Soul Loss Read online

  He wasn’t about to betray Mae and have Dahlia go after her, too. “I talk to the dead.”

  “Seriously? Like that fat woman?”

  The sucker pushed in again. Could Jamie do what he’d told Mae he would, and turn the negative energy back at Dahlia? He was supposed to heal her, not hurt her, but she was attacking him. His pulse accelerated, his breath grew shallow, and he felt sick. Desperate, he imagined vomiting out her intrusion.

  The invading sensation stopped. Dahlia put her jewelry back in its box. Jamie knew he should try to get back on track with the plan, but she scared him too much now, and Gasser was crying again. “’Scuse me. Need to take care of my cat.”

  Her expression so subtle he couldn’t tell if she was angry or pleased, Dahlia pinched up a wad of Gasser’s hair off the pillow and twisted it into a little rope. There was a vibration to her energy, something as powerful and hot as her face and voice were cold. “You do that.”

  The cat fell silent. Worn himself out, poor thing. Jamie opened the guest room door. “All cried out, mate?” No response. The cat’s sides didn’t swell with breath. Jamie crouched and felt him for a pulse. “No, fuck, no—”

  Downstairs, Mae screamed and the smoke alarm blared. The front door slammed.

  Clutching Gasser’s inert body, barely aware that he was crying, Jamie ran down to the kitchen. Mae, her back to him, was aiming a fire extinguisher at smoke pouring from the outlet where the wok was plugged in. She was alone. The slamming door had to have been Dahlia. The wall began to smoke and darken. Mae swung the nozzle of the extinguisher up and down the area of the fire. “I couldn’t touch it to unplug it or turn it off.”

  “Stop. Let it go.”

  She kept spraying. “No. You worked so hard on this place—your painting, your new furniture—”

  Holding Gasser with one arm, he grabbed her elbow and pulled her toward the door. “I’m not risking you for my fucking stuff. Let it go.”

  While Mae banged on Fern’s door, shouting to her to call the fire department and get out, Jamie dropped to his knees in the dirt of the front yard. Gently, he laid Gasser in front of him and felt again for something to revive, probing though flesh and fur for a pulse. None. He turned him face up between his knees and pressed the cat’s chest rhythmically with two fingers in a desperate attempt to resuscitate his heart. Nothing happened.

  Jamie let the inner door of his vision open. He moved his fingers up to Gasser’s second chakra. The soul was thready but present. He returned to the physical heart. One of Dahlia’s little darts stuck there. It felt like a miniature arrowhead carved from bone, yet made of spirit stuff. Jamie sent everything he could into saving his pet, an effort as fluid and intense as singing at full volume, holding his highest note. Gasser spasmed and let out a strange, choking yowl. The dart broke loose, floated out of his body, and then vanished. Gasser lay limp, heavy, and silent.

  Mae knelt in front of Jamie. “Oh my god, sugar, what happened? Is Gasser ...?”

  His voice cracked. “Dunno.”

  Dimly aware of Fern’s dowdy form hovering behind Mae, Jamie examined his cat again. There was another spirit-bone arrowhead in his tail-spine chakra. Again, Jamie flooded him with full healing force. Again, Gasser spasmed, but this time he gave a little mew of relief. The dart popped loose, left him, and dissolved. Jamie stroked him, feeling his breath and heartbeat, speaking soothing words through a new flood of tears.

  When the fire truck arrived, he got to his feet, hugging Gasser to his chest, and walked away from the building, away from Mae’s attempts to comfort him and Fern’s persistent questions about what had started the fire. They didn’t understand. His companion had almost died, and it had been his fault. He’d failed. Called out the witch instead of healed her.

  He paced down the sidewalk, away from the noise, and cuddled the cat to his face, listening to what could be a purr. “Jesus, mate, are you really all right?”

  The cold sense of being stared at snagged him. He looked for its source. Dahlia was standing across the street, as motionless as a mannequin. The moment they met each other’s gazes, she vanished. A white owl flew into a tree in a neighbor’s yard. A chill gripped Jamie’s bones. He bowed his head over his cat and hunched his shoulders protectively around him. The huffing of large wings passed overhead.

  He stood still, closed his eyes, and summoned the strength and focus to close his inner vision. He never wanted to see Dahlia’s soul again.

  The apartment stank with smoke, though only one wall in the kitchen was damaged. Jamie called his parents and told them he needed to come out for the night, bringing Mae and Gasser. He didn’t dare stay home. Dahlia knew where he lived, and how to kill with power. Why she would do it, he didn’t know, but she’d tried.

  Mae drove, and Jamie held Gasser in his lap. He felt underwater with exhaustion, his words struggling through to the surface, but he managed to tell her everything that had happened, up through the moment Dahlia had done something witchy with Gasser’s fur.

  Mae asked, “Do you think she did it to get power from his death?”

  “Dunno. Maybe she did it at me when I pissed her off.” Then he remembered what Andrea had said, when she’d been laughing about Jill’s drum circle and their secrets. “Fuck. She really thought he was my power animal.”

  “She believes that stuff?”

  “Yeah. She’s got one.” He shivered. “I saw it.”

  He described the owl. Mae remained silent for a while, and then said, “Kate saw that. In her crystal ball. She doesn’t want me to share her readings, but you should know. In the next part of the vision, Dahlia hitched a ride with someone who crashed into a cliff.”

  Jamie petted his cat’s spreading sides, cherishing the furry heat. Life. “Probably me after she killed Gasser.”

  “Or one of the people whose power she took. Some of them have crashed pretty bad. Especially Fiona.”

  Fiona. “Bloody hell.” Jamie had failed her, failed Ximena, failed everyone by not healing Dahlia. All he’d done was make her act even worse. “Can’t believe how bad I fucked up.”

  Mae reached over and rubbed Gasser before she took Jamie’s hand. The gesture touched him even though Gasser didn’t respond to it. “You tried your best, sugar.” She glanced at him, and then back at the road. “You gave it a good shot. At least she didn’t get Gasser. He’s your baby. Good thing you’d been practicing on him.”

  It was hard for Jamie to let go, but he knew the cat needed to rest. He put him on the bed in his room at his parents’ house, and went downstairs to join Mae, Stan, and Addie. Their conversation drifted to him from the back yard, far from the lights of the house, where the stars would be at their brightest. Addie’s voice carried like a bell.

  “Showing Mae the view, love. Come on down.”

  He found them sitting on the bent trunk of an old, wind-twisted juniper that formed a natural bench facing the arroyo, under a black sky blazing with stars. His parents sat hip to hip, and Mae a seat-width from Stan. Jamie slid into the space and put an arm around Mae.

  “I told them about Dahlia and Gasser,” she said. “And about those little arrowheads.”

  Addie leaned around and patted Jamie’s knee. “I’m proud of you, love. You saved him.”

  “But that’s all I did. I fucked up the rest.”

  Mae squeezed his hand that held her shoulder. “If you could have kept that spirit guide with you, maybe you could have won. There had to be some reason why he was pissing her off like that.”

  Jamie kicked a heel into the dirt. “But I had no fucking control. I can bring a spirit in, but I can’t control it once it’s there. Bloody thing runs off.”

  Stan said. “Control might not have mattered. You couldn’t have known what was coming. I’ve met two shamans in my entire life who could kill that way. You could hardly expect it of a nineteen-year-old fashion model.”

  “Dunno. She said something about animal sacrifice, but I didn’t hear it as anything serious. She was in the
middle of snarking about my food and Mae’s metabolism and everything else, and it sounded like the rest of her crap.” Jamie picked at a piece of the tree’s bark. He stopped. This was its skin. It would feel it. He patted the hurt place. Sorry. “I should have noticed.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Stan said. “You didn’t know what she did was possible. I didn’t want to scare you, so I never told you.”

  A disturbing possibility crept in. “Did you publish it?”

  Stan turned to face him as much as their close seating allowed. “I wrote about it—in that skeptical manner of the professional observer—as an unexplained phenomenon attributed to extraordinary powers. It’s an obscure article, too bizarre to have ever gotten much attention. It was about fifteen years ago.”

  “Jill could have read it. She was still a scholar back then, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, but she isn’t a shaman. You know that. She wouldn’t be able to do anything with it.”

  “She wouldn’t. But there are people the spirits want, y’know? Me, Mae—maybe Dahlia. And Jill knows some rituals, even if she doesn’t have the power to use them.”

  “So she finds a gifted person and turns her into a monster?” Addie said. “Even for Jill, that’s quite a stretch.”

  “Nah. She finds a monster and turns her into a shaman.” Jamie stood and walked to the brink of the arroyo. The emptiness below exhaled a drift of warmer air, the earth breathing in its sleep. “She’s using Dahlia to hurt me so she can hurt you, or to show she’s a real scholar who knows her stuff so well she can—”

  “Kill a harmless animal?” Stan cut in. “That’s a lot of firepower for an academic argument.”

  Jamie looked back at him, and noticed that Mae and Addie were leaning forward on the bent trunk, poised like sprinters in blocks. His closeness to the edge probably made them nervous. He moved away from it. “She used Kandy that way.”

  “Yes—but I don’t think Jill meant for her to die,” Stan said. “An alcoholic blackout, a surrender—that was all she needed to have happen.”

  True. Jill had manipulated Kandy into giving up, but she hadn’t intentionally murdered her. Cold-hearted as she was, Jill wouldn’t kill his cat, either. It was Lily that hated cats—and her mother.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Without pausing to explain to Mae and his family, Jamie walked away from them, calling Naomi on his cell phone. Her recorded greeting answered. “Hi. You’ve reached Naomi. Sorry I missed you. Leave a message. Be happy, be blessed.”

  Stumbling over his words, Jamie told her to call him and then tried her store’s number. If they were open until nine, she could still be there at ten doing paperwork. He had to explain this in conversation. A message would sound too strange, too crazy.

  Her voicemail picked up. “Hi. You’ve reached Naomi Petersen at Magic Mountain Books.” Idiot. It’s midnight on the East Coast. He almost hung up. “I’ll be out of the office for a couple of weeks. If you need immediate assistance please contact my assistant manager Willow at extension 6754 or use the customer service link on our web site. Thank you for calling and have a day full of love and light.”

  “Bloody hell.” She’d left for Santa Fe early—and planned to stay late. His lie had been close to true. He called her cell, willing her to pick up this time. She didn’t. He had to leave the message no matter how it came across. “Jamie again. Guess you’re on your way to Santa Fe. Wish you’d waited. Don’t see Lily, whatever you do. She could hurt you. Call me or Mae. We can explain.”

  He rejoined the group at the bent tree, but didn’t sit. Stan and Mae were in the middle of an argument. Stan had his fatherly, lecturing manner. “You’re too new at this. Only medicine people who’ve been practicing their whole lives can interfere with witches and sorcerers in the way you’re talking about, and even for them it’s not easy, or safe.”

  Mae protested, “But Dahlia is even less experienced than I am.”

  “It doesn’t matter. A witch who can kill has a power stronger than anything you have. She’d attack you before you could take it away from her. Look what she did when Jamie tried to fight her off.”

  Mae straddled the tree trunk, facing him. “We can’t be stuck. There has to be something we could do.”

  “I think ...” Stan paused, frowned, and continued carefully. “Your only hope is that she would choose to give it up.”

  They brainstormed ways to get through to Dahlia to make her quit, but came up with nothing promising. All her potential soft spots had been explored already. She didn’t seem to have any. Stan, Addie, and Mae declared themselves ready to sleep, too tired to think. Jamie said he couldn’t sleep yet, but went inside with the rest. In the kitchen, Addie brewed some herbal tea she claimed would help everyone relax, and the two couples departed to their rooms with steaming mugs.

  After the chaos, fear, and worry of the evening, Jamie found something comforting about his old bedroom. A hopeful young teenaged Jamie, the person he’d been before his first big breakdown, had decorated the walls with Santa Fe Opera posters and some small works of Aboriginal dot art, had painted each dresser drawer and knob a different color, and picked out a furred red bedspread that reminded him of his roo. Gasser slept on it now.

  Jamie sat beside his cat and stroked him. “Feeling like your old self, mate?” Gasser made a low rrrr sound, opened one eye and then the other, and stretched and farted. “Seem all right.”

  Did the cat remember dying, or had he suppressed or forgotten it? Though Jamie wished he could remember his own near-death, he thought it was better for his cat to forget. With his hand at the root of Gasser’s tail, he dug in a little with his thumb, provoking a questioning mer from the cat. They were so connected it was easy to tune into Gasser’s energy. Like a melody he knew so well it played itself when his fingers touched the flute, all Jamie had to do was open up and feel its flow.

  Mae put their tea mugs on the bedside table and stood watching him. “You checking his three chakras?”

  “Yeah. He’s a little sore.” He moved his hand up to the heart-throat point. Gasser was aching there as well, his energy shredded and weak. “Like how you feel after something sad or scary.”

  If Gasser remembered dying, the memory was that feeling, not a thought. His head chakra was peaceful, a nice bright purple. Jamie sent its flow down to the others until he felt Gasser vibrate at a slower frequency and sensed the trauma letting go. Satisfied, he closed his inner vision and healing force.

  “All better?” Mae asked.

  “Yeah. Think so.”

  She sipped the tea and made a face. “What in the world kind of herb is this?”

  Jamie tasted his. It was grassy and peculiar. He set it back down. “Ugh. Dunno. Mum means well. You don’t have to drink it.”

  “I’ll probably sleep without it.” She sat next to him, put her mug aside, and swung her legs up on the bed. “I always get tired this time of night.”

  It wasn’t even midnight. Jamie felt like a bat that had chosen a songbird for a mate. “My head sort of churns at night. What in bloody hell could Jill have done to teach Dahlia what she did?”

  Mae slid down, head on the pillow. “Dahlia is really into this power animal idea. Jill teaches that stuff.”

  “But it’s a load of crap when she does. Dunno how Dahlia could ...” Jamie forced down another sip of the supposedly soothing tea and shivered. “Freezes my bones to think about it.”

  He cuddled Gasser and lay back with Mae. Side by side, leg over leg, they stayed quiet for a while. Gasser tried to wedge himself between them but there was no room. He gave up and spread over Jamie’s belly with his tail on Mae.

  Mae broke the silence. “The electricity started messing up right around the time Dahlia talked about power animals, didn’t it?”

  “Nah—right after. When I pissed her off about something. And it wasn’t just her burning stuff out, my music got louder—like my spirits were fighting with hers, or my energy and hers.”

  “It makes
more sense that it was your energies. Positive and negative. Yours does things like fixing my ceiling fan and hers does stuff like setting your kitchen on fire.” Mae turned on her side and ran her hand over Jamie’s hair. “Your head looks like a hoo-rah’s nest. You want me to undo your braids? It’ll help you sleep if I brush your hair.”

  He pushed himself up to look in the mirror over the dresser. His hair frizzed from the braids like frayed rope. “Jeezus. Yeah, thanks.” He pulled a rubber band off a braid and hairs came with it. “Ouch. I think it’s spirits. Like, with the fan, and the ice, they wanted me to chill, y’know?”

  “It didn’t look like it worked too well.”

  “Ice did, sort of. For a minute.” He pulled another tiny rubber band off and cringed at the hair-pulling. “And if I’m lonely they turn on music, or if I’m scared they turn on lights.”

  Mae sat up, took the rest of the rubber bands off, and began to unravel one of his braids. Somehow she could do this without causing him pain. “You got guardian angels, sugar?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But that would mean Dahlia has spirits, too.”

  “Yeah. Demons.” He made a face in the mirror, frowning over wide-open eyes and forcing a square grimace. Japanese woodcut demon. It was a good face, but it strained his eye muscles and made his chin look triple. He rubbed his eyes and lifted his chin, stretching out the feeling of that little roll of flesh. “Anyway, she could attract some bad stuff.”

  “So could that face.” Mae finished undoing the braid and began on another. “I don’t see how Dahlia’s got demons. Demons would help her, not wreck things. If you got spirits that send you reminders and do things to help you feel better, what do hers do?”

  “Dunno. Maybe they’re holding up a mirror. Warning her to stop. ‘You’ll burn in hell if you keep this up.’ ” He made a modified demon face, adding a tongue flicker. “Spirits. Jesus. They’re running everything and we don’t get it—don’t pick up our cues or something.”