Page 45 of The Psychic

Aunt Kat plucked a napkin from the holder on the table and dabbed up the spilled tea as Ronnie let all her pent-up emotions out.

“Dad is all over my case these days, like he expects me to spontaneously combust, or something. Wants to nail down my future. Worse than ever. And I see things and hear things and I can’t tell what’s real anymore.

No one trusts me! I don’t trust myself! Something’s happened.

Something’s wrong. If you know anything that can help, tell me. ”

Her aunt had almost flinched at Ronnie’s words. Pressing her lips together, she wadded up the stained napkin and tossed it into the sink. Slowly, she turned back to her niece and Ronnie suddenly knew she was going to hear something she didn’t want to know. She automatically braced herself.

“Okay,” Aunt Kat said on a sigh. “You want to know, so here’s the truth.

Your mother started seeing things that weren’t there.

Worse than ever. Things that were never there.

And she had a lot of fears that just intensified.

She was deathly afraid of water, but kept going toward the river as if … it beckoned her.”

Gooseflesh broke out on Ronnie’s skin and her nerves thrummed. Don’t go in the water.

“She didn’t drown … That’s not what you said.”

“No. It was exposure, sickness, pneumonia complications …” she said painfully. “You know how I feel about your father. He’s …”

“A trial?”

She smiled faintly at her words tossed back at her. “Yes. But he did try hard to save Winnie. I’ll give him that. As difficult as their marriage was, he did love her.”

“So, things got worse for her? The visions? Before she died?”

“This … what’s happening to you is different,” Aunt Kat insisted. “You’re not anything like your mother,” she added with sudden ferocity. “You’re just confusing things, that’s all.”

“But didn’t you just say that’s what happened to Mom?”

“Not the same. You’re not paranoid.”

“I’m not? Don’t I sound paranoid?” She choked on a laugh as she scraped back her chair and stumbled to her feet.

“Sit, sit.” She waved Ronnie back toward her chair. “Take a deep breath. Separate what you know is true from your feelings, your guesses.”

“How? It all runs together more than it ever has.”

“Try. What do you know for sure?”

“I know Mel’s dead.” Ronnie sank into her chair again.

“I saw her body with other people. I don’t think Clint killed her, but maybe he did.

Or, maybe it was her husband. Or, maybe someone else.

Brandy said she had other lovers. Mel was one of those people who is always in love with love even if it involved more than one person. ”

“Let the police figure that out,” Aunt Kat advised, her kind eyes searching Ronnie’s. “Your friend, Detective Hart, seemed very capable.”

“He’s not my friend. He’s … he’s just someone I know.

And he doesn’t believe me and I don’t blame him.

I don’t believe me! But now he’s …” She ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.

“It’s not his fault but Brandy thinks I betrayed her and Clint, and maybe I did.

I just want to know what happened to Mel …

and I want to know why I saw that vision of Shana.

She was strangled like Mel. Dead. But then she called me, and it wasn’t a fake. It was her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes … mainly. Yes,” she added, though doubt crept into her voice.

“What else do you know for sure?”

“Not much,” she admitted, picking up her cup and sipping what remained of her tea. “I think I did help Detective Haynes a little.”

“Who’s Detective Haynes?”

“Oh … something separate.” She explained about Sloan temporarily stepping in to Haynes’s place at River Glen P.D. while the detective was on administrative leave, and how Haynes was currently searching for a missing surrogate. “At least she was found, unharmed.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah, but then there’s Shana. Was Mom ever that wrong?” There was a telling hesitation by Aunt Kat and Ronnie answered her own question: “She was at the end.”

“You are not at the end of your life, Ronnie,” Aunt Kat stated fiercely. “Just try to untangle your visions, impressions. That’s what Winnie did. She sang sometimes, when she was overwhelmed.”

“I’m no singer,” said Ronnie, but her aunt’s words made her recall those times she’d felt safe in her mother’s arms while Mom softly crooned to her.

“What makes you feel better?”

“I don’t know. Answers. The one thing I can’t get.”

“There are answers out there, somewhere.”

“I don’t know where.” As soon as she uttered the words, Ronnie realized she’d ignored the obvious. “Shana’s not dead. She called me. I know I’m going to have to face Sloan, who already thinks I’m a nutcase, and try to explain why we went on a wild-goose chase, looking for her.”

“And it matters what he thinks.”

“Of course it does.”

“Maybe a little more than what others might think of you?” she suggested and for a second an image flashed behind Ronnie’s eyes. She and Sloan. Alone. Water raining down on them as they clung together … holding each other … kissing … his hands on her wet body …

Don’t go in the water.

She blinked. Felt the heat crawling up her throat.

“I—I need to talk to Shana,” she said, dismissing the forbidden image.

Ronnie forced her gaze back to Aunt Kat in her warm little kitchen with the twinkling Christmas lights and the reason Ronnie had come here.

“I thought Shana was terrified,” Ronnie said.

“Strangled. I saw her. And I swear it was her voice on the phone, but …” She tossed her hands in frustration as she focused on the missing woman. “I need to talk to her in person.”

Aunt Kat nodded. “That’s a good start.”

“And if she’s okay, which I really hope she is, what then? What’s my next move?”

“I don’t know, hon.”

“You know, the truth is I thought I was supposed to save her. That’s what the psychic message was all about. I know that sounds ridiculous.” She was on her feet again, needing to be in motion, the rest of her tea forgotten.

“Maybe you are supposed to save her,” Aunt Kat suggested as she collected the cups. “Just not in the way you think.”

She let herself recall her vision of Shana. The horror on her face as she dug her fingers into the carpet. The bluish marks of strangulation on her throat.

“Not dead. Just … attacked …”

“Possibly,” agreed Aunt Kat.

“Maybe Shana’s hiding from her attacker. Maybe it didn’t happen at her apartment. Maybe my mind just embellished.”

“It sounds like a job for the police.” Aunt Kat frowned as she put both tea cups into the sink.

But Ronnie was already heading toward the door, her mind racing. “Maybe I jumped to conclusions.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I gotta go.”

“Honey, be careful.”

“I am. I will be. Thank you …”

She phoned Shana as soon as she was on the road again. The call went to voice mail, and she momentarily debated on calling right back, seeing if Shana would pick up on a second call, but then opted to leave a message.

“Hi, Shana. It’s Ronnie. Where are you now? I want to meet with you in person. All right? I’m on the road. Give me a call when you can.”

She was feeling more clearheaded, less emotional than when she’d raced over to see Aunt Kat.

Not that anything Aunt Kat had said had really soothed her fears.

Far from it. It was more that she felt she had a path, an explanation about Shana, and she couldn’t help it if Brandy wanted to blame her for Clint’s possible, maybe probable, involvement in Mel’s death.

She was going to be late to meet Marian. So be it. She needed to get home and change for dinner and think things through.

She was pulling into her parking spot at her apartment when her cell buzzed back. Shana? No. Sloan.

Grimacing, she let the call go to voice mail as she got out of the car and climbed the stairs to her unit. She glanced at Angel’s door. No sign of him again. No bat, though, nor other noxious warning on her mat. Maybe she should have told Sloan about the bat.

Do you want him to come to your rescue? Wait till he hears that Shana called you. He won’t believe anything you say from here on out.

No thanks to that.

She changed clothes into a nicer dark red blouse and pair of black slacks. Grabbing a black blazer, she looked at herself in the mirror. Okay. Professional. She needed to convey that she was serious about not accepting Marian’s job offer.

Say what you will, she still wanted to work at the law offices. She was mad at her father—more annoyed, really. His tactics for keeping her with the company needed work. Still … she was good at what she did. Maybe someday she would finish law school. Maybe someday she would step into his shoes.

She snorted at herself. Kind of a big turnaround from a few days ago.

But she’d learned that her father had tried to protect her mother from herself. His means might not have worked, but according to Aunt Kat, he’d never strayed from loving her.

Ronnie sensed that she was weakening when it came to her father. Was that a good thing, or bad thing? Hard to tell at this point.

She raced out the door, thinking she might not be that late. It was dark. The rain felt pent-up, waiting in the clouds, like it was about to dump in a deluge. She hurried down the stairs, expecting to be poured upon at any second, but made it to her Escape before the heavens opened.

Her cell rang as she was driving toward the Langdorf estate.

Shana.

Ronnie answered, “Shana.”

“Yeah. I’m back at my apartment,” Shana said in a rush. “Got your message. I want to talk to you, too. But I … I’m packing up. I going to leave town.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I’ll call you when I’m safe.”

No! “Wait. If you—”

The line went dead.

“Shit.”

Ronnie thought about it hard for the space of five seconds, then she wrenched the wheel at the next side street, decided to blow off Marian and go find Shana. She was alive. She believed that much and it was obvious Shana was scared to death.

Pushing the speed limit, Ronnie circled back to Shana’s apartment building.

As soon as she found a parking spot and stepped out of the car, the clouds burst open and a curtain of rain pelted down, drenching her in the few moments it took to cross the parking lot and get in the shelter of the stairways that led to Shana’s apartment.

She hurried upward, shaking water from her hair.

Shana’s door was two-thirds of the way down the fourth-floor outside corridor. As Ronnie neared the apartment, her steps slowed. There were no lights on inside, though the outside illumination was bright enough to see the door knob. Ronnie tapped her knuckles on the panel. “Shana?”

A silvery sense of premonition ran down her nerves.

Slowly, carefully, she twisted the knob, recognizing even as she did so that she was leaving prints. It turned beneath her fingers and she pushed open the door.

Shana was lying just as she’d pictured her in her vision. Mouth open in a silent scream. Eyes filled with terror. Fingers digging into the carpet.

“What are you doing here?”

Sloan’s voice came from behind her, where he was striding along the corridor in her direction.

She felt her knees buckle. I was right , she thought despondently. I was right.

“I just had the time wrong,” she said, and then felt his arm grab hers to keep her from falling.