A Whisker's Breadth, page 16
“Yes. He’s a good healer. And a good teacher. I enjoy it when he comes over to teach me something new or to help me to practice.”
“I don’t think you need a lot of direction.” When Reg opened her mouth to object and to say that she hadn’t known anything at all about firecasting before Davyn had come along, Damon waved her to silence. “I know what you were doing when I was in the conference center. I couldn’t see it, exactly, but I could feel it. Powerful magic. We would never have survived if you hadn’t been able to slow down the fire and stop it from reaching us. We didn’t have a chance. The firefighters were amazed that we weren’t dead by the time they got to us. Or at least incapacitated by the smoke. What you did was incredible. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“It didn’t feel like much,” Reg confessed. “I mean, it was hard, yes, and it took a lot more energy than I had on hand. But it still felt like it was… I don’t know… clunky. Clumsy. Like I was just playing around, and got lucky.”
“That was not luck. That was skill. Davyn could not have done that. Him telling you not to practice firecasting while he’s not here…” Damon snorted. “I don’t know. It’s like telling Einstein just to practice his times tables and not to try anything harder.”
Reg thought that was a bit of an exaggeration. She rolled her eyes. Without saying anything else about it, she grabbed the full coffee pot and poured them each a mug. Starlight meowed and rubbed against her legs, so she fed him while she waited for her coffee to cool to a temperature where she could drink it.
“You slept okay? I doubt if that couch was very comfortable.”
“Slept like the dead. Feel pretty good this morning, other than a bit of stiffness.”
“Good. But don’t plan on a repeat. I don’t generally have men sleep over. Or have anyone sleeping on my couch. This is where I work.”
He nodded. “Understood. It was just a one-time thing. I didn’t actually intend to fall asleep there. It just happened.”
“It’s okay. I know you needed it. I wasn’t about to wake you up and send you on your way. Just don’t spread it around that you slept here. I don’t think that my landlord would like it. Or certain other people.”
“Why do you care what Corvin thinks?”
“I didn’t say I was talking about Corvin.”
“But you were.”
Reg didn’t bother to deny it. What was the point of lying to him when he knew as soon as she spoke whether she was telling the truth or not? If she denied it, she would just sound more pathetic.
Damon sipped his coffee. Reg added a bit of sugar to hers and looked in the fridge while she took her first couple of swallows. She had apparently finished off the ice cream the night before. Most of the food in the fridge had been there for a while, so she started to pull the oldest takeout containers out and drop them into the garbage. Sarah would be so impressed that she was actually initiating cleaning on her own. Starlight got in the way a few times, wanting to know what Reg was doing, then finally snorted in disgust and returned to Reg’s bedroom for a nap.
In a few minutes, Reg was distracted from her cleaning by a knock on the door. She looked over at Damon and swore. She had not been planning on anyone else finding out that Damon had spent the night. Maybe it was just Davyn checking in on the two of them, but Reg doubted it. The door didn’t open, so it wasn’t Sarah.
Reg walked over and looked through the peephole. She swore again.
“Who is it?” Damon asked in a low voice.
“Vivian.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Reg swore again. “I don’t know.”
“There isn’t exactly anything wrong about me being here. And there’s no reason to think that I slept over.”
Reg looked pointedly at her housecoat.
“I might have been rude and come over early and gotten you out of bed,” Damon suggested. “Like Vivian is doing.”
Reg rubbed her forehead. “Fine. Go over and… plump up the cushions on the couch or something so it doesn’t look slept in. And fix your hair.”
Damon ran his fingers through his hair to tame his bed-head and went over to the couch. Reg took a couple of breaths and looked around for anything else that might be out of place. Vivian knocked on the door again. Reg sighed and let her in.
Vivian took in her state of dress. “Oh, did I get you up?”
“Seems like everyone is determined to get me up this morning,” Reg said grumpily, shooting a look in Damon’s direction. “I told you before I don’t get up early.”
Vivian looked at Damon and her eyes widened a little. “You’re the guy who was at the conference center yesterday. You helped get that family out.”
Damon nodded. “Couldn’t do it myself, as it turned out, but I tried.”
“I didn’t see your car out front.”
“It isn’t parked out front.”
If Vivian were fishing for information on whether Reg and Damon were in a relationship, she wasn’t getting anything. Reg and Damon both waited for her to make the next move.
“I’m happy you were there to help.” Vivian shifted uncomfortably. “I would have felt terrible if people had been killed in that… accident. I feel bad enough about the destruction and people who got hurt or scared.”
“It wasn’t exactly your fault, though, was it?” Reg asked. Without asking, she poured a cup of coffee for Vivian and handed it to her. They all sat down. Reg and Damon sat on the couch, and Reg ended up closer to Damon than she had intended to. His leg brushed against hers, and she wondered whether he was intentionally teasing her or trying to make Vivian think they were a couple. She felt her face flush red but didn’t say anything about it or make a show of moving away.
“No, but I know that things happen around me.” Vivian wrapped her hands around her coffee mug like she was cold. She looked over at Damon, obviously not sure what to say in front of him.
“I filled in Damon on the basics,” Reg told her. “After the fire. I figured he deserved to know what was going on, since it had affected him.”
Vivian nodded and didn’t seem upset about the disclosure. Reg was never sure what level of privacy was appropriate with a psychic client. But Vivian had been all over the news, so it wasn’t like her accidents were a secret.
“I can’t predict when something will happen…” Vivian explained, “but I try to stay away from places where other people might be hurt…”
“But you went to the conference center yesterday,” Reg pointed out.
“I thought… with the accidents that have happened recently, it would be a while until the next thing… that I’d be safe for a while again…”
Reg sipped her coffee and waited. Vivian had said that the accidents were getting worse and closer together. She had to know that it wasn’t safe for her to go anywhere.
“I just want… to have a normal life,” Vivian said. “This has been going on for too long and I just want it all to end. I need to know what to do.”
Reg looked at Damon to see if he had any input, then back at Vivian.
“If you want me to help you, or to try to help find a solution, then you need to be honest with me.”
“I am.”
“You’ve been holding things back from the start. Every time I learn something… you bolt. It’s not helping us to solve anything. So… you need to tell me everything.”
“I have.”
“Why did you take off after Calliopia and Ruan were here?”
Vivian’s lips pressed tightly together in a thin line. She shifted again and sipped her coffee. Her free hand went to her blouse, pressing against her chest. It looked like she was scared or cold, but Reg knew there was more to it.
“Your necklace. Was it something to do with your cat necklace?”
Vivian’s hand closed around it, clutching it through her shirt where it was hidden. “No.”
Reg looked at Damon, but didn’t need his headshake to tell her that Vivian was lying. She shrugged. “If you don’t tell me everything, I can’t do anything to help you. Simple as that. I can’t just guess what it is you need from me. I don’t know how to get rid of this problem without being told all of the details. So… there’s really no point in you coming back here over and over.”
“But…”
Reg waited.
Vivian squeezed the cat pendant. “When you blessed that girl’s cat pendant, or whatever it was you did, I thought it was all just show. But when you touched me… I felt something that I hadn’t felt for a very, very long time.”
Reg remembered brushing past Vivian when she had handed Calliopia’s pendant back. Vivian had flinched back and had left soon after that without a good explanation. But Reg couldn’t remember feeling anything unusual either while she was putting strength and healing into the necklace or after handing it over to Calliopia.
“What did you feel?”
“I don’t know. Like… someone was talking to me. In a deep voice.”
“A deep voice?” Reg couldn’t keep the bewilderment out of her tone.
Vivian touched her head, scowling. “Not… deep in tone. But… like it was reaching inside of me. Like… important. Awe-inspiring.”
Reg had no idea what that meant. Apparently, there was some kind of connection between the two of them. Because Reg had read her a couple of times? Because she had seen the lion incident, the first strange accident that Vivian remembered? Had that put them on similar wavelengths somehow?
She hoped it didn’t mean that she was now under the curse too.
“What if I touch you again,” Reg suggested, “and we see if it happens again?”
Vivian was hesitant. “I don’t know. I’m not here because of that.”
“Really?”
“I… just want it to stop, and you’re the only one that I feel like could help me. I’ve had all kinds of people who said that they could. Scammers who just wanted fame and fortune. But I feel like you understand, like you could do something. At least I know that you really have… second sight.”
“Do you think I can help you without touching you?”
Vivian’s face fell. She looked down. “No.”
“Well, then?”
Vivian didn’t reply for some time. Then she finally acquiesced. Her shoulders slumped down and she stared at the floor. “Okay. Fine.”
Reg waited for her to do or say something else, and when Vivian didn’t, Reg got up. She stepped around the coffee table so that she was at Vivian’s side, and slowly reached out her hand to see if there was some sensation when she got close to Vivian, either warmth or a repelling force.
Chapter Thirty-One
Nothing happened.
Reg looked over at Damon, then back at Vivian. She closed the distance between them until they were just a hair’s breadth apart. Still, nothing. She could feel the warmth of Vivian’s body, but nothing unusual.
Carefully, Reg laid her hand on Vivian’s shoulder.
Still nothing, but there was a layer of cloth between them. Reg moved her hand to Vivian’s bare arm, prepared for something momentous to happen.
But still, there was nothing. She looked at Vivian’s face to see if she were feeling anything. Maybe it was something that only the recipient felt. But Vivian just stared back at her, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the voice to reach deep down inside her.
Eventually, Reg withdrew her hand. “Well, I guess it wasn’t that. It must have been something else. Do you think it could have been the presence of Calliopia or Ruan? Did you feel anything particular toward either of them?”
“No. I thought… they were strange children. But other than that, no. Just that they were odd.”
Reg nodded. Vivian didn’t seem to have recognized them as a fairy and a pixie. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing special about them.
“Well, maybe this, then. Where did you get the cat pendant? Do you think… it was something about Calliopia’s pendant? About me…” Reg used Vivian’s word, “…blessing it?”
“Maybe. But her cat… wasn’t really anything like my cat.”
Reg heard Starlight jump down from the bed or windowsill in the bedroom. She made the connection. “I was holding Starlight. And he had been helping with the pendant. Maybe he was what had an effect on you.”
Vivian looked anxiously in Starlight’s direction as he made his way across the cottage toward Reg. Calliopia had commented on what a powerful being Starlight was. Maybe she had seen something with her fairy sight that Reg could not. When Reg had looked at Starlight with her second sight, he had been a brilliant shining white. Reg took a deep breath and looked at Vivian, willing herself to see any spells or aura that she hadn’t been able to see casually.
The pendant under Vivian’s shirt was glowing. Vivian herself seemed dark and distant, but the cat pendant, like Starlight, was bright white, like a little star fallen right in the middle of Reg’s cottage.
“Starlight.” Reg called to him and he came over.
Vivian looked frightened. It would appear that she was not ready for the cat to touch her. She did not want to feel that voice calling to her again.
“Where did you get the necklace?” Reg asked.
Vivian covered it with her hand again, even though it was beneath her shirt. “I don’t remember.”
“Something like that? You must know where you got it. Is it a family heirloom?”
“Yes. I… my grandmother, great grandmother, I don’t remember. It’s been in my family for a long time.”
Reg glanced at Damon. He didn’t shake his head this time, just looked down. Reg still understood. No. Vivian was lying. Reg watched Starlight approach Vivian and sniffing the air. His pupils got big like they did when he was hunting or playing a chase game with her. He stalked Vivian, legs stiff and the fur on his back fluffed out.
Vivian shook her head. “I don’t think he likes me. I don’t want him to attack me again.”
“He won’t, will you Starlight? We just want to try an experiment, see whether it was Starlight that triggered a reaction before. Maybe that will help us to figure out what’s going on with you.”
“No. I don’t think I want to do this.” Vivian prepared to stand up.
“You said you wanted a normal life. Did you change your mind?”
Vivian hesitated. “No.” She shook her head slightly. “I want… I want to be normal, like anyone else.”
“Then let’s figure this out. If it’s something to do with cats, maybe that means it’s something to do with your necklace.”
“But what? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just suggestive. A parallel that might be worth looking into.”
Vivian watched Starlight getting closer to her, holding tightly to her pendant.
“I don’t want to talk to her.”
Reg raised her brows. “To who? Starlight? He’s a him, not a her.”
“No. I think she’s… he’s…”
Reg looked at Starlight, curious about what he was going to do and what Vivian was so worried about. Maybe, like the fairies and pixies—and Corvin, for that matter—she hated cats instinctively. Could that be all it was?
Starlight stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on Vivian’s chair. Very delicately, he reached out one paw and tapped Vivian’s leg.
Vivian’s eyes rolled back and Reg stood, worried that she was going to faint and fall out of the chair. But by the time she could reach across the coffee table to steady Vivian, her eyes returned to their previous position. She looked straight at Reg, her pupils pin-prick size, almost swallowed up by her brown irises.
Reg swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.
“You should be careful of what you ask for,” Vivian said, her voice deep, but devoid of emotion.
“Because you might get it,” Reg finished. She remembered Harrison warning her about making wishes. And Sarah had said something soon after Reg had arrived in Black Sands, hadn’t she? Something about how wishes granted by fairies in fairy tales always ended up backfiring on the wisher. Somehow, it always ended up getting twisted around so that it was something bad instead of what the wisher had actually wanted.
“What did you wish?” Damon asked.
Vivian continued to stare at Reg, eyes wide, but pupils constricted. She looked eerily like an addict, but Reg knew she hadn’t taken anything.
“What did you wish on?” Reg asked. Was it a fairy wish? One of those falling-star or blow-out-a-candle wishes that little kids make? A wishing well or something else? A genie in a lamp?
Vivian pulled the cat pendant out, exposing it to their view. She let it lay in front of her shirt. Reg studied the glittering gold cat.
“Did you wish on the cat?”
Vivian nodded. Starlight let out a long, strange meow that raised the hair on the back of Reg’s neck. Starlight sat on the floor beside Vivian’s chair, straight and tall, looking directly at her the same way as Vivian was, except that his pupils were big, swallowing up his eyes with blackness. Reg had never been afraid of Starlight, but it was eerie.
“Where did you get it? It wasn’t an heirloom.”
“I found it.”
“You found it?” Reg repeated. That was highly unlikely. One of those things that people said when they didn’t want to be called out as a thief. So who had Vivian stolen it from? Was that why she was now under a curse?
“When I was digging.” Vivian’s voice was childlike. Reg remembered the little girl who was stolen away by the lion. “I was digging on my site. Like Daddy.”
“You said your father was an archaeologist,” Reg remembered. But then she heard Vivian’s actual words in her mind. He was like an archaeologist. What was like an archaeologist? Someone who dug up artifacts in northern Africa?
Not an archaeologist.
A treasure hunter. A tomb raider.
They had become very comfortable. He’d made good money plundering, enough to support his family and raise their status in the world.
