Bad Vibrations

Chapter One If it hadn’t been for his air of extreme agitation, I could have ordered my first client of the day from Central Casting. Perfectly tousled hair, abnormally white teeth, clothing meant to look loose and casual but which he probably overpaid for at Fred Segal or any number of the high-priced shops along Melrose Avenue. Alex Hathaway. He’d called for an appointment the day before and had seemed quite frustrated that I hadn’t been able to see him sooner than this. But I couldn’t see more than four or five clients a day, and it was only because Olivia D’Ambrosio had canceled that I’d been able to squeeze him in at all. Too many clients, and I’d be so overloaded I wouldn’t be able to read the information off their driver’s licenses, let alone interpret their auras or a tarot layout. Another West Hollywood pretty boy, I thought automatically, then gave myself a mental shake. Of all people, I shouldn’t be prejudging anyone else. Lord knows I’d been on the receiving end of some serious side-eye more than once in my life. I let my hand rest lightly on the Tarot deck. I never knew when I met with a client what sort of reading would speak to me. I didn’t bother with a crystal ball — they’d always been mostly for show, as far as I was concerned — but I found the Tarot useful…some days. At other times, I might as well be consulting a poker deck for advice. “What seems to be troubling you?” I asked, and waited for the telltale tingle from the deck to let me know it was receptive to my client’s vibrations. Nothing. Just a stack of coated cardboard. With a sigh, I folded my hands on the tabletop and hoped Otto at least would be on the line for this one. I hated flying solo, as my own sixth sense tended to be about as reliable as my spirit guide. Alex Hathaway shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. At what, I wasn’t quite sure, since my small office didn’t even have a waiting area. It was simply a cramped little space I’d tried to make more welcoming by painting the walls a serene sage green color and lining the tops of my bookcases with a variety of plants in painted ceramic pots. The peace lilies and pothos and philodendron seemed to thrive in the fluorescent light, even though I hated it. I’d always meant to replace the office-standard fixtures with something a little more friendly but somehow had never gotten around to it. “It’s my girlfriend,” Alex said, after one last look at the door. That particular confession was a little surprising. Considering his outward perfection and the area of L.A. where my office was located, I’d just sort of assumed he must be gay. Sooner or later I’d get past the assumption stage. I hoped. “What about your girlfriend?” I asked, thinking, All right, Otto…any time you want to drop in would be fine by me…. Another one of those shifty looks. “No one can hear us in here, right?” “Of course not,” I replied in soothing tones. I wondered whether Alex had smoked a bowl before coming over to his appointment. True, the twitchiness indicated something a little stronger than m*******a, but I knew people sometimes got paranoid when coming down off a pot high. I couldn’t comment from personal experience — I’d had enough mind-expanding experiences on my own without messing around with drugs. I went on, “We’re the only ones here, and I always schedule my clients at least fifteen minutes apart so no one can see you coming or going.” These words didn’t appear to have reassured him. “But they could still be listening.” The DSM-V strongly advised against labeling anyone as crazy, but either he was exhibiting sure signs of paranoia, or at the very least had been watching way too many spy movies. “I’d know if someone were spying on me,” I said. “Trust me.” That was only half a lie. Sometimes I really could sense when other consciousnesses were trying to impinge on my space. Not always, of course — like the rest of my powers, that extra sense wasn’t one hundred-percent reliable. But even eighty percent was pretty good odds, and that tended to be the percentage of times I turned out to be right. Right then, the only consciousness I wanted focusing on my office was Otto’s, and he remained conspicuously absent. Sometime soon we were going to have a talk about that. After all, what good’s a spirit guide who’s never around when you need him? Alex stared at me through long-lashed baby-blue eyes that were narrowed with suspicion. But after a few more seconds, he gave a slight lift of the shoulders which seemed to indicate he’d decided to confide in me after all. “I think my girlfriend is possessed by an alien.” Oh, great. It was times like these that I really wished I’d gone into something a little less wacky, like selling insurance or used cars. I was pretty sure most people in those fields didn’t have to deal with clients who claimed their family members were possessed, or that their dead relatives had come back and taken up residence in the cookie jar, or any of the other questionable tales I’d heard over the years. Still, rolling my eyes or letting out a put-upon sigh wasn’t exactly the professional way to handle this. Besides, Alex was obviously upset by something, so I owed it to him to at least say something comforting. “Actually, there really isn’t anything such as possession — not the way books and movies show it,” I told him. “Spirits do speak through some people, but their intentions are always benign. And ghosts can’t possess people.” “I’m not talking about ghosts,” he said stubbornly, arms crossed. “I’m talking about aliens.” This time, I didn’t bother to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “As in little green men from Mars?” “They’re not from Mars — and they’re not green. I mean, I don’t think they are. I’ve never seen one in its true form.” “But you think one has taken over your girlfriend.” “Yeah.” He rocked back in his chair and then hunched forward, fixing me with an intense stare. “Don’t you think I know how crazy that sounds? Why else do you think I’d come see someone like you instead of the cops or something?” “‘Someone like me,’” I repeated. I knew exactly what he meant, but that didn’t mean I had to like the sound of it. He waved a hand. “Well, you know — you have to believe all sorts of stuff to do what you do…don’t you?” Like six impossible things before breakfast? I figured it was best for me to keep that thought to myself, though. I took a calming breath, drawing in the air through my nose the way I’d been taught, and said, “I consider myself a professional, Mr. Hathaway. Just because I deal in things that not everyone can believe in or can tap into doesn’t make them any less important to me, or any less real. I assure you, I only believe in phenomena I’ve experienced myself. It’s just that my experiences tend to be a little different from those of people who don’t have any psychic abilities.” “Hmm.” I could tell Alex was both angry and disappointed. I hated it when a client went away from a session feeling he hadn’t learned anything or gained new insight, so I knew I had to keep trying, even though I really didn’t know exactly how I could help him. “What led you to believe your girlfriend was possessed? Has her behavior changed?” “Yeah — I suppose.” “How?” “She’s just sort of distant, I guess.” Oh, well, that’s an indicator of alien possession, no doubt about it, I thought wryly, but again I stepped on my tongue and assumed what I hoped was an expression of concerned interest. “Anything else?” “She started reading Variety.” I suppressed the urge to burst into laughter. If reading Variety was a sign that space aliens had taken over your body, then about two-thirds of Los Angeles had to be possessed. “I take it that’s not something she was in the habit of doing?” I inquired. Somehow I managed to maintain a neutral tone. “No. I mean, she wants to be an actress, but I don’t remember her ever reading much of anything before. Now she’s got Variety all over the place — she got an actual physical subscription — and is always on the Hollywood Reporter site, along with a few others I can’t remember now. TMZ, maybe.” He clenched his hands on top of his knees and added, “She never used to read anything except some online gossip sites. And she keeps making comments about how ‘I wouldn’t understand’ if I try to ask her questions about the stuff she’s reading. Which is kind of ironic, since she used to miss at least four out of five of those ‘are you smarter than a fifth-grader?’ questions.” While this all did sound a little unusual, it wouldn’t be the first time someone woke up and decided they needed to be more proactive about their career. I couldn’t exactly figure out how Alex had made the jump from a simple attempt on his girlfriend’s part to improve her marketability to concluding the brain in question had been possessed by aliens. Maybe that was easier to handle psychologically than realizing your significant other was about to leave you behind in the dust. “When did you first notice the change in her behavior?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how this particular piece of information was actually going to help me, but I thought I might as well try to go about this interview in an orderly fashion. “Right after she got back from a trip to the tanning salon,” Alex replied promptly. That response came from so far out in left field, I could feel my eyes widen for a second before I forced a noncommittal expression on my face. “Excuse me?” “She went to one of those places where they spray them on. She claimed being pale made her look flabby.” He scowled and added, “I told her that spray tans were stupid and that they just made people look orange, but she didn’t want to listen to me. She said it looked perfectly natural and I didn’t know what I was talking about, and she wasn’t going to lie out in the sun and get wrinkly. Like she needs to worry about that.” Maybe not now, I reflected, but in fifteen years…. Although my mother was Greek, I hadn’t inherited her olive skin, unfortunately. No, I got my complexion from my Irish father, and so I tended to flash-fry the second I stepped outside. Not exactly the best survival trait for living in Southern California. I cleared my throat, “Actually, that’s just being smart. Sun damage is cumulative.” Alex made another off-hand gesture. “Whatever. So off she goes, and she comes back all orange — and I tell her so, and she just give me this flat stare and tells me I need to get my eyes looked at. She had a stack of newspapers and magazines with her, and she sat down and started to read them and barely talked to me for the next two hours. And she’s been like that ever since.” “How long has this been going on?” “About a week.” He frowned. “It’s getting pretty old, Ms. O’Brien. ’Cause not only is she barely talking to me, but she’s not — I mean, we haven’t — ” From the flush I saw under his tan — natural, I assumed, since he was definitely brownish and not orange — I guessed Alex was trying to say he and his girlfriend hadn’t been intimate. Well, I supposed if an alien had taken over a human’s body but wasn’t really into the more down-and-dirty aspects of being an Earthling, it might try to avoid the horizontal mambo for as long as possible. I didn’t really know what to say next. Obviously, something was going on between him and his girlfriend, but it sounded like the natural growing apart of a relationship, not anything extraterrestrial. I could tell him that, of course, even though I had an idea it probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Too bad I couldn’t talk to the girlfriend as well, but I figured my chances of getting her in to talk to me were approximately the same as my getting a hot date that night.