chest, and she took an uncertain step backward. “I—”
“I know it’s not that good,” Evan insisted.
“No! It’s—” Beautiful. But how could she say that? “My mom would have a cow,” she said instead, changing the subject. “Once I got my picture in the paper, when my sixth-grade class sang Christmas carols at a nursing home, and she called the paper to complain about not getting permission. She never liked…”
Never liked the idea of strangers seeing Faith. Never wanted the publicity.
“That’s okay,” said Evan, with a shrug. “If you want, I could—”
“No. Go ahead and hang it. It shows what a great artist you are. Mom won’t know about it, and if she finds out, she can lump it.” Or finally do me the favor of explaining what the hell she’s hiding. “I’ve got to go talk to Absinthe.”
“Between the lot of us, I bet we can find Krystal’s killer,” said Evan hopefully.
Faith said, “We can at least help.”
In more ways than one.
By that evening, she had enough with which to make a call. It was awfully soon after her interview with the detectives the other night. But for Krystal, Faith had to risk it.
The information she’d gotten from Absinthe was too weird—and too pressing—to ignore.
And forty-two hours had passed since Krystal’s murder.
It was time to revive Madame Cassandra.
Chapter 4
“T he dead woman,” Faith said, with the fake Virginia accent she’d adopted for these anonymous public-telephone contacts, “was having nightmares about vampires.”
“Vampires?” repeated Detective Sergeant Butch Jefferson, from his mobile.
In his background, Faith heard someone else—his partner, Roy Chopin. “She’s gotta be kidding you.”
“Y’all clearly don’t understand dream interpretation.” As soon as she’d decided to pass information from her psychic companions to the New Orleans Police Department months ago, Faith had known she must remain anonymous. For one thing, she’d been raised to keep a low profile, a habit difficult to shed. For another, explaining that she was merely speaking for the psychics, instead of as a psychic, would lessen her already shaky credibility.
Instead, when she made contact, she pretended to be a reader herself. She’d pulled the name Cassandra out of the blue, probably because she believed herself to be conveying the truth, as surely as the ancient Greek heroine had, and because, like that mythic Cassandra, Faith honestly doubted anyone in authority would believe her.
“Well then, Miss Cassie,” said Butch, his drawl far more real than hers. “Won’t you please enlighten us?”
“I would be delighted.” She readjusted the black receiver of the pay phone in the Aquarium of the Americas. She never used private numbers to call Butch. “Dreams can’t generally be taken at face value. They tend to be symbols.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“If Miss Tanner feared vampires, that could mean she was afraid of being drained of power, of energy.”
She heard Butch say, away from the mouthpiece, “She thinks maybe the dead psychic was worried about being drained of power.”
“Could be she just went into withdrawal when Anne Rice moved to the suburbs,” said Chopin.
“Could be,” insisted Faith, “that she was predicting something about her own death. Being murdered is about as drained as a girl can get, isn’t it? Did either of you nice detectives get the impression that the murderer might believe in magic?”
“I fear we’ve been too short on likely suspects to do that kind of questioning,” admitted Butch. Whether or not that part was true.
“Well, y’all should check. All kinds of details could have magical meaning, which could tell you something about your killer. For example, if you found salt at the crime scene.” She knew they had. “Salt’s a protective substance, magically speaking. Or if there’s a chance she was strangled with something made of natural fiber, that would indicate a killer who’s concerned with energy transference.”
She’d learned of the dreams from Absinthe. Moonsong had explained the significance of salt, and of a silk cord versus, say, nylon.
“You don’t say,” mused Butch. “Miss Cassie, I do believe you may be on to something here.”
Then she had to wait while he repeated the insight to his partner and fielded the usual smart-mouthed responses. Faith shifted her weight, feeling exposed in the bluish light, filtered by displays of wavering water. The Aquarium of the Americas would be closing in half an hour. She hoped to finish this call before they made any kind of announcement that would tell the detectives where she was.
She also wore a black wig and sunglasses, in hopes of skewing anyone’s description if the police traced the call and come around asking questions.
It was during long delays like this that she got the most paranoid. She also didn’t like having the time to notice that whoever had used this public phone before her had drunk more than one hurricane. It reeked of rum.
“So what’s your opinion, Miss Cassie?” asked Butch. “Was Krystal Tanner killed by one of her spiritualist co-workers?”
“No! I mean—most folks who work on, shall we say, the edge of expected reality? They understand the consequences of karma. If this man you’re after wanted to take Krystal Tanner’s energy, he’s likely some kind of untrained wannabe.”
“Why is it you think that?”
“Only two things could make him think he can escape the karmic repercussions of murder, Detective Sergeant. Either he’s got such strong personal power, psychic shields, that he doesn’t have to worry about it—in which case he’d know that someone else’s energy wouldn’t do him a whole lot of good—or he’s too ignorant to know better.”
Butch murmured what she’d said to his partner, then asked, “Do you have anything else for us just now, Miss Cassie?”
She heard a slow beeping on his end of the line, like a car door had been opened while the key was still in the ignition. They’d arrived at wherever they were going.
“If this fellow’s a wannabe magic user, he might try some kind of crash course,” she suggested. “There’s a psychic fair Wednesday night at the Biltmore Hotel.”
“The one that had those strange fires last year?” Apparently the damage had been almost entirely external. Then again, almost every old building in the Quarter had some strange story to tell.
“That’s the one. There won’t just be readers there, there’ll be experts offering classes. Someone who wants to learn about manipulating energy, chances are he’ll show up.” That had been her first introduction to the magic community of New Orleans, anyway. “And on the chance that he might be looking for more
