“What did you do that for?” Evie swiped her nimbus of curls off her forehead, giving him a clearer view of the crystalline fury of her eyes.
“You’re barefoot.” He pointed out the obvious. “Where’s the broom?”
“You want me to fly out on it?”
It took a moment before he realized that they had two different ideas of the uses for a broom. If he picked up a stick, she’d see it as a magic wand, while he’d fling it for a dog to fetch. They not only operated out of different sides of their brains but in alternate universes.
The realization was most illuminating.
The ancient waitress arrived with, presumably, a normal broom to sweep up the glass.
Loretta interrupted before he had to reply, directing her horror at the women. “Did yousee? I don’t know how he makes tree limbs fall or glasses fly, but he wants me dead.”
He who? Was his ward as crazy as the women she’d run to? Or were the women persuading Loretta she was in danger?
Before he could question, the genie shrugged.
“Jaxprotectedyou. Glasses can’t kill. No one here is trying to murder you. You have ghosts.” Evangeline glanced at him, waiting for him to defy her.
Raising his eyebrows at this entertaining defense, Jax simply waited for the rest of the performance. He’d give her enough rope to hang herself with.
When he didn’t object, Evie continued explaining, presumably for his benefit as well as for his skeptical ward. “You need to understand that ghosts are a life essence, a form of energy. A protoplasmic field doesn’t normally have the ability to zip about as we do. It takes most of a ghost’s energy just to materialize. If the ghost experienced a great deal of trauma or passion in dying, that energy might be triggered by the place of death or a person related to the phenomenon.”
Loretta frowned. “You’re saying you saw aghostthrow the glass and try to kill me?”
“No, I’m saying the spirit used all its energy following you and hasn’t the ability to communicate more. Since you can’t see it, I think it’s trying to catch your attention. I don’t believe your life is in danger.”
Loretta looked rightfully dubious. “A ghost broke the glass to get my attention?”
“That, and in frustration from not being able to communicate. That might be the cause of the other accidents you told me about.” Using her bare toes, Evangeline spun on the stool Jax had placed her on.
“Can you tell who the ghost is?” Loretta asked dubiously. “I don’t know any dead people.”
Unable to figure out her objective, Jax waited to see how the genie would reply.
“No, I can’t. He seems adamant about disliking Mr. Jackson, but he can’t express why. We’ll let him gather his energy again and maybe we can hold a séance.”
“Or use a Ouija board,” Mavis suggested. “You’re fairly good at wielding that, and it would take less energy.”
“It will have to wait until this evening,” Evie warned. “The others had to go back to work.” She spun to glare at him. “Unless Mr. Jackson here has some notion of anyone who might hate him and be trying to reach him from beyond.”
Jax rubbed his forehead. The women must have practiced this routine a thousand times to repeat it without sounding foolish. Or they were damned good actresses. “Contrary to popular thought, I am only a lawyer. I do not kill people. I want to be there for your performance.”
His techie team would get to the bottom of this soon enough. Still, Jax didn’t want to be the big bad wolf in Loretta’s eyes. He knew the horrifying experience of being orphaned. It was the reason he’d taken this account. So he erred on the side of caution—he’d have to play along, until he’d reeled in the fish and had evidence.
He wouldn’t be so easy on Evie and Mavis. For the first time incenturies,he would prove the Malcolms were criminal frauds.
* * *
“Why can’twe talk to the ghost now?” Loretta asked, striving to keep the plea out of her voice as she sat cross-legged on Aunt Val’s colorful carpet.
It had been a long afternoon of Jax Jackson hovering like a thundercloud while Loretta refused to speak to him. The only way Evie had been able to pry out Loretta’s story so her lawyer could hear it was to ask questions about the incidents the child swore had endangered her life. Falling tree limbs and flowerpots dropping from balconies definitely sounded like poltergeist energy to Evie. Since the energy was evidently directed at Loretta, the child had every right to think she was a target.
The matter of John and Tiffany Post’s deaths was a different tale entirely. Jax had been even less communicative than Loretta. Evie was still contemplating rummaging for the lampshade.
In her experience, communication was vital—from both sides of the veil. Observation was what she did best, although people seldom appreciated that fact. It took skill to read auras. Pulling together all the puzzle pieces from everything she learned was her next best trait. Pulling facts from mule-headed subjects... not so much. Which was why she’d learned to study what her senses told her.
Focusing on the Ouija board set up at a card table, Evie let her teacher sister answer Loretta’s demands.