was right and drop Oscar's old dog whistle onto the table.
'I'm not sure. Oscar's not telling me. No, wait, he's got something with him, holding it in his jaws. I'm not sure what it is or what he intends to do with it. He's coming closer... closer...'
Charlie too should be coming closer-
'Why is it so cold?' Anya said.
'Yes,' Evelyn agreed, rubbing her upper arms. 'It's freezing in here.'
Lyle felt it too. A blanket of dank, frigid air had settled over the table. He rubbed his hands together. His fingers were going numb. But he sensed more than just a drop in temperature. A change in mood seemed to have moved in with the cold air. Anger... no, more than anger... a bitter, metallic rage...
Lyle jumped as Anya screamed. He saw her and her chair fly backward and crash against the wall. McCarthy's chair tipped back, dumping him onto the floor. Lyle felt himself pushed forward, as if by a hurricane-force wind, jamming his abdomen against the table, and then the table itself tipped, precipitating him onto Evelyn. As they tumbled to the floor, Lyle heard glass breaking all around him. He rolled over and saw the drapes flying back as the blackened window panes shattered, imploding one after the other and littering the floor with glittering shards of glass. Stark yellow sunlight poured in. The statues he'd arranged around the room were tumbling over, some of them cracking on the hardwood floor.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the tumult ceased. Dazed, Lyle struggled to his feet and helped Evelyn to hers. McCarthy was helping Anya up. No one looked seriously injured by the incident, but the Channeling Room... it was a shambles. Lyle did a slow turn and saw that every piece of glass in sight-the windows, even the two mirrors on the walls-had been smashed.
'It's your fault!' Anya screamed, pointing a trembling finger at Evelyn. 'You angered your dog's spirit, and now look what happened!'
Evelyn began to cry. 'I don't know what I did! I can't imagine what the poor dear could be upset about!'
'Let's stay calm, everybody,' Lyle said. 'I don't think Oscar was responsible for this.'
He goddamn well knew no fucking dead dog had anything to do with it, but who was responsible? And how had they done it?
'This is incredible!' Vincent McCarthy was saying. 'I never believed... thought this was all bullshit... but now...'
'I think it was the earthquake last night,' Lyle said, trying to salvage the situation. 'Seismic waves radiate into the spirit world and cause...'
What was the word he was looking for? He shoved his shaking hands into his pockets. His heart was pounding and his brain had been scrambled by this cataclysm. Think, damn it! Disruption-that was the word.
'... and cause disruptions in the transmission of information. Maybe it would be better if we rescheduled this for another time. Next Saturday, perhaps?'
'Oh dear, I don't think I can wait that long!' Evelyn said. 'If poor Oscar is upset-'
'Maybe a private session tomorrow night, then,' Lyle said. 'The seismic disturbances will have faded by then. I believe I can squeeze you in. As a matter of fact, I'll make it a point to squeeze you in.'
'Oh thank you, Ifasen! Thank you!'
Got to salvage something from this debacle, he thought.
'I want to come back too,' Vincent McCarthy said.
'Me too!' Anya cried.
Lyle held up his hands. 'I'll see that you're all taken care of. Let's just move into the waiting room so I can find places where I can schedule you.'
5
'Tell me that was you, Charlie,' Lyle said after he'd ushered the three sitters out the door. 'Tell me that was some new gag that went wrong.'
Charlie shook his head. 'Nuh-uh. I was crawlin' my way to the table with the dog whistle when the spirits started wrecking things.'
'The spirits'! Charlie, boy, have you lost your mind?'
'Forgive me, Lord, I know it's a sin to believe in such things, but how else you gonna explain what happened here?'
'Last night you said it was God sending us a warning, now it's spirits? Make up your mind, Charlie.'
'Making up my mind ain't the point, yo. I don't know what's happenin', but you gotta be blind or stupid or both not to know something's happenin'!'
'Yeah. We're being gaslighted. You saw that guy running last night. You saw the gas can. You going to tell me now that was a spirit?'
'No. Course not. But that different. That-'
'No different. They couldn't burn us out, so they're trying to scare us out. First the doors and windows, now this. Same people behind everything.'
'Yeah?' Charlie said. 'Then we up against some real geniuses. Anybody who can open and close windows and doors and mess up a room like they did today should be workin' for the CIA.'
'Maybe they once did. CIA's into everything.' He gestured at the shattered windows. 'Sound shatters glass, right? How about ultra-high frequency sound waves that...'
Charlie was shaking his head. 'No way. We got company, man. Told you that last night. The earthquake opened a gate and shook somethin' loose. This house possessed, yo.'
'And I told you I'm not going there! Some very human assholes tried to scare us and scare off our sitters. That's it, pure and simple. But guess what? It backfired. The fish thought they witnessed a bona fide, super-duper supernatural event and they're totally sold. They think Ifasen's the realest of the real deals and they want more- more-more!'
He started when the phone rang. Without thinking-normally he'd check the ID or let the voice mail pick it up- he snatched it off the cradle.
'Yeah, what?' he snapped.
6
'H-hello?' Gia said. She hadn't been prepared for such a gruff reception. 'Is... is this Ifasen?'
A brief pause, the sound of a throat being cleared, then a more cultured voice. 'Pardon me. Yes, this is he. Who is calling, please?'
Gia almost gave in to an urge to hang up. She had no clear idea why she had called in the first place. This was so unlike her...
She'd gone to the Beth Israel outpatient lab this morning where they drew her blood for the pregnancy test. Dr. Eagleton's service had said she'd requested stat results, but when 2 p.m. rolled around and Gia hadn't heard, she called in and learned that Dr. Eagleton was off call. The covering doctor did not return her calls. He left a message via the service that he knew nothing about Gia's lab test and saw no reason why it couldn't wait until Monday.
So she'd called the Beth Israel lab but they'd stonewalled her, saying they couldn't release results to patients, only the ordering doctor.
Burning with frustration, she'd paced the house. Normally she would have talked it over with Jack, but this was not a normal situation. And she didn't know how Jack would take all this. So out of sheer desperation she'd looked up Ifasen's number in his brochure and called him.
Crazy, she knew, but she could be pregnant... with her second child... and Ifasen had told her she'd have two. Jack's rational explanations from last night faded into background noise; he hadn't heard about Junie's bracelet then, how Ifasen had known exactly where it would be.
What else did Ifasen know? She had to ask. She could imagine Jack's expression when he learned that she'd called a psychic. But what could it hurt?
Besides, feeling crummy and worrying about being pregnant had thrown her off balance. The medical profession was doing its best to make her psycho, so she figured she'd give this a shot. Call it alternative
