Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

  “Hey, hey, LBJ,” I say under my breath. “How many kids have you killed today?”

  She doesn’t glance up.

  “Make love, not war,” I add.

  The techie looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Do you have Tourette’s?”

  “I’m a psychic. I know who you used to be.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  “No, not him,” I correct.

  Chances are, if she was killed in Vietnam in her past life, she was male. Spirit is genderless. (In fact, some of the best mediums I’ve ever met are gay, and I think it’s because they have that balance of masculine and feminine in them. But I digress.) I once had a very famous client—a female R & B singer—who had died in a concentration camp in a previous existence. Her current ex was the SS soldier who had shot her back then, and her job in this life was to survive him. Unfortunately, in this existence, he was beating her up every time he got drunk—and I will bet you anything that, after she dies, she’ll return in some other incarnation that crosses with his. That’s all a human life is, really—a do-over, a chance to get it right … or you’ll be brought back to try again.

  The techie opens a new menu with a few keystrokes. “You have a backlog of print jobs,” she says, and I wonder if she will judge me for printing out the Entertainment Weekly recap of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. “That could be the problem.” She pushes some buttons, and suddenly the screen goes black. “Huh,” she murmurs, frowning.

  Even I know it is not good when your computer technician frowns.

  Suddenly the store printer, on a table adjacent to us, hums to life. It starts spitting out pages at breakneck speed, covered from top to bottom with Xs. The papers pile up, overflowing onto the floor, as I rush to pick them up. I scan them, but they are gibberish, unintelligible. I count ten pages, twenty, fifty.

  The techie’s supervisor approaches her as she tries furiously to stop my computer from printing. “What’s the problem?”

  One of the pages flies right from the paper feed into my hands. This page is covered with nonsense, too, except for one small rectangle in the center, where the Xs give way to hearts.

  The techie looks like she is going to burst into tears. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

  In the middle of the string of hearts is the only recognizable word on the page: JENNA.

  Holy Hell.

  “I do,” I say.

  There is nothing more frustrating than being given a sign and not knowing which way it points. That’s how it feels when I go home, open myself up to the universe, and get served up a steaming hot bowl of Nothing. In the past, Desmond or Lucinda or both of my spirit guides would have helped me interpret how the name of that kid glitching up my computer is connected to the spirit world. Paranormal experiences are just energy manifesting itself in some way: a flashlight flickering on when you haven’t pressed the button; a vision during an electrical storm; your cell phone ringing, and no one on the other end of the line. A surge of energy pulsed through networks to give me a message—I just can’t tell who’s sent it.

  I’m not too thrilled about contacting Jenna, since I’m pretty sure she hasn’t forgiven me for leaving her at the steps of the police department. But I can’t deny that there’s something about that kid that makes me feel more genuinely psychic than I’ve felt in seven years. What if Desmond and Lucinda sent me this as a test, to see how I’d react, before they committed to being my spirit guides again?

  At any rate, I can’t risk pissing off whoever’s sent me this sign, just in case my whole future depends on it.

  Fortunately, I have Jenna’s contact information. That ledger I make new clients fill out when they come for a reading? I tell them it’s in case a spirit comes to me with an urgent message, but in reality, it’s so I can invite them to like my Facebook page.

  She has written down a cell phone number, so I call her.

  “If this is supposed to be some kind of customer service survey with one being total crap and five being the Ritz-Carlton of psychic experiences, I’ll give you a two, but only because you managed to find my mother’s wallet. Without that, it’s a negative four. What kind of person abandons a thirteen-year-old alone in front of a police department?”

  “Honestly, if you think about it,” I say, “what better place to leave a thirteen-year-old? But then again, you’re not the average thirteen-year-old, are you?”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” Jenna says. “What do you want, anyway?”

  “Someone on the other side seems to think I’m not done helping you.”

  She is quiet for a second, letting this sink in. “Who?”

  “Well,” I admit. “That part’s a little fuzzy.”

  “You lied to me,” Jenna accuses. “My mother’s dead?”

  “I didn’t lie to you. I don’t know that it’s your mother. I don’t even know that it’s a woman. I just feel like I’m supposed to get in touch with you.”

  “How?”

  I could tell her about the printer, but I don’t want her to freak out. “When a spirit wants to talk, it’s like a hiccup. You can’t not hiccup, even if you try. You can get rid of the hiccups, but that doesn’t prevent them in the first place. You understand?” What I don’t tell her is that I used to get these messages so often, I got jaded. Bored. I didn’t know why people made a big deal out of it; it was just part of me, the same way I had pink hair and all my wisdom teeth. But that’s the attitude you have when you don’t realize that at any moment, you might lose it. I’d kill for those psychic hiccups now.

  “Okay,” Jenna says. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking that maybe we should go back to that place where we found the wallet.”

  “You think there’s more evidence?”

  All of a sudden in the background I hear another voice. A male voice. “Evidence?” he repeats. “Who is that?”

  “Serenity,” Jenna says to me, “there’s someone I think you should meet.”

  I may have lost my mojo, but that doesn’t keep me from seeing, in a single glance, that Virgil Stanhope is going to be as useful to Jenna as screen doors on a submarine. He is distracted and dissipated, like a former high school football star who’s spent the past twenty years pickling his organs. “Serenity,” Jenna says. “This is Virgil. He was the detective on duty the day my mother disappeared.”

  He looks at my hand, extended, and shakes it perfunctorily. “Jenna,” he says, “c’mon. This is a waste of time—”

  “No stone left unturned,” she insists.

  I plant myself squarely in front of Virgil. “Mr. Stanhope, in my career I’ve been called in to dozens of crime scenes. I’ve been in places where I had to wear booties because there was brain matter on the floor. I’ve gone to homes where kids were abducted and led law enforcement officers to the woods where they were found.”

  He raises a brow. “Ever testified in court?”

  My cheeks pinken. “No.”

  “Big surprise.”

  Jenna steps in front of him. “If you two can’t play together, there’s going to be a time-out,” she says, and she turns to me. “So what’s the plan?”

  Plan? I don’t have a plan. I am hoping that if I walk around this wasteland long enough, I’ll have a flash of recognition. My first in seven years.

  Suddenly a man walks by, holding a cell phone. “Did you see him?” I whisper.

  Jenna and Virgil lock eyes and then look at me. “Yes.”

  “Oh.” I watch the guy get into his Honda and drive away, still talking on his cell. I’m a little deflated to find out he’s a living person. In a crowded hotel lobby, I used to see maybe fifty people, and half of them would be spirits. They weren’t rattling chains or holding their severed heads but rather talking on their cell phones, or trying to hail a cab, or taking a mint from the jar at the front of the restaurant. Ordinary stuff.

  Virgil rolls his eyes, and Jenna elbows him in the gut.

  “Are spirits her