Soul Loss Page 19

  “Let me get you some coffee,” Mae said. “What would you like?”

  “Iced.” Dahlia’s speech scarcely betrayed her North Carolina roots. She looked past Mae, watching people. “Black. No sugar”

  Mae bought the drinks and returned to her companion with two black iced coffees. She really wanted sweet tea but intuition told her to conform to Dahlia. Still observing the other customers in the coffee shop, the girl took her drink without thanking Mae. “There are a fair number of decent-looking people in Santa Fe. Have you noticed that? Not as fat as the rest of the country.”

  What an odd piece of small talk. No, maybe not, from a model. “They are in good shape.”

  “But they don’t do a thing with their hair.”

  Mae nodded without comment. She didn’t do a thing with her own hair besides wash and brush it, and Dahlia’s was probably cultivated and nourished like a garden.

  “And they let their skin go.” This came out with the strongest emotion Dahlia had registered so far. “Some of these people are so dried up. They have no idea.”

  “Reckon they don’t care.”

  “They should. You seem to.”

  “I try.”

  “You’ve done pretty well, for a redhead in New Mexico, but I can tell you the real secret of skin. Of course there’s sunscreen and staying hydrated, and the right cleansers—and a soft towel is very important—but this is the key thing.” Dahlia sipped her coffee, without pursing her lips to the straw. “Restrain your face.”

  Mae had to restrain a laugh. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. I mean, you obviously take care of your complexion, but ...” The purple-blue eyes fixed frankly on Mae’s. “You’re awfully expressive. Relax your eyebrows. See? Now if you like what I say, just imply a smile. Try it. See? Half the wrinkles.”

  “I’ll have to practice.” Mae tried a pale shade of an agreeable look. “Do you work in skin care?”

  “No.” Dahlia’s tone was slightly contemptuous, but she restrained it as well as her face. “I’m a model. I patronize skin care.”

  So she wasn’t going to hide her profession. This was unexpected. “That’s so cool. I wouldn’t think there’s a lot of modeling work here.”

  “Not much, no. Mostly I fly to L.A. or New York.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “Beats going to college. What a chore. I hated it. What are you doing in college here? You sound North Carolina. Mountains.”

  “You’re good with accents. Most people can’t tell one Southerner from another. My daddy coaches at College of the Rio Grande.” Dahlia registered subtle approval. The small, private school must have impressed her. Mae decided not to mention the free tuition, and sipped her coffee, trying not to overuse her face in case that was what it took to build a rapport. “What got you to studying with these healers?”

  Dahlia scooted her chair in closer and spoke just above a whisper. “I had a professional reason.”

  “Really? Can they just wave a crystal at you and make you skinny? A lot of girls would love that. Put me out of business as personal trainer, though.”

  A glimmer of further approbation showed in Dahlia’s eyes at the mention of Mae’s occupation. “Oh, it’s easy being thin. For me, anyway. No, I wanted to be the best. You know how that feels, right? There are a lot of trainers out there. How do you get ahead of the pack? I needed to find my power animal.” Dahlia drank her coffee, again with great care about how she moved her lips onto the straw. “Jill’s helping me with that.”

  “A power animal. I never would have thought of that. Would it fit in a paper on emotional wellness?”

  “I have no idea. I’m not into that healing and wholeness bullshit.”

  A desire for power was more in character for Lily Petersen than an interest in healing. “Power sounds more interesting, but I’m studying what most people who go to healers and psychics want.”

  Dahlia implied the potential lift of one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Which is?”

  Mae improvised. “Growth.” It was what Kenny talked about all the time. “I’ve read that word so much I’m starting to picture spiritual growths. Like carbuncles or something.”

  Dahlia’s eyes bordered on warmth, and her lips nearly curved. “I’m so glad you don’t take it all seriously. I swear, except for having my neighbor fix my stupid lights, I haven’t met any normal people around here. I mean, look at that.” She nodded toward a Caucasian couple in white robes and turbans. “They think they’re Sikhs. Some suburbanites out of Idaho or somewhere and they go do Kundalini in Espanola and they’re all Singhs and Khalsas now. Spiritual people are such idiots.”

  Her cell phone rang in a pocket on the outside of her tiny, square purse. She answered without excusing herself. “Oh. Wonderful ... Did you get them to meet my fee? ... Good ... Yes. Of course. Monday and Tuesday. I’ll be there.” She entered a date in the calendar function of the phone and tucked it back in its place. “I have to go out of town Sunday so I can do a shoot in LA next week, but tomorrow I’m going to a concert with Jill and Fiona. Join us. Jill might even talk to you.”

  “Thank you. I look forward to meeting them.”

  “We’ll see. They may not want to be researched.”

  “Should you check with them first?”

  “No. If they won’t talk to you or the music sucks, we can get up and shop. The concert’s at a mall. There’s a new coffee shop with a music stage at La Villa Real Center.”

  That mall was the first place Mae had seen Jamie perform. “Is the band Zambethalia?” Dahlia nodded. “They won’t suck,” Mae assured her.

  “Great.” Dahlia finished her drink, unenthused even when she said great. She reached to the empty chair beside her and picked up a copy of the local free paper, The Reporter. “This is your best resource.” She turned it to the back page classifieds and took a pen out of a special pen compartment in her purse. “These people will be interesting for your research.” She slashed through a few ads with big checkmarks. “And maybe these ...” She ticked a few more, stood, gathered her purchases, and dropped a fresh pink card in front of Mae. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. We should get together, hang out sometime without the old women when I get back from LA. ’Bye.”

  With a flip of her extraordinary hair, she swung toward the exit and then braked, spun back, and returned to Mae, leaning in close to whisper. “Don’t tell anyone what I do, all right? And don’t tell anyone what you’re seeing them for. If you really want to see them do their thing, you should pretend you’re suffering.” She winked, a robotic little drop of her eyelid without a wrinkle, and strode out into the blinding sunlight of the parking lot. She put on sunglasses. No squinting, of course, and undoubtedly she was SPF 50’d down to her perfect pink toenails.

  Mae went back for more coffee, this time with a muffin. She read the ads in The Reporter while she ate. The people Dahlia had recommended would help you communicate with your garden’s spirits, reveal your pets’ past lives, do Native American inspired feng shui, or astral plane surgery. Mae didn’t make any appointments.

  Did Dahlia have a strategy? It looked like she wanted to steer Mae away from the people she had damaged, but also to show off her relationship with the famous Ms. Betts. To do that she’d have to include Fiona, but she had already implied Fiona was worthless, perhaps to keep Mae from talking with her much.

  Why the new name? She could be Lily Dahlia, a flower-power version of a Southern double name. Mae was Rhoda Mae but had dropped the Rhoda. Using a preferred middle name wouldn’t explain Dahlia’s lack of a last name, though, or the don’t-tell-anyone whisper about her profession. Lily-as-Dahlia had a few secrets. Not only from her parents, but from her Santa Fe friends. Why had she shared them with Mae?

  Mae handled the card. She didn’t trust Lily. Dahlia. Was she really Jill’s weapon, like Kate suspected? If so, she was up to something—Mae had no idea what—on her own as well. Something Jill didn’t know about.

  On her way to her car, Mae got a
call from someone named Heather, asking her to stop at Palace Street Healing Arts to sign her contract with Spirit World Fair. When Mae got there, Heather gave her a list of names with times, locations, directions and phone numbers for the next morning’s appointments with people Mae was supposed to heal. Tomorrow. She should be practicing her skills, not unpacking for Jamie.

  Back at his apartment, she brought her suitcase into the living room and took out the brocaded case with the Chinese chi balls, and the books on crystals and on meditation techniques. It had been too long since she’d used them.

  She sat on the floor, rolling the metal balls enameled with gold-edged clouds and dragons in her hand. It was supposed to be chi, not just subtle muscle control that made the balls orbit each other. She used to be able to roll and to reverse them in either hand without a sound. Now the balls bumped each other, the chimes inside them ringing a gentle scolding.

  Meditation was equally challenging. The clutter sent out distracting energy and it took her a while to focus. After a few moderately successful practices with the balls, she lay back with Lily’s jewelry in one hand, turquoise and aventurine in the other, and her grandmother’s amethyst resting on her heart. This time, maybe she would have a vision that found answers.

  Why is Lily doing what she’s doing here? I need to know what will stop her if she’s a witch, and protect her, too, if Jill is one.

  The psychic tunnel moved Mae to a smaller kitchen than she’d seen before. Naomi, her broad-bottomed figure slightly slimmer, her thick hair as long and brown as Lily’s was now, talked on the phone. Lily, a fussy five-year-old, tugged at her mother’s jeans pocket chanting, “Mommy, Mommy.”

  Frowning, Naomi ignored her for a while, and then pushed her away. Lily cried and stamped her feet. “You’re awful. You hate me.”

  Her mother blew out an exasperated breath. “I’ve got to go. It’s Lily.” She slammed the receiver down and slapped the child across the face. Shocked, Mae struggled to stay in the vision. Lily wailed louder and struck at her mother’s arms. Naomi slapped her again and carried her up to her room. “You’ll stay there until you can be quiet.”

  Lily screamed and threw her toys around the room until Naomi seized her by the arm and spanked her, crushing Lily’s face against the wall, spanking until the child crumpled.

  Naomi stalked from the room. Lily lay on her back, wailing, and beat the floor with her heels. As time passed with no end to the howling, Naomi hollered, “Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

  Lily softened to sniffling and whimpering and rolled to her side, her ear to the floor near a heat register. Her mother’s voice came through it, and she was crying too, speaking to someone she called “honey.” No one answered. A phone conversation. Perhaps Naomi had renewed the call Lily had interrupted.

  Tears drying on her cheeks, Lily bunched up the rag rug from her floor and held onto it like a teddy bear. “I want my daddy.”

  Mae tried to keep her feelings from intruding on her focus, but her heart ached and her arms longed to reach into the past to comfort the little girl.

  “I’m so sorry, honey,” Naomi said to the person on the phone. She sniffed and blew her nose. “I don’t know what gets into me—I feel like I’m losing control. That child is so difficult. I ... I’m so ashamed. ... I hit her. I slapped my baby.” She burst into sobs. “I need help. Harold’s the only one she listens to and he’s on the road for three months. Three months. If I didn’t have you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  Naomi wasn’t talking to Harold. Mae almost lost the vision again. With effort, she followed the thread of Lily’s energy back into the tunnel to a new vision.

  Lily was about seven, tall and thin with a pale, pinched face. She was sneaking into her own house, closing the front door without a sound, and creeping up the stairs in her sock feet, carrying her shoes in one hand, her school bag in the other. The door to what must be her parents’ room was closed as Lily slipped into her own room, leaving the door ajar. She sat at a child-sized table and opened a coloring book, then began to fill in a picture. Not once did she stray outside the lines. Something made her look up. She tiptoed to her door and hid behind it, peering through the crack between the hinges. Naomi, dressed in a silky kimono, was kissing a tall, blond, broad-shouldered young man at the head of the stairs. He stood one step down, sliding his hands along her curves.

  “I hate to hurry you but the school bus comes soon,” she murmured between kisses. “I need to get dressed.”

  “Why? Your husband’s on tour. You called in sick. So of course you’d be undressed.” The man stroked her back and squeezed her bottom. Taking a step backward down the stairs, he paused and kissed her breasts. “Hm?”

  “At least I need my nightgown on if I’m sick.” Naomi’s eyes closed and her lips parted. “But ... you can help me put it on.” She drew him back into her room.

  After checking the hallway again, Lily sneaked down the stairs, shoes in hand, and opened the front door to run across the lawn.

  From the sidewalk a few houses down, she watched the man leave the house and get in his car. She shoved her feet into her shoes and then walked toward the house as if she were just arriving home. As the man drove down the street, she smiled and waved. He waved back. Re-entering the house noisily, Lily called, “Hey Mom, I’m early. I got a ride home with Julie.”

  Enough. Mae put Lily’s things back in her suitcase. What she’d learned was far too private. Unless there was some hidden logic to her visions about Lily, they were once again useless as well as misdirected. How could what she’d seen help her stop Lily from stealing power? Could Lily be preventing Mae from finding out?

  Mae had encountered a witch once before. He’d been able to sense her psychic access to his life and to catch her looking. If Lily could do something like that, it would make this work a whole lot harder.

  Mae cleared her energy with a quartz point and took the crystals outside to rebalance in the sun. A spiral flagstone path wound around clumps of sage and what looked like it might bloom into lavender. Jamie must have made this little garden in his signature design. His landlady’s side of the yard was nothing but dirt, decorated only with the piles of pink pebbles excavated by ants.

  She laid the crystals on a rock and walked the spiral, reflecting on her vision. It was hard to reconcile the generous, nurturing Naomi who had been so kind to Jamie on his tour with the woman who had slapped her child and spanked her so hard she collapsed. Mae hoped the violence was an aberration, a one-time terrible mistake, but it might not have been. It seemed to be part of some kind of breakdown for Naomi. Her desire to reconnect with Lily had to be burdened with guilt and regret.

  To Lily, Naomi had been the “bad parent” and Harold the “good parent.” The bad parent had betrayed the good one, with a man Lily knew. What had Lily done with that secret? What had the secret done to Lily? Calling herself Dahlia, she studied with a shamanic teacher recommended by the “bad” parent, then cut her mother off and refused to see the “good” parent, too.

  The journey had raised more questions than it answered, and complicated Mae’s view of the girl. It made her care about her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sign interpreting Bernadette’s Friday morning keynote address at the conference, Kate sat at the left edge of the stage with Lobo at her feet, her mind buzzing with both excitement and worry.

  The talk was on creating standards in CAM—complementary and alternative medicine— practices new to formal professional credentialing. Bernadette began with the history of licensure in acupuncture, and then moved on to Ayurveda and yoga as examples of CAM fields that were in the process of defining and measuring qualifications. When she reached the topics of healing and shamanism, Kate had to keep popping mental bubbles—from ideas for the guild to concerns about the plague—so she could focus on signing Bernadette’s speech.

  “Energy healing therapies, from older traditions like Qi Gong to modern ones like the Brennan school, have t
raining standards. But neither the skill nor the result is observable in the same way it is in the case of an Ayurvedic diet or a yoga practice. How does one assess competence on the invisible? The same problems occur with training neo-shamanic practitioners. How does one measure the outcomes, or even confirm the reality of the experience? These fields present special challenges, but I believe those are not insurmountable if practitioners are willing to be studied.”

  And if the best ones don’t all get the plague.

  As she wrapped up, Dr. Pena asked if there were any questions. Kate scanned the audience. She would need to hear the question well enough to sign it. Jill Betts stood. Her voice carried. “Are you serious about credentialing and registration for shamans? Is nothing sacred?”

  She sounded serious, and yet many in the audience laughed at her use of the cliché. So much for Jill joining the guild. Kate signed the question and indicated as an aside that there had been laughter.

  “With respect for sacred traditions,” Bernadette replied, “I certainly wouldn’t suggest that we need exams and certifications for Native medicine people. That may be my Apache bias, but Indian people have ways of assuring competence in our traditions. Perhaps, though, there is a need for credentialing people who set up a practice and charge by the hour, or train others for a fee. I’d recommend that such a process should be attentive, the way it is in more established fields, to the potential to do harm as well as the competence to do good.”

  Jill began to say more, but Bernadette had already acknowledged the next questioner. He asked about standards for yoga teacher training programs. Jill sat, taut as if ready to spring back to her feet, but the new subject was popular and used up all the time allotted for questions. Kate translated Bernadette’s final thank you, and the professor put her web site on the PowerPoint screen for further contacts. After applause, Bernadette said, “I’d like to thank Katelina Radescu for her signing. You were beautiful to watch.”