Vans and SUVs bearing the logos of various news stations crowded the curb in front of the Oracle Inn. Camera crews stalked up and down the sidewalk, thrusting microphones into the faces of passing residents. One of those faces was familiar, framed by long curls and dominated by rosy cheeks. Stephen Hastain was gesturing wildly and grappling with a reporter for control of their mic.
“Oh, boy,” I muttered, parking Baxter against the curb and clambering out of the small car with less grace than I’d have liked.
“He was the fraud!” Stephen shouted at the reporter as he swayed on his feet. “Are you going to report on the lives he ruined? Well? Are you?”
“Sir, let go of that!” The reporter wrenched the microphone from Stephen’s grasp, then he ran his fingers through his hair and straightened his tie.
The cameraman swung the lens in my direction as I jogged up to them. I blocked my face from view with the palm of my hand, feeling a teensy bit like a celebrity trying to get some privacy in Hollywood, and turned my back on the reporter.
“Mac?” Stephen squinted at me, blocking the morning sunlight with one uplifted hand. “What are you doing here?”
I wasn’t stupid enough to admit I’d come here to contact Raziel’s spirit in front of a rolling camera. Wishing Graham was here to ferry his friend home, then remembering Graham had already done that for Kit two days before, I realized I couldn’t just leave Stephen here to fend for himself against the media. I put my arm around him and steered him away from the news crew. “I’m taking you home.”
The reporter’s voice followed us up the sidewalk. “As you can see, these events have shaken members of the local psychic community and left a deep divide—”
I supported Stephen as he staggered toward the car. Praying he wouldn’t do anything that would make Graham suspend my Baxter-borrowing privileges, I buckled the rune caster into the passenger seat. Stephen rested his cheek on the open window frame, letting the breeze lift his curls as we cruised to The Enclave.
I parked Baxter in front of an enormous building housing a wood furniture manufacturer, and we made our way down the cobblestone path. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the top of the tall warehouse to the east, which cast the two rows of houses in a cold shadow. Without the strings of twinkling lights from the cocktail party, the little neighborhood felt a little less magical, but quirky charm still radiated from the stoop of each brightly painted building and every old-fashioned gas lamp.
We passed Daphne’s shop, Visions, where she read tarot. Another sign hung from the second-story window advertising massage and reiki sessions, and something called “furrapy.” Small CLOSED signs sat in the front windows on both floors; none of the businesses here were open yet, though the curtain in the massage parlor’s window twitched as we passed. Clairvoyance appeared to be a strictly nocturnal activity.
Stephen led us to his pink building where he threw runes under the banner of Ancient Answers. He rattled the doorknob and swore under his breath.
“No keys?” I guessed.
He didn’t answer. He gave the building a little kick and hopped off the stoop, stumbling on the landing. Then he banged on the door of the lime-green building beside his. “Fang!” he shouted. “I’m locked out!”
After a few minutes of banging and shouting, the door opened and a sleepy, black-haired kid poked his head out. I recognized him from the cocktail party; he’d pulled Nick and Daphne away because of some neighborhood drama. The boy, who looked too young to even be out of high school, ducked back inside for a moment before returning to the door and dropping a key in Stephen’s hand. Stephen blew him a kiss and came back to his own porch to open the door.
“Bless that boy,” he muttered as the deadbolt clicked back and the door swung open.
“He had a key to your building?”
“I’ve got one to his too, and about half the other shops here. This place is like a dormitory. Everyone’s in each other’s business, coming and going”—he jerked his thumb toward the windows above Daphne’s shop, where the curtains twitched again—“and spying. It gets on your nerves, and quick, but it’s downright useful having a couple spare keys floating about.”
Inside, a small square vestibule presented us with two options. The glass door to our right was etched with the same logo as the window out front. Stephen ignored that one, unlocking the solid wooden door in front of us that guarded the staircase up to his apartment.
Short ceilinged and uncomfortably narrow, Stephen’s space on the second floor felt even tinier than my studio apartment at Primrose House. But his kitchen boasted more built-in appliances than mine, and he had enough room for an overstuffed couch and flat-screen TV. Dim light from the shadowed street glowed through the edges of the black curtains that hung from the window in front of his dining set. I pulled them open, and he winced.
“Come on, Mac.” He yanked them closed again. “Have a heart.”
I got to work scooping grounds into his coffee maker while he cleared a pile of mail and paperbacks from the black-clothed table. Within a few minutes, he was scowling down at the mug in his hands and picking at a sleeve of saltines I’d found on the counter.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
He stuffed a few crackers into his mouth and chewed them for a long time, finally swallowing and mumbling, “I’ll be fine.”
I let him eat and drink in silence for a few minutes and studied the tablecloth. A silver circle about the circumference of a dinner plate was embroidered in the center, and four silver lines divided the circle into equal quarters. The pattern was familiar, and I thought I might have seen it on one of Graham’s sculptures.
After Stephen finished the crackers, he ran his fingers through his long, unwashed hair and rubbed his eyes. The bags beneath them had me wondering if he’d gotten an early start on the booze today or if he just hadn’t stopped since last night.
After his second cup of coffee, the alarming crimson flush he’d been sporting at the inn had faded back down to his normal level of floridity, and I felt he could handle another inquiry.
“What was that back there?”
He shook his head. “God, I was really off the rails, wasn’t I? How embarrassing.”
“It’s okay. I mean, who hasn’t gotten drunk and tried to steal a reporter’s microphone?”
“I’m not drunk,” he protested. “Just tired. I was up all night listening to tourists sing Raziel’s praises. You know how they’re talking about that bastard? You’d think he saved a bunch of kittens from a fire.” He crunched angrily into another cracker. “After I closed up shop, I got on the news sites to read what the press is saying. They’re worse than the tourists, but worst of all are the comments. All these sheep, bleating about how Raziel was some kind of saint.”
I’d learned the hard way that internet comments sections were dangerous places. After my first episode of Soul Searchers aired, ScreamTV viewers had seemed to care more about my physical appearance than about the ghostly figure that’d appeared next to me on a library bench.
“Do you know if he posted the video?” Stephen asked.
“Which video?”
“The one from the cabin.” Stephen flashed me a wicked grin. “Where you almost punched his lights out.”
“I haven’t seen it anywhere,” I said. “Hopefully it stays that way.”
“I’ll drink to that.” He gulped down the rest of his coffee and got up to refill his mug. He’d stopped swaying, and for the first time since he’d gotten into Graham’s car, I felt confident he wasn’t about to throw up on me. “God, that guy. He had it out for everyone.”
“Did he ever accuse you of anything?” I asked. “Like with Nick?”
He plopped back down into the chair across from me. “No, but my profile is a lot lower. I don’t think I even registered on that prick’s radar.”
“What would you have done if he had?”
“I dunno. Changed my name and kept going, or maybe thrown in the towel and retired to Corpu
s Christi. Who knows?”
“You wouldn’t have fought back?” I persisted. “Tried to prove him wrong?”
“How can you prove something like that? Plus, here’s the irony. Nick is a fraud. No question about it, and I’ve known it for a long time. But he’s huge. His following is massive, and they’ve got too much invested at this point. Imagine you’re at one of his readings, and you think you’d spoken to your dead wife or something, and in some weird way that brings you peace. Then you hear a rumor Nick was just a con artist. Pride alone would keep you from believing you got fooled.”
“So Raziel outing him wouldn’t have hurt his business?”
“Maybe he wouldn’t see many new customers. But he’s been around long enough to keep going. He’d probably stop selling out the huge venues he’s been doing, but he’d bring in enough cash to keep himself up.”
I chewed the corner of my thumbnail. Just one week before, I’d assumed everyone in town had gifts as genuine as my own, but the truth was becoming clearer by the hour. Raziel had known before coming here that not everyone was on the up and up. He hated psychics—he’d made that clear—so why had he accepted Yuri and Penelope’s invitation to come to a place like Donn’s Hill?
The answer leapt into my head the moment the question finished forming. He’d come here looking for his next Midnight Lantern, somebody new to debunk. Had Nick been his primary target?
Had I?
That answer wasn’t as obvious. Raziel hadn’t secretly recorded Nick performing a séance. He’d reserved that distinction for me. Nick had been a pawn, someone Raziel could knock out of the way so he could weasel his way into the cabin that night. But I wasn’t a tenth as famous as Nick or half as well-known as any of the intuitives that had regular clients at the festival. I wasn’t even as established as anyone who rented space in The Enclave. And Amari had said there’d been a “myriad” of reasons they’d decided to film here, so it couldn’t be just me.
If Raziel hadn’t been killed, I’d probably have gotten skewered on his new show. My career as a psychic would’ve been over before it began. I glared down at the black tablecloth, realizing my career could already be over. If I went to prison for Raziel’s murder, my entire life would be over.
Something tugged in my gut. Alive, Raziel had been a threat to someone, just like he’d been a threat to me. Was that reason enough to kill him?
For someone, it may have been. And if I could figure out who they were, I’d be able to clear my name.
“Do you think any of the psychics here are genuine?” I asked my host.
Stephen frowned, and he pulled back the curtain, letting in the gray light from outside. From this vantage point, all the houses on the opposite side of the narrow street were visible. He looked up and down the row of buildings and eventually shrugged. “At least half.”
Half? That was it?
Seeing the look of dismay on my face, he said, “You’re a good kid, Mac. Keep your optimism. Don’t let the odds get you down. Focus on the folks who are here for the right reasons.”
“How can you know who they are?”
He shrugged. “You can’t.”
“There has to be some way,” I pressed. “How did Raziel know about Nick?”
“Well, that’s sort of the paradox. You can’t know for sure if someone is telling the truth. But Nick got big enough and sloppy enough that he proved he was lying.” Stephen cocked his head to one side and considered me. “I know that’s not what you were hoping to hear.”
“I just want…” I stopped myself before admitting I was a murder suspect. “I just need to know who I can trust.”
“Trust your gut.”
“I don’t know how.” I winced at the petulant whine in my voice.
Stephen inhaled deeply and closed his eyes for a few moments. Then, he rapped his knuckles on the table. “Okay. Let’s start easy here. Do you think I’m a fraud?”
I opened my mouth to say no, but he held up a hand to stop me.
“Don’t give me the polite answer. Really think about it. Weigh the evidence. Listen to your instincts.”
When I hesitated, he said, “You won’t offend me.”
“It’s just… I’ve never seen you work. I don’t really have anything to go on.”
“Fair enough. But here’s the thing: I’ve seen you work. I was at the cabin for that séance. I’ve watched every episode of your show. I’m sitting across from you right now, and I still wouldn’t stake my life on you being the real deal.”
His words stung like a slap in the face. He’d been in the room when I’d made contact with that spirit at the cabin, and he still didn’t believe in me? I’d expected to face skeptics, just not from within my own community.
“Why did you come with us to the cabin then?” I tried to ask it in a normal voice, but it came out in a childish half-whisper.
He reached out and squeezed my hand. “Hey, you’re taking this all the wrong way. I believe you are what you say you are, Mac.”
That made me feel an ounce better, though in the back of my mind, I wondered how much the free publicity from our show played into his decision to be part of the cleansing.
“I’m just saying we can never really know,” he went on. “I think it’s healthy for everyone to have a little skepticism, and it’s even more important for people like us. Understand?”
I didn’t, and the confusion had to be plain on my face.
He sighed and stood up. “I see you’re the type who has to learn by doing. Wait here.”
He retrieved something from a table by the door. It was about the size of a box of donuts but made of dark, sweet smelling wood.
“Brazilian rosewood,” he explained when I sniffed the air. “People find it soothing.”
From inside the box, he pulled out four black velvet bags, each cinched closed with a different colored string: red, green, blue, and yellow. He lined them up on the table in front of me.
“Any of those speaking to you?” he asked.
I glanced down at the bags and back at Stephen, doubting his earlier claim that he wasn’t drunk.
“Just pick up whichever one you feel like picking up,” he urged.
Feeling foolish, I considered the bags. They were just bags; I didn’t even know what was inside. How could any of them “speak” to me?
But the expectant expression on Stephen’s face made me reach out a hand. I almost grabbed the bag with the red string, but felt a sudden warmth from the one with the yellow tie as my hand passed it. I picked up that one instead and handed it to Stephen, whose face broke out into a grin.
“All right,” he said. “I believe you a bit more now. Not enough to stake my life on it, but you’ve definitely got a touch of something.”
He set the yellow-stringed bag aside and dumped out the red one I’d almost chosen. Dozens of small, rectangular pieces of wood piled onto the table. The cedar had been lacquered, so the runes shone in the light from the window, and each one bore a different symbol.
“Do they have to be wood?” I asked.
“No, that’s all just personal preference. Some people like to cast with wood. Some like crystal. Some people think the only thing that matters is that you made the runes yourself.”
“Did you make these?”
“Yep. Go ahead, touch them. It won’t hurt anything.”
I picked up a rune and ran my thumb over the smooth surface. The symbols looked old and sharp. I couldn’t see any curved lines in the pile; the shapes were all composed of straight lines, and some almost looked like letters.
“These are Elder Futhark runes,” he explained. “I made this set myself when I was first starting out. I wanted to burn the runes into the wood while meditating on their meanings.”
“Do you have to make your own for them to be effective?”
“Nope.”
He gently pushed the cedar rectangles aside and grabbed the bag with the green string. When he tossed it onto the table, a random assortment of objects fle
w out: an old soda can top, a seashell, the thimble piece from a Monopoly game, a St. Christopher’s medal, and a gold wedding ring. I raised an eyebrow at Stephen, and he laughed.
“This is my favorite bag. You should see the looks on people’s faces when I cast these during a reading. But the funny thing is: it’s usually my most accurate set.”
“What are they?” I poked at the St. Christopher’s medal. I’d worn one in elementary school and didn’t see how a Christian symbol factored into an occult practice.
“Curios. Little things that mean something to me. It’s like letting life design your runes for you. When I find something that feels right, I add it to the set. Maybe a curio replaces another object or maybe the set grows.” He pointed to the pile. “The medal was a gift from my mother before I left Ireland. To me, it signifies travel or movement. I found that seashell on a cruise right before I got awful food poisoning, so it’s an omen of bad tidings.”
“And this?” I held up the wedding ring.
A wicked grin spread over his face. “That’s a fairly recent addition. My wife left me last year. As soon as we finalized the divorce, I won a mint in the state lotto. She didn’t get a dime, and I got enough to move here and be a full-time weirdo.”
“So, does it mean ‘luck’?”
“Almost. It means change. If it’s far away from that seashell, it usually means the change will lead to a favorable outcome. Thing about runes is, the symbols don’t really matter. As long as the caster knows what they mean, anyway. You could have a set of popsicle sticks with emojis painted on them, and as long as you’ve got a connection to them, you can get a good reading.”
He gathered his curios into a pile and put them beside the wooden runes.
“This next set,” he explained while opening the blue-stringed bag, “is the one that got me into all this stuff. They’re why I call myself a ‘caster.’ Did you know that some people call reading runes ‘casting the bones’?”
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