by Dale Mayer
Jericho stared at Tavika with new respect. “And is she still going to be able to do that after all this?”
Stefan spun to stare at him, his eyebrows raised almost to his hairline. I hope so. We need her skills. We need what she can offer those of us who work in this field. Not only that, she needs us. She’s been alone for a long time. That’s why all these people. She’s collected bits and pieces of everybody she’s ever touched, so as to not be alone. But because they’re all in different layers, different levels, different forms of existence, from ghost to spirit entities to some of us able to cross the divides, she’s essentially still alone. Stefan’s smile flashed his way.
“No.” Jericho gave a hard shake of his head. “She is no longer alone. She has me.”
He didn’t know where that came from, but it felt right. If nothing else he’d stand by her side and be a friend. That there was going to be more between them he knew full well, but he didn’t know how far or deep the relationship would go. One thing he did know, she didn’t have to walk alone anymore.
*
He sat back in his big, comfy recliner and let out a big sigh. Things were calm. Almost too calm. No one had been around for a while. Days it seemed. He knew the cops were working the crimes in the background.
He’d planned for that.
Yet he hadn’t expected the unnerving sensation of waiting. He’d committed many murders but not as many or as fast as now.
He wanted to pick up and continue but found his normal self-confidence shaken.
He didn’t like it. He’d never come close to getting caught. And of course, he wasn’t now either. But he had to remain calm and appear to be in control. That was the thing about love – he loved but was also loved by others. And sometimes their form of love was stifling as they watched and hovered over him.
He couldn’t let them know.
There was no unraveling here. He couldn’t afford to let it.
Chapter 27
How was it possible to have all these feelings washing through the center of her in broken snippets? She was buffeted from side to side as they shook the foundation of her being, yet the details were obscure. She recognized voices, places, names, faces. Cases, acquaintances, childhood friends. But so much of this had been lost to time. She didn’t understand why all this was familiar but at the same time didn’t come from that one particular place of her life she knew was so very damaging.
We’ll get there, Dr. Maddy said, her voice soothing. You’re doing great. Just keep letting this go. There are time bombs ready to go off, so I’m opening a hole in that block to reduce the pressure, letting the emotions flow. Releasing these can have the effect of them being new again. Raw. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid but it’s almost impossible. I’m doing my best though. Let’s just let the river flow.
I don’t want to look at the memories of that time, Tavika said abruptly then paused as she realized she was communicating in her mind with Dr. Maddy. In such a way that was natural, normal.
Dr. Maddy smiled. Of course you don’t. And if I wasn’t here right now and if Jericho hadn’t done what he’d done and if you hadn’t been doing whatever it was you were doing at the time then that would be an option. We wouldn’t be looking at any of this, but at some point in time in the near future you’d be in deep trouble. And that is not something you want. Let’s deal with everything we can right now, and maybe over the next few weeks or months, we can slowly ease out some more.
There was such a sense of relief to know Dr. Maddy wasn’t going to insist on all of this happening today.
A light, tinkling laughter filled the room as she realized Dr. Maddy was reading her thoughts. Psychics saw too much. With no privacy she was ripped wide open – raw. Everything bare for everybody to see and laugh at again. That brought up another barrage of horrible feelings.
No one is laughing at you, Dr. Maddy said. That’s the first thing you need to understand. Mothers are supposed to be warm, cuddly, and supportive. But they aren’t all that way. And you won the lottery when it came to yours. She wanted you to be bigger, better, brighter. She wanted to take pride in your accomplishments and because she couldn’t, she kept driving at you to be better. But her methods were questionable. The end result was she made you feel demeaned, minimalized as if you had no value. But you don’t have to continue to feel that way. Your mother is long gone. You cannot give away your power to her anymore.
She’s not, you know. Tavika didn’t know where all this honesty was coming from, but she’d never told anybody this before.
Dr. Maddy paused, a gentle hum in the air as she processed Tavika’s words. You mean she’s not gone?
Tavika shook her head. No, her ghost is tied to the house where it all happened.
In a way that makes sense. And what about your sister?
Tavika nodded. Bellamy is there too.
And are they still the same personalities?
Tavika winced. Yes, very much so. But more focused as if they’re locked onto the actual event. I’ve tried to talk to them until I was blue in the face, but they are convinced I want to die and if they stay maybe they can help me out. My mother and I both know my end is near.
Dr. Maddy’s movements turned jerky as she understood what Tavika was saying.
And maybe they can, she said in a calm voice. Fate says this is what’s going to happen, but we do have free will. We can change the outcome.
I told Jericho that, Tavika said. But he says most of the time his visions are deadly accurate.
Then we’ll have to do whatever we can to make sure he’s wrong this time.
Tavika smiled. Can’t say I’ve cared either way up to now.
That’s because of all this weighing you down. You’ve been living under a dark ugly cloud, Dr. Maddy said quietly. It will be different from now on.
I hope not too different. I still need to take down the asshole who killed my family. Growing up and knowing that was my one purpose in this short life – well, that’s a lot of pressure but it gave me a reason to go on.
Maybe now you’ll be able to recognize him – or you might once we open that time up.
She wasn’t sure anything was worth going back there. Even if it meant being able to find him faster. There were some things that were just too hard to face.
However, if you don’t face it – it will kill you one way or the other. At least if you open up that nightmare in your heart, you can clear it out and come out as a fighter versus someone paralyzed in victim mode.
*
He didn’t know if he should tell her that he knew what she and Dr. Maddy were saying. He doubted it. She was not going to appreciate the fact that he could hear most of the conversation going on in her head.
Stefan had long since disappeared, but he had a partner to return to. Maddy did too. He figured Drew must have the patience of a saint to be okay with her bopping off all over the globe at a moment’s notice. She was often gone for hours and hours on end. Then there were her patients. Dr. Maddy poured her heart into the Maddy’s Floor project. Now she’d started teaching and was flying between Norway and the US as she consulted on their version of her center. There was talk of one in England, but he hadn’t heard the details to know if it was going through. Often she could do her energy work from anywhere in the world.
Sometimes she had to be there for hands-on work.
The real detriment in setting up centers like Maddy’s Floor was they needed to have people like her – powerful healers to be the heart and center of the projects. They could train support staff in the different healing modalities, but Dr. Maddy was gifted in so many ways one couldn’t train as a replacement.
The healers were either gifted naturally and could be trained to do more, or they weren’t and their training needed to be for support activities. She’d spent a fair bit of time looking for other people like herself to take on a second center, and Stefan was involved in the new children’s wing at the hospital. But that was the extent of his involvem
ent as his time was at a premium too.
Jericho’s phone rang. “Hunter, any news?
“False trails, missed ones and directions. Everything but what I need which is a solid lead on this little girl. If she’s been left alone as much as Anna says she has there’s a good chance she’s dead. I’d really like to find her alive, but in order to do that we need to make this happen now.”
Jericho looked at Tavika lying on the bed. Solomon slept at her feet. Close, but not touching. He wondered what the cat felt with all the work going on. Tavika looked better and worse at the same time. As if she’d been to hell and back. Still, Dr. Maddy didn’t appear to be done.
“Let me call you back in a couple of hours. I might be able to have something for you by then.”
“You sure you can’t make that a half an hour?” Hunter rang off but the anger and frustration was evident his voice.
Jericho got up and walked to the back of the apartment. He knew he had no business approaching with the request at this time, but considering a little girl’s life was in hanging in danger maybe they would forgive him.
What little girl? Talk to me, Maddy said. I thought it had been determined she was already dead?
“Tavika said she caught sight of connecting dots when she was doing her inter-dimensional traveling.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I know that’s not how she phrased it, but she was doing something in between the etheric layers. She has some kind of weird system to see patterns, connect the dots between people, places, and things. She thought she saw Anna’s trail. Unfortunately, that’s also where I tried to help by pulling her out and giving her that blast that caused all this.”
Interesting, Dr. Maddy said. I do like the idea of somebody being able to do that.
Jericho reached up and rubbed his temple. “I do too. But if that little girl is alive, we need to find out where she is. And we need to find out fast.”
What would you like me to do?
“Any chance Tavika is strong enough to journey back into her layer of shit and see where that pattern led to?” he asked. “Or is that going to hurt her? We’re frustrated because we have no leads, and Tavika held out this tantalizing tidbit of hope.”
Right. Dr. Maddy’s tone was brusque as she added, I’ll go check it out.
And she disappeared from his mind.
Jericho didn’t know what that meant. Was she going to check out Tavika’s abilities? Or what she had in her mind? Whether she was capable of doing her little into the abyss stunt again?
The thing about psychics was some were too flaky to be useful, others felt they should be on all the time. Some people with abilities were unstable and couldn’t talk about this at all. Everyone was different. Many were gemstones like Tavika who only knew half of what they thought they did. When she developed she did it all in her own unique way. She had no teachers or trainers to show her to do it this way. And that meant she had created something nobody else had ever seen before. That was a gift in itself.
“Jericho?” He spun to see Tavika sitting on the edge of the bed. Her face was pale and her body looked frail, shaky. He rushed to her side. “I’m so sorry, Tavika. I didn’t mean to disturb what you’re doing.”
She waved off his concern. “A little girl is in trouble. We have to do everything we can to help her.”
“And is there anything you can do?” he asked.
Using his arm she straightened up and took a few experimental steps. “Honestly, I have no idea. Everything’s changed. I don’t feel the same inside or outs. I like to think my methods and the tools I utilized are still available to me, but I don’t know if my intuitive ability to use them is still there.”
Shit. He hadn’t considered that aspect.
Dr. Maddy’s voice spoke out through the room. There’s no place like now to try. I will stay here for another few minutes to make sure she gets through this, but after that I’m gone.
Taking a few more steps Tavika walked to the kitchen table where she sat down. “Normally I would work from the couch, but I’m not sure I have the strength. This might be better for the moment.”
He sat down opposite her. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
She shook her head. “No. But as I’m a little out of touch, feeling a bit rough around the edges, not to mention raw, I can’t say the transition is going to be terribly easy. There could be a mini boom or as you called it shockwave coming your way. You need to protect yourself. I’d like to think I have the skill to not make such an amateur mistake again, but I’m not on my game tonight. So it’s possible.” She gave him an apologetic look then bowed her head and rested her hands flat on the table.
He stepped back, mindful of what happened last time. She was right, she wasn’t in the best shape for this… But he was desperate.
She took several deep breaths, which he recognized as a normal prelude for any kind of psychic trip. And suddenly she raised her head. The light in her eyes held an unworldly glow. There was something foreign to her right now. If he was being truthful, he’d say it was magical.
Then her hand started to move as if she was seeing something nobody else could. She was pushing gently, flicking stuff sideways. He wanted to ask questions, to have some kind of a tour guide running commentary, telling him exactly what was going on. Of course anything like that would cause a disruption for her, making it that much harder to work. So far there had been no shockwaves. He was very grateful.
He sat back and watched. And waited. At one point in time she seemed to suck in her breath and her back stiffened as if she’d seen something that scared her. He leaned forward, questions on his tongue, but he bit them back and waited.
After a moment she leaned forward again and started to clean the air in front of her. When she reached down and picked up something out of the air he couldn’t see, but knew she could – he was hooked.
This was something he’d never expected to see. He had no idea if any of this was going to provide solid results when plain old detective work hadn’t done anything for them. But for some reason Tavika had picked up on the blue dots that supposedly signified Anna. He was willing to go with that.
If she found anything.
When she turned her head to stare directly at him, he stood up and walked around the table to stand beside her. “Tavika?” he asked gently. “Did you find something?”
She tapped the table at the far end. He looked down, wondering what it was supposed to mean.
“She lived at 427 Rhue Street.”
His eyebrows shot up to his hair. “Yes she did. Do you know where she is now?”
She stared at him. “No, you don’t understand. She’s at 427 Rhue Street.”
“No. She was there. That’s where she was kidnapped. We’ve been tracking her but there’s been no sign of her.”
“It’s like she never left the house,” Tavika whispered. “None of this is logical.”
He left that for the moment. In a low voice, he asked, “Is Anna okay?”
Tavika gave him a half smile. “Define okay.”
He waved his arm impatiently. “Is she alive?” he snapped.
“She’s alive, but she’s dying. I don’t know if you can make it in time.”
“Is she injured, bleeding?”
“No. But she’s alone, she’s crawled inside. She knows he’s going to come back. And if she’s still alive he will kill her then.”
“Do you know when he’s coming back?”
She whispered in a soft voice, “Yes. He’s coming back tonight.”
Chapter 28
She didn’t understand the pathway in front of her. It was as if the little girl never left the house. Surely the place had been thoroughly searched? She knew the police wouldn’t leave anything untouched if a little girl had been kidnapped. What the hell was going on?
She stared down at the universe below with its millions of lights shining. She tried to defocus to let the pattern show up. It helped her to see which ones she could access. This world looked di
fferent every time she came here. And if she didn’t follow a pattern at the time there was no guarantee she could pick it up again on the next trip.
It was frustrating as hell.
Her mother didn’t even know she could do this. But if she had, she might’ve had some words of wisdom to show her the way. Although chances were her mother would’ve just told her to figure it out on her own.
As she defocused, the blue stood out strong or in a series of circles. It was Anna. Relieved, knowing it could have been anyone, she searched the pattern for an end where she could lock down and say that was where the little girl was, but everything kept coming back to the same place. She had no choice but to assume the little girl was still there – although that wasn’t an assumption she could make from this far away.
Maybe that was the problem.
She stepped into another layer, a lower one, closer. She’d been this close before, trying to hunt the Ghost, but without any luck as he somehow was untraceable. She couldn’t afford to lose Anna. Several more steps down she slipped through another cloud to see the bright and shiny dots off to the left. She stopped and studied the tiny little jagged line from one house to the other. And understood. Anna was very close to her home but was not at the same house.
No. She’s in one of the neighboring houses, she said urgently. Now that I’m closer I can see her energy has been circling the area. And it keeps coming back to the same place, but that’s because she’s been there, she’s been there many times. She’s at a house where she’s been before. And it’s close to her home.
How close? Jericho asked. Can you get close enough to see if it’s next door or are we still talking a mile away?
Good question. She closed her eyes and sank deeper and deeper and deeper. I’m going closer.
She could feel the chill air on her skin. She didn’t understand why there were physical changes when all of this was in the nonphysical realm. But there were. She opened her eyes to see how she was doing in terms of distance.
