you gonna believe me?”

  Dana hesitated, then nodded. “You saw me and Paddy, saw my house, my car ...”

  If Dana would break off with Charlie that could make this spying not quite so bad. It could undo some of his witching. Mae ran her fingers over the tablet computer’s touch screen. She already sensed something of Charlie’s energy here. “So I’m checking out those rumors, and what he did while Bernadette was gone and he took time off.”

  Dana nodded.

  Mae set the computer down, went to her crystals’ shelf and selected another clear quartz point, and aventurine and bowenite for protection. “Give me a few minutes to do this. I can’t promise what I’ll see.”

  Returning to her chair, she picked up the tablet again and set the first question: What was he doing when he took those days off? Holding the crystals in one hand and running her other over the screen, Mae was startled to find that she could use his turned-off computer like a crystal ball. The energy was so strong she saw him, right away, in the screen, without the transition of the tunnel and without closing her eyes.

  Charlie, frowning and serious, wearing a blue polo shirt and his usual khakis, walked through a hallway with blond wood floors and off-white walls with inset niches for pottery. A beautiful, expensive, elegant place, probably his house—to which he had never invited Bernadette. He entered the dining room. It had dark red walls, a Buddha near a pebble fountain, and big sculptural bowls on a sideboard. The largest bowl was wide and shell-shaped, with a coarse-textured red glaze and a smoother, deep green interior. The long, narrow, heavy table looked like something that belonged in a monastery.

  Mae wondered what Charlie’s vision of his social life had been when he decorated. The room held an element she’d never seen in him. Maybe it was all for show, or all in the past. Charlie stroked his hand along the rim of the red bowl, and Mae felt a note, a deep vibration that was the same shade of red. Like Charlie’s signature note. This was his creation, his work of art. He turned the bowl, looked at it from another angle, frowned, let it go, and left the room, padding silently along in beige socks.

  Holding the railing, he went down to the first floor and into a room that appeared to be his home office. It was a mess. The walls were white, and the utilitarian furniture was covered with letters, unfinished sketches, and magazines and newsletters. Books were stacked on the floor. Some child-art, probably his granddaughter’s, was tacked to the walls, seascapes with stick people swimming and some kind of superheroes Mae didn’t recognize. A sketch of Dana in profile was also tacked to the wall, Dana with windblown hair, wearing an Air Force jacket. She had a distant, pensive look in the sketch.

  What, Mae asked the vision, is the most important thing I can learn? How has he been spending his time during these days off? Something melancholy pulled at her. Charlie opened the top left drawer of his desk. The thing that was pulling her—pulling him—hid behind some music CDs and old, obsolete floppy disks. He reached towards the feeling and brought out a little beaded deerskin pouch. It had to be from Bernadette.

  Mae wanted to see inside it, see through the leather, but she sensed the medicine bag—how did she know to call it that?—did not want to be opened except by Charlie. It was strong medicine, Mae could sense it through him, but he was holding onto it as a sentimental object. Emotion—craving, longing—charged him so intensely Mae felt it through her hand touching the screen.

  For a moment he stood perfectly still, gazing at the gift, absorbed in yearning. Then Charlie’s energy changed abruptly to harsh and cold. His eyes went from soft to hard and ice-bright as he dropped the medicine bag—and looked at her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Reflexively Mae found herself trying to close the page on the computer, but it wasn’t on, and in the moment of confusion, she lost contact with him.

  Stunned, she handed the computer back to Dana.

  “What did you see?” Dana asked.

  “I’m not sure.” How could Mae describe this? The lost, longing feeling, the red bowl, the medicine bag. The connection had been extraordinary—until Charlie knew it had happened and cut her cold. “I mean, I know what I saw, but I’m still working on what it meant.”

  It was d
ifficult to share, as if it violated Charlie’s privacy twice. Still, she owed it to Dana. No—how much of that did she need to tell her? Had he been trying to use the sight himself, to find Bernadette? To send the wolf after her? It was so confusing. It had looked as if he might have loved Bernadette. Or the part of him that could have loved her was looking for himself, in the art, in the medicine. He’d taken the time off because he couldn’t face the world. Mae almost knew, could almost grasp it, but it was too deep.

  “I saw him in his house, just looking at some of his pottery and one of the things he collects, might have been a gift from Bernadette—and then he looked back at me. He knew I was looking. He doesn’t want me to find things out.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “You really think so? I mean, I don’t know him as well as you do, but as far as I can tell he’s got some powers.”

  Dana nodded. “I know. It’s part of what fascinates me.” She took the tablet back from Mae and put it into her purse in slow motion. “But now what? I still need to know.”

  Mae thought. It looked like he never cleaned either office, home or work. “If you could get something from his office, something old, I might be able to touch on his past. Through people that gave things to him. That might bypass his catching me. But I can’t promise. This could be a dead end.”

  “If I can bring you something later, is that covered by the fee I paid tonight?”

  Mae looked at her watch. The fifty minutes was not fully used, but the remaining work might take hours. Hours of trying to spy on Charlie with little random bits of old junk from his messy office, hoping some of it had been left by an old girlfriend or three or ten. While Dana would be hoping for just the opposite. “Twenty minutes of it is. But there’s no telling how long that’d take, or if I’d even learn anything.”

  Dana hesitated, then reached into her purse and took out a bulging wallet, pulled out a stack of bills. She counted off six twenties and handed them to Mae. “Two more hours. If this doesn’t cover it, let me know.”