TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7
Logan Alexander considered himself a man of hardheaded practicality, which to his way of thinking was ironclad proof that the universe had a twisted sense of humor. Because he was also a medium.
A medium.
And he hated being a medium. He hated being called a medium, being dragged from peaceful obscurity into an unwelcome spotlight of sorts, what he was and what he could do named if not understood, word spreading among those who scorned with suspicion and those who believed or desperately wanted to. Both always, always finding him eventually and making his life hell so that he’d have to pull up stakes again, usually in the middle of the night, and find another place to live, in another town or city or state where he could be anonymous again, just another stranger and left in peace. Until the next time he was found, and the lost ones began to seek him out again.
Not the “Can you contact my uncle George and ask him where he hid all the family money?” sort of questions that only made him impatient. Those were relatively easy to either avoid or else respond to with some bullshit answer that would satisfy the sort of people who would even ask that kind of silly question.
It was the truly lost ones that got to him, the religious who had lost their faith and needed proof of some kind of an existence after death. The parents hollow-eyed and haunted in a very human sense by the inexplicable and heartbreaking disappearance of a child. The widows and widowers bereft by the loss of the other half of themselves. And others, so many others, lost people who were desperately hopeful that he could help them.
He hated it.
But what he hated most about an ability way too many people with no understanding of what they were talking about called a gift or a curse (as if it could be anything so simple as either) was that he had absolutely no control over it. And he had been told by someone who did understand and should certainly know all about it that the “door” most mediums opened in order to communicate with the dead was, in him, always open.
Always. Or, hell, just missing entirely.
And also that mediums naturally attracted spirits. Whether they wanted to or not.
He didn’t talk to the dead, certainly not willingly. They talked to him. Anywhere. Everywhere. No matter how hard he tried to ignore them. Persistent, insistent, often desperate. Dogging his steps. Showing up in different places. Making it impossible for him to go out to dinner, or to a theater and enjoy a play or movie. Impossible to attend a party, or even to date—or at least date the same woman more than once.
He’d learned that lesson the hard way, with too many first dates ending with a woman eyeing him uneasily because he’d spent too much time sending brief, fierce glares at nothing she could see past her shoulder or over her head, or at the empty chair at their table. Most were either too kind or too wary to say it aloud, but at least one date had told him frankly that she didn’t see the sense in a second date since it was obvious he had more baggage than she did and she wasn’t getting any younger.
And the last time an instant physical attraction had cut an evening short for energetic (if not desperate) sex in his bed, the lady had left before dawn after waking to find him sitting up in bed having a whispered but clearly angry argument with someone named Josephine.
His bedmate’s name wasn’t Josephine, he was wide-awake—and as far as the lady could see, nobody else was in the room. So she snatched up her clothing and ran.
Logan had not blamed her one bit. He was just grateful that she hadn’t called the police to report an escaped lunatic.
At least a few before her had done something of the sort over the years, reporting him as potentially dangerous, or mentally ill, or just a man who had frightened them in an age when police were finally paying more attention to that sort of thing, leaving him to spend time in this jail or that “detention room” or in some clinic or other while the police and sometimes doctors got things sorted out to their satisfaction in the quest to determine whether he was actually a danger—to himself or others. Sometimes there were fines, sometimes an order for a psychiatric evaluation.
All because he could see and talk to the dead.
They stole any chance he had of living a normal life, these spirits, and while his sympathy was sometimes roused by a particularly sad or frightened spirit killed in some brutally unfair manner and desperate for his help, he seldom could do anything to help them, and that only added to his resentment.
At least most of them had had a shot at a normal life, before whatever unfair act or illness or accident had put them in the ground. Logan, on the other hand, could hardly get a normal day to himself. Impossible to do everyday things. Wherever he went, whatever he was doing, there was at least one dead person anxious to talk to him.
Like now. He was just blamelessly walking in the park near his current home in San Francisco, needing some morning air before he returned to the freelance IT work he did from his home office, because of course he couldn’t work in a normal office setting with people all around him.
Besides, even the living had begun to wear on his nerves after a while.
Maybe especially the living.
He’d just wanted some air, that was all. And there was a dead guy walking beside him. Talking to him.
“She didn’t mean to poison me, I’m sure,” the older gentleman of about sixty was saying earnestly, for about the third time.
Logan paused on an arched footbridge and leaned his elbows on the wooden railing, gazing down at the happily burbling, man-made creek. A quick glance had shown him no one else was near, but he still kept his voice low; bitter experience had taught him that, as with dates, office jobs, and lovers, speaking aloud in public to people only he could see whenever normal people were within earshot too often meant a quick trip to the nearest loony bin, or at least a night in a cell.
Adding insult to injury, the cells too were always filled with dead people. Usually far more hostile than his living cellmates.
“Listen, buddy—”
“My name is Oscar.”
Logan didn’t bother telling him names didn’t really matter. “Oscar, I don’t know if your wife poisoned you—”
“My girlfriend.”
Logan sent him a glance, mildly surprised, but shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t know if she poisoned you, but if you’re looking for justice, I can tell you from experience that cops take a dim view of dead witnesses communicating through mediums, and judges take an even dimmer view. And I’ve had more than my fair share of time on a shrink’s couch, thank you very much.”
“But—”
“Were you buried or cremated?”
“Cremated.”
“Then you’re really out of luck.”
“The medical examiner took samples. Of . . . of everything. I saw him.” He sounded, suddenly, a bit queasy.
Logan felt the first flicker of sympathy, even though he didn’t want to. This wasn’t the first spirit who had shared details of his own autopsy. That had to be unnerving, to say the least, watching your own body being opened up on a slab.
“Must not have been anything conclusive enough to interest the cops,” he said.
“But that’s the thing.” Oscar sounded near tears. “They were convinced. They arrested her. They’re going to put her on trial for murder. And I know she didn’t poison me. But my wife hired a PI and he’s come up with a theory of how and why she could have done it, and I know he planted evidence and other stuff the police believe, or maybe they just slipped me the poison and made it look like she did. I think they’re both in on it, my wife and her PI, because I’ve seen them together, and I just—”
“Oscar, what do you want from me?” Logan tried his best to keep impatience out of his voice.
“My girlfriend doesn’t deserve to go to prison. She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t poison me.”