by Amber Foxx
Walking out through the Zen garden with Bernadette, Jamie couldn’t believe he’d left the building dressed like this. The giant beetle takes a walk with a human. She’d been ready to leave, though, and he needed to make sure he talked with her.
He clutched the bundle of his street clothes. “Don’t tell Mae I’m an idiot in yoga.”
“I didn’t think you were. You took a hard class for a beginner.”
“Jeezus. I was suffering in the bloody warm-ups. You make level two look easy. Bet you could do the class where you stand on your head with your legs in a split or something.”
“I do take level three, but I’m doing a new column in The Reporter. Reviews of healing practices and mind-body studios. It’s an extension of my research into credentialing in alternative medicine, but for the general public. I wanted to see how one of the owners here teaches a more intermediate level, and how she works with people with various challenges.”
He stopped walking. “Been meaning to call you about something kind of related. Can I take you to lunch or something?”
“I’m sorry. I have to write the review while it’s fresh in my mind, since I don’t take notes during a class.” Bernadette reached into her yoga mat bag for her car keys. “Stan told me about your project, though. I found an article you might want to read. It was strictly a study on energy healers and not a very good design, but it gives you an idea of the complexity of verifying competence with something so subjective. A lot of factors can affect a healer’s function. This is going to be much harder to assess than skill in teaching yoga.”
“Dunno if we’ll have anyone to assess. You ever heard of people losing their power?”
She frowned. “If you’re talking about something like energy healing or psychic vision, as far as I know people might get less adept if they didn’t use it for a while, but it’s not like a language you could actually forget.”
“I don’t mean forget.” He described the plague.
She looked worried. “We need to talk more about this. Can you come out to my office at the college later?”
“Dunno.” He checked the message on his phone. His voice teacher. He’d missed a lesson by taking this class, but she had an opening at three. He could take it, or pay the cancellation fee. Would he have to learn the bloody planner function? “Nah. Can you meet some people after my show at Soul tomorrow? Brainstorm? Mum and Dad’ll be there.”
She checked the planner in her phone. “Alan and I were going to do something, as yet undecided. Mind if I bring him?”
“The more minds the better.”
“Within limits. You don’t know where this problem comes from yet.”
“Yeah, I do.” Jamie felt, more than saw, Lily-Dahlia coming down the stairs from the Pilates studio, and glanced across the garden to confirm the sensation. She was alone, behind the same chatty women who’d gone in with her. Jamie indicated with his head. “Comes from her.”
Bernadette turned to look. “Which one?”
He’d thought it would be obvious, but the professor didn’t pick up the girl’s strangeness any more than the receptionist had. “The young one. With all the hair.”
“You’re sure of it?”
“Yeah.” He told the story of the fetus spirit. “Gaia felt her do it.”
Guarded and quiet, Bernadette watched the girl walk to the back parking lot. “She’s young to be such a powerful witch. I wonder who taught her.”
Chapter Fourteen
Kate and Tim entered Soul through the small lobby between the café and the concert room and were greeted by a poster showing Jamie in performance. A few people stood nearby talking, and others strolled across from the café. No Hilda. She was supposed to be there. Kate hadn’t wanted to go to Jamie’s show in order to have a meeting afterwards, but when she’d complained to Tim about it, he’d said it would be fun and that he wanted to go. When she’d called Hilda to explain why she couldn’t go to AA with her on Thursday, her sponsee had made an excited little noise and invited herself to join them. Hilda, it turned out, was a fan, and she wanted to meet Jamie.
“Maybe she decided to go to a meeting after all,” Kate said. “It’d be better for her.”
“No.” Tim said. “I see her inside. And anyway, having fun with sober people can be as good for her as a meeting.”
They entered the performance space. It took Kate’s vision a moment to adjust to the light, dim over the enormous dance floor and the tables around it, and bright over the stage. Tim led the way, pointing out Hilda. She stood by a table where Jill Betts, Fiona McCloud, and Dahlia sat.
Lobo tensed with a sound just short of a growl. Kate hushed him. Dahlia. Why had Hilda chosen to chat with her?
Hilda asked the group at the table, “Do you know Kate and Tim?”
Dahlia lifted a glass of something fizzy with a slice of lemon in it, sipping so minimally she might not have consumed any at all. “We’ve met.”
Her face held no expression as she scanned Kate before acknowledging Tim with a hint of movement at the corners of her lips and eyes. Was that flirtation, or did she know him?
“I know Kate,” Fiona said. Jill shook her head, implying they had no acquaintance. Kate gritted her teeth. I’ve talked to her about the fair every year when she’s turned me down.
When Hilda made introductions and mentioned that Kate was the founder of the Psychic Fair, Jill reacted with a tight-pressed smile. “So you’re the young lady who contacted me about that. So sorry I’ve never been available.”
Young lady. Kate heard dismissal, not apology.
“Do you come to this show a lot?” Fiona asked, looking at Kate and Tim. The energy healer appeared as unwell as Jamie had said, but unlike Jill and Dahlia she was making an effort to be sociable. “I gather some people are regulars.”
“We’ve heard him at other places a while back.” Tim said. “It’s our first time here. What about you?”
Jill’s eyes settled on Dahlia, and her voice oozed indulgent warmth. “First also. It was Dahlia’s idea.”
Did Jill take Dahlia out on the town every night, dragging her miserable partner along? Tim glanced at Dahlia, his posture braced with a subtle tension. He doesn’t like her, either. How does he know her? He smoothed Kate’s hair. “Okay if I do the first dance with Hilda?”
He probably wanted to get away from Dahlia. “Sure.”
“People don’t really dance with partners,” Hilda said. “I’ve been here before. We all dance together. Kate can take the chair out on the floor. Other people do.”
Kate could use the time better talking with Jill and Dahlia. “I won’t be able to see. I’ll stay here. If these ladies don’t mind.”
Jill and Dahlia exchanged cool glances.
“Of course not,” Fiona said. “I’m sure the waiter will be back soon if you’d like a drink.”
Hilda took Tim out onto the dance floor where more than half the audience had already assembled. If you’d like a drink. Kate had committed to sitting with people who were drinking alcohol, a situation she’d avoided for two years. The shapes of the glasses and color of the wine suggested the fantasy of what drinking was supposed to be.
It could be worth the stress, though, if she could get some insight into the plague. Jill wasn’t affected. Jamie thought it was because she was a fake, but Kate found that hard to believe. A fraud couldn’t be that successful without getting caught. Like Kate, Jill had to be immune. Was there some bitch factor that protected them, or did Jill have some other defense? Jamie had called Kate with Bernadette’s disturbing question. Who had taught Dahlia to be a witch?
A fashion model, not even old enough to drink, was an unlikely person to be attacking such powerful healers unless she had a teacher. Jill? Kate hoped not, but there had to be a witch behind the witch, and Jill, the shaman, was a credible candidate.
A microphone stood at center stage. To the right of it, a large table draped in a red cloth bore hand drums of varied sizes, a Western classical flute, a Nati
ve American cedar flute, and a shakuhachi bamboo flute. A five-foot-long didgeridoo stood in a carved wooden stand, and a smaller table held a pitcher of water and a glass. From behind a curved, free-standing red wall, Jamie jogged onto the stage, his hair topped with the five little braids, his smile radiant. The audience greeted him with applause and shouts.
“Thanks for coming.” Jamie bounced a little. “Good to see ya.”
He wore a different loose, loud shirt—orange, green, and purple paisley—and his goatee was braided, a gold bead sparkling at the tip and drawing attention to his gold tooth.
“If you’re new to what we do here, this is the Concerto for Voice, Percussion, Woodwinds, and Noise. The noise, that’s you.” He demonstrated a pattern of claps and stomps, and many in the audience knew to echo it back. He gave them a thumbs-up and did another pattern. The audience answered with louder noise. Call and response choreography. “Good onya.” He grinned. “Here’s how it goes. Once we start, we rage on. No stops, no applause. Have fun, and don’t trip on each other.”
Jamie started the song a cappella, then added complex drum rhythms, teaching the audience to clap and stomp them. Once they established that, he transitioned from singing to playing the Western flute, dancing in bursts between the phrases. The song flowed seamlessly into a new one. Jamie alternated chanted syllables with long rhythmic drones on the didgeridoo, counterbalancing the instrument’s weight in a standing backbend, while the audience stomp-danced a steady beat.
Unexpectedly swept up in the performance, Kate missed her legs deeply for the first time in many years, and the longing mixed with the desire to drink. She searched the dance floor for Hilda and Tim, reminders of sobriety, and pushed back from the table to be further from her companions’ wine.
If Dahlia had been eager to hear the music, she gave no sign of it. She and Jill never clapped the rhythms, tapped their feet, or even smiled. Dahlia, occasionally glancing at Jill, watched Jamie. Jill, occasionally glancing at Jamie, watched Dahlia. Fiona made a soft attempt to clap, but faded out. Kate tried to start a conversation. Despite their apparent lack of interest in the music, her companions hushed her.
At the start of a gentle love song, Jamie mimed reaching to people on either side for a swaying embrace. The people on the dance floor formed a long chain-hug. Jamie left the stage and joined them, singing while hugging his way through the crowd. At Kate’s table, no one touched or even looked at each other.
The next song and dance were so funny, Kate laughed out loud. Jill and Dahlia remained as cool as ever. Fiona’s weak smile showed an effort find her sense of humor, but little success.
A rapid-fire rhythmic game of scat syllables, drumming, and clapping went wild when Jamie taught the melody to the audience to sing, then set his drum down and exploded in an ecstatic dance, first earth-bound and low, spinning and crouching, then springing into a backward-leaping turn. Though he seemed too winded to manage it, he picked up the shakuhachi and somehow focused his breath into another layer of the music while stalking the stage as if he couldn’t hold still. Kate’s longing for full-body movement surged again. Jill read messages on her phone. Dahlia tapped the nails of one hand against the other, not on the beat, but rapid and restless. Fiona sighed and drank wine.
Jamie followed the wild song with a sad one. Kate didn’t know classical music well but she suspected that he could have sung opera. He had the power emotionally as well as vocally. Loneliness at its most profound poured though the song. The audience held still, as did Jamie, his face showing every change of feeling, every shade of pain.
A sniffle caught Kate’s attention. Fiona, crying. Was it only because of the song? Jill laid a hand over her partner’s without looking at her, but Fiona added her other hand as if grateful. Dahlia rolled her eyes. What a bizarre set of relationships.
In the finale of the ninety-minute concert, the audience and Jamie celebrated each other with the mantra, I am alive I am alive I am alive. The crowd danced and sang while Jamie drummed, his multi-octave voice soaring through joyful improvisations. When it was over, applause rocked the room and Jamie called out, “Love ya, love ya, love ya!” throwing his arms open to the audience before taking a bow.
Jill exhaled a little puff of contempt through her nose and looked at Dahlia. “Dear, did you want to talk to him?”
Dahlia rose, flipping her hair back, and answered with an exasperated “Yes.”
If Dahlia and Jill had an agenda with Jamie, it clearly had nothing to do with being fans. Kate roused Lobo. “I need to talk to Jamie, too. Nice to see all of you.” As she released her chair’s brakes, a gut feeling prompted her to double-check Jamie’s assessment of Fiona. Kate asked her, “Call me tomorrow, will you? I need to schedule a treatment.”
“Sorry.” The energy healer looked down. “I’m not working.” Jill frowned and touched Fiona’s arm. Silencing her about losing her power? Fiona said, “I haven’t been feeling well.”
“I’m sorry to hear it. Get well, and please let me know when you’re better.”
Fiona nodded, her face bleak. She doesn’t think she’s going to get well.
A few feet behind Dahlia, Kate crossed the dance floor toward Jamie. He sat on the edge of the stage, toweling sweat from his face and talking with a small group of people. The long-haired girl turned back and snapped, “Don’t follow me.”
And I thought I was cranky. Dahlia strode ahead. Kate slowed down enough to stay in hearing range without provoking another verbal assault, and stopped at the front of the dance floor by the edge of the stage, a few yards from Jamie.
Hilda and Tim joined her. He kissed Kate on the cheek. “That was the most fun I’ve had sober in public. It was like the way you used to think being drunk would make you feel.”
Hilda glowed. “That’s why I come here.” Her artfully painted eyes shone with warmth at Jamie, then clouded as Dahlia approached him. “It’s that girl again. I go to talk to Jill, and Dahlia’s there, and then I want to meet Jangarrai—and there she is again.”
“Jill practically sent her.” Kate imitated Jill. “Did you want to talk to him, dear?”
Hilda wrinkled her nose. “Jill’s at it again.”
“What, sending girls after Jamie?”
“No. That kind of hovering, possessive thing with a student. Like this girl’s her project or something. She used to do that with a girl at her retreats back when I used to go.”
So that was why Hilda had been talking with that group. Catching up with her former teacher. If Dahlia was a student—a favored, special student—and not just a friend, Jill looked like an even stronger candidate for the force behind the plague.
Dahlia made no effort to be considerate but stepped in front of a couple Kate guessed to be Jamie’s parents: a slim, broad-shouldered white man about six feet four, with a silver beard and gray eyes behind glasses, and a dark, solidly-built black woman about five feet four with white streaks at the temples of her thick unruly hair. She had almost the same face as Jamie and equally expressive, giving the intruding Dahlia a hot glare.
Without speaking, Dahlia reached into her beaded evening bag, extracted a dusty-pink business card, and handed it to Jamie. She adjusted her lips a hundredth of an inch into a proto-smile, moved her head just enough to shake her gleaming hair, and walked off.
“Fuck me dead.” He stared at the card and then looked around. When he found Kate, he hurried over and gave her a sweat-slicked kiss on the cheek. Who could sweat that much in New Mexico? Water evaporated. “Good to see you. Thanks for coming. Means a lot.” He dabbed his perspiration off her face and handed her the card. “Sorry. Dripped. Take a squizz at this.”
In raised burgundy script on textured cardstock was Dahlia, centered over her phone number. No occupation. No e-mail address.
“Strange. I wonder what she wants with you. She didn’t act like she was into your music.” Kate returned the card.
Jamie took it as if it were contaminated and stuffed it in his pocket. “Dunno. Creepy.�
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Hilda moved closer, a hint that she wanted an introduction. Kate said, “Jamie, this is my friend Hilda Davis.”
“The Angels Series.” Jamie’s hands flew to his hair, and his eyes widened. “That exhibit blew my mind. Jeezus—it was like another world. I’m honored.” He clasped Hilda’s hand. She beamed in mutual fan-dom. “Look, I was getting ready to hit the café with my parents and some friends.” He had classified Kate as a friend. “Join us? Got to put my instruments in the car and get a clean shirt on. Mum, can you get us a good table, not those bloody tottery things? Kate—and you’re Tim, right? You both staying?” Without waiting for an answer, Jamie sprang back onto the stage. “Dad, give us a hand with the load?”
His father ascended more sedately with a tolerant smile.
Kate gripped the arms of her chair. Jamie was ordering people around. He didn’t take charge when it was useful, only when it wasn’t. He was turning their meeting into a party.
Jamie and his father carried the instruments down from the stage. As they crossed the dance floor, Jamie turned to walk backwards, calling to Kate, “Haven’t totally slacked, y’know. Got an ad idea for radio.” He sang to the tune of Scarborough Fair, “Are you going to the Psychic Fair, woo woo woo, woo woo, woo woo woo.” Exploding in his blasting snort-laugh, he mimed dodging something Kate might throw at him.
Chapter Fifteen
Kate wanted to split the group so she could talk with Jamie, his father, and Dr. Pena by themselves, but Jamie’s mother swept ahead into the café, claiming a large round table that could seat eight. The server, a young man with spiky blue hair, removed one of the chairs, making space for Kate’s wheelchair. She resigned herself to the party. She could plow through it, get things done, and leave.