Possessed

It irritated her that she was letting him do this in the first place, but the thought of going back outside into the cold rain was so unappealing.

“I’ll be careful.” He said it like a solemn promise. She figured she didn’t have much choice but to trust him.

“I’ll wait up.”

He smiled gently and reached out to caress her cheek with his finger. “I’ll be upset if you do. Can I lock this when I leave?”

“Yes. Just turn the lock and close the door hard. I’ll leave the dead bolt off.”

He nodded. “I’ll…call you.”

It was the sort of I’ll call you that sounded more like I plan on never speaking to you again, but she let it go. There might have been a moment there between them that had nothing to do with his sister or her monster, but it made no sense to pursue it. They were from opposite ends of the spectrum and it was best that they stay there.

Once he returned the bike, there really was no reason for them to speak again. Not unless she had some answers for him. Currently, she was fresh out.

He opened the door as she stood back. The blinking light on her phone caught his attention and he nudged his chin in that direction. “You’ve got a message.”

“I know.” She didn’t bother to say that she had no intention of listening to it tonight.

Malcolm opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something else but then seemed to talk himself out of it. “Take care, Cass.”

“You, too.”

He turned the lock on the door and closed it firmly behind him. As promised, she left the dead bolt off, hoping that the criminal element wouldn’t choose this night to test her security system.

“I don’t know, girls. I think things were easier when I thought he was a rich asshole.”

Her cats raised their heads to her, then quickly trotted off in the direction of the bedroom, anticipating it was where she was headed next. She thought about camping out on the futon so she would hear him when he returned but figured there wasn’t much else to say.

The police would do their job and find the killer. Dougie hadn’t been bragging earlier. He knew his job. The ticket would help, Cass was as sure of it as Lauren had been. Which meant she just needed to wait and see if this monster made contact again. Wait and see if her ability was truly changing in a significant way that went beyond being a conduit.

Beyond channeling…to possession.

Chapter 10

Cass woke the next morning and felt a particular satisfaction at seeing her bike in the foyer. He must have known how to handle the scooter. There wasn’t a scratch on it.

She made a pot of coffee and some eggs, then picked up the paper from the sidewalk. She was going to have to skip the funnies this morning and move straight to the want ads. Sipping her coffee, Cass circled a few potential opportunities while pointedly ignoring the still blinking light on her phone. What would the repercussions be if she chose not to answer it?

Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good news. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to handle anything else. Three days ago she’d been content with her life, her job and her very good friend.

Today it was as if she didn’t know what way was up. Dougie was the enemy. There was a killer on the loose and possibly connected to her, and all of a sudden she was no longer a medium.

She was a something else.

There are those, she knew, who wouldn’t understand the distinction between hearing voices and relaying messages and allowing those voices to possess her. Psychic was an easy word for believers and nonbelievers to wrap their brain around. Of course there were the con artists who blurred the lines by claiming to be all things: clairsentient, clairvoyant, psychic medium and channeler. Not only did they cause damage through their lies, but they also made it that much more difficult for a truly gifted person to explain to a father why it was she could hear his dead grandmother, but she couldn’t find his missing little girl.

Cataloging her skills had helped Cass to get a grasp on her life. Knowing what she was capable of made it so she could define the ways in which she could help people as well as the types of situations and publicity she wished to avoid.

The occasional message passed to the person who most needed to hear it. A human lie detector for the police. These were tangible things that she could do by simply listening to and relating the messages from the beyond. Gifts had to be opened and played with, or what was the point of having them in the first place? Dr. Farver always used to say that. Cassandra Allen has a gift.

But giving up more to the spirits, the ones that up until now had only spoken to her, meant a loss of control of mind and possibly even body that could be dangerous. Hadn’t she fallen into the street? And the welt on her side, that was a definite result of the monster getting too close.

She wanted this new ability gone. She’d wanted her old abilities gone once upon a time, too. Never happened. No, there was no going back. Only forward. If only she knew for certain how it would all turn out.

Frustrated and more than annoyed with herself that she’d spent the last half hour dissecting what was happening to her rather than concentrating on her search for a new job, she set the paper down and hit the play button on her answering machine. Moving forward probably meant not being afraid of a phone message.

“You have one new message…beep…Cassandra, it’s Dr. Farver again. Listen, I understand why you won’t return my calls. I’m…disappointed, but I do understand. I just wanted to say that I hoped if nothing else…well…we could remain friendly if not actual friends. You were here for so long. Mad misses you. I guess I just wanted to be sure that you were all right. I won’t bother you again… beep.”

The guilt she had felt about erasing his first message returned tenfold. She plopped back down on her single stool and reached for the phone with the intention of returning his call and apologizing. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe she had chosen to walk away from that life and his convictions, but that didn’t mean he’d ever hurt her in any way. She had to find it within herself to stop blaming him just because he didn’t believe her.

Slowly, she lowered the receiver. The answer was there. Cass needed a way to catalog, examine and diagnose the changes she was experiencing, changes that had started over a year ago, she now accepted. Maybe he wasn’t a believer, but there was no better scientist for the task than Dr. Farver. Plus, he would have access both to the records of thousands of others who shared her symptoms and to his assessments of those people.

He would also have names. Names of others she might be able to talk to. It was through Dr. Farver that she had met Leandra, another medium who had helped her to refine her mental room to the point where she could open and close herself to contact at will. Dr. Farver hadn’t believed Leandra either, but he understood the inherent value of people with special gifts being able to network. It was, after all, a very small community.

Putting extra food out for the girls and leaving her bike behind, Cass decided to forgo the polite ritual of a preemptive phone call and head straight for the source. The Institute of Psychical Studies was located in the northwest section of Washington, D.C. It was only about a two-hour train ride away.

Cass took a cab to 30th Street Station. Inside the spacious building, a beautiful gold angel statue stood bearing the weighty load of humanity while watching over the flood of people who passed under its gaze each day.

A killer had passed under its watch just a few days ago. Cass wondered if it had noticed.

She walked up to the counter, preferring to deal with a human to purchase her ticket than a machine. It was late in the morning. Most of the commuter trains had already left, but she was able to secure a seat on the Boston Coach departing Philadelphia at 11:00 a.m.

Gazing down at the small, white, rectangular ticket, Cass read the name of her train. Like a trolley car, the Boston Coach made the same trip each day up and down the east coast. From Boston to Washington and back, stopping at several cities along the way. Including Baltimore. The Boston Coach had been the name of the train on the ticket found in Lauren’s apartment. Quickly, Cass made a mental note to call Dougie and ask him if he’d made any progress with that.