A Song of Forgiveness Read online

  I detoured to the kitchen to grab a couple of cold sodas. After I pulled them from the refrigerator, I paused to gaze around the kitchen. The hairs on the back of my neck had risen and I shifted nervously. Was something watching me? I could never be sure that a shade wasn’t around. They couldn’t get in with the protective wards I’d placed on the house, but it wouldn’t stop them from hanging around outside. This was ridiculous. Even harmless shadows were spooking me. A breeze shakes a tree and I’m seeing ghouls at the door. I hated this.

  I took our drinks back to the table and sat, grabbing a slice of pizza. As I ate, sharing a bite or two with Nygard, I told Ferris about a Native American text relating to dark spirits that sounded a lot like the shades and that Gavin was checking it out. “He’s hoping to get more insight on the True Shades and what we might be able to do to stop them.”

  Ferris shifted nervously. “Do you know how insane that sounds? Just the two of you are going to take on God only knows how many of these demons. You can’t do it.”

  “I know. We’re hoping to recruit help.”

  “What? Are you putting out an ad somewhere? Wanted: demon fighters.”

  “No, not like that. We’re trying a few things. Gavin has some contacts and he knows others who have encountered the shades. I’m doing some searching to see if I can find any other people like me.” I popped the rest of the pizza into my mouth, much to Nygard’s disappointment. He reached a paw up to let me know it was unacceptable.

  “Gilly, how can you expect to get someone to admit that to you? You don’t want to tell people and it’s likely others feel the same way. Most people think you’re wacky.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” I replied.

  At that point, my land line rang and the answering machine picked up. A rude-sounding male voice left a message: Hey, psychic lady. I wondered if you could contact my dead father. He owed me some money when he passed.

  “There you go,” Ferris said. “Crank calls.”

  “I get a lot of them now,” I admitted. “That one’s pretty tame compared to some. Others are downright sick.”

  “I thought you were going to take the phone out.”

  “I was... am. I just thought they might calm down if I gave it a little time. Damn that Trumbull woman.”

  After I’d fainted at the last funeral I did, Gayle Trumbull saw no reason to hold back any longer on identifying the mysterious funeral singer. In spite of my wishes, she’d reported that I had passed out following a service that was more like a séance. Not that there was any truth in that. I might have been singing odd words, but the whole encounter in the ethereal cemetery was far from a séance. Once people knew my name, the phone calls started. I had already changed my mobile phone number and started routing any genuine booking calls to my agent.

  Problem was any people who had been seriously planning to book us had reconsidered and switched to other people rather than attract the wrong kind of crowd. It created a big issue for us. Our band bookings dropped and we were getting hecklers unless we played a private function. Luckily, none of us in the band absolutely needed the extra income that performing brought, but it did make things tight for me. I could work more hours at the grooming shop so long as no one came or called there to create problems. If this kind of thing spread to the shop, Heeni would cancel my contract with her.

  Ferris shook his head. “Talk about something turning your life upside down; this has really done it. Kooks calling on the phone, coming to the concerts. Makes your stalker really seem tame.”

  I pressed my lips together and shrugged. “Yeah, it does. You know, Roger hasn’t been around since the party. I guess you got the message across. At least, he wasn’t a violent stalker.”

  “I don’t know. It could have turned ugly. Just as happy he’s gone.”

  “I’m glad I have you in my corner,” I said. It could have turned into a disaster with Roger if he and Digby hadn’t been there to back me up. I really needed them now with the threat of the shades being so strong. “You’re a great anchor, Ferry.”

  “You keep saying that. I don’t know what it really means. How can I help you when I can’t go where you go?” His forehead wrinkled with a frustrated look.

  I thought about how to explain it where it would make any sense. I barely understood the concept, so making it sound reasonable to him wasn’t easy.

  “It’s sort of like a ship’s anchor, which is why Astrid referred to it that way. She explained that physical contact on this plane will tie you to the plane when your spirit is elsewhere. So by touching me if I am traveling, you can ensure that I don’t get set adrift.”

  “Who’s been doing that until now?” His eyes carried that worried look I’d seen often in the past month.

  “No one. I didn’t know I’d need an anchor. When I’m in the chapel, I may be anchored by the people present there or the music, but no one is actually touching me. Until this last time, I didn’t feel there was any real danger in the ethereal plane. Even though he wasn’t with me, Nygard seemed to be connected also, so I think we somehow have a tie together. It’s weird.”

  “Weird is an understatement, babe. This whole deal is nuts. But I don’t doubt that it’s happening to you. It seems pretty clear it’s real enough to hurt you. I just feel like I’d be helpless to do you any good by sitting and holding your hand while you’re not totally there.” He frowned. This was hard for him to accept, but he was doing his best.

  “I get that. Just trust me. It will help me.”

  “What will help you is to not go there again. I don’t understand why it’s you that has to do this. You’re not a violent person or a bad ass... you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “No, but I think that may be why I was selected. Strange though that sounds.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Oops, I gotta go. Call me if you need me, okay?”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  I walked him to the door and hugged him, squeezing as if I never wanted to let go. After he left, I leaned against the door frame and pondered our relationship.

  Why would it be so bad to let him get closer? It felt good when we were together and I wanted it. Just because we failed in college didn’t mean we hadn’t grown and couldn’t make it work now.

  Who was I kidding? My life was a shambles these days and I didn’t know if it would ever get back to normal or if this was the new normal. Gavin had been fighting these demons for years now and I really didn’t want to have to follow that lead. I needed to get back to my own life. What if I couldn’t?

  TWO

  I grabbed my morning coffee, fed Nygard a snack, then headed back upstairs to my computer. As I’d told Ferris, I was trying to track down other people like me—spirit escorts or aides or whatever they might call themselves.

  Turning on my computer, I called up my browser and put in a search for spirit escorts. A long list of escorts came up, but none of them had anything to do with spirits or the supernatural. Although there was one young lady who dressed like a clothing-deprived angel who would happily accompany gentlemen to a Heavenly Hades, her words. Not the kind of escort I had in mind at all.

  Trying again, I keyed in afterlife spirit guides. That brought up an interesting mix of fantasy, brothels, and psychics for hire. Again, not quite what I hoped to find.

  Determined, I tried several other options, all of them leading me in a totally undesired direction. I then tried chat rooms for after death experiences to see if anything popped there. I soon had a list of about twelve chat areas and almost double that of blog sites that talked about the death experience.

  Encouraged, I clicked on one and read through a few entries about spirit travel and visiting the astral plane. I bookmarked that one and moved on to the next. Within what seemed like a short time, I located three others offering promising leads, and I bookmarked those as well.

  I pulled up one of the pages and started to read someone’s first-hand encounter of the next life. She claimed to have died on the operat
ing table and been brought back to life. But she had visions and memories of the place beyond. Eagerly, I read through them but found nothing that correlated with the ethereal cemetery. This read too much like the standard story that metaphysical books talked about; the brain’s dying image projected to the person as they pass on that validates the concept of Heaven. Not a real image at all, but a final construct from the mind to reassure itself.

  But I knew it wasn’t just a fantasy image. Something did exist on the other side or else I was having one hellacious hallucination myself. The next plane, the interim plane, was the middle stop before going on to the next level. That was beyond the gate and through that glowing tunnel of light. I’d seen and talked to people who’d made the journey. And discovered even more with the shades. I had been a total unbeliever and yet, I had seen. I still had to ask, why me? Why was I chosen for this?

  “Dammit, Zac. Why haven’t you come? I need answers. I need help. If you’re supposed to be my guide, why aren’t you guiding me?” I spoke the words as if my alleged angel might hear me better than through the silent pleas I usually made.

  I hadn’t seen him for several months now and I feared the reason wasn’t good, no matter which way it went. If he was actually working for the other side–the fallen angel theory–then he’d set me up and abandoned me. If he wasn’t, then something or someone had interfered with him helping me. Beyond that, why was he the only helper I seemed to have? If this was the Supreme Being’s intention for me, why didn’t I have more Divine help? Just me, Gavin, a psychic, and a cat? We were going to defeat the True Shades?

  My head thumped, aching at the thought. I shook it, aware suddenly of a pounding at the door. Jumping up, I hurried down the stairs and peered through the curtains toward the porch. My heart dropped when I glimpsed Egan Moss standing with a man in a Washoe County Sheriff’s Office uniform. What now?

  Bracing myself, I opened the door and smiled at the two men.

  “Afternoon, Ms. Foster,” Moss said. “I believe you’ve already met Deputy Bancroft from the Incline office.”

  Afternoon? Had I already gone through the morning? Brushing past that, I nodded and ushered them into the living room. “Yes, of course. Is this something to do with the snowmobile we found?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bancroft said. “I just wanted to update you and ask a couple of questions.”

  “All right. Sit if you’d like. Can I get you anything?” Why did I suddenly feel apprehensive? Had there been a dead body in it?

  “No, thank you,” the younger man said at once. Although Moss’ expression seemed more wistful, like he would like a coffee, he remained silent.

  “We extracted the vehicle from the snowbank and it was empty as we suspected. We found the identification plate on it and ran a search for the owner. We didn’t have any report of a problem or an abandoned snowmobile. It turned out to belong to a Roger James Mitchell. Would you happen to know this person?”

  “James Mitchell,” I repeated, shaking my head.

  “Uh, actually Roger Mitchell, ma’am.”

  “Roger Mitchell... Roger?” I scrunched my face in surprise as it connected. “Roger, my stalker?”

  Both sets of eyebrows rose in unison. “Stalker?” Bancroft asked as Moss narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Well, we—my band—called him my stalker. He was a super fan of my group, but he had a thing for me even though I never encouraged him. It kind of blew up at his engagement party when Roger got drunk and out of line.”

  “So you do know him?” Bancroft concluded as Moss shot him a disappointed look.

  “Yes, in a roundabout way. I didn’t even know his last name.”

  “Well, it appears the snowmobile is Mr. Mitchell’s, but we can’t seem to locate him. If you know him, then perhaps you might know where he is.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t really know him. He came to our shows and we played for his party in November. But that’s as far as it went.”

  I sank into the sofa as my knees lost their strength. What kind of strange coincidence was this? Ferris and I found Roger’s snowmobile and now Roger was missing. Somewhere a demon was laughing at me.

  Moss cleared his throat and I snapped my head toward him. “I’ll take that cup of coffee if you have one. How ‘bout you, Bancroft?”

  The deputy looked surprised by the remark, then shook himself out of it and said, “Yeah. If it’s not too much trouble, that would be great.”

  “No trouble,” I answered and scurried to the kitchen to pour out three cups. I think Moss knew I needed the time to pull my thoughts together and was trying to give me a breather. I pulled the milk out and poured it into a small creamer, then grabbed the sugar and sugar alternative that I used. I put them on all on a tray and carried them back to the living room where both officers had seated themselves on the sofa. I did this on automatic, more or less, while my mind raced with the new information I’d received.

  Reno was always called a small town in the sense that it had a friendly, small-town feel. You tended to encounter people you knew all over town. Often, it seemed particularly true when you’re in the public eye a little more than others, but it wasn’t unusual to run into people you knew at places you least expected to see them. So, the shock of encountering Roger’s snowmobile shouldn’t have seemed abnormally coincidental. But it did.

  I picked up my coffee, added the enhancements to it, then settled into the armchair facing them. As I took a sip, I tried to pull my scattered thoughts together and figure out what had led them to ask about Roger.

  Moss cast a brief grin at me, then sat forward a little. “We’re just trying to get a picture of what Roger was like. You said he hung around the band a lot, is that right?”

  “Yes. Most of our public performances. We could pretty much count on him being in the audience.”

  “Did he ever bother you?”

  “Not really. He made passes, but most of the time he was polite. He asked me out a few times. I was dating someone and I never took him up on it. I tried to discourage him, in fact. The only time it turned into something really weird was at his engagement party. He’d asked the band to play for a big party in the park and everyone was drinking. After we’d finished, he made a pass at me, and Ferris cut in, telling him to back off. We haven’t seen him since then. Have you talked to his fiancée?”

  “That would be Sonya Ferano?” Bancroft asked.

  “I guess. I didn’t know her last name either. Roger introduced us at the party and we noticed how much she looked like me. It was a little unnerving.”

  “So, he was infatuated with you and looking for a duplicate,” Moss suggested.

  “That’s how it seemed, but that was all that happened.” I sipped my coffee and glanced nervously at the two officers.

  “You never dated Roger?” Bancroft asked.

  I shook my head.

  “His co-workers tell a different story,” Bancroft said, consulting his notes. “They said you danced with him at a wedding; it was a mutual attraction and he started dating you. Apparently, things got tense between you and he broke it off. He then dated Ms. Ferrano and proposed. He also told them his crazy ex-girlfriend made a pass at him at the engagement party and it came to blows with one of your bandmates, who assaulted him.”

  “What?!” I jerked forward. “That’s not what happened.”

  “So you didn’t dance with him at the wedding?” Bancroft said.

  “No! Wait! Yes, I did dance a couple of songs with him. It was a wedding. I was performing, a hired musician. He was a guest and he asked me. He wanted to go out and I gave him my number thinking I might. Then I was injured in a fall that night and I didn’t see Roger again until a New Year’s Eve party. By then, I was dating a doctor I’d met. That was it. I never dated Roger.”

  Bancroft made notes on his tablet. “Okay. So you have no grudge against him or anything like that?”

  “No. I just thought he had a thing for me and since I was in the public eye often, he b
ecame a follower. Are you thinking something has happened to Roger?” I detected the slight fearful rise in my voice as I asked. I’d had unsettled feelings around that snowmobile, but I hadn’t connected them to anyone I knew.

  “He’s disappeared, it seems,” Moss said. “We’re following up on the statements people at his work made. We haven’t talked to his former fiancée yet, but since I knew you, I came along with Bancroft to get your story. It appears he made up quite a fantasy about the two of you.”

  Bancroft thanked me for my time as he rose to go and Moss followed a moment later, taking a moment more to finish his coffee. As I walked with them to the door, Moss lingered a moment and said in a low voice, “Don’t worry. It’s just routine.”

  I nodded, grateful for the reassuring words. Moss did know me and he knew I wouldn’t do anything to harm another person. Still, I was concerned and uneasy over what had happened to Roger.

  If the snowmobile had flipped over and he couldn’t get it upright again, had he walked out to the road and taken his car, or whatever he brought it up in, home? Why wouldn’t he have gone back to get the expensive toy? What if he’d been injured and had stumbled away from the snowmobile? Might he have gotten turned around and lost in the woods? Might he have died up there and been buried under the snow? A recent storm had dumped four feet of new snow on the mountains.

  I shook myself out of those thoughts. Leave it to the professionals to handle this. I had bigger problems to worry about that law enforcement couldn’t help me solve.

  After I cleared up the cups, I paused to play the messages on my answering machine. Another three crank calls and a message from my agent. I called her back.

  That turned out to be a request to sing at a funeral that Cate assured me was a legitimate request from a grieving husband whose wife had died. He’d heard about me and wanted me to give it my special touch.

  I sighed. “I told you. I’m not doing any more singing for funerals. It’s turned into a monster, so no more. Please, just thank him, extend my condolences, but decline the request.”