Soul Loss

by Amber Foxx

  “Nah. High risk profession for what happened to them.”

  “Both at the same time while they’re casting?”

  “Don’t think she’s got that much control.” He rose a little stiffly and ran the heels of his hands down his thighs. “Can’t believe I’m sore from yoga. Want something to drink?”

  “Iced tea, thanks. Why don’t you think she has control of her power?”

  From the kitchen, he called over the rattling of glasses and rummaging in cabinets. “She zaps her appliances. Kate’s boyfriend’s an electrician, and he’s Dahlia’s neighbor. Said things fry. Sort of the opposite of what happens to me.”

  “I thought maybe spirits did that.”

  “I did, too. Sort of.” He returned to the living room with a glass of tea for her, a beer for himself, and resumed shelving. “Dunno, though, not really.”

  She sipped her drink and set it on the coffee table. “Power she can’t control makes more sense. She’s probably got more than she knows what to do with, stealing from the kind of people she’s attacked. You could be sending out your excess, too.”

  “Gives me an idea.” Jamie stretched his legs out, straddling a stack of books, and began to sort the pile into smaller stacks. “I could short her out. Get Dahlia to send her suckers out and reverse it back at her.”

  “But what happens if she succeeds? Gets her suckers in?”

  “Dunno.” He drank beer, and wiggled his injured toe. “Can you do that?” One toe bent like a beckoning finger. “Move your second toe all by itself?” He crooked the same toe solo on the other foot. “Third one’s even harder.”

  Mae pictured Jamie wrestling with Dahlia’s energy suckers like some sort of spiritual octopus, toes around her tentacles, electricity shooting out all their appendages. “Let’s stay focused, sugar. Were you that good, in the energy healing training, that you can really do this?”

  “Just did it.”

  “I don’t mean the toes.” Who in the world sat around practicing this? “I mean, short her out or reverse her energy or whatever.”

  He hesitated, biting his lip, and then put on a bright expression. “Think I can.”

  “I know you want to help, but we can’t get you in over your head.”

  Jamie looked at the floor, drank, and turned the bottle around a few times. “I got Gasser to play today.” He picked up a jingling plastic cat toy off the floor and tossed it to where Gasser lay in the kitchen. The cat lifted a paw and batted the ball once. “Best workout the old pudge has had since I’ve owned him.”

  Mae took a second to realize this wasn’t a non sequitur like toe flexion. “Was that healing work?”

  “Yeah. Y’know he’s only got three chakras? Tail-spine, heart-throat, and head.”

  “That’s nice to know if you need to heal a cat—” Jamie’s hurt look told her she’d been tactless. She backtracked. “And you’re good at that. You did real well with Cara. But it doesn’t mean you can handle Dahlia.”

  “Bet I could. Bet she’s only got two chakras. One point five. Half the soul of a cat.” He got up with a soft grunt, swigged from his beer, then put it on the table and fetched Gasser. Kneeling, he put him in Mae’s lap. Jamie tickled Gasser’s heart-throat juncture. “That middle chakra is his affiliation needs.” He whispered to the cat, “You love Mae now, don’t you, mate?”

  Gasser blinked, farted, and put his head on his front paws.

  “See? He’s not so jealous anymore. Pet him.”

  Mae petted the fat cat. No response. “Sugar, he’s not exactly affiliating with me.”

  “Yeah, he is. Didn’t bite you did he?” Jamie massaged Gasser’s back and Mae’s at the same time. “Work on you next.” He snort-laughed.

  “That won’t prove you can heal Dahlia.”

  “Got to chance it. I’m the one who should take the risk. Not you. Not Andrea. If I try and fail and she steals my power, fuck, so what? I don’t need it.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t miss it?”

  He petted Gasser, stood, and shifted his hips around as if trying to adjust something. “Mm. Little bit. I like shining him up. But it’d be all right. I want everyone else to get their gifts back.”

  Jamie glided into the kitchen and began opening and closing the refrigerator and cabinets, chattering about what ingredients they’d need for dinner. Mae let his airy ramblings fade into background music, a pleasant sound that asked little of the audience.

  The fair would open in twelve days. Naomi and Harold would be there, hoping to reunite with Lily. If she was healed before they arrived, they might have their reunions—and her attack on the healers would be undone at the source. Ximena, Mary Kay, and Fiona could still participate in the fair. Jill wouldn’t get to be the only star. Healing Lily would solve almost everything. If Jamie could do it.

  He had a strong aversion to her, and could see her soul if he dared. Like Gaia, he would feel her invasion, but unlike his teacher, he would know what was happening and be able to pull back in time—Mae hoped. But although at this moment he seemed strong, his attention span was as short as ever, he had limited experience, and his emotions were unpredictable. She couldn’t quite agree to his offer. But if she didn’t, what other choices were there?

  They could have walked the few blocks to the Whole Foods on Cerrillos, but Jamie insisted on driving to the co-op on West Alameda for its selection of stone-ground Mexican chocolate. Inside the store entrance, in an area dedicated to flyers, announcements, and free newspapers, was a poster for Spirit World Fair. Mae put a hand on Jamie’s arm as he started off toward the produce section. “Look. The publicity’s out. That is such a good picture of you, sugar.”

  He snugged up next to her, humming. The poster featured his image in the center of a cloudy red-and-purple circle. An action shot of him in performance, drumming and singing, his face alive with ecstasy, it showed his charismatic vitality. The faces of featured musicians, psychics, and healers floated in the purple ring around the outside of the poster.

  “Jeezus.” Jamie stopped humming and scowled at the poster. “Fuck.”

  “What’s wrong?” Not only was the picture good, but the list of events was clear and inviting: wisdom stories, healing demonstrations, psychic readings, lectures by famous authors, and the daily concert schedule. Of course Jill’s involvement had to bother him and she was on the poster, but he didn’t sound upset in a Jill kind of way. Mae said, “I don’t see anything.”

  He tapped a spot on the poster near his braided beard. “That.”

  Someone had drawn a little speech bubble in blue ink, barely visible on the red-and-purple flame-cloud background, and filled it with exclamation points and question marks. In the mandala of faces around the border, the same blue pen had drawn a bubble with a single question mark over Jill’s head.

  Mae glanced at Jamie. He was rubbing the underside of his chin, pinching the flesh. “Jeezus. Do I really look like that?”

  He hadn’t seen the graffiti. He’d been looking at his chin. She swallowed a giggle. “Well, your face is kind of filled out, and when you sing ...”

  “Fuck.” He lifted his chin, stretching out, and then ducked his head and felt the underside of his jaw again. “Never knew that was there.”

  “Sugar.” She tapped the graffiti. “I think this is more to worry about than your chin.”

  “Chins.” Hugging her to his side again, he looked at the markings and snort-laughed. “Nah. No worries.”

  “People are talking about you.”

  “Yeah. Happens when you’re famous.” He grabbed a shopping basket and steered her toward the produce. “In the mood for Thai? I can do sort of a pad Thai thing, got some peanuts at home, get some of those snot-string noodles—”

  “How can you not care?” Or call rice noodles snot and expect me to eat them? “Did you and Wendy do something about it?”

  Basket hanging on his arm, he juggled a few onions before he chose one. “Yeah. I’ll explain it at the fair. Dunno what I’ll say ye
t. ” He dropped a package of tofu into the basket. “A shaman, a priest, and a rabbi walk into a bar? Got to work on a punch line for that.”

  “If I were Jill I’d be a little nervous, with someone who hates me as the emcee of the event, promising he’ll explain why he talked to me and went crazy.”

  “Ya think?” Jamie palpated a bunch of celery, put it down and felt another one.

  “She might try to do something to stop you.”

  He selected a third candidate. It passed inspection to join the tofu and the onions in the basket. “Why?”

  “You’re going to explain why you acted like that. She knows at least part of why you did. Think about it. She did what she did to Kandy to keep her from telling your dad Jill’s a bad shaman. What if she thinks you’re gonna tell the whole world?”

  Jamie’s energy dropped a little as he moved to the next section of produce and studied the hot peppers. “Got some dried ones at home ...”

  Was he upset that she’d mentioned Kandy? “Should I not have said that?”

  “Nah, it’s all right. Kind of.” He thumbed the stem of a pepper back and forth. “Stop worrying about Jill. She’s already put me in her book as a fucking tragedy. What more can she do?”

  “She’s sending Dahlia after you.”

  He chose three small, dangerous-looking peppers and pushed them into a plastic bag. “To steal power I don’t even want. Worst thing Jill can do is remind people that I’m fucked up. Which I am.” His smile revived as he lightly swung the bag of peppers into Mae’s bottom. “Hot stuff to hot stuff. Sorry. Couldn’t help it. Wonder where they keep the snot noodles here.”

  They browsed in search of rice noodles. Maybe he was right. Jill couldn’t do him any worse harm than she’d already done, as long as Dahlia didn’t attack him, and he’d said, again, that he could lose his gift and he’d be okay, that Dahlia wasn’t a threat to him. Had he forgotten how her soul chilled him, or was he pretending not to be afraid of her?

  Jamie had invited Dahlia for dinner while he was possessed. Did he remember doing it? “Sugar, I’ve been thinking. About what you offered to do, with Dahlia—”

  “Hah!” Jamie snatched a package of noodles from a shelf and held them up like he’d won a prize. “Yeah?”

  “Do you really want to try it?”

  “Maybe.” Fingering the flesh under his jaw, as he’d been doing every few minutes since seeing the poster, he led the way across the store to a vast display of chocolate near the checkout. “Y’know the only chocolate I don’t like is ice cream?”

  Mae stopped his hand on a disk-shaped package of stone-ground dark chocolate. “Focus, sugar. Listen to me. If you’re serious, we need to plan how we’ll do this.”

  He took her hand off his and dropped the chocolate in the basket, followed by other varieties. Coffee. Red chile. Orange. Vanilla. Mae asked, “How about we get just one?”

  “Nah.” He sniffed the disk of coffee chocolate with a beatific look and dropped it back in the basket. “Dunno what kind I want tonight. And you’ll like it, too, y’know.”

  We could split one. She wanted to argue but she expected Jamie would accuse her of nagging. If he couldn’t put chins and chocolate together for himself, he wasn’t going to like it when she did.

  They walked to the checkout. In line behind a trim woman in yoga clothes, he pawed through the basket, tapping his fingers on various items before unloading them onto the belt. He made a little tower with the disks of chocolate, lining their edges up evenly. “Where were you? You wanted to plan something?”

  Amazing. He’d found the train of thought and jumped back on without her prodding. “Yeah, with Lily. The dinner, and the healing.”

  “Jeezus.” The belt of the checkout counter began to move, and the tower of chocolate toppled. “Having the zombie vampire over. Should’ve bought garlic.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Two days later, on Wednesday afternoon, Mae walked downtown from Jamie’s apartment to put their plan into action. It was simple: They would let Dahlia think she was invited for the threesome she wanted, and then make friends with her, asking about her childhood and her parents, making her vulnerable enough to be open for healing. Mae would have to do most of that, since Dahlia seemed to already like and trust her. If that liking was genuine, the plan stood a chance. Jamie would let himself see Dahlia’s soul, so he could know when the moment to heal her had arrived.

  Mae found Dahlia where she’d agreed to meet her, sitting on a bench in the Plaza with her long slim legs crossed at the ankles. In a short red dress, low-heeled red sandals and a gold chain with a single pearl, she didn’t look like a poor orphan, but stylish and prosperous.

  “Hey, girl.” Mae sat beside her. “You look gorgeous.”

  “If you dress well, sales people give you better service.” Dahlia handed Mae a small red-and-gold paper gift bag. “Swag.”

  Mae looked inside. Lipstick. Blush. Eye shadow and mascara. She hadn’t worn makeup since her first wedding. Apparently Dahlia thought she should. “Thank you.”

  “I picked the eye colors for you. You need to bring out your eyes.” Dahlia smoothed her dress along her torso. “I just took a Pilates class with Richard Winger. He even has aerial Pilates. You should try that, too. It makes you tone without getting big muscles.”

  A hint, perhaps, that Mae’s muscles were not feminine. Was this how Dahlia showed friendship? Trying to improve Mae’s appearance? “Too late for me. I’ve been lifting everything from free weights to six-year-old twins.”

  Dahlia inspected her, and when the model spoke again, there was a childish sound to her voice. “You had twins?” She sounded appalled. “Like, two babies growing inside you?”

  “They’re my stepdaughters, my ex’s kids from his first marriage.” Seven years old now. Mae hadn’t been there for their birthday. She pressed the thought back into the deal-with-it-later place. “So no, they didn’t grow in me, but that’s what babies do. You make it sound like they were tapeworms or something.”

  “They are. Yuck. Pregnancy is creepy.” Dahlia resumed her normal indifference even as she said this, her violet eyes staring blankly at the monument in the center of the square. “Well, I’m up for some jewelry. If there’s anything you should buy while you’re here, it’s jewelry.” She rose. “You’ll have to get some rich clients. You should learn Pilates for that.”

  Mae managed to look grateful for the advice. “Thanks.”

  Dahlia aimed toward a shop, but Mae paused as they passed the vendors in front of the Palace of the Governors. “Wait. Won’t they have the best stuff straight from the artists?”

  “Oh my god. Are you kidding? I shopped there for about five minutes when I first got here and that was enough. There’s some great jewelry, but there are some trinkets, too—and you have to squat. With all those people from Idaho. And the artists all have those accents, and some of them are so fat. I hate that. I want someone with class waiting on me, not some old diabetic Indian lady pointing her cane at something.”

  Mae gripped the handle of her little bag of cosmetics, choking it. Rapport. She had to maintain rapport.

  In the first shop they visited, Dahlia demanded that the salesperson, a trim, well-dressed blonde woman in her fifties, bring out ten different turquoise necklaces one by one, inquired which mines the stones came from and if they were natural or hardened, asked Mae’s opinion on each, and then ignored it, buying nothing. She repeated a similar routine in a second shop. In the third, she briefly went through the same motions and then insisted that Mae try some things on.

  “Oh, that coral is unfortunate on you. Too much orange.” Dahlia’s voice barely registered amusement and distaste and her face remained blank. Mae suspected the girl had suggested the necklace just to set up the criticism. “I think your coloring calls for the green turquoise.”

  Dahlia finally chose a delicate gold and turquoise choker and a matching ring, earrings and bracelet.

  “A wonderful Native craftsman, one
of the few who does much with gold.” The saleswoman, another slender fifty-something blonde, slipped a card into the box with the jewelry. “In case you want to add to your collection of his work.”

  Dahlia gave the saleswoman a credit card and asked Mae, “What are you getting?”

  “Nothing. I’m a student, remember?”

  While she signed the charge slip, Dahlia left her Visa card lying on the counter. The name on it was Lily Petersen. Was she too self-absorbed to notice she’d displayed it, or didn’t she care if Mae knew? Dahlia put the card and receipt in her wallet. She tapped on the glass case, pointing out a silver bracelet with a single green turquoise set at an angle. “You should get that.”

  “Maybe I will someday.” Mae started for the door, taking her phone out. “I need to call Jamie—”

  “Don’t even think about it.” Dahlia swatted the phone down with a limp hand. “You ask for the jewelry after. When he wants more.”

  Was Dahlia playing? Even though the joke was about trading sex for jewelry, the girl had, for a second, acted almost human.

  A woman of about sixty exited the shop a few steps ahead of them, her leathery limbs exposed in summer clothes. “She shouldn’t be wearing shorts,” Dahlia said, making no attempt to avoid being overheard. “I don’t care how hot it is. Cover that up.”

  So much for being almost human.

  When Mae knocked, Jamie called to them to come in, his voice carrying over the wild, dramatic sounds of a chorus and orchestra. The music practically shook the walls. Mae turned down the volume as she and Dahlia passed through the living room. Dahlia stopped and stared at the spiral on the wall. “That is bizarre. What is it?”

  Dahlia apparently hadn’t gone out hiking and seen the area’s rock art. “It’s like a petroglyph.” Mae didn’t think she should explain the spirit toilet.

  They entered the kitchen. The air was dense with cooking smells. Vegetables, tofu, utensils, and bottles of oil and seasonings covered the counter. Small fluffy wrapped pastries sat on a cooling rack. Jamie turned from chopping onions to fling his arms open to his guests, conducting the music with a large knife. Something animated him beyond his normal high intensity.