by Kate Aeon
“That’s all right,” she said. “You’re not the only person who ever reacted that way.” She even managed a smile, though she suspected it wasn’t a convincing one.
“I’d... really like to hear what you wanted to tell me about my daughter.” Wary eyes, nervous twitch of a smile, first two fingers and thumb of the right hand rubbing nervously against each other. Alan didn’t look like a man who’d ever asked a psychic anything. He didn’t look like he wanted his world to have dark corners or unexplained nooks. Phoebe felt for him — he’d probably spent a life lived in hard light without shadows, and now the shadows were there and they were moving.
“I’ll tell you what I can. There really isn’t much. She just told me I was supposed to come see you — and she gave me a quick image of who you were.”
“But you could hear her.”
“Oh, yes. Quite clearly.”
“And you could see her.”
“I could. I’ve never actually seen a gho— ...ah, an... apparition...” She fumbled to a stop. There was no socially acceptable way to refer to the spirit of someone’s dead child, was there? Nothing gentle, nothing soothing, nothing vague and kind. If there was, Phoebe couldn’t find it. “I’m not a spiritualist or anything like that. I... I read cards. Tarot cards. Sometimes I get impressions. Usually of the person I’m reading, sometimes of someone important to them. Voices, pictures. But not physical manifestations. It’s an inexact thing, usually.” She looked away, past the palms and the bougainvillea and the long spikes of the bird-of-paradise plants lining the privacy fences. The little girl’s visit hadn’t been fuzzy or vague at three in the morning. Phoebe, feeling again the chill in the room, shivered in the Florida heat, and Alan gave her an odd, searching look.
“But, yes — I saw her.”
“I saw her yesterday, too,” Alan told her. “In my office. It scared the shit out of me, and it was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.”
She caught the shaking in Alan’s voice, the fear and confusion and disbelief — and the trembling hope — that lay just beneath the surface of the man standing before her, and the sound of it almost broke her heart.
Phoebe knew the sounds of loss. She heard those same sounds more often than she could bear in the voices of the men and women calling her in the dark hours, asking without words for some proof of a world beyond the stark, harsh reality of their lives. They were searching for immortality at $3.99 a minute, looking for the face of God in the fall of painted cardboard circles and rectangles, listening for magic and compassion in the voice of a stranger. They wanted a touch of grace. They wanted hope. They had a thousand different questions, but at base, those questions were all the same: Is there more than this? Am I more than this?
And sometimes Phoebe could reach beyond painted cardboard; sometimes she could transcend telephone lines and the carnival Psychic Sisters schlock and her own tired desperation and worn-at-the-elbows despair and find for those waiting, broken strangers a single small flash of magic. A candle’s worth of light from somewhere neither she nor they had ever been. Sometimes she could give them a whiff of something outside of their workaday lives that would let them hang on. Let them believe.
Sometimes she could find hope for them.
And when she found it, when she connected with something real and true for them and heard the wonder in their voices — across a hundred miles of wire or across two thousand — sometimes for a moment she could catch a little of that wonder for herself. Sometimes the light shone for her, too, and she could believe that she was more than her despair, her shame and fear and loss and pain.
Sometimes.
Phoebe looked back at Alan, stared deep into his eyes, and the chill inside her deepened.
It was the same question once more: Is there more than this? Is my daughter still out there somewhere, not lost forever but simply somewhere else?
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
They stood on the walk in front of her door, with the never-ending heat cooking both of them. Yet the cold lay bone-deep in Phoebe as Alan told her about sitting in his office and having a window to another place and time open beside him. He could easily enough be a madman, a kind man shattered by his life and fallen off the edge of reason. It would have been easy for her if he were. But he finished by saying, “Then I took a step away from the window and almost everything disappeared,” and against her will and against her wishes, Phoebe believed him.
“Almost?” she asked, shivering, with the oppressive Florida sun too weak to melt away the cold inside her and burn through her fear. No sun, she thought, could burn hot enough for that.
Phoebe’s dread sprang from a simple enough equation: If Alan’s daughter could step beyond death into her father’s life, then Phoebe’s murderous, comatose ex-husband could step beyond whatever ties bound him to flesh and bone to reach into her world. The possibility of one meant the possibility of both.
Hope for Alan meant deeper terror for Phoebe.
She wanted to run. To hide. But where would she hide from a man who could reach from a place as near to death as any living human could dwell to find her?
Alan said, “For a few minutes after... she disappeared... the carpet was still wet where the rain blew in through the window. It soaked into the knees of my pants before it was gone, too.”
And all Phoebe could think was, Oh, my God.
She said, “Where’s your office?”
“In my townhouse. Upstairs.”
Phoebe blew out a short breath, feeling the pain in her knee from just standing still with her weight half on it. “Of course it is. How did I know?”
“Because you’re psychic?” Alan’s faint smile suggested that this was intended as a joke.
Phoebe laughed politely. She’d heard that one before. “No. Because Murphy’s Law has a corollary that says if you have a blown knee, everything you desperately need to reach will be at the top of stairs.”
“You need to see the office?” Alan shook his head. “It wouldn’t be worth your effort now. The carpet is dry. There’s nothing left.”
But Phoebe gestured that Alan should wait for her; she walked to her front door, unlocked and opened it, tossed her few purchases on the couch — she’d gotten nothing that would be destroyed by a few hours outside of the fridge — and scooped her Universal Waite and her Motherpeace deck from her work space on the table. She rejoined Alan on her front stoop and closed the door again, stopping to lock all three deadbolts. “Not a waste of time,” she told him. “The room might hold some sort of residue of what happened there. Maybe I can read it for you and give you something useful.”
Alan nodded, though his arms crossed over his chest and his lips pressed together in a small, tight line. “How much do you charge for this, by the way?” he asked, and the question, and the faint tone of suspicion that underlay it, lit quick-burning rage inside her that she had to fight to quench.
Chin lifted, jaw tight, she said, “I don’t.”
“Oh.” Alan had the conscience to look embarrassed.
As they walked the few steps to his front door, she regained control of her temper and told him, “I’m not an expert on spiritualist things. I’ve read on the subject, but it isn’t my area. The event you describe — where your daughter actually created a physical contact from you to her into this whole other realm — sounds like the spirit-world equivalent of jogging to the top of Mount Everest. If it happened, that amount of energy should leave traces even I could pick up. Reading physical manifestations is not my talent. I read cards. Still, there had to have been a huge reason for your daughter to make that degree of contact. Maybe if I go up there, I’ll be able to figure out why she went to so much trouble. I’ll sit up there and throw some cards and see if I can draw out what’s going on for you.” She shrugged. “No sense in me not using what does work for me.”
“If it happened?” He glared at her.
As he unlocked the door to his home, she repeated, “If it happened. I
tend to believe you, but you must realize that there are other, much more logical explanations for what you describe. From my perspective, I have no way of knowing if you did drugs in your youth — or last night, for that matter. You might have fallen asleep at your desk and dreamed the whole thing. I’ve read that brain tumors can cause very complete, realistic hallucinations.”
“I don’t have a tumor,” he growled. “And how would any of those things explain what you saw and heard?”
“I might have a brain tumor, too,” she said evenly. “In which case we have the beginnings of a very nice class-action suit against the property management company. Have you seen how they spray around here?”
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t say anything at all.
Phoebe sighed. “I already told you that I tend to believe you. But I do think you need to consider all the possibilities.”
He shoved the door open. “I’m relieved that you tend to believe me. To reassure you, then — I never did drugs. I was wide awake — I’m quite certain of that. And my colleague Morrie asked me this morning if I wanted a CAT scan, and if necessary I can look into that later, but I haven’t had any other incidents of this sort, I don’t have headaches or sensory alterations, and I’m willing to take my chances on the brain tumor angle for just a bit.”
Phoebe did not permit herself to laugh out loud at his clear annoyance. He didn’t enjoy being doubted any more than she had, but she didn’t see any benefit in pointing out the parallels. She just said, “Why don’t we go upstairs and I’ll throw cards and see what I get.”
“You don’t think she’ll just come back?” Alan stood at the foot of the stairs, frowning. “She looked so real, and I thought if I could just get out to her before she left, I could be with her again. She didn’t look anything like a ghost. She wasn’t any older... she looked just the way she did the day I lost her. But I couldn’t see through her or anything. I should have climbed through the window while it was open.”
That last comment slithered down Phoebe’s spine, and she shook her head vehemently. “No. Definitely no. If any more of these windows open, don’t go through them. A window like the one you describe might just throw you out your second-story window to the ground below, which would be bad enough. But if it led to where your daughter is...” She faltered to a stop and shrugged up at him, palms wide. “Where is she, Alan? Wherever she is, it isn’t someplace where you belong right now.”
“I don’t care. If I could have my kid back, do you think I’d care where I had to be to get her?”
“I don’t suppose you would. But I doubt that she went to all this trouble to reach you just so that you could kill yourself. They’re usually trying to save the people they love, you know.” Phoebe stood beside him, eyes closed, listening and smelling. The too-dry stale scent of air-conditioned air, the drip-drip of a leak in the faucet in the downstairs bathroom; the hum of the fluorescent light over the washer and dryer behind their louvered doors in the kitchen; coffee and the faintest memory of sizzled steak.
No false scents — potpourri, carpet freshener, lemon cleaner. No off scents — spring or autumn, rainstorm or smoke from burning leaves. No off sounds — voices, bells, music.
She could feel nothing uncomfortable.
“You okay?” he asked her, and she opened her eyes to see him, very close and concerned, looking at her with eyes both beautiful and kind, and his clear concern shook her. She thought, No, I’m not all right I’m getting myself in trouble, and I already have enough of that. If I were smart, I’d turn my ass around and go home. But she smiled. “I’m fine. Just trying to get a feel for anything... supernatural. Hokey as I know that sounds.”
He smiled — a real smile this time. Like he was on her side. White teeth, slightly crooked. Crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He had a wonderful smile.
“Upstairs, then,” she said, and swallowed hard.
He started up the stairs at a jog, and she reminded herself that she was alone by choice and that she was never going to let a man into her life again and she tried hard not to notice his butt in the tight jeans.
I’m hopeless.
She followed him, stepping up with the good left leg, bringing the weak right one up second. She climbed stairs the way three-year-olds climbed stairs, and she hated it.
She had her head down, focusing on the next tread, grimacing from the pain. She expanded on objects of her hatred — she hated climbing stairs, but she also simply hated stairs. She hit the third one wrong, and her right knee twisted just a little, and in spite of her usual control, she hissed breathing in.
And Alan was right beside her.
“There’s no sense in this. You’re light. I’ll just carry you.”
He scooped her into his arms before she had a chance to protest, and he was careful of her knee, and he was strong and his hands were sure and she damned near stopped breathing. He started up the stairs holding her close, cradled against his chest
His right arm brushed against her right arm and their skin touched.
Phoebe closed her eyes, fought off her hunger for that touch. She’d taught science, for God’s sake. She knew that at the moment of contact between two people, the skin transmitted electrical signals and pheromones and other chemicals; she knew that the instant chemistry some people felt toward each other truly was chemistry — a compatibility of the chemicals their bodies were excreting. She knew. But knowing was not experiencing — and until that instant she’d never collided with chemistry.
Alan’s touch went straight to her brain. Her heart raced, her mouth went dry, her breasts tingled, and her skin ached for more.
“Oh, you don’t need to carry me,” she murmured. “I’ll get there.” But that protestation would have earned a big fat zero on a sincerity meter. For the first time in her life, a man was holding her in his arms like that, and she lost anything he might have said in response to the sheer wonder of his touch, and the feel of his arms around her, and the brush of his warm breath against her cheek. She couldn’t say that it had been a long time since a man had touched her like that. It had been a long time since a man had touched her — but until exactly that moment, she’d thought that was a good thing. Because in her entire life, a man had never touched her like that.
Her body hummed with an electricity she had never known before.
In her mind Phoebe ripped Alan’s clothes off of him, ran her hands over his warm skin, buried her face against his chest and...
Damn.
Thank God he wasn’t psychic.
Chapter Nine
Alan realized halfway up the stairs that he’d made a mistake. Phoebe smelled sweet — like new-mown hay and sunshine. She felt soft and solid and warm in his arms. The surprising weight of her hair spilled like a curling waterfall over his right arm, and she moved her head and his lips brushed her ear, and it took all his control not to pursue that fleeting touch. Her small, tight muscles would feel so good beneath the palm of his hand. Her full lips were designed to be kissed. She had curves that fit against him in a way that just meant sex.
She was saying something about how she could make it by herself — that he didn’t have to do this — but he couldn’t hear the words too well over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. His heart pounding in his throat made breathing so much of an effort that he didn’t dare speak. And his body was reacting to having her in his arms in ways he was pretty sure a psychic would notice — ways that, if he let her slide down another half inch while he was carrying her, she wouldn’t have to be psychic to notice.
And how the hell was he going to put her down without embarrassing himself?
Okay. He’d been neglecting his physical needs and desires — well, actually, until he ran over her on the sidewalk, he hadn’t been having any physical needs and desires, but five years plus change of being celibate were bound to take their toll. He could surely have done something to prevent what was going to become an awkward situation in just two more steps.
I should h
ave gone for the sympathy fuck on the X-ray table and made Morrie a little bit richer, he thought. Because then Phoebe wouldn’t end up looking at me like I was a pervert or a molester, and that’s where we’re going to go with this the second I put her down.
He reached the landing, winced a little at the discomfort of jeans that were suddenly far too tight, and leaned over a bit while putting her down, contrary to all principles of good body mechanics. But he didn’t betray his arousal, and the sudden sharp pain in his lower back gave him a much-needed distraction. He lunged past her to the door, hurried into the office, and switched on the light.
“In here,” he called, and by the time she made it into the room, he was sitting at his desk. Not smooth, but it worked. He wasn’t sure why he cared so much that she didn’t think he was some lecher who’d dragged her up the stairs just so he could grope her on the way up. But he did care. A lot.
She came through the archway, the limp not too pronounced, and glanced at him. Then she turned her attention to the window.
She moved toward it slowly, eyes half closed, with a sort of out-of-focus expression on her face, and she looked like a Botticelli angel in the sunlight that angled through the glass; she wore sparkling dust motes for a halo. And he thought, Yes. Simply, yes. To whatever place she might have in his future, his life, this room — yes.
She stopped a few feet away, her eyes went all the way shut, and he saw her shiver.
Suddenly the room felt cold to him. Not air-conditioner cold. Sweating-ice cold, like someone had poured water on him and shoved him into a meat freezer. He stood up, his other issues erased by the shocking temperature change, and by the fact that he could hear whispering all around him, though he couldn’t make out a word. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood up, and his testicles felt so tight they seemed to be trying to climb into his abdomen.
That’s one way to get breathing room in the blue jeans, he thought.
