Dark Demon Rising: Whisperings Paranormal Mystery book seven (6 page)

“Okay.”
With a sigh, I moved away from Mrs. Williams.

Magenta’s
hand trembled and tea slopped in the saucer. She glared past Mrs. Williams.

Mrs.
Williams sounded concerned. “Is anything wrong, Madam?”

“No,
nothing,” Magenta said after a moment. She carefully placed her cup in the
saucer. “Shall we begin?”

Mrs.
Williams swallowed the rest of her tea in one gulp. “Please.”

And
without further ado, Magenta went into her spiel. She closed her eyes and murmured,
“David is glad little Vernon is on the mend.”

Mrs.
Williams perked up. “Has he been watching over Vernon?”

“He
was fond of Veron in life and remains so in death.”

Jack
spat out the words. “Nobody’s here except us. She’s a fake.”

Magenta’s
eyes sprang open, her shoulders tensed. She didn’t move her head but her gaze
zipped from side to side.

Did
she hear us? If she did, she wasn’t a fake. But we were the only shades in the
room, so where was David? I wasn’t sure how clairvoyants operated, maybe she
heard David’s message from beyond. I put a finger to my mouth and mimed
shush.
Mel and Jack nodded.

Magenta
sucked in a deep breath and continued. “David says you must not feel guilty about
selling the house and moving to Colorado to be near Randolph, Sarah and Vernon.
He understands your home holds dear memories of your life together, as it does
for him, but you must think of your future.”

Mrs.
Williams’ chin trembled. “You don’t know how relieved I am to hear dear David
understands. Sentimentality has held me back, and leaving will be difficult,
but I am so lonely without him. In Colorado, I can watch my grandchildren grow.”

“And
David vill be there vith you.”

Mrs.
Williams smiled, and the session continued.

How
did Magenta know all this stuff about Mr. and Mrs. Williams? She must be the
real thing.

At
long last, Magenta saw Mrs. Williams to the door, where the happy lady passed
her an envelope.

We
watched from the parlor doorway. Mel took a hesitant step into the hall and
grinned. “We can move in this house.”

“The
entire house?” I asked.

“Guess
we’ll find out,” said Jack.

Magenta
leaned her cane against the wall and tottered through the hall, past us to a
staircase. Yes, tottered. She didn’t look sure of her balance. We followed, and
found her lowering to the bottom step. She hoisted her skirt, kicked off her
shoes and massaged one foot with an audible groan of relief.

The
shoes had three-inch platform soles and six-inch heels. She needed the cane to
help her walk in the ugly things.

After
working on her other foot, Magenta got upright, hiked up her skirt and climbed
the steps. We followed her. The staircase opened to a landing at the top and
Magenta went left and in a room. We peered around the frame to see her toss the
envelope on a couch, cross the room and disappear into another. She shut the
door.

We
edged inside. The décor in this room was the opposite of the dim, musty the
parlor.

Jack
pressed his knuckles to his mouth. “Oh, good golly Miss Molly.”

“It
is . . . bright.” Mel shaded her eyes with her hands.

Jack
spoke in the tone you use when you’re trying to see the upside of something. “Yes,
cheerful.”

Red
blinds half covered two windows. The overhead lamp and two standing lamps
glowed bright white. A long gold, plush-velvet couch sat against the green
north wall. The other walls were dark-blue. A lavender-colored plastic desk
with laptop, printer and stack of paper stood under one window. A red beanbag faced
a forty-two-inch plasma television on a black console with stereo units on the
lower shelves. A small wooden table with seashells set into the trim sat next
to the couch and a blue leather armchair completed the décor. A fire smoldered
in a small fireplace surrounded by black and white tiles.

Glass
beads in shades of orange, tied back either side, hung over the door Magenta
had used. Travel posters of tropical paradises fought for wall space with
pictures of movie and music idols. Yellow sticky notes dotted a mirror above
the fireplace.

It
was worse than the worst coed dorm room imaginable. I wanted to close my eyes.

 A
toilet flushed in the adjoining room, followed by water running. Jack looked a
question at me. I shook my head and mimed
no
. Neither of us should watch
Magenta at her ablutions.

We
waited ten minutes. Jack and Mel prowled the room. I wanted to chew my
fingernails but could I? I decided against trying.

Magenta
did not emerge from the bathroom when the door finally opened. Nope. Someone
else did.

Shorter
than Magenta, this gal wore her hair cropped short and teal-blue, partly damp
and partly fluffy from being rubbed with a towel. Black jeans and a tight green
T-shirt hugged a trim figure. The shirt almost matched eyes fringed with long,
thick blond lashes. With those eyes, a pert little nose, wide mouth and the
hair color, she could be a high-schooler.

But
she must be Magenta, unless someone else hid in the bathroom all along.

Mel
stood nearest the bathroom. I got her attention and jerked my head. She gave me
a puzzled look. I head-jerked again. Wide-eyed, she nodded and stuck her head
through the bathroom wall.

She
popped out. “A wig and a ton of makeup.”

“Okay,
I heard you,” Magenta said. “Who’s there?”

She
sounded different, too, her accent decidedly American Northwest.

“Are
you Magenta?” I asked.

“Yes.”
Her eyes widened; she stuttered, “Who are you?”

“I’m
Tiff.”

“Wow!”
Magenta backed across the room and landed sprawled on the couch. She bent over
her knees, dug fingers in her blue hair and repeated, “Wow!”

Her
head jerked up, her gaze sharpened. “Are you still here?”

“We
are. Can you see us?”

“We?”
She squinted. “Kind of. I see a . . . you’re hazy, wavering. Are you a tall woman
with pale hair? And a couple blurs, kind of smoky columns.” Her gaze shot to
Jack and Mel. “Three of you?”

“Nice,”
Jack huffed. “She sees you okay but Mel and I are
blurs
.”

“Oh
boy.” Magenta put her fingers over her mouth and laughed through them.

“She’s
hysterical,” Jack said.

“Not.”
She let her hands flop at her sides and looked at the ceiling. “This is
huge!”

“Pull
yourself together, honey,” said Mel.

Magenta’s
gaze shot to Mel. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . you’re
ghosts
, in my
living room,
talking
to me!”

“Not
for much longer if you keep this up,” Jack said.

She
muffled a chuckle with one hand, then pasted a serious expression on her face.
“You’re right. I suppose we should introduce ourselves?”

“I’m
Tiff.” My hand swept the room. “They’re Jack and Mel.”

“Why
are you astounded to see us?” Mel asked.

Jack
disappeared into the bathroom.

“I’ve
seen hazy shapes, now and then,” said Magenta. “And I heard voices chattering
when I was thinking of something else, though they stopped when I concentrated.
It led me to dream up Madam Magenta. Real ghosts have never come to my house. Why
are
you here?”

“Just
one second.” I strode to her. “What do you mean, dream up Madam Magenta?”

Jack
strutted into the room. “Dark makeup, the wig, the clothes, the accent. Colored
contact lenses? You are
good
, girl!”

“Magenta
is an act?” I said. “But what you told Mrs. Williams . . . you
do
speak
to the departed.”

She
threw her arms wide. “I’m a big fake.” Frowning, she scratched her nose with
one finger. “I thought I was.”

Bouncing
to her feet, she paced the room with fingers dug in her hair. “This is positively
creepy.” She spun on her heel; her gaze drifted until it focused on me. “You
are
real.”

“You’d
prefer we weren’t?” Mel asked.

Magenta
splayed her fingers on her mouth and grinned behind them. “Well, what do you
know!”

“So
you didn’t communicate with David Williams?” I asked.

Magenta
snorted. “No.”

“She’s
a scam artist,” Mel huffed.

The
girl’s brow puckered, so did her mouth. “I tell them what they want to hear,
and yeah, I do take advantage of them. But I’m not the worst thing out there.”

As
if that vindicated her.

“How
do you do it?” Mel sunk in the beanbag.

“Not
as hard as you’d think. I can get a lot from the newspaper and public records,
and I make an appointment with a client at least a week beforehand, and follow
them from a distance. They meet friends or family sooner or later. If they’re
in a public place, a restaurant or café, or maybe a park, I move in and listen.
No one’s gonna recognize me as Madam Magenta.” She crossed the room and opened
a cupboard set flush with the wall. “If I can’t get close, I use this.” She
hauled out a long range, sound amplifying listening device.

“You
stalk your clients?”

She
exaggerated a wince. “Stalk sounds so . . .
dirty
. Can we say I
investigate?”

With
Royal’s supersensitive hearing, we didn’t need to use a device to listen in when
we were on a stakeout, but the police, FBI and other agencies did. And yeah, we
called it investigation.

“You
and Royal follow people and pry into their lives,” Jack said sarcastically. “But
it’s not stalking when
you
do it.”

Whatever
she was, she could help us. “It’s like this, Magenta. Jack—” I began.

She
interrupted. “Maggie.”

“Maggie.
Jack and Mel are . . . ghosts. They’re my friends, we’ve known one another a
long time. I’m not a ghost. I got separated from my body but I’m not dead.”

“No
way.”

“Yes,
way.”

“Where’s
your body?”

“On
life support at Clarion General.”

Her
jaw dropped. She snapped her mouth shut and winced as her teeth clacked. “You’re
the woman who was shot in the head, the psychic.”

I
didn’t say I’m not a psychic, not as people understand psychics to be. “Yup,
that’s me.”

“You
work with Royal Mortensen,” Maggie said. “He used to be a police detective and
now he’s a private eye.”

“I
know what he did and does now,” I snapped out.

She
flushed. “Sorry. It’s just I’ve . . . noticed him.”

“Who
hasn’t?” Jack crooned.

Oh
lord, not another infatuated female.
“He’s the reason we
came. I’m not dead, Maggie, and I need you to tell Royal what’s happened so he
doesn’t give up on me.”

But
a thought hit me. I imagined Maggie, a stranger with claims of psychic ability
trying to persuade Royal I gave her a message. With Royal’s cynicism for all
things paranormal, and the state he was in, it would be difficult. You’d think
a man from another dimension, with his world’s history and the mind-boggling
way so much there operated, naturally accepted anything. It doesn’t work like
that. What is outrageous and extraordinary to one culture is business as usual
to another, and vice versa. The mystical stuff I’ve come to take for granted
has never been part of his life and is hard for him to accept.

And
if Maggie got through to him, would he believe the rest, that I existed but was
not the shade of a dead person? If he recalled what I told him about shades, he
knew they experienced strong denial when they first woke. It was a dream, a
hallucination, they were ill and their mind played tricks on them. Anything,
except they were dead. He’d think I came up with an offbeat story rather than
accept the truth.

Perhaps
the fact alone I communicated with Maggie would, in his mind, confirm the
doctors were right, I was beyond saving.

“No,”
I said under my breath.

“No?”

“If
you say, my shade is—”

“Shade?”

“Ghosts.
Spirits. I call them shades.” I irritably flipped one hand. “Royal is at the
point of letting the doctors take me off life support. If you tell him you have
a message from me, it might be a kind of confirmation, that if my spirit has
left my body, it’s beyond saving.”

Maggie
coughed. “Not that I
agreed
to tell him anything.”

But
she might still be valuable. Again, I recalled Royal’s promise he would not let
me linger as a shade, he’d kill whoever murdered me and free me to pass over.

I’d
think of a way to convince Royal, but later, after I stopped him committing
murder. I had to get to the shooter first.

Time
to let her into the secret lives of shades. “I think you’re the one person in
Clarion who can help me.” I sat on the other end of the couch. “Maggie, I see
people whose death results from an act of violence. To me, they look much like
living people, except their expressions are stiff and they whisper to me. They
are stuck where they died until their killer dies, unless they know how to move
by attaching to a living person’s aura. It’s how we came to you. Now I need
help.

“I
want to find out who shot me and get to them before Royal does, but moving from
one location to another takes an age. We’ll save time if you take us where we
need to go.”

“But
what if, meanwhile, he pulls the plug?” Jack asked.

“I
don’t think he will till after he finds the shooter and. . . .” I hesitated.
How much should I tell Maggie?

“And
kills him,” Mel finished for me.

I
glared at her as I spoke to Maggie. “Yeah. Shades of the violently slain are tied
to their place of death until their killer dies. Royal swore he would not let
that happen to me. If he believes I can’t be saved, he’ll go after the person
who shot me. He’s been grilling Mike Warren for info and I think Mike has
something. If he does, you can guarantee Royal’s not far behind him.”

“Wait,”
Maggie said. “You want me to investigate your attempted murder?”

Jack
chuckled. “Lord, no, girl! We’ll do the investigating. You’ll be our
transportation.”

“
Please
help, Maggie,” I pleaded with all the emotion I could muster.

“Sure,
no problem.” Grinning massively, she bounced on the sofa. Then she lost her
smile. “I’m not confronting a murderer.”

“You
don’t have to. If we can discover who he is and where he is, you take it to
Captain Mike Warren at Clarion PD.”

“But
how do I explain to him?”

“Tell
him the truth.”

“He
won’t believe me.”

“I’ve
worked with Mike for years. If anyone will believe you, he will. No, it won’t
be easy, and if he doesn’t, he still has to check out your story.”

“Ookay,”
she said dubiously, stretching the word. “What do you want me to do?”

I
thought of the time we left Carrie at Provo PD. “Jack, Mel, we’re going to the
precinct to get intel. Maggie will drop us off in the foyer and we can grab a
ride to Homicide. I’ll stick with Mike, read everything which comes across his
desk, go where he goes and listen to everything he and his guys say about my .
. . attack. You and Mel can shadow the other detectives as far as you’re able.”

“Why?
How is it going to help?” asked Jack.

“Maybe
it won’t but it’s all I got right now.”

Jack
sighed. Not the parody of a sigh I’m used to, what
appeared
to be an
actual inhalation and gusty exhalation. “All right.”

I
told Maggie about our visit to the PD with Royal and why I thought Mike had
information he refused to share.

“It’s
a hunch,” I concluded, “but I’ve learned to trust them.”

“Clarion
PD it is. Whatever you need.”

“You’re
okay with all this?”

“Okay?”
She grinned widely. “This is fantastic!”

“I
don’t know about fantastic.”

She
hugged her shoulders. “But it is. I see spirits. I
do
see spirits! And I
can help them!” She started chuckling quite wildly and covered her mouth with her
hands to muffle
chuffs
and snorts.

“Here
we go again,” Jack said with an eye roll.

A
few more chuckles and she regained her composure. “It doesn’t matter. If it’s
this once, it’s enough. I’m not an utter fraud.”

I
looked out at the bitter weather. “Okay. Great. Shall we go?”

Another
violent, delighted nod from Maggie. She sped across the room to the bathroom. “Give
me a minute.”

Mel
siddled to me and whispered, “I hope she can keep it together when we get to
Clarion PD.”

“So
do I.” I grimaced. “Or she has someone who can bail her out of lockup.”

Maggie
emerged with her teal-colored hair gelled and spiked. “So I drop you off at the
station. How do I hook up with you when you need me again?”

“The
coffee house across the street, Beanz,” Mel suggested. “Can you be there every
morning? We should be able to get in there easily enough.”

“Every?”
My brows felt as if they rose. “I hope we can do this today.”

“Whatever.
But it’ll have to be noon till eight, when I’m at work,” said Maggie.

I
meant to point out she didn’t make sense, when she added, “I work the afternoon
shift at Beanz, Tuesday through Saturday.”

Well,
how convenient. Due to the location, cops went to Beanz a lot for their coffee
and pastries.

“That’s
me, part-time medium, part-time barista.” Maggie headed for the door.

We
followed in a rush as she trotted down the stairs, opened a small closet at the
bottom and took out a black hoodie. After struggling into it, she turned and
peered as if trying to bring us into focus. “How do we do this? You said you
have to attach to a person?”

We
moved behind her and grasped her aura.

“Okay,
we’re on,” I told her. “Let’s go.”

She
took a step, stopped. “Are you sure? I don’t feel you.”

I
reminded myself of how outrageously bizarre all of this must be to her. I spoke
quickly as her head turned. “It might be better if you keep your eyes ahead.
We’ll try to stay behind you.” She might freak out if she saw us all over her.

Maggie
swallowed hard and moved off, but she crept along as if loathe to dislodge us.
Patience,
Tiff
, I told myself.