Bad Vibrations

Chapter 1-2

In other words, about zero.

If Otto had decided to drop in on this cozy little session, maybe I would have been able to come up with something a bit more useful. I wasn’t getting much from Alex, except the frustration and anger and worry that seemed to pour off him in waves. Not that reading his emotions really helped me that much — I’d gleaned just as much from talking to him. But I wasn’t getting any answers from the astral plane, and my Tarot deck had dummied up on me as well. I hated this feeling; it rarely happened, but on the few occasions when it did, I was always left feeling impotent and a little foolish after a session, as if I weren’t any better than the sham psychics who gathered all their tells from people’s behavior and speech patterns and who didn’t have any more psychic ability than a footstool.

“Well,” I said after a pause, knowing what I needed to say and hating to have to say it, “I’m very sorry, Alex, but I’m not getting any clear vibrations from you regarding this situation. My advice would be for you to talk things over with your girlfriend.” I added, as I saw his jaw clench, “Of course there’s no fee for this reading.”

“That’s it?” he demanded. “This is bullshit!”

It wasn’t the first time a client had sworn at me, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “No, it would have been bullshit for me to feed you an easy line and take your money. I’m sorry, but sometimes even I draw a blank. This just happens to be one of those times.”

“So what am I supposed to do now?”

“I’m not a relationship counselor — I just relay what the spirit world tells me.” This wasn’t the strictest truth; I actually did have a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling, although once I’d gone to work as a psychic full-time, I’d quietly put away my diplomas and certificates. For whatever reason, people didn’t seem to like a psychic who was also a psychologist — it made them nervous, maybe because they didn’t know exactly how to regard me.

“You think I’m nuts.”

Well, that wasn’t how I would have put it, although I was starting to get the distinct impression that Alex Hathaway was just a wee bit unbalanced. It would have taken a few more sessions to get to the bottom of his current fixation, of course, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t come to me for psychological counseling — he’d just wanted outside confirmation that his girlfriend wasn’t, strictly speaking, his girlfriend anymore, and I wasn’t prepared to make that kind of determination.

I said, “Of course I don’t, Alex. I believe something has gone wrong between you and your girlfriend — it’s just that I don’t feel confident enough to offer you any corroborating evidence.”

“Great,” he said, looking as gloomy as someone as sunnily Southern Californian in appearance could. “Well…thanks for not charging me, I guess.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said. “I would be a fraud if I took your money when I couldn’t even give you a true reading.” I stood then, hoping he’d get the hint that the session was over.

He hesitated, but after a few seconds, he got up out of his chair. I crossed to the door and opened it for him. As he passed me, his shoulder brushed against mine, and for a second, a shiver of freezing cold ran down my spine. I’d experienced that sensation before…from clients who were about to leave this plane of existence, usually in unexpected and often nasty ways. I opened my mouth to warn him, but then again, I hadn’t received any visions of how he was going to die — if he were even going to die at all. Maybe I’d just been hit by a stray draft.

Oh, yeah, a sub-zero draft when it’s eighty degrees outside, my brain mocked me, and by then it was too late — Alex Hathaway was out the door and gone.

Somehow I knew I’d never see him again.

* * *

About a half-hour after Alex had left the office, Otto finally decided to make an appearance. By then I was safely home, ensconced in my apartment with my feet up on an ottoman and a cup of mint tea on the table next to me. I’d considered pouring myself a glass of chardonnay instead, but decided it was probably better to avoid the whole concept of solitary drinking as long as I could. Maybe my neighbor Ginger would be back soon, and we could share a bottle while I tried to justify my self-medicating.

Anyhow, I’d just picked up the remote for the TV and was about to turn it on when Otto wavered into existence a few feet away, floating three feet off the living room floor as he sat in a modified lotus position. He couldn’t manage a true lotus — his legs were too chunky for that.

“Nice of you to drop in,” I remarked. “I could have used a little help earlier this afternoon.”

He gave me a heavy-lidded half-smile. “The world of the spirit does not work on demand.”

This statement might have sounded impressive — if I hadn’t heard the same thing about a hundred times before. “Well, unfortunately, I do. I drew a perfect blank. The client was annoyed, and I looked like an idiot.”

The Mona Lisa smile never left Otto’s lips. “You are not here to be concerned with how others see you.”

“Then boy, did I pick the wrong town to live in.” To hide my irritation, I picked up my tea and took a swallow. It tasted good. The chardonnay could wait. “So what, did you have an urgent pedicure appointment in the otherworld or something?”

His mouth thinned a little. I knew he hated it when I made comments like that about the spirit world. It wasn’t respectful. Actually, I had a lot of respect for the alternate plane of existence we mortals thought of as the afterlife or heaven or nirvana, depending on our beliefs. If nothing else, knowing it was out there had given me a certain perspective on my day-to-day troubles. On the other hand, it didn’t make me feel much better about the wasteland otherwise known as my social life.

“I am your guide,” Otto said, and now his tone was distinctly testy. “Not your errand boy.”

“Too bad, because this guy today was a live one. Thought his girlfriend was possessed by an alien or something.”

Usually Otto wasn’t above finding amusement in the foibles of mere mortals. Of course, he purported to be impartial, but I knew he also enjoyed a joke at our expense. I tended to forgive him this quirk, considering he’d been a eunuch in sixteenth-century Turkey and probably had a good deal of resentment toward mankind stored up. Now, however, he looked a little strained — which was my tipoff that what I’d just said had disturbed him.

“Do you know something?” I asked suddenly. “Because if we actually are getting overrun by aliens or something, I’d sort of like to know about it.”

“I cannot speak of matters that impact you personally.”

I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What, am I next I line for alien possession or something?”

A flash of irritation crossed his normally cherubic features. “Which part of ‘I cannot speak of matters that impact you personally’ did you not understand?”

“Fine,” I said. It wasn’t the first time we’d had this sort of discussion. Otto was there to help facilitate my contact with the spirit world, but he was either unable or simply unwilling to tell me anything about my own future. Just as well — half the time I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. But when he threw out cryptic comments like that and refused to elaborate, I had a tendency to get a little pissy. “So was there a reason for you dropping in tonight…like maybe apologizing for going AWOL this afternoon?”

His sparse eyebrows drew together, and for a second he looked distinctly transparent. Usually he appeared just as solid as any other human being — except you could walk right through him. Not that I recommended doing any such a thing. I did once, and got a lecture about showing respect for beings from other planes and how I wouldn’t appreciate it if he decided the shortest path between two points was right through me. At the time, I had thought his comparison was a little faulty. After all, I was corporeal, and he, well, wasn’t. But I’d also learned fairly early on that a disgruntled spirit guide was of no use to anyone, so I’d apologized and said it would never happen again. Ever since then, I’d noticed that Otto had an odd tendency to discorporate partway if something disturbed him. Maybe it was the spirit equivalent of blushing.

So I knew now something was up, but I could also tell from the firm set of his chubby chin that if I pressed too hard, he’d just evaporate, and it might be several days before he deigned to speak to me again. I couldn’t have that — I depended on him too much for my readings. Sure, I could whip out the tarot deck and hope for the best, but Otto’s guidance tended to be a lot more reliable.

“I wasn’t AWOL,” he said primly. “You’re not my only psychic, you know.”

As a matter of fact, I did know that, and I had never been overly thrilled with the fact. To be fair, from what I could tell, his other…clients, for lack of a better term…seemed to be located in different time zones from mine, and since a spirit didn’t need to sleep, he could flit from one to the other of us without too many conflicts. But if one of his other psychics had a crisis in the dead hours of the night, it would of course impact my afternoon readings. It hadn’t happened too often, but it did add a certain element of uncertainty to my practice.

So was it coincidence that he was called away the same day Alex Hathaway came to my office, or was there more going on here than met the eye?

My personal experience told me there was almost always something more going on than the most logical explanation. Now, however, was probably not the time to confront Otto about his bouts of unreliability. If he wanted to tell me something, he would. If not, threats, cajoling, and bribes simply wouldn’t work. I’d found that out the hard way.

“Well, I hope it was important,” I grumbled, and set my mug back down on the side table. After that, I picked up the remote and said, “Was there some reason you popped in? Because the latest season of The Santa Clarita Diet just dropped, and I feel like a binge.”

He shook his head. “Really, Persephone. Why you waste your time with such petty diversions — ”

“It relaxes me,” I retorted. “No one likes a stressed psychic.”

“Hmph.” Otto crossed his arms. “As a matter of fact, I did have something I wanted to tell you.”

“I’m waiting breathlessly.”

His expression was as sour as a Turkish eunuch’s round face could manage “Just this — if Ginger asks you to go with her for drinks tonight, you should.”

“Isn’t that crossing the line?” I inquired innocently. “What about all that palaver about not letting me know anything about my future?”

“I’m not giving you any concrete facts — I’m just offering a piece of advice.”

If a spirit guide offers you advice, it’s usually wise to take it. Never mind that I was tired and more than a little cranky, and the effort it would require to get myself presentable enough to face a bar or club didn’t seem worth the amount of time it would take. On the other hand, what else did I have to do? Netflix would still be waiting for me when I got home. Actually, it tended to be one of the few constants in my life.

“All right,” I said, and tossed the remote onto the table, missing my mug by about an inch. “Any spiritual advice as to what I should wear?”

Otto looked a little pained. “I hope one of these days you’ll realize such things are immaterial.”

Tell that to the producer of every makeover show ever made, I thought. But getting into an argument with Otto over my preoccupation with what he considered earthly frivolities would just be silly. So maybe I was the world’s most earthbound psychic. Sue me.

“Maybe I will,” I replied, and pushed myself up out of my chair. “Until then, I’ve got some spackling to do.”

I’d never been able to figure out how a being who had no actual lungs was capable of producing such prodigious sighs, but somehow Otto managed to do it. He dredged one up now, then said in sepulchral tones, “As you wish.” After that, he sort of melted away in his usual fashion, disappearing like mist evaporating in sunlight. Even now, after being visited by him for almost twenty years, I found the sight a little unnerving.

Once he was gone, though, I had to turn my mind to more important matters. Although I knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d get a date out of tonight’s bar hopping, I was damned if I was going to hit the clubs without making an attempt at bringing my best game. After that, well, we’d just have to see. There had to be one guy in this town who wasn’t freaked out by the prospect of dating a psychic, right?

Right.