Soul Loss

by Amber Foxx

  Did Jamie have negative energy toward anyone besides Dahlia?

  Jill. Who equally disliked Jamie and his father. This cluster, Jill vs. Jamie and Stan, had the only two-way negatives in the whole pattern. That had to mean something, but Mae didn’t know what.

  The diagram looked like a long-chain molecule, reminding her of how a polyunsaturated fat got turned into a trans fat. Dahlia would be horrified to be analyzed in terms of a fat molecule, but the image worked. Not all the bonds were occupied, which would make the molecule less stable. The witch was not fully saturated.

  Dahlia had lost her connection with Azure. Jill’s unfinished exit question to Dahlia seemed to have been about making a date with Jamie, though she thought he was in a relationship with Andrea, who had expressed no interest in Jill’s drum circle. Why pursue the two of them? They’d trained with Fiona together. The pursuit could be sincere, or it could be for stealing energy. If so, what was in it for Jill—to set Dahlia up with new victims? What did these bonds do for Dahlia?

  Mae studied her molecule and looked for answers. She found none. Her eyes were drawn back to the big question mark between Dahlia and Jamie. Possessed? By what?

  Mae got her overnight bag from her car and slung its strap over her shoulder. After the afternoon’s sweet and unexpected intimacy, she shouldn’t feel nervous about spending the night, and yet she did. Much as she loved Jamie, she didn’t know how well she could actually sleep with him. She had to ask about his so-called possession, too.

  While she helped him bring his instruments into his apartment, he chattered elatedly about the Rolling Stone interview, reenacting key parts. When he’d finished the story and they’d set down their loads, he took her in a dance hold, scat-singing a Latin-style tune and beginning to rumba with her.

  “Sugar.” She stopped the dance. “You’re in such a good mood I hate to pop your bubble, but I need to know more about that—whatever that was. The thing you said possessed you.”

  “Nah.” Her gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “No worries. All gone.” His confidence surprised her. How could he be so sure? If he’d gotten something in his hair, he’d be freaked out and begging her to check on it. This thing had gotten into his head. He padded barefoot into the kitchen. “Get you a coldie?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Mae sat on one of the cushions that constituted the new living room furniture until the rest would be delivered. The second chair at the dining table was the only other item they’d brought home. Jamie returned with two beers and the bag of green chile pistachios. After two pieces of cake? He handed Mae her drink, kissed her again, and sprawled into a mess of pillows.

  Gasser waddled in, uttering his loud, abbreviated mew. Jamie gathered his cat to his heart. “Yeah. I hear ya, mate. Get your tune-up in a minute.”

  “Can you tell if he feels it?”

  “Nah. But I can see his soul. And it looks good, y’know? Like I shine him up.” Jamie propped his head and shoulders on a stack of pillows and resumed his drink, while Gasser walked on his belly. The beer belch came out louder than normal, assisted by the cat’s weight. “Whoo. Sorry.”

  Mae took a sip of her beer and set it aside. She didn’t want to have a buzz while she did psychic work. “Let me check you out before you do anything with him.” Jamie shook his head and focused on his pet’s front paws, beginning to stroke the tops of the big white toes. Was this the first step in cat Reiki, or just one of those odd ways he handled cats? “If Dahlia put something into you, you could pass it on to Gasser.”

  “Jeezus.” Jamie looked up, wide-eyed, freezing Gasser’s toe massage “You really think I could?”

  “Maybe. I never ran into anything like this before. Were you really possessed?”

  “Fuck, yeah. I had some visitors. Stuff flew in.”

  “Did you know who or what it was this time?”

  He tossed a handful of pistachios into his mouth and mumbled with his mouth full. “Nah. Some bunch of spirits. Gaia’s helpers, I think.” He swallowed. “Sorry. Smack me when I do that. One stayed.”

  “One that made you do everything you could to disgust Dahlia—and she liked it. What kind of spirit does that?”

  His shoulders rocked in an evasive shrug. “Dunno. Crazy bastards show up and they decide.” He took a long, chugging drink and thumped the beer bottle onto the floor. “But it was Gaia’s crazy bastard. Not Dahlia’s.”

  “I wish I was so sure. You can’t recognize or identify your spirits. She seemed to think she’d made some sort of connection with you. Please—I need to see if she put that fetus thing in you.”

  “Into a bloke? That’d be fucked up. Anyway, I know what that fetus feels like, if it was in Ximena. I don’t have it in me. I feel fine.”

  “But if you made yourself open to spirits, Dahlia could have sent—I don’t know—some different one she uses on men. Who just accidentally gets possessed? That was too weird.”

  “Think I did the wrong song. Invited the spirits instead of sending ’em. The shamans at the clinic in Tuva are doing a healing for Gaia around now. Wanted to join in, y’know? It was—fuck. Dahlia stole Gaia’s power.” He squeezed Gasser, staring at Mae. “Jeezus. What if I called in Gaia’s helpers, and they work for Dahlia now?”

  The idea was appalling, and all too possible, but Mae tried to stay calm for his sake. “I hope that’s not what happened. Let me look and find out.”

  “How? You’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “I’ve never known anyone to get possessed, but I can pick up energy, and I can see the past.”

  He frowned, kneading Gasser’s back. “I know.”

  The two words dropped between them like stones into a pond. Mae hesitated, then pushed through the ripples of discomfort. “I won’t be looking at your personal past, sugar. Not deep, anyway, not far. Just like ninety minutes ago.”

  “No. Anyway, if Dahlia did something, you shouldn’t touch me.”

  “She didn’t get me through Azure and Mary Kay. I can let go in time.”

  Gasser stood, turned, and resettled, farting in his owner’s face. “Fuck.” Jamie pushed the cat’s hindquarters down, provoking a kind of yodel from his pet. “Sorry, mate. I know you can’t help it.” He resumed rubbing Gasser’s back, fingers deep in his fur, and stared at him for a while. “All right.” Jamie stuck his hand into the bag of pistachios. “Quick in and out, inspection. But don’t mess with me. Don’t want you looking at my, y’know, my inner landscape.” He tossed a nut into the air and caught it in his mouth. “And don’t go pressing some fucking weight loss button, either.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “Yeah, you would. Love ya anyway.”

  When Mae turned around from digging in her bag for her crystals, she found Jamie sitting cross-legged on a couple of pillows, eyes closed.

  She sat across from him. “You meditating?” She didn’t think he could focus his mind that well that fast, but he could surprise her.

  He roused, still partially absent, dazed and quiet. “Nah. Opening up. If you’re going looking for some Dahlia spores, I ...” He looked at the palms of his hands, then at Mae. “I need to be able to help you. Protect you.”

  “You seeing my soul?”

  He nodded and caressed the air space an inch from her body. Heat came off his hand. “Kind of strange. Seeing inside each other like that. Don’t think Dahlia left anything in me, but if she did, I’ve got your back.”

  Did that make sense? If something went wrong, he’d be able to see it, but that didn’t mean he’d be able to do anything about it. Mae didn’t argue, though. She knew Jamie needed to feel useful.

  He lay back down. Gasser reclaimed his spot, punching his paws into his owner’s belly. Mae held Jamie’s hand, took a moment to quiet her thoughts, and asked the questions to guide her journey. Where did the spirit that had entered Jamie come from? Who or what was it? Had it left anything behind?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Avoiding the cat so sh
e wouldn’t pick up his energy, Mae scanned the length of Jamie’s body with a clear quartz point, feeling for traces of something that wasn’t him. Nothing came through but pure Jamie, a fire like the heart of the sun. Good—the spirit was gone. But what had it been?

  The tunnel shot her into a vision full of light.

  College-aged Jamie and Kandy stood in an alley between two adobe houses, part of a crowd that lined every side of a pueblo plaza and even the rooftops. Jamie wore a stained, battered outback hat and held his hands as a sunshade over Kandy’s eyes. She leaned against him as if he were a comfortable piece of furniture and watched the dancers who filled the plaza.

  Women in one-shouldered black dresses with colorful sashes and turquoise-and-coral jewelry danced across from men in white kilts with red-and-green trim and foxtails down the back. Heavy necklaces and strands of shells bounced on the men’s bare turquoise-painted chests. Tufts of parrot feathers waved on their heads. Shaking rattles and waving pine branches, the lines moved in unison in an elaborate weaving pattern except for small confused children shuffling at one end. On the far side of the plaza, a fat man painted with black-and-white stripes, wearing a black vest-like drape and a belted loincloth with a turtle shell on the back, guided and cared for the group. Feet keeping the rhythm set by a single huge drum, he lifted a woman’s long hair off her neck and smoothed it back down, and then retied a child’s loose legging.

  A thin man in the same striped body paint and turtle-backed loincloth, his whitened hair in high pigtails stiff with cornhusks, passed near Jamie and Kandy. He danced between the lines of dancers, going in the opposite direction of their progress around the plaza. His movement had an eerie, floating quality. Squared black lines around his eyes and mouth gave his face an otherworldly expression. He directed a slow smile at Jamie, miming something around his head.

  “I think he wants your hat,” Kandy said. “Or else he’s making fun of it.”

  The thin man moved on.

  Jamie gazed after him. “Don’t see how these are clowns.”

  “They make fun of everything, not just tourists with crummy old hats.” Smiling, Kandy reached up and tapped the brim of Jamie’s decrepit headgear. “They act out how we’re living, to make us see our faults. I’ve been told they make dirty jokes, too, but they’re always in Keres, so I don’t get them.”

  “Didn’t mean the jokes. It’s the paint. Bloke looks like death.”

  “I think the clowns hang out with the dead.”

  Jamie dropped his hands to her shoulders. “Fuck. Seriously?”

  “I don’t know the religion that well, but I think they’re from the underworld. With the dead people and the cloud people. The shiwanna. They all have something to do with making rain.”

  “Rain from the underworld? Shouldn’t that come from the sky?”

  “Water spends more time in the ground. When I was little, I used to think Cochiti Lake was the underworld. That’s where I’d be if I hadn’t missed.”

  “In the lake?”

  “No, silly, one of the underworlds.” She squinted at the dance. He shaded her eyes again. Her face relaxed, open and curious. “Where would you be, if you hadn’t lived?”

  “Dunno. Never think about that.”

  “Why not? It’s not like we really go away. My Grandpa died last year, but I’m sure he’s here for the feast.”

  “Mum told me we come back as plants or animals. Said I’m coming back as a yam.”

  “A yam?” Kandy looked incredulous. Jamie nodded. She asked, “You don’t go to the Dreamtime?”

  “Nah. Dreamtime’s not heaven. It’s like ... creation-time-space, when we were all people-animals. Still are.” He fell silent a while. “Hard to explain.”

  The pounding of the big blue-and-yellow drum sounded like a giant heart echoing off the walls of the pueblo. The drummer turned it on its side, and then over, never losing the beat. A chorus of men in white pants and bright shirts sang with it, moving in a slow, subtly rotating procession. A stout man swept a banner over the dancers. The banner was attached to a pole so long it looked impossible to handle, and yet he did so with grace. On the banner were symbols of corn, sun, clouds, lightning, and rain.

  Kandy said, “When we’re old and we die, I couldn’t find you if you were a yam.”

  “Yeah, you could.” Jamie pressed his chin into the top of her head. “You’d rain on me. I’d say there’s Kandy, pissing on me, thanks, love.”

  “Yuck. You’d make a good clown.”

  He straightened up, lowered one arm, rolled his shoulder, then put that hand back up to shade Kandy’s eyes while he rested the other arm. “Might make a good yam.”

  “No. I want you to go to your Dreamtime when you die. I bet it meets my underworld. Some place where all the sacred stories are. We’ll be friends ’til we’re a hundred years old, and then we can still be friends after we’re dead—if you don’t come back as a vegetable.”

  “Do my best.” He bounced his knees in time with the dance and hummed along with the singers. “Great music. Know where I can get one of those drums?”

  The trance vanished as Jamie yanked his hand from Mae’s. She opened her eyes. He moved Gasser to the floor in a desperate scramble and sat up. His voice creaked. “Fuck.”

  “Sugar? Are you okay?”

  “Fuck.” He pushed himself to stand and ran up the stairs.

  Mae followed halfway. The bathroom door flew shut. Was he sick? Beer on top of all that cake—she wouldn’t be surprised. “Jamie?”

  No answer. She climbed another step. He was crying. Loud, stormy sobbing. Mae hurried the rest of the way up the stairs and tapped on the door.

  “Jamie?”

  More sobbing. Silence. A thump, a gasp. Water ran. A loud sniff. “I’m brushing my teeth.”

  He probably was.

  She sat on the top step and waited, her mind strangely empty, her heart full.

  Jamie emerged, red-eyed and mint-scented, and sat beside her. He put his arm around her. “Sorry.” His voice was hoarse.

  “What happened?”

  “You took me with you. To Cochiti.”

  Mae was too startled to speak, but her expression must have asked him to explain.

  “You went inside me. Like—like little threads.” He raised his hands and spread his fingers, making a trembling loom. “Weaving backwards.” The shuttle hand turned sideways and slid into a space between two fingers. “Through me, through time.” He dropped his hands to the floor and braced his arms. “You go there. Where it’s all still happening. Bring it with you when you come back out. You leave a trail.” He looked down at his chest. “This little gold thread.”

  Jamie rubbed his heart area as if it was sore from this thread she’d left in it.

  “I’m sorry,” Mae said. Even though she called what she did a journey, the idea that she’d actually traveled and done this to him stunned her. “I didn’t know that was possible.” She stroked the place he’d touched that seemed to hurt. Maybe it was because he’d been in an altered state himself, or because they were intimate, that he’d been able to feel it. “I was looking for the thing that got into you.” After Jamie’s Old Man Coyote act at Jill’s workshop, it would be ironic if some trickster from the underworld had come when he’d called in spirits. “Do you think I found it?”

  “Nah. It’s not the clown. It’s ... that was...” He bit his thumb knuckle. Mae couldn’t tell if his look of pain was entirely from thinking about Kandy, or partly from biting himself. She took his thumb from his mouth. He lay back and stared at the ceiling, holding her hand. “Those are her spirits.”

  Kandy must have been guiding Mae’s journey. Again. The vision now seemed layered with meanings—the clowns, the clouds, the dead, the drum—that she didn’t understand.

  Jamie gulped and took a deep, unsteady breath. “She’s with them now.” He clutched Mae’s hand against his chest and began to rock side to side. “I let her die. Fucking left her with Jill.”

  �
�It’s not your fault.”

  He shook his head, tears trickling back into his hair.

  Mae touched his cheek. “Jill made her fast all day, the day after you left, and made her cry in front of everyone. It must have been humiliating. Nothing spiritual happened. Kandy finally saw through it all. She agreed with you about Jill. She even wanted to tell your father, to get him to help her tell the world what Jill was really like.”

  Jamie sat up. His voice had the wounded quality of a child faced with incomprehensible unfairness. “Then why’d she get drunk?”

  “I’m not sure she even knew why. But she was already struggling, and ... Jill kinda pushed her.”

  Mae described Kandy’s final hours. Jamie withdrew into a huddle, feet on the top step, shoulders hunched in, hands rubbing his thighs and knees. When she finished, he stood, frozen for a moment, fists clenched, and then walked with a strange, rigid precision down the stairs and out the front door.

  She hurried after him. “Jamie, where are you going?”

  “Dunno. Fuck. I want to—I want to—” He choked an invisible enemy, threw an unseen object, pounded his fist into his palm, and then pulled on his hair in a frenzied succession of explosions. “Jill. Jesus. I hate her. I fucking hate her.”

  Mae searched for some way to help him, but his pain was too big for her to soothe or comfort. She could only witness it and hope he would turn to her when he could.

  Jamie kicked the stone step with his bare foot and recoiled with a gasp. His rage disappeared, replaced by dismay. “Fuck. My toes.” He sat and put his ankle on his thigh, anxiously examining the damage. “Why did I do that?”

  “You were really upset.” Mae sat beside him. “Let me look at it.”

  He placed his foot in her lap. “Jeezus. Just fucked up the only part of my body that never hurts.”