“But, M.J.!” Gilley said, his voice high and pitchy. “The contract!”
I rounded on my partner, my fury bubbling over. “Did you not
see
what happened in there?” I roared. “Did you miss that a woman had her heart broken, as well as an heirloom that was
priceless
to her, because some jackass with the name of a rodent coaxed her onto this stupid show and handed her over to a
lunatic
posing as a medium? Do you think that any of those people in there care
anything
about presenting the truth, Gilley? Do you think they care about that woman and how she’s just lost her mother to cancer? Do you think they care about
one goddamn thing
other than ratings?”
“M.J.,” Gilley said calmly, and approached me the way a lion tamer approaches one of his more temperamental felines.
“Don’t you ‘M.J.,’ me, Gilley Gillespie!” I shouted back at him. “This whole production is a load of crap! Anyone who would hire a fraud like Angelica isn’t concerned with helping any of these people. This is bullshit, and I want no part of it!”
“You’re right,” said another voice, and my eyes darted away from my pale-looking partner over to Gopher, who was coming out of the doorway I’d just exited.
I glared hard at him, still furious. “This is all your fault, you know,” I said.
“Again,” he said, looking irritatingly guilty, “you’re right. I blew it. I had another medium lined up for this show with much better credentials, but she canceled at the last minute. The production company that bought the concept insisted that I have four mediums, two men and two women. I had twelve hours to come up with someone, and one of my stagehands found Angelica at a palm-reading shop along the highway.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head, taking a few deep breaths while I was at it. After a bit I said, “I personally know two other choices who would have been perfect. If you had made one phone call, Gopher,
one
call to me or to Gilley, we could have handed you someone credible like
that
.” And I snapped my fingers for effect.
“What can I say, M.J., other than I’m sorry? Angelica’s fired, okay? She’s done. Tell me what else you want, within reason, to come back onto the show, and I’ll work on getting it for you.”
Steven came through the double doors at that moment, and when he spotted me he looked relieved. “Patty is asking for you,” he said. “She wants to tell her mother she’s really sorry about the bowl.”
And like that I softened. I sighed heavily and brushed a curl out of my eyes but stared hard at Gopher. “Here are my demands,” I told him. “First, I’m going to take Patty shopping. I’ll need to know where the closest Villeroy and Boch is, and I’ll need a credit card. We’re going to replace Patty’s bowl with something her mom will approve of and that she can use in her wedding. Then you are going to pay for a full day at the spa for the poor woman so that she can relax after all this trauma.”
“Done,” said Gopher, and he was already pulling out his wallet to offer me his credit card.
“Hold on,” I said to him. “I’m not finished.” I heard Gilley gulp, but ignored him as I continued. “Next, if I come back onto your show, you are going to have me work with Heath, and Heath alone. I want nothing to do with Count Chocula in there.”
“You mean Bernard?” Gopher asked. I nodded, and he said, “I can fire him too if you want. The truth is he was also a last-minute choice.”
“Do whatever you want,” I said tiredly, walking forward to snatch the credit card before adding, “but if
one
more thing gets damaged, smashed, or broken, I am outta here.
Capisce?
”
“
Capisce
,” Gopher agreed. “I’ll tell the crew we’re breaking for lunch early and wait for you and Patty to get back.”
“Now you’re thinking like a producer.” I clucked and headed back with Gilley and Steven to find Patty.
About two hours later I had left Patty in the hands of the staff at the hotel spa for a complete head-to-toe workup and was feeling pretty good about myself. She’d been a little reluctant to go to the elegant china store with me, but when we found out it was just across Union Square and I’d convinced her that her mother was coming along for the ride to help us pick out something perfect to replace her bowl, she’d agreed.
I’d known immediately when we entered the store which bowl to go for, and as it turned out my intuition was right on the money, because Patty said that the one I pointed to and told her that her mom was jumping up and down about was exactly the same pattern that she’d selected for the fine china on her bridal registry.
As we’d had the bowl wrapped up, I’d told her again and again that her mother was fine with the heirloom’s disastrous ending, and that she just wanted Patty to be happy on her special day. “Remember, when you’re walking down that aisle, your mom is going to be right next to you,” I’d said.
And it was times like that, when I was reminded about the power of my abilities, that the awesome nature of reuniting people with their deceased relatives was an amazing thing. I also thought that maybe, when we got back home, it might be time to do some professional readings again.
I’d done too many appointments for too long and finally gotten burned out nearly a year ago. That was how I’d gotten into ghostbusting. Gilley had bugged me ever since to get back to doing personal readings, but I’d been stubbornly reluctant until now.
When I arrived back at the hotel I saw Gilley, Steven, and Heath all having lunch together in the café. I strolled over to them and was greeted warmly. “How’d it go?” Steven asked as I took a seat.
“It went better than expected,” I said, smiling and looking at Gilley. “Do me a favor when we get back home?” I said to him.
“Of course,” said Gil. “You name it.”
“Set me up some readings, if you can.”
Gilley squealed like a girl and clapped his hands. “Really?” He giggled, fluttering his eyelashes as if he were dreaming.
I laughed. “Yeah. I think I’m ready.”
“Wait a second,” said Heath. “You mean you haven’t done readings before?”
“Oh, she’s done them,” said Gil. “And I made the unfortunate mistake of overloading her schedule and working the poor girl into the ground. So she quit and went into ghostbusting. She hasn’t let me set up an appointment for a one-on-one reading in a year!”
“I needed the break,” I said, waving to a waitress. I ordered a club sandwich and Coke with lemon, then turned back to the group. “So what did I miss?” I asked.
“Count Chocolate is gone,” said Steven. “Gopher fired him on the spot.”
I looked at Heath to gauge his reaction, but he simply shrugged his shoulders. “I’m glad it’ll be just you and me, M.J.”
“What time are we due back at the shoot?” I asked.
Gilley looked at his watch. “We’ve got a half hour,” he said. “Long enough for you to eat your lunch, at least.”
“Cool,” I said. I hate working on an empty stomach.
I polished off my sandwich and we put the entire bill on Gopher’s credit card (I was seriously considering putting on a few more items from the fabulous shops around the hotel, just to teach the producer a lesson, but decided we might not have time), and we all wound our way back to the Renaissance Room for round two.
Heath and I endured more makeup and hair spray before taking our seats at the table and waiting for Matt to do his intros again. From the script he was following, it was clear that Angelica and Bernard would be completely edited out of the production.
I nudged Heath a little when an elderly man was shown into the room carrying a small urn that was carefully set down on the center of the table and checked for the right lighting.
I eyed the urn curiously and glanced at Heath. His brow was furrowed, and he glanced at me with a shrug. Matt then announced that the elderly man was Franco De La Torrez. He was bringing a small urn left to him by his brother, who had died mysteriously in the Amazon while on an archaeological expedition there some twenty years before. Franco knew nothing about the urn’s origin, nor what might be inside it, but he was convinced that it was full of dark magic. Franco was also terrified of getting rid of the urn, lest it anger the evil energy filling it.
I’ll admit, when Matt got through talking, it was difficult to keep from giggling. I noticed too that Heath was trying hard not to smirk. “Mr. De La Torrez,” I said as soberly as I could muster, “why is it that you believe this urn to be haunted?”
“It feels bad,” Franco answered, his voice cracked and flaky with age.
“Uh-huh,” I said, turning to Heath. I was getting no read off the urn at all, and thought maybe he might pick up something.
“You say this urn came from your deceased brother?” Heath asked. Franco nodded. “And your brother died in the jungle of the Amazon?” Again Franco nodded. “And in the twenty years you’ve had it, you’ve never opened it up to see what was inside?”
“I’ve been too afraid,” Franco admitted timidly. “It might let out the dark magic!”
Carefully I reached forward and laid my fingers on the urn. Absolutely nothing was coming from it. Furthermore, Franco’s brother wasn’t coming through to me either, but I did get a female energy connected to the old man that gave me a name of Mary or Maria. “Do you know a woman who has passed with the first initial M, like Mary or Maria?” I asked him.
Franco pumped his head vigorously. “My sister, Maria,” he said in wonder.
“And who’s the male with the initial N?” asked Heath.
“My brother!” said Franco, his crackly voice filling in with a little bit of volume. “His name was Nico.”
I was glad that Heath had gotten the brother and wanted to have him take the lead, but this Maria character was literally yelling at me and ordering me to open the urn. My fingers hovered over the top of it, and I glanced sideways at Heath, undecided. He seemed to know what I wanted to do and gave me a brief nod of encouragement. Carefully but quickly I opened up the urn, tensing as the lid came off.
For a moment, no one spoke and no one moved. Franco had let out a small gasp as he realized what I’d just done, but then he watched the top of the now opened urn with great attention. Finally, I tipped the small piece of pottery upside down and out fell a dried flower that was probably once white but now appeared yellow and brown in its preserved state.
Franco reached for the flower with trembling fingers and held it up, staring at it with moist eyes. “Gardenia,” he whispered. “It’s a flower my family grew in our greenhouses back home and sold at the local markets. My brother’s way of sending me a peace offering.”
“You and your brother were at odds?” I asked.
Franco again pumped his head. “I told him not to go on that stupid expedition. I told him it was too dangerous. The night before he left we got into a terrible fight. My sister tried to get us to make up, but Nico wouldn’t have it, and he left without saying good-bye to me. That was the last time I ever saw or spoke to him. Word came to us three months later that he’d contracted malaria and died. They buried him in the jungle, and as a last request from him, he sent me this urn. I figured Nico was still so angry at me that he’d sent a curse with the urn. I never thought to open it and look inside.”
I sat back in my chair and wondered how long Franco had been held prisoner by believing the worst of his brother. “See?” I said to him. “No haunted urn, here, Mr. De La Torrez. Just a final gift from your brother.”
Franco’s eyes leaked tears down his craggy face, and I could tell the camera had moved in for a close-up. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely, holding the dried flower with great care. “This is such a gift. Thank you.”
“And . . . cut!” yelled Gopher, intruding on the sweetness of the moment. I sat back in the chair and watched as the director strode forward with a big, confident grin. “That was fantastic!” he gushed, beaming at Heath and me, but his adoration was short-lived as he whipped back around to his crew and ordered, “Okay, people, let’s move on to the next contestant. Someone help Franco back up to his room.”
Before the next guest was shown in I leaned over to Heath. “We make a good team.”
“We do.” He beamed. “And if you didn’t already have a boyfriend, I’d probably ask you out.”
I felt like I blushed all the way down to my toes, and not just because Heath didn’t look a day over twenty-one and I was . . . well . . .
older
by far. “That’s the adrenaline talking,” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah, well, can you blame me?” he said, still flirting.
“Honey,” I said soberly, “I’m taken. But methinks there have to be loads of women closer to your age bracket who would be happy to go out with you.”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin, “but none of them
get
me, you know?”
“Oh.” I laughed. “Trust me, I do understand.” My eyes traveled over to Steven then, and I thought that I was really lucky to have found someone so willing to try to get me.
The afternoon moved on quickly, and Heath and I met with people from all different backgrounds with many different items and objects that they swore to be possessed or haunted, but none of them—as in, not a single one—had any kind of negative energy at all connected to it. In fact, in all cases the people sitting across from us had one thing in common, and that was a deceased relative with a strong connection to the object resting on the table. By moving the object or tapping on it or making it fall over, their relative was simply trying to get the attention of their loved one.
So Heath and I acted as true mediums, reuniting the person in front of us with their dead loved ones. And working with Heath felt really good. It gave my own intuitive abilities a nice boost, and it was really great to see these people let go of the fear of an object while embracing the love from their relatives who had passed on.
And when Gopher called, “Cut!” after a long afternoon of passing on these messages, I was really hoping that our producer would finally let us go for the day.