“My head hurts.”
“I imagine it does.”
“But I didn’t know you in this life,” I said. “I didn’t know you or your son, or your granddaughter.” A granddaughter, I knew, who had been murdered.
“Not physically, no.”
“Which is why you are coming to me now...like this.”
“One of the reasons,” she said.
“And what’s the other reason?”
“I can instruct you better from the spirit world.”
“Instruct me in what?”
She smiled and looked down at the table. At the Wicca instructional manual that was still sitting there, placed there by her, in fact.
“In witchcraft?” I asked.
“In Earth-based magic, dear. I prefer to call it Earth magic.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I’m here to remind you, Allison, of what you really are.”
“And what am I?”
“You are, of course, a witch.”
Chapter Fifteen
I needed wine. Badly.
So, despite Millicent’s earlier admonition—and, last I checked, wasn’t she a friggin’ ghost?—I got up and poured myself a healthy dose of wine. This was, of course, just far too much for me to deal with without at least a little alcohol. Okay, maybe a lot. Wine calmed me. I loved having it in my hand. I found it comforting. Also, I loved the taste of it.
When I sat back down, Millicent, amazingly, looked different. Younger.
She answered my unspoken question for me. “I wasn’t always an old woman, you see.”
“Suit yourself.” I drank deeply from the wine. I sensed Millicent’s disapproval. I ignored her disapproval.
“Are you comfortable, dear?” she asked.
“I am,” I said, and held up the wine. “Now that I have this.”
“I do not understand the need for inebriation.”
“Then you don’t understand me.”
“I know you very well, dear. And never before have you been so interested in alcohol.”
I held up the wineglass again. “Welcome to the new me.”
“Very well,” she said. “I need to tell you that I’m here for another reason, too.”
“Fire away.”
She looked down at her mostly solid hands. I could have been wrong, but she seemed to be growing younger and younger with each sip of wine. Mid-fifties now, I’d say.
She said, “I’m here to also help my son.”
“Peter?”
“Yes. He’s stuck on this tragedy, unable to move on. Unable to deal with the loss of his daughter. He needs answers. He needs help.”
I thought about her words, drumming my longish nails against the wineglass. The clicking was peculiarly loud in my little apartment. Something wasn’t sitting right with me here, something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“That’s the wine, dear,” said Millicent. “Clouds your thinking.”
“Oh, put a cork in it,” I said, and laughed at my own pun.
“What’s troubling you, dear, is that a part of you thinks that, in spirit, I have all the answers.”
I snapped my fingers and pointed at her, nearly spilling my wine in the process. “That’s it. You are in spirit. You can appear in my home, his home, and God knows where else. For all I know, you can speak directly to Penny herself and ask who the killer was.” I was on a roll. “Hell, you could probably speak to God himself. Why do you need me to provide any answers?”
“I must remain at a distance, dear.”
“Even so, now a killer walks the streets. A killer you might very well know the identity of?” It might be the wine talking—yes, I’d now drunk about half of the glass—but the idea of Millicent knowing full well who the killer was and keeping this information from her son, who was clearly struggling with his daughter’s murder, was appalling to me.
“Do not be too appalled, dear. It is the nature of the physical world you live in.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
“It means, that not all answers to all problems are given to you. Or to my son. In the mortal life, you must seek answers.”
“But you are here, trying to help him through me.”
“I am still his mother, and he is my troubled son.”
“Who decides these things?” I asked. I stood deftly, managing not to spill my drink, which was getting easier and easier to do as the contents drew lower to the bottom. “I mean, who decides that you can’t help your son? Or, for that matter, why don’t spirits help all of us know more? Surely, one of you up there knows where Jimmy Hoffa was buried, or who really shot Kennedy, or who’s responsible for every unsolved murder case out there. What gives? Why the secrecy? Why are we left to struggle and writhe and stumble in the dark?”
“You assume I have all the answers, dear.”
“I assume you have more answers than me since, well, you’re dead or in spirit or whatever the hell you call it. I also assume that you’re sticking to some sort of spiritual rule book. I want to know who makes these rules and why?”
I had somehow ended up back in the kitchen and back to the wine bottle, which had mysteriously ended up in my hands. Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a mystery. I filled the glass and returned.
She waited for me before speaking again. “We help more than you know, dear. But, yes, we are limited in our help.”
“Limited by whom? Or is it who? Whatever. Who stops you? And why would they stop you from helping someone?”
“There’s helping, dear. And then there’s helping too much. All help first goes through that soul’s higher self, and then through the spirit guides. The higher self and spirit guides decide what is best for the incarnate soul.”
I’d heard about higher selves and spirit guides and incarnates and discarnates and reincarnation. But hearing it from a spirit was something else entirely. It made things real.
“And the person living has no say in it?” I asked.
“The person living has the final say, dear.”
“So, why are you here now?” I asked. “Are you sort of circumventing the rules?”
“I’m using whatever leverage I can to help my son.”
I thought about that, watching the spirit standing before me. She didn’t look much like a spirit now. She looked three-dimensional. She had substance and depth and definition. The more she stood in my room, the more she came to life, so to speak. Although she did continue to rise and fall ever so slightly. Most interesting, she continued to grow younger and younger before my very eyes. If I had to guess, she was now in her early forties. She was now a beautiful, dark-haired woman.