A Darker Shade

by Laura K. Curtis

  Twice in one day people had mistaken Nathaniel’s feelings for me. A ripple of guilt slid over me. They had to be reading my cues, not his. How embarrassing for him.

  Nathaniel ignored the comment about our relationship nodded in grudging admiration of the rest. “That’s your regular evaluation. What about your psychic evaluation?”

  Davidson reached across the table and held out a pudgy hand to Liza. “Will you, my dear?”

  She hesitated a long, long moment before taking it.

  Davidson closed his eyes. “You miss your mother a great deal,” he said. When Liza did not answer, he continued. “You don’t need to worry about her. Regardless of what some uninformed clergy believe, suicide does not damn one eternally. It’s not even the act itself that creates a lingering spirit. No, that occurs because the person realizes, in the moment of the act, that they have left things incomplete. It’s the desire to fix their mistakes, the very same desire that often leads to suicide, the same kind of regret, that creates a restless spirit. She wanted to assuage your pain. Once she realized she wasn’t helping, she moved on.”

  His nose twitched. “This is not your mother, my dear.” His eyes opened and he stared into Liza’s face. “Do not encourage her.”

  “What does she want?” Liza whispered.

  He shook his head. “That I cannot see. But she doesn’t belong here, with you. She should have moved on long ago. I feel only her aura, clinging to you like a cobweb.”

  Twice, this thing had appeared in female forms—as my mother, and as Liza’s. If it had appeared to Hailey as me, that would be three. But that was not to say it could not be masculine just as easily. “Dr. Davidson, you say not to encourage her. What makes you think this is a woman?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “I’m not entirely sure. As I said, there’s a distinct aura. And it’s feminine.”

  Not terribly helpful. “And how do we make her go away?”

  Liza made a wordless noise of protest, but Nathaniel put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Unfortunately,” said Davidson, “I have no idea.”

  Out on the sidewalk, Nathaniel appeared a good deal grimmer than he had when we entered. “I shouldn’t have used my real name to book the appointments. A simple internet search would bring up the facts of Marianne’s death.”

  “He said it wasn’t Marianne, though,” I pointed out. “And yes, he could have gotten a good deal of that from cold reading, but not all of it. And he didn’t ask for more money for further readings. He wasn’t faking.”

  Nathaniel’s jaw clenched and I could practically hear his teeth grinding. How difficult it must be for him to discover that there was a whole world he’d never imagined and that something it meant his daughter harm.

  “Why did you ask about making her go away?” We’d been walking, but Liza stopped, forcing us to stop with her. “I don’t want her to go away.”

  “Why not?” Nathaniel shook with the effort of keeping his voice calm.

  “Because. Even if she’s not mom, she cares about me. Why should she have to go away? It was her house before we got there.”

  I shivered. Without Liza’s help, we stood no chance whatsoever of getting rid of the malignant spirit. It wanted her. It spoke to her and only her.

  “You said back at the house that you wanted to help her,” I offered.

  She nodded reluctantly.

  “Well, even if she does care about you, you’re not her family. She’s stuck here, away from the people who knew and loved her. Shouldn’t we help her find them? After all, loads of people will love you as you go through life. It’s not fair to hold her here, where no one else can talk to her or care about her.”

  She crossed her thin arms across her chest and frowned. Nathaniel opened his mouth, but I shook my head slightly and he subsided. After a moment, he put one arm over his daughter’s shoulders and the other around mine. I glanced up and a quick, gentle grin flickered across his face. It warmed the cold hollow beneath my breastbone created by Liza’s question.

  The storefront for the second medium, Lady Ivana, could have been built and decorated by the same designer who put together Dr. Davidson’s shop. Perhaps in a remote corner of Maine existed a bulk outlet—going into business as a psychic? We have it all, from rental space to curtains! I shook away the thought. Hysteria wouldn’t help anyone.

  Lady Ivana answered the door before Nathaniel could ring the bell. No great feat given the security camera scanning the street from the second story, but I twitched slightly nonetheless. Behind her, the shop’s interior was dim and an odd odor wafted out.

  “I am Lady Ivana.” She pushed the door wide and the sunlight caught on silver rings that circled every finger. A thick layer of makeup hid her natural skin tone and a waist-length black wig covered her hair. “I hope you don’t mind the mess. I didn’t have time to clean up after your call and with the weather forecast I wasn’t expecting visitors today.”

  Mess hardly described the shop. Psychics R Us had exploded all over the interior. Swags of herbs hung from the ceiling tied with complicated knots of hemp. Bowls of folded paper packets and tiny, satin-tied scrolls littered the counter that ran along the left side of the shop. The shelves along the right held books, tarot decks, crystal balls, and amulets of all shapes and sizes.

  I sneezed.

  “So sorry. I had a terrible visitation yesterday so I smudged with sage to cleanse the place before your arrival. It’s effective, but the smoke can put people off. Come on through. My reading room is in the back.”

  She led us to her parlor, almost identical to Dr. Davidson’s but for a deck of tarot cards and a silver bowl half-full of water resting in front of one of the seats at the table. The same burgundy velvet that hid the view from the street hung from rods along each wall.

  Her movements were sparrow-quick and jerky as she seated us and then took her own place in front of the cards. “Now, what can I do for you today?”

  Nathaniel slid a glance at me and said in a completely flat tone, “I’d like to talk to my dead wife.”

  “Of course.” Lady Ivana put the cards aside, slid the bowl of water to the center of the table, and lit two candles.

  “Take a seat, everyone, and let your fingers rest on the edge of the bowl.” She fixed an eye on Liza. Just because Liza was a child and apt to be disruptive, or did she see something in the girl? “Lightly.”

  We obeyed and she closed her eyes and hummed slightly. The table shook slightly and I saw Liza’s eyebrows go up. I caught her eyes and rolled my own. If Nathaniel was determined not to believe, Liza was too gullible.

  After a moment, Lady Ivana shook her head. “Something is blocking her from coming through. I thought I had her for a moment—did you feel her?—but then it went dark. This will require further exploration.”

  Seven minutes later and fifty dollars poorer, we were out on the street. “Charlatan,” Nathaniel pronounced as the door shut firmly behind us.

  I agreed. I’d suspected before she opened her mouth—those who lacked talent relied on an abundance of tools—but her ridiculous performance attempting to contact Marianne clinched it. Especially once she launched into her sales pitch for further sessions.

  “The last one’s a ways out. Let’s pick up groceries first since we have time, then I can drop you home after the appointment and come back for Jenn and Hailey.”

  I paid no attention to what went into the cart and would not have been at all surprised at checkout to find nothing but tuna and peanut butter. The food was an excuse, a show for Jennifer to mask the real and vital purpose of our trip.

  Chapter 17

  Adriana Livingston worked out of a converted Colonial a few miles outside Portland proper. Four steps led up to a wide front porch and a hand-carved wooden sign hanging by the buzzer panel indicated that she shared the building with two chiropractors and a nutritionist.

  “I’m on the second floor,” said a pleasant, neutral voice when I passed the button. “First door on you
r right.”

  The place smelled of pine cleaner and an earthy, spicy scent a long-unused part of my mind identified as sandalwood. Perhaps one of the chiropractors practiced aromatherapy as well, for the scents, along with the oaken floors and whitewashed walls, proved calming.

  Livingston stood in the doorway to her office. A tall, slender figure with a neat blonde bob wearing tan slacks and a baby blue sweater set, she radiated an easy confidence. She clasped my hand with cool, bare fingers when she introduced herself, but merely nodded at Liza. She led us to a small seating area beneath a window hung with heavy chocolate-colored linen drapes held back on either side by white hooks. Nathaniel and Liza settled on a loveseat while I took a plush chair nearby. Only then did Livingston seat herself in the lone wooden chair.

  “I was sorry to hear about your wife.” She crossed her legs and laced her fingers in her lap. She switched her focus to Liza. “It must have been very difficult for you.”

  Liza nodded, wide eyed.

  “But I must admit to being surprised to hear from you, Mr. Prescott. Marianne gave me the impression that she hid her visits to me. She told me you were a skeptic right to the bone.”

  “You knew my wife?”

  “She came to see me several times. I recommended she seek help from a more mundane source.”

  “Help with what?”

  Livingston considered the question. Did psychics have an obligation to protect their clients’ privacy? Even after death? If death did not constitute an end to life, perhaps the contract continued indefinitely.

  “Marianne believed her paintings were haunted, even possessed.”

  I remembered the cracked earth, oozing neon paint and the discomfort they’d inspired on first sight. Just good art, or something more?

  “Oh, for—” Nathaniel clamped his lips shut.

  “She brought me several. I still have them. But I felt nothing beyond the emotional connection to the work of a talented artist from most of them. No supernatural force inhabited them. Yes, they disturbed me. In particular one with two crosses. Do you remember that one?”

  Nathaniel shook his head.

  Livingston frowned. “I have the others at home, but that one I could not keep. Green and gray, a lonely, quiet spot for a grave. It might have been peaceful in the hands of a different artist. But Marianne did not do peaceful. I could almost understand why she thought it was possessed.”

  “What did you do with it?” Was it still in the house? Could it be that simple? A spirit trapped in a painting?

  “We burned it. I admit, I did not think it would do a jot of good—it was just a painting, though an exceptionally good one—but Marianne’s state of mind came before her artistic prospects. She did not want to sell it, did not want to keep it, so we burned it to give her peace. I thought that was the end of it. And yet…”

  “And yet?”

  “And yet, here you are. Her husband, the skeptic. Her daughter, the haunted. And the woman drawn into the web, all sitting in my office.”

  “You believe my daughter is haunted?”

  “Don’t you? Isn’t that why you are here?” She fixed me with moss green eyes that reflected the snowy scene outside. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you? The unquiet spirit.”

  I froze, and the whole room waited. Even the dust motes floating through the air paused in their journeys. The muscles in my neck tightened, refusing to move, and when I finally managed to nod, the crack was audible.

  “Who are you?” she asked me.

  “Liza’s tutor.”

  Perfectly plucked brows rose and she blinked twice. “Really?”

  “Should she be someone else?” Nathaniel asked.

  Her lips formed a tiny smile. “Not at all. Besides, right now you all have more to worry about.”

  “And what, precisely, should we be worrying about?”

  “She doesn’t like you.”

  Nathaniel recoiled. “Molly?”

  “Oh, no.” Again that private smile. “Not Miss Allworth. The spirit. She likes your daughter, but you are another story. I could feel her when I took your hand.”

  Nathaniel snorted. “And you think it—she—is dangerous.”

  Adriana aged as I watched, a slight sagging of the skin beneath her eyes, and a downturn of her mouth stealing her vibrancy. “To you, absolutely. Eventually, to all of you. You haven’t noticed?”

  “Noticed what?”

  She picked at one perfect nail. “A spirit fades with time if left alone. It requires energy to maintain a presence in this world, and it acquires that energy from the emotions of the living. As it becomes stronger, it weakens those whose energy it is draining.”

  I studied Liza’s pale skin and hollow eyes and shuddered. She did seem to be fading away. I had hoped that would change when she began speaking, but it had not. Could her father not see it? ”You’re saying this thing is like a sort of vampire? That it will suck Liza dry?”

  “Not just her. Remember, as it gets stronger, it becomes more physical in the world. It will be able to cause more damage to those in its way.”

  “So what’s your suggestion,” Nathaniel asked. “A spell? A charm? A candle?”

  “Should we leave the house?”

  She answered my question first. “If you’d come to me when this first began, I’d have recommended leaving. This spirit was attached to the location, and woke up at the taste of Liza’s grief. In the early days, you might have run. In time, she would have faded once more. But now, she has formed a bond with Liza. You might weaken that bond temporarily if you left, but I doubt you could break it.”

  “She doesn’t want to hurt me,” Liza said.

  Livingston smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. If anything, they turned down further than before. “Have you ever been to the zoo and seen the bears or the wolves and thought how cute they were?”

  Liza nodded.

  “But you can’t play with them, right?”

  Another nod.

  “And it’s not because the bears or the wolves want to hurt you. They don’t. But they don’t realize that you aren’t the same, that what seems like playing to them could kill you.”

  “How do we make it go away?” Nathaniel cut right to the heart of the matter.

  “I don’t have an easy answer to that.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “I am a medium,” she chided. “I communicate with the dead. But they have to want to talk to me. This one most emphatically does not. I can sense her rage, her sorrow, but they are emotions, not fully formed thoughts that give me a clear picture of how to encourage her to move on.”

  “Fat lot of good you are,” he grumbled.

  I ignored him. “What do you recommend?”

  “You have no idea who she is? What she wants?” Livingston addressed the question to Liza, who refused to meet anyone’s eyes as she shook her head.

  “She’s lonely,” I offered. “We know that.”

  “Lonely.” Livingston drew out the word, tasting it. “No, that’s not enough. There has to be more.”

  “More? It’s what I felt, it’s what Liza told us she felt, too.”

  “An unquiet spirit forms when a person dies with regrets, with tasks left unfinished, with needs left unmet. The death is usually violent. When my husband was diagnosed with cancer, we went on vacation. We talked over everything. When he finally passed, I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach him beyond the veil because I was the one with regrets, not him. I was the one who had held back, kept things secret. If I’d suddenly had a heart attack before his death, my spirit would not have rested because I wanted to be sure he passed as happily as possible and I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to do it. I would have been afraid he might discover the things I’d hidden from him.

  “Loneliness is too unspecific a desire to form an unquiet spirit.” She slanted a glance at Nathaniel. “And it doesn’t explain her fury at you.”

  “I didn’t do anything to any damned ghost.”

  “
No, I don’t imagine you did. You’re a stand-in. But that doesn’t make her any less angry, or any less lethal.”

  “So we return to the original question,” I said. “What do you suggest we do?”

  “I can call friends who specialize in hauntings. They may have ideas about how to force her out. That’s not my forte.”

  “Great. Refer us to a few of your friends so they can bleed me dry in hundred-dollar increments.”

  I kicked him, reminding him of our conversation that morning, but Livingston merely laughed. “Oh, dear, no. A hundred dollars, that’s for the initial consult. I usually charge twice that, but when I heard your name I wanted to meet you. You’d have to mortgage that house to afford anyone who could really rid you of the problem, and that’s assuming the spirit isn’t too deeply dug in.”

  “It’s already mortgaged,” he said. “Twice over. So I guess your friends are out of luck.”

  “It’s not my friends who need luck,” she said. “Find out what this spirit wants. Convince it that it does not belong here. Sever the connection to your family. Otherwise, I will be attending your funeral as I did Marianne’s.”

  Nathaniel dropped us at the house and went back to get Hailey and Jennifer from the spa. None of us had spoken more than three words the entire drive, and I felt burned out, beaten up, and unready to face the normalcy of the others.

  I dragged myself into the kitchen and Liza followed me. But much as I cared for and worried about her, I needed to be alone, apart even from her.

  “Take the dog outside for a while, okay? He’s been locked up too long.”

  When she had run outside with Rocky, I collapsed into a chair and tried to make sense of my turbulent emotions. If the spirit derived energy from our fright and grief, she’d have a banquet in my heart. I pulled out my notebook and tried to make notes on what we’d learned. But the words wouldn’t come and when Liza returned I was setting coffee on to jump-start my brain.