“You think I’m nuts.”
Well, that wasn’t how I would have put it, although I was starting to get the distinct impression that Alex Hathaway was just a wee bit unbalanced. It would have taken a few more sessions to get to the bottom of his current fixation, of course, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t come to me for psychological counseling — he’d just wanted outside confirmation that his girlfriend wasn’t, strictly speaking, his girlfriend anymore, and that I wasn’t prepared to do.
I said, “Of course I don’t, Alex. I believe something has gone wrong between you and your girlfriend — it’s just that I don’t feel confident enough to offer you any corroborating evidence.”
“Great,” he said, looking as gloomy as someone as sunnily Southern Californian in appearance could. “Well…thanks for not charging me, I guess.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “I would be a fraud if I took your money when I couldn’t even give you a true reading.” I stood then, hoping he’d get the hint that the session was over.
He hesitated, but after a few seconds he got up out of his chair. I crossed to the door and opened it for him. As he passed me, his shoulder brushed against mine, and for a second a shiver of freezing cold ran down my spine. I’d experienced that sensation before — in clients who were about to leave this plane of existence, usually in unexpected and often nasty ways. I opened my mouth to warn him, but then again, I hadn’t received any visions of how he was going to die — if he were even going to die at all. Maybe I’d just been hit by a stray draft.
Oh, yeah, a sub-zero draft when it’s eighty degrees outside, my brain mocked me, and by then it was too late — Alex Hathaway was out the door and gone.
Somehow I knew I’d never see him again.
* * *
ABOUT A HALF-HOUR after Alex had left the office, Otto finally decided to make an appearance. By then I was safely home, ensconced in my apartment with my feet up on an ottoman and a cup of mint tea on the table next to me. I’d considered pouring myself a glass of chardonnay instead, but decided it was probably better to avoid the whole concept of solitary drinking as long as I could. Maybe my neighbor Ginger would be back soon, and we could share a bottle while I tried to justify my self-medicating.
Anyhow, I’d just picked up the remote for the TV and was about to turn it on when Otto wavered into existence a few feet away, floating three feet off the ground as he sat in a modified lotus position. He couldn’t manage a true lotus — his legs were too chunky for that.
“Nice of you to drop in,” I remarked. “I could have used a little help earlier this afternoon.”
He gave me a heavy-lidded half-smile. “The world of the spirit does not work on demand.”
It might have sounded impressive — if I hadn’t heard the same thing about a hundred times before. “Well, unfortunately, I do. I drew a perfect blank. The client was annoyed, and I looked like an idiot.”
The Mona Lisa smile never left his lips. “You are not here to be concerned with how others see you.”
“Then boy, did I pick the wrong town to live in.” To hide my irritation, I picked up my tea and took a swallow. It tasted good. The chardonnay could wait. “So what, did you have an urgent pedicure appointment in the otherworld or something?”
His mouth thinned a little. I knew he hated it when I made comments like that about the spirit world. It wasn’t respectful. Actually, I had a lot of respect for the alternate plane of existence we mortals thought of as the afterlife or heaven or nirvana, depending on our beliefs. If nothing else, knowing it was out there had given me a certain perspective on my day-to-day troubles. On the other hand, it didn’t make me feel much better about the wasteland otherwise known as my social life.
“I am your guide,” Otto said, and now his tone was distinctly testy. “Not your errand boy.”
“Too bad, because this guy today was a live one. Thought his girlfriend was possessed by an alien or something.”
Usually Otto wasn’t above finding amusement in the foibles of mere mortals. Of course he purported to be impartial, but I knew he also enjoyed a joke at our expense. I tended to forgive him this quirk, considering he’d been a eunuch in sixteenth-century Turkey and probably had a good deal of resentment toward mankind stored up. Now, however, he looked a little strained — which was my tipoff that what I’d just said had disturbed him.
“Do you know something?” I asked suddenly. “Because if we actually are getting overrun by aliens or something, I’d sort of like to know about it.”
“I cannot speak of matters that impact you personally.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What, am I next I line for alien possession or something?”
A flash of irritation crossed his normally cherubic features. “Which part of ‘I cannot speak of matters that impact you personally’ did you not understand?”
“Fine,” I said. It wasn’t the first time we’d had this sort of discussion. Otto was there to help facilitate my contact with the spirit world, but he was either unable or simply unwilling to tell me anything about my own future. Just as well — half the time I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. But when he threw out cryptic comments like that and refused to elaborate, I had a tendency to get a little pissy. “So was there a reason for you dropping in tonight…like maybe apologizing for going AWOL this afternoon?”
His sparse eyebrows drew together, and for a second he looked distinctly transparent. Usually he appeared just as solid as any other human being — except you could walk right through him. Not that I recommended doing any such a thing. I did, once, and got a lecture about showing respect for beings from other planes and how I wouldn’t appreciate it if he decided the shortest path between two points was right through me. At the time I had thought his comparison was a little faulty. After all, I was corporeal, and he, well, wasn’t. But I’d also learned fairly early on that a disgruntled spirit guide was of no use to anyone, so I’d apologized and said it would never happen again. Ever since then, I had noticed that Otto had an odd tendency to discorporate partway if something disturbed him. Maybe it was the spirit equivalent of blushing.
So I knew now something was up, but I could also tell from the firm set of his chubby chin that if I pressed too hard, he’d just evaporate, and it might be several days before he deigned to speak to me again. I couldn’t have that — I depended on him too much for my readings. Sure, I could whip out the tarot deck and hope for the best, but Otto’s guidance tended to be a lot more reliable.
“I wasn’t AWOL,” he said primly. “You’re not my only psychic, you know.”
As a matter of fact, I did know that, and I had never been overly thrilled with the fact. To be fair, from what I could tell his other…clients, for lack of a better term…seemed to be located in different time zones from mine, and since a spirit didn’t need to sleep, he could flit from one to the other of us without too many conflicts. But if one of his other psychics had a crisis in the dead hours of the night, it would of course impact my afternoon readings. It hadn’t happened too often, but it did add a certain element of uncertainty to my practice.
So was it coincidence that he was called away the same day Alex Hathaway came to my office, or was there more going on here than met the eye?
My personal experience told me there was almost always something more going on than the most logical explanation. Now, however, was probably not the time to confront Otto about his bouts of unreliability. If he wanted to tell me something, he would. If not, threats, cajoling, and bribes simply wouldn’t work. I’d found that out the hard way.
“Well, I hope it was important,” I grumbled, and set my mug back down on the side table. After that I picked up the remote and said, “Was there some reason you popped in? Because I want to watch that episode of What Not to Wear I DVR’d last week.”
He shook his head. “Really, Persephone. Why you waste your time with such petty diversions — ”
“It relaxes me,” I re
torted. “No one likes a stressed psychic.”
“Hmph.” Otto crossed his arms. “As a matter of fact, I did have something I wanted to tell you.”
“I’m waiting breathlessly.”
His expression was as sour as a Turkish eunuch’s round face could manage “Just this — if Ginger asks you to go with her for drinks tonight, you should.”
“Isn’t that crossing the line?” I inquired innocently. “What about all that palaver about not letting me know anything about my future?”
“I’m not giving you any concrete facts — I’m just offering a piece of advice.”
If a spirit guide offers you advice, it’s usually wise to take it. Never mind that I was tired and more than a little cranky, and the effort it would require to get myself presentable enough to face a bar or club didn’t seem worth the amount of time it would take. On the other hand, what else did I have to do? The fashion mavens who hosted What Not to Wear would still be waiting for me when I got back.
“All right,” I said, and tossed the remote onto the table, missing my mug by about an inch. “Any spiritual advice as to what I should wear?”
Otto looked a little pained. “I hope one of these days you’ll realize such things are immaterial.”
Tell that to the producer of every makeover show ever made, I thought. But getting into an argument with Otto over my preoccupation with what he considered earthly frivolities would just be silly. So maybe I was the world’s most earthbound psychic. Sue me.
“Maybe I will,” I replied, and heaved myself up out of my chair. “Until then, I’ve got some spackling to do.”
I’d never been able to figure out how a being who had no actual lungs was capable of producing such prodigious sighs, but somehow Otto managed to do it. He dredged one up now, then said in sepulchral tones, “As you wish.” After that he sort of melted away in his usual fashion, disappearing like mist evaporating in sunlight. Even now, after being visited by him for almost twenty years, I found the sight a little unnerving.
Once he was gone, though, I had to turn my mind to more important matters. Although I knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d get a date out of tonight’s bar hopping, I was damned if I were going to hit the clubs without making an attempt at bringing my best game. After that, well, we’d just have to see. There had to be one guy in this town who wasn’t freaked out by the prospect of dating a psychic, right?
Right.
CHAPTER TWO
Ginger came sailing into the apartment building’s courtyard a little before six. Since I’d been lurking on my balcony, waiting for her to come home, I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.
She paused directly below the balcony, then removed her sunglasses. At that hour on an early March evening, they were mostly affectation, but then again, a lot about Ginger was for show. “You up for drinks tonight?” she asked.
“Sure — I’m sort of getting cabin fever,” I replied.
A frown barely etched itself into her brow. “Bad day?”
I figured this probably wasn’t the best time to go into a discussion of UFO Boy. “No, but the usual TV offerings have sort of palled.”
“All right. Just let me change. Meet you at your place in twenty.” With that she disappeared under my feet; her apartment was directly below mine.
Luckily it was a Thursday, and so she didn’t have any evening classes to teach. A former professional dancer, she ran a ballroom dance studio in Hollywood, a studio she’d bought with cash when her first husband, a producer, dropped dead of a sudden heart attack and left her a tidy sum. That tidy sum came into dispute when her second husband, another dancer, tried to get her to pay spousal support even though they’d only been married for two years. The lawsuit fell apart when she was able to prove he’d been cheating on her with a male student from her own studio, but the experience had left her more than a little wary. On more than one occasion I’d seen her crowned with three gold rings, sort of like a weird triple halo, which indicated husband number three was somewhere in her future, but I knew better than to tell her that. She’d sworn off men — besides letting them buy her drinks — so I figured it was best to let her be surprised by her third foray into matrimony.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t even gotten close to one trip down the altar, let alone three. Why I continued to torture myself by venturing out into the singles world instead of just giving up and turning into the crazy cat lady, I wasn’t sure. Probably the same streak of stubbornness that had led me and my mother to continually butt heads over the years. Besides, I was only thirty-two. The biological clock had gotten a little louder the past few years, but it hadn’t swung over into “countdown to detonation” mode yet, so I kept telling myself I had plenty of time and that things would work out eventually.
That’s sort of the sad thing, though. You live your life, and you have your work and your small circle of friends, and you think everything is going just fine. And then your mother asks a few pointed questions about your dateless state, and you realize it’s been months, with no prospects of anything better to come. So you make excuses, and you joke, and look away, and hope that you’re better at blocking your own emotions than you are at reading those of others. And so it goes.
So far the men I’d met had fallen into two categories. The first type were the ones who, once they found out I was a psychic, were convinced I’d know everything about them, down to every single impure thought they’d ever had, and headed for the hills at the earliest opportunity. Now, that’s just ridiculous — I don’t read minds, although I can sense people’s emotions if they’re strong enough. But who would want to go tromping through every corner of another person’s mind, even if they were able to? No, thanks.
The other type was even worse in a way. They seemed to think that dating a psychic entitled them to tips on the stock market and the results of every World Series and boxing bout for the next five years. I couldn’t do that any more than I could directly read someone’s mind, but they always seemed to think my refusal to supply them with that information was purely personal. Those relationships usually didn’t end very well, either.
Despite this wretched track record, I took my usual care in fixing my makeup and selecting something to wear. Now, my closet had its fair share of what the What Not to Wear team disparagingly referred to as “loosy-goosy, airy-fairy” clothes, but that’s just sort of how people expect a psychic to dress. But I also had some nice pieces I’d picked up at local boutiques, and it was one of these I selected now, a sapphire-blue silk top just low-cut enough to be interesting but not too extreme. I discarded my baggy cotton drawstring trousers and Börn flats in favor of dark jeans and kitten-heeled pumps.
It’ll do, I thought, giving my reflection one last critical look. Not much could be done about my hair at this late notice — if I wanted to beat my unruly curls into submission, I had to give myself at least an hour to blow-dry my hair and then flat-iron the waves that remained. Still, it wasn’t as if I was going out to a speed-dating session or something. It was just drinks with Ginger.
I heard a knock at the door and headed over to let her in. She’d changed as well, but her crossover top and clingy skirt didn’t look all that different from the dance garb she wore while teaching. Ginger had a good fifteen years on me, but she’d kept herself in great shape. And although I knew she had to have had some work done, she hadn’t gone overboard with it the way so many other women in this town who were approaching fifty had. No frozen foreheads or freakishly lifted eyebrows for Ginger — she just looked fresh and at least ten years younger than her real age. I hadn’t worked up the guts to ask her who her plastic surgeon was (not that I needed one...yet), but when the evil day came, I was definitely going to swallow my pride and get a recommendation.
“So where do you want to go?” she asked, after giving me a quick once-over and an approving nod.
“I don’t want to drive,” I said. Even on a Thursday night, navigating around West Hollywood could be a night
mare, and I wasn’t sure my nerves could handle it. But luckily we had several candidates within walking distance.
“El Churro? We can make the tail end of happy hour and get four-dollar mojitos.”
Personally, I thought El Churro’s mojitos were pretty weak, but the purpose of going out wasn’t to get blotto. I just wanted to do something normal so I wouldn’t be seeing space aliens around every corner.
“Sure,” I replied, and gathered up my purse. Besides, El Churro was only two blocks away, easy to navigate even in heels.
As we walked over to the restaurant, I kept getting distracted when people with fake-looking tans walked by. But none of them seemed to be showing evidence of alien possession — no flat stares, no antennas sprouting out of their heads.
“Something wrong?” Ginger asked, as we paused at a corner and waited for the light to change so we could cross the street to the restaurant. “You seem a little jumpy.”
Automatically, I replied, “I’m fine,” even though I felt far from fine. Maybe going out had been a bad idea after all. Who knew that one random client could set me so much on edge? Especially since I’d never been the type to believe in UFOs and alien abductions. Oh, sure, I’d enjoyed watching The X-Files back in high school and college, but that was probably more because I thought David Duchovny was dreamy than because of the show’s actual subject matter. I’d always had a thing for the brainy types, starting with a crush on the Professor from Gilligan’s Island and working my way on from there. Too bad the science-minded guys tended to bolt at the first mention of psychic abilities.
Ginger shot me a dubious look from under her false eyelashes but said nothing. Thankful for that small bit of grace, I followed her across the street with the rest of the pedestrians and on into El Churro’s waiting area.
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