21 Shades of Night, page 449
As if he already knew.
I brushed off my suspicions. Instead, I found myself eager for the stars to ascend in the night sky and for the séance to commence.
Chapter 12
SHE WAS BACK! I was slaphappy over it. My ploy with the shantytown boy had worked. I took a hot shower and slid into my best suit. Spritzed a dose of Parisian cologne on my neck. Fiera had made it clear she was here only for the work. But I couldn’t help myself.
I spent the next hour cleaning the parlor, deciding not to leave the task strictly to Opal. I organized the books, the candles, the goblets, and the brandy that Tim had procured from Spellbinding Speakeasy.
Finally, seven approached. When I stepped outside to place the sign on the boardwalk, a spirited breeze cooled my face. Leaning on the railing, I watched golden reflections of the full moon ripple on the waves. I imagined Fiera next to me, her shoulder brushing against mine, which made me think about her shapely legs, and helping her slide under her covers, tucking her in. Peter, I scolded, stop this insanity! The lady is only here to work. And you are here to study her every nefarious, con-artist move. I sighed, straightened my jacket, and returned to the store.
Back inside, the guests arrived in rapid succession. Dr. Talcott came first and spent time perusing my bookshelves. He was again dressed in his white seersucker suit with red shirt and dangling Circle pendant. Next came Opal and Fiera. Opal looked quite presentable, and I wondered if Fiera had straightened Opal’s collar and advised her on a dress. And Fiera was resplendent. A little soap and water had done wonders for her muddy, rumpled state. She’d washed her hair and it was loose and wavy, flowing down her back. She wore a faded, but pretty navy dress with ribbon trimming.
I offered Fiera the first choice of seat at the table. If she was going to work, she should be comfortable. She picked the spot facing the front door and began to shuffle her cards. Presently, Talcott came over and introduced himself. They exchanged friendly banter, and Fiera seemed quite curious about the Circle’s bogus photography business. I had to choke down a derisive comment or two.
Tim arrived next with a new memo pad and a fresh fountain pen. He asked Fiera how Dulcie was. Fiera said she wasn’t sure but hoped to see her soon. Opal busied herself getting drinks for people—Coca Cola with a brandy spike for Tim, Fiera, and me, and plain soda for Dr. Talcott. Opal set a brass incense pot in the center of the table and handed Fiera the matchbook.
I closed the heavy drapes and shut the door. Just as the séance was about to start, the chimes rang and a young lady with a pink dress and ginger-colored hair piled high atop her head waltzed in.
She smiled at Fiera. “Ah, if it isn’t the very same lady who asked me about the Truth Taffy. Fancy seeing you here! You’re reading the cards tonight?”
“Yes,” Fiera answered, a rush of pink mottling her cheeks.
“Shall we do a round of introductions?” I suggested.
“They call me Celeste,” the new arrival said. “I work at Spellbinding, on the boardwalk.”
I introduced myself and sat down next to Fiera. In case of another trancelike reaction on my part, I didn’t want to practically fall across the table again. Tim described himself as the recording secretary. Dr. Talcott explained he was the regional head of the Circle of Light.
Celeste studied Talcott. “Are you a medical doctor?” Hadn’t she ever heard of the Circle of Light folks? That seemed unlikely as their idiotic posters were plastered all over the boardwalk.
“I’m a Doctor of Philosophy.” Talcott sniffed.
Fiera lifted the brass pot’s lid, lit the incense, and closed the top. It began to waft out of the pot’s tiny holes. She asked us to hold hands. “Breathe in deeply and close your eyes.” The incense smelled deliciously of exotic western sagebrush. She chanted what she called a Spell of Protection, asking the spirit world to bring us timely messages of truth. Her quick study of séances and the cards impressed me. It had taken me weeks back at the Manhattan headquarters to commit the basic procedure to memory, and at least another week to put on a convincing performance. If a devoted realist such as me could fake it, I supposed Fiera, who seemed to be a believer, could ace it.
“I’ll start by reading the cards.” She placed them, one by one, in the cross-pattern I had used. Had she studied my method so thoroughly in one evening that she’d already imprinted the pattern to memory?
She stared down for a time, occasionally moving her hands over the cards as if they were emitting surges of invisible electromagnetism. Supernatural energies, bah! I worked hard to suppress a sardonic snigger. “There’s a young boy stepping forward.” She pointed to the Prince of Cups. “A baby boy is trying to tell me something.”
How on this green earth did she get a babe in arms from a grown prince? My memories wafted back to the speakeasy, to us hearing the cry of a disembodied baby. Absurd! Poppycock! Was Fiera going to pull the same stunt here? Did she have a hidden music box that sounded like an infant’s cry? I regretted not rifling through her pockets the night she was crocked. I’d let my emotions cloud my strict procedural techniques. That couldn’t happen again.
Closing her eyes, Fiera began to swoon. When she next spoke, her voice was higher, faint with pain. “I am sick with poison. The lady left a jar of mushrooms in pork sauce in the sun for three weeks. The mess rotted and grew Botulism spores. She skimmed the mess off and put it in my milk. I was too young to know.”
“What lady? What was her intention?” Talcott asked, his brows beetling over his hawkish eyes.
“The mean lady,” squeaked Fiera. “I see it now. She put the spores in my milk bottle, and I drank it.” Fiera gurgled, deep in her throat, as if the actual poisonous substance was making her paralyzed, unable to speak. The crowd gasped.
“That sound is horrific!” Celeste clapped her hands over her ears.
“What happened next?” I asked Fiera—or the baby boy inside of her. It wasn’t as if I believed her performance, though it was quite compelling.
She drawled slowly, painfully, “My little lungs were frozen. The woman laughed at me, but I couldn’t move.”
Oddly, I felt an empathic burn in my own lungs. “And after that?”
“The doctors never found my killer,” she gasped. The supposed spirit, through Fiera, began to cry in a high-pitched infant squall. I would have guffawed over this just a few days ago, but my doubts swirled inside me, twisted up my guts, confusing me.
“Who killed you?” Talcott asked again.
“Evil looms large,” was Fiera’s quizzical answer. But the voice was not hers. Now, it had lowered in timber to the voice of an old woman’s. Fiera’s eyes rolled up in her head. “Evil. Looms. Large.”
“Who is speaking now? Are you still the babe?” I asked.
“The old caretaker. The one who found them.”
“Them?” Talcott asked.
The spirits inside Fiera had no more to say, at least with words. Abruptly, a cold wind blew throughout the room, despite the fact that the drapes were drawn together and the windows closed. Rustling around, the cards rearranged themselves into a loose circle, with The Prince of Cups in the center.
All the while, Tim kept on taking furious notes.
From the outer circle, the Queen of Swords rose of its own accord and slapped down over the Prince of Cups as if she were trumping it. My Lord, how had Fiera done this trick? It was more than any natural wind could do. But she had no strings attached to the cards; her hands weren’t even touching them. My pulse throbbed in my temples, and I had to loosen my collar.
Opal came forward and pointed to the queen. “Fiera, tell us, what does that mean?” I was shocked to hear Opal interject in a reading. It was not her way, not her place. She’d always lurked far back in the shadows. “Please, what does it mean?” she persisted.
Fiera stared down at the Queen of Swords. Swaying in her seat, she answered in a third, singsong voice. “A sad little girl comes forward now. She needs to speak.”
“What does she say?” Tim asked, his pen poised over his paper.
“She’s still a baby, too, with short, auburn hair. She says the woman filled her bottle with iodine.”
“Was the woman treating the baby for a goiter?” Talcott asked in his crisp, scientific manner.
“No goiter,” Fiera answered in the singsong monotone.
“For hypothyroidism?” Talcott persisted.
“No.”
“Then why the iodine?” he asked.
Fiera choked back a sob. It tore me to pieces to hear. “She wanted to stop my heartbeats.”
“Who are you? Tell me,” I pleaded, all of my professional distance cast to the wind.
“Someone dear to you.”
“But I have no children,” I protested.
“Someone dear to you,” Fiera repeated in a high baby voice.
“This reading is quite dreadful!” Celeste’s already-pale complexion turned greenish white. “Make it stop!”
“Why did she want to poison you?” I asked earnestly, leaning close to Fiera and taking her arm.
At the touch of her soft skin, I felt myself start to fade. As before, Fiera’s senses melded into mine—into a gooey pudding of emotions and half-digested visions.
Behind my lids, I saw a spinning linoleum floor with gray paisley panels, a high kitchen counter with glassed in, dark wooden cabinets; a rounded, black kettle on a big stove, a pair of square-toed black shoes by me on the floor.
Why was I on the floor, pray tell?
I babbled the answer to my own questions, and the last bits I recalled were Celeste’s gulps of horror, the clip-clip of her chunky heels as she ran from the shop, and Tim’s fountain pen scritch-scratching against his infernal memo pad.
At that, I slumped over in my chair and slid to the floor.
Chapter 13
“PETER!” DESPITE MY vow not to have any more close contact, I leapt from my chair and knelt down, rubbing his cheeks firmly to rouse him. “Answer me, please. Wake up!”
Opal was already beside me, sprinkling cool drops of water on his forehead.
He came to quickly after the dousing. As before, he blinked in confusion, clearly not recalling his last lucid moments.
“Are you hurt?” I ran my greedy fingers once through his dark curls—just to help revive him, I told myself.
When he gazed up at me, I detected a fire in his eyes, which, to his credit, he dimmed to a simmer. “I… I’m fine. It must’ve been from breathing in all that incense on an empty stomach.” Sitting, he brushed off his suit jacket and rose awkwardly to his feet.
But he didn’t look fine. Furrows of worry lined his forehead, and his upper lip had beads of sweat that he nervously brushed off.
“You’re turning into a regular lilting lily,” Tim chided.
Talcott adjusted his bowler hat. “Mr. Dune, I see you’ve revived, so I must leave. Let me know if Miss Bone will plan to attend an upcoming séance. If the fireworks spark this hot when she’s not even here, pity we never got to see what happens when she is.” He nodded to me. “Good performance, Miss…”
“Fiera, Fiera Lorena.” Why did everyone assume I was performing? And Talcott of all people! He was a spiritualist.
Talcott swung back to Tim. “Frankly, I’m disappointed. I thought you’d mentioned inviting Miss Bone to this one.” With that, he marched to the door.
Tim scrambled after him. “Why leave so soon? Have a cup of tea, perhaps?”
“Not now, too late for that.”
“I’ll make sure Miss Bone is here next time,” Tim persisted. “This was simply a gap in our communication, that’s all.”
Dr. Talcott kept on walking.
I tried to fathom why Dr. Talcott wanted to see Alyse Bone so badly, and why Tim cared so greatly for Talcott’s business. Talcott seemed like a wet blanket at best, though these days money was money, after all.
Inside, Peter settled wearily into a chair, while Opal ran over with a fresh snifter of brandy and a handkerchief she’d dampened. A surge of jealousy passed through me, watching her dab the cool cloth across his forehead.
Inwardly, I scolded myself. No, Fiera, no more thoughts of Peter Dune. Your unhealthy attraction can only lead to trouble. Regardless of my attraction, our supernatural connection had reoccurred in spades, and it made me intensely curious—and upset. The strange voices emanating from me during the séance and the onslaught of poisoned infant exposés had my stomach violently churning. “Do you remember what happened, Mr. Dune?” I asked in a timid voice.
“Call me Peter, and no, I don’t.” He heaved a great sigh as he shook his head. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“You touched my hand and then…”
Tim marched back into the shop, interrupting our attempt to piece together the events. “May I take a look at your cards, Fiera?” he asked.
“For what purpose?” Funny, Tim had never expressed interest in them before this.
“After your dramatic read of the Prince of Cups, I’d like to refresh my memory of the cards. Take a closer look at the cup arcana.”
“Certainly.” I handed him the deck. He rifled through them to the card in question. Fishing it out, he held it to the light and flipped it to the other side.
“Whatever are you doing?” Peter grumbled.
Tim ignored Peter’s question and leveled his gaze on me. He smiled, but it wasn’t a warm grin. “So, Fiera, how did you make those cards rise?”
Heat flared in my chest. “Truly, I’ve no idea. I’d like to know as much as you.” There was no answer as to why my supernatural powers were growing, and it alternately terrified and astonished me.
“Oh, baloney.” Tim glanced at Peter, and then back up over to me. He chuckled. I didn’t find anything funny about Peter’s collapse or the upsetting message I’d received about the poisoned infants. In fact, it was a challenge not to burst into tears, for I was still quite rattled by how real and utterly terrifying it all was. Under the circumstances, Tim’s laughter seemed cruel.
“You must know, Fiera,” Tim shot back. “Let us in on your masterful act. You scared away our customers. Celeste practically had a conniption fit, and Dr. Talcott—”
“Forget about Talcott. Enough!” Peter roared, his strength clearly reignited. “Do we not want help attracting more customers?”
“We have our routine,” Tim shot back. “It’s one thing for Miss Fiera to bring in a few warm bodies, but quite another for her to have them running for the hills! Whose bright idea was this? And you!” Tim shook his fist at Peter, who returned a glare that demanded he not utter another word in public company.
Opal scampered about, gathering soiled cups, wiping down the table, and tamping out the incense in the brass pot.
I packed my cards, and turned once again to Peter, who was now sitting in a chair. “If you’re sure you’re feeling better, I think it’s time I left for the inn.”
“What inn?” Tim asked me. “I thought you’d returned to the city.”
“The Starfish, in Asbury.”
“You had a hand in getting this dame a room here?” Tim growled at Peter. I’d never seen him this cross in the short time I’d known him, and it raised my pulse in alarm. Was Tim going to insist I check out of the inn? If so, I’d be forced to sleep under the boardwalk with the vagrants. I imagined them pawing me, rubbing up against me with their unwashed clothing and drooling mouths as I tried in vain to sleep.
“Stay out of this,” Peter retorted. “I’m in charge here.”
“He hired me fair and square,” I added. “And if the money is a problem, you can take some of the hotel cost out of my next paycheck.”
“Peter, you and I need to talk,” Tim hissed.
Opal was giving me darting, cagey looks, as if she longed to be saved.
“Are you finished with your chores?” I asked her. At her nod, I snatched my satchel, took her arm, and we left together.
We were silent as we hurried to the Starfish Inn. The nighttime ocean blew in raw air, and I shivered in my light cotton dress. Somehow, the people walking around after dark looked decidedly shadier—a goateed man with gleaming gemstone eyes, two rummies staggering by, a fox-lean boy with a famished look that had me sensing he might rob us. Or worse.
Safely inside, I invited Opal for a cup of tea. I brewed it from hot tap water and the free teabags I’d squirreled away while still at the Asbury Hotel. She perched on my one wicker chair in the corner, its slats cracked and dry, shedding to the floor in stumpy bits. I sat on my bed. Poor Opal looked worse for wear than I felt. Her big, owlish eyes were rimmed with pale pink.
“Why was Tim so angry, Opal? I was only doing my job reading the cards. Is the hotel cost coming out of Tim’s pay or what?”
“I’m not sure,” she murmured in a voice so soft I had to crane my ears to hear it.
“Tim usually tries hard to be funny—he’s full of off-color jokes,” I added, coaxing her to relax, to talk. “Don’t you agree?”
She sipped her tea and ran her finger across a chip in the rim. “When no one’s in the shop, he’s not always so jolly. He can be unkind to Mr. Dune as well.”
“What does he do, Opal?”
“Tim has a short temper. He thinks he’s always right. He competes with Mr. Dune.”
“Competes for what?”
She shrugged. “To be the boss. They don’t argue in front of me, but I hear them going at it in the back room. Not what they’re saying, but the blare of their angry voices.”
“That’s awful, Opal. They’re business partners. What could they be fighting about? Do you think Tim will get me thrown out of this inn? I don’t understand why he’s so angry with Peter for hiring me, or why he cares so much about Dr. Talcott. I could go talk to Talcott if he likes, try to get him back for another reading…”
