Dead womans pond, p.11
Dead Woman's Pond, page 11
Oh. Right. “The powder room is there, if you’d like to freshen up.” I wave behind her. Maybe she’ll go in there and stay until Gen comes out. Then again, I can’t remember if I cleaned up after myself when I took care of the basics this morning. A glance over her shoulder shows me puddles of water around the porcelain sink and a discarded T-shirt hanging on the towel rack.
Crap.
“No, I’m fine.”
Thank God.
I lead her to the living room, as if she can’t find her way the whole five feet by herself, and nod toward the larger couch. Then I busy myself setting things out the way I’ve seen Gen do it: tossing the pillows on the floor (well, they are throw pillows, right?), lighting the candles, and fetching her well-worn deck of tarot cards from a closed cabinet by the easy chair.
Tingles run through my fingers when I touch them, jolting me from nails to wrist, and I almost drop the whole deck. As it is, the top two cards escape my grip and flutter to the carpeting, landing faceup.
The Tower and the Lovers.
My heart rate picks up as the client (still don’t know her damn name) sucks in a sharp breath, then lets it out with a little laugh. “You aren’t a reader, are you?” she asks.
“No, I’m not.”
“Good.”
Yeah. I’ve been around Gen long enough to know the Death card doesn’t mean death, but change. However, the Tower, with its macabre image of bodies jumping off and plummeting to an unknown doom, does indicate someone’s demise. And the Lovers, well, that one explains itself.
Chapter 19
For Love or Money
GEN TAKES her sweet-ass time “getting ready” for the reading. I gather the fallen cards with still trembling fingers and place them next to the pillows as fast as possible, then try to ignore my odd reaction to them. As she suggested, I make small talk about the weather, Festivity, and whatever, which lasts all of two minutes.
“Can I get you anything? Soda? Tea?” Anything to give me an escape from the living room?
“You may get me a cup of tea, yes. That would be lovely.”
Ah, grammar Nazi. I’d lay odds she worked as an English teacher.
In the kitchen, I stare at the counters and cabinets, with absolutely no idea how to “make tea.” If I want caffeine, I’m a Coke Zero kind of gal. But I’ve seen Gen do it, and it isn’t hard, right?
It only takes me three tries before I find the shelf with the teapot, and another two to locate the little baggies. “Um, Earl Grey, ginger, or vanilla?” I call out.
“It’s night,” she says by way of an answer.
Riiight. And which one is the most… night-timey? “Um, vanilla, then?”
“Please.”
Okay. I get the water going. Gen still hasn’t emerged from her… our room.
I smell a rat.
This is a test. I hate tests. And Gen and her brother have been testing me a lot lately. I’m damn well not going to fail this one.
When Gen finally returns from the bedroom, I’ve set out the fine china teacups, the sugar bowl, and lace doilies to place things on. I have my legs crossed and my pinky extended, and I’m discussing the current state of education with her client (whose name, by the way, is Mrs. Pinkerton. Snort. And yes, she’d been a teacher for over thirty years, and her husband was a surgeon, which explained the Coach purse).
You could hear the thud Gen’s jaw makes when it hits the floor.
I wink at her as she crosses to us and offers an apology with the excuse of having to take an urgent phone call—family business. Yeah, right. Gen’s remaining family is Chris, and he never calls. He just shows up at the door.
“No trouble, dear. I know this was last-minute, and I so appreciate you working me in. Besides, I was having a lovely conversation with your new assistant, here.”
Mrs. Pinkerton has done all the talking, but that seems to be the real trick, and I’m happy to take her mind off the loss of her daughter. Twenty-eight years old. My age. Fell in the shower. Geez.
I think about my near plummet at work and swallow hard, getting a taste of what Gen must have felt watching from below.
“Well, I’ll just be leaving, then….” I stand and turn toward the bedroom, but Gen stops me with an upraised hand.
“Actually,” she says, a wicked gleam in her eye, “if it’s all right with Althea, I’d like you to stay. You should familiarize yourself more with the process, now that you’re working here and all.”
“Oh, it’s fine by me,” Althea Pinkerton says, gesturing toward the couch she vacates and easing herself onto the floor pillows. It takes a full minute for her to manage the cross-legged position, and I might suggest to Gen that she provide some alternate seating arrangement in the future.
I glare at Gen, but she has a point. We discuss our jobs with one another, but my phobia of all things supernatural has prevented me from observing her, with the exception of the occasional street festival. And even then, I’ve only seen her read tarot. I’ve never seen her actually channel a spirit. I need to suck it up and deal.
Pasting on another smile, I settle on the couch, rest my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands, and wait.
Gen has explained that she isn’t a typical psychic insofar as her methodology is concerned, but there’s a wide range of skills and talents and ways of using them. Some can mix potions. Others read minds or move things without touching them or catch glimpses of the future. Some walk through the spirit world while deep in meditation, and still more see into people’s past lives. However, most psychics read tarot or channel the dead.
She combines both of these.
Gen uses the cards to “tune in” to her clients and the loved ones with whom they wish to communicate. She begins by giving a simple reading: an overview of Althea’s personality, where she’s been, where she is, where she’s going. Gen asks leading questions. Althea answers. The Death card and the Tower both make appearances.
When Gen’s fingertips brush the Tower, she… changes.
I sit straight up, my blunt nails scraping my jeans, as the transformation occurs right in front of me. Gone are Gen’s posture and mannerisms, the way her hands move, replaced by… someone I don’t know.
But Mrs. Pinkerton does.
“Isabelle?” she asks, voice wavering, eyebrows drawn together.
Gen’s head comes up slowly, gaze rising from the cards to Mrs. Pinkerton’s suddenly pale face. “Mother?”
Holy shit.
It isn’t Gen’s voice. It’s several pitches too high to be hers. And the way she cocks her head to the side. Not Gen. Definitely not Gen. My chest constricts. I can’t breathe. Gooseflesh rises on my arms and neck. I want to grab and shake her until this stranger, this apparition, gives me back my girlfriend. I shift my grip to the armrest and the cushion. It’s everything I can do to remain on the couch.
“Bella, baby, is that you?” Althea reaches out with her fingertips, holding her hand mere inches from Gen’s arm, then thinks better of the action and drops her hand to her side.
Gen blinks, unfocused, her face a mask of confusion.
She’s told me that spirits get confused when they’re channeled. It disorients both the ghost and the medium. And sometimes they don’t realize they’re dead or understand why.
Gen’s expression clears, her focus sharpens, the ghost looking out through her eyes.
“I’m… I’m sorry, Mama. So sorry. I should have been more careful.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” She breaks down then, the grieving mother, tears coursing over her cheeks. “It was an accident. Not your fault. Nothing was your fault.”
To my utter shock, I feel wetness on my own face and swipe it away on the back of a sleeve.
They speak for a good half hour, this mother and daughter, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing over a shared memory. Althea eventually asks about a will, though she’s obviously hesitant to mention something so cold and material.
No, Bella didn’t have one, but she’d like half of her estate (twenty-eight-year-olds have estates?) to go to her parents and the other half to a charity for retired racing greyhounds, of all things.
I glance from one to the other. Gen’s a huge supporter of animal rescue groups. If this is a ploy on her part… but no. Bella’s mother nods vigorously, telling me that her daughter always felt so sorry for those poor mistreated racing dogs.
I feel terrible for even thinking Gen might use a desperate client to accomplish her own goals. No, Gen performs a much-needed service here. And she’s amazing at it.
Then, as quickly as she came, Bella goes. Three of the six candles blow out simultaneously, drawing a shriek from Althea and a gasp from me. Gen slumps where she sits, shakes herself, and stretches her arms high above her head like she’s awakened from a long nap.
“You okay?” I ask, rising and placing my palm on her shoulder.
She blinks up at me, dark circles under both eyes. What she does, it’s hard on her. I’ve seen the emotional aftereffects, but I never noticed the physical strain before.
“I’m fine,” she assures me, voice cracking a bit. “But I could use some water.”
While Mrs. Pinkerton thanks her over and over and they handle the payment, I go to the kitchen and stand at the sink, taking breath after shaky breath. I splash cool liquid in my face. My hands shake when I fill the glass. I have to wait several minutes until I can carry it without spilling.
When I return, Althea is telling Gen how much like her daughter I am.
I just watched my girlfriend channel a woman’s spirit. A couple of nights ago, I was sexually assaulted by my dead lover’s ghost. It’s been a really hard week. I’m not thinking clearly.
“Oh, so your daughter’s gay?” I ask.
“What? No!” Mrs. Pinkerton turns from Gen to me and back again, horror and shock warring for dominance on her face.
I close my eyes and sigh. So much for passing that test.
Chapter 20
To Hell and Back
EVERYTHING GOES pretty much downhill from there.
Gen, her stride stiff and controlled, her face rigid with the effort of not laughing in the presence of this woman who has lost her daughter, walks the sputtering Mrs. Pinkerton to the front hall. Once she shuts the door and Althea’s high heels clatter down the closest set of exterior cement stairs, Gen falls into me, a helpless victim of her own hysterics.
She can’t breathe, can’t speak, can’t even stand without my support, she laughs so hard. I should be mortified, but I chuckle with her, relieved she laughs rather than yells.
“You’re not mad?” I manage to sneak in during a lull in her mirth.
“Flynn, I swear, you’re going to be the death of me.”
The remaining candles go out.
Really, people should know better than to say things like that.
“Um, Gen?”
In my arms, she goes rigid. Her skin chills beneath my hands. The temperature drops by ten degrees or more. “We’re not alone,” she whispers, breaking away.
Kinda figured that one out on my own.
I track her by sound as she crosses the room, heading, I assume, for the heavy front curtains to open them and let in the streetlight from the road below. The zing the fabric makes as she yanks one curtain aside might be the most wonderful noise I’ve ever heard. A beam of light casts its path through the pitch-dark living room. I follow it to the corner nearest me.
Where Kat stands.
From the far side of the lake, I hadn’t noticed the way her clothing and hair clung to her, soaked through with water, but here, this close, I can see every gruesome detail. She still wears the tan slacks and fuzzy sweater, pale green, I think, though in the yellow light it’s hard to be certain of the color. I don’t want to take my eyes off her for a second, but curiosity has me following droplets when they leave her skin… and vanish before hitting the floor.
That explains why the bed hadn’t been wet from her previous… visit.
She takes a step toward me, feet squishing in her leather shoes. I’m not sure if it’s water or tears running down her face, but her depthless eyes hold an eternity of sorrow. I shiver.
“What is it you want?” Gen asks, arms folded across her chest. She’s pissed, and I’m impressed. Her voice never wavers, while I can’t even get my own mouth to open. Then again, she’s used to this sort of thing.
Up until this moment, I was sure Kat knew Gen was in the room. Kat’s head snaps to the side, her dead eyes fixing on my current girlfriend’s face. A look of rage replaces the hopelessness of a moment before. Sparks flash in her eye sockets. She moves fast, heading straight for where Gen stands.
Without thinking, I throw myself between them, blocking Kat’s apparition seconds before it intersects with Gen.
“Flynn, no!” Gen screams, grabbing my forearms at the moment of impact.
Kat’s spirit literally slams into—into—me.
My blood turns to ice. Pressure builds and builds from within, a thousand maggots crawling beneath my skin. Needle-covered maggots. With teeth. Chewing their way through flesh, muscles, bone, while I writhe and twist and struggle against their invasion.
“Let her go!”
It’s Gen, but I barely hear her over my own screaming. The sensation creeps, wriggles, and squirms to the outermost tips of my extremities, to the innermost centers of my heart and brain. And then my body is no longer my own.
The maggots force their way up my throat, moving my lips and tongue to produce one word—one word emerging from my mouth in Kat’s voice.
“Mine.”
Gen said a spirit like Kat can’t possess her. Kat isn’t strong enough to overcome Gen’s psychic defenses.
She didn’t say anything about Kat’s ability to possess me.
Chapter 21
Crosstown Blues
YOU WANT something done right, you have to do it yourself.
Max drove the shovel deep into the soft dirt at the far edge of his golf course property. No one around. Clubhouse closed at dusk. Nothing but rolling miniature hills, flags stuck in holes, sand and water traps, and the occasional deer or wild boar.
He swatted at a mosquito and tossed the shovelful over his shoulder. Sweat trickled down his chest and beaded on his brow.
The body lay wrapped in garbage bags at his side.
Dumping Amanda in a water trap would have been easier on his sore back, but he’d had enough of water. No one would find her here.
He’d wait at least a week before reporting her missing. No one would know the difference. She rarely left the house. He allowed her few friends, all of them older, heavier, uglier.
Then it would be—he came home from work. No sign of her at the house. No idea where she’d gone. Car still in the garage. Nothing disturbed. No forced entry.
Some of the neighbors would suspect a crime had been committed, but not by him. Not by the man who gave to charity and helped build playhouses for needy kids. The man whose first wife had tragically died in a horrible car accident to which he could not (had better not) ever be connected. Other neighbors might think Amanda left him, and he’d have to live with that embarrassment. But it beat the inevitable alternative—that she planned to leave him sometime in the near future for yet another fucking dyke.
Swimsuit magazines, fashion magazines, long hours in front of the TV watching Dancing With the Stars, all those girls in skimpy costumes. Amanda loved figure skating. Every winter. Every broadcast. Especially the female soloists.
She said she used to skate when she lived up north, said she competed in college.
Bullshit. Max knew the truth.
She liked watching them, those women.
He kicked at the black-plastic-covered body at his feet. “Not watching them now, are you, bitch.”
His athletic shoe dislodged the bag, revealing half of Amanda’s face—pale skin, wide, terrified eye, mouth agape. He’d caught her by surprise, his hands going to her neck as she sat in her favorite chair. A few soft, kneading strokes, the pretense to a massage and more, then a quick grab and a twist to the right, a wet pop. Done.
No screaming. No blood. Simple. Should have gone about it that way the first time around.
When the hole became deep enough to discourage curious scavengers, Max dumped the body, bags and all, into the opening and filled it in.
Now to fetch the seven boxes of petunias he’d purchased. Purple ones, pink ones. Amanda loved petunias, and he intended to plant a row along the property line, right across her grave.
In case anyone wondered at the disturbed dirt, the recently used shovel, the muddy shoes.
Everyone loved petunias.
Chapter 22
Inner Strength
“MINE,” KAT says again with my voice.
My voice. Mine.
“She was never yours. You let her go. You threw her away,” Gen says, hands still wrapped around my forearms. I think the contact hurts her. Her mouth twists in a pained grimace. “Hang on, Flynn.”
Gen does… something. Jolts like tiny electric shocks prickle my skin where she touches me. The maggots retreat from the new and almost-as-unpleasant sensation, squirming down to my fingertips and disappearing in little sparkles of light that drop from my hands, winking out before reaching the floor. But Gen’s tired from the earlier channeling. The process is slow, too slow, and the pain is too great. I’m suffocating, my lungs constricting as if Kat has forgotten to make my respiratory system function. I’m no longer certain my heart is beating.
But my nerves and brain work fine. I’m aware of every moment of torture, though my vision swims a bit from lack of oxygen.
And something in Gen’s touch changes. For a half second, her eyes roll back into her head. Then she blinks and her focus narrows, her irises going almost black, like the darkest forest.
Holy mother of God.
“What do you want?” Gen asks.
Who gives a fuck? I know what I want. I want this thing out of me. And I want Gen to stop doing whatever the hell she’s doing. Even if it works, even if she helps me, it feels… wrong.
