A striking brunette, Tina McCannon was lean and photogenic, one of the stars of the TV show Paradox PI. We’d met when the show came to town a few years ago, and I roped her and her colleagues into an interview, which turned into a live ghost-hunting session and a Ouija board séance that set New Moon on fire. We fixed it. Turned out, Tina was good at ghost hunting because she really was psychic. A year later, we both participated in a cabin-in-the-woods reality TV show that went very south very quickly. We survived, when not many of the original participants did. Made for a tight-knit club. She’d been one of my go-to resources on psychic phenomena ever since.
Tonight she was in jeans, T-shirt, and jacket. She paused at the doorway, searching. Her gaze lit up when she found me.
“Kitty!”
I squealed as we came together in a big, noisy hug there in the middle of the bar. I might have been a werewolf, but I had a monster-sized sentimental streak. The last time I saw Tina she was recovering from a gunshot wound in her gut. My friends and I, bound by our scars. And Ben and Cormac wondered why I worried so much.
“This place looks so much better when it isn’t on fire, doesn’t it?” she said.
Yes, yes it did. “I didn’t know you were going to be in town, why didn’t you call?”
“I knew you’d be here. I am psychic,” she added, a twinkle in her eye.
“Er. Right. Come in, sit. What’s up?”
Over at our table, Tina and Ben shared a friendly hug and traded mutual well wishes. Cormac looked on expectantly, patiently. I had to think for a minute—he’d been in prison when she came through town, hadn’t he?
“Um, Tina—this is Cormac.”
She blinked at him, then donned a sunny smile. “Hi, I’m Tina,” she said redundantly.
He smiled thinly, took a sip of beer.
“Um,” Tina said, leaning toward me. “There’s something weird going on with his aura.”
“There are two of them,” he said.
“Cormac and Amelia,” I said.
That weird subtle change came over Cormac as he spoke in a suddenly refined voice. “Hello, I’ve heard so much about you. Delighted to finally meet you. Um, Cormac would rather I step aside for the time being. But yes.”
“Oh. Hi. Yes, nice to meet you, too.” She nodded sagely, like she encountered this sort of thing all the time. And maybe she did. “So, I take it he’s—they’re—in on everything.”
Ah, how to explain Cormac and his role in all this in a dozen words or less? Without making him sound like a maniac?
“You could say that,” Ben said. Nailed it.
I made us all sit, and Tina asked a server for a glass of water.
“How are you? What brings you to Denver?” I asked.
“This was kind of last minute,” she said, wincing as if chagrined. “That’s why I didn’t call. I just got in my car and drove.”
“From L.A.?” I said.
“Yeah.” That wince again, like she knew it sounded crazy and couldn’t explain it to herself, much less me. “I need to talk to you.”
“You couldn’t have called? Not that I’m not happy to see you—but what’s wrong?”
“Would it be weird if I said I didn’t feel safe calling? I keep looking over my shoulder like someone’s following me. I just … I needed to see you, to make sure it was you, you know?”
That made a scary amount of sense. I exchanged a concerned glance with Ben. Cormac stud
ied the inside of his beer glass. It was that feeling again, that something was about to happen. So, it wasn’t just me.
“There’s something in the air, I think,” I said.
“Kitty—when was the last time you heard from Anastasia?” she asked.