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

by Christine Pope

  Well, that was something. Who knew I had such a talent for a life of crime? Maybe I’d gone into the wrong line of work. Psychic powers could probably be a big asset when robbing banks or running Ponzi schemes.

  “Good,” said Paul, with a sort of grim satisfaction. Then, “Persephone, why don’t you explain what brought you to see me?”

  I really didn’t want to, not with the way I could practically feel the irritation pouring off the stranger in waves. Funny how I could sense his emotions so easily, when Paul might as well have been a closed book. That was just how it worked — my abilities ebbed and flowed based on the vibrations of those around me, and Paul was one of those I tended to regard as a neutral energy, one that didn’t give off any discernible tells. Unlike this young man, whose name I suddenly knew was Jeff Makowski, and who I also knew ran his underground operations from a ramshackle Craftsman house in the Silverlake district.

  “I thought you already told him,” I protested.

  “Just the bare bones. Go on.”

  A strong pull of my iced tea to fortify me, and then I said, “Well, Jeff, I had a client come to see me yesterday” — he blinked when I said his name, but otherwise didn’t react — “And he told me his girlfriend was possessed by an alien….” From there I went into as complete a description of my encounter with Alex Hathaway as I could remember.

  When I got to the part where Alex said his girlfriend had changed after getting a spray tan, Jeff held up a hand to stop me. “A spray tan.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Jeff drummed his fingers on the tabletop and looked over at Paul. “Thoughts?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Could be something in the tanning spray. Easy way to get into our system, through the pores. The aliens could have infected the spray with a virus that allows them to infiltrate a human’s system — ”

  “You mean like the black oil?” I cut in. It had been a recurring plot device in The X-Files, a gooey substance the aliens used to infect people with some sort of mind- and body-altering virus.

  Both men’s heads swiveled toward me, staring as if I were the one who had suddenly sprouted antennae.

  “Hey,” I said, “you’re not the only ones who watched The X-Files, you know.”

  From Jeff I got a sense of extremely grudging respect, while Paul was still a blank — although he did give me an encouraging nod.

  “Okay,” Jeff said. “So we’ve got the possibility of the spray at a tanning salon being contaminated with an alien virus. Do you know which one?”

  “Which one what?”

  “Which tanning salon she went to.” The exasperation was back. He gave me a glance of narrow-eyed irritation, as he added, “Try to keep up.”

  I didn’t have time to count to ten, so instead I sipped my iced tea. That way, I wouldn’t risk throwing the cup at his head. “I’m afraid my session with Mr. Hathaway wasn’t that in-depth.”

  “I’ll see if I can look him up. You have an address?”

  “No. Since I didn’t charge him for the session, I didn’t get any more information than his name. I did get the impression that he was local, so I’m guessing the salon his girlfriend went to was also in the area.”

  “I’ll look him up, see if I can narrow it down.”

  He began tapping away again, and I lifted my eyebrows at Paul. He only shrugged, but something in the tilt of his head told me he expected me to show some patience. All right, I’d try to be patient, but if Mr. Makowski started slinging insults again, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Both Paul and I looked questioningly at him. He stopped typing and turned the laptop around so we could both see the screen.

  “That your guy?”

  I stared at the image, fighting the sick sensation that rose in my stomach. The face was slack and pale, bloodless. At first glance, you barely saw the black hole in his temple, or the ring of livid flesh that surrounded it.

  Now I understood why I had sensed that wave of cold when Alex’s shoulder brushed mine. I’d known something terrible was about to happen, but that could have meant a variety of things, from a fatal car crash to an IRS audit. And while I didn’t feel quite ready to acknowledge the connection between his visit with me and his subsequent murder, it was clear that he hadn’t lived more than a few hours after I had spoken with him.

  The omelette somersaulted in my gut, and I stood up from the table. I knew I had to get some fresh air or risk being sick right then and there. Without a word, I rushed for the door and then made my way out onto the terrace that ran alongside the west wall of the cafe. A cool breeze, tangy with ocean salt, washed over my face, and I took in deep gulps of air, willing the food to stay down, trying with all my might to keep that image of Alex Hathaway’s blank, dead face from my mind. I wasn’t very successful at the latter, although the nausea subsided after a few seconds.

  “Persephone.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Paul standing a few feet away.

  “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m — well, ‘fine’ isn’t exactly the right word, but I’ll manage. It was just — unexpected.”

  For a few seconds Paul didn’t say anything. He stepped toward me, then hesitated. “The police report says he was found this morning, but apparently he was killed yesterday in the late afternoon.”

  “I know.”

  A flicker of surprise moved over his features. “You saw the time of death?”

  “I didn’t have to.” I shifted so I faced him fully. There were a few people out on the terrace, but none of them were close enough to hear what we were saying. “I knew when he left my office that he didn’t have long to live.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Because I hoped I was wrong.” I shoved my icy fingers into my jacket pockets. “I’m not one hundred percent accurate. I make mistakes. Not often, but I do. And so when I felt the cold when I touched him, I tried to tell myself it was nothing.”

  “Couldn’t you have warned him?” There was no reproach in his voice that I could hear, only a desire to understand my actions.

  “I could have — and I doubt he would have believed me, considering I struck out pretty spectacularly during our session. Anyway, if I’ve learned anything, it’s when it’s your time, you go. This isn’t like giving advice on whether to go out on a second date or buy a certain stock. Death can’t be cheated.”

  Again he was silent. After a pause, he nodded. “All right. Are you ready to go back in?”

  “Sure, as long as Jeff doesn’t bring up any more show-and-tell. And just how did he get that photo, anyway? It had to have come from the LAPD’s servers.”

  “And I’m sure he’d like to know how you learned his name,” Paul replied, looking unruffled. “I suppose you both will just have to acknowledge that you have certain…talents…and leave it at that.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I followed him back inside the cafe and resumed my seat. To my surprise, Jeff seemed rather subdued. I’d been sure he’d mock me for my precipitous flight from the table, but maybe even he had his limits.

  “Right,” he said, as if I hadn’t interrupted the conversation at all. “I got the address, and it turns out there are four tanning salons within a quarter-mile radius of Alex Hathaway’s apartment. One called SunGold, another called Paradise Tanning, one named Golden Age, and a day spa called Lotus.”

  I must have let out a little sound of surprise, because both men shot questioning glances in my direction.

  “Er — I go to Lotus,” I explained, and then, as they sent disbelieving looks at my fish-belly-pale skin, “Not for tanning. I get my eyebrows done there.”

  “Eyebrows,” Jeff repeated, as his own lifted slightly.

  “Good eyebrows are very important,” I assured him, and he made a sound of disgust.

  “So you know the people there,” Paul cut in.

  “Yes. I’ve been going for the past two year
s.”

  “Good.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone, then slid it across the table toward me. “I think it’s time you made an emergency eyebrow appointment.”

  Chapter Six

  I stared at Paul for a few seconds, then blinked. “Um, what happened to not using your phone because they might be able to trace it back through one of my contacts?”

  “Would they have any way of knowing you’ve frequented this spa?”

  He actually had a point there. Information about my clients could be easily gleaned from the laptop back at my apartment, since I kept fairly extensive records for tax purposes. However, anything personal, whether pertaining to my dentist, my hairstylist, or Ula, the genius at Lotus who tended to my brows, stayed on my phone. So unless the feds — or whoever they were — had been tailing me for weeks, I was pretty certain they had no idea who did my hair, or my toes, or my teeth cleanings. And since we’d already tentatively established that no one had paid any attention to me until Alex Hathaway had showed up on my doorstep, I guessed I was in the clear on this one.

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “So I make an appointment…and then what?”

  “Get a sample of the spray tan fluid,” Jeff said immediately. “I have some people who can analyze what’s in it if we can lay our hands on some.”

  “And what if it’s not Lotus, but one of the other salons?”

  “Then we’ll try again,” Paul replied. “But it makes the most sense to start with a place that’s familiar to you and work our way from there.”

  That argument made some sense, but I still wasn’t thrilled about the situation. Somehow, things had seemed more distant, less real, when all I was doing was hiding out in a motel in Pomona and refraining from using my cell phone or going back to my apartment. But the image of Alex Hathaway’s dead face had brought it all back that this was real, that someone — or something — had raised the stakes pretty damn high. Also, I had a hard time believing that Badri, the stunning Persian woman who owned Lotus, had anything to do with alien plots and government cover-ups. However, I sort of guessed it wouldn’t be too hard to slip someone a topical Mickey. After all, Badri didn’t even handle the spray-tan side of the operation; her assistants did that.

  “All right,” I said. An idea had begun to form in my head, one I thought might just work. “I’ll give it a try.”

  Jeff melted away to his hideout in Silverlake with barely a goodbye. Not that I was too sad to see him go. He made sure to see Paul and me off, as if he didn’t want us to know what kind of car he was driving or which direction he would go once he reached the bottom of the hill. I refrained from mentioning that I already knew the number of his house and the name of the street where it was located. Things came to me that way sometimes, in flashes of blinding clarity. At other times, I needed the cards, or Otto.

  Otto, who was still conspicuously absent. Maybe he’d decided this one was a little too close to home and so was leaving me to fly solo. But if that were the case, then why had he sent me to see Paul in the first place? If I’d learned anything in my years of being a psychic, though, it was that some questions always remained unanswered. Only time would tell if Otto’s disappearance was one of them.

  Paul parked our rented Camry a few blocks away from Lotus, down a side street. He’d been silent on the drive over, except to ask for clarification on some of my directions. In the middle of the day, it wasn’t quite as difficult to navigate the streets between Griffith Park and West Hollywood, but it had still taken us almost a half-hour to go those few miles. We lucked out by having someone pull away from the curb just as we turned the corner, and he neatly maneuvered the car into the space the much bigger SUV had left behind.

  “So what exactly do you have planned?” he asked, just as I reached for the passenger-side door handle. As usual, he sounded calm and unruffled, but something in his expression seemed to indicate he might actually be a little worried about me going into the spa without any backup.

  “It’s a surprise,” I told him, and reached up to adjust my sunglasses with my free hand. “Trust me — I’m just going to work the L.A. angle.”

  His brows knotted as he apparently attempted to puzzle through that one. While he was occupied, I opened the car door and got out.

  The main reason I hadn’t wanted to tell him about my plan was that I didn’t want him, the double-doctorate with the overwhelming brain power, to start poking holes in it. As it was, I had just enough sheer nervous energy carrying me along to keep me going, down the sidewalk and out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, where I turned to the left and passed a few storefronts before entering Lotus’ reception area and waiting room.

  Everything there had been carefully designed to be soothing, from the warm cocoa color on the walls to the fountain with its floating lotus blossoms under a glass-block skylight in the far corner. I felt far from soothed, however, as I made my way past two glossy-looking women who were waiting on the buff-colored couches, and on to the reception desk. Hoping they wouldn’t realize I’d gotten my entire outfit off the clearance rack at Kohl’s, I removed my sunglasses and smiled down at Paz, the receptionist.

  “Persephone!” she exclaimed, widening eyes made even wider by perfectly applied false lashes and cat-eye liner. She glanced over at her computer screen, then typed a few commands and did a quick scroll-up, obviously looking up my account. “I thought you weren’t coming in until next Thursday.”

  “I wasn’t, but I’ve had something very important come up. Is Badri available?”

  “Let me check.” Paz picked up the phone and dialed what I guessed was the extension in Badri’s office. “Badri? I have Persephone O’Brien here, and she needs an immediate consult. Is it all — ” She broke off, and then nodded. “Of course.” After hanging up, she said, “She’ll be right out.”

  Almost as soon as Paz had finished speaking, Badri appeared. Her age was something she’d managed to conceal from everyone, including me, and could have been anything between thirty and fifty. There was something timeless about her elegant features, and she always wore classic clothing that seemed to transcend trends. In other words, she almost always made me feel like a complete schlump, and my bargain-rack attire wasn’t exactly helping at the moment. On the other hand, she seemed to find something fascinating about having a bona fide psychic as one of her clients and always went out of her way to be polite to me.

  “Persephone!” she exclaimed, and extended a pair of perfectly manicured hands. “What is it I can do for you today?”

  “I need some expert advice on a very important matter.” I hesitated, then looked quickly at the women in the waiting room and back at Badri.

  She got the message immediately. “To my office. Here we go.”

  So I followed her down the hallway, past the rooms where women were getting massages or body wraps or facials or any of the myriad services the spa offered to make us all better conform to current standards of beauty. Badri’s office was located at the end of the corridor, in a large room decorated in the same exquisite taste as the rest of the facility. Here, though, I saw personal touches in the form of framed Persian textiles on the walls, and sculptures that also must be Persian, though my knowledge of world art wasn’t all that extensive and I couldn’t be completely sure. She indicated that I sit down, and took her own seat behind a desk of warm mahogany.

  “So what is it?” she inquired, with what she probably thought was a surreptitious glance at my left hand. “Should I be offering congratulations?”

  I stared at her blankly for a moment, then managed a quick laugh. “Oh, no. Not that. I’ve, well — actually, I’ve been offered a reality show.”

  In any other town, such a pronouncement would most likely have been met with skepticism, if not downright derision. But here, where everyone could be a star if they had the right connections, it probably seemed completely plausible. After all, with the multitude of reality shows currently populating the all those rapidly multiplying cable ch
annels and streaming services, didn’t it make sense to have one that focused on an L.A. psychic?

  “But that is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “How very exciting for you!”

  “Yes, it is,” I replied. “However, the producers think — that is, they’d like me to be spruced up a little. You know, a little polish.”

  “Ah,” she said. Of course she was far too polite to say out loud that she agreed with them, but it didn’t take a psychic to know privately she concurred.

  “One of the things they mentioned was a spray tan,” I continued.

  “Oh, excellent. That would give you a nice, healthy glow.”

  “True,” I allowed. “I know I’m a little pasty for L.A. The problem is that I have sensitive skin. Really sensitive.”

  “Not to worry. We use the highest-grade formula, the best — ”

  “I’m sure you do. But I was wondering…would it be possible for me to get a sample of the tanner you use? I’d really like to take it to my dermatologist, have him test it for me. Just to be sure,” I added, as Badri started to open her mouth again, no doubt to protest that their tanning ingredients wouldn’t cause a reaction on even the most sensitive skin.

  “Well, it is most unusual — ”

  “I know. And normally I wouldn’t ask. But this is a big deal for me, and I really want to do what the producers want. I just don’t want to harm my skin.”

  “Of course,” she said, and smiled, although it looked a little stiff. “This I can do for you. If you can give me a moment?”

  “Sure,” I replied, and waited as she got up from her desk and went out the door. I let out a sigh of relief. Crazy as it had seemed when I first cooked it up, it looked as if my plan might just work after all.

  Of course, we could be on the wrong track, and Alex Hathaway’s alien-infected girlfriend could have gone to a completely different salon. But, as Paul had said, we had to start somewhere, and I could probably use this ploy at the other places if necessary. And if my life ever got back to normal, and I did return here to get my brows done, I could always say the deal had fallen through. I worked with enough entertainment industry types to know that sort of thing happened all the time.