A Psychic with Catitude

by P. D. Workman

  And then there were their looks. If someone were making a movie about the kidnapping and their relationship, they would have cast a beautiful, fresh-faced girl and a dark, handsome, brooding boy, something like a younger version of Corvin. In real life, Calliopia was a girl with plain features, muddy brown hair, and a weedy figure. Ruan, far from being a dark and handsome Romeo, looked like a ten-year-old. He was shorter than any of the boys he appeared beside in the year book. Maybe the shortest one in his grade. His face was child-like, as if he had not yet reached puberty. Both had watery blue eyes. Neither showed up on the honor rolls and certainly neither one would ever be prom king or queen. They would probably be lucky to even get asked to the prom.

  And maybe that was the one thing they had in common. Maybe they were both outcasts, the bottom of the barrel, without a hope of ever measuring up to society’s measurements of success. They’d grow up to be office clerks, dentists, or social workers, good respectable jobs with little praise or chance at achieving social standing.

  Reg waited for the lunch bell to ring. In the chaos that followed, she could mix with the crowds and ask people if they knew Callie or Ruan. If she were lucky, she would find Ruan himself, and see if he knew anything about Callie’s disappearance. Since she wasn’t a police officer, there was no danger in spooking Ruan. He wouldn’t have any idea that he was a suspect. Reg was just a friend of the family trying to find out what had led up to Callie’s disappearance.

  Before the bell rang, the door nearest Reg opened, and she watched Ruan walk out alone.

  In her old life, she would have dismissed it as a coincidence. A highly unlikely one, but a coincidence nonetheless. She was used to such things. Unlikely things did happen to her. Serendipity. Synchronicity.

  In her new life, she knew what Sarah or Corvin would tell her. It was part of her psychic gifts. An intuition that told her which doors Ruan was going to come out of and when. She needed to meet him, so she was standing there when he decided, of his own accord, to leave the building before the dismissal bell had even rung. She watched to see which way he would go. He walked straight toward her. Reg waited until he was close to her before calling out.

  “Ruan.”

  He turned his head and looked at her. His expression was blank. If he were surprised at being addressed by name by a stranger, he didn’t show it.

  “Ruan Rosdew. That’s your name, isn’t it?”

  He looked around as if making sure she wasn’t accompanied by someone else and that they had not attracted anyone’s attention. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of Calliopia Papillon. Or rather… a friend of the family.”

  He rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “So?”

  His clothes, Reg saw close up, had been well-tailored at some point. But they were old and worn and had been mended numerous times. Like clothes that had been passed through a long line of boys, even though he was the only Rosdew she had found in the recent yearbooks. He carried a damp, earthy odor. Not sweat or body odor, but a musty scent. His hair appeared to be uncombed. That was a teenage boy for you. Some of them went to excessive lengths to look just right, with not a single hair out of place, and some refused to attend to any personal hygiene at all.

  “Did you know that Callie is missing?”

  He considered her for a moment before nodding. “Yes. I heard that.”

  “You two were friends, weren’t you?”

  He shook his head. “No. I never had anything to do with her.”

  “She liked you.”

  His eyebrows went up, making him look even more childlike. “No one likes me.” He didn’t say it in an angry or depressed way, but as if he was simply stating a fact. As if he would have been surprised if someone did like him.

  “Callie did. She wrote about you in her diary.” Reg bit her lip after saying that. She should really not have revealed such a thing. If they rescued Callie and she ended up going back to school with Ruan, she would be mortified that he knew she had written about him.

  Ruan didn’t act as if this were a revelation to him or of any interest. He just shook his head.

  “You know who Callie is.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “No.” Again, a simple fact. Ingenuous. Unconcerned. Not that he’d hated her because of the feud, or loved her in spite of it. No embarrassment or teenage drama. As if he’d never given Calliopia Papillon a second thought. Maybe he never had. She didn’t detect any signs of deception from him and she was usually a pretty good lie detector.

  Was the whole idea of star-crossed lovers a false trail? Maybe the kidnapping had nothing at all to do with Ruan or the Rosdews. Just because their families had a feud going on, that didn’t mean that the Rosdews had been the ones to take her.

  Jessup had said that Callie was interested in the Rosdew boy, but Reg couldn’t see any reason she would be. It was possible she had admired him from afar and he had never known it, but what would she admire him for? How short and childlike he was?

  Or maybe… Reg flashed back to her own days in high school. Maybe he had just said a kind word to her. Something that he didn’t even remember, but she did. School could be a cruel place, full of bullying and scorn. For someone like Calliopia, it could be a very lonely place.

  Reg had hated school. She was always the new kid, poor, a weirdo foster kid who didn’t fit in. She made friends quickly, but they weren’t the kind of friends she’d keep for life. They were friends that she worked hard to entertain, so that if she were lucky, she wouldn’t have to sit alone for lunch. It wasn’t about who she was, but about giving them what they wanted so that she would be accepted.

  Maybe Ruan had just not been mean to Calliopia. Maybe he had bumped into her in the hallway and apologized for it. Or had given her a compliment or asked her opinion. For an outcast, such a tiny thing could mean everything to her.

  “Did you guys take the same bus?” Reg asked, trying to find the thread between them and hoping to discover how Callie had disappeared.

  “We do not take the bus.” Ruan shook his head and laughed. “No.”

  “When was the last time you saw Callie?”

  “I do not know.”

  He made no apparent attempt to remember and Reg felt suddenly cold. Any normal person would have at least been curious enough to think back on the last time they had seen a missing person. And a normal person talking to someone investigating a kidnapping should have at least made some show of caring and giving himself an alibi.

  Maybe there was a reason Reg wasn’t getting any tells from Ruan.

  Not because he was innocent, but because he was a psychopath. He didn’t have to cover his guilt; he didn’t even feel it.

  But Reg had a new weapon in her arsenal. She didn’t have to look for those infinitesimal physiological changes. She could use her psychic skills to test whether he were telling the truth and find out what he knew. She focused her attention on Ruan. First on the space around his body, his aura. His spiritual energy.

  It was dark and cold. Like the smell he carried, it felt damp and musty. No, not a boy who had once said a kind word to Callie in school. He had no warmth about him. Reg brought her attention down to skin level. He was pale, but not as blue-white as Calliopia’s parents. Their paleness reminded her of starlight, but his of the squirming white maggots that lived under a stump or rock.

  Reg delved into his mind, taking care, not wanting to alarm him or to go into a trance that would give him some indication of what she was up to. He was, she sensed, older than she had thought. There was nothing boyish about his mind. Was it a case of possession? And older spirit imposing itself on Ruan’s mind? She wasn’t sure if she believed in such things, but she hadn’t been sure about other psychic phenomena either, and had not believed in real witchcraft or the other things she had recently had to come to terms with. Maybe demonic possession was real and Ruan was under the control of some older, angrier spirit.

  She was thrown abruptly out
of Ruan’s mind with a violence so palpable that she staggered backward. He looked at her, eyes wide and innocent. But she could now see beyond his outward appearance, to the cunning craftiness behind those wide, childlike eyes.

  “Do you not know it is rude to enter one’s mind without permission?”

  “I’m… sorry. It was an accident. I’m still learning how to use my… gifts. I was curious and I… I’m sorry, I breached the barrier without meaning to.”

  He took a step back from her, his eyes never leaving hers. Reg felt mesmerized by his gaze. Not like she felt with Corvin; she felt no physical attraction to him, but he held her there, unable to move. Corvin’s words echoed in her mind. They do have their own brand of magic. Their own ways of luring prey.

  She tried to look away from him or to close her eyes.

  “No,” Ruan said aloud, still holding her.

  “I said I’m sorry,” Reg said. “It was a mistake.”

  “It was a mistake,” Ruan agreed in his prepubescent voice. “This isn’t any of your business. Stay out of it.”

  “But if you’ve taken that girl…”

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  With an enormous effort, Reg managed to pull herself away from his gaze. He made a grunt of protest and took a step closer to her. Reg kept distance between them, being careful not to look back into his face. She felt half-blind not being able to meet his eyes to read his expression and body language, but she wasn’t about to let him get control of her again.

  “Kidnapping is wrong,” she told him.

  “Yes.”

  Reg was thrown by his agreement and caught herself just before she met his eyes again. She was sure it had been a ploy to get her to do just that.

  “Yes?” she repeated. “If you know it’s wrong then why won’t you tell me what you know?”

  “Stay out of piskie business.”

  “What?”

  “Human creatures have no business getting involved in piskie dealings. You and the rest of your people must stay out of it.”

  “I thought your name was Rosdew.”

  But maybe they were part of a larger clan. Jessup hadn’t mentioned it to her, because she hadn’t wanted Reg to get involved. She had misjudged how helpful Reg could be to the investigation.

  “If you want to know what happened to the girl, I will tell you.”

  Reg looked at him. His offer appeared to be genuine. His gaze met hers unflinchingly. She realized her mistake too late.

  ⋆ Chapter Ten ⋆

  T

  he eyes are the windows to the soul.

  She had spent so many years reading people’s faces, looking for danger and deception while carefully guarding her own expression to protect herself and get what she needed, that looking into the boy’s eyes was her natural reaction to his surprising offer. She wanted to gauge his expression and see what he was trying to pull. Ruan was a convincing liar, but she knew he wasn’t telling her the truth. She immediately wanted to verify it in his eyes.

  And he had a hold on her again. Stronger this time. He wasn’t going to let her go or be taken off guard. Rather than pulling away, Reg went for the opposite. He’d pushed her away once when she had looked into his mind. He would do it again. She looked past his eyes, delved again into his brain. She felt for any sign of Callie and his recollections of her.

  They wrestled, gazes locked on each other. A battle of wills. Reg had been told that her powers were significant, but struggling with Ruan, she didn’t feel like it. She had needed the assistance of Starlight to break Uriel Hawthorne’s spell, and she wished she had him with her in her fight against Ruan. But Starlight was gone and she was too far from the cottage to hope that he might feel her need and come to her aid.

  Holding her paralyzed, Ruan stepped forward and grabbed her by the arm. His fingers were like iron, far too strong for his diminutive body. Reg grabbed him to pull his hand off of her. There was initial resistance, and then Ruan gave a cry and let her go. He rubbed his arm where she had grasped him, looking at her with those wide, childlike eyes. He broke his gaze and looked at her hand. It throbbed and Reg knew she was bleeding again.

  Ruan muttered something she didn’t understand, turned in a full circle, and then ran, ducking behind a low stone wall and disappearing from sight. Reg stood frozen for a moment, then ran after him. She jumped over the wall to pursue him, but he was gone.

  There was no sign of Ruan Rosdew.

  Reg searched up and down the length of the wall, looking into the trees that surrounded the private school, but she could see no sign of the boy. The school bell rang, and students poured out the doors. Not wanting anyone to see her lurking in the woods and think she was a danger to the students, Reg walked briskly back to her car and sat down.

  For a few minutes, she just sat in the car with the air conditioner blowing on her, running through what had just happened in her head. Ruan had as much as admitted that he knew what had happened to Callie, despite his earlier denials. If he didn’t know what had happened, he wouldn’t be able to claim that it was family business. She needed to let Jessup know that there was definitely a connection between the kidnapping and the Rosdew family.

  But even as she reached for her phone, Reg knew she couldn’t tell Jessup her discovery. Not only was she not supposed to be investigating on her own, but she had done exactly what Jessup had said that she wanted to avoid, spooking Ruan and sending him running.

  Blood had soaked through the bandage on her hand and Reg didn’t have bandages or any kind of first aid kit in the car. If she had been Erin, she would have been prepared. Erin was always obsessing over planning and making lists, and she would have had everything she needed right there at hand. Reg, on the other hand, always seemed to be lacking for something.

  Her hand was throbbing and she was shivering with cold. She turned the air conditioning off and waited for her body to warm up. In a few minutes she was again sweating in the Florida heat and decided she’d better head home. Halfway there, she was shivering again. She swore to herself. Either she was coming down with the flu, or her wound had become infected.

  She’d been careful to keep it clean, but maybe there had been something on the knife and she hadn’t been quick enough to get antiseptic on the wound. She swore at Hawthorne-Rose. She really didn’t have anything to complain about, considering he had put Warren into a magical coma and could have done the same to her, but she was still irritated with him for not keeping his blade clean.

  Once home, she looked around again for Starlight, calling his name up and down the street, but it would seem the cat was gone for good. She walked back into her cottage, feeling lonely and abandoned. It didn’t make any sense; she’d lived alone all her adult life but had only had a cat for a short period of time. So why should she miss him so much? He’d been nothing but a bother during the time she’d had him, biting her, complaining, and giving her all sorts of attitude. But she had gotten attached to the furball and missed having him around.

  On the kitchen counter there was another flyer, this one about a community celebration, which apparently included a potluck, a dance, and some business development opportunities. Reg stood looking at it.

  Sarah kept giving them to her. Corvin had also pushed her to start attending some of the community events. Maybe they were right. It would be good not only for her business, but for her personally. She wouldn’t feel so lonely if she knew more people in the neighborhood and could find some people she had something in common with. And maybe she wouldn’t be so strongly attracted to Corvin if there were someone else in her life.

  There was a knock at the door. Reg turned to see Sarah open it, but she remained on the doorstep instead of entering as she usually would have. Her body language was tentative.

  “I saw you out looking… but no sign of Starlight?”

  “No,” Reg sighed. She made an inviting motion to Sarah. “You can come in.”

  Sarah didn’t need a second invitation. She entered, s
hutting the door carefully behind her. Locking the barn after the horse was gone.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized again. “Have you called the pound to see if he was picked up?”

  “Yeah, I did that earlier. They put me on a list, but I’m still supposed to call in every few days in case someone forgets to call me back.”

  Reg carefully removed the sagging, blood-soaked bandage from her hand to examine the cut. Sarah got closer to have a look at it.

  “Oh, that looks bad.” She took Reg’s hand gently to look at it close up, turning it in the light and giving it a couple of light prods. “That must really hurt. You should go to Letticia. She is very expert in magical healing. She could tell you just what to do.”

  “I already know what I need to do. Clean it, bandage it, and let it rest. It’s just so hard when it’s a hand. And my dominant hand too. I can’t stop using it.”

  “If you don’t, this might get a lot worse,” Sarah said darkly. “I really don’t like the looks of it. It didn’t look like this when you first got it.”

  “No. It’s infected. I’ll put some antibiotic cream on it and take an aspirin. It will be fine.”

  “You should have Letticia look at it. I’ll give her a call.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  Sarah glanced over at the flyer Reg had been looking at, maybe detecting that it had been moved a quarter of an inch away from its original position.

  “Are you going to go?”

  “Maybe. I guess I should start getting to know more people in the community.”

  Sarah nodded her agreement. She tapped the flyer with on finger. “This is at one of those big houses out by the sanctuary. They’re always so lavish. It’s fascinating to see how the more… elite of our community live.”