Ciji Ware (36 page)

“What do you mean, ‘objects’?”

He pointed to the floor. “These Persian carpets, for instance, have a thick crust of psychic crud.”

“This is getting a bit too much for me, Dylan. Those rugs are vacuumed every week!”

“Well, somebody’s extrasensory cooties are still clinging to it, sunshine! It’s got the imprint of a couple of very nasty, greedy folks all over it!”

Corlis thought of the grasping Randall McCullough and his partner, Ian Jeffries.

“Okay! Okay! Clear the rug, and anything else you see lurking around here. But let’s just
do
it,” she added apprehensively, “and get it over with.” She was due back at the station in two hours.

Without further conversation Dylan snapped the heads of the daisies off their stems and arranged them in three small dishes around lighted candles. He stuck the incense in several holders and lit them as well. Then he asked Corlis to place the offerings around her house—in the parlor, in her bedroom, and the third dish in her tiny kitchen.

Methodically he removed a gold crest ring from his pinkie finger, his watch, his belt with its metal belt buckle, and the metal coins from his pockets, and put them inside her refrigerator. He pointed to a flat gold necklace Corlis wore and asked her to take it off.

“Metal attracts energy,” he explained when she had returned to the front parlor. “It acts as an electrical conductor, which would be counterproductive.”

“Right,” Corlis agreed doubtfully.

“Let’s both wash our hands in the kitchen sink.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Next Dylan took off his shoes. “I hope you don’t mind. I get a better feel for how well I’m clearing the space of negative energy if I walk around the place barefoot.”

“Be my guest,” she nodded. “My shoes are the first thing I take off when I come home.”

He crossed the parlor and pushed open the two large windows that fronted the ironwork gallery facing Julia Street.

“The energy needs a place to go,” he explained. “It can travel through solid objects, but I like to invite it to dissipate and diffuse into the larger atmosphere outside.”

“Sounds perfectly sensible to me,” Corlis said. The truth was everything that had happened since Dylan arrived seemed surreal.

He then took her hand and led her down the hallway toward the front door. To her surprise, they continued down the stairs and stood beside the closed entrance that faced Julia Street.

Dylan paused, shut his eyes, and indicated with a gesture that she should do the same.

“Try to quiet your mind,” he said softly, and began inhaling and exhaling in deep, even breaths. “Silently petition for help with our cleansing enterprise here today.”

“You mean pray?” she asked, feeling uncomfortable even uttering the word.

“Whatever,” he murmured. After a few minutes matching Dylan breath for breath, she felt an unaccountable sense of calm and serenity settle into her chest. “Now open your eyes and stand sideways, like I am. Hold your hand nearest the front door a few inches away from it… like this.”

Corlis did as she was instructed.

“Follow me and begin to stroke the energy field of this door.”

“Do
what
?”

“Every solid object has an energy field, remember?” Dylan reminded her. “Pretend you’re petting your cat, only not touching him. Stroke the area near the wall, and mentally commit your intention to connect spiritually with your home for the purpose of purifying your living space of old, negative energy generated by past traumas that took place here. Be
receptive
,
Corlis. Listen to what the house has to say to you.”

“I feel kind of silly,” Corlis dared to whisper.

“Don’t waste your energy feeling silly,” he gently reprimanded. “Use it instead to feel the magnetic pulsations left over from the people who lived here before you did.”

Chastened, Corlis did as she was told. Amazingly her palms and fingertips began to tingle slightly, and she sensed a force field flowing around her hand. She followed behind Dylan as he moved counterclockwise along the walls on the ground floor. The sensations she was encountering reminded her of everything from the feel of fine cobwebs to an impression that she was handling thick, sticky molasses—just as Dylan had described earlier.

“Some places feel hot, some cool,” she marveled.

“And some sensations will be pleasant, others, not so pleasant,” Dylan commented softly. “You may even feel dull aches in your bones or a zippy, tingling feeling in your palms.”

Abruptly he began to shake his hands briskly.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Ridding myself of the energy I’m picking up as I travel around the perimeter of the lower floor. This place is loaded with it.”

As an experiment, she sharply gave both hands several hard flicks of the wrist and was gratified to feel the weird sensations course through her fingers and out the tips.

When Dylan arrived at a corner of the room, he raised his hands slightly above his head and clapped downward to the level of his waist, increasing the intensity of his clapping as he got closer to the floor.

“What
are
you doing?” she demanded in a low voice.

“Clapping out the bad energy sticking to the nooks and crannies,” he explained matter-of-factly, as if his actions were the most normal in the world. As they trudged upstairs to the second-story apartment, Dylan commented, “The living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen are the most important places for us to work on clearing out bad stuff. And don’t let me forget the closets and cupboards.”

Corlis followed in Dylan’s wake around the entire apartment, making a good-faith effort to suspend her normal critical faculties and just go with the program as he was urging. To Corlis’s astonishment, she realized that all the while Cagney had been following them from room to room.

When the three of them entered her bedroom, Dylan moved toward the wall behind the huge four-poster and began to clap in sharp, even motions. For no reason she could fathom, a flood of emotion suddenly began to well up in her chest. The next thing she knew, tears were streaming down her cheeks. Worse yet, she felt wracking sobs filling her throat. She saw in her mind’s eye a picture of King’s handsome face—only it
wasn’t
King’s at all. It was André Duvallon with blood streaming down his cheeks.

“Breathe! Breathe in and out…
big
breaths!” Dylan commanded, watching her closely. “That’s a girl… Let it go… Let the tears come if they want to… It’ll help the energy move on out… It will pass, I promise you.”

“I—f-feel so s-stupid!” Corlis wailed. “I’m not feeling s-sad for myself… It’s for… it’s like—”

“Letting go? Something passing through?”

“Yeah… s-sort of,” she stuttered. “It’s as if s-something sad that happened here was leaving… dissipating or something. I dunno. This is pretty crazy, Dylan,” she gulped, flashing him a watery smile while reaching for a tissue from her bedside table.

“No… it’s good,” he said quietly. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a warm squeeze. “Take another deep breath. How are you feeling now?”

Corlis looked around her bedroom and suddenly felt a strange lightness come over her. Then she grinned. “It feels good in here!”

“All clear?” Dylan asked, beaming beatifically.

“All clear!”

Corlis dutifully threw salt into the corners of every room as instructed and followed Dylan throughout the apartment with a lighted sage-and-rosemary bundle laced with juniper berries in her hand. As its pungent, medicinal aroma filled the atmosphere, she remarked in a low voice, “It smells like someone’s getting ready to cook a turkey!”

“You mean… like Thanksgiving?” he said pointedly.

“Are you reminding me to show a little gratitude?” she replied meekly. “For being able to purify this place?”

“Might be a good idea, oh ye of little faith.”

On their third round of the building, Dylan brought a small bell out of his briefcase. On the ground floor he rang the bell once and paused to listen to its pure, clear tone. Then he walked the perimeter of the downstairs foyer, ringing the bell at intervals.

“Visualize all the spaces filling with shimmering light and sound,” he commanded with quiet intensity as he continued on his rounds. “This will create a protective shield of pure, vibrant light.” Then Dylan drew a horizontal figure eight in the air with the bell. “It’s the symbol of eternity,” he declared with absolute conviction. “It tells the spiritual energy to keep going round and round this protective ring we’ve constructed.” He turned suddenly and rang the bell over her head, as if to enclose her in its pure, tinkling sound.

“What are you doing?” she protested mildly.

“I’ve just given you a personal shield, dear Corlis,” he said. “If you ever feel you are in a dangerous situation, just remember that you can create your own sacred space around you by imagining that I am ringing this bell in a circle to trace your aura.”

And instead of feeling foolish or cynical, Corlis glanced around her front parlor, filled with gratitude for the clear shafts of daylight slanting through the floor-to-ceiling windows. A strange humility seized her, and she gave thanks for the extraordinary, lanky young man with the golden eyes who was presently neatly packing his odd assortment of space-clearing implements back into his briefcase.

“And now, Ms. WJAZ,” Dylan Fouché announced cheerfully, “you may buy me lunch. An expensive one. At Antoine’s.”

She called into the station, explaining that the traffic downtown and in the French Quarter was a bear and she’d be an hour late.

***

In the days that followed Dylan Fouché’s “psychic cleansing” of Corlis’s apartment on Julia Street, a gradual sense of serenity enveloped her home environment. With it came the conviction that she could now forget about the strange visions she’d been having and simply get on with her normal existence as a feet-on-the-ground reporter.

High on her list of priorities was to follow up on something King’s assistant, Chris Calvert, had mentioned to her recently. She wanted to find out if Grover Jeffries was using strategic campaign contributions “donated” to members of the New Orleans City Council to help smooth the way toward downgrading the zoning of the 600 block in the historic district along Canal Street. Such freewheeling largesse was also bound to help Jeffries’s cause with the politically appointed City Planning Commission, a body that would be required to give its permission to demolish the Greek Revival structures in order to make way for the proposed hotel.

King Duvallon was obviously doing research along the same lines.

“Hey, Ace… how ya doin’?” he asked a few days later over the telephone. It was five thirty and Corlis had returned to her office cubicle after broadcasting a story about the metropolitan water district’s plans for new pumping stations. “You looked real nice on TV tonight.”

“You watched?” she asked, pleased.

“Sure did,” he replied. “Now listen, sugar… want to go to a masquerade ball with me on Saturday? It’ll be a real New Orleans experience.”

Surprised and secretly delighted, she smiled into the phone receiver. “A costume ball? Do they still have those things?” Then she frowned. How would it look to be seen at a social function with a date who also figured in the ongoing public controversy she was covering for WJAZ?

“Don’t worry… It’s absolutely,
positively
business,” he said, as if reading her mind. “It provides a chance for us both to do a little sleuthing—you for your cause, me for mine.”

“How’s that?”

“Grover Jeffries’s wife is giving a fancy-dress extravaganza at their mansion to benefit the symphony association. It’d give us a golden opportunity to nose around a bit.”

“Can we wear masks the whole time so no one will know who we are or that we’re there together?”

“That’s part of my plan,” he assured her. “In fact, you’re my ticket
in
.
Grover and Bonita Jeffries love publicity. I’m sure WJAZ is on the invitation list. Get yourself assigned to cover the party, and I’ll go as part of your crew.”

“What—specifically—are you looking for?” she asked warily.

“The same thing I expect you are.” He sounded amused. “Information about how Grover intends to get the Landmark Commission, the Planning Commission, and the City Council to see things
his
way and vote to change the historic zoning and okay demolition of the Selwyn buildings. I understand he has a home office…”

“And you want to rifle through his files to see who he’s giving campaign contributions to, right?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be exactly breaking and entering. Not like that time at
Ms. UCLA
—”

“Pretty close to it, Professor.”

“Who knows what we might pick up on if we just have a little look-see?” King suggested, ignoring her previous remark. “You’re exactly the person I want to have with me while I poke around. Besides, it might help you too. Advance the story, and all that. Are you game?”