Occult and Battery

by Lena Gregory

  “I hope so.” Joan Wellington pulled off her hat and twisted it in her hands. She glanced over her shoulder then walked farther into the shop. “I was wondering. Well. I’d like to know if you can do a reading?”

  “For you?”

  “Yes. Please. Everyone says you can talk to the dead. And . . .” She lowered her gaze, and a tear dripped onto her wrist. She made no move to wipe it away. “I thought you might be able to talk to Conrad, to ask him who . . . you know.”

  Ah jeez. She did know. How could she explain to this woman that she didn’t exactly talk to the dead? Easy. She couldn’t. At least, not without ruining her reputation. She blew out a breath, fluttering her hair up off her forehead. “Sure. Of course. Please, come in and sit. Take your coat off and get comfortable. Would you like something to drink? Tea, coffee, hot chocolate?”

  “Do you have any water?” Joan pressed a hand to her throat.

  “Sure.” Cass took Joan’s coat and guided her to a chair. She placed a box of tissues in front of her then left her alone, giving her a little privacy to compose herself. After hanging the coat on the coatrack by the door, Cass took a small bottle of water from the fridge and handed it to Joan. She placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  Joan reached up and patted her hand. “I’m fine. Thank you.” She sipped the water.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  Joan took another sip of water and nodded. “Yes. I’m very sure. I need to know.”

  “Okay, then.” Cass lit the candles at the side of the table. A color reading would probably be best, the most peaceful. Perhaps it would help soothe Joan’s nerves, ease some of her tension. Customers often told her they felt calm and at peace after having a color reading.

  Cass pulled the basket of colored pencils and a small stack of paper out and brought them to the table, then sat across from Joan. Taking her time, she selected several pencils without bothering to look at them. It didn’t matter. She had no doubt the random selection of colors would give her the results she needed. Instead, she studied Joan.

  This was a large part of her business. Her uncanny ability to read people, to gain insight from their actions. It was obvious Joan was a nervous wreck. Anyone could see that. But Cass had to look deeper. Why was she so nervous?

  Cass lined her selection of pencils beside the paper then rolled them back and forth.

  With another quick glance over her shoulder, Joan finished off the water. Shifting the chair just the slightest bit, she glanced toward the door from the corner of her eye. The movements were so subtle—disguised as everyday fidgeting—most people might have missed them. But Cass was trained to see them and had spent years looking for those small tells in her patients. If you watched people enough, you learned they were very rarely completely still. Many were in a constant state of motion, without even realizing it. A scratch here, a cough there, hair swiped behind an ear, foot tapping to some imagined rhythm. It was Cass’s job to differentiate between those small fidgets and actual telling behavior. And she was very good at it.

  “Who are you afraid of?” The question blurted out before she could censor it. Would she have asked it if she’d realized sooner? In all honesty, probably not. While waiting for Joan to answer, Cass lifted a grey pencil, tilted it to the page, and slowly moved it back and forth. She wasn’t surprised to have chosen grey first, the color reinforcing her observations of distrust. Or had she knowingly chosen the color, having already observed Joan’s fear? Hmm . . .

  “Afraid?” Joan forced an obviously uncomfortable chuckle. “I’m not afraid of anyone. Who would I be afraid of?” She punctuated the denial with a glance over Cass’s shoulder.

  Cass resisted the urge to turn and look behind her. Beast wouldn’t still be sleeping fitfully on the floor if someone had entered the shop. Besides, the chimes would have tinkled, announcing the intrusion immediately. Intrusion? She frowned. Odd word choice. A client coming in wouldn’t necessarily be an intrusion. Was it Joan’s paranoia she was picking up on?

  She returned the pencil to its place in the line and studied the blob she’d drawn.

  Joan’s hand shook as she spun the water bottle in circles. “When are you going to talk to Conrad?”

  “It doesn’t really work that way. I can’t just call him up and have a conversation. He will send me . . . impressions, for lack of a better word, and I’ll have to interpret them with your help. I won’t necessarily understand what he’s telling me but, hopefully, I can help you make sense of it.”

  Joan’s shoulders relaxed a little, but she continued to pick at the label on the water bottle.

  Cass chose a purple pencil and started to scribble. Another unsurprising color choice—the color of wealth and luxury.

  “What is that you’re doing?” She gestured to the page Cass was coloring on.

  “It’s a color reading. It helps me—”

  Joan gripped her wrist, stopping the pencil mid-stroke. “Look, I don’t have much time. I’m not as much interested in a reading for myself as in contacting Conrad.” She pitched her voice low, even though the shop was empty. “I absolutely must ask him something. It’s of the utmost urgency.”

  Cass sighed and set the pencil down among the rest. The urge to lift the red pencil was strong, but she ignored it. Red was a color of passion, power, and anger. The choice would have surprised Cass only a moment before. “All right, we can try something else.” She stood and went to the counter behind the table. With one last glance over her shoulder at Joan, she lifted the crystal ball and returned to the table with it. Now to find out what in the world was going on here.

  “I might be able to contact Conrad more easily through the crystal ball.” Cass closed her eyes, the ball resting on the table in front of her. She conjured an image of Conrad, his hand resting on the small of Joan’s back as he guided her toward the back of the house to prepare for the séance. “What do you want to know?” When she was met with silence, she opened her eyes.

  Joan sat staring at her, thumbnail caught between her teeth.

  “You have to ask him something if you want an answer.”

  “Is he here?”

  Was he? Who knew? Maybe. “I won’t know until you ask your question. Then we’ll see if he answers.”

  “Fine.” Joan slid up and perched on the edge of the chair. She leaned forward and looked into the crystal ball as if she expected to see her dead husband in there. “Where is it?”

  Cass jumped, startled by the intensity of the command.

  “I said, where is it, you rat?”

  Shocked, Cass jerked back. A vision popped into her mind. A small compartment or hole. The same opening she’d seen in the cupola? She couldn’t tell. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring any of the surrounding space into focus. Was it her memory surfacing or some sort of cryptic message from beyond? She had no idea, but now she had to decide how much to tell the infuriated widow. “I see a cubby of some sort.” True enough. Since she didn’t know if it was the same one, she couldn’t say with any degree of certainty where it was located.

  “A cubby?”

  “Well, sort of an opening or a hole.” Cass shook her head. The image stayed firm.

  “Can you be any more specific?”

  Could she? She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. That’s all I can see. He seems pretty insistent on showing me that same vision continuously.” True enough, since she couldn’t seem to rid herself of the image.

  “Hmm . . .” Joan stood. “Not surprising. I guess he’s as useless dead as he was alive.” She tossed a twenty-dollar bill onto the table. “Thanks for trying.”

  Cass stared after her, mouth agape, as Joan crossed the room, grabbed her coat, and left.

  10

  Cass opened the back door of the small car, and Beast dove out. “Come on, boy. Time to see the doc and make sure you�
��re all right. Again.” Crossing the icy parking lot with Beast tugging on the leash proved to be treacherous. With the snow that had melted all day now freezing over, it was definitely time to get home before the roads got any worse.

  She stamped her feet off as she entered the waiting room. Trying to keep Beast from jumping on anyone, she approached the counter. “Hi, Sue.”

  The receptionist looked up from the computer. “Oh, hey, Cass.” She slid her glasses up onto her head and eyed Beast. “What’d he eat this time?”

  Sue was a regular customer at Mystical Musings. She often attended group readings and had been at the Madison Estate for the disastrous weekend. They’d become quite friendly since she’d inherited Beast. “A ring.”

  The other woman winced. “I hope it wasn’t a good one.”

  Hmm . . . “Nah. Nothing important.” True enough. “Sorry about the weekend.”

  “Are you kidding me? People are going to be talking about that for years.”

  “You think?”

  “For sure. When I stopped at the deli this morning for a roll and coffee, it’s all anyone was talking about.”

  “Ah . . . jeez . . .” Cass massaged her temples between her thumb and forefinger, while gripping Beast’s leash tightly in the other hand.

  “Nah, no worries. It’s fine. Actually, interest in Mystical Musings is through the roof. I heard at least three women and one man mention they were going to stop by the shop this week.”

  Sue’s smile was contagious, and Cass couldn’t help joining her. “Yeah, well, let’s just hope the fascination keeps up.”

  Sue sobered. “Not sure the Wellingtons are going to fare as well, though. No one can stop talking about the way they bicker like spoiled children. Not appealing.”

  Bay Island was a small community of hardworking people. Being lazy or spoiled didn’t earn you any points. The fact that one of the Wellingtons committed suicide might have earned them sympathy, the fact that someone was murdered there might have banded the community together to help, but the fact that they argued like a group of unruly children would do nothing to further their cause.

  “They did bicker a lot, huh?”

  Grabbing Beast’s chart from the holder, Sue skirted the desk and gestured for Cass to follow. Beast pranced beside her while they walked down the small hallway. “No kidding. The four of them were at it constantly.”

  Wait. “Four?”

  “The siblings and Joan. I guess she fits right in.”

  Cass frowned as Sue pushed open the door to an exam room and patted Beast on the head. Holding the door open with her back against it, Sue gestured for Cass to enter the room, then dropped Beast’s chart in a wire holder beside the door.

  “Who did Joan fight with?”

  Sue scoffed. “Please. Who didn’t she fight with? Before the séance started she was the main topic of conversation. She was bickering with Priscilla on the way to the ballroom. Then she went at it with James.”

  Cass was having a hard time connecting this woman—the same woman who’d come in demanding to speak to her dead husband—with the meek woman who’d introduced herself on her way into the estate. How had Cass missed all of that arguing? She was usually so accurate in her observations of people. The success of her readings depended on her spot-on assessment of people’s personalities and moods. Oh, right. She’d been too preoccupied with Donald and Sylvia when she should have been making notes on each of the guests.

  Sue folded her arms and leaned back more comfortably against the door. “And let me tell you, it’s not like she was taking up for Conrad either. That woman didn’t have one nice word to say about her husband. And nasty as he was to other people, he doted on her like you wouldn’t believe. Poor guy—may he rest in peace.” Sue made the sign of the cross. “No wonder he killed himself.”

  Hmm . . . If Sue had been in the deli, and with the number of people who were in and out of the vet’s office all day, her gossip was probably pretty reliable. The general consensus must be that Conrad killed himself. Cass bit her tongue. No sense fueling any talk about murder.

  “Anyway, I gotta run. Work to do and all that.” She smiled and petted Beast’s head. “Let me know when you reschedule the weekend.” The door started to fall shut, but she grabbed it and pushed it back open enough to stick her head in and lowered her voice. “By the way, how on earth did you make that man appear in the smoke? That’s the real topic of conversation, and people are pretty much divided on whether you did it on purpose or if it was a real ghost.” Sue waggled her eyebrows. “Come on, you can tell. Your secret is safe with me.”

  Sue was a real sweetheart, and Cass liked her a lot, but truth be told, no secret was safe with her. “Sorry.” Cass grinned through her fear. “My lips are sealed.”

  The grin slipped away as soon as the door fell shut, and she closed her eyes, massaging the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. Apparently everyone had seen the figure in the smoke. But what caused it? Bee swore he didn’t, even when she’d asked him again and again, and she believed him. Could one of the Wellingtons have been behind the strange phenomenon? If not, there was only one alternative she could think of. She swallowed the lump of fear threatening to choke her.

  The doorknob rattled, startling her from her reverie. She jumped and pressed a hand to her chest.

  Doc Martin laughed as he entered. “Sorry, dear. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Cass forced a chuckle. “Not your fault.”

  Beast jumped up and propped his front paws on the exam table while Doc Martin scratched behind his ears. “How are you doing, fella?” He dropped the chart onto the table, opened it, and scanned the front page. “A ring this time, huh?”

  “Is he going to be all right?” Cass unclipped the leash and rolled it up, more for something to do with her hands than anything else.

  “Why don’t we have a look? Generally, these guys are pretty sturdy, but we’ll see.” He pulled on gloves and bent to feel Beast’s stomach. “Any blood in the stool?”

  “Not that I saw.” She fidgeted with the clasp, opening it, letting it flip closed, opening it . . .

  When he finished, he stripped off the gloves and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I’ll tell you what. I think he’s going to be fine.”

  Cass sighed in relief.

  He held up a hand. “But . . .”

  Of course.

  “I’d like to keep him overnight—”

  “But, I thought—”

  “Just for observation. It’s already late, the roads are going to be bad tonight, and I don’t want to risk you having a problem and not being able to get him back here.” He crossed the room and tossed the gloves in the garbage. “This way, I’ll be able to check on him throughout the night, do an X-ray and make sure everything looks okay, and you can pick him up sometime tomorrow morning.” Pulling a treat from a cookie jar on the counter, Doc turned his attention to Beast, who propped his front paws on the counter and nudged the cookie jar with his nose. “No.”

  Beast dropped to the floor and looked quizzically at the doctor.

  Doc held the treat in his hand and said, “Sit,” while moving the treat toward Beast and above his head.

  Beast promptly dropped his butt to the floor, tail wagging wildly, and Doc handed him the treat.

  “Hey. How’d you get him to do that?”

  “That brings me to the next order of business.” He offered her a sympathetic look and scratched the back of his head. “You have to get this animal some kind of obedience training. He’s too big to run around doing whatever he wants.”

  “Bu—”

  He held up a hand to stop any argument. “No buts, Cass.” His tone softened. “He’s going to get hurt, or hurt someone else, if you don’t get him under control. He’s a great dog, with a fantastic temperament, but what’s going to happen if a child
comes into the shop and Beast gets excited and jumps on him? He’s going to weigh well over a hundred pounds full-grown. You must be able to control him. It won’t be his fault if he hurts someone.”

  It would be hers. He didn’t have to say the words for Cass to get the message. Cass lowered her gaze to Beast, happily crunching his treat. “I’m sorry, boy.” She ruffled his mane. “I was planning to take him to Herb in the spring.” Herb Cox was the only dog trainer she knew of on the island, and he ran classes from the corral behind his house, which meant no classes when it was below freezing with a foot of snow on the ground. “I guess I could look for somewhere on the mainland.”

  “You can wait for Herb but, in the meantime, there are things you can be doing. He should be able to obey basic commands. If he learns sit, and he launches himself at a child or runs toward a busy road . . .”

  A vise gripped Cass’s chest at the image.

  “All you have to do is yell sit, and he’ll stop.” Doc opened the top cabinet and pulled out a sheet of white paper. “Here’s a list of websites that have good information on training. Work on one command at a time. Set aside fifteen minutes every day and work on teaching him to sit.” He finally smiled, filling his ice-blue eyes with warmth. “This guy’s smart. You’ll be surprised how fast he learns.”

  “Thank you, Doc. I’ll make sure to work with him.”

  He patted her arm. “I’ll give you a minute to say good night, then Sue will come and take him back. Don’t worry. I’ll check on him all night. He’s going to be fine.”

  She knew the doctor was right. And a breezeway connected the veterinary office to his home, so he’d be close by all night. But it didn’t make it easier to leave Beast. She hugged him. “I’m sorry, boy. We’ll work harder to make sure you’re safe. I love you, ya big teddy bear.”

  After checking out at the front desk, she headed out. Cass pulled her hood up, opened her car door, tossed her bag and Beast’s leash onto the passenger seat, and climbed in, then wrestled the door shut against the wind. Once she started the car and blasted the heater, she just sat, staring out the window. Wind rocked the car, the sensation bringing a small surge of nausea. At least, she thought that’s what turned her stomach. Could also be stress . . . or guilt.