A Psychic with Catitude

by P. D. Workman

  It was a pretty room, a princess room, white with gold and pink accents. And yet, Reg didn’t get the feeling that it had suited Calliopia. She was a strangely sad girl for living in a house that was so magnificent, with parents who obviously cared for her. Maybe Reg was mistaken. She hadn’t talked with Calliopia and had been connected with her for only a few moments. She could be sad simply because of the circumstances. Maybe she had been perfectly happy before the kidnapping.

  “Can I… stay here a little longer?” she asked Mrs. Papillon tentatively. “Just… to see if I can pick up anything else.”

  Callie’s mom looked around. She didn’t make any comment on the state of the room as her husband had, writing it off as Calliopia being a teenager.

  Like the rest of the house, Reg found the room strangely bare. All of the necessary furniture was there, clothing hanging in the closet, and a few plants near the window where they would occasionally be able to get some light. The walls were bare of decorative paintings or teen idol posters. The top of the dresser was bare, not littered with the usual clutter teenage girls collected. Quick to dust. Easy to leave behind.

  “Take as much time as you need to,” Mrs. Papillon allowed, shrugging. She gazed at Reg for a moment, then turned away and left her and Jessup alone in the room once more.

  “Picking anything up?” Jessup asked.

  “Just… I don’t know. I feel like this is a front. This isn’t who Calliopia really is.”

  “You think it wasn’t her room?”

  “No, I’m sure it was. Her presence is pretty strong here. But I thought… I don’t know how to explain it. She wasn’t the one who decorated it. It’s… someone’s idea of what a girl’s room should look like. But not all little girls are into princesses and pink. And when they grow into teenagers… how many teenagers do you see being happy with a room like this?”

  “Okay… so she’s probably outgrown it. Even if she wanted the pink theme when she was a little girl, it probably doesn’t suit her anymore. But her parents don’t want to redecorate, or don’t realize that she wants something different.”

  Reg nodded. That felt right. But did it get them any closer to finding her? Did that help them to figure out who was holding her?

  “There wasn’t a ransom?”

  “No ransom. No contact from anyone saying that they have her or know who does. Or anyone saying that they saw her taken or that we shouldn’t look for her because she doesn’t want to be found. It’s the ones who disappear without any fanfare or ransom call that are the most difficult to find… the ones who stay lost for years.”

  “Well… she is alive. For now, anyway.”

  “What did you see? Did you see the people who took her? Anything distinctive about where she’s being held? Smells? Sounds?”

  “I didn’t see any other people. Not clearly. Just shadows in the darkness. Cockroaches. It’s… a cold room. Dirt floor. Other than that… I really don’t know. Nothing identifiable. She doesn’t want to be there.”

  Jessup moved around the room, peering into the closet, opening the drawers of the dresser to look over the contents. Reg reached out to the clothes in the closet, looking for something that might help her to connect with Calliopia again later and to learn more about what she had been through.

  Her hand landed on a long black dress, silky to the touch and practically vibrating with the girls’ energy. Reg slipped it off of the hanger and closed her eyes, feeling and imagining.

  “What did you find?” Jessup demanded.

  “I don’t know. Just a dress.” Reg opened her eyes and looked at it. It was less a dress than an overcoat. Something meant to be worn over top of her clothes, but was not particularly warm or weatherproof. Almost a cape. Reg shrugged. She held it up for Jessup, and then draped it over her arm. “It just has a strong energy. I’m hoping it will help…”

  “Can you find things that are hidden?” Jessup asked abruptly.

  Reg blinked at her, thinking back to many lost and found objects. “Yes, sometimes I help people find things that are lost. It wouldn’t be any harder to find things that were intentionally hidden.”

  “Teenagers have secrets. Everybody has secrets. She’s bound to have hidden something in here.” Jessup looked around. “The crime guys have already been through it, and they didn’t find anything. No diary. No pictures of boy or girl friends. No drugs. So what were her secrets, and where did she hide them?”

  Reg looked around the room with new eyes this time. Where would Calliopia have hidden something? If, as she had suggested to Jessup, the room didn’t reflect Callie’s personality, then where were the objects that did? What were the things that made her comfortable with who she was when she was alone? Her energy was strong enough in the room that there had to be things that were imbued with her energy. Just like the cloak.

  Reg made a slow circuit around the room, letting her imagination guide her.

  It was only recently she had discovered that what she had always been told was an overactive imagination was more than that. Not her own invention, but psychic powers. The ability to see into the world of the unseen. Her disrupted childhood had been peppered with imaginary friends, the souls of those who had gone on before. She was still getting used to the idea that paranormal phenomena were actually real, something that she could control or interact with.

  So she still called it her imagination, envisioning what Calliopia had done in her room when she was by herself. Reg opened a few of the drawers and pulled out objects that called to her, assembling them on the dresser. It still didn’t look like anything but a random assemblage of junk. Something anyone could have produced. Nothing mystical about it.

  Jessup eyed the items with a frown.

  Reg focused on the collection as a whole. An empty crystal bottle which had probably previously held perfume. A small silver disk that could be a coaster or ashtray. A silver brush and comb set with a few dull brown hairs clinging to them. A fountain pen. And the black dress in Reg’s arms. There was something missing, but as many times as she looked through the drawers and walked through the room, she couldn’t seem to find the missing object.

  “What is it? What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something else that goes here.”

  “What is this supposed to be? Some kind of shrine?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that these things are important.” Reg looked down at the assortment. They were the simple treasures that any child might accumulate. Pretty, everyday objects that kids collected and developed an attachment to. Like crows gathering glittery things that they had no real use for.

  “There’s a pen, but still no journal,” Jessup pointed out.

  “Maybe she keeps it on her…” Reg trailed off, looking around in realization.

  “On her…?”

  “Your crime guys must have already taken her phone and computer.”

  Jessup scratched her temple. “Not that they mentioned to me. They said they hadn’t found anything of interest. I’ll double-check…” Jessup pulled out her own phone and called in.

  Reg continued to look at the objects while Jessup followed up. Eventually, the detective ended the call and shook her head.

  “No. No phone or computer.”

  “Nothing? What kid these days doesn’t have a phone or a computer? Not even a tablet?”

  Jessup shook her head. “It might be her… the culture here,” she explained. “These people—this family—tends to eschew technology. They wouldn’t have encouraged her to get a phone or tablet.”

  Reg hadn’t realized until then that she hadn’t seen a single TV or electronic device as they had walked through the house. No wide screen on which to watch the latest sports or movie. Her parents hadn’t had phones in their hands, lying on the side tables, or bulging in their pockets.

  “They must have something. How could her parents work without computers or phones?”

  “It’s a different world,” Jessup said.


  It was a lifestyle Reg could hardly even imagine. Surrounded by luxury, but without any of the forms of entertainment she was used to. She could picture Calliopia’s parents reading together as they sat by the fire in the evening. Though, in Florida, who needed the fire?

  Reg would go crazy without TV or movies. Reading was not something she had ever learned to enjoy. Reading for entertainment was as foreign to her as running for fun. Both equally painful.

  She went to the bed and checked under the mattress for a journal. Of course there wasn’t one there; that would have been one of the first places the crime techs would have checked. She and Jessup checked all of the usual hiding places. Under the clothes in her drawers, on the bottoms and backs of the drawers. Hidden under other miscellany in the closet.

  Reg went back to the treasured items and stared at the pen, searching mentally for its mate. What good was a pen without paper? She picked it up and turned it slowly in her fingers, waiting for it to give her a clue. She went back to the drawers that they had already checked. The drawers had all been checked multiple times, by the crime guys, Jessup, and Reg herself. But Reg was following the tug she felt from the pen. On TV shows, Reg had seen them trace bullet trajectories, and that was what it was like. Like a string was being pulled from her belly button to the pen and projecting past it.

  “We already looked there,” Jessup objected.

  “I know,” Reg agreed. But she looked again anyway, removing each article of clothing and folding it neatly to place on top of the dresser beside of the treasures. When the drawer was empty, Reg put her hand in against the bottom and felt a sort of pulsing heartbeat. The wood was warmer under her fingers than it should be.

  “Is it a false bottom?” Jessup asked, tapping the bottom of the drawer and looking at it from several angles. “The tech guys would have noticed if it wasn’t as deep as it should be.”

  It didn’t appear to be any shallower than any of the other drawers. Reg felt around the bottom and the edges of the drawer, looking for a release. She couldn’t find any kind of catch. Finally, she pressed down lightly on the bottom of the drawer, where it was warm. There was a click, and the wood rose up to reveal the hidden compartment.

  “Well, I’ll be…” Jessup breathed, looking over her shoulder.

  Reg didn’t touch the diary. She didn’t want to destroy any fingerprints or any other trace evidence. She moved out of Jessup’s way. Jessup put on a pair of gloves and pulled an evidence bag out of her pocket. Before transferring the journal to the evidence bag, she turned the pages, eyes skimming over them quickly.

  “Anything?”

  “Usual teen stuff,” Jessup said. “I don’t see anything that would indicate anyone was stalking her or causing her other problems.” She turned a few more pages.

  Looking at the book, Reg wondered how Jessup could even read it. Print was difficult enough for Reg. Cursive was that much more difficult. The script that Calliopia had written with the fountain pen wasn’t the same cursive that Reg had been taught in school, but was an older-style hand. Tall and angular and squeezed close together.

  “She was interested in a boy,” Jessup noted.

  “That’s not surprising. Where did she go to school? Did she bus to public school? Get driven to some private school? Or tutored?”

  “Private school, but not as elite as you would think. A good mixture of races and classes.”

  “So there were boys.”

  Jessup nodded, her eyes on the handwriting in the journal.

  ⋆ Chapter Five ⋆

  R

  eg was tired going home, even though it was just mid-afternoon. She had said that she was only going to do less strenuous work as she recovered from the Warren Blake case to give herself time to get caught up on her sleep and get her energy back. But the work she had done for Jessup had not been easy and she knew there was more to do if they were to have any chance of finding the girl. Finding the journal was helpful; it might even be the key to finding out what had happened to her, but while Jessup and the police department were reading and analyzing it, Reg would need to see what else she could discover.

  She unlocked the door to the cottage without first looking around the yard and making sure she was alone. Maybe because in the past, the people she had been most threatened by had been the police, but this time she was helping them, so she knew they weren’t going to be waiting for her there.

  She hadn’t been thinking about Corvin or any other threats to her safety.

  “How did it go?”

  She jumped at his voice and whirled around. “What are you doing here?”

  “You said I could come by today.”

  “No, I said you could call today,” Reg corrected. “I specifically said to phone me.”

  Corvin gave her a slow smile, exuding warmth and whatever pheromones Reg had come to associate with him.

  “Not the way I remember it,” he said.

  “Then you’re remembering wrong. Shouldn’t you be brewing potions or something?”

  “That type of thing is usually more efficacious if done at midnight, or at least under the moon. During the day… my time is more open for other pursuits, barring emergencies.”

  “You have witching emergencies?”

  “Don’t you have psychic emergencies?”

  The trip to see Calliopia’s home had been pretty urgent, and it wasn’t the first emergency job Reg had been called on to perform within her new career as a medium.

  “Well, okay. Yes.” Reg rubbed her eyes, still standing on the doorstep with the key in her hand. “Now is really not a good time, Corvin. I’m tired…”

  “So the job for Detective Jessup went well?”

  “How did you get that out of me feeling tired?”

  “You’ve obviously expended a lot of energy. I assume that is good news.”

  “Well… I don’t know. It might be. I didn’t have anything that could direct the police right to her, but…” Reg trailed off. “How do you know about this case?”

  “I hear things.”

  “Yeah? What do you know about it?” She couldn’t speak to him openly about the case if he didn’t really know anything about it. It was a police matter, and she assumed she needed to keep quiet about it with anyone who wasn’t already in the know.

  “Missing teenager,” Corvin said. “Part of that lot,” he made a vague directional gesture.

  Reg raised her brows.

  “Part of the Papillon family, I think,” he offered.

  Reg nodded grudgingly.

  “And…?” he prompted.

  “Like I said, I couldn’t do anything that would point them directly to where she was being held, but I did get some impressions. I found her journal for them. Maybe there will be something in there that will help them to figure it out. If it wasn’t just some random kidnapping…”

  “And this…?” Corvin indicated the cloak Reg hadn’t yet had a chance to take into the cottage.

  “Just… a piece of clothing to help me to reach her again, if I can.”

  “So, no location clues for the police? Being held near a large body of water?”

  Reg couldn’t help laughing. “Everything in Florida is near a large body of water.”

  “So that would be a pretty good bet.”

  “No, nothing like that. I could see where she was, but only from the inside, nothing that would be helpful to the police in figuring out where she was.” Reg leaned on the doorframe. “I really am tired.”

  “I could come in,” Corvin suggested. “Help tuck you into bed?”

  Reg shook her head at his audacity.

  Reg did not allow Corvin to tuck her in. She left him outside where he belonged and went into the cottage on her own. Already unnerved by one unexpected guest, she checked all around the cottage to make sure there were no burglars lurking under beds or behind doors before deciding she could safely go to sleep. Having been assaulted by Hawthorne-Rose in the cottage, she couldn’t help feeling a little overanxious, do
uble- and triple-checking locks to be sure she couldn’t be taken off-guard.

  Starlight followed her from room to room, obviously wondering what she was looking for. When she satisfied herself that it was safe and headed toward the bed, he nipped at her calves.

  “Hey! Cut that out!” Reg whirled on Starlight, and he jumped back, retreating far out of her reach, then sitting down and watching her as she glared at him angrily. “What was that for? Just because I’m going to bed, that doesn’t mean it’s time to eat. You don’t need anything right now. If you do, you can eat your dry kibble like cats are supposed to!”

  He licked at his back where his fur had become ruffled.

  “If you’re going to bite me, I’m going to start carrying a spray bottle around with me. Or maybe a whole glass of water. How would you like that?”

  He stopped licking and stared at her steadily.

  “Don’t give me attitude.”

  He didn’t flinch or blink.

  “Fine, I’m going to lay down now. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad. I’ll shut you in the bathroom.”

  She turned back to her bedroom, but looked back over her shoulder once to make sure he wasn’t coming after her again. He stayed where he was, watching her departure.

  Reg sighed as she climbed into bed and got settled in. The day was warm, even with the air conditioning running, so she peeled off her socks and didn’t pull on the covers. Her brain felt fried after the mental work she had done looking for Calliopia. As soon as she lay down, she could feel her consciousness slipping away.

  She slept soundly for a couple of hours, but then she started to dream. She found herself once again in Calliopia’s room. The drapes had been pulled closed again, so the room was only dimly lit through the cracks between the panels.

  Calliopia was sitting at her desk. In her hand was an item that they had not turned up in her bedroom, maybe the object that Reg had sensed was missing. A glittering silver knife. The handle was ornately carved, and it felt warm and well-balanced in Callie’s hand. She drew the point down her arm several times, not cutting the skin, just running the blade over it. She whispered something to herself, but Reg couldn’t understand what it was. As with Calliopia’s song, she had reverted to another language. Her family must have retained their native tongue when they had emigrated to the United States, however far in the past that had been.