Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest

by Christine Pope

  “Hmm.”

  I could tell Alex was both angry and disappointed. I hated it when a client went away from a session feeling he hadn’t learned anything or gained new insight, so I knew I had to keep trying, even though I really didn’t know exactly how I could help him. “What led you to believe your girlfriend was possessed? Has her behavior changed?”

  “Yeah — I suppose.”

  “How?”

  “She’s just sort of distant, I guess.”

  Oh, well, that’s an indicator of alien possession, no doubt about it, I thought wryly, but again I stepped on my tongue and assumed what I hoped was an expression of concerned interest. “Anything else?”

  “She started reading Variety.”

  I suppressed the urge to burst into laughter. If reading Variety was a sign that space aliens had taken over your body, then about two-thirds of Los Angeles had to be possessed. “I take it that’s not something she was in the habit of doing?” I inquired. Somehow I managed to maintain a neutral tone.

  “No. I mean, she wants to be an actress, but I don’t remember her ever reading much of anything before. Now she’s got Variety all over the place — she got an actual physical subscription — and is always on the Hollywood Reporter site, along with a few others I can’t remember now. TMZ, maybe.” He clenched his hands on top of his knees and added, “She never used to read anything except some online gossip sites. And she keeps making comments about how ‘I wouldn’t understand’ if I try to ask her questions about the stuff she’s reading. Which is kind of ironic, since she used to miss at least four out of five of those ‘are you smarter than a fifth-grader?’ questions.”

  While this all did sound a little unusual, it wouldn’t be the first time someone woke up and decided they needed to be more proactive about their career. I couldn’t exactly figure out how Alex had made the jump from a simple attempt on his girlfriend’s part to improve her marketability to concluding the brain in question had been possessed by aliens. Maybe that was easier to handle psychologically than realizing your significant other was about to leave you behind in the dust.

  “When did you first notice the change in her behavior?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how this particular piece of information was actually going to help me, but I thought I might as well try to go about this interview in an orderly fashion.

  “Right after she got back from a trip to the tanning salon,” Alex replied promptly.

  That response came from so far out in left field, I could feel my eyes widen for a second before I forced a noncommittal expression on my face. “Excuse me?”

  “She went to one of those places where they spray them on. She claimed being pale made her look flabby.” He scowled and added, “I told her that spray tans were stupid and that they just made people look orange, but she didn’t want to listen to me. She said it looked perfectly natural and I didn’t know what I was talking about, and she wasn’t going to lie out in the sun and get wrinkly. Like she needs to worry about that.”

  Maybe not now, I reflected, but in fifteen years…. Although my mother was Greek, I hadn’t inherited her olive skin, unfortunately. No, I got my complexion from my Irish father, and so I tended to flash-fry the second I stepped outside. Not exactly the best survival trait for living in Southern California. I cleared my throat, “Actually, that’s just being smart. Sun damage is cumulative.”

  Alex made another off-hand gesture. “Whatever. So off she goes, and she comes back all orange — and I tell her so, and she just give me this flat stare and tells me I need to get my eyes looked at. She had a stack of newspapers and magazines with her, and she sat down and started to read them and barely talked to me for the next two hours. And she’s been like that ever since.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “About a week.” He frowned. “It’s getting pretty old, Ms. O’Brien. ’Cause not only is she barely talking to me, but she’s not — I mean, we haven’t — ”

  From the flush I saw under his tan — natural, I assumed, since he was definitely brownish and not orange — I guessed Alex was trying to say he and his girlfriend hadn’t been intimate. Well, I supposed if an alien had taken over a human’s body but wasn’t really into the more down-and-dirty aspects of being an Earthling, it might try to avoid the horizontal mambo for as long as possible.

  I didn’t really know what to say next. Obviously, something was going on between him and his girlfriend, but it sounded like the natural growing apart of a relationship, not anything extraterrestrial. I could tell him that, of course, even though I had an idea it probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Too bad I couldn’t talk to the girlfriend as well, but I figured my chances of getting her in to talk to me were approximately the same as my getting a hot date that night.

  In other words, about zero.

  If Otto had decided to drop in on this cozy little session, maybe I would have been able to come up with something a bit more useful. I wasn’t getting much from Alex, except the frustration and anger and worry that seemed to pour off him in waves. Not that reading his emotions really helped me that much — I’d gleaned just as much from talking to him. But I wasn’t getting any answers from the astral plane, and my Tarot deck had dummied up on me as well. I hated this feeling; it rarely happened, but on the few occasions when it did, I was always left feeling impotent and a little foolish after a session, as if I weren’t any better than the sham psychics who gathered all their tells from people’s behavior and speech patterns and who didn’t have any more psychic ability than a footstool.

  “Well,” I said after a pause, knowing what I needed to say and hating to have to say it, “I’m very sorry, Alex, but I’m not getting any clear vibrations from you regarding this situation. My advice would be for you to talk things over with your girlfriend.” I added, as I saw his jaw clench, “Of course there’s no fee for this reading.”

  “That’s it?” he demanded. “This is bullshit!”

  It wasn’t the first time a client had sworn at me, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “No, it would have been bullshit for me to feed you an easy line and take your money. I’m sorry, but sometimes even I draw a blank. This just happens to be one of those times.”

  “So what am I supposed to do now?”

  “I’m not a relationship counselor — I just relay what the spirit world tells me.” This wasn’t the strictest truth; I actually did have a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling, although once I’d gone to work as a psychic full-time, I’d quietly put away my diplomas and certificates. For whatever reason, people didn’t seem to like a psychic who was also a psychologist — it made them nervous, maybe because they didn’t know exactly how to regard me.

  “You think I’m nuts.”

  Well, that wasn’t how I would have put it, although I was starting to get the distinct impression that Alex Hathaway was just a wee bit unbalanced. It would have taken a few more sessions to get to the bottom of his current fixation, of course, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t come to me for psychological counseling — he’d just wanted outside confirmation that his girlfriend wasn’t, strictly speaking, his girlfriend anymore, and I wasn’t prepared to make that kind of determination.

  I said, “Of course I don’t, Alex. I believe something has gone wrong between you and your girlfriend — it’s just that I don’t feel confident enough to offer you any corroborating evidence.”

  “Great,” he said, looking as gloomy as someone as sunnily Southern Californian in appearance could. “Well…thanks for not charging me, I guess.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “I would be a fraud if I took your money when I couldn’t even give you a true reading.” I stood then, hoping he’d get the hint that the session was over.

  He hesitated, but after a few seconds, he got up out of his chair. I crossed to the door and opened it for him. As he passed me, his shoulder brushed against mine, and for a second, a shiver of fr
eezing cold ran down my spine. I’d experienced that sensation before…from clients who were about to leave this plane of existence, usually in unexpected and often nasty ways. I opened my mouth to warn him, but then again, I hadn’t received any visions of how he was going to die — if he were even going to die at all. Maybe I’d just been hit by a stray draft.

  Oh, yeah, a sub-zero draft when it’s eighty degrees outside, my brain mocked me, and by then it was too late — Alex Hathaway was out the door and gone.

  Somehow I knew I’d never see him again.

  About a half-hour after Alex had left the office, Otto finally decided to make an appearance. By then I was safely home, ensconced in my apartment with my feet up on an ottoman and a cup of mint tea on the table next to me. I’d considered pouring myself a glass of chardonnay instead, but decided it was probably better to avoid the whole concept of solitary drinking as long as I could. Maybe my neighbor Ginger would be back soon, and we could share a bottle while I tried to justify my self-medicating.

  Anyhow, I’d just picked up the remote for the TV and was about to turn it on when Otto wavered into existence a few feet away, floating three feet off the living room floor as he sat in a modified lotus position. He couldn’t manage a true lotus — his legs were too chunky for that.

  “Nice of you to drop in,” I remarked. “I could have used a little help earlier this afternoon.”

  He gave me a heavy-lidded half-smile. “The world of the spirit does not work on demand.”

  This statement might have sounded impressive — if I hadn’t heard the same thing about a hundred times before. “Well, unfortunately, I do. I drew a perfect blank. The client was annoyed, and I looked like an idiot.”

  The Mona Lisa smile never left Otto’s lips. “You are not here to be concerned with how others see you.”

  “Then boy, did I pick the wrong town to live in.” To hide my irritation, I picked up my tea and took a swallow. It tasted good. The chardonnay could wait. “So what, did you have an urgent pedicure appointment in the otherworld or something?”

  His mouth thinned a little. I knew he hated it when I made comments like that about the spirit world. It wasn’t respectful. Actually, I had a lot of respect for the alternate plane of existence we mortals thought of as the afterlife or heaven or nirvana, depending on our beliefs. If nothing else, knowing it was out there had given me a certain perspective on my day-to-day troubles. On the other hand, it didn’t make me feel much better about the wasteland otherwise known as my social life.

  “I am your guide,” Otto said, and now his tone was distinctly testy. “Not your errand boy.”

  “Too bad, because this guy today was a live one. Thought his girlfriend was possessed by an alien or something.”

  Usually Otto wasn’t above finding amusement in the foibles of mere mortals. Of course, he purported to be impartial, but I knew he also enjoyed a joke at our expense. I tended to forgive him this quirk, considering he’d been a eunuch in sixteenth-century Turkey and probably had a good deal of resentment toward mankind stored up. Now, however, he looked a little strained — which was my tipoff that what I’d just said had disturbed him.

  “Do you know something?” I asked suddenly. “Because if we actually are getting overrun by aliens or something, I’d sort of like to know about it.”

  “I cannot speak of matters that impact you personally.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What, am I next I line for alien possession or something?”

  A flash of irritation crossed his normally cherubic features. “Which part of ‘I cannot speak of matters that impact you personally’ did you not understand?”

  “Fine,” I said. It wasn’t the first time we’d had this sort of discussion. Otto was there to help facilitate my contact with the spirit world, but he was either unable or simply unwilling to tell me anything about my own future. Just as well — half the time I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. But when he threw out cryptic comments like that and refused to elaborate, I had a tendency to get a little pissy. “So was there a reason for you dropping in tonight…like maybe apologizing for going AWOL this afternoon?”

  His sparse eyebrows drew together, and for a second he looked distinctly transparent. Usually he appeared just as solid as any other human being — except you could walk right through him. Not that I recommended doing any such a thing. I did once, and got a lecture about showing respect for beings from other planes and how I wouldn’t appreciate it if he decided the shortest path between two points was right through me. At the time, I had thought his comparison was a little faulty. After all, I was corporeal, and he, well, wasn’t. But I’d also learned fairly early on that a disgruntled spirit guide was of no use to anyone, so I’d apologized and said it would never happen again. Ever since then, I’d noticed that Otto had an odd tendency to discorporate partway if something disturbed him. Maybe it was the spirit equivalent of blushing.

  So I knew now something was up, but I could also tell from the firm set of his chubby chin that if I pressed too hard, he’d just evaporate, and it might be several days before he deigned to speak to me again. I couldn’t have that — I depended on him too much for my readings. Sure, I could whip out the tarot deck and hope for the best, but Otto’s guidance tended to be a lot more reliable.

  “I wasn’t AWOL,” he said primly. “You’re not my only psychic, you know.”

  As a matter of fact, I did know that, and I had never been overly thrilled with the fact. To be fair, from what I could tell, his other…clients, for lack of a better term…seemed to be located in different time zones from mine, and since a spirit didn’t need to sleep, he could flit from one to the other of us without too many conflicts. But if one of his other psychics had a crisis in the dead hours of the night, it would of course impact my afternoon readings. It hadn’t happened too often, but it did add a certain element of uncertainty to my practice.

  So was it coincidence that he was called away the same day Alex Hathaway came to my office, or was there more going on here than met the eye?

  My personal experience told me there was almost always something more going on than the most logical explanation. Now, however, was probably not the time to confront Otto about his bouts of unreliability. If he wanted to tell me something, he would. If not, threats, cajoling, and bribes simply wouldn’t work. I’d found that out the hard way.

  “Well, I hope it was important,” I grumbled, and set my mug back down on the side table. After that, I picked up the remote and said, “Was there some reason you popped in? Because the latest season of The Santa Clarita Diet just dropped, and I feel like a binge.”

  He shook his head. “Really, Persephone. Why you waste your time with such petty diversions — ”

  “It relaxes me,” I retorted. “No one likes a stressed psychic.”

  “Hmph.” Otto crossed his arms. “As a matter of fact, I did have something I wanted to tell you.”

  “I’m waiting breathlessly.”

  His expression was as sour as a Turkish eunuch’s round face could manage “Just this — if Ginger asks you to go with her for drinks tonight, you should.”

  “Isn’t that crossing the line?” I inquired innocently. “What about all that palaver about not letting me know anything about my future?”

  “I’m not giving you any concrete facts — I’m just offering a piece of advice.”

  If a spirit guide offers you advice, it’s usually wise to take it. Never mind that I was tired and more than a little cranky, and the effort it would require to get myself presentable enough to face a bar or club didn’t seem worth the amount of time it would take. On the other hand, what else did I have to do? Netflix would still be waiting for me when I got home. Actually, it tended to be one of the few constants in my life.

  “All right,” I said, and tossed the remote onto the table, missing my mug by about an inch. “Any spiritual advice as to what I should wear?”

  Otto looked a little pained. “I hope one of
these days you’ll realize such things are immaterial.”

  Tell that to the producer of every makeover show ever made, I thought. But getting into an argument with Otto over my preoccupation with what he considered earthly frivolities would just be silly. So maybe I was the world’s most earthbound psychic. Sue me.

  “Maybe I will,” I replied, and pushed myself up out of my chair. “Until then, I’ve got some spackling to do.”

  I’d never been able to figure out how a being who had no actual lungs was capable of producing such prodigious sighs, but somehow Otto managed to do it. He dredged one up now, then said in sepulchral tones, “As you wish.” After that, he sort of melted away in his usual fashion, disappearing like mist evaporating in sunlight. Even now, after being visited by him for almost twenty years, I found the sight a little unnerving.

  Once he was gone, though, I had to turn my mind to more important matters. Although I knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d get a date out of tonight’s bar hopping, I was damned if I was going to hit the clubs without making an attempt at bringing my best game. After that, well, we’d just have to see. There had to be one guy in this town who wasn’t freaked out by the prospect of dating a psychic, right?

  Right.

  Chapter Two

  Ginger came sailing into the apartment building’s courtyard a little before six. Since I’d been lurking on my balcony, waiting for her to come home, I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

  She paused directly below the balcony, then removed her sunglasses. At that hour on an early March evening, they were mostly affectation, but then again, a lot about Ginger was for show. “You up for drinks tonight?” she asked.

  “Sure — I’m sort of getting cabin fever,” I replied.

  A frown barely etched itself into her brow. “Bad day?”