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Kate and Lobo arrived in the hotel lobby at ten-thirty on the dot. Bernadette was already perched on the edge of one of the oversized gray velour chairs, her posture easy yet erect. She looked up from her phone. “Mae’s running a little late. Jamie.”
“She’s bringing him?”
“Why not? He is on the board.”
“All he does is delegate.”
Bernadette glanced down at her phone again and smiled. “And cook. They went swimming, and then he had to go back home and bake us some muffins. I don’t know if that means she’s bringing him, or just the muffins.”
“Just the muffins, I hope. We need to get a lot done in half an hour. Has Mae told you anything about how her work is going?”
“I’ve hardly seen her. I showed her my epidemiology chart, such as it is, but we’ve really only had time to catch up on our friendship. Not her work.”
Friendship first, work second. What a novel idea. Maybe one day Kate would think like that, if she didn’t work herself to death first.
The automatic doors from the main parking lot opened and Mae came in—with Jamie. Mae offered a cheery little hey in a voice that could have sweetened lemons, confirming Kate’s impression from her online picture. Healthy girl-next-door type. Voted least likely to be a psychic in her high school class. Jamie carried a slightly fogged plastic tub with its lid askew. The smell of hot cornbread wafted from it as he set it on the coffee table.
“G’day.” He sounded half-asleep, though he had to have been up for hours. “Blue corn muffins.” He rippled his fingers and popped the lid the rest of the way off. The muffins were a dull purplish-gray color. “Need coffee with ’em.”
Bernadette indicated the buffet table bearing coffee carafes and cups behind her. “Over here.”
As if an inner gear had shifted and all his systems were now running, Jamie walk-danced across the room to the coffee, moving to that music that always seemed to be playing in his head.
“Sorry we’re a couple of minutes late,” Mae said softly, taking the chair closest to Kate. “Nice to meet you. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.” She looked down, fiddling with the handle of her purse, then put it down and met Kate’s eyes. “The work’s not going like I wanted.”
Shit. The fair depended on Mae’s success. There was no room for failure in the time table or the budget. “What’s happened?”
While Mae described her work so far, Jamie served coffee in paper cups and delivered each woman a napkin bearing a warm gray muffin, presliced and moistened with what must be some vegan butter-like substance. Hungry, Kate got past the color and took a bite. Jamie hovered over her, apparently waiting for approval. He’d gone to the trouble to bake for this meeting. She told herself to be grateful, but he still got on her nerves.
“Yes, it’s good. Thank you. Please sit down.”
He disappeared, as much as Jamie could disappear, into the vast cushiony sofa, kicking his sandals off and putting his feet up, arranging the pillows, and then slurping his coffee and shoving half a muffin into his mouth. When the fair was over, Kate would never, ever watch him eat again.
She refocused on Mae and where she had broken off her account. “What about Ximena?”
Mae glanced at Jamie. “You want to say anything, sugar?” He made a negation-like sound. Mae continued. “Same as with Mary Kay, pretty much. I reckon Hilda’s already told you she didn’t want me to try with her.”
“No, she didn’t.” It might be a sign of sobriety taking root, which Kate was glad to hear. She wished she could have had more proof of Mae’s abilities, though. Azure was healed, but in a way that Mae couldn’t reproduce with Mary Kay and Ximena, and Fiona wouldn’t agree to an interview. Trying to sound calm despite her simmering frustration, Kate asked, “So what are you going to try next? Any ideas?”
“I was thinking I’d try to heal the source rather than the victims. It makes more sense. It’d cure ’em all at once. Dahlia’s just gonna want new victims if she loses ’em one at a time. She’s down one with Azure, and if the ceremony for Gaia worked, that’s another. I think Jill’s scouting already. Finding replacements.”
Bernadette inched even further to the edge of her chair. “Be careful what you say, and keep your voices down. Jill’s attending this conference, and you never know who’s a friend of hers.”
A good point. There was little privacy. The lobby had doors on four sides. The main entrance from the parking lot faced sliding glass doors to a patio at back, with a blooming cactus garden and two tall water-trickling stones in its center. On one side, a corridor led to the conference center and on the other side, to guestrooms.
Kate moved closer to Mae. “Scouting?”
“She invited Andrea Jones to join her drum group. She could have other motives, but she might want to—”
Jamie cut in. “Feed her to her pet vampire.”
“So,” Kate brought her voice to a near whisper, “Jill is teaching Dahlia to be a witch?”
“Not that I can tell,” Mae said. “I found out what Jill did with ...” Jamie rose and walked to the patio doors, carrying his coffee in both hands. Mae’s eyes followed him. “With Kandyce Kahee. She didn’t use any kind of power on her, and she didn’t teach her anything like what Dahlia does. As far as I can tell, Jill’s a complete fake. I have no idea why Dahlia would be studying with her, or who’s really teaching her. It doesn’t seem like it could be Jill.”
Kate’s relief stalled halfway. She hadn’t asked someone evil to headline in the fair—she’d asked a fraud. “So, if Jill’s just in it for the money, inviting Andrea to join the drum group might have nothing to do with Dahlia.”
“No—there’s a connection. Jill likes Dahlia. Andrea studied with Fiona, but she’s not publicizing that she had the training. I think Jill uses Fiona to find out who’s—” Mae turned to Jamie. “Sugar, can you come back with us? I need to know if it’s okay to talk about this.”
He shoved his free hand in his pocket, drank coffee, and stared out the patio doors a little longer before returning to the couch. Slouched, elbows on his knees, he kneaded the carpet with his toes, one of which wore a conspicuous Caucasian-colored adhesive bandage.
Mae prompted him. “Sugar ...”
He looked up at Kate. “I went to Fiona’s workshop with Andrea. I’m not a real healer or anything, y’know, just do a little Reiki on my cat. But I had the training.”
Mae tipped her head, raised her eyebrows. Jamie picked up another muffin, pulled a piece off and examined it before popping it in his mouth. “I studied with Gaia, too.”
Kate felt her brain jolt a little. Gaia didn’t take a lot of students. He had to be—Jamie?—exceptional. “You? How?”
He finished chewing and swallowing, and tossed down the last sip of coffee. “We mostly did music. I’m not—fuck, don’t look at me like that, I’m not a shaman or anything. She just taught me a few things. That’s all. I hardly told anyone—just Fiona, Wendy, Andrea, Mae. That’s it. Think Fiona told Jill, and Jill sent Dahlia. Only reason a model’s chasing some fat bloke. Think about it.”
Kate thought about it. Jamie returned to the coffee bar and refilled his cup. He was hardly what she’d call fat. A little overweight, but graceful enough to carry it, and reasonably good-looking in an off-beat way. He was a local celebrity of sorts. She’d assumed Dahlia might be chasing him for the reasons women chased performers in general. His revelation changed the picture. If Mae’s guess was right, Dahlia would keep getting new victims. She might not get Andrea or Jamie, but sooner or later Jill would tell her about some other student of Fiona’s, or some gifted new healer would move to Santa Fe and Dahlia would show up as a client. The only way to stop her was the way Mae had suggested—at the source, not victim by victim—but this might not be safe.
Kate asked Mae, “Can you really heal Dahlia? I thought that was how everyone lost their power.”
Bernadette spoke up before Mae could answer. “Not everyone. Ximena, Fiona, and Gaia. All Hilda did was talk with Dahlia. Mary Kay and Azure are psychics, not healers. They made a connection with her that way, like I assume you did. If we could figure out why you were immune to her, maybe Mae could use that factor—”
As other people entered the lobby, Bernadette cut her words off and rose to join Jamie at the coffee bar. To Kate’s dismay, the people coming in from the patio were the same family with the wandering child who had tried to play with Lobo the day before. The parents were engaged in conversation with each other, ignoring their daughter. The child lunged for Lobo again, running at him, arms wide, shouting, “Doggie!”
There was no point in talking to this family. Kate spoke to Lobo instead, her hand on his harness, and the dog held perfectly still.
Jamie looked alarmed, though. “Jeezus.” He dropped his coffee on the counter—upright, somehow—and ran to stop the little girl, grabbing her shoulders as she was about to seize Lobo’s muzzle. “Don’t do that.” His voice trembled. “You could get hurt.”
The parents stopped their progress down the corridor, looking back as if they had just discovered they might have a daughter. Lobo showed a similar level of detachment, but more alertness. Kate patted him and praised him. The little girl pouted at Jamie and ran off after her parents, who resumed their stroll and conversation without waiting for her to catch up.
“Fuck.” Jamie seemed unsteady or light-headed. He staggered back from Lobo and leaned against the coffee bar. “Scared the crap out of me for a second.”
Kate had to admit that with his fear of dogs he’d been brave. A less well-trained dog might have bitten the child. “Thanks for intervening,” she said. “But I knew he’d be all right.”
“He’s amazing. Doesn’t growl or anything.”
“No.” Kate rubbed Lobo’s head. “Only at Dahlia.”
“Seriously?”
“Sometimes his hair even stands up. We pulled in at Tim’s place last night at the same time she was going out to her car, and you’d think Lobo had smelled a bear or something.”
Jamie retrieved his coffee and sank onto the couch. His hands were shaking so much he failed in an attempt to drink. Mae sat beside him and patted his leg, but he didn’t respond to her. He looked at Lobo for a while. The dog lay down and grunted. “She makes me feel strange like that, too,” Jamie said. “Cold stuff coming off her like dry ice.”
Bernadette returned to her perch on the edge of her chair. “I don’t think other people pick up on what you sense. She seemed perfectly normal to me when you pointed her out the other day.”
“I didn’t like her,” Kate said. “She annoyed me. But that doesn’t mean much, if you know me. If Lobo hadn’t growled, I wouldn’t have thought she was abnormal until I did her reading. Mae?”
Mae said, “She came across as shallow and conceited, but she was sort of friendly to me. Nothing witchy about her.”
Bernadette sipped her coffee, frowning, and put the paper cup on the end table beside her. “I think I’ve figured out why Kate is immune to Dahlia.” She turned to Kate. “It’s simple. Everyone she’s attacked has opened up to her, cared about her. Lobo growled and put your guard up. You didn’t trust her.”
“So Mae has to feel that way, too, to be safe to heal her.” Kate looked at the psychic. “Can you do that?”
Mae got up and refilled her coffee. “I don’t know. Her folks had me looking for her and I learned a lot about her childhood. She’s awful now, but she wasn’t always. I’ve got this—I can’t call it friendship—but I’ve got some kind of rapport with her. I might be able to shut it off. I’ve never done that, though, made myself not care about somebody. Especially not someone I was gonna heal.”
Jamie sat up straighter. “I put a spider outside and I still didn’t like it.”
“Sugar, that’s wonderful.” Mae beamed at him and then frowned. “I don’t see how it helps me stay safe from Dahlia, though.”
“Not you. Me. I can’t like Dahlia. You paint a target on her for me, since you know her story, tell me where to aim, what to send her for healing. Be like those robo-surgeon arms, y’know? And I could tell if it worked. So could Lobo.”
Robo-surgeon. Kate started to laugh and stopped herself. Jamie wasn’t joking. But if he did as little with his training as he’d said, he was nowhere near qualified to make good on his offer. Kate tried to think who else could do the work. If he had the aversion to Dahlia that he claimed, he might be the only immune healer. No, not quite. “What about Andrea? Does she know or like Dahlia?”
“Nah,” Jamie said. “Never met her. And I warned her about her.”
“So she could aim at Mae’s target as well as you could. If she joins the drum circle, she’ll have to play spiritual with Dahlia anyway and it’ll be the perfect set-up. Does she do any healing work?”
“On her massage clients. Sort of like I do when I brush my cat.”
“That’s a lot more than what you do when you brush your cat. Give me her number.”
“I don’t want her to get hurt.”
“She’s more experienced than you are. You’re the one that would get hurt. Anyway, it’s up to her if wants to say no. Will you give me her number? I’m sure I can find it some other way if you won’t.”
Making a scrunchy-mouthed face, he went through his contacts list and then brought Kate his phone, displaying the number. “Might say it scrambled if I read it to you.”
A heavy silver bracelet with gold trim and inlaid stones like little planets glittered on his wrist above the phone. The artwork was so beautiful Kate wanted to stare at it, but she entered the number and thanked him. Jamie returned to the couch and the muffins. Kate texted Andrea. Spirit World Fair would pay for her to apply to and join Jill’s drum group, and pay her to attempt to heal Dahlia. The money would come out of Mae’s projected pay, but Kate didn’t mention that. She would have to explain it to Mae first.
Bernadette started talking with Mae about her triathlon training. The conversation sounded natural except for the abrupt shift. Kate sent the message and looked up.
Jill, her arm around the waist of a slim brown man with collar-length hair, strolled into the lobby from the corridor of bedrooms. The man was around forty, dressed with casual, stylish elegance—a Latino GQ cover model. Jill’s cheeks glowed and she walked with a flaunting, sensual sway.
“I’m glad to see you’re working on your education, Miss Martin.” Jill beamed a gap-toothed smile at Mae, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Good morning, Bernadette, Kate.” She paused. “But why do we have Jamie Ellerbee at this conference? Don’t tell me you’re seriously studying healing.”
Before Jamie could answer, Jill turned back to Kate. “Miguel is my agent.” She loosened her hold on her male companion to rest a hand on his arm. “He’s very excited about my doing a talk at the fair. He thought I could preview my new book then.”
“You? At the fair?” Jamie looked from Jill to Kate. “What in bloody hell is going on?” Kate held up both her hands and lowered them as if she were pushing him down into a box. It didn’t work the way his father’s calm-down signal had at the meeting. Jamie grew angrier. “I told you I’m not in if she is, and you fucking lied. You said you’d wait before you asked her—”
The man at the front desk called out, “You’ll need to quiet down, sir. We can’t have that kind of language.”
Jamie paced to the patio door, punching his fist into his palm.
Jill’s stage whisper was exactly that—staged, and loud. “Kate, dear, I warned you. If you need back-up, Miguel knows people who represent some good musicians. I’m sure we can help you out.”
Jamie spun on her. “Is that what you want? You think you can—fuck—I’ll do the bloody show then. I’ll—”
Jill aimed her smug flat-topped smile at him. “You’ll what?”
The clerk raised a warning finger. Jamie yanked the door to the patio open and strode out.
Kate glared at Jill. “I hadn’t told him yet. I wanted to break it tactfully.”
Jill’s mouth twisted to the side. She glanced at Miguel, then back at Kate. “I haven’t seen you do tact. Can you?”
“Not really. But I need you two to get along. Or put up with each other. Something. The fair’s riding on both of you, not one or the other. He may be temperamental, but I need him. You didn’t have to make those comments about getting back-up. Be the adult. Go make peace.”
Jill regarded Kate with mock awe, as if no one told Jill Betts what to do, but then Miguel nodded and inclined his head toward the open doors. Jill lost the sarcastic look and went out, her boots clicking on the flagstones.
“I’m not so sure that was a good idea,” Mae said. “I found out why he doesn’t like Jill.”
Miguel’s eyebrows lifted. If his ears could have pricked up like a dog’s, Kate thought they would have. Mae gave Miguel a defensive stare, took her phone out and texted. Kate read the message.
Kandy Kahee was Jamie’s best friend. She was a recovering alcoholic and Jill pushed her to drink. He blames Jill for her death.
No wonder Jamie had jumped to Hilda’s rescue in that ludicrous, desperate way. Kate muttered a quick thanks to Mae, roused Lobo and headed to the patio. She felt guilty and stuck, two of her least favorite feelings. Her hands craved to light a cigarette.
Miguel came up behind her. “I want to supervise this, too. I have a lot invested in Jill, as I’m sure you do in the Spirit World Fair.”
True, but Kate resented being paired with Jill’s agent at some level. She ignored him and wheeled hurriedly across the open space, Lobo trotting ahead, Miguel pacing behind.
Jamie stood at the edge of the cactus garden, still shoeless, facing Jill. The hot dry wind blew her hair toward him while his hair blew back, giving the odd effect that Jill was controlling the wind, sending her long silver threads at him. She held out her hands, palms up. “I told Kate I’d make peace with you.”
Jamie scowled. “Don’t even try.”
“Come, come. It’s a spiritual event.”
“Would be if you weren’t in it.”
Jill folded her arms. “I’m doing you and Kate and the rest of the board a big favor by being in it.”
“Pig’s arse. You’re doing it to be a star. Or so you can stand at a lectern on the Eight Northern campus.”
“I hardly need that kind of local publicity.”
“Nah. But you’d do it to piss off my dad. You’ve been aiming at him for years.”
“I think he took aim at me.” Jill stepped closer. Kate stopped a few yards from the arguing pair. She felt Miguel close on her back, and picked up a scent of mixed colognes and sweat. Jill probably had that same reek of infidelity on her, too. Jamie backed off from her at the same time Kate eased away from Miguel. Jill closed in again. “But my issues with your father aren’t about you and me, Jamie. I always thought we should be friends.”
He turned away from her, fists clenching and unclenching, and then massaged his forearms. Her hair blew onto him. He brushed it off with a cringing panic, as if he’d walked into a spider web. Kate wanted to yell at him to get it together. She wished she’d never sent Jill out to talk to him.
Jill said, “It would honor Rainbow’s memory if we made peace.”
Jamie faced her again. “Jesus. You, honor her? You wore her like your fucking jewelry, like some Indian accessory. Got rid of her when she didn’t flatter you anymore.”
Miguel murmured over Kate’s head. “This is not going well.”
“No shit. Are you going to butt in?”
“No.” He sounded amazed that she would ask. So much for supervising. “Are you?”
Jamie had been too angry to listen to reason even before things got his far, and Jill, Kate suspected, was too proud to quit a fight. If Kate intervened, she could have the fair’s key people pissed off at her as well as each other. Reluctantly, she said, “No.”
Jill pulled herself up tall. “What makes you say that?”
“You know bloody well. You made her give up—”
“You made her choose between us. That’s why she drank. I’m sure you feel terrible about it, but you can’t blame me. I was there. I know what happened.”
“Yeah—you gave her another drink when she could hardly walk. You fucking killed her.”
Kate and Miguel exchanged looks.
Jill took a long pause and adjusted her heavy necklace on her chest. “That’s cruel. And it’s perfectly absurd. You weren’t there. You left her. You have no idea what happened.” She stepped closer to Jamie and grabbed his arm, squeezing hard. “I cared very much about Rainbow. You let her down. She drank. She died. I lost her, too, and I haven’t held it against you.” Her jaw clenched and her eyes hardened as she seized him in a forced handshake. “Let everyone see we made peace.”
“Not a bloody chance.”
Jamie yanked both arms out of Jill’s grasp with a dramatic backward sweep, straight into a man-sized cactus. Kate gasped. She’d gotten an armful once and it had hurt for days. Jamie held up his hands, his palms a thicket of cactus spines, and stared at them, as silent as if he’d stopped breathing. Jill laughed. “Well, I guess we can’t shake on it.”
Miguel hissed Jill’s name in the tone of a parent with a misbehaving child.
“Oh, stop,” she snapped. “You saw I made an effort.”
Jamie turned from her and tried to wrap his arms around himself, only to recoil as his thorny hands took the pressure. His legs buckled the way they had after he’d stopped the child from touching Lobo, making him stagger into the same cactus. Lobo whimpered. Alarmed, Kate called to Jamie and hastened toward him, offering to help, but he bolted as if she’d come at him with a weapon. He stumbled frantically through the garden, crashing into several more cacti, and came to a stop between the two water-trickle stones, leaning one shoulder against the taller rock and breathing with hoarse vocalized gasps. What in the world had made him act like this?
Cactus blossoms had somehow gotten snagged on the thorns that stuck into his arms and chest, so he looked both deranged and weirdly festive. He had to be in agony, emotionally and physically. Kate wished she could get her chair into the rocky garden. It didn’t matter anymore that he’d annoyed her for weeks. Something was seriously wrong. She had a strange, painful urge to take care of him, and not in the condescending way Miguel was whispering to Jill, patting her shoulder and sending her off. Kate called out to Jamie again, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
Mae dashed past her and into the garden, dodging cacti and rocks to rush up to Jamie. A short, rotund security guard hastened across the patio from the furthest side of the hotel. At the same time, from the conference center, a long, lean Native man with graying hair in a double- folded bun ran to join them, his Western boots clattering. Kate recognized Carl Gorman. She’d interpreted his session on alternative therapies for mental illness that morning. He reached the cactus garden a few seconds after Mae and a few seconds before the guard.
“Please, let me help.” He spoke to the guard. “I’m a psychologist.”
“How do I know that?” the guard asked.
“I’m one of the presenters at this conference.” Dr. Gorman tapped a name badge on his shirt. “You can check the program.”
“I can vouch for that,” Kate said. “I sign interpreted his talk.”
Kneeling between the stones, Mae was pulling cactus spines out of one of Jamie’s legs. “It’s okay, sugar. Breathe slow. Hang in there. I don’t want you falling down with all these stickers in your knees.”
“Thank you.” Dr. Gorman acknowledged Kate with a respectful nod, and turned to the security guard again. “Could you ask your manager if there’s a room where I can—”
“I’ve already talked to the manager.” Bernadette’s voice surprised Kate, though it shouldn’t have. Of course she’d come out. She’d probably called Dr. Gorman. Or maybe he’d noticed on his own. Several people from the conference were out on the steps watching, some shooting pictures or video with their phones. “Mae can get Jamie to come in. Carl, thank you for coming out. Officer, he’s in good hands. Let us take care of him.”
Jamie looked like a frightened porcupine, quivering, staring, seemingly fixated on a short, fat barrel cactus that had sprouted a yellow flower at the bottom like a foot in a frilly sock. Mae kept reminding him to breathe. His gasps grew softer but shakier.
The guard frowned at him, glanced back at Dr. Gorman, and took his radio off his belt and spoke into it. “They got a psychologist here. He wants a place to check the guy out. Lady in a suit says she talked to you already.” A crackly voice answered, unclear to Kate, but the security officer said, “Gotcha. Over.” He turned to the doctor. “Follow me.” And then to Mae, implying Jamie was too incapacitated to communicate. “Ma’am, is this your friend? Will he come with you?”
“I think so.” She stood, placing herself between Jamie and the barrel cactus. The wind blew the water off the rocks in little rainbow sprays, moistening him. “Come on, sugar.”
Mae guided him, her hand on the back of his neck, massaging, and presented him to the psychologist like some shaken, bedraggled prize a cat might lay at its owner’s feet.
“Ms. Radescu.” Miguel appeared beside Kate. “We need to talk. Damage control.”
She looked at the small crowd on the steps of the conference center. It was growing. More phones were up. Why did some idiot have to call security? Maybe it was standard procedure with a disturbance, but Jamie hadn’t been dangerous or violent. If he hadn’t been a local celebrity, or Jill a national one, no one would be taking pictures of him being escorted into the building like this. But they were. He would be on YouTube any minute. Rumors would follow. “Yes. Let’s talk.”
“I sent Jill to my room, so we can’t go there ...” Miguel looked across the patio. “Let’s go over to that corner.”
Kate cued Lobo to walk and they followed Miguel. He sat back in a big white wooden chair, steepling his fingers and then interweaving them. “Do you know how to reach Jangarrai’s manager?”
“Yes.” Kate had plagued Wendy Huang all winter, trying to get Jamie to make a commitment to the fair. For some unexplained reason, it had taken until mid-March. “You want her to do the damage control?”
“She needs to be in on it. Brainstorm. Find ways we can spin this to make both our clients look good.”
Kate had no desire to make Jill look good, but he was right, they had to do it. It was his job as Jill’s agent, and Kate’s as director of the fair. She let her mind go blank and open the way she did before a reading, hoping for a brainstorm. Nothing came.
Miguel prodded. “What could help sell your fair? Something positive. It doesn’t have to be true.”
No wonder Jill kept her glowing reputation. Miguel wasn’t her book publishing agent, he was her handler and image-maker. She’d probably signed with him the day Kandy Kahee died. Kate checked the time on her phone. Amazingly, she still had ten minutes before she had to interpret another presentation. Ten minutes in which to think of a spin, even a lie, if this pro didn’t think of one first. Wendy might be able to help. As Kate looked up her number, the edge of an idea began to surface.
“Crisis,” Kate said, listening to the ringing. What had Hilda said about crises? “Emergence. Look it up in Jill’s books. Shamanic conductor, some shit like that.”
“I like it.” Miguel leaned toward her, his eyes alight. “Some shit like that indeed. Keep going.”
Kate pressed the end button before Wendy could pick up.