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At the end of the day’s sessions, Mae looked forward to some active time outdoors and was glad she had brought her bicycle. Steady rhythmic activities like swimming and cycling eased Jamie’s anxiety, and just being near him, she could feel his stress. She left him for a moment to go thank her partner from the last practice. When she turned back, he was on his way out of the room already, with Sierra tagging along, talking at him like a reporter chasing a star. Mae couldn’t see his face, but the speed of his stride and set of his shoulders made his irritation clear.
Mae caught up with them in the parking lot and made a quick excuse to Sierra, drawing Jamie aside. “Hey, sugar.” She took his hand. It was hot and sweaty. “Let’s get a ride in before dinner. You can show me that trail along the railroad that you like.”
Sierra ignored Mae and closed in on him again. “If you don’t work things out with your soul group, it can affect all of them. And you. It could be why you have all these problems—”
“Jeezus.” Jamie stepped back. “We’re not part of some fucking soul group.”
Sierra locked eyes with Mae. “Give us have some space, please. I have karmic business to take care of with your husband.”
This woman who thought she was so perceptive hadn’t noticed their lack of wedding rings. Mae asked, “Which husband? My first or my second?”
“Your second. Obviously.”
“Well, he’s on his honeymoon cruise with his third wife, so your karmic business will have to wait. I have some romantic business to take care of with my boyfriend, so I hope you’ll give us some space.”
“Oh. Not married. That would explain a lot.” Sierra nodded. “I was wondering why he’d chosen someone from a different soul group, when he has all that karma from our group still to resolve.”
Jamie glared at her. “The only karma I need to resolve is what in bloody hell I did to make you pick me for this rubbish. I hope you don’t work as a healer anywhere and dump this crap on other people.”
“With your issues, Jamie, I hope you’re not working as a healer. And Mae, you’re not working yet, are you? You were disrespectful, teasing me about which husband.”
“I’m sorry, but you got on my nerves, harassing Jamie about past lives. If you think you knew him and he doesn’t, he’s as likely right as you are. Can you let it drop? We have another day and a half of this workshop and I don’t want you to spoil it for us.”
“The truth shouldn’t spoil anything. If you want to be ready to be healers—”
Jamie interrupted. “Mae is a healer. She is ready. And I work with animals, all right? That’s as ready as I get.” He strode to Mae’s car and stood by it, hands tapping on the passenger door handle.
“Can we call a truce on this?” Mae asked. “Can you hang on for the next lifetime or something?”
Instead of taking offense at Mae’s sarcasm, Sierra appeared to interpret her words seriously. “And hold back the evolution of the whole soul group?”
“Look, I don’t even know what a soul group is—”
“We’re spirits with a shared past, a shared purpose. We have to heal and evolve together.” Sierra gazed past Mae toward Jamie. “Now.”
“Y’all might evolve better for being patient.”
Mae turned her back and walked away.
As she drove toward Jamie’s apartment, he beat on the dashboard with his fists and let out an operatic wail, the sound of a man who cared too much about his voice to scream in frustration but wanted to. “Jeezus. I don’t deserve this. Why me?”
“She may really believe it, sugar. I know a lady in T or C who believes in aliens. People have all sorts of ideas.”
“Yeah, but they don’t have to drag you into ’em. Doctor Don believes in reincarnation, but he’s not aggressive about it. She’s like those missionaries that knock on your door, only worse. We can’t make her go away.”
“Doctor Don?”
“Older bloke, bald-ish. You work with him at all?”
“Not yet.”
“He said Sierra could be making up her diseases, and her past lives, too. Said it’s hard to remember them. They don’t just pop up.”
“Then I guess there’s something else wrong with her. Something that makes her need to do that.”
“Yeah, no fucking kidding. But why me? Why not you, or Josh, or Dr. Don? Anybody besides me?”
Mae squeezed Jamie’s hand. “Could be she’s hot for you, sugar.”
“Nah. Think it was the sparkles. Or the fact that I shared, y’know?”
“Being open and vulnerable is appealing. It could make you more attractive to her.”
“As a victim,” he said. “She’s a bully. A spiritual bully. Bullies always choose me.”
Mae wasn’t sure about Jamie’s dramatic always, but his sensitivity did make him easy to pick on. Sierra, though, didn’t seem to be trying to torment him. She was doing it, but with some other goal in mind. A goal Mae couldn’t begin to figure out.
*****
Mary Kay attended the morning energy healing session as a practice client for the students and requested to work with Jamie. He wondered if that had been Fiona’s suggestion or if Mary Kay was secretly checking out his sparkles. No, that would be unethical without asking his permission.
Kneeling and exploring the space over Mary Kay’s chakras while she lay on a blanket, he picked up her emotional energy as the texture of sandstone, dry, friable and grainy. How could she be a healer? She seemed to have nothing to give. But then, she wasn’t a healer. She was more like a psychic radiologist.
Fiona had told her students to practice seeing the highest level of the person this morning, the bliss body, and he wasn’t finding it. Mary Kay seemed to have a shell on hers. He stopped trying to sense it. “Stand up.”
She frowned. “What?”
“Can’t do it like this.”
They rose, and he wrapped his arms around her. The sandstone began to crumble, grains falling in rapid trickles, to reveal a rushing, bubbling fountain inside the shell. She trembled the way he did when he had a panic attack. He held her tighter, and she began to weep, then softened into his arms. As usual in these healings, he cried with her, an exhausting flood of tears. When she had settled down, he stepped back, sniffed, and wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. “Yeah. Um. Lie down now. Need to do the thing, y’know, close the healing.”
Fiona stepped up. “No, Jamie. You don’t have to. Not for her. Your clients get closure. You need to do it for yourself, though.”
“What?”
Mary Kay thanked him and left.
“Sit down.” Fiona sat across from him. “You need to restore your boundaries. And your energy. Remember what I did for you yesterday? See if you can do that for yourself.”
He lay down and placed his hands as she had on his belly and his heart and sought the same energies. Where would healing come from? Not from him. He was used up. “What am I looking for?”
“Invite ki. Chi. Prana. Whatever you want to call it.”
He tried opening to it, but there was too much of it in the room and it seemed to flood his pores. His body jerked and he opened his eyes. “I can’t do that. Be like overcharging a battery.”
“Try only your left hand.”
Puzzled, he turned his left palm up and tuned into it as the only receiver. Gradually a sensation came, as if a small animal lay in his hand. It was calming, but what was it? It felt like a kitten. A spirit kitten.
“Jamie?”
“Yeah. Just ... dealing with it. Something showed up.”
Some of the guides that had come to Jamie in the past had been hard to handle. A trickster spirit. A crowd of entities like bees made of blue light. A more welcome guide, a macaw spirit, had recently showed up, and now, apparently, he had the kitten. Fiona waited. Jamie’s muscles relaxed in response to the warmth in his hand, but his mental energy stayed unsettled. This is too weird. Why can’t I heal people like Mae does? Like Fiona does? Why do I have to cry and then call in a kitten?
Fiona broke into his ruminations. “Pay attention. I can feel you losing focus.”
“How do I close this? I’ve got this little ... entity.”
“Where?”
“My left hand.”
“I don’t know. My students don’t work with spirits or entities. Is it helping you?”
“Yeah. Dunno why. Sort of freaky, really.”
“Maybe you should thank it?”
He did, and it faded. Jamie sat up. Fiona was studying him, her brows slightly contracted, her lips pressed between her teeth.
He picked at a loose thread in the blanket. “I’m not normal, am I?”
“No. But you’re very, very gifted. Mary Kay has been looking for that breakthrough for years.”
When Fiona left, Sierra rushed over to squat beside him. “That was amazing, what you did for Mary Kay. You need to bring that power to people in your soul group. When you do, you’ll receive as well as give.”
“Jeezus. You make it sound like multilevel marketing.” He got to his feet and hoped his brisk exit would send a message.
It didn’t. She followed him to the lobby. “Don’t make fun of this. People in our soul group have serious illnesses.”
Jamie met her eyes. Was she crazy? He’d attracted a wacko before, a dangerous one.
It was part of a pattern. He attracted bad luck in general and had been a trauma magnet his whole life. Was there a thin thread of a chance Sierra was right? He’d repeatedly suffered from a serious illness that had nearly killed him, depression. Was there some karmic thing he had to clear up?
No. He’d lost his cat William to cancer, and William hadn’t earned bad karma. “Y’know, you may be onto something. Think I feel a serious illness coming on.”
Did she look pleased about that?
“Diarrhea.” Jamie nodded towards the men’s room. “Got to deal with a load of crap.”
He hid from her in the bathroom until he calmed down. When he returned to the workshop, he was vigilant, making sure Sierra was occupied with other people before he sought a group to join. She was paired with Mae. Had Mae done that to protect him? Or was this Sierra’s second choice, her backdoor access to him? It bothered him either way—Mae taking care of him like he couldn’t defend himself, or Sierra plaguing Mae.
Everyone had paused in their practice and turned toward Fiona, who was answering someone’s question. “If you have sufficient background in Qi Gong, emitted chi is something you could study with a master, but that’s a more advanced technique than this course will cover. More accessible methods include crystals, imagery, or prayer. I like using the imagery of the chakras, because clients can participate. For example, if a client has issues with intimacy and relationships, we might both focus on his or her second chakra while I give the healing. The client’s focus can enhance the effects. Does that answer your question, Sierra?”
“Not exactly. Let’s say I see what someone in my support group needs, but they won’t acknowledge it. Is there a way to send the healing without their knowing?”
A general murmur rose. Jamie hoped it was objection, not enthusiasm.
“You need consent,” Fiona said. “Not just for hands-on, but for distant healing, too. You may think you know what others need, but your best intentions could be wrong.”
Sierra sighed and made a show of rolling the tension out of her neck and shoulders.
“It was a good question,” Fiona reassured her. “In fact, I’d like follow up on it. Let’s choose a mutual focus with our partners, to see if you perceive the same needs. Chakra work is basic, and I’m sure you’ve all done it before. One of you will scan the other’s chakras. Don’t send healing, though. Simply draw awareness to each chakra. Both of you will attend to the same one at the same time, and then you’ll the share the imagery with each other.”
With the odd numbers, Jamie could pick any pair he wanted and make a threesome. He looked for Dr. Don and was about to join his group, then felt like a coward. He didn’t want to see what was going on in Sierra’s chakras or hear what she would say was happening in his, but he needed to quash her once and for all. If Mae did it for him, he would be grateful, but it would be one more case of her being stronger than him, creating further imbalance in their relationship. He signaled to Mae, and she came over.
He took both her hands. “I need to get rid of Sierra. Do something. Dunno what. Make her bugger off and let me be, y’know?”
“I was going to try to keep her in line, so you could work with someone else.”
“Nah. I’ll just feel her all the time, like when you know there’s a spider in the room but it went under the furniture. Have to catch her and put her out.”
“She paid to be here, too. You can’t make her leave.”
“I’d like to. Make her leave me alone, anyway.”
“Can I help?”
“Yeah. Just don’t do it for me. It’s my fight.”
Jamie followed her back to where Sierra sat on a blanket. The blonde woman’s eyes lit up as Jamie eased down to the spot beside her. He couldn’t think what to do next. Her eager glow made him cringe.
Upbeat and in charge, Mae popped into a cross-legged position facing them. “Jamie and I don’t work on each other, so why don’t you share your chakra imagery with both of us? It’d be an interesting experiment if we all wrote down what we felt and saw, then passed the papers around and read them before we talked about it.” Unlike Jamie, she’d been taking notes all day and had a notebook and pen at hand. She gave Jamie and Sierra sheets of paper.
Sierra beamed at Jamie. “You go first.”
“Think Mae meant we both work with you at the same time.”
Mae said, “It’d be a better experiment.”
It would be, if Jamie could bring himself to participate. He didn’t want to make contact with Sierra’s energy. Mae must have a reason for suggesting it, though. Maybe to compare how she and Jamie perceived Sierra and figure out what was wrong with her. Mae the scientist.
Sierra shook her head. “It’s not possible. I’d be baring my soul, connecting with Jamie. I can’t share that with you.”
“Then back off,” he said. “Just focus on your own stuff.” Jamie suspected she was going to send some sort of unwanted healing she thought he needed while they were in a mutual mindscape, and that she wouldn’t do it if Mae was involved. “You don’t have to bare your soul. It’s just an exercise.”
“You never could handle an open heart. Knowing you, this is what I should have expected.”
“You don’t know me. In case you haven’t noticed, when I work with everybody else, I don’t have a problem opening my heart. It’s you. It’s not me. Of course I’m not opening up to you. I’d be a fucking idiot to do that.”
Sierra studied him, shaking her head. His anger grew as he waited for her next salvo of psycho-spiritual bumph. Putting on a sad little smile, she touched his arm, making him recoil as if she were a bug. “I’ll let this go for now,” she said. “But we’ll meet again. You’ll be ready to open up to me sooner than you think.” Her porcelain-doll blue eyes lingered on him a moment longer, then she walked away.
“Jeezus. I will not—”
“Sh.” Mae scooted closer and put her arm around his shoulders. “Let her think it, if it makes her feel better. What matters is that she’s gone.”
She was. He’d driven her off. Jamie hugged Mae and then lay on his back and wriggled, kicking his feet and shaking his fists in triumph and stretching his mouth in a soundless shout of joy.
Fiona interrupted his celebration, taking the spot Sierra had vacated and speaking softly. “I know Sierra can be difficult. But watch your language and keep your voice down. In case you hadn’t noticed, you interrupted everyone else’s practice.”
“Sorry.” How embarrassing. He stood, made a small Japanese bow to the class, and apologized again.
Fiona asked two groups to reorganize so Mae and Jamie could have partners. He found himself with Dr. Don again. Like a reward for bad behavior. They settled into a corner.
“Sorry I was so loud,” Jamie said. “Didn’t know how else to get rid of her, though.”
Don grinned. “Nobody minded. Deep in our serene little healer souls, I think most of us were like the crowd at a hockey game yelling, ‘Fight, fight!’ No matter how much we want inner peace for ourselves, we still like watching other people’s drama.”