meat loaf?” Clarissa asked.
“I couldn’t eat another bite.” A.J. smiled at David. “Perhaps David would like more.”
“As much as I appreciate the home cooking, I can’t.” He tried not to register too much relief as he stood. “Let me help you clear up.”
“Oh, no.” Rising, Clarissa brushed his offer aside. “It relaxes me. Aurora, I think David was just a bit disappointed with me the first time we met. Why don’t you show him my collection?”
“All right.” Picking up her wineglass, A.J. gestured to him to follow. “You’ve scored points,” she commented. “Clarissa doesn’t show her collection to everyone.”
“I’m flattered.” But he took her by the elbow to stop her as they started down a narrow hallway. “You’d prefer it if I kept things strictly business with Clarissa.”
A.J. lifted the glass to her lips and watched him over the rim. She’d prefer, for reasons she couldn’t name, that he stayed fifty miles from Clarissa. And double that from her. “Clarissa chooses her own friends.”
“And you make damn sure they don’t take advantage of her.”
“Exactly. This way.” Turning, she walked to a door on the left and pushed it open. “It’d be more effective by candlelight, even more with a full moon, but we’ll have to make do.” A.J. flicked on the light and stepped out of his view.
It was an average-size room, suitable to a modern ranch house. Here, the windows were heavily draped to block the view of the yard—or to block the view inside. It wasn’t difficult to see why Clarissa would use the veil to discourage the curious. The room belonged in a tower—or a dungeon.
Here was the crystal ball he’d expected. Unable to resist, David crossed to a tall, round-topped stand to examine it. The glass was smooth and perfect, reflecting only the faintest hint of the deep blue cloth beneath it. Tarot cards, obviously old and well used, were displayed in a locked case. At a closer look he saw they’d been hand painted. A bookshelf held everything from voodoo to telekinesis. On the shelf with them was a candle in the shape of a tall, slender woman with arms lifted to the sky.
A Ouija board was set out on a table carved with pentagrams. One wall was lined with masks of pottery, ceramic, wood, even papier-mâché. There were dowsing rods and pendulums. A glass cabinet held pyramids of varying sizes. There was more—an Indian rattle, worn and fragile with age, Oriental worry beads in jet, others in amethyst.
“More what you expected?” A.J. asked after a moment.
“No.” He picked up another crystal, this one small enough to rest in the palm of his hand. “I stopped expecting this after the first five minutes.”
It was the right thing for him to say. A.J. sipped her wine again and tried not to be too pleased. “It’s just a hobby with Clarissa, collecting the obvious trappings of the trade.”
“She doesn’t use them?”
“A hobby only. Actually, it started a long time ago. A friend found those tarot cards in a little shop in England and gave them to her. After that, things snowballed.”
The crystal was cool and smooth in his hand as he studied her. “You don’t approve?”
A.J. merely shrugged her shoulders. “I wouldn’t if she took it seriously.”
“Have you ever tried this?” He indicated the Ouija board.
“No.”
It was a lie. He wasn’t sure why she told it, or why he was certain of it. “So you don’t believe in any of this.”
“I believe in Clarissa. The rest of this is just showmanship.”
Still, he was intrigued with it, intrigued with the fascination it held for people through the ages. “You’ve never been tempted to ask her to look in the crystal for you?”
“Clarissa doesn’t need the crystal, and she doesn’t tell the future.”
He glanced into the clear glass in his hand. “Odd, you’d think if she can do the other things she’s reported to be able to do, she could do that.”
“I didn’t say she couldn’t—I said she doesn’t.”
David looked up from the crystal again. “Explain.”
“Clarissa feels very strongly about destiny, and the tampering with it. She’s refused, even for outrageous fees, to predict.”
“But you’re saying she could.”
“I’m saying she chooses not to. Clarissa considers her gift a responsibility. Rather than misuse it in any way, she’d push it out of her life.”
“Push it out.” He set the crystal down. “Do you mean she—a psychic—could just refuse to be one. Just block out the…let’s say power, for lack of a better term. Just turn it off?”
Her fingers had dampened on the glass. A.J. casually switched it to her other hand. “To a large extent, yes. You have to be open to it. You’re a receptacle, a transmitter—the extent to which you receive or transmit depends on you.”
“You seem to know a great deal about it.”
He was sharp, she remembered abruptly. Very sharp. A.J. smiled deliberately and moved her shoulders again. “I know a great deal about Clarissa. If you spend any amount of time with her over the next couple of months, you’ll know quite a bit yourself.”
David walked to her. He watched her carefully as he took the wineglass from her and sipped himself. It was warm now and seemed more potent. “Why do I get the impression that you’re uncomfortable in this room. Or is it that you’re uncomfortable with me?”
“Your intuition’s missing the mark. If you’d like, Clarissa can give you a few exercises to sharpen it.”
“Your palms are damp.” He took her hand, then ran his fingers down to the wrist. “Your pulse is fast. I don’t need intuition to know that.”
It was important—vital—that she keep calm. She met his eyes levelly and hoped she managed to look amused. “That probably has more to do with the meat loaf.”
“The first time we met you had a very strong, very strange reaction to me.”
She hadn’t forgotten. It had given her a very restless night. “I explained—”
“I didn’t buy it,” he interrupted. “I still don’t. That might be because I found myself doing a lot of thinking about you.”
She’d taught herself to hold her ground. She’d had to. A.J. made one last attempt to do so now, though his eyes seemed much too quiet and intrusive, his voice too firm. She took her wineglass back from him and drained it. She learned it was a mistake, because she could taste him as well as the wine. “David, try to remember I’m not your type.” Her voice was cool and faintly cutting. If she’d thought about it a few seconds longer, she would have realized it was the wrong tactic.
“No,
