The Witch and the Gentleman (7 page)

“
I’m going to need more wine—”

“
Not now, child. I need you fully here, fully aware.”

“
This isn’t happening—”

“
It is, dear. Stop doubting yourself, or doubting the state of your mental health. Spirits are real. They’re all around you. Every day. I’m real. I’m here now, before you. You know this to be true.”

“
Okay, fine. I see you. I hear you. But that doesn’t make this right. Or wrong. You’re a ghost...and you just read my mind.”

“
I prefer the term
spirit
.”

I nearly laughed. “Was I not being politically correct?”

The spirit’s facial expressions didn’t alter. I wondered if they could change. Perhaps that was asking too much of her etheric body to perform the more subtle movements.

“
You were not being
spiritually
correct, dear,” she said, correcting me. “Ghosts are those who have not moved on, those who are stuck on this plane, those who are afraid. Those who are, in general, new souls.”

“
So, what does that make you?” I asked.

“
A very old soul, child, and so are you.”

As she spoke, another flash of recognition came over me. Yes, I knew her, but not from the car wash. Not even from this life. In fact, I was suddenly certain I knew the old woman very well from another place and time.

I said, “Hello, Millicent.”

Lord, help me.

Chapter Fourteen

I wanted more wine—a lot more wine, in fact—but, after using the bathroom, I resisted the urge to hang a left into the kitchen and, instead, hung a right back into the living room.

Gone was my hope that the old woman would be gone. I was happy that she had not followed me into the bathroom. I just knew she was still in the house because my skin was still buzzing away, still tingling, still doing its groovy thing to alert me that
here be ghosts
.

And, truth be known, the old lady was right. I
did
want to remember this. All of it, and I needed to know that what I was seeing was
real
, and not some alcohol-induced hallucination. If, of course, there was such a thing, which I doubted.

Most important, I wanted to remember, and, yes, I needed my head to be very clear.

She was still there, of course, hovering, watching, waiting. I was briefly tempted to pull out my phone and take a picture of her, or, even better, to film her. But that would have been stupid. The moment I reached for the phone, I suspected she would disappear, and perhaps never reappear again. I didn’t want that. Not now. Not before I knew what the hell was going on, and what she wanted with me.

“
You’re wondering why I’m here, Allison?” she said as I sat back down on the couch before her.

“
The thought crossed my mind. Which you would know, since you can read my thoughts. And since when could spirits read thoughts, anyway?”

She did not answer at first. She continued standing there, floating, her hands clasped together below her waist. For the first time, I noticed she wore a wedding ring.

After a moment, Millicent said, “You gave me permission, dear. Long ago, in another place and time.”

“
Convenient,” I said. “But what if I don’t want you in my head?”

“
Then ask me to leave.”

I drummed my fingers on the couch arm. The couch arm was cushioned, so the drumming was mostly muted. “Why are you here?”

“We have unfinished business, dear.”

“
Who are you? Who are you
really
?”

“
I am many things, honey. I have been many people. As have you, but one thing has remained constant.”

She didn’t have to explain further, I felt it. I knew it. The electrical tingling morphed into real goose flesh. I shivered. “Friends,” I said. “We’ve always been friends.”

“We’ve been
more
than friends, dear. We’ve been sisters and daughters and mothers. And, a few times, brothers. Except we didn’t like being brothers very much. Boys aren’t quite as evolved, you see.”

As I stared at her, the words
soul mate
appeared in my thoughts. I suspected Millicent had placed it there.

“
Soul mates?” I repeated.

“
In a way, yes, although many incorrectly infer that the word applies to a single soul. In fact, you have many soul mates.”

“
And you are one of them?”

“
Yes, dear. A very special one. Myself, and one other.”

“
One other? A man?”

“
Not in this life, no.”

“
Another woman?”

“
Yes.”

“
Great. I can’t buy a break. Who is she?”

“
You’ve met her, dear.”

I knew exactly who she talking about. My latest friend. My freaky new friend, in fact. Made sense. Samantha Moon and I had hit it off immediately. From the get-go, she’d felt like the sister I’d never had, even as she drank from me.

I focused on the spirit before me. “Were we, um, ever lovers?”

She shook her head and smiled. I might have actually blushed. That was a new one: blushing while talking to a ghost. “No, dear. Never lovers. Friends and siblings. There is, let’s say, another soul group that’s reserved for our physical intimacy.”

“My head hurts.”

“
I imagine it does.”

“
But I didn’t know you in this life,” I said. “I didn’t know you or your son, or your granddaughter.” A granddaughter, I knew, who had been murdered.

“
Not physically, no.”

“
Which is why you are coming to me now...like this.”

“
One of the reasons,” she said.

“
And what’s the other reason?”

“
I can instruct you better from the spirit world.”

“
Instruct me in what?”

She smiled and looked down at the table. At the Wicca instructional manual that was still sitting there, placed there by her, in fact.

“In witchcraft?” I asked.

“
In Earth-based magic, dear. I prefer to call it Earth magic.”

“
I don’t understand,” I said.

“
I’m here to remind you, Allison, of what you really are.”

“
And what am I?”

“
You are, of course, a
witch
.”

Chapter Fifteen

I needed wine. Badly.

So, despite Millicent’s earlier admonition—and, last I checked, wasn’t she a friggin’ ghost?—I got up and poured myself a healthy dose of wine. This was, of course, just far too much for me to deal with without at least a little alcohol. Okay, maybe a lot. Wine calmed me. I loved having it in my hand. I found it comforting. Also, I loved the taste of it.

When I sat back down, Millicent, amazingly, looked different. Younger.

She answered my unspoken question for me. “I wasn’t always an old woman, you see.”

“
Suit yourself.” I drank deeply from the wine. I sensed Millicent’s disapproval. I ignored her disapproval.

“
Are you comfortable, dear?” she asked.

“
I am,” I said, and held up the wine. “Now that I have this.”

“
I do not understand the need for inebriation.”

“
Then you don’t understand me.”

“
I know you very well, dear. And never before have you been so interested in alcohol.”

I held up the wineglass again. “Welcome to the new me.”

“Very well,” she said. “I need to tell you that I’m here for another reason, too.”

“
Fire away.”

She looked down at her mostly solid hands. I could have been wrong, but she seemed to be growing younger and younger with each sip of wine. Mid-fifties now, I’d say.

She said, “I’m here to also help my son.”

“
Peter?”

“
Yes. He’s stuck on this tragedy, unable to move on. Unable to deal with the loss of his daughter. He needs answers. He needs help.”

I thought about her words, drumming my longish nails against the wineglass. The clicking was peculiarly loud in my little apartment. Something wasn’t sitting right with me here, something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“That’s the wine, dear,” said Millicent. “Clouds your thinking.”

“
Oh, put a cork in it,” I said, and laughed at my own pun.

“
What’s troubling you, dear, is that a part of you thinks that, in spirit, I have all the answers.”

I snapped my fingers and pointed at her, nearly spilling my wine in the process. “That’s it. You
are
in spirit. You can appear in my home, his home, and God knows where else. For all I know, you can speak directly to Penny herself and ask who the killer was.” I was on a roll. “Hell, you could probably speak to God himself. Why do you need me to provide any answers?”

“
I must remain at a distance, dear.”

“
Even so, now a killer walks the streets. A killer you might very well know the identity of?” It might be the wine talking—yes, I’d now drunk about half of the glass—but the idea of Millicent knowing full well who the killer was and keeping this information from her son, who was clearly struggling with his daughter’s murder, was appalling to me.

“
Do not be too appalled, dear. It is the nature of the physical world you live in.”

“
What the devil does that mean?”

“
It means, that not all answers to all problems are given to you. Or to my son. In the mortal life, you must seek answers.”

“
But you are here, trying to help him through me.”

“
I am still his mother, and he is my troubled son.”

“
Who decides these things?” I asked. I stood deftly, managing not to spill my drink, which was getting easier and easier to do as the contents drew lower to the bottom. “I mean, who decides that you can’t help your son? Or, for that matter, why don’t spirits help all of us know more? Surely, one of you up there knows where Jimmy Hoffa was buried, or who really shot Kennedy, or who’s responsible for every unsolved murder case out there. What gives? Why the secrecy? Why are we left to struggle and writhe and stumble in the dark?”

“
You assume I have all the answers, dear.”

“
I assume you have more answers than me since, well, you’re dead or in spirit or whatever the hell you call it. I also assume that you’re sticking to some sort of spiritual rule book. I want to know who makes these rules and why?”

I had somehow ended up back in the kitchen and back to the wine bottle, which had mysteriously ended up in my hands. Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a mystery. I filled the glass and returned.

She waited for me before speaking again. “We help more than you know, dear. But, yes, we are limited in our help.”

“
Limited by whom? Or is it
who
? Whatever. Who stops you? And why would they stop you from helping someone?”

“
There’s helping, dear. And then there’s helping
too much
. All help first goes through that soul’s higher self, and then through the spirit guides. The higher self and spirit guides decide what is best for the incarnate soul.”

I’d heard about higher selves and spirit guides and incarnates and discarnates and reincarnation. But hearing it from a spirit was something else entirely. It made things
real
.

“
And the person living has no say in it?” I asked.

“
The person living has the
final
say, dear.”

“
So, why are you here now?” I asked. “Are you sort of circumventing the rules?”

“
I’m using whatever leverage I can to help my son.”

I thought about that, watching the spirit standing before me. She didn’t look much like a spirit now. She looked three-dimensional. She had substance and depth and definition. The more she stood in my room, the more she came to life, so to speak. Although she did continue to rise and fall ever so slightly. Most interesting, she continued to grow younger and younger before my very eyes. If I had to guess, she was now in her early forties. She was now a beautiful, dark-haired woman.