Soul Loss Read online

  His long slender toes looked as normal as they could for such fingerlike appendages. No swelling, though one was bleeding. She squeezed them one by one. He frowned, but didn’t show signs of serious pain. “Wiggle ’em for me.” They rippled. She saw the source of the bleeding. “It’s your toenail. You almost ripped it off.”

  “Jeezus.” He stared at his foot, took it from her lap, and put it back on his thigh. He prodded the toenail and winced. “I’m a fucking lunatic.”

  “Shh.” She stroked his hair. “You’re not a lunatic.”

  He wiggled the loose toenail. Blood oozed from under it. “Should I pull it off all the way?”

  “No! Oh my god. Do you know how much that would hurt?”

  He frowned and wiggled the toenail again, as if pain was somehow irrelevant in decision-making.

  Mae took him up to the bathroom and cleaned and taped the injury. If left to his own devices, he would have hurt himself more, without even realizing that he shouldn’t. How in the world did he get through life?

  Stupid question. He almost hadn’t.

  Mae had worried that she’d find it hard to sleep with Jamie, but she drifted off easily after they made love, curled spoon-style with her back to his front. Her last drowsy thought was a hope that he would be able to sleep, too.

  Within what felt like minutes, she woke again. The light was still on. Gasser had lumped his bulk onto her pillow. Before she could push him away, he went for the back of her neck like an obese deconditioned leopard taking prey. It was a pitiful little nip, not a real bite, but it stunned her nonetheless.

  Jamie sat up, pulling his cat to his chest. “Jesus, mate. What’s got into you?”

  “Is he jealous?”

  “Fuck. Hate to think he’s like that.” Jamie carried Gasser to the hallway, put him down and talked to him softly, and then closed the door. Gasser began to yowl. “Sorry.” Jamie nestled behind Mae again. “Cuddle up. We’ll train him. He’ll learn.”

  “To sleep alone?”

  “Nah. Can’t do that to him. Teach him to share.” He pulled her hair aside, touching and prodding her neck, and kissed the spot to which Gasser had applied his teeth. “He didn’t break the skin. Does it hurt?”

  “No. He just behaved badly, that’s all.”

  The sorry mewing stopped, but Gasser kept sliding a paw under the door, a soft sh-shing noise on the hardwood floor. Mae reached for the lamp to turn it off.

  “Not yet. I’m still looking at you.” Jamie ran a finger along the length of her side. “You’re so beautiful. Like a moon goddess.”

  “That’s the most poetic compliment I’ve ever heard. Thank you. But I need to turn off the light so we can sleep.” The big white paw persisted under the door. “You can see me in the morning.”

  “Mm. Can’t sleep in the dark.” Jamie pushed upright, sighed, and walked to the closet. He put on the pink satin robe with silver embroidery that Mae had hung up while she was unpacking. If she hadn’t been so tired, she would have asked where in the world he got such a thing. He said, “Turn off the light once I’m out. I’ll just keep you up if I stay here.”

  “You okay, sugar?”

  “Yeah. No worries.”

  He paused on his way out the door, in front of the box where she’d put the roses, the picture and the jewelry, and slowly drew aside the shirt he’d draped over the mementoes of Kandy.

  Mae asked, “You still thinking about her?”

  The light caught the gold in the bracelet. He picked it up and turned it as slowly as the heavens. She didn’t need him to answer with words. Jamie dropped to his knees, put the bracelet on his wrist, and held the picture. After a moment of silence, he rose stiffly and took the picture with him.

  Mae felt a thread tugging at her heart, but lay still and turned off the light. Jamie needed some time alone with Kandy.

  Around two in the morning, he came back to the bedroom, turned on the light and sat on the edge of the bed, holding Gasser up to Mae’s face and asking if he could please have his pet sleep with him. When she protested, he told her about Gasser saving his life when he’d overdosed. Another suicide attempt he’d kept from her. She didn’t know what to say. Whenever she started to think he was healing, another trapdoor opened, dropping her into his darkness. They gazed at each other in sad silence.

  Jamie seemed to take it as permission. He got into bed with the cat. Mae turned off the light.

  After a few minutes in the dark, Jamie began to fidget. Though he had Mae on one side, her arm draped over his belly, her head on his chest, and Gasser presumably cuddling on his other side, his breathing grew shallow and his muscles tense. Then the light in the bathroom turned on, sending a soft glow into the bedroom. It bothered Mae—she’d somehow almost forgotten about Jamie’s effects on electricity—but he relaxed, mumbled something about forgetting to send the spirits off, and fell asleep.

  An hour or so later, he made small distressed vocalizations in his dreams. Mae calmed him out of the nightmare. Off and on for the rest of the night, though she could tell he was trying to be considerate, he disrupted her rest repeatedly by whispering to Gasser, restraining him from going after her.

  When she was deeply dreaming at last, heavy paws pressed into Mae’s pillow. The bright light told her it was morning, a little later than she normally slept. She turned and put a hand on the cat’s chest, urging him back. He didn’t move, his legs braced and unexpectedly strong. Jamie stirred, grabbed him, re-planted him on his side of the bed, and tucked Mae against him, spooning. He kissed the back of her ear, his hand cupping her breast. Noticeably aroused, he pressed against her and made soft sounds of pleasure, but then stopped, his breath slow and steady on her neck. Asleep.

  Mae was too exhausted to feel romantic herself. She closed her eyes, but the light and her to-do list wouldn’t let her go back to sleep. Maybe she could slip out and see Kate without disturbing Jamie. She began easing as gently as she could out of his arms. He made a few incoherent noises and reached for her. “Why are you getting up?”

  “I can’t sleep after I’ve seen the sun. I’m a morning person.”

  “Jeezus. How are we ever going to live together?” He rolled onto his back. “Only time I’m up in the morning is if I’ve been up all night. Get my best sleep when it’s light out.”

  “We’ve got all the time in the world to work that out. This was only our first night.” She kissed him and got out of bed. Gasser crept onto Jamie and spread across his chest, put a paw to his face, and purred. “Look at that. Cat thinks he won. He’s gonna love it when I go back to Bernadette’s for the rest of the week.”

  “Fuck.” Jamie sat up, sliding the cat down to his lap. Gasser protested with a small mer. “Was it him?”

  “Me and Gasser got some negotiation to do, but it’s not him.” Jamie’s pink robe lay on the floor at her feet. She placed it near him on the bed and borrowed his other one from the closet, bright yellow terry cloth embroidered with tiny red parrots. “Where do you find this stuff? You got some wild outfits.”

  “Dunno. Gifts. Impulses. I like parrots. Why are you leaving? It’s not my fucking clothes.”

  “It’s not anything. It’s just healthier, that’s all. Taking our time. You can go back to sleep if you want.”

  “Nah. Got to try to adapt to a morning person.”

  They went down to the kitchen, Gasser belly-dragging ahead of them, mewing and squalling in what Mae now recognized as his food call. Jamie ground coffee beans. Then Mae had an idea of what might help him enjoy the morning,

  “Let’s go for a swim before breakfast. I brought my suit. You up for that? I got stuff I need to do today, and it’d be something nice we could do together first.”

  “Jeezus. Before breakfast? Is the Chavez Center even open this early on a Sunday?”

  “It’s not that early. It’s eight o’clock.”

  “Crack of fucking dawn.” He yawned. “Yeah. S’pose we could. Y’know we’re having dinner with the oldies tonight, right?”
She nodded. “What else did you need to do?”

  “I need to meet up with Kate, and ...” She reached down to her purse on the floor near the table and took out her phone. “Figure out a bunch of stuff about Dahlia. Do my work I’m here for.” Mae sent text messages to Kate and Bernadette.

  Jamie filled the coffeemaker and Gasser’s water bowl. “Thought you were stuck. Couldn’t heal anybody else.”

  “I am stuck. But I can’t quit. I need to meet Kate and Bernadette, try to figure out a strategy.”

  The coffeemaker hissed suddenly as Jamie poured cat food into Gasser’s dish, making him start. Gasser plowed into the resulting spill, hunkering down with a quiver. “Manna from heaven, mate.” Jamie put the box back on the counter. “Strategy to do what?”

  “Stop Dahlia.” Mae got up and pulled the overfull dish away. Devouring what had fallen on the floor, Gasser didn’t take any notice. She emptied the dish back into the bag. “Any idea why Jill would want her to have power?”

  Jamie watched the coffee drip and wiggled the pot as if that would hurry it. “Dunno. Prove she can actually teach people?”

  “I don’t think so. Dahlia isn’t bragging about being a shaman. She told me she was getting her power animal, but it was like this big special secret.”

  He stuck a mug under the drip, poured what was in the pot into another mug which he handed to Mae, and then switched mug and pot again. There was only an inch in his mug. He gulped it. “Kate tell you what she predicted for Dahlia? Might be something in that.”

  “She e-mailed it to me.” Mae stood at the counter, drinking. Kate’s reading had baffled her more than helped her, other than it confirmed what she’d observed about Dahlia’s personality. “She said it’s confidential between her and me as professionals. She doesn’t want me to share it.”

  “Jeezus. I’m on the board. You can tell me. I could help more if you did. I can think of strategies, too, y’know.”

  Mae glanced down at his bandaged toe. So far he’d talked about Jill without getting upset, but he wasn’t fully awake yet. He shouldn’t swim with that injury, anyway. “You know, maybe you shouldn’t get that toe in the pool yet. I should let you go back to bed and just—”

  Her phone beeped. She returned to the table and read a message from Kate agreeing to meet when the conference had a break. In her peripheral vision, Mae noticed Jamie cutting the finger off a rubber glove and then opening a drawer and taking out some small object. Another message came in, this one from Bernadette. Mae looked up. Jamie slipped the glove finger onto his injured toe, wrapped a little green rubber band around it, and dipped his toes into Gasser’s water bowl. She burst out laughing.

  Jamie withdrew his foot and rubbed it on his robe. “What? He’s not fussy. And it works. We’re going swimming.”

  It took her a while to stop the giggles. Jamie was creative. The reason for the injury he’d handled so inventively wasn’t funny, though. “Kate and Bernadette have a half-hour break at ten-thirty. You can help us with our strategies. But we may have to talk about Jill. You gonna be okay with that?”

  “Jeezus.” The coffeepot emitted a final moist sigh. Jamie sighed with it and filled his mug. “You think I’m gonna freak out and tear off the rest of my toenails? I’ll be fine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kate and Lobo arrived in the hotel lobby at ten-thirty on the dot. Bernadette was already perched on the edge of one of the oversized gray velour chairs, her posture easy yet erect. She looked up from her phone. “Mae’s running a little late. Jamie.”

  “She’s bringing him?”

  “Why not? He is on the board.”

  “All he does is delegate.”

  Bernadette glanced down at her phone again and smiled. “And cook. They went swimming, and then he had to go back home and bake us some muffins. I don’t know if that means she’s bringing him, or just the muffins.”

  “Just the muffins, I hope. We need to get a lot done in half an hour. Has Mae told you anything about how her work is going?”

  “I’ve hardly seen her. I showed her my epidemiology chart, such as it is, but we’ve really only had time to catch up on our friendship. Not her work.”

  Friendship first, work second. What a novel idea. Maybe one day Kate would think like that, if she didn’t work herself to death first.

  The automatic doors from the main parking lot opened and Mae came in—with Jamie. Mae offered a cheery little hey in a voice that could have sweetened lemons, confirming Kate’s impression from her online picture. Healthy girl-next-door type. Voted least likely to be a psychic in her high school class. Jamie carried a slightly fogged plastic tub with its lid askew. The smell of hot cornbread wafted from it as he set it on the coffee table.

  “G’day.” He sounded half-asleep, though he had to have been up for hours. “Blue corn muffins.” He rippled his fingers and popped the lid the rest of the way off. The muffins were a dull purplish-gray color. “Need coffee with ’em.”

  Bernadette indicated the buffet table bearing coffee carafes and cups behind her. “Over here.”

  As if an inner gear had shifted and all his systems were now running, Jamie walk-danced across the room to the coffee, moving to that music that always seemed to be playing in his head.

  “Sorry we’re a couple of minutes late,” Mae said softly, taking the chair closest to Kate. “Nice to meet you. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.” She looked down, fiddling with the handle of her purse, then put it down and met Kate’s eyes. “The work’s not going like I wanted.”

  Shit. The fair depended on Mae’s success. There was no room for failure in the time table or the budget. “What’s happened?”

  While Mae described her work so far, Jamie served coffee in paper cups and delivered each woman a napkin bearing a warm gray muffin, presliced and moistened with what must be some vegan butter-like substance. Hungry, Kate got past the color and took a bite. Jamie hovered over her, apparently waiting for approval. He’d gone to the trouble to bake for this meeting. She told herself to be grateful, but he still got on her nerves.

  “Yes, it’s good. Thank you. Please sit down.”

  He disappeared, as much as Jamie could disappear, into the vast cushiony sofa, kicking his sandals off and putting his feet up, arranging the pillows, and then slurping his coffee and shoving half a muffin into his mouth. When the fair was over, Kate would never, ever watch him eat again.

  She refocused on Mae and where she had broken off her account. “What about Ximena?”

  Mae glanced at Jamie. “You want to say anything, sugar?” He made a negation-like sound. Mae continued. “Same as with Mary Kay, pretty much. I reckon Hilda’s already told you she didn’t want me to try with her.”

  “No, she didn’t.” It might be a sign of sobriety taking root, which Kate was glad to hear. She wished she could have had more proof of Mae’s abilities, though. Azure was healed, but in a way that Mae couldn’t reproduce with Mary Kay and Ximena, and Fiona wouldn’t agree to an interview. Trying to sound calm despite her simmering frustration, Kate asked, “So what are you going to try next? Any ideas?”

  “I was thinking I’d try to heal the source rather than the victims. It makes more sense. It’d cure ’em all at once. Dahlia’s just gonna want new victims if she loses ’em one at a time. She’s down one with Azure, and if the ceremony for Gaia worked, that’s another. I think Jill’s scouting already. Finding replacements.”

  Bernadette inched even further to the edge of her chair. “Be careful what you say, and keep your voices down. Jill’s attending this conference, and you never know who’s a friend of hers.”

  A good point. There was little privacy. The lobby had doors on four sides. The main entrance from the parking lot faced sliding glass doors to a patio at back, with a blooming cactus garden and two tall water-trickling stones in its center. On one side, a corridor led to the conference center and on the other side, to guestrooms.

  Kate moved closer to Mae. “Scouting?”


  “She invited Andrea Jones to join her drum group. She could have other motives, but she might want to—”

  Jamie cut in. “Feed her to her pet vampire.”

  “So,” Kate brought her voice to a near whisper, “Jill is teaching Dahlia to be a witch?”

  “Not that I can tell,” Mae said. “I found out what Jill did with ...” Jamie rose and walked to the patio doors, carrying his coffee in both hands. Mae’s eyes followed him. “With Kandyce Kahee. She didn’t use any kind of power on her, and she didn’t teach her anything like what Dahlia does. As far as I can tell, Jill’s a complete fake. I have no idea why Dahlia would be studying with her, or who’s really teaching her. It doesn’t seem like it could be Jill.”

  Kate’s relief stalled halfway. She hadn’t asked someone evil to headline in the fair—she’d asked a fraud. “So, if Jill’s just in it for the money, inviting Andrea to join the drum group might have nothing to do with Dahlia.”

  “No—there’s a connection. Jill likes Dahlia. Andrea studied with Fiona, but she’s not publicizing that she had the training. I think Jill uses Fiona to find out who’s—” Mae turned to Jamie. “Sugar, can you come back with us? I need to know if it’s okay to talk about this.”

  He shoved his free hand in his pocket, drank coffee, and stared out the patio doors a little longer before returning to the couch. Slouched, elbows on his knees, he kneaded the carpet with his toes, one of which wore a conspicuous Caucasian-colored adhesive bandage.

  Mae prompted him. “Sugar ...”

  He looked up at Kate. “I went to Fiona’s workshop with Andrea. I’m not a real healer or anything, y’know, just do a little Reiki on my cat. But I had the training.”

  Mae tipped her head, raised her eyebrows. Jamie picked up another muffin, pulled a piece off and examined it before popping it in his mouth. “I studied with Gaia, too.”

  Kate felt her brain jolt a little. Gaia didn’t take a lot of students. He had to be—Jamie?—exceptional. “You? How?”

  He finished chewing and swallowing, and tossed down the last sip of coffee. “We mostly did music. I’m not—fuck, don’t look at me like that, I’m not a shaman or anything. She just taught me a few things. That’s all. I hardly told anyone—just Fiona, Wendy, Andrea, Mae. That’s it. Think Fiona told Jill, and Jill sent Dahlia. Only reason a model’s chasing some fat bloke. Think about it.”