The Witch and the Gentleman (Page 10)

“Deep breaths, dear. Slowly.”

“Am I…am I dreaming?”

“No, dear.”

She was an old woman, perhaps very old. Like in her nineties and beyond. Yet, she had surprisingly wonderful posture, shoulder back, chin up, back straight, hands folded in front of her…at least, I think they were. Her hands were faded and hazy. Even crazier, she looked familiar. I’d seen her recently, and not just in Peter’s house.

“I don’t feel very well.”

“I don’t imagine you do, and I see that you cut yourself. It’s a little worse than you think. You need to take care of that, dear.”

“How do you—never mind,” I said, backing out of the kitchen slowly, bracing myself on the counter. Luckily, the glass smash and spill zone was further into the kitchen, toward the spirit now watching me closely. The spirit that I could see through.

With the path behind me relatively free of broken glass, I picked my way slowly, leaving a small trail of blood in my wake. The spirit, mercifully, did not follow. Instead, she watched me closely. At least, I thought she was watching me closely. Truth was, I was doing my best to avoid any kind of eye contact with her.

And when I was off the linoleum and on the carpet, I hopped up on one foot so as not to track blood through it…or, at least, that was the plan.

The reality was far less graceful.

I fainted right there on the carpet.

Chapter Twelve

I awoke in the same spot.

As I lay there blinking, face pressed against the white fibers, briefly wondering where the hell I was, and who I was with and how much I had drunk.

Until I remembered the ghost.

I gasped, but didn’t move or even open my eyes. I just lay there, accessing the situation.

I was fairly certain I was alone.

Of course you’re alone, an inner voice told me. Perhaps the last remnants of my logical ego. And ghosts don’t exist.

I nearly laughed at that as I sat up. I’d hit my head pretty hard, carpet or not. How long I was out, I didn’t know. A few minutes at least, maybe longer. Gingerly touching my head, I noted that I didn’t feel the same electrical, staticy feeling I’d felt when the spirit had manifested.

Definitely too weird for someone sober.

Yes, I still wanted that drink.

First, I hobbled into the bathroom. My toe had quit bleeding on its own, but it needed some doctoring. I did the best I could with my foot up on the sink, cleaning it first with hot water, then applying alcohol and peroxide. The attention to the wound had started the blood moving again, but not by much. Soon, my little piggie was bandaged and ready to face the world.

Ghosts and all.

I limped back into the kitchen and spent the next fifteen minutes sweeping and hunting down glass fragments like the Inglourious Basterds hunted down Nazis. Or not. When I had done my best sweeping and eyeballing the shards, I next used a small kitchen vacuum that I kept in a front closet. Now sweating a little, I finally had that glass of wine.

As I poured, I said, “Whoever you are, can you please wait until I’m sitting before scaring the unholy shit out of me?”

I waited for a response, didn’t get one—which relieved the hell out of me—and made my way into the living room. Once there, I set the glass down on a coaster on the glass coffee table, like a good girl, and, as I reached for the remote with every intention of wasting my night away in front of the TV, watching everything from nerds to half men to country singing contests, I saw something very strange lying by the remote.

It was the Wicca instructional book for beginners. A book that I’d left in my bedroom, by the Spirit Chair.

“Holy hell,” I said.

I glanced around my small apartment, hoping like crazy that I wasn’t about to see a floating old lady who, I was now fairly certain, was Peter’s departed mother.

I drank more wine.

A lot more wine.

Almost all of it.

The book. It was sitting on the arm of my couch, as if I’d just set it there minutes earlier. I hadn’t, of course. I’d been out cold on the carpet minutes earlier, and prior to that, I had last seen the book in my bedroom.

Even more curious, I could see that there was something in the book, something I hadn’t put there myself.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.

I tentatively picked up the book. That something strange and miraculous was happening to me right now, I had no doubt. I could feel it. My skin was tingling. The hair on my head and arms bristled. It was as if the room was suddenly filled with a low dose of electricity. Although I was still new to the psychic world, I knew that something bigger than me was happening, happening right now, and that I needed to be strong and power through and, most importantly…

“No more fainting,” I whispered to myself.

I opened the worn book carefully, turning to the page with the bookmark. The bookmark consisted of an old receipt of mine. Really, really old. I looked again, blinking. Three years old, in fact. From a car wash in North Hollywood. NoHo, as we called it here. I continued blinking, staring at it. The receipt must have been in an old pair of jeans. Or dropped and forgotten at the back of my closet. Or in an old drawer or even in my car. All I knew was that I sure as hell hadn’t seen it in years, and, quite, frankly, I barely remembered going to the car wash.

I was about to wad it up and toss it aside when a flash of memory occurred to me. Yes, I did, in fact, recall going to the car wash. This was back before I had met Victor, the man—or creature—who would first introduce me to the world of vampires.

Three years ago, I had been a personal trainer and somewhat aimless. Yes, I’d always known that I had some psychic skills, and a part of me had always wanted to explore that. But mostly, those thoughts had been in the background, flaring only briefly when I’d get a psychic hit, only to recede again quickly.

But one day, all that had changed, hadn’t it?

I nodded to myself. It had.

And it had changed at the car wash.

As I looked at the receipt and thought about that day, I gasped and said aloud, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

*  *  *

I didn’t remember much about the car wash, but I did remember the old woman watching me.

I had been sitting in the waiting area, probably reading a book or a magazine or on my phone texting. I’d just gotten into texting back then, and that had been the death of me. I both loved and loathed texting, as technology was both loved and reviled by me. It put a degree of separation between me and other people, and yet in some ways, like the Psychic Network, it was a tool to bring me close to people with whom I would not otherwise ever connect.