Reg didn’t know what she was saying, but it sounded like a question. The same thing repeated over and over again.
She seemed to be working her way up to something. As she repeated the question in a whisper, she ran the blade down her arm again, the cutting edge positioned against her pale skin. She moved it down, and Reg felt the bite of the blade and gasped in shock. She tried to put her hand over the cut or over Calliopia’s hand to stop her, but she had no control over the situation. She was only an observer.
Blood welled up in a line. It was a shallow cut, nothing serious, but Reg knew enough about self-harming to know that was the way it started. Shallow cuts at first, hesitation marks. Testing how difficult it was and what kind of relief it might bring before proceeding further. Then deeper cuts, other locations, and maybe a suicide attempt.
She tried to call out to Callie in her mind, telling her to stop and to talk to someone, to get help before it proceeded into something more serious. In the vision, Calliopia sat there staring down at the blood welling up on her arm, still repeating the question in a voice that was breaking and getting quieter.
People love you. Reg tried to get the message across the abyss between them. People love you and want you to be healthy and happy. Don’t do this.
But she was seeing the past, not the present. Reg couldn’t change the past, and she couldn’t see what it would lead to. But whatever had happened next, Reg had been right. Calliopia was not a little girl anymore, playing princess and ponies in her pink and gold room. She was a teenager, dangerously depressed.
Who knew what sequence of events she had been about to trigger.
⋆ Chapter Six ⋆
W
hen Reg woke up, Starlight was standing on top of her, kneading with his paws, purring up a storm. Reg considered this strange behavior for a few minutes, still groggy from her afternoon nap, before rolling over to tip him off.
Starlight snorted and righted himself, stalking around her to confront her nose to nose.
“What are you doing?” Reg demanded.
He yowled, drawing the sound out like a plaintive query. He snuffled at her hand and Reg realized from the coldness of his breath that it was once again wet with blood. She checked to make sure she hadn’t bled on the pillow or bedsheets, then got up to take care of it.
“I don’t know why it keeps opening back up,” she told Starlight crossly. “It should be starting to heal by now.”
Apparently deciding that she was alright, Starlight rubbed against Reg’s legs, curling his tail around them like a snake.
“I suppose you’re ready for something to eat now. Me too. Let’s see what we can find in the fridge.”
One benefit of Sarah coming and going as if she owned the place—which she did—was that she had taken it upon herself to make sure Reg was taken care of, and that included the occasional restock of her fridge. Reg checked the fridge but didn’t find anything new and interesting there, so she pulled a box of macaroni and cheese out of the cupboard and started the pasta boiling.
“This is not cat food,” she told Starlight. “You need to eat the food that’s actually made for cats. Look at this.” She took the box of dry cat food out of the cupboard, shook it, and showed him the box. “Look, it has a picture of a cat on it. Like you. That means it’s for you. And listen: ‘promotes smooth and luxurious fur’ and ‘scientifically balanced nutrition’ and ‘great meaty taste.’ Doesn’t that sound good?”
He stared at her inscrutably.
“Listen to the ingredients. It has…” Reg scanned the dense ingredients list for familiar words, “…uh, chicken and pork byproducts. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t seem the least bit impressed. Reg was a little irritated at the cat food company for burying the meat under a lot of other polysyllabic chemical names. Shouldn’t food for cats actually be filled with meat? She might have to replace the cat food with another brand that had more real meat in it to see if it were more appetizing to him.
When the macaroni was soft and Reg had mixed the bright orange cheese into it, she spooned some into Starlight’s dish. He immediately went to work on it, making slurping and chawing sounds as he went. Reg made a face at him.
“Eat politely.”
He stopped to look at her, then went back to eating, even more noisily.
“You’re as bad as a kid.”
Reg called the number on Detective Jessup’s card and told her about the dream she’d had.
“And are you sure this was a vision of something that happened to Calliopia?” Jessup asked, “It wasn’t just a random dream because you were thinking about her?”
“No. I’m sure it really happened. You could ask her parents about it, but a lot of times, parents have no idea when their kid is cutting.”
Jessup hmmed. “They might know if she was depressed, though. They never said so, and she didn’t have anything… dark on the walls or in the journal.”
“What was in the journal?”
“She did have a boy she was interested in. Not obvious from the journal just how close they were. Unless a girl is explicit, it’s hard to tell the difference between a crush from a distance and an actual physical relationship. It is worrying, though.”
“Worrying how?”
“The boy that she was interested in… was not someone her parents would have wanted her to see.”
“Why? Was he older?”
“I haven’t checked his age. But the two families… are not friendly.”
“Oh,” Reg stretched the word out several syllables, understanding. “Romeo and Juliet, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Have you told her parents? Asked them if they knew?”
“If they’d known, they would have told us when they made the initial report. Hopefully, it was just a crush and she never actually got together with him. You know how silly girls can be.”
“Are you going to go back to them with it?”
“I will, but not yet. I want to check it out quietly first.”
“You don’t think that this boy had anything to do with her disappearance, do you? If she’s being held against her will, then it’s not by him, right? If she was with him, I wouldn’t have seen her locked in a dark room.”
“You didn’t actually see that it was locked. You said there were other people coming and going. Maybe she was just sleeping there and that’s why the room was dark.”
“No. She wanted out. She was being kept there against her will. And he wouldn’t be holding her against her will.”
“How do you know that? She liked him, yes, but if she decided she didn’t want to stay with him anymore and wanted to go home, and he wanted to keep her there…”
Reg’s stomach clenched and felt queasy, suddenly regretting that she and Starlight had polished off the entire box of macaroni.
“I hope not.”
“I’d rather that than some of the alternatives. But we don’t know yet. No point in jumping to conclusions.”
Reg made a noise of agreement.
“I want you to talk to Corvin,” Jessup said.
Reg felt her jaw drop. She looked at the phone for a minute, as if it were the phone’s fault for sending the wrong message.
“What?”
“What you saw with Calliopia. I want you to talk to him about it, tell him what you saw.”
“About her cutting?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What is Corvin going to know about that? He’s not a doctor or psychiatrist.”
“He has expertise in some areas. I’d like you to give him your impressions and see if it triggers anything for him.”
Reg shook her head. “I don’t want him coming here.”
“Understandable,” Jessup agreed. “I wouldn’t want him in my house, either. How about at the police station?”
“I’d prefer not to go there, either. Isn’t there somewhere neutral we could meet? A coffee shop? As long as you’re there, I don’t have t
o worry about…”
Reg wasn’t sure how to finish. Just how much did Jessup know about who Corvin was and what he did? Just because she was familiar with some of the magic that was practiced in Black Sands, that didn’t necessarily mean she knew all of the details. It would be hard for anyone to know all of the players and how they were involved in the magical community. If Jessup knew a lot of practitioners, she wouldn’t have called on Reg to consult on Calliopia’s case. She would have had other psychics on retainer already.
“I’ll keep Corvin in check,” Jessup agreed. “Between the two of us, we can manage him.”
Reg left it with Jessup to make arrangements with Corvin. She wanted to have some time to herself before meeting with him again face to face, to make sure she was calm and ready to see him again. If she were tired and stressed, he would work on her weaknesses and might be able to overcome her defenses. She knew what he was now, and hopefully that meant that she would be able to keep her head and not be drawn into his snares like an insect into a Venus fly trap.
She had no intention of losing her powers to him again. Next time, she knew there would be no getting them back. That had been a one-time thing. But she wasn’t going to let him steal them again.
Reg tried to meditate and achieve a state of calm, but the meditation thing wasn’t working for her. She had such a busy brain that she could never seem to focus on one thing for long enough to achieve any sort of Zen state.
She tried patting Starlight instead. She could feel the calming, soothing energy coming off of him like the warmth from a fireplace. As soon as she touched him, her heart rate started to slow.
Why did Jessup want her to talk to Corvin? She closed her eyes and tried to remember every detail that she could of the dream. Callie and her knife. Tracing lines down her arm, and then starting to cut. The words were almost a chant in her mind. Was she thinking about the boy she had a crush on? Were they a couple or did she admire him from afar? Did he have a girlfriend, and that was what had upset her so much that she had cut herself? Was the cutting to relieve her pain or was it leading up to a suicide attempt? Or both?
Starlight purred and Reg refocused on him. She would do everything she could to help Calliopia. The cutting was in the past. Reg wanted to prevent anything bad from happening to Calliopia in the present or the near future. Reg owed Callie that much.
⋆ Chapter Seven ⋆
J
essup met Reg outside The Crystal Bowl so that they could go in together and neither would be left alone with Corvin.
“It’s a public place, so there’s not that much he can do,” Jessup said, “but we’ll stay together anyway. Better safe than sorry.”
“He can still turn on the charm in a place like this, and lead on to other places,” Reg agreed.
Jessup looked Reg over thoughtfully. “Is that what happened before?”
Reg shrugged and looked away. “Pretty much, yeah. We went out for dinner, drinks, dessert… which led to other things… I took him home…”
Jessup winced.
“I know. Stupid,” Reg acknowledged. “I should have listened to Sarah. Used some common sense. I didn’t think he would do anything.”
“Not really your fault. That’s what he’s genetically programmed to do. Charm and seduce to feed on others’ powers. You were lucky.”
“I know. They don’t usually give them back.”
“They never give them back. There’s something special about you.”
Reg shook her head. “It was the only way to get the upper hand over Hawthorne-Rose. It was just the logical solution. But now Corvin seems… even more obsessed with getting them back again.”
“He’s fed recently, so he should have some self-control. I’ll be there to make sure nothing happens. I really do need his opinion on this.”
“I want to get Calliopia back too. I know… how scared and vulnerable she’s feeling. She just wants to get out of there.”
Jessup nodded and patted Reg on the shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. This is the fastest way.”
The two of them entered The Crystal Bowl together. Reg felt Corvin’s presence before she even saw him. She led Jessup to a back table. There were no private dining rooms at The Crystal Bowl, which was good. She would be safer with everything out in the open and plenty of distractions.
“Ladies,” Corvin greeted. “You have no idea how delighted I was to get your call.”
Jessup placed a small box on the table. Corvin’s eyes followed it. He put his hand over the box as if checking its temperature. His pupils dilated.
“Not yet,” Jessup said, sliding the box away from him. “You help me first.”
Corvin nodded, giving a strained smile. “Regina,” he greeted, reaching out to shake her hand.
Reg didn’t touch him. She pulled out a chair and sat down. “Let’s get this over with. The longer we draw out the small talk, the longer it’s going to take to find Callie.”
Corvin motioned to the teapot in the middle of the table. “A drink?”
“Is it safe?” Reg looked first at Corvin and then at Jessup.
“You think I would poison you?” Corvin demanded.
“I think you would… magic me. Or maybe something else that would let you control me.”
Corvin looked at Jessup. “No spells,” he promised. “Just tea.” He looked back at Reg. “Just regular black tea, no hallucinogens or special ingredients. Something to refresh yourselves and to focus your awareness.”
Jessup nodded. “Go ahead,” she told Reg, and poured herself a half teacup. Reg followed suit. She took a sip of the tea, took a deep breath, and let the air out slowly.
“Okay. Tell me what it is you need to know.”
Corvin raised his brows at Jessup. “You’ll have to take that one, I don’t know what it is you needed my expertise on.”
“Just tell him what you told me,” Jessup told Reg. “I want to see what he thinks.”
Reg related the dream she’d had about Calliopia, trying to be as specific as possible about what she saw and heard and about her impressions at the time, her certainty that it was a memory, not just something her brain had conjured.
Corvin’s eyes were quick and bright, focused on Reg’s face throughout the story. He nodded a few times and scratched his whiskers, thinking about it.
“Your focus was on Calliopia cutting herself,” Corvin said. “I want you to widen your perceptions to the rest of the room, or whatever else was in view.”
“Hmm.” Reg closed her eyes and recalled the vision, frowning. “Okay. She was in her bedroom. The drapes were pulled, so it was mostly dark, but I could still see.”
“Where in her room was she? Sitting on the bed? On the floor?”
“No, at her desk.”
“What else was on the desk?”
Reg pressed her fingers into her temples. The cut on her hand throbbed. Reg concentrated.
“The things I took out of her drawers.” She could see them out on the desk in front of her, and it all started to come together. A vial of liquid. Burnt herbs smoking on the salver, their acrid sweet scent hanging in the air. The pen laid across a couple of sheets of parchment, with a recipe or incantation written in Calliopia’s old-style script, indecipherable to Reg. “Oh.”
“Yes…?”
“It was a spell, wasn’t it?”
“Tell me what you saw.”
Reg told him what she could about each object. Corvin nodded.
“I don’t know what spell she was performing without more details, but it certainly sounds like it.”
“Blood magic,” Jessup said.
Reg looked at her. “Is that… like human sacrifice…?”
“Human sacrifice would be a different kind of blood magic. Blood is used to strengthen some kinds of spells. Especially love potions. The caster uses her own blood, not blood from another victim. Putting some of her own life force into the spell.”
“Modern-day practitioners don’t generally use ceremonial da
ggers,” Corvin said. “That’s a bit… dramatic. Most today will use a finger lancet, like a diabetic uses for glucose testing. You only need a drop or two.”
Reg pressed her thumb into her palm, aware her cut was bleeding again. Cuts on fingers and hands were so problematic. It kept opening again every time she moved. She tried to ignore the pain. “A love potion. For the boy she wrote about in her journal?”
Corvin took a sip of his own drink, which was definitely not tea, and raised a questioning eyebrow at Jessup.
“What boy?”
Jessup sighed and didn’t answer. Reg realized she probably shouldn’t have mentioned him. She looked down at her tea, trying to imagine what kind of a boy Calliopia had been attracted to. Was she drawn to him just because he was the forbidden fruit? Was he good-looking? Did they have any common interests?
Corvin’s eyes were dancing as he looked at Reg. “A Rosdew?” he suggested.
“A who?”
Jessup looked daggers at Corvin. “Where did you get that from?”
“Miss Rawlins.” He smiled at her.
“I don’t even know what a Rosdew is!” Reg protested. “And I didn’t say a word!”
“You didn’t have to. It was written all over your face.”
“You were never telepathic before,” Jessup growled at Corvin. “A little intuitive, maybe, but nothing like that.”
“After holding Regina’s powers, I’ve retained a small measure of her abilities. And I’ve done the best I could to enhance them through whatever other sources I could.” Corvin eyed the box that Jessup had placed on the table.
“You are here to consult, not to pry.”
A Psychic with Catitude Page 4
