Butch Jefferson, anyway—she wanted even less than touching.
With a determined smile, she allowed Butch to envelop her hand in his.
It wasn’t anywhere near as unsettling as touching his partner would have been. Butch’s personal energy was slow and easy, like the Mississippi in the summertime. The flashes of possible information that accompanied his touch—widowed, volunteered with Big Brothers, loved beer and boiled crawfish—he released it all so freely, it didn’t carry the unsettling jolt of so many other people.
“Faith Corbett,” she said—the first time she’d ever given this particular cop her real name. Please don’t recognize me.
“From evidence,” added Bad Cop, who proceeded to take over most of the talking.
The older detective didn’t seem to realize he and Faith had spoken before, much less that it had had nothing to do with her job with the crime-scene unit.
Then again, she’d chosen Butch Jefferson last year specifically because he didn’t have a terribly suspicious nature—not for a homicide detective, anyway. She’d always used a fake accent, the dozen-or-so times she’d telephoned him. And she’d given him a fake name, Madame Cassandra. But the information she’d passed on as Detective Jefferson’s anonymous contact with the psychic community had always been real.
As long as the information stayed anonymous, Faith could remain useful. But if he recognized her voice, or learned the tips came from her…
Well, either he’d see her like Chopin had—young and blond and thus somehow unreliable—or he’d see her like the few other people who had learned her secret.
Freak.
Worse, they would want to know how she did it. And that, not even Faith could tell them.
She honestly didn’t know what she was.
But whatever she was, keeping quiet about it was one of the few things her nervous mother had gotten right. Look what happened to Krystal.
The thought caught Faith by surprise. How could Krystal’s murder have anything to do with the tarot reader’s special abilities?
She stiffened, increasingly aware of the gurgling drain beneath Roy Chopin’s surprisingly accurate narrative of her night. It would keep running until the night shift for the crime-scene unit arrived.
Running water?
She might only do glorified clerical work for the crime-scene unit, so far. She might only be an assistant crime-scene technician. But she knew the water had to mean something.
What?
Amidst the Bourbon Street crowd that lingered into the night, attracted by flashing lights and yellow police tape, He closed His eyes to savor His…His amplification.
Strength. Meaning. Confidence. Yes!
That last time hadn’t been a fluke, after all.
He stood for what may have been hours, too powerful to tire of it, relishing how helpless the so-called authorities looked. Patrolmen had come and gone, as had an ambulance. Now the photographers and the crime-scene investigators, the night shift, had arrived. But He waited.
He wanted to see the detectives leave as ignorant as when they’d arrived. Stupid, arrogant suits. He wanted to gloat.
When finally they emerged, a younger man with an old black partner, they didn’t seem as helpless as He’d hoped. The younger one looked dusty enough to have been clambering around the crawlspace over the ceiling.
But they didn’t look satisfied, either. Or done.
Both seemed distracted by the blond bitch who’d chased Him from His kill before he was done. The one with the green tank top and the miniskirt. He didn’t like that one at all.
“Let me or Roy get you a cab now, Miss Faith,” He heard the black man say. “Gang activity’s gotten worse, not far north of here. No need for you to take chances.”
“No,” said the girl, all but backing away. “Really. My roommates will walk with me. We’ll be safe together.”
The trio who shuffled nearer, red-eyed and lost, looked as if they needed more protection than they would provide. Even the man among them had the posture of a girl.
Those three looked familiar—from Jackson Square.
More psychics?
Even as He thought that, as His breath fell shallow and His heartbeat sped and his groin tightened, the one called Miss Faith suddenly turned her head. Her unnerving green gaze raked across the remaining onlookers as if she knew what she was looking for.
He leaned back just enough to hide behind the shoulders of some good ol’boy. When He dared look again, she’d gone. She seemed to deliberately ignore the detectives staring after her. She was too busy dividing her attention between her friends and the street around them, like a little blond bodyguard.
He dared breathe again after they turned a corner. More than one psychic there, for sure.
The kind of people with power to spare.
A few more like tonight, and even the Master could no longer control Him.
Chapter 2
F aith couldn’t tell if she’d really sensed the killer among the onlookers, or if it had been her imagination. Sure, she was weird. But could she really recognize a particular heartbeat, a particular smell, in that kind of crowd?
Probably she’d just been distracted by Roy Chopin and Butch Jefferson watching her retreat.
“They asked a lot of questions,” noted Moonsong, after a block. “Who Krys dated, if we knew anybody who would want to hurt her. That was nice and thorough of them.”
“Bull! Did you see how they looked at me when I told them I’d met Krys at an astrology class?” Between grief, guilt and frustration, or maybe the simple boredom of waiting out the administrative elements of a crime scene, Absinthe had chewed most of her black lipstick off. “Like I was crazy. Like Krystal was crazy. It’s disrespectful, is what it is.”
“Krystal would have thought it was funny,” Moonsong insisted. Her real name was Emily, but a surprising number of psychics changed their names. It wasn’t so much to hide their true names—like Faith masquerading as Madame Cassandra when she made anonymous calls to the police. It was more about…identity.
About making a fresh start, even honoring their unusual abilities.
“Well, it’s not funny,” said Absinthe who, because Faith had helped her through the paperwork of a legal name change, really was Absinthe. Faith had majored in pre-law, before dropping out.
Until she knew what she was, it seemed premature to settle on what she should do.
Moonsong’s expression set. “But she would have thought it was. Remember? Whenever people got all cynical about what she did, she’d say, ‘That is so Queen of Swords.’”
Absinthe
