Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (32 page)

"Well, it sure as hell isn't growing
very strong around me," he said. "I can't find anybody to
listen
." He knew in his heart it was
because he didn't know how to manage a career even one he didn't
get paid for. He needed help and could certainly understand where
it would be a conflict of interest for her to help him any more
than she was already.

She, on the other hand, knew in what
passed for
her
heart that a
major part of his problem was that she had switched his fairy dust
for a bag of powdered fool's gold, and he was no more magical or
charming than he really was. That suited her purposes down the
line.

"Well," she said brightly, "why don't you
return to work with the others? I'm sure they'd be delighted to see
you again."

"Can't do it," he said. "I'll make my own
way. None of them are gonna do any more for the music than me,
darlin', and you can bet your little ol' pitchfork on that."

"I'm real pleased to hear it," she said
sweetly. "But in the event that things don't work out quite as you
planned, you know, sugar, there is somethin' you could do that
would help more than everything the others are doing," she said.
"That is, if you can't get this music thing goin' down here, of
course."

"I'll do it," he said.

"I only meant if you couldn't."

"Well, what is it?"

"I was thinking that if you couldn't do it
the regular way, help bring the music and the magic back, that you
might be able to do more by joinin' up with me and—er—helpin'
me."

"I thought I was already helping you."

"Well, like you pointed out, despite your
best efforts you aren't having a lot of success, are you? And I
just thought, if you got too desperate, I mean I wanted you to know
that you could still—well, count for something, in the end."

"End?" he asked.

"You aren't exactly young anymore, sweetie.
And unless I miss my guess, you're the type who would like to go
out with some sort of grand finale. Am I right?"

"Possibly. If it was a good cause."

"The very one we've been discussin',
actually."

"What would I need to do, if I should feel
like it, that is?"

"I'm in pretty good graces with the bosses
now, and they don't seem to need my services as a Debauchery Devil
anymore for obvious reasons. I believe I can strike a deal with
them for my freedom and the reinstatement of my kingdom right here.
There are already former subjects scattered throughout Canada,
among other places. I'm sure they've been wondering where I am. I
only need one teeny little itsy bitsy thing to close the deal."

"And that's where I come in?"

"Well, yes."

"As what?"

"A sacrifice, actually. I need you to
replace Tarn Lin as my tithe to hell. Still have to pay the
mortgage, you know."

* * *

Juli only had to walk past the first turnoff
when a woman picked her up. "Where you staying?" she asked.

"I'm a houseguest of Lucien Santos," Juli
said.

"Lucky you," the woman said. She looked to
be in her early fifties, her hair reddish blond rather than gray,
her clothing neat and functional, a wool skirt, pale blue silk
blouse, and a white cardigan sweater. Her shoes were fiats. "He
travels all over the country, you know, giving lectures. We tried
to get him to give one at the library, and he promises he will, but
he's always just so busy. Then too, I'm sure he must be as stricken
as the rest of us over Marley Bethune's disappearance."

"Who's Marley Bethune?"

"Oh, she was one of his staunchest
supporters, as well as the library's and the arts committee's."

"Maybe she just got to where she didn't like
groups," Juli said, thinking of Willie. "It can happen."

"Oh, no, honey, she
loved
her life. Her late husband had
left her
well
fixed, and she
really enjoyed life. In fact, I s'pect that's partly why she
enjoyed Lucien Santos so much—he was the only person as worldly as
she was. Oh, I do hope she hasn't fallen prey to the Black
Widower."

"What's that?" Juli asked.

"Why, girl, where have you been anyhow?
Haven't you read the news? All over this part of the country, widow
women have turned up missing—they've only found a few of the
bodies, and the police think the women were all killed by the same
person. The press has dubbed him—or her—the Black Widower."

"They should ask Lucien to help them," Juli
said. "He's a super medium, really. He helped me keep in contact
with my husband George until I left the country. I'm sure he could
locate these troubled spirits for the police and help them learn
who's responsible. Where is your library anyway? I've been wanting
to look up some stuff on local history."

"Oh, it's just down the street from Lucien's
office. You can't miss it. Say, I notice you're carrying a musical
instrument. I don't suppose you'd be interested in playing for our
story hour sometime, would you? It's been years since anyone did
that, but we used to have music all the time."

"I'd
love
to," Juli said. "When?"

"Why don't I drop you at Lucien's, and you
can let him know you'll be at the library with me. We can talk it
over then."

* * *

Ute handed out the plates and sat down to
eat with the women.

"You make it sound as if you don't approve
of Juli's association with Santos," Heather-Jon said.

"No, ma'am, I don't. Not to use too strong a
term but that low-down son-of-a-mother-dog was an evil wizard."

"Now, now. Witchcraft is an accepted
religion in these enlightened days," Shayla told him.

"I don't mean he was a Wiccan, ma'am, or any
other kind of nature-loving religion. Man was an out-and-out minion
of the board of directors of the devil company, and I'd stake a
claim he was half devil himself and a major stockholder to boot. It
just shows you what a powerful hoodoo artist he was when you think
that in a town the size of Joplin, with moral turpitude makin' a
comeback, here was a single man engaged in a very—shall we
say—interestin' occupation, where he gave intimate advice to large
groups of adorin' women and told normal hardworkin' people what to
do with their lives and how to contact the dead, and nobody in town
had a bad word for him, much less wild speculation or out-and-out
gossip.

* * *

When Lucien opened the door of his shop and
Juli saw all the nicely dressed people sitting around in a circle,
she wished she had washed her clothes before coming to town. She
was pretty grubby looking, though thanks to the bath she'd had
before being haunted, she didn't stink.

Reflective crystals dangling at various
lengths from the tops of the windows sent rainbows flying around
the room, flashing incongruously across the sorrowful and pained
faces of the people in the circle.

Julianne sank down into her lotus position
on the hooked rug carpet protecting Lucien's hardwood floors.

Across from her a woman was crying
into a Kleenex, a little dash of blue, pink, and green glinting off
tear-wet fingers. "I am so
angry
at that bastard."

And another woman, a timid-looking
body whose shoeless feet were still neatly encased in nylons, said,
"Now, Charla, he was your
father
."

"I'd like to continue this in a moment,
Charla, Wilma, but right now I want you all to meet a new member of
our group—this is Julianna Martin."

"Hi," said Charla with barely a pause
for breath before continuing. "You don't understand at all, Wilma.
The man wasn't right in the head. He beat my mother and he raped my
brothers and me, and then he taught my brothers to beat up on
mother
and
me, and when I was
sixteen I had a baby by one of them—I'm not sure if it was Daddy's
or one of my brothers'—that I gave up for adoption. I just hope it
isn't feeble-minded. It was after that I quit school
and—"

"And stole a bus and moved to Lawton,
Oklahoma, where you met Tom and he was just like your daddy and
then you met Jim and he brought you back here and he was as bad as
any of them and now you're looking to head on out again. What
good's that going to do?"

Julianne shifted uncomfortably. She didn't
like the way Wilma was going after poor Charla, though the remarks
she was making might have been appropriate if they'd come from a
therapist instead, which Lucien was supposed to be.

He took Charla's sudden tight-lipped silence
for an opportunity to speak. "Now, then, what we need to do here is
insert our knowledge of our past lives into this situation to
search for patterns and solutions."

"Well, I am sick to death of hearin'
about
her
past life," Wilma
said. The others murmured and hushed and now-nowed, but Wilma was
defiant. "She just
does
the
same stupid things over and over again. She says how much she hates
her daddy, but she goes out and marries men just like him. And I'd
like to know what good she thinks moving to Topeka, Kansas, is
going to do if she just takes her same crappy old taste along with
her."

"Wilma Sinclair, you are certainly not bein'
very supportive," another woman said. "You'd think you blamed
Charla for what her old man did to her. Can't you see how upset she
is? You act like you hate her."

Charla turned on the speaker. "You hush up.
Wilma is the best friend I've ever had. It just upsets her to hear
me talk about what trash I come from. She's from a nice family, not
low-class scum like mine."

Julianne had picked up her banjo out of
discomfort, for something to do with her fidgeting hands. She was
used to hearing Lazarus comment on whatever was going on around her
and her companions, and she found that she now was picking out a
tune—what was it?—"Tifty's Annie," about the girl who loved the
wrong man and was beaten to death by a committee composed of her
nearest and dearest.

"What's that you're playin'?" Wilma
demanded. "We're here to talk about our lives, not to go foolin'
around while other folks are speakin'.”

"I'm sorry," Juli apologized. "I was
thinking about Charla's feeling that her family were low-class and
scum because of the way they acted, and how somehow or other
abusiveness still gets associated with economic status, even though
it isn't and never has been."

"You know that from
your
past lives, I suppose," Wilma
said.

"Yes, I do. Although actually the
songs that relate to Charla's situation are more often the ones
that a friend of mine lived through in
his
past lives. But they weren't about peasants
or low-class people at all. And most often the lady ended up dead
and never got to find out if her true love was as bad as her family
or not, because one of her family would kill her or him or both of
them."

"Oh, no, I don't think I could bear that,"
Charla said. "Not so soon after poor Marley died." She shot a
significant look in Lucien's direction, but Lucien merely smiled,
though Juli caught an unexpected flash of hostility from him.

"Nonsense, my dear. Marley would have wanted
us to be as clear about this as possible. And perhaps a song is the
most comfortable way for Julianna to express herself just
now—later, when she comes to know us better, she may be more open
with us."

Now, in times past Juli would have
just considered that Lucien was being magnanimous about her poor
little frailties, but now she said, with a great deal of dignity,
"Lucien, I know that you've never particularly approved of my
calling, but it so happens that I am a musician, and sometimes
music is the most
eloquent
expression I have of my feelings or of my empathy for the
feelings of any other human being."

"Julianna, dear girl, I do apologize if I've
put you on the defensive," he said.

"Not at all," she said, standing up and
packing her banjo back in its case. "It's I who should apologize
for threatening your authority." She glanced around at the
thunderstruck faces of the others. "I am so sorry for busting in
like this and maybe being inappropriate in the face of your grief
over the loss of your friend. Maybe I'll see you around."

She was shaking as she walked down the
street, shaking from a mixture of emotions—anger, shock at her own
temerity, and suppressed laughter at the look on Lucien's face at
the admittedly great exit line she'd come up with. When she'd known
him before, confrontation hadn't been exactly her style. She'd been
a lot like some of those other women in his group. But going
through ballads where she shared a body with some hero or the other
who was always having to slay or marry monsters had given her more
confidence than she used to have. She felt a little bad about
abusing his hospitality.

Her librarian friend was working the
reference desk. "Hi," she whispered when Juli came over. "I didn't
expect to see you so soon."

Juli told her a polite social lie. Just
because she'd made a scene in front of what appeared to be half the
town was no reason to spread her personal differences with Lucien
any farther. "I think I came at a bad time. Lucien and the others
are still so upset about that lady—what did you say her name was,
the one who disappeared?"

"Marley Bethune. Yes, I'm sure they would
be. Lucien especially. Everybody kind of thought he and Marley
might . . ." She looked at Juli, sized her up as a possible love
interest for Lucien, smiled brightly, and changed the subject. "So,
what kind of research did you want to do?"