The Witch and the Gentleman (The Witches Series Book 1)

by J. R. Rain

  “You assume I have all the answers, dear.”

  “I assume you have more answers than me since, well, you’re dead or in spirit or whatever the hell you call it. I also assume that you’re sticking to some sort of spiritual rule book. I want to know who makes these rules and why?”

  I had somehow ended up back in the kitchen and back to the wine bottle, which had mysteriously ended up in my hands. Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a mystery. I filled the glass and returned.

  She waited for me before speaking again. “We help more than you know, dear. But, yes, we are limited in our help.”

  “Limited by whom? Or is it who? Whatever. Who stops you? And why would they stop you from helping someone?”

  “There’s helping, dear. And then there’s helping too much. All help first goes through that soul’s higher self, and then through the spirit guides. The higher self and spirit guides decide what is best for the incarnate soul.”

  I’d heard about higher selves and spirit guides and incarnates and discarnates and reincarnation. But hearing it from a spirit was something else entirely. It made things real.

  “And the person living has no say in it?” I asked.

  “The person living has the final say, dear.”

  “So, why are you here now?” I asked. “Are you sort of circumventing the rules?”

  “I’m using whatever leverage I can to help my son.”

  I thought about that, watching the spirit standing before me. She didn’t look much like a spirit now. She looked three-dimensional. She had substance and depth and definition. The more she stood in my room, the more she came to life, so to speak. Although she did continue to rise and fall ever so slightly. Most interesting, she continued to grow younger and younger before my very eyes. If I had to guess, she was now in her early forties. She was now a beautiful, dark-haired woman.

  She was a good mom, too, and a good person. I sensed that about her. No, I somehow knew that about her. After all, according to her, we had been a type of soul mates throughout time and space.

  Life is so very, very weird, I thought.

  “So, what do you want me to do about your son?” I finally asked.

  “Help him find the answers he needs to move on.”

  “Except I hardly know what I’m doing.”

  “The answers will come, dear, if you ask the right questions.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, “and you can quit with that ‘dear’ crap. You look younger than me now.”

  She smiled and nodded, and with that, she slowly disappeared before my eyes.

  I stared down into the wine, shook my head, and, after a few minutes, said, “Okay, that did not just happen.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was at the park again.

  It was a rainy April morning, which meant, at least in southern California, this would be the last rain we would see in nine months.

  I liked the rain and didn’t run from it. In fact, I wasn’t even using an umbrella now. Such a rebel. I did, however, have a hoodie on. I wasn’t a total idiot and I had spent thirty minutes on my hair earlier this morning.

  Such a waste, but that was the price one paid for living and working in Beverly Hills. Twice a week, I worked as a personal trainer at the Beverly Hills Gym. No, not the most ambitious name, but our clients were devoted and wealthy and paid good money for personal trainers. I liked good money.

  So, I made it a point to look my best on these days. After all, I was my own best advertisement.

  I checked my phone. I still had an hour before my first client. He was a big film producer. Actually, he was a small-time film producer, but a big man. Most important, he wasn’t a pervert, which I always appreciated.

  So, I sat back on a bench that countless mothers had sat on before me, watching their children play in this small neighborhood park, complete with jungle gym and swings. Had this been any other day, kids would have been here, I’m sure, and mothers and fathers and grandparents. Their kids would have been dressed in designer clothes with designer shoes. This was, after all, Beverly Hills. And, being Beverly Hills, there would have been a fair share of nannies out here as well.

  I was a new psychic. I had one extraordinary skill—remote viewing—a skill that did little good now. My other skills were still blossoming rapidly. I still didn’t know what to do for Peter.

  Millicent had said to ask the right questions. So, what were the right questions? I knew an obvious one...

  “Who killed you, Penny?” I asked.

  A name didn’t appear in my thoughts. Nor did I hear it whispered in my ear, or on the wind, but was feeling...something. A tingling.

  “Penny?” I asked.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the rain drum along the concrete path nearby, listened to it slap the leaves above me. The same electrical buzz was alive on my skin, a buzz that I now knew meant the dead were near.

  “Penny,” I whispered again, and now, I saw her in my mind’s eye. I saw her standing nearby, watching me. But the image quickly morphed into her painting of her dog, Sparky.

  Penny didn’t make a full appearance, not like her grandmother. But I felt her nearby, watching me. Perhaps it wasn’t really her. Perhaps it was just an imprint of her. I wasn’t a medium, and unless a spirit made actual physical contact with me, I was having a devil of a time connecting with her.

  I sighed. She was near. I could feel her.

  “Who hurt you, Penny?” I asked. “Who?”

  “I ask the same questions,” said a voice from behind me. “But, admittedly, I’m usually weeping when I ask them.”

  I gasped and spun around. I knew the voice. It was Peter, standing behind me, drenched to the bone. He was wearing a suit and tie and his shiny shoes. I hadn’t heard him approach, thanks to the drumming rain and dripping water.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t sure who was sitting here, and by the time I saw it was you, I realized I might frighten you anyway.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, although my rapidly beating heart told me it was anything but okay. Jesus H. Christ, the man nearly gave me a heart attack. “I’m a psychic, I should have known you were standing there,” I said, laughing lightly.

  “You were trying to make contact with her,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. Except I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “Do you mind if I sit?”

  “No, please do.”

  I scooted over and he came around and sat on the other end of the bench. The rain had, if anything, increased. Peter didn’t seem to mind. I watched as water dripped steadily from the tip of his nose. He looked lost, helpless, forlorn.

  “I miss her so much,” he said. “Both of them.”

  I nodded, watched a car drive by slowly, probably staring at the two loonies sitting in the rain.

  “Do you...feel her at all?” he asked. “My daughter?”

  “I do,” I said. “Or I thought I did.”

  “Could you see her?”

  “No, not yet. Although I saw her painting in her bedroom. But I suspect that’s just an imprint of her, a sort of scene replaying itself over and over in your house.”

  A faint smile touched his lips. He looked past me, took a deep breath. “I would do anything to see her again.”

  Ask the right questions...

  “When was the last time you saw your daughter alive, Peter?”

  “When she left for school that morning.”

  “Who was the last person to see her alive? I’m sorry if these questions are hard.”

  “No problem. I’ve answered them a million times, to the police, reporters and the private eye we hired.”

  “And no one turned up anything?”

  “We’ve turned up some things, but not enough to catch her killer. You should talk to a Detective Smithy over at the Beverly Hills station. The case is still open, of course, although I haven’t spoken to him about it in over a year. He knows everything. I’ll as
k him to see you.”

  I made a mental note of the name and we sat there together some more, in the rain, until I had to leave for my training appointment.

  By the time I made it back to my car, started it, and looked back, Peter was gone. I cried into my hands, feeling his sadness, and then purging his sadness through my own tears.

  It took me a while to get a hold on my emotions and when I finally did, I began to understand why the spirits couldn’t just hand us answers to life’s hard questions. We were obviously meant to seek answers and by doing so, raise new questions.

  I drove off, more determined than ever to find Penny’s killer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After my training session, and after I had showered and changed at the gym, I headed straight to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

  This wasn’t my first time here. I’d been brought in for questioning on the night my vampire boyfriend had been found with a silver arrow in his chest. The police wanted answers and grilled me relentlessly about my murdered boyfriend. I told them I hadn’t a clue who’d broken into the house, or why my boyfriend had been shot in his sleep, with an arrow, no less. Or why the man had spared me.

  Truth was, the man had nearly sent an arrow into my own chest, too. Never had I been so afraid, or so devastated. The vampire hunter had shown some compassion towards me, and listed a handful of murders around Los Angeles that my now-dead boyfriend, whose blood was even then pooling in the bed next to me, had committed. I didn’t doubt the hunter. I knew my boyfriend was a killer. But I was addicted to him. Or, more accurately, addicted to him feeding from me.

  Few knew that a vampire’s victim derived just as much pleasure from the feeding as did the vampire himself. And I derived much, much pleasure. More importantly, with each feeding, I could feel my psychic powers increasing, sharpening.

  Anyway, I had been hauled down here for questioning, twice. The police had been baffled over my boyfriend’s murder. They were certain I had something to do with it. I had been a go-go dancer before meeting Victor. For two months, I’d lived well. No, I’d lived like a queen. A true whirlwind romance of lovemaking, feeding and shopping. Honestly, what more could a girl want?

  But I kept to my story: a break-in, I’d awakened to find Victor gasping, and a man standing in the doorway holding a crossbow. Those were the facts. I neglected to mention a few additional facts. That Victor was a vampire, that he had killed often, and that he was getting his just due by a vampire hunter.

  Just or not, his murder tore me up for a long, long time. I had literally been addicted to him, to the feeding, to the lifestyle, even to what I thought had been love.

  The police, of course, didn’t like it, but in the end, my story held up purely through forensic evidence. Ample evidence of a break-in, and a murder weapon that I had no association with. That I could have staged the break-in with another, to rob my boyfriend, was a possibility they had brought up. I reminded them that I was already living with Victor. Already being treated like royalty, and that I was in love with the man.

  It was pointed out by another cop that nothing had, in fact, been stolen, and there was no sign of foul play, or that I was trying to extort Victor. In the end, it was decided that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the case, as far as I know, was still open.

  Despite having just worked out with a client, I lit up a cigarette and sat in my car outside the police station. I inhaled deeply from the cigarette, knowing I was killing myself slowly, but loving every drag. I didn’t smoke much. Only when I was nervous. And sitting outside the police station was harder on me than I thought it would be.

  It had stopped raining. I was in a metered spot along the street just outside of the very police station made famous by a single Zsa Zsa Gabor slap. Traffic slogged past me. Rich people going home after making themselves richer. Water reflected off the road, off the cars. Red taillights and high-powered headlights reflected, too. Beverly Hills was a busy city. Lots of cars. Lots of people. Lots of business. Lots of money.

  I finished the cigarette, flicked it out my side window like the bad girl I sometimes was, then got out and headed up to the station.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After waiting nearly thirty minutes, I was shown into Detective Smithy’s office.

  Detective Smithy was a smallish man in a biggish office. His desk was polished. The window behind him appeared recently cleaned. I didn’t detect any cobwebs or dirt or even dust bunnies. The computer monitor on his desk was bigger than my TV screen at home. Even the wires that led up to the monitor gleamed. I swear to God, someone had wiped those, too. Must be nice working for the Beverly Hills Police Department.

  If Detective Smithy gave a damn about any of it, he didn’t show it. His thick cop mustache was slightly askew. As in, I was fairly certain he didn’t trim it as neat as his superiors would hope. His nails were mostly trimmed, except for his pinkie nail, which he seemed to have forgotten about. It was twice as long as the others. There was dirt under exactly half of the other nails. I suspected that what Detective Smithy lacked in grooming and hygiene, he more than made up for it in performance. At least, I hoped so.

  When I came in, his smallish hand with the long pinkie nail was resting on top of a thick file. He didn’t bother standing, but instead motioned to one of the three chairs sitting before him. I took the middle one because I enjoyed symmetry.

  “What’s your interest in this case, Ms. Lopez?” he asked while I straightened my workout pants so that the drape hung neatly. More symmetry. Then again, I think I was overcompensating for his lack of neatness with an overabundance of my own.

  Detective Smithy looked at me as if I were doing something foreign to him, blinking once or twice. He waited. While he waited, I thought about how I should answer. Ultimately, I decided to go with the truth—the freaky truth—knowing there was a good chance I might be laughed out of the department.

  “I was hired to help look for the killer,” I said simply enough.

  “I see,” he said. “In what capacity?”

  “I’m a psychic.”

  “A psychic?”

  “A good one, too, although I’m new to murder investigations.”

  He didn’t laugh. At least, not yet. Instead, he studied me closely. “I see. And where do you generally employ your services?”

  Detective Smithy had an uncanny ability to look directly into me. Meaning, I knew he was sizing me up far differently than I was used to being sized up. The man was literally absorbing everything about me in ways that I suspected only a homicide cop could. What those ways were, I wasn’t entirely sure, but judging from the way his eyes touched on every aspect of my face, my features, my clothing, there wasn’t a whole lot this guy missed. Also, I intuitively sensed he was a hell of a fine detective.

  “I work at the Psychic Hotline.”

  “The Psychic Hotline? Those guys I see on TV?”

  “I’m one of those guys, or girls. There’s a few of us, actually. I work out of my home, though. Callers get rerouted to me. They are, of course, in for a heck of a surprise when they get me.”

  Detective Smithy’s smallish face with its slightly askew cop mustache didn’t move much. But when I mentioned the Psychic Hotline, the errant whiskers twitched a little. “Oh?” he said. “What’s the surprise?”

  “I’m really good at what I do.”

  “I’m sure you are,” he said, and this time his mustache didn’t twitch. “May I ask who hired you?”

  “Peter Laurie.”

  He stared at me. “Peter Laurie hired you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The father of the victim?”

  “Yes.”

  He continued staring at me long and hard and I sensed that something was amiss. Now he drummed his fingers and looked down at the file. He tilted his head a little and, there, his mustache actually looked straight.

  “Is there something wrong?” I asked.

  “There are many things wrong about the case, e
xcept I’m not at liberty to discuss them with you, Ms. Lopez.”

  “Peter said he was going to call you and give you permission to talk to me.”

  “Did he now?” said the detective.

  “Yes. Didn’t he call you?”

  Detective Smithy held my gaze again, and I sensed a small energy shift in him. From one of rigidness and professionalism, to openness. He took in a lot of air, then finally nodded. “Yes, he did.”

  “And he said that you could speak to me.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  I sensed some of the detective’s misgivings here. I said, “Except, of course, it’s not his place to tell you who you can and can’t talk to.”

  “True enough.”

  “But I want you to know that he did hire me—or tried to hire me. I told him I wouldn’t take his money.”

  “How did you meet Mr. Laurie?”

  “He called the Psychic Hotline.”

  “Did he request you specifically?”

  I thought of Conn’s efforts to reach me and nearly smiled. Instead, I shook my head and said, “You get who you get. It’s all very random.”

  I thought of Millicent and wondered if she had something to do with my chance meeting with her son. I was betting that she had.

  “I see,” said the detective. “And you proceeded to meet with him later?”

  “Yes, at his home. He showed me his daughter’s room.”

  “Did he mention if any new evidence had come to light?”

  “No. He just wanted a new...perspective on the case. I think I can give him that.”

  “Of course,” said Detective Hill.

  “You don’t believe me,” I said.