by Eve Paludan
I was incredulous. “I want to know. You’re sticking around until I die, so we can go Home together?”
“Something like that.”
“What do you mean, ‘Something like that’? What are you going to do about this situation?”
“Nothing. Yet.”
“I wish you could tell me everything. I wish I could pry things out of your mind like you can out of mine.”
“I’ll tell you more, when it’s time. For now, I’m going out for the evening to the house where Amanda died. Where Ramon died.”
“Why do you want to go back to that horrible place? It’s full of sadness and negative energy.”
“There is a spirit there, still hiding, and I want to talk to her alone. She probably won’t come out if you’re there. She’s that private of a person.”
“No one is that private.”
“It’s Greta Garbo.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“Looking for her true love. A man who once took her to a party in that house, long ago.”
“Who’s her true love?”
“John Gilbert, an actor. She should have married him, but she never did. It’s keeping her from leaving.”
“Unfinished business,” I said with understanding. “It’s what keeps spirits from leaving and from going into the light.” I paused. “John Gilbert. It’s a common name, but why does that name sound so familiar?”
“He played ghost poker with us that night that you almost drank yourself to death. I want to get the two of them together, so they can go into the light. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that we connected with both of them in a short time span.”
I nodded. “I wish I could meet her. Now, I remember meeting him. Can I go with you?”
Mack shook his head. “Not this time. I have to move fast. Like at the speed of light, before I lose the energy trail of John Gilbert, that wayfaring wanderer. So, I’m going back into the fray. There’s someone else. I want to help her go into the light.”
“Who?”
“Jean Harlow. Her husband of only two months died and she has unresolved issues. I know that’s why she can’t go Home.”
“Paul Bern, right?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“He was said to have committed suicide. I remember reading something about it online in an article about unsolved deaths of Hollywood stars. He died and a strange suicide note was found. Also, his death wasn’t reported right away.”
“That’s right, Pauline. Instead of calling the police when his body was found, they called the movie studio.”
“And they came to the house and cleaned it, before the police got there.”
“Yeah, I am going to talk to her about putting things behind her and going into the light.”
“I really want to come with you, Mack.”
“I don’t think it would be healthy for you to go back to that house where Amanda and Ramon died so tragically.”
“You’re protecting me.” I had mixed feelings of frustration and appreciation.
“Yes. This is one of the few times, really, where I am pulling rank on you.”
“We have ranks?” I asked.
“In a way. If I took you there, the energy signatures alone might make you have a breakdown. That house was so full of evil. And traces of Amanda’s empath abilities are a part of you now.”
“I know they are. I just wish you could put me in your pocket and take me to that place between the tangible and the intangible.”
“There are places where you can’t go, Pauline. Not yet.”
“I understand. But before you go, you should know something else about that house.”
“Yes?”
“Me and Allison and Amanda. You weren’t present when it happened, but we killed a weird kind of vampire there with salt.”
“What are you talking about? A vampire?”
“Yeah, she shed her skin and was flying around the house, stirring every spirit up in an evil way. Until we salted her skin that she left in the Cuisinart food processor and she died. So I’m a vampire killer now.”
“That’s quite a story. And I don’t believe in vampires, Pauline.”
“You should. Hopefully, she didn’t leave behind any of her friends of the same ilk.” I paused. “You should know that the vampire compelled me to do things while I was in that house. And other people and spirits, too. I mean, she’s dead, but what if she bit someone and the whole thing starts over again?”
“I’ll watch my back. Thanks for the warning.”
After Mack disappeared, I wished I could have hugged him, but of course, he was a ghost. I swallowed hard, feeling needy.
Life was too short. Too freaking short.
Chapter Eighteen
While Mack was gone, I went back to Amanda’s grave. I didn’t know what for. I just felt like I was supposed to go there.
It was a cliché, but a police detective came to the gravesite, too. It was also almost comical that I realized he was a detective before he told me.
He reminded me of Peter Falk’s Columbo in his rumpled raincoat and mashed porkpie hat. He smelled of In-N-Out burgers and fries. Or maybe that was just his wrinkly raincoat that smelled like that.
The detective approached the lone person still lingering after the graveside service. Me.
“Pauline Ocean, psychic,” he said.
“I prefer the term, ‘medium.’ You know who I am?”
“Yeah, but you sort of cut out before I could get your full statement the night that Ramon Santiago and Amanda Jordan died. Several people at the party remembered your name.”
I nodded. “I was pretty upset, and no law enforcement officer asked me to stay, so…I left. You were all pretty busy.”
“That we were.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He handed me a business card. “Elliot Churchill, homicide detective for the Hollywood Community for LAPD.”
“Homicide?” I swallowed nervously, the back of my neck prickling. Uh-oh.
“Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. What did you see?”
I told him the truth. “Amanda Jordan was possessed by an evil spirit and it pushed Ramon Santiago off the balcony ledge. And I—I mean, she held onto him as he went over the edge.”
“Wait a minute. That’s your story and you’re sticking to it—that some sort of ghost was the murderer?”
I gave him a frank nod. “It’s the truth. A spirit did it.”
He sighed. “You’re quite a piece of work, Miss Ocean.”
“So I’ve been told. You’re quite a piece of work, too, Detective. For instance, what would make you show up at this gravesite at the exact moment I did? Maybe you’re psychic, too, hmmm?”
For a moment, we had a staring stalemate. I could see his soft purple aura and grinned because he was not going to touch that question with a ten-foot pole.
“If you’re psychic,” he broke the silence at last, “tell me what I’m thinking.”
“I’m not especially a mind reader.”
He challenged me again. “Fine. If you’re the real deal, just tell me where I lost my wallet today.”
I laughed.
“It’s not funny!”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, it’s my freaking wallet and I need it. Badly!”
Blowing out air between my lips, I closed my eyes and reached out to Detective Churchill’s brain and then did something that was pretty hard for a medium. I ran a tape in my mind, backward, of everything he had done today until I located the missing wallet.
I opened my eyes, amazed not just because my powers were back, but because of how strong they were.
I must have looked smug because he said, “Well, Miss Ocean?”
“The Greek Theatre. You had your wallet out to buy tickets to a show for you and a lady friend, but the show was sold out. And when your work cell phone rang, you put down your wallet to answer your phone and walked away from the ticket window. The box offi
ce still has your wallet, though it has been riffled through. Sorry, the cash is gone. Go get it now or lose it forever.”
Now, it was his turn to let out a big breath. “How did you do that?”
“Told you. I’m a real medium.” I paused. “Now, do you believe me that a ghost was the murderer?”
“I’m not putting that in my official report.”
“I don’t blame you. If I were you, I would just put that I said the fall was an accident.”
“That’s pretty much what we pried out of everyone else, though a couple of them were freaked out that the place was haunted or something.”
“It is haunted. So, are you done with me, Detective Churchill?”
“Yeah, I’m done with you. For now. I’m going to go get my wallet. Thanks.”
“No problem.” I dug out a business card and handed it to him. “Call me if you need anything else. Or any consultations on other cases. Truthfully, I could use the medium work.”
He put my card in his wallet, adjusted his porkpie hat, and walked away, muttering to himself, “Vampires, witches and werewolves. And now, ghosts and psychics. Never a dull moment in Hollywood.”
As soon as the good detective left, I used Amanda’s keys and things in her purse that I’d previously swiped from the “crime scene” to locate her apartment and pack up her personal stuff.
She’d lived in an efficiency apartment that had been ridiculously organized. And she’d had little in the way of material things, which shocked me. Maybe some of it was over at her boyfriend’s house. Her dead boyfriend’s house.
I got in my car and headed home with her most important stuff, including a stack of unsent letters to her mom.
Somehow, I had to deliver those letters. I just didn’t know how I was going to do it.
Chapter Nineteen
As usual, traffic was insane. And, it was raining lightly, which it hadn’t done for some time in Los Angeles. So, the roads were a little slippery as rain mixed with months of oil on the road and created a slick driving surface that made it take longer for cars to stop. I hoped I wasn’t the only driver who realized this.
I remembered that there was a premiere of a brand-new superhero movie in Hollywood that night, and chance somehow pigeonholed my car behind an orange Ferrari that held the interest of a group of desperate paparazzi with the worst road manners I’d ever seen. They hemmed me in from both sides. I might have used my horn a time or three when they got too close to my vehicle, almost sideswiping me once.
And then I saw who was driving. Justin Bieber. At least he wasn’t driving crazy, although the paparazzi were.
I finally broke away from that group by forcing my way into the right lane with my horn blaring. I headed into the drive-thru of an In-N-Out Burger on Sunset Boulevard. I got myself something to eat and drink for the long way home and used the window washer to clear the gunk on my windshield. Was rain in Los Angeles really so dirty? Or was it just my car that was so dirty?
I realized that I had not eaten all day and I wolfed down my burger, fries and a Diet Coke as if it might be my last meal on Earth. It was manna from Heaven and completely took away my urge for nicotine. I was obviously a sicko, but tragic deaths made me so angry and so hungry.
With my worn windshield wipers squeaking, I made my way home through nine miles of gridlock that lasted from the Hollywood Hills to Echo Park.
When I was finally able to take a shortcut that was not cruising bumper to bumper down Sunset Boulevard, I breathed a little easier. I knew where I was now, never mind my Google Maps app. I used landmarks, and they usually consisted of fast-food places.
As I finished my fattening in-car meal that was dripping all over my lap—and tried to stop obsessing about Mack going back to the Hollywood Hills mansion without me—my worry about him rose. I understood that he wanted to get John Gilbert and Greta Garbo together and get them to the light—and wanted to speak to Jean Harlow about her husband’s mysterious death—but I was a little put out that he was doing such an interesting mission without me.
That feeling of panic about Mack being lost in Los Angeles lasted all the way home.
Ordinarily, after a shitty day like this, I would just go home and drink a half-bottle of something alcoholic and go to bed. I knew that I numbed myself when the emotional fallout from being a medium was just too much to handle.
And what Mack had said about my childhood trauma affecting my adult behavior was something I had never connected before. But it was certainly light on that darkness, just to know why I was the way I was. It was the only way to rise above the mess I had made of my life. To understand myself.
I hoped Mack would come home soon. I felt like something big had changed in our relationship. Something good. I suddenly realized that here I was, sober, and that the adversarial parts of my relationship with Mack were soon to be a thing of the past. I was both elated and frightened.
A fragile bubble of hope rose in me. I hit the parking lot of my apartment complex, parked in my assigned spot, and looked up to see every single light burning in my apartment.
How sweet! He left the lights on for me to let me know he made it home.
However, as I strode through the rain toward my apartment, I got a sense of foreboding and saw psychic flashes of what lay inside before I even reached my front door. It wasn’t good.
In my head, I saw Mack in a rage, his face creased with anger. And I saw him throwing things, hours earlier.
When I got to my front door, it was unlocked and swung open to reveal the aftermath of Mack’s rage. Pictures hung askew or had been ripped off walls, and the glass fronts broken. My clothes had been flung all over the apartment. Broken dishes littered the kitchen. Plants had been dumped out on the carpet. Books were tumbled from the bookshelves.
Furniture was upended and when I saw that my lingerie was hanging from the rotating ceiling fan in the living room, I lost it. And lost it good.
Screaming at the top of my lungs, I hurled the worst insult that I could think of, “How dare you, Mack! You poltergeist!”
I heard something smash in the bathroom and shuddered. Right now, the last thing I wanted to see was Mack’s angry shimmering ghost face.
Gutted at what Mack had done, I knew I had to leave my trashed apartment and go back out into the rain because I just could not face what Mack had done to my sanctuary.
The destruction meant that he was jealous of what I had shared with Ramon while I was in Amanda’s body. Very jealous. And in his mind, I had crossed some sort of line—a line I didn’t even know existed between us. Of course, since Mack had come into my life, I had not even been interested in any men.
Mack had no previous romantic claim on me. None.
I still had clothing and my laptop in the trunk of my car. I stormed out of my apartment, slamming the front door.
As I got in my car again, I heard Mack bellow my name in a way that would have terrified me if I hadn’t been a medium and hadn’t known him. He’d screamed my name across the parking lot in the way that you shouted someone’s name when you wanted to hurt them. A lot.
A spear of fear went through me and I pushed it down like a good little medium. I didn’t understand why he was losing it now, when I thought everything was fine between us now. He must have learned something I was not privy to at this time.
I tried not to let Mack’s angry destruction of my only safe place get to me.
But deep down, it did.
Chapter Twenty
I was furious and aghast at what Mack had done to my beautiful apartment, to my possessions, and to my life.
I was also furious with myself for calling him a poltergeist. What a mean thing to say.
Deep down, I knew what this was about.
Admittedly, medium ethics aside, I’d committed more than a faux pas or a transgression. But were there even rules for romantic escapades when in someone else’s body?
I thought back to the last few years—heck, for most of my life, actually. Before Mac
k, there had been James, a wonderful man in my apartment building who had departed his body and yeah, I had kissed James. Or he had kissed me. Well, it was mutual.
After James had gone into the light, Mack had come into my life, and into my apartment, to become my resident ghost. And that had been the end of any romantic relationship with a live human being.
Brash as he was at times, I had become psychically smitten with Mack the ghost—and my entire romantic life as a mortal woman had gotten stalled as I had pushed my feelings for Mack to the back burner. Not knowing how to be in love with a ghost…I had not acted on any of those feelings for him.
Now, my apartment was a wreck and I was fleeing my life with a ghost. Too bad I couldn’t run from my own failures. Nope, those would follow me everywhere. I had been unable to keep the spirits under control and had failed to keep Ramon and Amanda alive. If not for Allison and Mack, I would be dead right now, too. Some medium I am.
No matter how much I tried to rationalize the events of that night in my mind, the fact remained—a client had died on my watch.
It was a debacle of extreme magnitude and perhaps it would be years before I got back my confidence in my medium mojo. Good mediums did not screw up like I had. With Julie. With Ramon and Amanda. And now, with Mack.
I pulled into a Starbucks parking lot and sat in my car, trying to decide what to do and where to go as I watched people file in and out of there like ants to sugar. People that I could read from my car. People who were in love. People who were happy. People who had big dreams. I loved being a medium and I hated to give it up, but I was considering it. I wasn’t good at anything else. Clearly, I had failed my client. Could such a thing ever be undone in the world of karma? I doubted it.
My heart was heavy and the loss of Amanda and Ramon weighed on my chest so heavily that I didn’t even want a cigarette. At the moment, I could barely even breathe.
Now, I felt betrayed by Mack, just when I thought we were making headway into something huge and beautiful between us.
Oh, I was sure he felt betrayed by me, too, but neither of us was ready to talk about any of this right now. He’d made himself quite clear when he’d wrecked my apartment. He was jealous of Ramon and me. One hundred percent. And he wasn’t buying my story about being under a compulsion from that soucouyant vampire.