Devil's Advocate Read online

  “Too bad.” Gerlach chewed his gum.

  “Yes, it will be too bad if this distraction results in another of our subjects breaking loose.

  “Control,” the angel said, “requires focus.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Beyond Beyond

  4:09 P.M.

  “Don’t freak out,” said Corinda.

  “I think it’s too late for that,” said Dana. “I’m way past being freaked.”

  They sat together at the table where Dana and Melissa usually sat. Corinda said she needed to be close to the coffee bar register and where she could see the front register in case she had to go help the part-time girl. There were fresh cups of tea and a plate of scones on the table, but Dana hadn’t touched them. Her pulse was beating as rapidly as machine-gun fire, and she was sweating badly. She also felt light-headed, as if this were all some kind of dream and she wasn’t fully awake.

  “How do you know about the murders?” demanded Dana. “How do you know about my dreams? How do you know any of this stuff?”

  Corinda picked up her cup, blew across the surface of the hot tea, and took a careful sip. Then she leaned over and took a deep inhalation of the vapors, her eyes closing for a moment. “Ahhh, that’s nice. This is my own special mixture. Lotus flower tea. The lotus is a sacred symbol of eternal life in all the important spiritual cultures, from modern Egyptian Kemeticism to ancient Hinduism and Buddhism. It helps cultivate spiritual enlightenment, transcendence, and devotional love. You can use any part of the lotus, but I love it with the stamens and petals.”

  Dana stared at her. “You’re talking about tea and my head’s about to explode.”

  Corinda nodded to the cup in front of Dana. “I made you special tea with chamomile to soothe your nerves, and rose petals, which are a wonderful way to help open the heart, calm the mind, relax the body, stabilize your aura.”

  “I’m leaving,” said Dana, but Corinda snaked out a hand and caught her arm. The woman was surprisingly fast, and her grip was strong.

  “No,” she said. “You need to stay and we need to have a conversation. I know you’ve seen him at night, in your room.”

  Dana thought about pulling away, and almost did, but she had to know. She heaved an eloquent sigh and settled back.

  “Drink your tea,” said Corinda. There was a deep, strange noise from the speakers, and it took Dana a moment to realize that it wasn’t feedback or distortion but was instead Australian folk music played on a didgeridoo. There was a whole display of those long, painted, hollowed-out wooden drone pipes in the front of the store. Melissa loved them, but Dana thought the music sounded like the kind of songs whales would play at funerals.

  She sipped the tea and looked at Corinda. “Tell me how you know what’s going on with me.”

  Corinda cocked her head to one side and gave Dana a considering look. “You do know where you are, right? I mean, you know what this place is, and who I am, and what I am? Look around. Tell me how you think I know about these things.”

  Dana actually did look around. At the racks of tarot cards and crystal balls and rune stones. At the shelves of books about spiritual channeling, sun signs, roads less traveled, about inner work and self-discovery, books about unlocking the mind and transcending the body. At the talisman jewelry and the icons that stood in ranks on every table. At the posters on the wall for classes in yoga, tai chi, meditation, aligning chakras, light therapy, rebirthing, primal screaming, pranayama, qigong, and more. When she turned back to Corinda, the tall woman wore a knowing smile.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s how.”

  Dana gave a stubborn shake of her head.

  Corinda sipped her own tea, then set the cup down firmly. “Last night when I was meditating, I was letting my consciousness rise free from my body. Do you know what astral projection is?”

  “I think so. Leaving your body? Something like that?”

  “Yes. Your spirit self leaves the physical behind and can travel great distances without assistance. The spirit undertakes a willful out-of-body experience, what we call an OBE, and once free of the body, the spirit expands beyond the limits of the five senses. It can see more, know more, understand more.”

  “And you’re saying this is what you do?”

  “All my life,” said Corinda. She gave a rueful grin. “It’s not the easiest way to grow up. It was bad enough being taller than every guy in my class and acing all my courses, but then I had to go and be deeply weird on top of it. But then … you know what that’s like, don’t you?”

  “Do I?” asked Dana, keeping her guard way up.

  “Sure,” said Corinda. She selected a scone, tapped crumbs off it, took a bite, and spoke as she chewed. “You ace your classes. You always have.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Corinda gave her a look. “I told you already. Don’t look like you’re totally shocked. You’re in my house and this is what I do. Now … give me your hands. Let me read you. It’s okay, I don’t bite. Come on.”

  Corinda set down her scone and reached across to take Dana’s hands. Dana resisted for a moment, then allowed the touch. Corinda’s hands were warm against Dana’s cold fingers.

  “How … how does this work?” asked Dana. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Just look into my eyes,” murmured Corinda. “Concentrate on me and allow me to step inside your energy field.”

  “How?”

  “Just allow it, honey. That’s all. I’ll do the heavy lifting.”

  “Um, okay?” It came out as a question.

  Corinda stared at her with green eyes that were flecked with chips of gold. She kneaded Dana’s fingers gently and steadily, as if working to soften stiff pieces of modeling clay. At first Dana was very aware of the people and movement around her and was certain she looked like a complete idiot, sitting here holding hands with a woman twice her age. But the soft, steady, constantly moving pressure of Corinda’s fingers on hers was strangely soothing. It was like a massage in a way, and the warmth seemed to spread, to run up her hands into her wrists and through the muscles of her arms. The Australian folk music ended and a new album began playing, one Dana recognized from past yoga classes. A somber flute played by Paul Horn, recorded inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, and it had a hypnotic quality. Slow and subtle and very deep.

  “I can see your spirit self, Dana,” said Corinda in a low, measured voice. “Your aura is orange-yellow. It means you have a scientific mind. You tend to analyze and overanalyze everything. You’re a perfectionist. You love to solve riddles and problems and to find order when everything seems chaotic.”

  Dana opened her mouth.

  “Shhhh. Just listen. Just be. Let me see what I can see and share what is open for me to share.” Corinda slowed and deepened her kneading motions. “My aura is blue. My gift is that of being a spiritual intuitive and clairvoyant. That’s why I can see all the way into you. I can see spikes of yellow shooting off you, Dana. They’re like solar flares. Yellow means that you are on the verge of a great spiritual awakening, and there is a circle of violet above your head, over your crown chakra. It tells me that your higher self has become very active. Your inner eye is struggling to open. Let it! Let your third eye see what your human eyes cannot. I’ll help you, Dana, because I already see. My third eye has been open since before I was born.”

  Dana felt herself drifting to the edge of sleep. She tried to blink herself fully awake, but that warm, constant touch was so soothing.

  “These visions aren’t new to you. You’ve had them before, but now they’re getting stronger—now they’re happening more often, and that’s scary. You saw something and you don’t know if it’s an angel or a devil. You don’t know why you’re having those visions, and you’re afraid of what it is you’re seeing. It’s okay, though. Let me be your guide. Nothing can hurt you while we’re together. I have my shields, my spirit guides and protectors all around me. This is a safe place.”

  “Safe…,” murmured Dana. r />
  “The being who has been visiting you in your dreams is an angel, Dana,” said Corinda. “He is a messenger who wants very badly to share important information with you. Nod if you understand that.”

  Dana nodded. She believed that, too.

  “Sometimes he is beautiful, the way you think an angel should look. Pure, whole, filled with glory.”

  Another nod.

  “But sometimes he appears as something else. Darker, stranger, frightening. A monster.”

  “Yes,” said Dana very, very softly.

  “Yes,” agreed Corinda. “I will tell you why, little sister. The being that is manifesting to you is an angelic being, but it is not an angel as you have been taught to think of one. They are not tall, blond white men with fluffy wings. They are not little babies. Angels are very powerful and very different from anything you can imagine. They are not human. They only appear human when we humans give them that form. They have no physical manifestations at all. They’re beings of pure cosmic energy. But when you look at them with your human eyes—even when dreaming—then your human, organic mind becomes confused and demands that you clothe them in a way that makes sense. That’s why angels have been depicted as beautiful and regal humans. It’s why painters have created images of God as a man with a white beard. They are clothing the cosmic All in the shape of a king, because that’s how they imagine kings to look.”

  Dana kept nodding.

  “You chose a form for the angel that looks beautiful and serene and safe,” continued Corinda. “It’s a father figure. I know you love and respect your father, but you’re also a little afraid of him. He’s strong and stern and distant, and so your angel appears to you with all those qualities. You give your angel a different face, though, because you want to love him in ways that you can’t love your own father, and that’s good—that’s safe and healthy. But it is you who are choosing that form.”

  Corinda’s words soothed as much as her touch, and Dana felt herself drifting, as if rising above her body. She even imagined she could look down and see herself sitting across from the woman.

  “Then the deaths started happening in town,” said Corinda. “Horrible deaths. Lives stolen away. Murders. That offends the harmony of your spiritual nature, Dana, and because you’re a sensitive, you have tapped into the negativity that is in the very air. But because you’re not yet aware of your gifts, not in full control of them, the negativity clouds your eye. It influences the way in which you perceive the celestial beings in your spirit-space. As the negativity covers you, you change the way in which you choose to view the angelic being. You see it as the devil, as Satan, because you cannot understand why harm can come to the innocent in the presence of cosmic power. For that to happen, it must be the angelic beings themselves that are doing the harm. But Dana … listen to me, this is not true. It isn’t the angelic entity that is causing all of this. That’s not what they do. The angelic beings are here as guides—they’re here to protect us and elevate us.”

  Inside Dana’s mind, the shape of the dark angel from her dream suddenly took shape. He stood facing away from her, tall and powerful, his black wings folded, muscular arms loose, fingers curled and tipped with black nails. He stood as if listening to what Corinda was saying, and then he began to turn. The wings twitched, and Dana could hear the rustle and rasp of the leather membranes.

  Dana, spoke the angel in a voice that rumbled like summer thunder. Dana, be careful. Be very careful. If you open your eyes, you can never unsee what you see.

  The dark angel turned and for a moment—for a fractured, flickering piece of a second—he wore the face of her father.

  Dana cried out and lunged backward from him, and in doing so tore her hands from Corinda’s grip. Her shoulders struck the partition between the booth and the register, hitting hard enough to knock something over. A calendar, maybe. She heard it slither down the partition and thwap onto the floor. The connection was snapped with the image of the dark angel and with Corinda, and the tall woman gasped and snatched her hands back as if stung.

  They sat there, both frozen, staring at each other. Corinda looked shocked at first, but she composed her features very quickly, and even managed a smile.

  “Well,” she said, “that was something, wasn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 28

  Beyond Beyond

  4:31 P.M.

  “What are you guys talking about?”

  Dana jumped and turned to see Melissa standing beside the table. She hadn’t even heard her sister approach.

  “God! You scared the life out of me,” gasped Dana.

  Melissa raised her eyebrows. “Looks to me like you were already scared silly. You’re white as a ghost. Move over. Are those fresh scones? I’m famished.” She sat down and hip-checked Dana across the bench seat, took a scone, and bit off a large chunk, then nodded to Corinda. “You spooking my baby sister?”

  “Only a little,” said Corinda. “Dana’s been doing a good job of spooking herself.”

  “Oh, I’m way past being spooked,” said Dana with a nervous laugh. “I’m way, way, way freaked out.”

  “Tell me everything,” said Melissa, taking Dana’s cup and finishing the last of her cold tea.

  “I had visions of some disturbing things that have been going on in Dana’s spiritual mind,” said Corinda. “But you already know about that, don’t you? Yes. I can tell that she’s shared this with you.”

  Melissa did not even blink when Corinda said that. Instead she nodded. “She tells me everything. How’d you know? Cards? Crystal gazing?”

  “Meditation and astral projection,” said Corinda.

  “So cool. And you got inside Dana’s head?”

  “I’m actually right here, you know,” said Dana.

  Melissa elbowed her gently. “Tell me everything.”

  They did. Or at least Corinda did, and Dana grunted and nodded at all the appropriate places. Some of what Corinda said to Melissa was phrased differently, using even more of the often hard-to-follow language of the new age. The gist was the same, though.

  Melissa leaned forward, her eyes wide and bright. “You think Maisie was murdered?” she said in a shocked whisper. “Oh my God!”

  “That’s what Ethan thinks,” said Dana. “His uncle seems to think so, too. Maisie and the other teens.”

  “You think they’re right about this?” asked Melissa. “I mean, this can’t be true, can it?”

  “It’s true,” replied Corinda. “Dana knows it on a soul level. The murdered kids are reaching out to her, using her sensitivity to share their story. To reveal the truth. That’s why Maisie appeared to her at school.”

  “We have to tell people,” declared Melissa. “We have to tell the sheriff and, well … everyone.”

  “No,” said Dana and Corinda at the same time.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’ll think I’m actually certifiably insane,” said Dana.

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Corinda. “People have thought I’m an oddball since I was three years old. Who cares? It’s just proof of their small minds and the blinders they choose to wear. No, girls, the reason we don’t tell anyone about this, not yet at least, is that we don’t know who the killer is.”

  “Which is why we have to tell the police,” insisted Melissa.

  “No,” said Dana, getting where Corinda was going with this.

  “Why not?” asked her sister.

  “Because,” said Dana, “if we tell the police, the killer will know that we know.”

  Melissa said, “Again, so what? We don’t know who the killer is, so it’s not like we’re ratting on anyone in particular. We’re not naming names.”

  “The killer won’t know that,” said Dana. “If it gets out that we know this because I’ve had some kind of weird psychic flash, or that Ethan told me about his uncle’s case files, then the killer’s going to wonder what else I know. He’s going to wonder what happens if I have a dream of his face or his name, and he’s going
to have to do something about that.”

  “Yes,” said Corinda quietly. “It would focus all his attention on you, Dana.”

  “I wish you could grab more details out of your visions,” said Melissa. “Like maybe a name, an address. Anything.”

  “It takes time,” said Corinda, “even for me. There has to be a proper alignment of universal factors for these things to come to me.”

  “I wish I understood what was happening to me,” responded Dana.

  “Visions aren’t usually that precise,” said Corinda. “They’re often clouded with symbolism and all sorts of cryptic elements.”

  “It’s driving me nuts,” said Dana.

  Corinda swirled the cold tea in her cup. “You joke, but visions have broken a lot of minds over the centuries.”

  “And gotten some burned at the stake, I bet.”

  “That, too. And while we don’t have to worry about that kind of thing, the reaction by the unenlightened is often negative and hostile. You saw some of that in the gym yesterday.”

  Dana glanced at her. “The fact that you know that is really creepy.”

  Corinda looked pained. “I know. I’ve been creeping people out all my life. It’s not fun. Those of us with gifts are often made to feel like we’re evil, or sinful or wrong because this is part of who we are. However, I don’t recall asking for this burden, and I suspect you didn’t, either.”

  “Not on your life,” said Dana. “Not in a million years.”

  “Which leaves us right where we were,” said Melissa.

  They sat and thought about it for a bit as the flow of people in and out of Beyond Beyond continued with the regularity of a tide. Angelo walked past carrying a red metal toolbox. He glanced at them, and Dana met his eyes. It was only for a brief moment, but there was an electric connection that she felt all the way down to her toes. His face was serious, unsmiling, almost troubled, and as soon as he noticed her looking at him, his gaze darted away. Why? Was he embarrassed? Did he not like what he saw? Was there something about her? Dana didn’t know. Whatever it was, Angelo moved away quickly and vanished into the back.