by Amber Foxx
Just then, Jill dropped in at Hilda’s booth and began browsing through the prints with Fiona. Jamie ceased rambling. “Got to remind you about our special, honored guest, Jill Betts.” He flashed a spectacularly insincere gold-toothed smile. “Check your programs for where to find her. I understand she’ll be giving a preview of her new book. You don’t want to miss it.”
Had he been waiting for Jill? Kate had pictured Jill sweeping in just before her lecture in her arrogant, above-the-riff-raff style, confident and prepared with her story. Jamie apparently knew her better than that, and Kate should have. Of course Jill would want to hear what he had to say, and to intimidate him while he said it if she could. Jill stepped to the edge of the tent and waved like royalty.
Kate’s client, a broad-hipped woman with long, thick, wavy gray hair, looked up from choosing her Tarot cards and gasped. “Oh my god. I’m right next to Jill Betts.”
Jamie walked to the edge of the stage. “Got to get serious for a minute now. Said I’d explain. Y’know. My run-in with the cacti. Bear with me if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Jill whispered to Fiona and turned to examine the prints again. Kate offered to delay her client’s reading until Jamie finished his story, and the woman nodded.
“This may disappoint people who thought Jill had triggered some kind of emergence or something, but an emotional breakdown hasn’t got a bloody thing to do with being a shaman.” Kate’s client twitched as if someone had poked her. Jill let out an exasperated huff. Jamie continued. “I lost it because Jill and I were talking about a friend who died. It tore me up.” His voice faded a little. “I couldn’t handle it.”
Was he going to tell the truth? Could he get through it?
In silence, he fidgeted with a shirt button before resuming. “If you’ve followed my music, you probably wonder why I keep disappearing for months at a time and coming back all different sizes. Been through some struggles, y’know?” He rubbed his heart as if he needed to massage a knot out. “Not done with ’em yet.” A sudden snort-laugh. “Guess that’s obvious.”
A soft chuckle rippled through the audience. Jamie half-smiled, faded, and waited. No hint of humor remained when he spoke again, intense and passionate. “But I’m as well as I am and still alive because of my parents, no matter what some bloody fool put in a book.”
Jill stopped her show of interest in Hilda’s art and stared at Jamie.
He continued. “When I couldn’t hold myself up, they never let me down. I made it this far because of them—and Kandyce Kahee.” Kate shot her attention back and forth between Jamie and Jill. The shamanic teacher’s lips and jaw tightened. Jamie’s volume dropped. “Kandy saved me from killing myself.” He took a pause, long enough to let his words sink in. “And then she died—drinking—at one of Jill’s retreats.” Another beat, an actor’s timing. “Jill was the last person to see her alive.”
He walked to the side of the stage closest to Jill. She pulled both in and up, like a snake lifting its head. His voice shook. “I had a bloody worthless shrink in college, always trying out more meds to see what happened. Fucked me up even more.” Kate barely had space in her mind to object to his F-word. Even though she didn’t understand half of what he was talking about, it was obvious that Jill did, and Kate’s Jill-fan client seemed to follow his meaning with deep concern as well. “You don’t test your bad ideas on people who are breaking, but she did. They’ve got that black box thing on the drugs now. But there’s no warning label on—”
He turned to his back on Jill and strode to center stage. Kate filled in the blank in her mind, and imagined that most of the audience did the same. No warning label on Jill Betts
Jamie tipped his head back, blinked at the sky, and then looked out at the crowd again. His next words came out like delicate bubbles of glass. “I want to dedicate this song to the memory of Kandyce Rainbow Kahee. And to everyone who’s lost someone to alcohol or suicide, and to everyone who’s survived. I miss you, Kandy. I always will.”
A cappella, Jamie sang a slow, haunting melody, with spaces between the lines like the breaks when a person overcome with grief attempts to speak. The emotion that poured through his voice moved Kate to unexpected tears.
“It can’t be true, no, no, not you
Please, please, don’t die
Don’t give up, don’t let go
Don’t say goodbye
What will I do—life without you—
No, please don’t die
You can’t be gone—it can’t be true
Our last goodbye ...”
As Jamie’s voice soared and swelled though variations on the song, Kate’s client and Hilda also wept. Dry-eyed and tight-lipped, Jill touched Fiona on the arm and slipped out through the rear of booth. Fiona, for once, didn’t follow.
Hilda said to Fiona, “Shouldn’t you go with her? Jill was the last person to see this girl alive.”
Fiona shook her head, her face sadder and more drained than ever, and sank into a chair in Hilda’s booth. It was Kate’s client who ran after Jill, leaving behind a large flowered purse.
Jamie blended the sad song into an anthem Kate recognized from his concert at Soul, a faster, upbeat melody with only one lyric. “I am alive.”
At Jamie’s encouragement, the audience took up the song. Hilda began to dance in front of her tent. Jamie sang harmonies over the crowd, spun like a dervish, and invited people up onstage. He hugged them, sang with them, danced with them, unmistakably loved them, these strangers who shared his song.
Tim ran across the quad. He bent to squeeze Kate in a powerful hug as he arrived, and held her hand and sang at the top of his lungs, “I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.”
Yes, we are. That death from alcohol could have been any of them. Hilda, Tim, Kate. She sang along.
When the song ended, she asked Tim if he could watch her booth and make appointments for her during Jill’s talk. Human nature being what it was, the suggestion of scandal should draw a crowd. Jill and Miguel were probably meeting right now to spin something new to tell them. Though she doubted Jill stood a chance of erasing Jamie’s impact, Kate had to know what she said so she could bring him ammunition if he needed it. She also needed to find her runaway client and return her purse.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Mae and Dahlia stood at the edge of the crowd, listening to the song dedicated to Kandy. Mae loved Jamie so much at that moment she felt she could burst with it. He’d had the courage to share everything and turn his anger into healing, not only for himself but for all the people in the audience who’d suffered the same way.
Dahlia appeared unmoved. She raised an eyebrow infinitesimally. “Alcohol.” She almost laughed. “I suppose the medical examiner had to come up with something.”
The night of the fire, Dahlia had offered to tell Jamie how Kandy had died. Jill tells me everything. “What do you mean?
“That’s not how it happened.” Dahlia checked her phone, took a small tube of sunscreen from a compartment of her purse and reapplied. “Jill used her power.”
Mae stared at Dahlia. It was hard to tell what the model thought of what she’d just revealed—approval, disgust, admiration? She restrained her face too well.
“Is that what Jill told you?”
“Mm-hmm.” The song ended. Applause exploded. Dahlia steered Mae toward Azure Skye’s booth and planted herself in front of the medium while Jamie introduced his next song. “We want to talk to that dead girl.”
Why? To find out who’s telling the truth?
Azure sat stiffly and folded her hands on her table, her pink face firm. She seemed to recognize the disguised Dahlia. “I’m sorry. The dead only come back for people they had relationships with, or whom they can serve.”
“That’s all right,” Mae said. “I want to go hear the wisdom stories now anyway.”
“Old people.” Dahlia fingered Azure’s business cards. “I’d rather hear from dead people.”
“A number of
the dead are with us today, Dahlia,” Azure said. “But most of them aren’t here for you.”
“Most of them?” Dahlia’s voice rose a notch. “Is there anyone dead hanging around me?”
“Yes. You should let him go.”
Dahlia spun on her heel and flicked her head to indicate Mae should come with her. “She has to be making that up.”
Mae apologized to Azure and caught up with the girl.
A number of the dead are with us today. Mae hoped her Granma was with her. She needed all the help she could get.
“Where are we going?” she asked. Dahlia was walking fast.
“Somewhere indoors. I want some tea. And I want to sit down.”
Mae looked at the campus map in the program, located the coffee shop, and directed the way.
Dahlia shoved the door open, let Mae catch it, strode to the counter, and demanded iced green tea. The heavyset Indian girl at the counter explained that they only had black tea cold, but could brew green tea and ice it. Dahlia preached at her about the skin benefits of green tea, and paid with a fifty-dollar bill.
Mae bought iced black tea and dumped sugar in it. Dahlia said, “You’ll look like that medium if you keep doing that.”
“Don’t worry. I’m training for a triathlon, remember? All that metabolism?”
“Oh, yeah.” Dahlia watched the barista count out her change and then tucked the bills and coins into their own little compartments of her purse. “That seems like a hundred years ago. Going to Jamie’s for dinner. That was a really weird night.”
“No kidding. It was a mess. I helped him clean up after the fire truck left. I could swear you were outta there before the smoke alarm went off.”
Dahlia lifted her arm above the counter and examined it, rotating her wrist and running a finger over her skin. Small soft muscles swam under the ivory surface. “I stayed around. Outside.”
“You did?”
She lowered her arms. “Jamie saw me. He didn’t tell you?”
Did Dahlia realize Jamie had perceived her owl form? If she had, Mae didn’t want Dahlia to think she knew about it. “No.”
The barista handed Dahlia her tea, and she took it with a sigh that suggested it had taken too long. “I saw him doing something with his cat.”
Mae and Dahlia took seats at a table near the window. Mae said, “He was saving his life. The poor thing almost died. I don’t know if it was from the smoke or what. Jamie probably didn’t remember he saw you, he was so broke up over that cat.”
“Really?” A subtle trace of surprise moved Dahlia’s eyebrows above her sunglasses. She placed a straw in her tea and arranged her lips around it with minimal creasing or suction. “I thought Jamie was some big shaman or something, with a cat for his power animal. Like a witch’s familiar.”
“That was a joke, honey.”
“So ... it’s like his pet?”
“It sure is. That’s his baby. Jamie was crying when he brought him downstairs, he was so sad he might have lost him.”
Dahlia remained silent for some time, and then let out a little dry laugh. She took her hat off, and short, jaw-length hair fell free. She shook it. “I almost cried when I had to cut my hair for the shoot this week.”
As if there was any comparison. “Is that the saddest you’ve been in a while?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t know. Azure saw somebody dead hanging around you. I wondered if that might make you sad.”
“She’s stupid. There’s no one. Come on, you haven’t said if you like my hair this way.”
Mae had almost angered Dahlia—not a good idea. If she was going to try to get her to surrender her power, she had to keep a connection. She went with Dahlia’s flow. “I do. It makes you look older, more soph—”
“Older?”
“Not in a bad way. But like you could be my age, maybe, less of a kid.”
Dahlia turned her face to the window, expressionless behind her shades. Abruptly, she took them off, a subtle hint of fear tightening her lower lids, her purple irises bright with pinpoint pupils. “Do I look all right?”
“Of course you do. You’re always the most put-together person in the world.”
She put her sunglasses back on. “I think my eyes look different.”
“Is that why the shades?”
“No. Jill doesn’t know I’m here, or that I cut my hair. I’m going to surprise her.”
“What about surprising your parents? Sorry, I know you don’t like to talk about your folks, but I love your daddy’s music. I hope you’ll want to hear him with me. I bet he’d be tickled to see you.”
Dahlia dropped her chin and played with her straw. “Maybe.” She reached across the table and took the program out of Mae’s purse. “But first we have to go hear Jill.”
*****
By the end of his set, Jamie was shaking as if the temperature were twenty below zero. His opening talk and the song for Kandy had taken almost everything out of him, and he’d still had to perform for the rest of the hour. He introduced the next performer and took a break to sit in the front row and listen. The Native flute music soothed him, and he lingered as long as he could before going inside to check messages. The day’s stresses weren’t over yet. Mae was spending the day with Dahlia, and that troubled him. He’d glimpsed Naomi at Kate’s booth and feared for her, too, and then depending on how Jill fought back, he could have his own problems coming.
He unlocked Stan’s office, the stars’ dressing room for the day. The other musicians had classrooms for backstage space but Jamie had asked Harold to share this more private room, to keep him away from his daughter for now.
As soon as the door swung open, Cara launched from the arm of a chair onto Jamie’s shoulder. Fuck. Relapse. He shouldn’t be surprised. As hard as he worked on getting better he still had setbacks all the time, and it wasn’t as though cats could go to therapy.
Harold, seated in the chair in front of the desk, glanced up from tuning his guitar. “Sorry about that. Had to bring her. She freaks in hotels if she has to stay through housekeeping. She was better after Mae did something, but it didn’t last.”
“Wasn’t Mae.” Jamie opened the small refrigerator and took out two local microbrew beers, handed one to Harold. “Give her a touch-up in a minute.”
“You?”
“Yeah. Don’t tell anyone. I’m weird enough without that.”
Harold shook his head with a puzzled half-smile and opened his beer. “I saw a reminder in the program that this is a dry campus. Your father know we’re drinking in his office?”
Jamie sat behind the desk. He disengaged Cara from his back and put her in his lap. “Didn’t ask. Plenty of room in the fridge. He just keeps his boring little snacks in there. Apples and yogurt. Every day, same thing. Got to love how dull he is, y’know? Been all these crazy places and he’s still this ordinary bloke.”
“Not a Jill Betts kind of anthropologist.”
“Fuck no. He’s a real one.”
Harold sipped his beer. “You sure gave Jill a haircut. Naomi made me read those books—trying to save our marriage with that shit, if you can believe it—so I got what you were saying. I haven’t seen her yet, but you must’ve shaken her up some. Were you trying to make Lily leave Jill, too?”
“Nah. Don’t think she’d care, to be honest. Or that Naomi would listen. Just had to do it for my friend. ”
“That took some courage, man. Telling your story like that. It made that song powerful.”
Courage? Maybe it had. He’d been scared and done it anyway. “Thanks.”
Jamie drank and looked at his phone lying on the desk. Three new messages. Oh, yeah. That was what he’d come in for.
Mae had sent two texts assuring him she was still Dahlia’s friend so far, and they hadn’t run into Naomi. Wendy had left one furious voicemail saying she was looking for him and demanding to know what was the matter with him.
The sound of it stirred Cara. She crept i
n a low-walking scurry over to Harold, leaped to his lap and then his shoulder, finally latching onto his upper back. Poor thing. “No offense, mate, but your cat’s more fucked up than I am. Hand her over.” Harold stood and passed Cara to Jamie. Jamie petted the cat’s back and pressed her down into stillness. “Give me a minute. Enjoy your beer. I need to get quiet.”
After seeing Lily’s owl form, Jamie hadn’t wanted to see a soul again ever, except for Gasser’s, but this was another cat. He’d be safe. He half-closed his eyes and let the inner door open.
When his vision shifted, he found her soul was shaky and starting to crowd up into her left shoulder again. She was so full of fear, only her head chakra was open, while the ones at the throat-heart center and the spine-tail joint were fluttery and almost closed.
Letting the healing force take over, he explored her energy with a nudge here, a wait-and-see there. After a while he felt her lower chakras flower in relief, and she purred so loudly it made him want to purr back. He massaged her all over to close the healing, and then put her on the floor. She looked around and began to explore. “She’s better for now, but don’t let Lily near her. She’s the one that fucked her up in the first place.”
“Lily?”
“Yeah, she—” An alarm on Jamie’s phone went off. Heather’s idea, to get him places on time. She’d set what felt like hundreds of them. This one interrupted his attempt to shut down his soul vision.
“I’m not buying that witch stuff,” Harold said. His soul was over-extended and foggy, like mountain mist drifting into valleys. “I know you and Mae believe it, but I can’t swallow it.”