True Vision (11 page)

Still smiling, AnnaCoreen pivoted to tend to a teapot on a banquet that matched the table. “I hope you won’t mind if I have some.”

“Of course not.”

When AnnaCoreen turned with a teacup in hand, she indicated one of the chairs facing the throne. “Please have a seat.”

Once Charlie was situated, AnnaCoreen lowered herself onto her chair and folded her hands on the table. Rings adorned every finger, her nails a garish, glittery red. Still, Charlie noticed, she had nice hands, grandmotherly hands.

“What brings you to AnnaCoreen today?”

Charlie blurted, “Lily sent me.”

AnnaCoreen cocked her head, her blue eyes shimmering with an odd light. “Lily?”

“Lillian Trudeau. My grandmother.”

AnnaCoreen sat back on her throne and smiled. “I see.”

The intensity of the older woman’s gaze unsettled Charlie. “She passed away three months ago,” Charlie said.

“Yes, I know. I was at her funeral.”

“I don’t remember seeing you there.”

“I stopped in only briefly to pay my respects.”

The older woman’s gentle smile calmed some of Charlie’s anxiety. “Nana told me that if my sisters or I ever needed . . . guidance, that we should come see you.”

She nodded, her smile never wavering. In fact, it hadn’t wavered since Charlie had arrived. But it wasn’t creepy. It was sweet, affectionate, perhaps even a little knowing. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to finally meet you. Charlie, right?”

Whoa. The woman knew Charlie from her other two sisters? Well, she
was
psychic. She almost laughed. God, first her life was a mess. Now her brain was joining in on the fun. “You knew my grandmother well?”

“Not really, no. I met her only a few times. But I liked her very much.”

“I don’t understand why she would send me or my sisters here.”

AnnaCoreen rose, every movement so fluid she seemed to float. “Let’s take this conversation to the house, shall we?”

Charlie followed her out a back door and into a lush, vibrant garden. A narrow brick path led to a small house that she hadn’t noticed earlier because all her horrified attention had been focused on the pink eyesore. The beach house, the antithesis of the shack, was a fresh, sunny yellow with bright white trim. They entered through the kitchen. Red, blue and yellow touches kept the gleaming white floors, appliances and wicker furniture from being blinding.

AnnaCoreen gestured toward the front room, also white, surrounded by paned floor-to-ceiling windows. French doors led to a wraparound porch that faced the white-sand beach. Yellow-and-white-striped cushions on rocking chairs invited guests to get comfortable and rock the day away. Charlie immediately wanted to go out there and settle in with a glass of iced tea. Sweetened.

AnnaCoreen said, “Please make yourself comfortable on the porch while I change. I’ll bring out some iced tea. The herbal stuff gives me a headache.”

Alone on the porch, Charlie settled onto a rocking chair and looked out at the rolling waves, glistening in the late afternoon sun. Usually the expanse of the Gulf humbled her, made her problems seem so small and pointless. Not today.

When AnnaCoreen returned, she carried a tray with two tall glasses and a pitcher of ice- and lemon-laden tea. As thirsty as she was, Charlie couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s shocking transformation.

A simple red dress conformed to delicate curves and showed off bare legs that could have belonged to a dancer. The blond wig was gone, revealing short, reddish blond hair that had an amazing amount of body considering it had recently been flattened by a wig. She’d washed off the brassy eye makeup and lipstick and replaced them with simple foundation and a little pink blush and lip gloss. But the smile and cheekbones lived on in bold Technicolor.

While the costume had changed, her movements were the same—graceful, precise—as she set the tray on the wide porch railing and began to pour tea with a clink of ice.

“This is sweet tea, the kind my momma used to brew,” she said. A slight Southern drawl had replaced the faint British accent.

Charlie suppressed her sigh. So it was all a big fake-out. The shack, the crystal, the scarves over the lamps. While she couldn’t help but be impressed at how well the woman pulled it off, she couldn’t imagine that someone so adept at show business would be able to help her with her problem. Like she’d thought earlier: She needed an expert.

AnnaCoreen handed her a glass of tea, and her smile seemed to reach deep into Charlie’s eyes. “You need to relax, honey. I’m all the expert you need.”

Charlie felt her mouth drop open. What the?

AnnaCoreen continued to smile as she drifted down onto a rocking chair. “Let’s say you start from the beginning.”

 

Noah sat in the Mustang parked up the street from the pink shack and tapped his fingers on his knee. A psychic? Charlie Trudeau, journalist, was visiting a psychic?

Not for the first time, he wondered what the hell he was doing following her around. Laurette’s death had swiped his legs out from under him. Someone killed her, and he couldn’t find a damn bit of evidence as to why. Except for Charlie and her family secrets.

As much as he didn’t want Charlie to be the key, he knew in his gut that she was. So he followed her and hoped she led him somewhere useful, somewhere that wouldn’t somehow end up destroying her in the process.

Sighing, he glanced sideways at the seat next to him. There sat the large envelope John Logan had given him of what Laurette had had on her when she’d been hit. He’d retrieved the rest of her things at the Royal Palm’s front desk, stashed the suitcase in the Mustang’s trunk and put the carry-on and a clear plastic bag on the floor of the passenger side. He dreaded going through her things, smelling her scent on them, considered boxing it all up and shipping it to her sister. But he had to sort through it all, had to search for something significant.

Bracing himself, he reached for the envelope and upended its contents into the seat. The usual stuff tumbled out. A tiny clutch bag, sunglasses, the amethyst ring she always wore on her right hand, the small diamond-stud earrings. Nothing unusual or unlike Laurette. Nothing worth killing over.

He opened the clutch purse and peered inside. Cash, lipstick, a tampon, a couple of credit cards, some loose change, a card key for the Royal Palm.

Something was missing. But what?

He thought of what Mary Dillard had told him, that Laurette had paused after exiting the stairwell and gone through her bag as though she’d forgotten something.

Her cell phone. She always carried her cell phone. He’d found that funny about her. So simple yet devoted to that phone.

Leaning over, he snagged the clear plastic bag of stuff from her room. According to the woman at the front desk, it held the things Laurette had left on the vanity in the bathroom and scattered about the hotel room.

Unopened bottled water. Peanut butter snack crackers. A granola bar wrapper (Jesus, couldn’t they have thrown that away?). A travel alarm clock. Umbrella.

He picked up a thin sheaf of loose papers and sifted through them. Printouts of online stories by Charlie Trudeau,
Lake Avalon Gazette
staff writer, Charlie’s photo displayed next to her byline. So that’s how Laurette had recognized Charlie outside the newspaper.

Then he noticed the cell phone at the bottom of the bag.

He sank back in the seat and shook his head. Now he knew why Laurette had come out of the stairwell looking indecisive. She’d forgotten her phone in her room and had debated going back for it.

If she’d gone back, maybe she’d still be alive.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

A
nnaCoreen stayed silent for several minutes after Charlie finished telling her about the hit-and-run and her subsequent paranormal experiences. The older woman, who’d listened quietly without interrupting, sipped her tea and watched the waves, a soft smile still in place before she began to nod and gently rock at the same time.

“Your experience is quite unusual indeed,” she murmured. “Quite, quite unusual.” She stopped rocking suddenly and pierced Charlie with an inquisitive stare. “Explain to me how these flashes feel.”

Charlie took a breath, held it for a moment, then blew it slowly out. “It’s like I
am
the person I’m touching at the time they experienced . . . whatever it is I relive. Sort of like an out-of-body experience.”

AnnaCoreen pursed her lips and began to rock again. When she said nothing for a long moment, Charlie asked, “Have you heard of anything like it before?”

“Never,” AnnaCoreen said, her blue eyes dancing in the afternoon light. She seemed more excited than perplexed, like a scientist who’s realized she’s on the cusp of discovering the cure for cancer. “You say this woman who was killed, Laurette Atkins, resembled you?”

“I believe she was my cousin, but getting that verified isn’t as easy as it should be.”

“Yes, Lily mentioned your family situation to me when we met.”

When they met? Why would Charlie’s family situation have even come up when they met? “How exactly did you know my grandmother?”

AnnaCoreen began to rock again, a slow, even rhythm. “Lily came to me shortly before she died. She wanted to make sure you and your sisters had someone to turn to concerning your empathic abilities.”

“You mean, my sisters . . .”

“Possibly. Lily knew only about you for certain. She explained that you come from a background of deep denial, that you and your sisters had been raised to reject such gifts.”

“How could we be raised to reject something we didn’t even know about?”

AnnaCoreen’s smile didn’t falter. “Let me rephrase. You weren’t raised to
embrace
your gift.”

“I’m not sure how Nana even knew I was sensitive,” Charlie said. “She just asked me one day.”

“She mentioned your mother’s ability.”

Charlie felt a moment of shock. Her
mother
was empathic?

“Lily suspected, yes,” AnnaCoreen said. “She didn’t know for sure, though.”

Charlie gaped at the older woman. “Are you reading my mind?”

AnnaCoreen’s smile deepened. “Mostly, I’m reading your face. It’s very expressive.”

Charlie forced her shoulders to relax. “So what would Laurette and I being related have to do with what’s happened?”

“It’s highly possible she also was empathic. Death is an incredibly powerful experience. Because you were holding her hand when she passed on, her energy could have mingled with yours to, as you so creatively put it earlier, supercharge your ability.”

Charlie had only one concern. “Will it go away?”

“It’s more likely that it will grow stronger with time.”

So
not what Charlie wanted to hear. “Can you explain why I’m tapping into these particular events? I mean, why aren’t I just getting a . . . flash, or whatever it is, of them brushing their teeth or eating lunch?”

AnnaCoreen rose out of the rocking chair and walked over to the porch railing. “I’m not an expert in empathic phenomena, so please keep in mind that what I’m about to say is only conjecture. I could be wrong. Very wrong.”

“All right,” Charlie said with a slow nod.

“Each of us is surrounded by an energy field, or in mystical terms, an aura. Sometimes it’s negative and sometimes positive. The average empathic person can walk into a room and feel the energy, or current mood, of a particular person or several people at once. In the level of empathy that you’re describing, it appears that the act of physically touching another person, skin-on-skin, actually breaches the energy field, gaining you access to that person’s most intensely emotional memories. You’re tapping into residual energy, rather than what that person’s feeling at the moment, and absorbing it into yourself as if it’s your own.”

“Physical stuff is affecting me, too. I felt Laurette Atkins get hit by the car, and later I felt my sister bump her head.”

“Each intense event, emotional or physical, carries residual energy,” AnnaCoreen said. “That’s why brushing one’s teeth wouldn’t affect you, because it wasn’t intense. And why you might not feel something every time you touch someone. It’s likely you’ll feel only traumatic events.”

Charlie had to laugh. It was either that or cry. She’d never felt so overwhelmed. Or doomed. She imagined life without ever touching another human being, and desolation seemed to expand heavily inside her like a balloon filling with water.

AnnaCoreen lowered herself to the rocking chair beside her and patted her knee. “This is a lot for you to take in. You’re doing very well.”

Charlie fought back the sting of tears. Great. At least she was taking it well that she was so totally screwed.

“Have you had any side effects?” AnnaCoreen asked.

“A migraine last night. I’d never had one before. I thought it might be connected, but I wasn’t sure.”

AnnaCoreen nodded. “I expect the experiences will physically wear you out, sometimes severely and without warning. Especially if you have more than a few in a day. The more powerful they are, the more draining they’ll be, perhaps even debilitating.”

She rose and picked up the tea pitcher to refill Charlie’s empty glass. “I assume you learned how to shield yourself from others’ emotions before the accident?”

“Nana tried to get me to imagine a white light and a reflective shield, but it didn’t work for me. I could never get into grounding exercises, balancing my chakra or waving around sticks of sage to smudge my aura. Nothing wrong with any of that. It’s just not who I am.”

“Nothing wrong with that, either. Is there something that works for you?”

Charlie shifted, embarrassed. “Nana told me to sing a song in my head whenever I started to feel overwhelmed.”

AnnaCoreen smiled, nodded. “To focus on yourself instead of the other person. Not that it matters, but I’m curious about which song.”