“It is a terrible habit,” Doctor Helen Storm said aloud and then took a drag from a cigarette. “I really should quit, but I enjoy it far too much.”
I had arrived early for the appointment, as was my nature in all things involving a scheduled time. We had actually met at the door as I was on my way in and she was on her way out. She’d been hoping to grab a quick smoke break. To her credit, she had started to put the cigarettes away and take off her coat, but I insisted that she go ahead and indulge the addiction. Instead of having me wait alone, she had invited me to walk outside with her. We were now standing at the railing of an outdoor lounge that occupied an architecturally truncated corner of the seventh floor of the building. The air was chilly but it had calmed, and with the late morning sun to dull the bite, the crispness was for the most part pleasant.
“I know what you mean,” I replied, mentally beating down the desire to bum one from her as I shifted a half step away from the enticing smoke.
“I am so sorry, is the smoke bothering you?” she asked, noticing my obvious move and shifting away herself.
“Yes and no,” I shrugged. “I quit a couple of years ago, but for some reason I’ve been having some pretty horrendous cravings lately.”
“I apologize, Rowan. I should have asked before I invited you out here with me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shook my head and waved her off before she could extinguish the cigarette. “I’m fine.”
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“So why do you think you have been craving cigarettes?”
“Dunno.” I shrugged. “Stress I suppose. Aren’t you supposed to be the one telling me why I’m all screwed up?”
Helen Storm regarded me with mysteriously dark eyes that were a mirror image of her brother’s. She bore an unmistakable family resemblance to Ben, but with a far softer edge to her features. Her pretty face was framed by shiny black hair that fell across her shoulders and was interspersed with strands of grey. My friend had once told me that she was a handful of years older than him, but the streaks in her hair were the only telltale sign of that fact. The one physical attribute that came into severe contrast with her sibling was her size, she being almost a foot shorter than he.
“You do not have a very high opinion of psychiatrists, do you, Rowan?” she asked after a moment.
“It’s not really that,” I answered, somewhat embarrassed that I was broadcasting my distaste for the situation so clearly. I thought I’d be able to maintain at least some amount of control, but quite obviously I had not. “I’m just not entirely sure that I need one.”
“You might not,” she answered easily.
I paused, slightly taken aback. “Well, I have to admit, that’s not exactly what I was expecting you to say.”
“I got that impression.”
“I’m sorry.” I apologized for my challenge. “That was pretty rude of me, wasn’t it?”
“Not really.” She shook her head and smiled. “You are simply voicing your anxiety.”
“I suppose you’ve dealt with worse.”
“Were I at liberty to do so, I could tell a few stories,” she chuckled.
“Okay, so now that we have the awkward moment out of the way, I guess I can assume Ben has filled you in on some things?” I posed the question without accusation.
“Yes. Some.” She nodded. “I will not lie to you. Benjamin and I have talked at length about your situation. I have even spoken with your wife.”
“The conspiracy grows,” I remarked flatly.
“That is one way to view it,” she returned. “Or you could look at the other side and see it as some people who care very deeply for you and are trying to help.”
“You’re right. That comment was unfair.”
“Fairness is somewhat subjective. It is all a matter of the individual perception.”
“So it’s okay for me to perceive that my wife and best friend have conspired against me? I thought that was considered paranoia.”
“It is perfectly natural to feel a sense of betrayal when a loved one disagrees with you on something such as this,” she explained. “But healthy individuals will reason it out and understand that they are not being betrayed at all. It would only be paranoia if you took it to the extreme.”
“So you don’t think I’ve taken it to the extreme?”
“Seriously, at this juncture, no I do not.” She took a drag from her cigarette and made it a point to exhale the smoke downwind before bringing her penetrating gaze back to my face. “To begin with, you are here and obviously no one is forcibly escorting you. Secondly, you are not visibly angry. Maybe a bit apprehensive… Some confusion… Yes, I can sense some definite confusion… But I do not really detect any fear. If anything, you are somewhat curious about what I think about everything I have been told thus far. All in all, I would have to say you are probably a perfectly rational human being. Of course, we have only been talking for a few minutes now. So I suppose I should reserve me judgment.”
At the end of her impromptu analysis, she gave me a disarming smile.
“Don’t you need to show me some ink blots or play some word association games with me before you can draw that conclusion?” I asked.
“I tend to trust my instincts,” she chuckled. “It would appear that you have as many misconceptions about psychiatrists as the general public have about Witches.”
“So Ben told you about that.” I offered the words more as an observation than a question.
“Of course, not that he needed to do so,” she explained. “You have made no secret of the fact and therefore have attracted more than your share of media coverage from your involvement with the Major Case Squad.”
She was correct. I had been the hot topic earlier this year in both print and broadcast media. Among the headlines were such things as “SELF PROCLAIMED WITCH AIDS POLICE IN MANHUNT” and “POLICE SEEK HELP FROM PAGAN PRACTITIONER.” There was usually a picture of me to accompany the story, so my faith and way of life weren’t exactly secret. The worst, however, had to have been the moniker coined by a local TV station news team. Ben, FBI Special Agent Constance Mandalay, and I had been dubbed the “Ghoul Squad.” That one, along with a video clip of the three of us at a particularly gruesome crime scene, had even made it into the national media pipeline.
“So the Witch thing doesn’t bother you?” I asked.
“Should it?” She raised an eyebrow and questioned me as much with her gaze as her words.
“No.” I shook my head. “But it did take some time to convince Ben, so I assumed maybe you might be…” I let my voice trail off as I searched for the least offensive phrase.
“…Just as closed minded?” She offered the words to me. “My brother is peculiar that way.”
“I thought so,” I agreed. “Especially for a Native American.”
“Benjamin never truly embraced his heritage,” she told me. “Only on the surface, culturally perhaps, though not completely in that respect either. And especially not deep down. Certainly not at a spiritual level. I cannot fault him for it; he has his reasons. But I can easily see where it would seem odd to you.”
It was obvious by the way she spoke that she was intimately familiar with the history to which Ben would occasionally allude, but never reveal. Still, she didn’t offer any further details, so I didn’t ask.
I said, “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You didn’t.” She shook her head and gave a slight shrug as she crushed out the remains of her cigarette. “With that said, however, what do you say we go inside and see if we can figure out just exactly what has been keeping you off balance as of late.”
The remainder of my time spent with Helen Storm was relaxing if nothing else. She was so easy to talk to that I actually felt calm and even partially grounded while we chatted in the comfort of her office. My earlier apprehension had melted quickly away, only to return for wholly separate reasons when the session came to an end.
While we hadn’t stumbled across any great revelations or uncovered any “ooga-boogas,” as she called them, lurking in my psyche, Helen felt that we had actually made some amount of progress. I just didn’t know exactly how much or of what type that progress was, and she didn’t elect to tell me.
Still, though it was hard for me to believe that simply talking with her for an hour could have such an effect, I wasn’t about to knock it. Without a doubt, I was actually looking forward to my next appointment with her.
“Jeezus fuck! I can’t believe this is happening!” an extremely agitated Ben Storm exclaimed as he came through my front door.
I’d barely managed to pull the barrier open in response to the repeated jangle of the doorbell that was coupled with an impatient knock. His six-foot-six frame was already in forward motion the moment I turned the knob.
“Well, hello to you too,” I said as I quickly sidestepped out of his way.
I was gnawing my way through yet another piece of nicotine gum and, for the moment, wasn’t feeling nearly as jittery as I had fifteen minutes before. I’d been home for several uneventful hours now and was actually in the process of throwing together dinner when Ben first assaulted the front doorbell. Felicity and I had intended to spend the evening going over our plans for the upcoming Yule ritual. Unfortunately, the frenzied tone of my friend told me that was about to change.
He completely ignored my jibe and using one of the handful of nicknames he’d assigned to my wife asked, “Is Firehair home?”
“Not yet, why?”
“Shit. She got ‘er cell phone with her?”
“Probably. What’s going on, Ben?”
“Well, we can’t wait, so ya’ better call ‘er and tell ‘er ta’ meet us. Make sure ya’ tell ‘er ta’ not even come home first.” He shot his hand up to rub his neck as he began to pace. “Jeezus she’s gonna freakin’ kill me for this.”
“Why not? Meet us where? What are you talking about?”
He didn’t seem to hear me and instead of answering simply muttered, “Dammit, white man, you are just too fuckin’ spooky.”
“BEN!” I exclaimed, raising my voice to capture his attention. “Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re going on about?”
He stopped and looked at me with a deadly serious gaze then shook his head. “Ya’know your little foray inta’ the world of sick poetry?”
“What about it?”
“Well the handwritin’ might not have belonged ta’ Paige Lawson, but it sure as shit belonged ta’ Debbie Schaeffer.”
“Debbie Schaeffer? Why does that name sound so familiar?”
“Because she’s been all over the friggin’ news. She’s the college cheerleader that went missin’ about two months ago.”
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
D-E-A-D-I-A-M!
What’s that spell?
Dead I am!
Louder!
Dead I am!
One more time!
DEAD I AM!
The words rang inside my skull with painful clarity, and the exuberance of the morbid cheer was now sharply obvious. Ben didn’t need to say anything more for me to know that Debbie Schaeffer was no longer a missing persons case. Her legacy now belonged to homicide and the Greater Saint Louis Major Case Squad.
“Where should I tell her to meet us?” I asked quietly as I turned toward the phone.
I had no doubt it was going to be a very long night, in more ways than one.