Soul Loss Page 40

  “I didn’t mean she witched Cara. She ...” Could he tell Harold his daughter had abused his cat? “Never mind. Just act like you believe everything, all right? I don’t think she’d hurt you, but wait until Mae or I give you an all-clear—”

  A hard knock on the door. “Jamie?” Wendy’s voice.

  He rose and opened the door. Cara remained calm as Wendy’s spiky sandals stepped in. “What got into you?” Wendy asked. Her firm soul-radiance, subtle northern lights, grew brighter and hotter. “I told you I didn’t want you to make more waves with Jill. You were supposed to talk about your stuff, not hers. I heard someone gave Jill a pretty bad dig at that conference and she wanted to do this lecture to prove herself. If she walks out on the fair, I wouldn’t blame her.”

  “Nah—she won’t walk out. Not ’til she gets to stand in a lecture hall on this campus.”

  “Then you’re lucky. That was irresponsible, dropping hints like that, and you didn’t run it by me—”

  “Didn’t have to. I’m on the board of this bloody thing.” Jamie put his hands on her shoulders. “Come on. You heard me. Don’t you get it? I had to talk about Jill. I couldn’t explain myself without the whole story.”

  “I know.” Wendy’s face softened. “But you stirred up more gossip. You didn’t kill it.”

  “Sorry.” He hugged her. “Couldn’t help it.”

  She pulled back and looked at him with wide, puzzled eyes—he must have sent her a charge, the same thing he’d done to her back in March, the day he’d come back from near-death. Juice running though him. He needed to get away and shut down, get back to normal.

  She left with a warning not to be seen with that beer and to keep track of time.

  Time. The alarm had already beeped.

  Harold reached down to pet Cara, who still sat fearlessly on the floor. “Is she gonna need these treatments every week or so?”

  “Dunno. Maybe. Bound to be someone in Asheville who can do it.”

  Jamie took another drink and excused himself. He was due back onstage as emcee in a minute.

  He tried to find a quiet place to close the spirit door, but the building was full of other musicians talking, laughing, and rehearsing in the classrooms, and they flooded him with auras and feelings. A stall in the men’s room might be the only private place. He went in. Someone in the next stall was talking on a phone and farting. Jeezus. Thought my manners were bad. No chance of concentrating here either.

  Out of time, inner vision wide open, Jamie gave up and hurried to the stage.

  *****

  Kate looked for her lost client. She spotted her trailing Jill into the lecture hall, struggling to keep up with Jill’s brisk strides. The woman looked as though she’d attempted to style herself after Jill by wearing her gray hair long and flowing and loading her neck with oversized jewelry, like a high school girl copying one of the cool mean girls. The effect was more comical than flattering to either of them. Jill kept waving her follower off, but the woman persisted, talking to Jill’s back as she walked toward the stage.

  Almost all the seats were filled, and the room buzzed with conversation. Far from driving people away, Jamie had sparked their curiosity. Whatever happened next, Spirit World Fair would be talked about for weeks to come.

  Kate had a place up front where a few seats had been taken out near one of the side exits for wheelchairs to fit. Her disability was accommodated well. She didn’t have to sit in the back like she did in some theaters. Suddenly she realized with dismay that she, of all people, had neglected to arrange for sign interpreters. The fair had never had lectures like this before. Delegating, working less, sharing responsibility, she’d lost track of details. Shit. I’m turning into Jamie. She started for the ramp to the stage.

  “I’d show you her picture,” the follower said to Jill, “but I misplaced my purse. I’m sure she’s in your group, and would want me to come—”

  “There is no Lily Petersen in my drum circle, and there’s a very important application process. This is deep work. It’s not a drop-in yoga class.”

  Lily Petersen. This was Dahlia’s mother. Kate had to keep her away from her daughter. She waved the big flowered purse.

  “Oh—thank you, that’s where I left it.” The Petersen mother turned to take her bag, and as soon as she did, Jill climbed the steps to the stage. Ms. Petersen sighed. “I should have come earlier. I’ve been trying to find Jill all morning after Jamie—Jangarrai—the dedication ... That had to have been awful for her.”

  “I’m on the board of directors for this event. Maybe I can arrange for you to talk with Jill later, if you stay right up front where I can find you.”

  “You know her?”

  Kate nodded. Ms. Petersen took her phone out and opened her picture files to display Dahlia modeling as a nymph in a purple tunic. “This is my daughter. Was she ever with Jill?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Jill tested her microphone, then glanced at Kate with raised eyebrows. Of course—Jill expected the director of the fair to introduce her. Kate signed, Sorry, aware that she was being a little passive-aggressive. For all Jill knew she could have been saying Too bad, bitch, I’m not kissing your ass.

  “I suppose,” Jill said to the crowd, “I need no introduction.”

  Applause pattered through some parts of the room, but the silence of the rest, punctured by a lone giggle, outweighed it.

  Dahlia’s mother whispered, “Are you staying for this? You don’t have to go tell fortunes?”

  “My boyfriend’s making my appointments. I’m trying to get up on the stage to sign interpret. Come back to my booth with me after. I still have to finish your reading. Maybe it’ll tell you something about your daughter.” Like, that she’s dangerous. “I’ll bring you to meet Jill later.”

  Not much chance of that. Even if Jill managed to pull off a rebuttal, she would probably leave when her lecture was over and have nothing to do with Spirit World Fair or Kate Radescu ever again.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  As the faint applause faded, Dahlia whispered to Mae, “Have you ever noticed Jill’s throat? It’s so wrinkly compared to her face. Do you think she’s had some work done?”

  “Shh. Maybe.”

  “It’s either that or she’s aging funny.”

  Jill placed her hands on the podium and looked around the room like a minister about to preach. “My purpose, ever since the tragic death of Kandyce Rainbow Kahee, has been to empower women. Most of all, women who feel they are victims, who feel life has crushed or wounded them. I learned the hard way that the path of light, the path of the moon, is too mild for strengthening these broken souls. My new book is a case study of teaching another path, the shadow path, to heal a young woman into her true power.”

  She paused to drink from a bottle of Evian water. “All shamanism is poetry, music, and art. The spirits we invoke are the archetypes of our souls. In the Jungian shadow, we find the spirits needed for this kind of healing—the dark goddesses, the shadow powers. The Woman in the Shadows: A Shaman’s Path to Power, will come out in the fall. This book holds a message many young women need: to overcome nice, to overcome sweet, to be empowered.”

  Dahlia elbowed Mae and whispered, “Bullshit.”

  For once, Mae had to agree with her. Jill’s claim about Kandy’s death motivating her work had to be a quick cover-up, a replacement for explaining her strange scene with Jamie. She might have already planned to talk about this book, but not about Kandy. Jill continued describing, in a vague and intellectualized way, her work with a depressed, orphaned young woman who lacked confidence in her personal power or sexuality. She made a dismissive reference to “certain narrow-minded anthropologists” who didn’t see value in modern neo-shamanic practices, but assured her audience that she had proof of its effectiveness in this extraordinary student.

  Dahlia pushed her sunglasses up her nose and tucked her hair more neatly under her hat. “She didn’t tell me I’d be in a book. Does she think I’ll be
flattered?”

  “She doesn’t think you’re here.”

  As usual, Dahlia was expressionless, but she twisted her purse strap and ran the zipper open and closed repeatedly.

  Maybe Dahlia’s resentment of Jill’s book would be the key to getting her to give up her power. Mae hoped the lecture would go on for a while. It would give her time to come up with a plan around this new idea. The talk was short, though, and when the time came for the question and answer session afterward, she still didn’t have a strategy for approaching Dahlia. After all, the power was working for her. It was the book she didn’t like, not its subject matter.

  “First question?” Jill asked. “I’m sorry we don’t have microphones for you to be heard.” She made the situation sound blameworthy. “Please stand and speak up so everyone can hear you.”

  Kate spoke before Jill could select a person from among those waving hands. “Pardon me that I don’t stand.” Kate signed her own speech and got a few uneasy laughs. “This is a long question, so I want to a make sure everyone can hear me.” She reached out her hand in a manner that gave Jill no choice but to give her the mic. “Last week at the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Symposium, you took issue with Dr. Bernadette Pena’s suggestion that neo-shamanic work like yours had the potential to do harm. Today you say your work is essentially healing even when you invoke the images of black magic and witchcraft. Are these things real or not? Is there a spirit world, and do shamans interact with it, or is it all myth and poetry? If it’s real, it seems to me it could do harm as well as good.” Kate offered the microphone back to Jill.

  The speech surprised Mae. Why was Kate, who had recruited Jill to speak, challenging her like this? Was it because of what Mae had told her about Kandy’s death? Another possible answer came when Mae recognized Naomi in the front row. Kate could be trying to get Jill to say something that would convince Naomi to avoid her daughter.

  “Wonderful question.” Jill nodded. “Did everyone hear that? The answer—wow—this gets into the quantum nature of the spirit world. The is-and-isn’t, the neither-here-nor-there, the both-and rather than either-or.”

  “More bullshit.” Dahlia rose, slipped past the other people in their row, and started down the outer aisle.

  Fearful yet focused, Mae followed. She had no idea what she could do, but she had to stay near her if only to stop her from touching Naomi. Mae’s spiritual powers might not be stronger than Dahlia’s, but her muscles were.

  Dahlia walked past her mother without a sideways glance, directly to the edge of the stage. Jill took a question from another audience member. A man in the white turban and clothing of the Kundalini community in Espanola stood. “Are you familiar with the Tantric left-hand path, and do you think it relates to your ideas in this book?”

  “Excellent insight, making that connection.” Jill beamed her gap-toothed smile at the man. “I’d say both are misunderstood in the mythology of the modern world.”

  Dahlia took off her sunglasses, put them in her purse, and left her hand inside it. Jill froze, and then frowned like a disapproving parent. Taking a step closer, Dahlia brought out a lock of long gray hair tied with black ribbon. She stretched it out, holding it close to her body. Had she gotten hold of Naomi’s hair somehow? “I have a question.”

  A slow cold moonrise of fear blanched Jill’s face.

  Dahlia kept her back to the audience. She began to twist the hair into a rope. “Are you a crone?”

  Crone. Mae had a sudden image of Jamie teasing Dahlia as he cooked. Hair turned gray—slam. Like an equatorial sunset. When you do bad magic, it sucks the juice out of you. Checking her forearm, thinking her eyes looked different—Dahlia was afraid she looked older since trying to kill Gasser. Mae grabbed the model’s wrist and whispered, “You do that, and your ass is gonna look like your mama’s.”

  “What? How do you know—”

  “And your neck is gonna look like Jill’s.”

  Dahlia let out a sharp huff and dropped the hair. Too late. Jill fell.

  “I’m CPR trained, but we need a doctor here,” Mae called out. She swung herself up onto the stage and knelt to touch Jill’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  No answer. Mae leaned close to Jill’s face. To her relief, she felt breath. Kate had her phone out, probably ready to call 911.

  A thickset woman of about Jill’s age came down the center aisle, identifying herself as a doctor. She hurried up the stairs to the stage.

  Mae said, “She’s breathing.”

  “Thank you. I’d like you to stay in case I need you to get an AED or help with CPR.” The doctor knelt beside Jill and said to Kate, “Can you clear the room, please?”

  Kate obviously hadn’t really needed the microphone. Her voice came out strong and steady as she asked the audience to leave and assured them Jill was under a doctor’s care. The crowd, buzzing with low-pitched conversations, began trickling out the three exits. Already on his phone, Jill’s agent Miguel pushed through the congested bodies like a knife through butter, heading toward the main lobby doors.

  Dahlia had already left. Naomi was gone, too. They’d been close to the side exit. Naomi’s voice called out in the corridor, “Lily! Lily! Wait!”

  Mae’s impulse was to run after them, but the physician had asked her to stay. Kate could go after Naomi, but no—she’d never get her wheelchair through that crowd fast enough.

  Jill’s eyelids fluttered and she moaned. The doctor began to ask her about pain and other symptoms. Jill mumbled her replies, denying any problems, but her voice was weak and her face white.

  Had the black magic done real harm, or had she simply fainted in fear of it? The answer to that, and Naomi’s safety, too, might depend on whose hair had been in Dahlia’s hands.

  It lay on the gray carpet, barely visible. Mae let the doctor know she wasn’t leaving and jumped down to look. The hair was bright, silvery and straight. Jill’s.

  She picked it up and showed it to Kate, who uttered a near-silent whoa. “It doesn’t make sense,” Kate said. “Jill worshiped Dahlia.”

  Mae laid the ribbon-tied lock on the edge of the stage. “But her mama worships Jill.”

  She explained about the forced seduction of Calvin Mackenzie, the delayed abortion of his child, and Lily’s cruelty to the kitten Naomi had called her new baby. Lily’s way of punishing her mother was to attack the ones Naomi loved.

  Kate asked, “Do you think she’ll go after her mother, too?”

  “It looked more like she was running away from her. Anyway, I might have scared Dahlia into quitting her power.” Mae described Dahlia’s fear of looking older, Jamie’s creative version of Jill’s age, and Mae’s attempt to frighten Dahlia even more. “Dahlia’s so scared of getting wrinkles she won’t even smile or frown. If she thought being a witch would age her real fast, it might have made her want to quit. But I can’t be sure.”

  “I know how you can be.” Kate scrolled through the contacts in her phone. “If she pulled the plug on what she was doing, other people could have their power back.”

  At the doctor’s request, Mae returned to Jill’s side and supported her into a sitting position. Jill grumbled and protested when the doctor asked her to raise each arm in turn, and then to smile. Mae recognized a test for signs of stroke. Could Dahlia have caused one?

  Both arms worked. The empty smile was symmetrical. With Mae’s assistance, the doctor helped Jill to her feet and made sure she could stand. “Ms. Betts,” the doctor said, “I think you simply fainted—from stress, maybe, or hunger, or heat. You should have a friend or family member take you home and stay with you. See your regular doctor as soon as you can. Check your blood pressure, blood sugar, make sure there aren’t more serious reasons for this. Things start to wear out when we reach a certain age.”

  “I’m not old, I’m fifty-six. And perfectly healthy.” Jill stepped away from the physician, stopped, and glanced back with a brusque, “Thank you for your help.” She glared at Kate. “What are
you doing here?”

  “Being a responsible board member,” Kate replied. “I called Fiona. She’s on her way over.”

  “I don’t need her.”

  Jill walked past, head held high. The doctor followed and caught up with her, offering a hand at Jill’s elbow. Jill ignored her. She kept her hands out but didn’t touch the wall on her way down the steps.

  “Too late.” Kate urged Lobo up and started down the ramp. “You aren’t getting out of here without someone keeping an eye on you. Mae can wait until Fiona gets here. I need to take care of an incident report, if the doctor can give me a few more minutes of her time.” She paused at the bottom and said to Mae, not bothering to lower her voice, “If you’re up to it as a psychic, you can give Jill a check-up. Earn what’s left of your pay.”

  Kate and the doctor started up the center aisle. Mae stifled the urge to argue. Kate’s words were sharp, but so was her aim. Mae hadn’t done all the board had hoped for. She should do this last service for them.

  Jill’s velvet-brown eyes examined Mae from a curious side angle. “What’s she talking about?”

  “I’m not really doing a study. I’m working for the Spirit World Fair board—”

  “Working where?” Jill sniff-laughed through her nose. “Jamie Ellerbee’s bedroom?”

  “I can’t believe you just said that. Especially the way you’ve been sending Dahlia after him.”

  “I didn’t send her after him. She chose him. I was encouraging Dahlia to develop confidence in her sexuality.”

  “With a man who’s already got a girlfriend?”

  “That didn’t stop you.”

  “That’s because I’m the girlfriend.”

  Jill’s guard dropped for a split-second of genuine surprise. “What?”

  “Andrea’s his manager’s partner. And she’s been telling people your drum circle is a hoot.”

  Jill’s pale face whitened even more. She started to say something, but stopped. Mae continued, “Looks like your application process doesn’t work so well. Especially seeing as Dahlia got in. I need to see if she—”