Chapter One
“Hi, this is Allison. Thank you for calling The Psychic Hotline. How can I help you see into the future?”
As I spoke and waited, I reached for my protein drink, which I had just whipped up a few minutes earlier. I found that protein drinks helped me connect with the spirits.
Yes, I’m a telephone psychic. A pretty good one, too. I’m also a personal trainer and hoped to someday start my own gym. A gym that focused on the body and the mind. Lofty dreams, but we all need them.
I set aside my protein drink, cleared my thoughts and glanced at my computer screen. According to my screen, I had a call on the line, a local number, too. I worked from home, plugged into my company’s switchboard, so to speak. I wore headphones with a microphone, and as soon as I clicked on the number blinking on the screen, we were live.
The wonders of technology.
I adjusted my headphones. The previous callers were already out of sight, out of mind. A couple of kids wanted to mess with me. Except, of course, I sensed their names quickly enough to blow their minds. Then again, they were high and it wasn’t very hard to blow their minds.
Yeah, we got a lot of jerks who liked to mess with us. It was part of the business. We also got a lot of people who needed real help. Little did the callers know they were getting a real psychic. A powerful psychic. One whose gifts were enhanced nearly daily, thanks to my unusual source of power. From a friend of mine who just happened to be a vampire.
Now, I focused on connecting my energy to the person on the other end of the line. I heard crackling in the background, followed by faint street noise.
It wasn’t hard to connect with others on a psychic level once I learned how to do it. I practiced like a kid who had just learned how to ride a bike. It was a sort of mental reaching out. However, I knew it went further than just the mental. It was a brief connecting of souls. My soul connecting with the caller’s. Except he didn’t know I was connecting. Yes, I already knew it was a “he” on the other end of the line. And he had a very, very heavy problem weighing on his heart.
“Can you hear me?” asked a hesitant voice.
“Loud and clear,” I said. “How can I help you?”
Through my living room’s sliding glass door, the posh apartment building across the street caught some of the mid-afternoon sun, and glittered magnificently. A seagull swooped in that moment over my balcony, which was unusual because my Beverly Hills apartment was at least ten miles from the ocean.
“I’m not sure,” said the man.
“Then let’s start with your name,” I said.
“My name is Pete.”
I sensed his crackling nerves on the other end of the line. This wasn’t going to be your everyday phone call to a psychic. What it was going to be, I didn’t know, but I sensed a lot of pain on his end. A friggin’ lot.
“Don’t be nervous,” I said, and was not very surprised when the big seagull landed on my balcony wall. The big bird was missing a leg, but did a fine job of balancing on just one. How in the hell a seagull could lose an entire leg was beyond me.
No, not beyond me. Not these days. Just as I speculated on the leg, I saw an image of a young man holding what appeared to be a BB gun. The projectile went through the seagull’s leg, breaking it and nearly severing it. Nearly. The poor guy had spent weeks in agony until he’d finally chewed off his own leg with his beak.
The animal kingdom endures horrors that few of us could fathom, I had once read. I believe it.
“Well, how much information do I give you, and how much information do I, you know, wait to receive?” he asked.
“We can do this any way you want.”
“Well, I would prefer not to say much.”
“To test me?”
“Yes, sorry. But it’s the only way I can know if you are legit.”
“Fair enough,” I said. The truth was, I would do the same. His only ace in the hole was that he hadn’t told me anything yet, other than his name. “Give me a moment.”
I really didn’t need a moment. I was already linked into the guy pretty well. But sometimes, it took a moment to make sense of what I was seeing, feeling and hearing. And yes, I experienced all three. A true rarity for a psychic.
Then again, most psychics weren’t a source of blood for vampires. Especially powerful vampires. And my very good friend might have been just one of the most powerful vampires ever, although she didn’t quite believe it yet.
As I made sense of what I was seeing, as a sort of story unfolded before me, two things happened: the first was that the seagull hopped a little closer on one leg and cocked its head a little to stare at me, and the second was that I gasped.
“You’re looking for the person who murdered your daughter,” I said to my caller.
There was a long pause. A very long pause. Before sound ripped into my ears. And I suddenly realized that what I was hearing on the other end was the sound of the man sobbing.
Chapter Two
I waited for him to regain control of himself.
While I waited, I reached out further, expanding my mind, but I wasn’t God. I didn’t know all, see all. I was also not a medium. I didn’t see the dead or talk to the dead. I did, however, have other gifts, many other gifts. One of them was remote viewing, which happened to be my strength.
In my mind’s eye, I saw a man sitting on a couch in the dark in a living room. The shades were drawn and no lights were on. His phone was pushed up against his ear as he sort of hugged himself in an upright fetal position.
I expanded further out. It was a big home. Nice furniture. A robust leather couch banked one wall. Elegant glass tables reflected light. Framed photos were arranged across the top of a slick, black lacquer piano. I shifted my focus to the photos.
The photos mostly consisted of the man who was now presently huddled on the couch, and also featured an unnaturally blond wife and a naturally blond girl. The girl might have been the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Dozens of pictures lined the piano, and the nearby fireplace mantel, too. I quickly glanced at all of them. The girl sitting at this very piano, the girl in soccer and softball. The girl clowning around with her dad and mom. The girl who ripped his heart with unspeakable agony.
One of the frames said Penny on it.
“Was your daughter named Penny?” I finally asked.
He quit crying immediately, gasped. “Jesus. How did you know?”
“You called The Psychic Hotline, remember?”
In my mind’s eye, I could see the man desperately wiping away his tears and nodding. He sat up straight.