“Sort of, yes.” She eyed him, once again wary. “You don’t appear too freaked. Most people look at me funny when I tell them about the ghosts. My aunt said I mustn’t ever tell anyone about the visions. She said I should learn to ignore them. But after she died, I went into the foster care system. Eventually I made the mistake of confiding in a counselor. Everyone concluded that I was seriously disturbed. The next thing I knew, I landed in the Summerlight Academy. By the time I graduated, I had learned to keep my secrets, believe me.”
“When did the ghost visions start?”
“When I was about twelve. They got stronger as I went through my teens.”
“That’s about the age when Emma, Sam and I came into our talents,” he said.
“I’d see the ghosts in unexpected places, almost always on some reflective surface,” Gwen said. “The first time it was a mirror in an old antique shop. I was terrified. Somehow I knew that it was not a real ghost, but in a way, that just made the experience more unnerving.”
“Because you wondered if you were crazy.”
“For a time, yes,” she said. “So did everyone else around me. But it was Evelyn who helped me to understand that the visions are actually lucid dreams that occur when I’m awake. I can go into a lucid dream on purpose. But the energy laid down at the scenes of violence seems to trigger the ghost dreams.”
“A lucid dreamer is someone who knows when he or she is dreaming, right? The dreamer can take control of the dream.”
“Yes.” Gwen took another sip of wine. “It’s not an uncommon experience. A lot of people occasionally have lucid dreams. But in my case, the talent is linked to my psychic intuition and my ability to see auras. I’ve come to the conclusion that seeing ghosts at old murder scenes is actually just a side effect of my type of paranormal sensitivity.”
“How did you figure out that the ghosts were always at old murder scenes?”
“After the first few instances, I went online and researched the locations where I had seen the ghosts. It didn’t take long to find out that in most cases there was a record of a murder or unexplained death in the vicinity. My intuition was picking up some of the psychic residue and interpreting it as a vision of a ghost.”
“The energy laid down by violence is powerful stuff,” he said. “A lot of people are sensitive to it, even those without any measurable talent. Almost everyone has had the experience of walking into a room or a location that gives off a bad vibe.”
“I know. But in my case the reaction is a little over-the-top.”
“How bad was the Summerlight Academy?” he asked.
“I was miserable at the time, but looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was very lonely at first and I was scared, but I soon met Abby and another talent, Nick Sawyer, there. The three of us bonded. I’m not sure why. We just did. We stuck together until we graduated, and we’re still very close. We’re family. The other good thing about Summerlight was that I met Evelyn there. She was the one who helped me deal with my talent.”
“But most of the time you use it to do your psychic counseling work.”
“I prefer living clients.” She smiled over the rim of the glass. “They pay better.”
That surprised a laugh out of him. “I can see the upside.”
She stopped smiling and wrinkled her nose. “But living clients are also incredibly frustrating. I can pick up a lot of impressions when I view their auras, but those impressions are not helpful if I can’t get context. To obtain that, I need cooperation from my clients. That isn’t always forthcoming.”
He raised his brows. “Are we, by any chance, talking about me now?”
“We are.”
“I’m not one of your clients,” he said very softly, very deliberately.
“True,” she agreed. “But that could change. I’ve got room on my schedule.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“Fine. Be like that.” She finished off the rest of her wine and set the glass down. “Your dreams, your problem.”
“That’s how I look at it.”
“At least you’re not one of those clients who pays for dream therapy and then fails to take my advice.”
He smiled. “Does that happen a lot?”
“Oh, sure, all the time. Clients book a session, spend forty minutes telling me about their dreams to give me context, I do an analysis, put them in a trance and help them rework the dreamscape until we discover the unresolved issues involved. Then we talk about the issues and I offer advice. The clients go away and return a month later complaining about the same problems.”
“Because they didn’t follow your advice?”
“It’s very frustrating.” Gwen shook her head. “I suppose I should be grateful for the repeat business but —”
She broke off because he had started to laugh. She watched him, her eyes widening with a mix of curiosity and bemusement.
He was even more surprised by his laughter than she was. It had been a while since he’d been able to laugh like this. A couple of people at a nearby table turned to look at him.
He finally settled into an amused smile and reached for a chunk of bread.
Gwen narrowed her eyes. “What’s so funny?”
“You, the psychic counselor, wondering why people pay you for advice and then ignore the advice,” he said around a mouthful of the bread. “Talk about naive. But it’s rather sweet when you think about it.”
“Excuse me?”
“People ask for advice all the time. They go to their friends for it. They talk to virtual strangers at the gym. They pay doctors, shrinks, therapists and psychics for advice. But very few people actually take the advice unless that advice happens to be something they are already inclined to do.”
“That’s a very insightful comment.” She wrinkled her nose. “Still, it’s one thing to have a person reject my help flat-out like you did. It’s something else altogether when people pay you for expensive dream therapy and then ignore it. Do you know how disheartening that is?”
“Sure, I’m a consultant, remember? The pay is good in my line, but almost no one ever follows a consultant’s advice.”
She furrowed her intelligent brow. “I hadn’t realized that.”
“Look on the bright side: at least we both get paid for the advice we give.”
“There is that.”
The waiter put the plates of broiled salmon down in front of them and departed.
Gwen examined the salmon for a few seconds and then looked up.
“Do you think we’ll be able to find Evelyn’s killer?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“You sound very certain of that.”
He shrugged. “The case looks simple enough. It will take a while to sort out, but it’s just a matter of following up on the leads. Plenty of those.”
“I wish you had been around two years ago when Zander Taylor was stalking the people in Evelyn’s research study. Maybe he could have been stopped before he killed Ben and Mary.”
“One thing I’ve learned in the consulting business. Don’t look back. Not unless there is information in the past that can be used to figure out what is going on in the present.”
“It’s a good rule.” Gwen picked up her fork. “But in my line, I’ve learned that the past always impacts the present.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’ve run up against that problem a few times, myself.”
They ate in silence for a while. He tried not to watch Gwen overtly but it was hard to take his eyes off her. It was good to be here with her, basking in her delicate feminine energy. This was what he had needed ever since he had returned from the island, he thought. Gwendolyn Frazier was the fix he craved.
“It’s usually better if you don’t ask,” she said matter-of-factly. She speared a tomato slice and ate it.
He went very still, vaguely aware that his ring was suddenly infused with a little heat.
“Better if I don’t ask what?” he said, feeling his way as cautiously as he had when he had escaped the underwater cave.
