Chapter One
“Hi, this is Allison. Thank you for calling The Psychic Hotline. How can I help you see into the future?”
It was early evening, and I was nearing the end of my shift. My “shift” was the time I was scheduled to be logged into the Hotline’s computer system, via my laptop, via my comfy couch. Once I finished my shift and logged out, I could officially get dressed and start my day. Yes, I worked in my pajamas, and, yes, I worked from home. It was a good gig, but challenging—and sometimes strange—work.
“Yes, hello,” said a very crisp and, if I wasn’t mistaken, English accent. English and Australian accents tended to sound similar to my untrained ears. Then again, I was just a simple girl from San Pedro, which was a hop, a skip and a jump from where I now lived in Beverly Hills.
Of course, simple might have gone out the window a few years ago when I’d met my first vampire—and before I had been told that I was a witch. A very powerful witch.
So weird, I thought, once again shaking my head over the insanity of it all. But to the Englishman on the other end of the line, I said, “What’s your name?”
“Don’t you already know?” he asked pleasantly enough. “I mean, you are psychic, right?”
I didn’t take offense at the question. In fact, I was usually surprised when the question wasn’t asked. In this case, I sensed the good-natured ribbing behind the question.
I said, “You bet your ass. But once I connect with you, I don’t just stop with your name. All your secrets will be mine.”
There was a pause, and then a light chuckle. “You’re joking, right?”
“I say, why stop at a name?” I swung my stockinged feet to the polished wood floor and sat forward on the couch. The Englishman had my attention. And when someone had my attention...they really had my attention. I found myself logging into him easily enough. “The real question is, how much do you want me to know?”
He laughed sharply. “Now you’re making me nervous. I suppose I had that coming. It was a rude question.”
“A fair question,” I said.
“Okay, now I like you, too,” he said in his clipped accent.
“Now, that I could have predicted. So, how can I help you, Billy?”
He made a sound that might have been a gasp.
I made a sound that might have been a laugh.
“Well, I’m gobsmacked. Obviously, my name came up on your computer screen,” he said.
“Obviously.”
“Caller I.D. or something?”
“Or something,” I said.
“My name didn’t come up on your screen, did it?”
“No, it didn’t.”
“I see.”
Except, of course, he didn’t see. Not really. I knew this by the way his energy level had dropped...and by the way he’d mumbled those last two words. Mostly, of course, I knew by his body language.
Yes, his body language.
Little did Billy know that I was presently “in” his house with him. Although I was relatively new to the world of psychics—at least, paid psychics—I was highly gifted in “remote viewing.” Yes, I could do exactly what the term implied: I could “see” from a distance. In my case, I could see the surroundings of those I tuned into. And, I could see them.
I was very in tune with Billy.
Presently, he was sitting in a wide-open living room, looking through a big sliding glass door that overlooked a sweeping back yard. Rising above the treetops, in the distance were some familiar tall buildings. I recognized the skyline. He was, if I wasn’t mistaken, in Santa Monica.
I didn’t know how remote viewing worked. It was weird and freaky, and it only seemed to get freakier by the minute. I got freakier by the minute, too, especially since I was best friends with a vampire.
Yes, with a vampire.
That had a lot to do with my growing psychic skills. Long story.
Anyway, one of the perks of being friends with a vampire—or, rather, allowing one to feed from me, but not kill me, of course—was that my own psychic abilities were amplified with each feeding.
Apparently, just being in close proximity to a vampire also increased my psychic abilities.
So weird.
Happily, Samantha Moon and I did a lot more than just hang out and watch The Vampire Diaries, which I had gotten her hooked on. At least once a week, I allowed her to feed from me. Often, it was right after we’d watched The Vampire Diaries. There was a strange synchronicity to that. More than once, I had caught her making a mental note or two while watching the show. Samantha Moon was still a relatively new vampire, as vampires went. And her “condition,” as she called it, didn’t come with a user’s manual. So, while I was watching the show—because I, and most of the rest of the viewers, had the world’s biggest crush on Damon—Samantha was making mental “how-to” notes about the vampire mystique.
Yes, our lives were that weird.
Mine was only getting weirder.
Apparently, my friendship with Samantha stretched back through the ages, along with another friend of ours named Millicent, who was now deceased...and who was presently haunting my apartment. Millicent, Samantha and I had once formed a “triad” of witches.
Powerful witches.
Except, in this life, Samantha had to go and get herself turned into a vampire, and Millicent had pretty much insisted on ousting Sam from our witchy clique. So now, the witch triad was missing one of us.
Millicent, the strongest of the three of us, had purposely passed on well before us, so that she could guide and coach us from the spirit world. An interesting concept, surely. Now my apartment here in Beverly Hills was haunted by a deceased witch...and an old friend.
So very, very weird.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this until Millicent had appeared in my life...quite literally. That was the nature of this world: we came here with a clean slate, only to be filled with that which moved us, inspired and pushed us forward.
I had never thought that I might be a powerful witch. Or even a not-so-powerful witch. Yes, I had always been intrigued by Wicca and witchcraft, but not inordinately so. Mild curiosity only.
Now, Wicca was my life, as Millicent trained and coached me almost daily...coached me from beyond.
“I’m afraid to ask what else you know about me,” said Billy, after a moment. He was standing now, having moved over to the big glass sliding door. I went over there, too, shifting my focus so that I saw what he saw: a wide expanse of back yard that was surrounded in a lot of dead ivy and high walls. The back yard looked like something mentioned in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland: empty, dark, and dead.