Unless, of course, one counted seeing a full-blown ghost in my living room medium-ship. Which I didn’t. I could almost hear Millicent’s words now: Not a ghost, dear. Spirit. There is a difference.
I said to Conn now, “Well, I wasn’t going to lie to you or waste your money.”
“But you could have,” he said. “You could have told me anything, and I probably would have believed you.”
I heard it in his voice...he was still looking for answers, or some type of validation that his mother was okay. Poor guy.
I said, “Well, that would have been wrong, and I’m not like that.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw Conn cross his arms over his chest, still holding his cell phone to his ear. He was wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses. Flecks of gray at his temples. He was tan and fairly toned. Okay, a lot toned. I already knew that, of course...but...it certainly looked like he’d been hitting the gym a little harder these days.
“And that was when it continued,” said Conn.
“When what continued?” I asked.
“My, ah, interest in you.”
“Lucky me,” I said, although I smiled.
He smiled, too, and we spent a few minutes smiling at each other on the phone, except, of course, he didn’t know I was smiling, and he didn’t know I was watching him smile. As we sat there, with him absorbing the sun and working on his tan, and with me contemplating my morning cigarette, I had another loving sensation spill over me, this time followed by some words. I saw them, in fact, on a polished black tombstone: “Our Loving Rose.”
Almost instantly, my heart picked up a beat or two. I sat forward, adjusting my headset, and nearly knocking my laptop off my lap. “Does the name Rose mean anything to you, Conn?”
The image of Conn had been replaced by the tombstone, but I sensed very strongly that Conn had sat up himself. “Rose is my mother’s name. How did you know that?”
“Does...does her tombstone say ‘Our Loving Rose’?”
There was a long pause. “How...How did you know that, Allison?”
“I just saw it.”
I also saw him remove his sunglasses and bury his face in his hands. As he wept, I felt a wave of unconditional love, and I knew what it was and who it was for.
“Your mother, I think, is sending me love for you. A lot of love. More love than I’ve ever felt in all my life.”
I had to stop because now the tears were coming and I couldn’t speak, and Conn and I spent the next few minutes weeping silently over the phone.
Chapter Twenty
It was late, and I’d been drinking.
I was sitting in the Spirit Chair with the police report summary, which I’d picked up earlier and had read a half-dozen times. There was something in there. Something that the police had either failed to see or had missed completely.
I let my subconscious work on that. Or my Higher Self, or whatever I wanted to call it. Some things couldn’t be rushed. Some things were presented to us with perfect timing and it was our job to wait patiently, yet expectantly.
And I was very, very expectant that I would find an answer hidden within this summary.
Mostly, as I sat in the Spirit Chair, I was troubled. Troubled in a good way, perhaps. I was thinking about my experience with Conn. I’d never before shown signs of medium-ship and this was new to me.
Also, her love for him had been overwhelmingly pure and beautiful, and made me, on some level, wish I had a child of my own, to love so completely.
Of course, I needed a man for that, and I hadn’t felt like dating since my last two disasters. And by disasters, I meant my last two relationships had ended horribly. Both men had been murdered.
One had been killed by a silver-tipped arrow. And my last boyfriend, a man I had been engaged to and still loved and was still having problems moving past, had been killed by what is known as a dim-mak, or in martial arts speak, a death-blow.
Crazy stuff, I know. But the pain was real. For both men. Well, one man and one vampire. Yes, my relationship with Victor had been pleasure-based, and we both sort of used each other, too, but I’d grown close to him quickly. Hell, instantly. And I missed him like crazy.
Caesar Marquez, my brave and sexy boxer, had been a different story. We had so much in common, and I had been certain he and I would grow old together, although I was always—always—nervous about boxing. Turned out, I had good reason to be. He and I had discussed kids, too. Building a family together, a life together.
Thinking of him now, especially after a few glasses of wine, wasn’t a smart thing to do. The booze was liable to reduce me to tears for many hours, and leave me curled in the fetal position at the foot of my bed, or on the phone with Samantha, sobbing like a teenager while she made sympathetic noises. Samantha was a good friend, although it had taken her a while to come around. Same with me, I guessed. I didn’t make friends easily, but when I did, well, I bonded with them forever.
So, I forced myself to think of something else...and ended up thinking of someone else.
Conn.
What was his deal? Who was he? I had resisted doing too much research on the man. Yes, I had made sure he wasn’t a creep, but beyond that, I didn’t know much about him, and I didn’t want to know much about him. And if I was honest with myself, I would admit to the reason why: because I wanted him to tell me himself.
Perhaps over wine.
I sighed and shook my head and wiped the tears that had pooled in that small space between my upper cheekbone and lower eyelid.
Too soon, I thought. The pain of losing Caesar was still too raw. I needed more healing. A lot more healing. And with that thought, I was reminded about Conn’s mother coming through.
Could I someday channel Caesar? I didn’t know, but I suspected that seeing him, and feeling his love for me, knowing he was okay and still watching over me, my protector, might be enough for me to move on.
Might.
With a deep sigh, I pushed past the pain and opened the book in my lap. The book on Wicca, of course. Since, according to Millicent, I’d been a witch down through the ages.
I shook my head at the thought and wondered if I’d ever been burned at the stake. On second thought, I didn’t want to know.
So, I went through the basic exercises again, practicing my visualization, practicing feeling the energy in various objects around me, including the array of crystals lined on my bookshelf behind me. I discovered I received an almost electric tingle—very similar to the feeling when Millicent appeared—when I held my hand over the chunk of amethyst.
I reveled in the feeling for a few minutes then went on to the other crystals. Each seemed to have a signature, a feeling, a buzzing, but none like the amethyst. According to the instruction book, I was to use whatever stone resonated the most with me for various spells and ceremonies. Well, then, amethyst it was!