Page 15 of Power of the Mind
“No.”
“Grab a coffee somewhere? Have a long chat?”
“I should… work.”
“It’s Saturday.”
I grunted for lack of knowing what else to say.
“Do you want me to leave?”
No, I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted him to stay and talk. I wanted to hear his voice as he chattered on about everything and nothing. I wanted to inhale his scent. I wanted to tell him how much it killed me to see him with other men at the club. How much I hated it when he brought them home.
I wanted to be a different man. One who was datable. One without a mountain of issues.
“I’ll call you if I find anything.”
“Call me even if you don’t.”
I grunted.
Sighing, Tallus rose. “Dismissed as always. I’ll pretend it doesn’t break my heart.”
What did that mean?
Before heading out the door, Tallus brushed a hand over my hair, tipping my head so I looked up. “Don’t be a stranger, Guns.”
I remained quiet. His attention was all over my face. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I felt like a bug under a microscope.
In the end, Tallus winked seductively, blew an air-kiss, and was gone.
4
Diem
Fucking mind control. Jesus H Christ. What the hell was I doing? Talk about being led around by the dick and balls. What had happened to my backbone? I needed to seriously reevaluate my self-worth and figure out why I couldn’t say no to Tallus Domingo.
I wasn’t sure if I dove into investigating his convoluted theory because I was curious about Madame Rowena or wanted a reason to call Tallus sooner than later—not that I was any good at talking on the phone.
Either way, I spent the rest of my Saturday on the computer.
I didn’t care what people claimed or believed when it came to psychics. I didn’t care if Amber’s brother or Allan’s neighbor were convinced mind control was responsible for killing them. I didn’t give two shits if the CIA was one day going to use our cell phones to get inside our brains and turn us into a bunch of mindless drones. In my opinion, it was all bullshit.
My focus was on Rowena Fitspatrick and performing as thorough a background check as I could to prove to Tallus she was a regular, everyday quack psychic with no special abilities, and Memphis—God I hated Memphis—was safe to have his fucking palm read, or whatever the fuck he wanted to have done.
What a waste of money. Idiot.
It should have been a no-brainer, but less than ten minutes into my search, my job became complicated. My mind grew uneasy. It turned out sixty-five-year-old Rowena Fitspatrick had a list of extortion and fraud charges on her file a mile and a half long, some dating back to the late seventies when she was a spry seventeen-year-old college student sporting bell-bottoms, a psychedelic lantern-sleeved shirt, and platform shoes—I’d found pictures.
The woman had spent time in prison, and it had nothing to do with the murder charge Tallus had glazed over.
In seventy-eight, the woman had been arrested for witchcraft fortune telling—a criminal charge I didn’t know existed until I looked it up. In eighty-four, it was extortion of over five thousand dollars. She had manipulated victims into believing something bad would happen to them unless they paid her a remittance fee upfront for her to rid them of theircurses. Rowena had spent eighteen months in prison for that offense.
Tallus had found the incident in eighty-six, when Rowena was going by her married name, Hilty, and the stage name Madame Fitz. She and her husband, William Hilty, were doing mobile sideshow performances across the province and latching onto county and city fairs when they could. A psychic and hypnotist duo. Neither were licensed—which the police believed was why they took their show on the road, hoping authorities wouldn’t catch up with them and throw them both in the slammer. It had happened anyway when two men from Scarborough endedup dead under suspicious circumstances following one of their performances.
Reading up on the incident, I was flabbergasted. It wasn’t that I hadn’t believed Tallus, but I was convinced he had embellished the story to earn my cooperation. He hadn’t.
An honest-to-god trial had taken place, accusing Rowena and William Hilty of mind-controlling the victims and causing their deaths. There had been an uproar in the community. Due to the nature of the charges, there had been plenty of news coverage. In the end, the judge threw the case out—because of course he fucking did—and the married couple went free. Although, both accused had been fined for practicing without licenses.