Psychic for Hire Series Box Set

by Hermione Stark

  “This guy bothering you, Diana?” the portly man asks.

  “Everything’s fine, Luca,” she says. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

  Luca gives Storm a grim and lingering look of warning before disappearing back inside the restaurant.

  Storm turns to Diana. “You’ve got a good thing going here, Diana. An employer who cares about you. I’m serious about you getting help. Do you really want to throw it all away? Trust me, I know how easily the slippery slope gets you. You’ll be at the bottom before you even know it.”

  To his frustration the expression on her face doesn't even change. “Don’t worry about me, baby,” she says. “I know how to get what I want.” Then she kisses him on the lips, hard.

  Chapter 14

  DIANA

  Pssst. Wakey wakey, sleepy head.

  I groan, feeling like my head has been hit with a truck.

  Daylight’s wasting, the little voice complains. We’ve got a wager to win.

  “Why do you even care? You didn’t care about me getting my agency job back.” Even the sound of my own voice hurts.

  I’ve changed my mind, she purrs. Nothing gets me going like a good challenge.

  “My head feels terrible. Did you make me drink last night? I can’t remember… stuff.”

  She laughs. I don’t need to get drunk to have a good time.

  “But I don’t feel good.”

  Then you shouldn’t have fought me so hard. If you’d just let me do what I wanted you would be waking up feeling pretty good about now.

  Fragments are coming back to me. I remember fighting with her last night. I remember serving a customer at the restaurant. I remember coming home and collapsing into bed with exhaustion.

  Beastie, who is curled up like a warm ball against my lower back, growls a little in her sleep, dissatisfied with my fidgeting.

  I try to remember more of yesterday. Things are fuzzy. What is clear is the memory of going to Beatrice Grictor’s house, of being cramped under the desk in Raif’s office and that horrible vision of fire burning in my mind.

  Except it hadn’t been a vision. Not exactly. It felt like something else. I had been filled with this horrible fear, like this thing was pushing at my mind, trying to see in. And I had screamed and screamed.

  And then… Then what?

  I groan, and sit up in bed to take a sip of water from the glass I keep beside the bed. The fear had come when I had touched that symbol on the paper. The little voice had forced me to drag my fingers away from it, causing the darkness and pain to subside.

  I had emerged panting and in shock, to find myself staring into the face of an utterly bewildered Beatrice Grictor who had given a pitiable little cry of astonishment. Behind her Storm had been rolling his eyes and muttering something no doubt unpleasant under his breath. He had looked more exasperated than furious. And then he had reached for me. And then…

  “You took over!” I say. “You took over and you made me run. You punched Storm in the face!”

  You’re damn right I did, she says smugly. He was about to arrest you.

  “No, he wasn’t. He already knew I was there and he didn’t say anything!”

  That changed the second you screeched like a banshee. If Beatrice Grictor had wanted you charged, that is what he would have done.

  I grunt in annoyance. She is probably right. He would have had to. And then my wager with the chief would have been over for sure.

  Admit it, she says. I saved your ass, and his too. Because if she thought you and he were there together — which she would have known the second you looked at him with your puppy dog eyes — she would have complained to the Agency. And kaput goes your precious job, and probably his too.

  I grimace. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  I frown. I am getting a vague memory of Storm being mad at me in the restaurant last night. Had he been at the restaurant last night? Oh God. Yes he had been there, and the whole team too. And she had been inside my head making me say terrible things. And, oh God, the look on Remi’s face when I had teased her about the new guy. Forget tease, I had been downright rude.

  I bury my head in my hands in shame. Remi had been the only one trying to give me a proper chance in the team.

  “How could you do that to her?” I snarl.

  Oh please, even you have to admit it was fun, Miss Prissy Pants, she says, sounding amused. And anyway, those two clearly wanted to get into each other’s pants. I just brought it all out into the open so that they can move onto the next step.

  “You had no right to do that!”

  I didn’t hear you complaining when I helped you kiss Storm, she says slyly.

  The blood drains from my face. “Oh my God,” I whisper. She made me kiss Storm. She had yanked him down by his shirt and kissed him. I close my eyes in mortification. Storm hadn’t kissed me back.

  He didn’t push you away either, she says.

  That was because I had gathered my wits and snatched control away from the little voice. It had been me that had pulled away and marched back inside the restaurant before she jumped his bones. Thank God for that. At least I hadn’t given him a chance to reject me. Because I know he would have pushed me away. I know it for sure.

  I push aside my sheets and climb out of bed. In the mirror that is hanging over the back of my door I can see that I am still in last night’s clothes. I scrunch my eyes shut in dismay. It is not an outfit I would have picked. What must Luca have thought when I walked in wearing that?

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” I hiss. “Don’t you ever ever do that to me, or I swear—”

  Except I have nothing to threaten her with. Dr Carrington had diagnosed it as dissociative personality disorder. But he misjudged it. I’m not like normal people. I’m the Angel of Death. Not that I ever told him that, because then he would have thought I was crazy for sure. And so what if I made up a little voice in my head to turn to for support when life got too scary? She helped me deal with the loneliness of living with the Coltons. It’s no big deal. At some point I’ll unmake her, and that will be that.

  I can feel her moping inside my mind. Whatever, she says sulkily as she curls up into a little ball and proceeds to ignore me.

  I find the clothes that I had been wearing to Beatrice Grictor’s office dumped in the pile on the floor. I go through the pockets and to my relief I find in there the little envelope that had been hidden behind the photograph in Raif’s office. The photograph is there too, folded into quarters. At least the little voice had the sense to bring them with me. I probably would have dumped them as I ran.

  The wizard’s business card is still inside the little envelope. Theodore Grimshaw, Purveyor of Needs, has an address in Soho, which I imagine must be his business address. By the time I get there I have figured out in my head what I need to say to him. I figure that a wizardly purveyor of needs must be a canny sort who won’t be forthcoming with his information.

  Grimshaw’s turns out to be what looks like a rundown pawnshop, from the outside at least. The window is full of lots of old jewelry and watches and other bric-a-brac. I peek in the window, but I can’t see anyone inside. Not any customers, and not Theodore Grimshaw himself.

  I am just about to push the door open when my phone rings. I pull it out of my satchel. I grimace as the caller ID shows me that it is Smithers. I debate ignoring it, but then I change my mind.

  “Hi Eric,” I say, answering it.

  There is the tiniest momentary silence. Smithers is shocked. “It’s Mr Smithers to you,” he says.

  “Yeah, whatever, Eric. What do you want?”

  “Where are you?” he demands. “You didn’t turn up yesterday. You can’t turn up without calling in sick. Who do you think you are? I’ll make an exception for yesterday, but if you don’t turn up within the next ten minutes—”

  “You’ll what? I’ve already lost three shifts because of you. What exactly are you going to do to me now?”

  “I did no such thing! Thre
e shifts? What are you talking about?”

  “One, you wouldn’t let me leave early for a funeral on Friday so I had to give all my money to Rosalie for the Friday shift. Two, you stole my Saturday shift and gave it to Rosalie. Three, because of you Rosalie forced me to give her my Wednesday shift at the Ambassador’s ball too. That’s three shifts. Can’t you count?”

  “Don’t you dare blame me for your problems!”

  “You’re the one that is causing my problems. You’ve lost me a lot of money by failing to notify me of the fraud incident. And how am I supposed to pay my rent and earn a decent living if you keep giving my shifts away? And then not even notifying me until I actually turn up to work is taking the cake. Now you know how it feels.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t got your number, miss! Your girlfriend calls you and you’re so desperate to get into her pants that you make up some lie about a funeral? What funeral when you don’t even have a family? Rosalie was right about you. Every word out of your mouth is a lie. If you don’t get here within the next twenty minutes you’re fired, my girl!”

  “First, I’m not your girl. Second, how can I be fired when I’ve already resigned?” And then I hang up the phone.

  My heart is racing. I have to take several deep breaths to calm myself. Girlfriend, indeed. Typical of the perv to think I was a lesbian just because I hadn’t flirted with him like Rosalie had. What a fantastically tiny ego the pig had.

  I cannot believe I’ve finally told the prick to shove his stupid job. And I never have to see him again. I could dance a jig!

  I giggle at the thought of telling Remi that he had thought we were girlfriends. She would get a kick out of that. But then my smile fades. If she’d forgiven me for my behavior last night, that is.

  I push open the door of Grimshaw’s and step in.

  “Good morning. How can I help you?” says a smooth and very posh English voice.

  I blink in surprise. A man is standing behind the counter. In his mid-forties, his brown hair is peppered with a dash of grey at the temples. He looks good in his brown tweed suit, even with the cute little glasses perched on his distinguished nose. A veritable silver fox, not that he knows it.

  A book is in his hand and he has a distracted air as if his mind is still in it. I’m sure he hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

  His smile is slightly nervous, as if he is socially awkward, but that doesn’t stop him from launching into speech. “No, let me guess.”

  He reaches into the window display and extracts one of the boxes of jewelry there and holds it towards me with a flourish. It contains a glimmering necklace with a large red pendant nestling on black velvet. “It was this beautiful necklace which caught your eye. You noticed the magnificence of this fire ruby. It comes from Otherworld, you know. It belonged to a—”

  I slide his business card across the counter towards him. He looks at it and stops speaking. He puts his finger on it. Worried he might take it, I snatch it away. He smiles and there is a twinkle in his eye. He puts the box with the necklace back in the window display.

  “Ah,” he says. “I should have known a young lady like yourself would be here for something a little more out-of-the-ordinary. Please, come this way.”

  He comes out from behind the counter and walks straight through a wall. Feeling disconcerted, I warily follow him, putting my hands out before me to touch a wall that my fingers tell me is not there. I follow them through to the other side of this illusion, and emerge into a larger room filled with books and jars and ornaments and shelves full of all kinds of weird stuff.

  He marches straight to a rack of glass bottles and tubes and vials, all filled with concoctions of different colors and consistencies.

  “These are the potions and elixirs the young ladies are usually interested in. Make up and love spells and the like. We don’t deal in anything contentious or dangerous here.”

  He gestures around the store. “Everything else you can peruse at your leisure. Unless there was something specific you already had in mind?”

  “Actually, yes,” I say. “What I am after is the key to this.” I hand him the slip of paper with the ornate circular symbol on it.

  I don’t even know if what I have said makes any sense, but I thought it was important to sound like I know what I am talking about.

  Fortunately he does not seem confused. He is looking at the paper with an expression of severe distaste. He quickly folds it up and hands it back to me.

  “As I said, we don’t deal in anything contentious or dangerous here,” he says.

  He had picked up a crystal vial of purple stuff to show me, but he drops it back into its slot with a clunk. He’s not smiling any more. He is ushering me back towards the exit.

  “Wait!” I say. “Look Theodore, or is it Theo? I know my friend was here so there’s no point hiding it.”

  “I’ll tell you what I told your gentleman friend. There is no key to that,” he says bluntly.

  I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I sense that if I admit this to him, he will refuse to cooperate entirely. So I say with perfect confidence, “Of course there’s a key to that. You’ve just admitted my gentleman friend was here. Unfortunately for you he’s also dead.”

  This has the effect I had hoped for. Theodore Grimshaw looks startled.

  Satisfied, I continue, “And while I know your connection to him, the Special Agents investigating his murder have no need to know anything about you. So long as you tell me what I want.” I inject a hint of menace in the last few words. That’s how they do it on TV.

  “Well!” Theodore Grimshaw seems to swell up in dignified outrage. He pushes his glasses up his nose. “I’m terribly sorry to hear about your friend, and if you wish to send the agents here you are welcome to do so. I have nothing to hide!”

  Damn it. I got so worked up that I’ve used entirely the wrong approach with him. The guy doesn’t seem a bad sort. I bite my lip in regret.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I tried to play hardball and overdid it.”

  He looks a little mollified. But he is still ushering me towards the exit.

  “Please! My friend’s name was Raif Silverstone. You might have read about him in the papers? All I want is your help to find his killer.”

  “Then you should’ve gone to the Agency, not come here.”

  “I did! But they didn’t want my help.”

  “Young lady, you should give that paper to the agency and be done with it,” he says briskly. “You are out of your depth.”

  “Please? Can you just tell me what I need to know and I won’t bother you again.”

  He sighs. “Young people,” he says under his breath. “This is not some exciting adventure. You may think your magic makes you invincible, but it does not. That’s right. I can sense it. And if I can sense it, so can others. You really should be setting yourself on a course of education—”

  “Seriously? I didn’t come here for a dad lecture,” I tell him. “And I don’t have magic.”

  His words have taken me by surprise. I don’t know what kind of magic he is talking about, unless he is somehow sensing my navelstone. My fingers twitch with my automatic instinct to cover it up. I try not to put my hand anywhere near it. The last thing I want him to know about me is that.

  “Well, I don’t know how else I can help you. And if you’re not going to take that paper to the Agency, you should burn it. You don’t know what kind of trouble you’re meddling with.”

  “But clearly you do. I know that Raif got the key. If he didn’t get it from you, where did he get it from?”

  He shakes his head. “It is simply not possible.”

  “It is possible. Raif has it.”

  “You said he was dead.”

  “Makes no difference. He still had it.”

  He hurries back towards his wall, gesturing for me to come with him. “I want nothing to do with this. Please leave right now.”

  I stay where I am. “
I’ll leave after you tell me what you know.”

  He contemplates me for a long moment. He takes a neat little handkerchief from his pocket and pats his forehead. The worried look on his face makes me feel uneasy.

  He is shaking his head. “You really have no inkling what this is. I told your friend there was no way on this world or the other of helping his girl. Nobody would make him that sort of key. Not if the girl was the property of the Grey Queen. I said he should take the poor girl back before the fae caught them both and… Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. That poor girl doesn’t have a hope.”