A Song of Forgiveness Read online

  “He’s offering good money, Gillian,” she replied. “Are you sure you want to pass it up? Bookings have been really slow.”

  “I know. We’re hoping they’ll turn around soon. Maybe we’ll get a gig for Valentine’s Day or St. Pat’s, but for now, I just can’t accept any funerals.”

  I could hear the slap of her closing the calendar she kept our bookings in. Cate was old school and used an actual date book instead of a computer. “Right. I’ll keep trying to get you something for those and anything else. Big events are concerned about disruptive people. Private events might be doable.”

  “Do what you can, Cate. I keep thinking this novelty of a funeral singer, who sees dead people, will die down and we can get back to normal.”

  “Either that or you figure out a way to use it so it pays for you. Talk to you later, sweetie.”

  Use it so it pays for me? That was a thought. I’d have to talk to Ferris and Digby and see if they had any ideas of how we could do that. Maybe Janna might have some input as well. I hadn’t talked to her in a few days now.

  Since she’d gotten a promotion at work, her time was being gobbled up in the corporate world. I called and left a message for her to call me back, suggesting a movie or a night out dancing.

  As I started back up the stairs, my mobile phone rang and I grabbed it when I saw Gavin’s name on it. “Hey, prof. How‘s it going?”

  Like me, Gavin was searching for clues to defeating the shades and had been on a trip back east somewhere to talk to a few people he knew. At times, I wondered who funded his escapades or if they were part of his research budget.

  “It’s going okay. No big revelations although I’m talking to a shaman tomorrow who might have some insight into our problems.”

  “A shaman? You mean like an Indian?”

  “Native American is the proper term now, chica. Yes, the Minnetonka tribe has an old shaman who claims to have seen the other side and talks of demons there. I figure it’s worth chatting with him.” Gavin sounded perfectly serious as he said this, so I had to believe he had something solid.

  “Great. That sounds promising. So far, I have nothing. Well, I have located a couple of potential chat rooms with people who claim a lot of things. But I’ve tagged a couple I want to follow for a bit to see if they might be legit.”

  “Don’t reveal anything about yourself or your experiences on the board. Save that for a private chat and only to the ones you think might actually be in the same boat.” I could hear the grin in his voice, but I knew he was worried about me attracting more weirdos.

  “Got that. I was half-way hoping I’d find an actual site or chat room for spirit escorts or guides. I guess any others like me might be shy about posting as well.”

  “You’re not surprised about that, are you?”

  “No, not really. I just worry that there aren’t any others and it’s just us up against an army of shades.”

  He talked a few more minutes about the trip and said he’d be back in Reno on Friday. He’d call me then.

  As I hung up, I thought about how much I missed talking with him and our training sessions. I was anxious to get moving on them again.

  Feeling the need to burn off some anxiety and energy, I changed into my running shoes and headed out for a jog around the neighborhood. I made it almost to the end of the driveway, snapped my finger, then turned back to take the extra minutes needed to strengthen the protection wards on the house. I’d had visitors and gone outside a couple of times so I wanted to be certain it was secure. Nygard stared at me as I did it, reminding me that we needed to take all precautions.

  After covering six blocks down in a quick jog, I swung around the corner and started back up on the street below mine. My cell phone rang again and I halted to look at the caller. Ferris. I took it.

  With tightness in his voice, he informed me that Moss and Bancroft had just left his office. Apparently, they had gone to question him after they’d talked to me. Of course, his story matched mine and there wasn’t a problem, but he was concerned anyway.

  “It’s just routine,” I told him. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Yeah, I hope you’re right. The thing is, what happened to the guy? Did he just go off and not tell anyone?”

  “Good question. I was wondering that also.” I hadn’t thought about him just disappearing. Maybe it was a ruse of some sort to throw authorities off his trail. Or he just wanted to disappear for a while. But not telling his boss or his fiancée? Wait, Bancroft had said ex-fiancée, hadn’t he? Either way, that didn’t make sense.

  When I mentioned my thoughts to Ferris, he agreed. “If his truck or car wasn’t found or towed from the road, then he had to have taken off, right?”

  “Seems like. Odd. I cannot believe we found something that tied into him.”

  “Yeah, strange.” Changing the subject, Ferris asked, “Are you up for a movie tonight? There’s a couple of good ones that just came out.”

  I hesitated for a few beats, then said, “Sure. Why not? I was going to do a little more research, but it can wait. Where are we going?”

  Making a note of the time and place to meet him, I started running again. My mind went back to the conversation with Gavin and what we needed to do over the next few weeks. I had to learn how to control my light blast, particularly calling it up when I needed it. It didn’t work as well on this plane and I couldn’t exactly practice on the ethereal plane without putting myself at risk.

  Almost to my house, I could see the upper story from the street and I glimpsed a dark patch on my roof. I halted and peered at it. Was it a shadow from a tree? No, I couldn’t see any tree that would cast that shadow and the sun was behind me to the west. Then the shadow seemed to flow over the roof, a blob of black covering the area like a moving oil slick.

  A shade looking for a way in.

  I bolted forward, running down the driveway at top speed and prepared to cast a repulsion spell toward the ghoulish thing. As I rushed, halting just before the porch, the blob oozed over the side of the house, shifting direction toward me.

  I thrust my right hand, fingers coned like a duck’s bill, out from my body toward the shade and chanted the spell at the same time.

  White energy burst from the tips, tearing into the shade and knocking a spray of shingles off my roof. A shriek of pain or anguish emanated from the creature as it rose and sped away. At the same time, a howl of anger or fear came from within my house. Nygard!

  I rushed into the house to find my agitated cat standing in the middle of the floor with his head pointed toward to roof, his fur standing on end, and his back arched in alarm. A growling howl still came out of his throat, a sound I’d never heard him make. Usually, he had a small voice, a gentle meroow in his cello-like voice. This sounded more like a big bassoon of a bass note.

  “It’s okay,” I said as I drew near him. “The thing is gone. The house is safe.”

  Cautiously, I knelt and reached to pet his fur down. He swung his head toward me, eyes showing deep red pupils almost obliterating the blue irises. Then he snapped into focus and the eyes returned to normal as his body relaxed.

  After his experience on the next plane, I figured he was ultra-sensitive to the shades. As I ran my fingers over his fur, little golden strings connected with my hand and that odd energy we seemed to share flowed again.

  I had thought the shades were staying away from my house, but this one had come too close. I wanted to make sure all the wards were in place and that the house didn’t have any openings unprotected.

  With Nygard accompanying me, I went upstairs with a spray of lavender water mixed with verbena, a particularly good combination Gavin had assured me, and sprayed along any the window sills, the vents and the roof skylights where there might be any weak spots. I repeated the spell protection words over and over. For someone who had been a skeptic, I’d become a full-fledged believer over the past year.

  Almost an hour later, I felt I’d done all I could do. I sat on the be
d, and the cat jumped up next to me cuddling against my side. As his purr started to grow, I relaxed and thought about what had happened to the two of us in the transitional cemetery. How close we’d both come to being killed on that plane. If our physical state when we’d both returned indicated the impact, then I was inclined to believe death there would cause our bodies to die as well. While I had people I could talk to, I hadn’t considered how much my cat might be traumatized.

  Maybe I needed to get Nygard some help.

  THREE

  With a touch of sadness, I watched as the telephone company serviceman removed my landline from the house. It turned out to be trickier than I thought it would since I had to switch over my service on my internet in order to keep getting it and the television once the in-house phone was gone. He actually left the worthless phone as he switched my service over to the satellite. I had a shiny new modem blinking at me in the corner of the living room, but at least I didn’t have any wires running to the computer upstairs. Everything was wireless now.

  In a sense, I mourned the loss of my privacy that had occurred because of Gayle Trumbull’s story. I still felt she had no right to use my name and connect it with her psychic funeral singer story, even if it was true. Sadly, it didn’t seem I could fight it.

  I’d been thinking about what Cate had said about using the psychic thing to make it a draw in our performance rather than something detrimental. Maybe I could write a song about it or turn it into a comedy bit. I hadn’t talked to Ferris and Digby, but I’d be seeing them for a rehearsal later on.

  I pulled my mobile phone out and called Madame Astrid to make an appointment. I wanted to talk to her about what had happened with Nygard and see if she had any suggestions on what I might do to protect him. I hadn’t seen her since the attack in November, so I needed to touch bases anyway. She could fit me in the following day, late afternoon. Perfect for me. I could finish up work a little early and still make it.

  I had a little time before I had to be at the grooming shop, so I headed upstairs and checked the two chat sites I’d joined. I’d been thinking about how I could put a feeler out to try to draw anyone out. With a touch of apprehension, I typed in my opening salvo: Hey, guys. Have any of you seen a large shadow that doesn’t seem to be cast from any object around it? Maybe it was my imagination, but...

  With any luck, that might draw a response from someone else who had seen a shade, or it might draw a lot of false leads. You never know until you try though. Then I read through a few of the posts that had gone up in the past couple of days and didn’t see anything that related to my situation.

  With that done, I checked my protection spells and headed downstairs again. Giving Nygard a hug and a treat, I locked up and headed out, pausing to cast a glance back up at the roof and the trees surrounding the house. It seemed clear, nothing moving. But I could see the two foot or so section on the slope where tiles had blown loose. I’d need to get that fixed. For a moment, I wondered if my landlady would cover it. Probably not.

  I hated this. Hated leaving the house feeling like it could be invaded at any time.

  I WENT STRAIGHT FROM work to Ferris’ house for our rehearsal. Digby was already set up in the garage and had his instruments lined up on stands. He looked up, flashing a big grin, then came over to my Jeep to give me a hug, his long arms wrapping around me and squeezing. The boy had the best hugs.

  “Hey, beautiful. Let me get the stand and keyboard out and you just carry yourself and your bag in.” He opened the door to the backseat and grabbed my stuff.

  “You’re a prince, Dig. Thanks. Where’s Ferris?”

  “He just went into the house to get drinks. You know he has good timing.”

  “Perfect, actually.”

  I walked up the driveway ahead of him and took my things to the make-shift studio we’d used for the past few years. It was possible that Ferris bought the house with the garage for this express purpose. For certain, it had never housed his vehicles and he’d essentially converted it within the first few months. Sealed and heated, it provided a comfortable and sound-dampened space for us to practice.

  As I plugged in my keyboard and got it positioned on the stand, Ferris came back with drinks and snacks, including mini-pizzas. I shook my head. Of course, there would be food.

  “We need fuel,” he said when I teased him about it.

  “You’re right, boss,” I answered and grabbed a beer. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us practicing for... nothing.” It hit me at that point; we didn’t have a gig coming up for a couple of weeks at least and it was beginning to feel like we were just killing time. “Sorry. I—I had a moment there when I...” I let the sentence die.

  Ferris set his beer down, crossed to me, and pulled me into his arms, squeezing my shoulders. “It’s okay, babe. Things will turn around. It’s just a bad spell.”

  I nudged my head against his shoulder. “I hope that’s it and this whole mess will blow over. But even places that normally book us aren’t doing it because of the problems we’ve had with hecklers the last couple of gigs. Bad news spreads fast.”

  He shrugged, still rocking me in his arms. “It happens. No one wants any kind of an incident at their show.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Digby added. He’d dropped into the closest of the two armchairs Ferris had added to the area. “So we’re not performing anywhere right now. Lots of groups aren’t. That’s no reason we can’t play together and have fun. Didn’t you mention that you’d written a new song?”

  “Yeah, I did. Let’s get warmed up and I’ll play it for you. Before we start, I have something I want to talk to you guys about.” I pulled back from Ferris’ hug, reluctant to leave the security of his arms.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Actually, it was something our agent said.”

  Digby’s head came up and he raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

  I went on. “She said that we needed some way to work the funeral singer/psychic thing into our performance, play with the audience on it, and make it into a joke. Maybe if we turned the stupid heckling around and actually played off it, it would change the whole tone. What do you think?”

  I shifted my gaze from Ferris to Digby, trying to read their expressions. Waiting, I slipped my fingers to the earring on my right side and rubbed it, something to channel my nervousness.

  Ferris rocked back on his heels, his arms crossing his chest as he thought while Digby, with one leg crossed over his opposite knee, contemplated his boots. Finally, Ferris spoke.

  “I dunno. Cate may have something there. If we make it part of the act, then no one will take the hecklers seriously. If they can’t have the laugh and the fun out of it, there’s no point in the heckling. But is it kind of selling out? I mean, this is a real problem for Gillian and playing it off like a joke undermines her, doesn’t it?”

  Dig nodded his head and gave it a little more consideration. “Well, I’m not opposed to giving it a tryout. I’m just not certain we can turn those remarks fast enough. Do you feel like we’d be evading those wankers or encouraging them?”

  “It could make it worse,” Ferris agreed. “It might get better or the heckling might increase if they think it’s funny. Worse, it could bring out more serious disruptions.”

  “What do you think might happen?” I asked.

  I’d started to pace back and forth a few feet as we’d been talking, my mind turning over the recent examples we’d had at the last two performances we’d done. The called out jibes had been silly and moronic, but not disruptive to the performance other than creating a bit of a scene.

  Ferris shrugged, tapped his finger on a cymbal lightly. “Worst case, I think it could start a brawl or a shouting contest. If a religious zealot came out and declared you demonic, it could pull in others who might think it strange. If people can find demonic issues in Harry Potter, then this isn’t much of a stretch to think what’s being reported about you could be the work of satanic forces.”<
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  I halted mid-step, considered what Ferris had just said, shuddered, and thumped my foot to the floor. Digby sat straight up and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, a calculating look in his eyes as he watched me.

  “They wouldn’t be far off, would they?” My throat felt dry.

  “You’re not demonic,” Digby replied.

  “No, but the shades certainly are. Those are evil creatures. Soul eaters. If I were to tell anyone else about them, they would think the worst of me since I can see them. This is not something that can get out.”

  “You’re right about that,” Ferris said. “And we’re not going to let it get out.”

  “But if we just keep ignoring the hecklers, will that solve our problem? If they keep making remarks during our shows, we keep losing work unless it’s a private event. Is that what we want?”

  “So, what’s the solution?” Digby cut in. “We go on the way we are and see what happens or we make some humorous responses to what they say. We don’t have to make a comedy act out of it, just a few standard comebacks to let them know we’re in on the joke. Really, it’s all speculation from the Trumbull woman and she doesn’t actually know what Gillian does.”

  I nodded. “That’s the truth. She is putting this all together in a twisted way. Maybe I should do that interview with her and set the record straight.”

  “What?” Ferris’ barked question clanged with a sharp snap to the cymbal and Digby shot me a have-you-lost-your-mind look.

  “Not the real story,” I said. “A carefully constructed story that will answer the burning question of what goes through my head at the funerals and how I create those unique songs that she’d been placing so much weight on. I can sell that.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a great idea. Anything—”

  “Come on, Ferris. I can control it. I’ll ask Gayle for a list of the questions in advance so I can get a feel for where she wants to take this, then adjust my responses accordingly or flat out nix an answer. I can bullshit as well as she can.”