After Moonrise Read online

  Both women smiled knowingly back at him.

  He considered pouring more Scotch into his tea. Instead, he faced Lana. “So, that’s the bottom line? I have to move through positive emotions to find this killer?”

  “That’s the bottom line,” Lana agreed. “Like you, the guy is a fish out of water when he’s not attached to hate and fear and pain. Let Aubrey show you how to flank him through joy and love and happiness.”

  “Flank him, huh? I knew you were a Russian spy,” Raef muttered.

  Lana grinned. “Here’s the good news. All human soul are designed to accept love and happiness and joy, or at least they are if they can let go of their attachments to hate and fear and pain. And you’re human, even though you are a man. Good luck. You’ll need it.” Lana waved a goodbye to Lauren and then disconnected the Skype call.

  Raef and Lauren sat in silence, watching the screen saver come on—a series of pictures of a North Side beach house in Grand Cayman where he vacationed every year. At that moment Raef wished desperately he had his ass in the sand and a cold beer in his hand.

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  Lauren’s question seemed loud and out of place, but weirdly enough Raef thought he knew exactly what she was asking.

  “You mean the part about all human souls being designed to accept love and happiness and joy?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  “I don’t think I do, either, but I can promise you Aubrey would think it’s true—even now. Even dead.”

  He looked at her and saw how tired she was and how dark and sunken her blue eyes were. “I guess it’s a good thing Aubrey’s leading this hunt, then.”

  “She won’t be doing anything for a while. When he jerks her back like that, so hard and so painful, it takes a lot out of her and she doesn’t manifest for hours, sometimes a whole day.”

  “It takes a lot out of you, too,” Raef said.

  Lauren shrugged. “I’m still alive.”

  “You need to rest. Let me take you home, or to your mom’s. Whichever you’d rather,” he said, disconcerted by how hollow the thought of Lauren being not alive made him feel.

  “Thanks. You’re right. I’m exhausted. You can take me to my home. Not my mother’s. Never my mother’s, no matter how out of it I am.”

  “You’re not out of it. Actually, I think you’re doing pretty damn well for someone who’s being soul sucked by a serial killer.”

  Lauren smiled as they walked back to the car. “That shouldn’t make me feel better, but it kinda does.”

  “Hey, that’s me. Mr. Warm and Fuzzy.”

  Lauren laughed then, and Raef was taken aback by how much she suddenly reminded him of Aubrey—so taken aback that he didn’t have much to say as he drove the short way to Lauren’s house, which was in the Brookside area of Midtown Tulsa, just a few miles away.

  When he pulled up in front of the neat little bungalow, Lauren said, “Thanks, Raef. I guess I’ll see you soon.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Let me do some digging about this soul-sucking crap and then you and I will take another whack at working with Aubrey.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.”

  Raef went around and opened her car door for her, and when she hesitated, obviously gathering her energy to get out of the car, Raef took her arm and guided her to her feet.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be fine from here.”

  “I’m going to make sure you stay that way,” he said.

  Lauren looked up at him, and as their eyes met and held, Raef felt a sensation deep inside him—one he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.

  “I believe in you,” Lauren said, eerily echoing her twin. Then she went up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek softly before turning away from him and going into her dark house and leaving Raef to drive away rubbing his cheek and muttering, “Cluster fuck…a total goat-herding, cat-roping cluster fuck…”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Raef didn’t go home. Instead, still muttering to himself about unnatural disasters, he stopped by his After Moonrise office and grabbed some Psy books from a very surprised Vivian Peterson, who was their resident expert on ghosts.

  Raef didn’t like her. Never had. She was just too damn ooie-ooie. Her hair was green, for God’s sake.

  On the way back to the house he stopped for take-out pizza at the Pie Hole and a six-pack of Blue Moon beer—both the liquor store and the pizza place were within walking distance of his house.

  “Which is just one of reasons this place is so perfect for me.” Raef sighed with contentment as he chugged the first bottle of beer between bites of the Everything Pie Hole Special. He didn’t open the first research book until he’d worked his way through half of the pie and half of the six-pack. Then he started reading.

  Within fifteen minutes he was shaking his head and opening another beer. He flipped through the chapters of the first book, The Spirit Hunter’s Guide, reading quickly. “‘Possession, succubus infestation, poltergeists, noxious aroma invasions…’” Raef read aloud. “This ghost stuff is some seriously not right shit.” He swigged another beer and tossed that book aside, picking up a slimmer volume titled Shamanic Retrieval. Paging through it Raef found essays sectioned off with the titles “Soul Theft and Loss,” “Souls Lost to Love” and finally “Retrieving a Stolen Soul.”

  “About damn time,” he said under his breath and began to read.

  Retrieving a stolen soul must be done with skill and care. Remember, we must act in harmony with the universe—harming others, even others who have stolen souls, puts us out of harmony.

  Raef snorted. “Like I give a fuck?” He kept reading.

  Soul thieves usually take spirits because they believe they need the power to live. This is rarely true. Only one psychic in thousands can actually feed from the energy of another’s soul. The problem is some less than scrupulous psychics can convince themselves that they can use the power of another—therein you find a soul thief.

  “The problem is the asshole I’m dealing with can feed from souls.” Raef continued.

  Because of the power attachment to the stolen soul, it is complicated to convince the thief to release it. There are two basic ways to attempt, with responsibility to universal order, to retrieve a stolen soul.

  Then in bold writing Raef read:

  1) Offer the thief a gift to replace the soul. Sometimes an animal spirit can be traded for the human soul.

  “That sucks for the poor dog,” Raef said.

  2) Trick the thief by distracting him or her, and then pull the soul away yourself. Of course, this takes the well-honed skills of a shaman or a medium, and should not be attempted by a psychic with a different Gift. To do so may cause harm to the thief and, possibly, the stolen soul, as well as the inexperienced psychic.

  Raef sat back, sipping his beer and thinking. Should he bring in another psychic like Lana? He didn’t give a shit about the thief’s safety—the guy was a killer. Even though he’d rather not get his own ass in a bind, he wasn’t particularly worried about himself. Raef had been handling his own shit for decades. He did care about Aubrey, as well as her sister—which was almost as irritating as it was unusual.

  It just wasn’t normal for him to care.

  “Hell, this isn’t a normal case,” he reasoned aloud. “And this isn’t a normal soul stealing, either,” Raef rationalized aloud. “It’s a murder. The soul part is only secondary. So, the ooie-ooie crap needs to take second place to the murder. And I’m the right man to take care of the murder part.” He reread number two. “‘Trick the thief by distracting him or her, and then pull the soul away yourself.’ How ’bout I do the distracting, like get this guy arrested and put away for life, and Aubrey just runs like hell—so to speak.”

  Nodding to himself, Raef paged through, skipping the sections on “Restoring a Soul’s Light” and “Finding Shattered Souls,” but stopping at the heading “Retrieving So
uls from the Land of the Dead.”

  The Land of the Dead is not the equivalent of a Christian heaven or hell. It is not one of the three layers of the Otherworld. It is a place for lost and broken souls—be they dead or alive. It is a dangerous place, even for a trained shaman or medium. It’s filled with hopelessness. Sometimes shattered souls can be found there. Sometimes soul thieves choose the Land of the Dead as a holding place for their victims. Whether you are healing a shattered soul or retrieving a stolen one, enter the Land of the Dead without protection and experience, and you risk becoming lost, too.

  “Jackpot!” Raef said. “Definitely sounds like the place I need to go.” He skipped the rest of the warnings and went straight to the heading titled “Entering the Land of the Dead.”

  Begin by lighting a candle. You are seeking shadow and smoke, death and darkness, you will need to keep a light close to you, both figuratively and literally.

  Reluctantly, Raef got up and went to his bedroom where he always kept a vanilla candle ready to burn. He used to like the way the candlelight flickered off his wife’s smooth skin. Kathy had been lush and sexy, and the warm light of a flame used to make her look like a love goddess come to earth. Of course, he hadn’t actually burned the damn candle in years, not since his wife had decided she couldn’t live with his job—or in her words, I can’t stand what your job does to you, Raef. It makes you sad, and nothing I do ever changes that.

  Raef paused halfway back to the living room, candle in hand. “Why the fuck am I thinking about that? Kathy’s been gone five years. The candle only stayed because I like the way it smells.” Raef stifled a sigh of annoyance. So, yeah, it would be nice to see another naked woman in candlelight, but that hadn’t happened in a long time. “Too long,” he said as he lit the vanilla candle and picked up the book and the beer again. “All right, what next?”

  Shamanic battles of life and death can happen in the Land of the Dead. If you attempt to go there you must be skilled and courageous and well protected.

  “Yeah, yeah, get to it,” he mumbled.

  The Land of the Dead can be found past the Otherworld boundary. Think of the Otherworld as if it were an ancient map when man believed the world was flat, and if you went too far you fell off into nothingness. That nothingness is the Land of the Dead.

  To find it, keep the light of your candle strong in your mind’s eye. Then begin to meditate upon the reason for your quest. A shaman or medium can Track a soul with the help of his or her Gift.

  “Huh.” Raef snorted. “I’m not an ooie-ooie shaman or a medium, but I can Track things. Usually murderers, but whatever. Nothing is normal about this case. Maybe I can Track more than I thought I could, or at least when it comes to Aubrey and Lauren maybe I can.” He kept reading.

  Know that once you have Tracked the soul to the Land of the Dead, your psychic Gift will cease to work. You must use mortal guile and your own wisdom to retrieve the lost one.

  “First good news I’ve heard yet,” he said, chuckling softly.

  Raef closed the book and looked at the candle. He stared at the flame until it seemed as if the light was burned into his mind.

  Then he began thinking of Aubrey.

  She made him feel joy.

  She laughed. She laughed a lot, especially for a dead girl.

  She was blonde and beautiful and had a sparkle that even death couldn’t dim.

  She called him Kent. No one called him Kent.

  Raef closed his eyes, held the light in his mind and Aubrey in his heart and, just as he did at a murder scene, began to feel around with his Gift…seeking…questing…searching.... Only this time he wasn’t trying to Track rage and fear and pain. This time he was questing after a sparkling blonde whose laughter reminded him of champagne.

  When he actually found her it jolted him with surprise. Murder victims he’d Tracked before had led him to their killers with dark, smoking trails—or rivers of pain and hatred like oil slicks. Aubrey’s trail was a shimmering thread of joy that flickered bright and then dim. Why? he wondered. What’s going on with her? Then he recognized the dimming—he’d seen it before; it was worry. Raef reached with his Gift to grab on and Track the illusive, glittering thread, but instead of Tracking he felt an already familiar sensation pass over his skin, and her voice, somewhere between annoyed and surprised, sounded in the air around him.

  “Kent, what are you doing?”

  He opened his eyes. Aubrey had materialized in front of him, between the couch and the old steamer trunk he used as a coffee table. It had gotten dark while he’d been reading, and the living room was dim—the only real light cast by the vanilla candle. The lack of light agreed with Aubrey. She looked almost substantial, and Raef noticed she was wearing only a slip of a dress, one of those silk things that laced up the front and hugged women’s curves so well. And Aubrey had some serious curves to hug.

  The joy that had been dimmed by worry sparkled alight as Aubrey cocked her head to the side, studied him and then began to laugh. Her laughter skittered across his skin, raising the hair on his forearms, and calling alive sensations that had been dead within him a lot longer than Aubrey had been.

  “What?” he said, scrubbing a hand roughly across a forearm. “Why are you laughing?”

  “’Cause I just realized what you’re doing.”

  She grinned, but didn’t continue until he prodded, “And what do you think I’m doing?”

  “It’s not think, Kent. It’s know. I know you’re checking me out.”

  Raef frowned, trying to ignore the crackle of humor that lifted around her and washed against him. “That’s not what I was doing before you showed up, and why does that make you laugh?”

  “Because it means your love life is even deader than me.” She giggled.

  “That’s not funny,” Raef said. “And before you showed up I was trying to Tr—”

  “No!” For a moment she sounded frantic, and the humor that had been bubbling around him faded. Then, she reached up and took hold of one of the diaphanous laces that held the front of her dress together. Aubrey smiled teasingly at him. “No, let’s not go there. If we go there, then I’ll have to leave, and neither of us wants that. How about we go here instead.” With one deft pull, she undid the tie and the lacing fell open, exposing her naked flesh.

  “You’re naked!” Raef blurted, and then mentally smacked himself. Were boobs all it really took to make me forget she’s dead?

  “No, I’m naked under this.” Aubrey slowly ran her hands down the front of the silk dress, lingering over her breasts until her nipples began to harden. She gasped in pleasure. “Wow—” her voice was a breathy whisper “—I feel amazing.” Still touching herself, Aubrey half walked, half floated closer to him. “You can feel me, Kent. I know you can.”

  She was only an arm’s length from him, and she was so fucking sexy there in the candlelight, all skin and lush curves and nipples that were tight and ripe and ready for his tongue. Raef reached for her, and felt a shock and a chill when his hand met with nothing but air.

  Her laugher bubbled around them. “Not like that, silly! Feel me in there.” Aubrey took one hand from her body, leaned forward and pressed her hand against his chest, over his heart.

  He didn’t feel the pressure from her hand. He didn’t feel anything except her laughter and his raging hard-on. “I don’t feel shit! You’re a ghost. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

  “I’ve made you feel before. I can do it again, and it’s important that you do. It’s the only way we can move forward. The only way we can fix what’s wrong.” She was standing right before him. Her hands went to one of the loosened laces of her dress. She tugged again, this time harder, and the silk slid through, opening the dress completely. With a teasing smile she shrugged her shoulders and it slid from her body to pool in a semisubstantial puddle at her feet.

  “Oh, God. You are so damn beautiful,” Raef couldn’t stop himself from saying.

  “Then feel me, Kent. Let go of all
of that baggage you have because of the past, and allow yourself to feel pleasure again.” Aubrey caressed her breasts. Then slowly, she moved one hand down her body, over the curve of her belly, and slid her fingers under the triangle of blond curls between her legs.

  Raef couldn’t take his gaze from her. His body was aching in hot, hard response. Automatically, he rubbed his hand over his jeans and down the long length of his swollen cock.

  “Yes! Let me see you. Let me watch you.”

  “Then let me feel you!”

  “Kent, baby, you can do that yourself. Just let it happen. Let go of the past and be willing to feel pleasure in the present.”

  “Yeah, okay. Anything,” he said. “I let go of all that crap.”

  “Why? Tell me why,” Aubrey whispered.

  “Because I want to feel pleasure. With you!” He almost shouted the words.

  As soon as he’d spoken it hit him—her emotions. He’d felt her laughter before. He’d even felt her joy. But what he was feeling now sliced through him like a sword: joy, laughter, lust, desire, pleasure, all wrapped together. The emotions entwined and implanted within him. Raef ripped open the front of his jeans and took his cock in his hand, stroking himself as he watched her blue eyes widen.

  “You are incredible!” Aubrey said. “And you do feel me.”

  “I do feel you,” he gasped. “I feel what you do to yourself. I feel what you do to me.”

  “Then feel this....” Aubrey’s gaze never left his as her fingers moved more quickly over herself. Raef was staring into her eyes as they both came to orgasm—he was still staring at her when she whispered, “This makes you closer to me, and the closer to me you get, the closer you’ll be to finding him. But you can’t do it through negative emotions. You have to Track him through the opposite—joy and pleasure, happiness and hope. He can’t fight that, and he won’t be able to stop you from—”