Bad Vibrations: Book 1 of the Sedona Files

T
his is a work of fiction
. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BAD VIBRATIONS

Copyright © 2011 by Christine Pope

Published by Dark Valentine Press

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I
f it hadn’t been
for his air of extreme agitation, I could have ordered my first client of the day from Central Casting. Perfectly tousled hair, abnormally white teeth, clothing meant to look loose and casual but which he probably overpaid for at Fred Segal or any number of the high-priced shops along Melrose Avenue.

Alex Hathaway. He’d called for an appointment the day before and had seemed quite frustrated that I hadn’t been able to see him sooner than this. But I couldn’t see more than four or five clients a day, and it was only because Olivia D’Ambrosio had canceled that I’d been able to squeeze him in at all. Too many clients, and I’d be so overloaded I wouldn’t be able to read the information off their driver’s licenses, let alone interpret their auras or a tarot layout.

Another West Hollywood pretty boy
, I thought automatically, then gave myself a mental shake. Of all people, I shouldn’t be prejudging anyone else.

I let my hand rest lightly on the tarot deck. I never knew when I met with a client what sort of reading would speak to me. I didn’t bother with a crystal ball—they’d always been mostly for show, as far as I was concerned—but I found the tarot useful…some days. At other times I might as well be consulting a poker deck for advice.

“What seems to be troubling you?” I asked, and waited for the telltale tingle from the deck to let me know it was receptive to my client’s vibrations. Nothing. Just a stack of coated cardboard. With a sigh, I folded my hands on the tabletop and hoped Otto at least would be on the line for this one. I hated flying solo, as my own sixth sense was about as reliable as my spirit guide.

Alex shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. At what, I wasn’t quite sure, since my small office didn’t even have a waiting area. It was simply a cramped little space I’d tried to make more welcoming by painting the walls a serene sage color and lining the tops of my bookcases with a variety of greenery in painted ceramic pots. The plants seemed to thrive in the fluorescent light, even though I hated it. I’d always meant to replace the office-standard fixtures with something a little more friendly but somehow had never gotten around to it.

“It’s my girlfriend,” Alex said, after one last look at the door.

That was a little surprising. Considering his outward perfection and the area where my office was located, I’d just sort of assumed he must be gay.

Sooner or later I’d get past the assumption stage. I hoped.

“What about your girlfriend?” I asked, thinking,
All right, Otto…any time you want to drop in would be fine by me….

Another one of those shifty looks. “No one can hear us in here, right?”

“Of course not,” I replied, in soothing tones. I wondered whether he’d been smoking weed. True, the twitchiness indicated something a little stronger than marijuana, but I knew people sometimes got paranoid when coming down off a pot high. I couldn’t comment from personal experience—I’d had enough mind-expanding experiences in my life without messing around with drugs.

I went on, “We’re the only ones here, and I always schedule my clients at least fifteen minutes apart so no one can see you coming or going.”

My words didn’t appear to have reassured him. “But they could still be listening.”

The DSM-IV strongly advised against labeling anyone as crazy, but either he was exhibiting sure signs of paranoia, or at the very least had been watching way too many spy movies. “I’d know if someone were spying on me,” I said. “Trust me.”

That was only half a lie. Sometimes I really could sense when other consciousnesses were trying to impinge on my space. Not always, of course—like the rest of my powers, that extra sense wasn’t one hundred-percent reliable. But even eighty percent was pretty good odds, and that tended to be the percentage of times I turned out to be right.

Right then the only consciousness I wanted focusing on my office was Otto’s, and he remained conspicuously absent. Sometime soon we’d have to have a good talk. After all, what good’s a spirit guide who’s never around when you need him?

Alex stared at me through long-lashed baby-blue eyes that were narrowed with suspicion. But after a few more seconds, he gave a slight lift of the shoulders that seemed to indicate he’d decided to confide in me after all. “I think my girlfriend is possessed by an alien.”

Oh, great. It was times like these that I really wished I’d gone into something a little less wacky, like selling insurance or used cars. I was pretty sure most people in those fields didn’t have to deal with clients who claimed their family members were possessed, or that their dead relatives had come back and taken up residence in the cookie jar, or any of the other questionable tales I’d heard over the years.

Still, rolling my eyes or letting out an exasperated groan wasn’t exactly the professional way to handle this. Besides, Alex was obviously upset by something, so I owed it to him to at least say something comforting.

“Actually, there really isn’t anything such as possession—not the way books and movies show it,” I told him. “Spirits do speak through some people, but their intention is always benign. And ghosts can’t possess people.”

“I’m not talking about ghosts,” he said stubbornly. “I’m talking about aliens.”

This time I didn’t bother to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “As in little green men from Mars?”

“They’re not from Mars—and they’re not green. I mean, I don’t think they are. I’ve never seen one in its true form.”

“But you think one has taken over your girlfriend.”

“Yeah.” He rocked back in his chair and then hunched forward, fixing me with an intense stare. “Don’t you think I know it sounds crazy? Why do you think I’ve come to someone like you instead of the cops or something?”

“Someone like me,” I repeated. I knew exactly what he meant, but that didn’t mean I had to like the sound of it.

He waved a hand. “Well, you know—you have to believe all sorts of stuff to do what you do…don’t you?”

Like six impossible things before breakfast?
I figured it was best for me to keep that thought to myself, though. I took a calming breath, drawing in the air through my nose the way I’d been taught, and said, “I consider myself a professional, Mr. Hathaway. Just because I deal in things that not everyone can believe in or can tap into doesn’t make them any less important to me. I assure you, I only believe in things I’ve experienced myself. It’s just that my experiences are a little different from those who don’t have psychic abilities.”

“Hmm.”

I could tell Alex was both angry and disappointed. I hated it when a client went away from a session feeling he hadn’t learned anything or gained new insight, so I knew I had to keep trying, even though I really didn’t know exactly how I could help him. “What led you to believe your girlfriend was possessed? Has her behavior changed?”

“Yeah—I suppose.”

“How?”

“She’s just sort of distant, I guess.”

Oh, well, that’s an indicator of alien possession, no doubt about it
, I thought wryly, but again I stepped on my tongue and assumed what I hoped was an expression of concerned interest. “Anything else?”

“She started reading
Variety
.”

I suppressed the urge to burst into laughter. If reading
Variety
was a sign that space aliens had taken over your body, then about two-thirds of Los Angeles had to be possessed. “I take it that’s not something she was in the habit of doing?” I inquired. Somehow I managed to maintain a neutral tone.

“No. I mean, she wants to be an actress, but I don’t remember her ever reading much of anything before. Now she’s got
Variety
all over the place, the
Hollywood Reporter
—a few others I can’t remember now.” He clenched his hands on top of his knees and added, “She never used to read anything except some online gossip sites. And she keeps making comments about how ‘I wouldn’t understand’ if I try to ask her questions about the stuff she’s reading. That’s rich, since she used to miss at least four out of five of those ‘Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?’ questions.”

While this all did sound a little unusual, it wouldn’t be the first time someone woke up and decided they needed to be more proactive about their career. I couldn’t exactly figure out how Alex had made the jump from a simple attempt on his girlfriend’s part to improve her marketability to concluding the brain in question had been possessed by aliens. Maybe that was easier to handle psychologically than realizing your significant other was about to leave you behind in the dust.

“When did you first notice the change in her behavior?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how this information was going to help me, but I thought I might as well try to go about this in an orderly fashion.

“Right after she got back from a trip to the tanning salon,” Alex replied promptly.

That came from so far out in left field I could feel my eyes widen for a second before I forced a noncommittal expression on my face. “Excuse me?”

“She went to one of those places where they spray them on. She claimed being pale made her look flabby.” He scowled and added, “I told her those things were stupid and that they just made people look orange, but she didn’t want to listen to me. She said it looked perfectly natural and I didn’t know what I was talking about, and she wasn’t going to lie out in the sun and get wrinkly. Like she needs to worry about that.”

Maybe not now
, I reflected,
but in fifteen years….
Although my mother was Greek, I hadn’t inherited her olive skin, unfortunately. No, I got my complexion from my Irish father, and so I tended to flash-fry the second I stepped outside. Not exactly the best survival trait for living in Southern California. I cleared my throat, “Actually, that’s just being smart. Sun damage is cumulative.”

He made another off-hand gesture. “Whatever. So off she goes, and she comes back all orange—and I tell her so, and she just give me this flat stare and tells me I need to get my eyes looked at. She had a stack of papers and magazines with her, and she sat down and started to read them and barely talked to me for the next two hours. And she’s been like that ever since.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About a week.” He frowned. “It’s getting pretty old, Ms. O’Brien. ’Cause not only is she barely talking to me, but she’s not—I mean, we haven’t—”

From the flush I saw under his tan—natural, I assumed, since he was definitely brownish and not orange—I guessed Alex was trying to say he and his girlfriend hadn’t been intimate. Well, I supposed if an alien had taken over a human’s body but wasn’t really into the more down and dirty aspects of being an earthling, it might try to avoid the horizontal mambo for as long as possible.

I didn’t really know what to say next. Obviously something was going on between him and his girlfriend, but it sounded like the natural growing apart of a relationship, not anything extraterrestrial. I could tell him that, of course, even though I had an idea it probably wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Too bad I couldn’t talk to the girlfriend as well, but I figured my chances of getting her in to talk to me were approximately the same as my getting a hot date that night. In other words, about zero.

If Otto had decided to drop in on this cozy little session, maybe I would have been able to come up with something a bit more useful. I wasn’t getting much from Alex, except the frustration and anger and worry that seemed to pour off him in waves. Not that that helped me much—I’d gleaned just as much from talking to him. But I wasn’t getting any answers from the astral plane, and my tarot deck had dummied up on me as well. I hated this feeling—it rarely happened, but on the few occasions when it did, I was always left feeling impotent and a little foolish after a session, as if I weren’t any better than the sham psychics who gathered all their tells from people’s behavior and speech patterns and who didn’t have any more psychic ability than a footstool.

“Well,” I said after a pause, knowing what I needed to say and hating to have to say it, “I’m very sorry, Alex, but I’m not getting any clear vibrations from you regarding this situation. My advice would be for you to talk things over with your girlfriend.” I added, as I saw his jaw clench, “Of course there’s no fee for this reading.”

“That’s it?” he demanded. “This is bullshit!”

It wasn’t the first time a client had sworn at me, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “No, it would have been bullshit for me to feed you an easy line and take your money. I’m sorry, but sometimes even I draw a blank. This just happens to be one of those times.”

“So what am I supposed to do now?”

“I’m not a relationship counselor—I just relay what the spirit world tells me.” This wasn’t the strictest truth; I actually did have certification in marriage and family counseling, although once I’d gone to work as a psychic full-time I’d quietly put away my diplomas and certificates. For whatever reason, people didn’t seem to like a psychic who was also a psychologist—it made them nervous, maybe because they didn’t know exactly how to regard me.

“You think I’m nuts.”

Well, that wasn’t how I would have put it, although I was starting to get the distinct impression that Alex Hathaway was just a wee bit unbalanced. It would have taken a few more sessions to get to the bottom of his current fixation, of course, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t come to me for psychological counseling—he’d just wanted outside confirmation that his girlfriend wasn’t, strictly speaking, his girlfriend anymore, and that I wasn’t prepared to do.

I said, “Of course I don’t, Alex. I believe something has gone wrong between you and your girlfriend—it’s just that I don’t feel confident enough to offer you any corroborating evidence.”

“Great,” he said, looking as gloomy as someone as sunnily Southern Californian in appearance could. “Well…thanks for not charging me, I guess.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said. “I would be a fraud if I took your money when I couldn’t even give you a true reading.” I stood then, hoping he’d get the hint that the session was over.