by Lori Drake
“I didn’t think you were…” I began to protest, but swiftly realized the futility of it in light of her revelation. “Shit, can you read my mind?”
She chuckled and rolled her head to the side, looking at me. “No, not that kind of psychic. Most people assume I’m a germophobe, though. I’m used to it. I can’t read minds, just people and objects.”
I cocked my head to one side. “How so?”
“When I touch things, I see their history.”
“So when you touched the bed…”
She averted her eyes and rolled her head back to face forward. “I saw the murder.”
Knowing Mindi’s condition at the time of her death, I winced. “I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is. But I can understand why Mindi doesn’t want to remember. It was pretty awful.”
“Yeah,” I said, agreeing wholeheartedly. Then I thought about her demeanor, her plastic-covered furniture, and her attire. “So, you can’t control your ability at all? Whenever you touch something, it’s triggered?”
“Pretty much. The first time is the most intense, like any new experience. I manage it as best I can with gloves, long-sleeved shirts, and pants.”
Dozens of questions spun through my mind, but I didn’t know her well enough to ask them. I decided to stick with the matter at hand. “You saw the killer’s face.”
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t recognize him.”
“No. He’s either new to town, or he’s been flying under our radar.” The set of her jaw telegraphed how little she liked the second thought.
“Don’t blame yourself. It’s a big city… It’s easy for someone to get lost in a crowd.”
Amber started the car and put it in gear. “Well, he’s not going to be for long.”
11
“That’s me, the gray Jeep.”
Amber pulled the MINI up behind my Jeep and stopped to let me out. “I’ll call you in the morning and let you know what the High Priest says.”
“Are you sure showing up at his door after midnight is a good idea?”
She shrugged. “If ever there was a time, a magic-wielding serial killer would be it.”
“I guess so. Still, I feel like I should at least go with you.” It didn’t seem right, letting Amber earn the man’s ire all on her own.
“No offense, but this is coven business. I know you’re involved already, but I need to do this the right way.”
A warning bell tinkled in the back of my mind, but I ignored it. “Okay, but screw morning. Call me when you’re done meeting with him. I’ll be up.”
Amber tilted her head, studying me for a moment. “You’re going through a lot of trouble for someone you barely knew.”
“Someone has to do it.” I opened the door and climbed out of the clown car, stretching my long legs, then leaned over to look into the car again. “Drive safely, okay?”
She nodded, and I closed the door, then fished in my pocket for my keys and headed for the Jeep.
“Hey, Dean?”
I halted and turned back, bending to look in the now open passenger’s window. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about the drowned ghost.”
“Sorry? That wasn’t your fault.”
She grimaced. “Not directly, but… I’ve always known that someone drowned in my bathtub. I gave up on showering in sandals years ago. I should’ve thought about it before I brought a medium to my place. Given you a warning, at least.”
“Don’t sweat it. Like I said, it’s been a weird few days.”
“Do you think there’s something we can do to help her cross over?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Not sure. She’s pretty far gone, but we can try. But first thing’s first. Go wake up a powerful witch before it gets any later.”
I watched her pull away, bouncing my keys in my hand, my thoughts on another night not very long ago when I’d watched Trish drive away on a deserted highway without a second thought. It was the last time I’d seen her alive. For the first time, I questioned bringing Amber on board. It was one thing for me to run into a burning building on my own. Dragging someone else along was another.
“Don’t brood, chulo. It doesn’t become you.”
I turned at the sound of Trish’s voice and found her leaning against the Jeep’s bumper as if summoned by the mere thought of her. “Hey.”
She lifted her chin in a silent greeting.
“Mindi started to remember what happened, but it took a lot out of her. I think she went back to the in-between. Have you seen her?”
Trish nodded. Her expression was grim. “She’s unraveling. The faster you can wrap this up, the better.”
I scrubbed my fingers through my hair. The longer I stood there, the more tired I felt. It’d been a long day. “I’m doing the best I can, Trish. I don’t have a lot to go on, but Amber confirmed that the killer used magic.”
“Damn. I was hoping he was just extremely sneaky.”
I snorted a soft chuckle and headed for the front of the Jeep. “Me too.”
Trish caught up with me inside, reappearing in the passenger’s seat. “What else did I miss?”
I filled her in on everything on the way home, including the revelation of Amber’s psychic ability. It was good to have someone to talk to. It kept me awake on the long drive without having to resort to late night drive-thru coffee.
“What’s your next move?” Trish asked when I was finished.
“That depends on the High Priest, I suppose. Kind of hoping he has an idea for tracking the guy down. If not, I guess I need to start researching the other victim and try to find out what she has in common with Mindi. If I can figure out how he’s picking his victims, maybe I can get ahead of him.”
“I don’t like this. Going up against a witch, all on your own. You’re defenseless against magic.”
I sighed. “I know, Trish. Believe me, I know. But I can’t let him keep cutting up women. Not when I can do something about it.”
“What about an anonymous tip? Amber’s seen the guy. Can’t a sketch artist make a drawing or something?”
“Maybe. But do you think the police are any better off against a rogue witch?”
“I guess not, but at least they’re not you.”
Another time, her concern might’ve been touching. In the moment, it grated on my nerves. “No, they’re not. But they probably have families and kids, people who depend on them and care about them.”
“You’ve got people who care about you too, you know.” There was a sharp edge to her voice that I couldn’t ignore after our quasi-fight earlier in the day.
“I know.”
I saw her fold her arms out of the corner of my eye. Her displeasure was clear, and I really didn’t want to fight with her about it, so I let the conversation lull. Or tried, anyway. We drove for a solid fifteen minutes in silence before she spoke again.
“I just want what’s best for you.”
“No, you want what’s safest for me.”
She snorted. “They can be the same thing.”
“Not always, and not this time. Why are you so hell-bent on getting me to stop helping spirits cross over, anyway? When you first found out, you thought I was a goddamn hero.”
“Why are you so hell-bent on doing it?” she fired back.
Trish wasn’t the first to ask me that. Not by a long shot. But she was the first person I actually considered telling—the first person I cared for enough that I felt a pull to explain myself to. My fingers tightened on the wheel and I stared ahead, watching the road as the Jeep’s low beams cut through the darkness.
“Well?” she said.
I spared her a brief glance. “I’ll show you mine, you show me yours?”
She smirked. “We’ve already played that game.”
“You know what I mean. An answer for an answer. Quid pro quo.”
“Ugh, you know I didn’t take French.”
“It’s Latin.”
“Fine, fine, what
ever. Yes. Now tell me, already.”
As if on cue, rain started to fall, plonking against the canvas roof. I turned on the windshield wipers and took a calming breath before giving voice to the thought I’d never spoken aloud, not ever. “Because it’s the right thing to do—”
“Bullshit.”
I shot her an annoyed glance. “Let me finish.” She huffed and tightened her folded arms, but let me continue. “Because it’s the right thing to do, and if I don’t do some sort of good with this ‘gift’ of mine, it feels like Leti died in vain.”
I didn’t risk another glance at her, but I could hear a softening of her tone. “Leti didn’t give her life for this. She didn’t give her life for anything. It was a stupid accident.”
“Was it? A stupid accident where I was the only one who walked away from? A completely random incident that left me with the ability to communicate with the dead? I can’t believe that.”
“Leti didn’t do this to you.”
“No, but there has to be a reason. There just has to be, Trish. I don’t know if it’s fate, or God, or fucking destiny. But I’m here and she’s not, and I—” A familiar tightness built in my chest until I couldn’t get any more words out. I’d thought—no, I’d hoped—that I’d left all this shit behind. But Trish’s needling had brought it all back to the surface again. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Now you owe me an answer. What changed?”
She gazed out the window in silence for a long moment, then answered quietly, “At first, I thought I could help you find some sort of balance. But now I realize how dangerous what you’re doing is. Since I found out about your ability, you’ve been nearly eaten by coyotes, shot at by an angry spouse, arrested—not once, but twice—”
“Hey! No charges were filed.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Let me finish. Where was I? Right. Arrested, caught up in a cross-country wild goose chase, beaten by cultists, kidnapped by a maniacal witch, oh, and let’s not forget… strangled by a batshit crazy ghost.”
When she tallied it all up like that, it did sound pretty bad. I sighed and turned on the blinker as we neared the turnoff. “I know the risks, Trish. But I can’t just turn it off. I can’t stop seeing them, and when I do… I want to help. It gives me purpose, and yeah, sometimes it sucks, but at the end of the day, all that risk and all that pain… It’s worth it to know that I made a difference. I mean, how many people get that kind of satisfaction out of their work?”
“I still don’t like it,” she said, but there was a grudging air of acceptance about her now. I may not have won her over, but I’d countered her objections.
“You know I love you, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Then you know I say this with love: tough shit. It’s not your decision. This is my life, and if there’s any one thing I’ve learned in the last few years, it’s that it could be over at any moment. I’d rather that death have meaning than be a random quirk of fate.”
“At the rate you’re going, it’ll be sooner rather than later.”
She had no idea how right she was.
Amber took her time about getting back to me. By the time my phone vibrated on the couch cushion beside me, I was up to my eyeballs in undead, trying valiantly to escape the virus-stricken city of Santa Olivia with my vulnerable young ward. I paused the game and answered the phone.
“That took a while. How did it go?”
“Hello to you, too,” Amber said, sounding amused. “It went okay. I had to wake a few more people up, but there’s an emergency meeting going on now.”
“Why aren’t you in it?” I tucked the phone between my shoulder and ear and resumed the game, mashing buttons while I listened.
“Because it’s above my pay grade. So to speak.”
“You’re the one who saw the guy.”
“I know. They’ll probably call me in after some initial discussion. For now, I’m just cooling my heels. I might try to sneak in a nap. You should too. These things can take a while.”
I frowned, both over the phone call and the situation on the screen. I’d run into a building to search for supplies but ended up cornered in the basement with no ammo. I paused the game again, putting my full attention on the call. “How long of a while? They know lives are at stake, right? This guy’s already killed twice.”
“A few hours, at least. And yes, they know. I’m sure they’ll do something. I just don’t know what, yet. I’ll call you when I have news, but for now… get some rest. I have a feeling tomorrow’s going to be hectic.”
“Is that one of your gifts too?”
She laughed. “No, just regular old intuition. Good night, Dean.”
“G’night.”
I hung up and set the phone face down on my leg, tapping a finger against the textured black case. My eyes drifted back to the game, but my mind wasn’t on it as I went back to searching the basement for a weapon. I wasn’t sure what the coven could actually do besides provide backup once I found the guy, but I really needed that backup. Going toe to toe with a witch wasn’t my idea of a good time. No matter what Trish thought, I didn’t have a death wish.
Even if the coven pitched in—which I fully expected they would—I still had some work to do to track the guy down. I needed to find out more about Kim Lee, the first victim, and try to figure out what connected her and Mindi. There had to be something. I could start online, but there was going to be some good, old-fashioned leg work involved. Amber was right, it was going to be a hectic day.
I saved the game and called it a night. Sadie lifted her head from her paws when I stood and hopped down from the sofa to follow me upstairs. Trish had made herself scarce since we’d gotten home, and I found the little dog’s company a comfort. I shared a house with seven other people, yet loneliness still crowded in from time to time. It was a sad state of affairs that my best friend was a ghost. Sometimes I wondered if the fact that she hadn’t crossed over yet was because I wasn’t trying all that hard to convince her. I liked having her around. She was a connection to my past, one I wasn’t ready to let go of. I suppose that was pretty selfish.
Upstairs, I twitched the curtains aside and peeked out into the darkness. There hadn’t been a single ghost outside when I got home a couple of hours ago, but now ghosts littered the lawn. They hadn’t ventured inside the house since… Was it only yesterday that I’d awoken to find them all crowded into my room? Had I actually banished them from the physical plane en masse? Is that why they were keeping their distance now? Or had I somehow done something that was keeping them out of the house?
12
“What do you mean they want me to stay out of it?” I stood in front of the sliding glass door in the kitchen, looking out on the lake as the morning sun dappled it in oranges and pinks. The view was far from my mind as I gripped my phone’s case tightly and did my best not to shoot the messenger. So to speak.
On the other end of the line, Amber sighed. “They said to thank you for bringing it to our attention, that it’s our business now, we’ll handle it, and there’s no need for you to, uh, risk yourself needlessly.”
I got the feeling she was trying to make their sentiment as inoffensive as possible, but it still galled me.
“No way. I can’t just sit idly by and hope someone else solves the problem.” I’d done that to Mindi once. I wasn’t going to do it again. “Can you get me a meeting with the High Priest?”
“I can try, but Dean—”
“Just do it. Please. Let me talk to him, and I’ll convince him that I need to be involved. Meanwhile, I’m not shelving the investigation. No way, no how.”
Behind me, Trish snorted. I glanced over my shoulder and arched a brow. She smirked at me.
Amber promised to try, and we hung up. I went back to the kitchen table and groaned when I found that the screen saver on Adam’s laptop had come on… and it was password protected. Naturally.
“Adam!” I bellowed, hoping he hadn’t left for work yet. “I need your password!”
<
br /> Adam pushed through the plastic drape covering the doorway a few moments later, riding to the rescue in his “Nerd Brigade” polo shirt and khakis. “What’s up?”
I pointed at the screen. “The screensaver kicked on.”
“Oh, sorry. I thought I’d turned that off.” He came around the table and rapidly typed a rather lengthy password, then proceeded to go into the settings to turn off the screensaver.
“Can’t you just leave me your password?” I asked, worried about getting locked out again while he was gone. I would’ve used my own laptop, but a particular canine—who shall remain nameless—had chewed through the cord at some point. The battery was dead, and no one in the house had a compatible charging cable. Sorting that out was yet another item on the day’s lengthy to-do list.
“Friends don’t let friends share passwords,” Adam quipped, turning the laptop back to face me when he finished.
I sighed but mumbled a halfhearted thanks, anyway.
“I’ve gotta get to work. If you have any more trouble, call me. I’ve got remote access.” He swiped a section of the orange I’d been working on for breakfast and headed for the door, calling back to me, “Remember, computers can sense fear!”
Whoever said the geeks shall inherit the earth didn’t account for them being beaten senseless by frustrated friends. That’s not to say I didn’t appreciate him letting me use his laptop. I just would’ve preferred to use my own and resented the fact that he didn’t trust me with his password. Regardless, I’d managed to get some research done. It was barely nine in the morning, and I already knew where Kim Lee was born (Seattle), her last known address (a few miles from Mindi’s apartment), and where she went to high school (Redmond High). She’d been employed as a secretary at a downtown law firm, but art was her true passion.
Thanks to social media, her life was practically an open book. I wondered if that took any of the thrill out of stalking her, but that wasn’t a thought I was willing to pursue for long. Instead, I got back to work.
The media reports of her death were light on details, but I’d expected that. Scrolling through The Seattle Times archive, I was at least able to determine that she had been killed a few weeks before Mindi, making Kim the killer’s first victim—at least, as far anyone knew. I really hoped she’d been the first, just as much as I hoped Mindi would be the last.