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In the hot, gritty wind outside Sparky’s after Blues Ridge’s final set, Kenny said goodbye, shaking hands with Harold and Jamie and reiterating how exciting it had been to meet them. As her neighbor walked off, Mae realized what this meant. Jamie would be taking her home. She was glad they had the party in between to give them a chance to talk more. Aside from his lyrics—if they were true, and not just a joke from a fellow musician—she still hadn’t caught up on his life over the past few months.
Harold gave them directions to the band’s hotel and went into the restaurant half of the building to order takeout food for the party. Jamie bounced on his heels and adjusted his top buttons, having buttoned them crooked on the first attempt. “This all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. You got ’em straight this time.”
“Nah, meant Harold. Party.”
“Of course it is. You came here to see him. I’m a surprise.”
“Jesus. Yeah.” Jamie pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear and studied her face. “Good one, but I’m still in shock, y’know?”
“Me too.”
He slipped his arm around her waist, his touch light with nervous tenderness, and led her across the street to a parking lot bordered by more advertising statues—a bull, a tiger, a wild-eyed eight-foot-tall man serving ice cream, and a Tyrannosaurus.
“First time I’ve ever driven you anywhere except crazy.” He opened both sides of a sparkly green Fiesta hatchback parked near the dinosaur. “Never had a new car before. Like it?”
Mae took a moment to get used to the choice. Her ex’s fiancée had a car just like it. “It’s nice, but how do you fit all your instruments in it?”
He mimed a long diagonal movement, which she understood to be sliding the didgeridoo in through the hatch and across to the reclining passenger seat. “Drums on the floor. All fits. Like a big puzzle.”
“You couldn’t fit your luggage for a tour, though.”
“Yeah.” He adjusted the passenger seat to accommodate a person rather than the didg. “Kind of where my head was at when I bought it.”
The interior of the car was hotter than a sauna. When he turned the key, both air conditioning and opera blasted. “Sorry.” Jamie popped the CD out, put it away, and absently patted a faded, threadbare toy kangaroo that perched on the center console. For some reason Mae liked it that he still rode with his roo. “Love having a real sound system.” He rubbed the Fiesta’s steering wheel. “It’s a good little car. Miss the old Aerostar, though. Feel like I let it down.”
Mae caught herself about to reassure him that his van had forgiven him. It wasn’t alive. “You get enough work without touring?”
“For now. Not pushing it.” He steered onto the main street. “I’ll know when I’m ready. I was in worse shape than the van, y’know? Had to do a lot of repairs.”
“How’s that going?”
He took her hand and slid it under his shirt to make her rub his belly. His bare flesh made her more aware than their hugs had how much the loose shirt was hiding. He’d put on at least twenty pounds, maybe more. In five months. Jamie wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Fucking great.”
At the party in the hotel suite, Mae tried to focus on her conversation with Harold, but Jamie-noise bubbled in the background, distracting her: fuck-punctuated chatter and his unmistakable laugh, a single hah and a snort, followed by another ear-blasting hah. So familiar and yet disorienting. He was back in her life. Again.
“Phew.” Beside her on the couch, Harold bit into a green chile cheeseburger, then gulped from a large soda, his eyes watering. He took another sip. “How’d a Boone girl end up in the land of green chile?”
“My daddy coaches at College of the Rio Grande in Las Cruces. I get free tuition, so I came out to go to school, and to be with him.”
“I thought you might have moved here for Jamie.”
“No. I met him last summer when I was in Santa Fe for a few days. Daddy used to live up there. His partner is Niall Kerrigan, the sculptor—”
Harold looked delighted. “He was artist in residence at Appalachian State—wow, that was like fifteen or sixteen years ago. I bought a bull he made out of Toro lawnmower parts. Love that thing. I got the biggest kick out of his exhibit.”
“That was where Daddy met him.” Mae paused, and then decided to skip the family mess. “He moved to Santa Fe with Niall. They got to be good friends with Jamie’s folks there.” She edited out another complicated story. Explaining her friendship with Jamie could take all day. “That’s how I know Jamie.”
Harold nodded. “Sounds like you and your daddy had good reasons to move to this wasteland. Don’t see how you could do it without someone to do it for. Place looks like kitty litter to me.”
Mae laughed. “I like it.”
“Don’t you miss those rolling old mountains, the green grass, the waterfalls?”
“Not really. I’d already left Boone. Mama moved me to a little town in the eastern part of the state when she and Daddy split. I didn’t fit in too good there. It’s nothing like Asheville.”
“Not much else in Carolina is.” He scraped some of the chile off his cheeseburger and took another bite. “I heard New Mexico is a good place to be unconventional. You fit in here?”
Mae nodded, her mouth full.
“Naomi’s fantasy is to go to Santa Fe and study with this lady shaman that writes those books Kenny didn’t like.” A hint of sadness weighed Harold’s voice down. “She asked our daughter to look the woman up when Lily did a shoot in Santa Fe back in March. Don’t know if she did.”
“Sounds like you don’t see Lily much. Is she an actress?”
“No. A model.” Harold scrolled through some pictures on his phone and showed it to Mae. “This is one of the first things she ever did. For a vineyard near Asheville a couple of years ago, while she was still in high school. When she does fashion stuff, they put her hair up and paint her so much you wouldn’t know her, but this looks like Lily.”
The ad was both campy and elegant, with gold art nouveau lettering. Da Vine Wine. Blessed by the Goddess of the Grape. The goddess, a pale slender girl, had thick brown hair partly contained in a circlet of leaves and grapes from which lustrous tendrils escaped, rippling over her shoulders and down to her hips. She wore a purple tunic and clasped a golden goblet in one hand, while the other rested on a grapevine. Vine tendrils tickled her long slim legs and bare toes.
“She’s pretty.” What else could Mae say? Aside from her hair, Lily looked like a lot of models, a generic, forgettable, but attractive girl with a straight nose, a narrow face, and scarcely any curves in her subtle shape. Only her hair was memorable, and the color of her eyes. Mae wondered if they’d been photoshopped to go better with the grapes. “You must be proud of her.”
“Not always. I saw her in some fancy underwear catalogue.” Harold reddened. “Not exactly what a father wants to see, even if it’s good for her career.” He sipped his soda, gazed out the window across the room. “Haven’t heard from her for months on end. I only know she’s alive and well because I look at my sleazy junk mail.”
“Months? Are you sure she’s all right? It might take a while to get that catalogue out.”
“I exaggerated a little. You know how it is—ol’ Southern boy telling a story. Her agent says she’s still working. But Lily didn’t get back to Naomi when she told her to look up that shaman lady, and she hasn’t been in touch with me since then, either. And that’s strange. Lily and I were always a lot closer than Lily and her mama.”
“Why don’t you go see her? You have to know where she’s living.”
“Not anymore. She works out of New York a lot, but her agent says Lily flies in from somewhere. Same when she works in LA. You’d think she’d live one place or the other. But mail to her old New York address comes back, and she’s changed her number. Her agent won’t give it out without Lily’s permission. Since she dropped out of our sights around that shoot in Santa Fe, I was hoping you or Jamie might somehow know her, run into her, if that’s where she moved.”
Mae gave him his phone back. She couldn’t find a missing person through a picture. As a psychic, she had to touch something the person had handled enough to put energy into it. With that kind of trace, Mae could probably find Lily.
“One reason I don’t miss that little town in eastern North Carolina is ...” She hesitated. She was cautious about revealing her psychic ability. It was easily misunderstood. But Harold was from Asheville. His ex was into shamanism. He’d be okay with this. “They thought I was a witch.”
His eyes widened. “What’d you do to make ’em think that?
“Nothing bad. I’m psychic, or as they say in the mountains, I have the Sight. I’m pretty good at finding missing people and animals.”
“Even if you are—and mind you I’m having a hard time with this—I think Lily doesn’t want to be found.”
“You mean,” Mae’s voice softened, “y’all had a fight?”
“No. We got along fine, and Naomi had really been trying to heal things between them. Can’t figure out why Lily’s cut us off. I worry she’s got some crazy possessive boyfriend or some other problem she doesn’t want to tell us about.” He sipped his soda and picked up a fry but didn’t eat it, tapping the bun of his cheeseburger with it instead. “I never been to a psychic. Not sure I believe in it. Naomi would. Are you saying you could actually find out if Lily’s in trouble?”
“Maybe. The Sight usually shows me what I’m asking for, but it’s not perfect.”
He took a long pause, rattling the ice in his soda. “Can you do that work here?”
“I do better somewhere quiet. And I need something that belonged to the person I’m looking for. Helps me pick up sort of a scent, energy-wise.”
“I suppose you charge money for it.”
She did unless the client was poor or a very close friend. “I do. But I didn’t mention it because of that.”
Long brown fingers curled over Mae’s shoulder. A kiss landed on the crown of her head. Jamie still didn’t make a sound when he walked. How long had he been there?
“Hey, sugar. Did you hear what Harold and I were talking about?”
“Finding someone named Lily. Yeah.” He sat between her and Harold and began to eat fries off her plate. “Psychic work.”
“Lily’s my daughter,” Harold said. “Nineteen, living on her own. I can’t get hold of her.”
“Jeezus. Hope she’s all right.” Jamie broke off the end of a fry that had touched meat juice, laid it on a napkin, ate the uncontaminated portion, and took a slug of his beer. “Almost forgot you had a daughter. Naomi hardly talked about her.” He dumped hot chile sauce on the edge of Mae’s plate, poked several fries into it at once and talked through eating them. “Can’t remember if she had her picture anywhere.” He swallowed, mumbled an apology for his bad manners, dipped another cluster of fries and repeated the same lapse. “Yeah. In ballet clothes. Some recital or something when she was a kid. Hair in a bun, tutu ...”
Harold placed his phone on the coffee table and brought up Lily’s picture again.
“Fuck me dead.” Jamie stared. “That’s Lily?”
“One of her modeling jobs.” Hope crept into Harold’s voice. “Do you know her? Is she in Santa Fe? That’s the last place we heard from her.”
“She’s there.” Jamie drank, looked down at the picture again. “At least she was.”
“When did you see her?”
“March. Once. At Yoga Space. For about ten seconds.” He shivered and reached into the bag of fries, having finished the ones on Mae’s plate. “Haven’t seen her since.”
Mae sensed Jamie was glad he hadn’t seen Lily again. Something about his ten-second encounter had bothered him. Harold didn’t notice, his gaze on the goddess of the grape.
“Guess I still need a psychic, then,” he said. “I don’t have anything of Lily’s with me for you to work with, though. I do have my cat—”
“You do that, too? Tour with your cat?” Jamie lit up, then ducked his chin, seeming to realize he’d interrupted. “Sorry.”
Social skills. Mae rubbed Jamie’s back. “Was Lily around your cat a lot? I’ve picked up information from people’s pets before.”
“We had Cara for four years before Naomi and I got divorced last year. Naomi got the house, and I got Cara. That was our custody battle. Lily was going to college then. She quit right away, couldn’t see why she needed an education when she was earning money modeling, but anyway, it seemed like the right time for us to split once she’d moved out. Lily hasn’t been around Cara since then, but I reckon the connection wouldn’t wear off.”
Jamie nudged Mae gently. “Give it a whirl. Good chance for me to talk with the band. See if they’ll do a gig in Santa Fe next month.”
“We already are,” Harold said. “We do a lot of the Indian casinos. We’ll be at Buffalo Thunder near Santa Fe on our way back from Colorado.”
“Perfect. Add this to your plan. Spirit Fest Music Festival and Psychic Fair. Huge outdoor venue.”
“Can’t. We’d be competing with our own show. It’s not like hitting some cozy little spot like Sparky’s and then Casino Apache. If this is a big event we’d be splitting our audience.”
“Nah. ’Cause you’d be singing old Southern gospel.”
Harold broke out in a surprised laugh. “You kidding me?”
“Serious, mate. Spiritual music festival. I was thinking of that song on your solo album.”
Harold nodded and sang softly:
“Come to your father’s arms like the prodigal son,
He’ll take you back no matter what you’ve done.”
Jamie joined in on the chorus, singing harmony. “Like the prodigal son, like the prodigal son, like the prodigal son.”
The band members sang along from the other side of the room, whooping and clapping, joking about getting that old-time religion.
“We’ll think about it.” Harold stood. “I’ll have to talk with our manager, but it’s possible. Let me introduce Mae to Cara and I’ll be back.”
––––––––
As soon as Harold opened the door to his bedroom, a smooth black cat leaped onto his leg. She climbed him like a tree and wrapped herself along the back of his neck. He attempted to remove her but Cara dodged by moving to his other shoulder. When he sat so Mae could get hold of the cat, Cara clung as though landing on the bed would be traumatic. In some way she reminded Mae of Jamie when she’d first met him. She tried to grab the cat. Cara hissed, squalled, and wriggled, and then leaped to lodge on Mae’s upper back, pacing from shoulder to shoulder.
“Can I say she’s a little weird?”
“Always has been. But it’s a long tour. We’d miss each other.”
Mae reached back to pet Cara and earned not a purr but the cat’s muscles tightening for a spring. Cara jumped back to Harold. “I hope she’ll settle long enough for me to focus and see something.”
“She might hold still once I step out. She gets excited to see me.”
Mae suspected more going on with Cara than just excitement, but she said, “Thanks. That might help.”
Harold managed to put his cat on the bed and then tossed her a catnip mouse, distracting Cara long enough for him to open the door. “Naomi would be thrilled that I’m getting help from a psychic.”
“You don’t sound like you are.”
“I’m not. No offense, but it makes me feel like I’m kind of desperate.” He stepped out and shut the door.
––––––––
Through the wall Mae heard the gospel song again, the whole band and Jamie in four-part a cappella harmony. His voice soared. It was good to hear him so happy and healthy.
She sat in the big armchair near the window, took the velvet pouch of crystals from her purse, and chose a clear quartz point for intensifying her abilities. After a few random charges around the room, Cara ran up onto the back of the chair, made an attempt to play with Mae’s hair, and then settled.
Mae turned to look into the cat’s bright green eyes. Cara’s body held still, but her skin was jumpy. “Hey, Cara.” Mae kept her voice soft. “You still connected with Lily?”
Cara twitched. Mae petted her and leaned back again, letting Cara’s tail drift over her head. It would do for contact as long as the unpredictable creature stayed there. Mae quieted her mind and concentrated on the energy from the crystals in her hand and from the cat, seeking Lily through her connection with Cara.
The vision that signaled a psychic journey began, a tunnel that pulled her through to emerge in a new scene.
In the spacious kitchen of an old house, teenaged Lily practiced a dance routine. Cara, a tiny kitten, chased something imperceptible on the floor, perhaps a bit of dust. Lily executed a series of jumps and turns, frowning in concentration. The kitten began chasing her feet. Lily lightly kicked her aside. Cara hesitated, watched, and sprang again, this time launching onto the top of Lily’s flying foot, attacking with all four paws and biting.
“You stupid little wretch.” Lily seized Cara and threw her. The animal’s fragile-looking back struck the sharp edge of the drawer on the stove with a thud that almost shocked Mae out of the vision. Cara, miraculously unharmed, ran from corner to corner in terror as Lily chased her and kicked at her. “That’ll teach you to chase me!”
Ears back, Cara finally escaped. Lily resumed her practice with a furious energy.
Mae’s vision moved through the tunnel again to open in a different room. Lily lounged on a living room couch watching TV. The sound of Blues Ridge rehearsing filtered in from another part of the house. A woman Mae guessed was Naomi, with a round, rosy face and hair similar to Lily’s but halfway to gray, sat in a cozy chair. She held the kitten against her chest like a baby, chattering in cute-animal talk, stroking the thin fur on Cara’s belly.
“Mom, that is so sickening,” Lily snapped. “Can you cut that out?”
“She’s my new baby,” Naomi crooned to Cara, not looking at her daughter. “You’re all grown up.”
“What a hypocrite. You should have just had a cat instead of a kid.”
Naomi flushed. Her mouth opened and closed, no words coming out.
“It’d be nice,” Lily continued, “if I had a TV in my room, so I wouldn’t have to sit with you.”
Naomi replied in a shaky voice, “We’re trying to make sure you spend some time with us as a family. But if that’s how you feel, stop talking and watch the show.”
Lily stretched her legs out. “I could go down to Daddy’s studio and listen to the band practice.” She paused and smirked. “Or you could. The new bass player is hot. And young. You’d like that.”
Naomi turned redder, stood, and left the room, shedding the kitten onto the floor. Lily picked up the remote, poised to throw it. Tail fuzzed out, Cara shot past her like a little fur rocket. Lily increased the volume and nestled deeper into the couch with a satisfied sigh.
Enough. Mae pulled back from the scene and reconnected with her body. She used snow quartz to clear her energy field, and then turned and touched the cat. The sleek black back vibrated under her hand. No wonder Cara was afraid to be on the floor. Lily must have terrorized her.
A knock sounded on the door. “Come in.”
Mae put the crystals in the separate pouch for those that needed cleansing and tucked both pouches in her purse. What would she tell Harold?
The door opened and Jamie walked through, beer in hand.
“Yeah. Not Harold.” He sat on the bed. “You find her?”
“No. Only her past. It was awful.”
Cara contracted and launched onto Jamie, making him slosh beer onto his shirt “Jeezus. Like a fucking mountain lion. Straight for the neck.”
He put his drink on the bedside table, pulled the cat off with a twisting reach to his upper back, and held her out and studied her, making prolonged eye contact. She went slack like a feline rag doll, oddly peaceful. He hugged her to his chest and rubbed her shoulders. “Did Lily hurt her?”
“Yeah.” How did he know? “She kicked her, and I think she threw things at her. Poor Cara was terrified of her.”
Jamie sighed. He cuddled Cara a while longer, then flattened her against his legs with a firm stroke down her back. The bedside lamp turned on. No clicking sound, only a gradual glow from the bulb. Mae wanted to ask if he’d seen that, but Jamie was absent in some way. He massaged the cat, pausing at the part of her back that had struck the stove. His fingers moved to the top of her head and stayed a while, slid to the space between her throat and her heart and paused there, then rested at the juncture of her spine and tail. To finish whatever he was doing, he held her paws and touched her nose, intimacies most cats wouldn’t tolerate, and placed her on the bed.
She looked at him, then began to lick herself. He picked up his beer, frowned at the lamp, and switched it off. Cara jumped down and wandered over to Mae’s feet and sniffed.
Had Jamie’s spiritual gifts come back? He’d had healing and visionary abilities that troubled him and scattered his mind too much. Twice, he’d needed to have a healer or shaman shut them down so he could function.
“What’d you do, sugar?”
His shoulders squirmed, a right-left shrug. “Mm. Little something.”
“Harold’s gonna wonder what happened when she acts like a normal cat.”
Jamie’s face clouded. “Fuck. He won’t mind will he?”
“Of course not. I’m sure he’ll be happy. But are you gonna tell him? Explain anything?” Mae wanted the explanation herself.
“Nah. He’ll think you did it.” Jamie bent down with a little mff, petted Cara, and stood. “Guess we’d better get back out there before everybody thinks we’re—”
Harold knocked and opened the door a few inches. “Hey. Figured you were done if Jamie was in here.”
Mae told him to come in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t find Lily. I only picked up her past with Cara.”
Jamie scooped the cat up and carried her to the window. Mae could swear he was hiding the fact that he’d healed her. Harold entered and asked, “Did you really see anything?”
“Of course I did.” She didn’t know him well enough to know how he’d handle what she’d seen, though.
“Guess that came out wrong. I saw such a boatload of fakes going through Naomi’s store on their book tours, it’s a reflex for me to get skeptical.”
“It’s okay. You weren’t there for what I saw, so you wouldn’t know if it’s true, and Jamie could have described the house to me if that’s where Naomi still lives. I could be fake for all you know.”
“Not necessarily. Naomi redecorated when I left. What’d the place look like?”
Mae described the kitchen and the TV room. Harold fell silent for a while, then took his wallet from his back pocket and walked over to hand Mae a few bills. She declined. He held the money out again. “You did your work.”
“But not what you asked for.”
Harold put the money on the table. “Can you see the future?” He frowned, his mouth going crooked. Mae suspected he couldn’t quite believe he’d asked this. “See if she gets in touch with us?”
“Sorry. All psychics are different. I see the past and the present, but not the future.”
“Then the present will have to do. I’m gonna have Naomi send you some of Lily’s things. If it’s her own stuff, you sure you can find her?”
“Things she wore or used a lot, yes. I don’t think she was very attached to Cara.”
“Well, my poor baby is a little hard to take.”
He appeared to have no idea Lily was responsible for his cat’s strangeness.
Jamie released Cara to the floor. “Mae tell you she’s a healer?”
Cara trotted to Harold for an ankle rub. He stared for a moment before crouching down to pet her. “That’s amazing.” His eyes met Mae’s. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mae gave Jamie a look. He hadn’t quite lied, but he’d squeezed the truth into a funny shape. He blinked a few times, offered her a smile.
Still watching Cara walk on the floor, Harold straightened up and took his phone out, pressed a number, and waited. “Lily’s always loved her things. I’m sure Naomi can find something to send you. Give me a way she can get hold of you.”
He began talking to his ex-wife’s voice mail. Mae wrote down her mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address and gave it to him. She hoped the work would be fast and easy. The less she saw of Lily Petersen, the better.