Dreams of Jeannie and Other Stories.

Catherine Dain.

Dreams of Jeannie

A New Age Mystery

Mariana Morgan has been the protagonist of two New Age mystery novels, one (Angel in the Dark) in which she had to develop her psychic powers to solve her husband's murder, and a second that picks up her life after she has become a professional psychic, when she uses those powers to search for her missing brother and solve a murder that occurs at Enchantment, the metaphysical store where she works. The events of this story take place shortly after the time of Darkness at the Door.

"I am so tired of clients insisting that their dreams of a terrorist attack are clairvoyant," Mariana snapped. "The dreams are the body's attempts to call attention to stress. Personal stress combined with the anxiety of the collective unconscious, that's all. How long is it going to take before we go on to the next fad?"

She leaned against the jewelry counter, hoping for some attention, but Deirdre was devoting herself to polishing earrings and didn't look up. Deirdre ran Enchantment, a small store and metaphysical center, with impressive attention to detail.

"Well, the sleeping-with-Bill dreams persisted a couple of years after his presidency ended," Deirdre answered calmly. "So I think we're going to be hearing about terrorists for a while. You'd better find a way to deal with your own stress so you can nod and listen when your clients express theirs. Right now, I suggest you go outside, take a psychic shower, clear your chakras, and come in again."

Mariana straightened up, uncertain whether to follow Deirdre's advice or argue with her. Clearing her chakras before the next client arrived for a psychic reading was a good idea. But she had half an hour, and arguing felt more satisfying.

"Why don't you hold a workshop on dreams?" she asked. "Teach people something instead of letting them muddle through on their own."

"Why don't you?" Deirdre responded.

"Because I don't know enough about dreams. I can give people intuitive help, but I don't know theory, so I can't teach them to help themselves. You can."

"All right." Deirdre finished polishing the silver moon-and-stars earrings she had been working on and removed the polishing glove from her left hand. She looked up at Mariana, giving her full attention. "Tell me what you've been dreaming."

"Not about terrorists." Mariana hesitated. Deirdre waited expectantly. "I dreamed about Tim dying again. And I dreamed about Marion Zimmer Bradley. And I dreamed about an earthquake."

"What did you dream about Marion Zimmer Bradley?" Deirdre was suddenly interested. Although the writer had been dead for several years, her books still sold well. Deirdre had limited shelf s.p.a.ce for books, since she had a better mark-up on jewelry, crystals, incense, and other such items for New Age-minded shoppers, but she always had at least one copy of Mists of Avalon in stock.

"I dreamed I was standing in line with a group of other women, waiting to hear a great teacher speak. We were outside a temple, and the weather was warm. I could feel the perspiration on my skin. When we were allowed inside, the speaker turned out to be Marion Zimmer Bradley. But she was young, and she wasn't obese," Mariana said.

"How do you feel about Marion Zimmer Bradley?"

"I love her books."

"Okay," Deirdre said, "so either you had an out-of-body experience in which you went to hear her speak in the spirit world because the message in her books means something to you, and you wanted more, or your Higher Consciousness took her form to tell you something."

"I think I was really there. Do astral bodies sweat?"

"Why not? People cry astral tears in their dreams, why not sweat astral beads of perspiration? Do you remember what she told you?" Deirdre asked.

"No."

Deirdre shook her head with impatience.

"Ask for another dream about her, and this time remember. The message might be important-like about writing a great book. And you know why you dream about Tim dying."

"I know. Because I still miss him," Mariana said. "I know he has gone on, which is why he doesn't talk to me as often, but I still miss him. I don't know about asking for a dream about Marion Zimmer Bradley. You're better at asking for dreams than I am. My subconscious doesn't seem to pay attention. Anyway, why would Marion Zimmer Bradley give me a message about a great book?"

"Why not?" Deirdre said again. "Especially if it was just your Higher Consciousness appearing as Marion Zimmer Bradley. Your Higher Consciousness might think it's time for you to use your talent. And if you want to control your dreams, you have to practice."

This time Mariana shook her head.

"Maybe. All right. What about the earthquake?"

"This is Southern California. Wait long enough, there will be an earthquake, and then it will be a clairvoyant dream. Maybe it was nothing more than a truck going by outside, and the rumble became an earthquake in your dream consciousness. Otherwise known as random firing of synapses in your brain. Or maybe something-maybe someone-is coming to shake up your life."

"I could have come up with that myself. And I really don't want my life shaken up, thank you very much. I think I'll go clear my chakras."

Mariana pushed through the gla.s.s doors and left the shop. What she saw outside was so unattractive that she almost changed her mind. Mini-mall parking lots are seldom aesthetically pleasing, and the one in front of Enchantment was no exception. On this day the heavy marine layer, Southern California June gloom extending into July, had added a gray glaze to the picture. Cars, a few people, a street, and another mini-mall on the other side. All the colors muted, slightly drab. Maybe she could use some change in her life.

She sat down on a bench, took off her sandals so that her feet could feel the energy of the narrow strip of gra.s.s between cement and asphalt, and closed her eyes. Visualizing a waterfall of drops all the colors of the rainbow, flowing through her body, clearing her energy centers, helped more than she thought it would. When she opened her eyes, she was ready to go back to the store and see her next client.

"Mariana? I'm Jeannie Cullen, and I'm early. Can we start now?" A woman was standing between the bench and the door, barring Mariana's way. The woman's dark brown hair was wild and frizzed, and her face was flushed from crying. She was wearing a yellow tunic top that didn't go well with her blue and green floral slacks, as if she had dressed in what her hand grabbed from the closet, without paying attention. But even those colors were muted by the gray of the day.

"Of course, Jeannie," Mariana answered, allowing herself a slight twinge of annoyance that her break was over almost before it began. "Come on in the store, let me get a cup of tea, and we'll start."

Deirdre looked up and nodded as they entered.

"Okay?" she asked.

"More or less," Mariana replied.

She slipped behind the counter, dropped a bag of spicy herb tea into a cup, added hot water from the red-topped spout on the dispenser, and slipped back to the customer side.

"Follow me," she said to the distraught woman waiting for her.

Beyond the book section at the back of the store, a hallway led to a combination office and storeroom for Deirdre, two offices that she rented out, the reading room, and a larger room where evening cla.s.ses were offered.

Mariana ushered Jeannie into the reading room, which wasn't much more than a large closet with a small, round table, two chairs, a framed poster of frolicking dolphins, and a potted plant that somehow managed to sustain itself in fluorescent light.

"I dreamed about a terrorist attack," Jeannie began, before Mariana could even set the timer to thirty minutes.

"Dreams are not necessarily clairvoyant," Mariana said, knowing it would be useless to tell Jeannie that she was the second person that day to come in with a dream of terrorists. Jeannie would take it for confirmation, when it was nothing of the kind. The last client's dream could be easily explained by what was going on in her life. Mariana was certain Jeannie's dream would be the same.

Jeannie glared at her. Mariana knew that she would have to be careful, or the heavy emotion that had caused the flushed face and the swollen eyes would turn to anger.

"You don't understand," Jeannie said. "And I thought you were a psychic. In the dream, my husband was the terrorist."

"I'm sorry," Mariana replied, belatedly switching her attention from herself to her client. "No wonder you're upset. You're right, I didn't take the time to tune in before I answered. What is it you want from me?"

"I want to know what's going on. I know he's involved in something, and now I get this dream that he's a terrorist, planning to blow something up. What is he doing?" Jeannie's eyes began to fill, and her voice broke.

Mariana reached down and grabbed the box of tissues from its place on the floor-there was no room on top of the table-and offered it to Jeannie. Jeannie grabbed two tissues and held them to her eyes.

"Okay," Mariana said, after she had returned the box to the floor. "Here's how we're going to handle it. I want your birthdate, then his first name and birthdate. I'm going to look at your life paths and the path of your relationship, and we'll go from there."

Jeannie glared again, distracted from her tears.

"You think it's about me," she said. "And it isn't. It's my patriotic duty to turn him in, but I need corroboration from somebody before I call the FBI."

"Birthdates," Mariana said calmly.

"I'm a Taurus and he's a Scorpio."

"I don't care about your sun signs. I'm not doing astrology. I want to know your life path cards, the archetypes of the Major Arcana that you're working through. They will help me tune in to the situation. May I have your birthdates?"

Jeannie reluctantly gave her both dates.

"His name is Eric," she added.

Mariana quickly added up the two dates.

"A nine and a one," she said. "You're a Hermit and Eric's a Magician. This has to be a difficult relationship for you under the best of circ.u.mstances. You need boundaries, you need a quiet s.p.a.ce to get in touch with your own inner truth, and Eric has no concept of the word privacy. He also doesn't have much sense of truth."

"I know that," Jeannie said. "I know he's lying to me. And I know he's a terrorist."

"Doesn't fit the profile," Mariana said, hoping to lighten the mood a little. She didn't like the energy she was picking up from Jeannie, and she didn't like the energy path that she was tuning into as she looked at the two cards, the Hermit and the Magician.

"What kind of psychic are you? You think only Arabs are terrorists?"

"I'm sorry," Mariana said. "We haven't gotten off to a good start. Let's try again." She shuffled the cards and fanned them out on the small table. "Pick six cards, and let's look at your relationship with Eric."

"This is not about my relationship with Eric," Jeannie said, her voice rising. "This is not about me. I want to know what he's doing."

"I understand that. But if you want me to look at him, I have to start by looking at the two of you. That's the way I work," Mariana responded. "You're the one who's here, you're the one who's upset, and I need to look at the energy flow between the two of you. He may not be a terrorist. He could be lying about something else."

"He's a terrorist." Jeannie hesitated, as if she might want to argue, then quickly chose six cards and handed them to Mariana.

Mariana placed them as the base, stem, and petals of a flower, to see the direction of the energy flow. The cards confirmed her own sense that the energy between the two people wasn't good and wasn't going to get better. And there was more. She waited until the images in her head became clearer before she spoke.

"You're partly right," she said. "Eric is involved in something dangerous, and there is someone else involved. But his anger seems personal, not against the government, or anything faceless. You can't talk to him. He won't listen to you. In fact, some of his anger is toward you. The wisest course of action might be for you to move out. Would you like to see what your path looks like if you choose to do that?"

Jeannie shook her head, dismissing Mariana's question. "I know I can't talk to him. I need to talk to the FBI. How can I stop him?"

"You can't. You can't change what he does. You can only protect yourself."

"You are not helping," Jeannie said. Her hands flew around her face, disconnected, then settled back in her lap. "In the dream, he blew something up, something concrete, some kind of building. I wasn't in danger. I think you're wrong. Eric may be angry at me-he's angry at everyone right now-but he isn't going to hurt me."

"What Eric is blowing up is your marriage. Your dream was a metaphor, something that your subconscious was trying to tell you. He may not hurt you physically, but he's hurting you psychologically. You need to get out." Mariana said it flatly. She didn't like telling clients things they didn't want to hear.

"I don't need to get out. I need to get information I can take to the FBI, and you aren't giving me that," Jeannie said. She picked up her bag. "This is useless."

Mariana glanced at the timer.

"We've only used about fifteen minutes," she said. "I'll tell Deirdre to charge you for that."

"Fine."

Jeannie was out the door and halfway down the hall before Mariana caught up with her.

Deirdre barely raised an eyebrow when Mariana explained that Jeannie had called off the reading.

"I couldn't give her what she wanted," Mariana began, once Jeannie had left the store. "She decided to end the reading, and I let her."

"This is the first time a client has walked out on you, but it won't be the last," Deirdre said. "You'll have others. Some will even yell at you. And some of the ones who yell will come back for another reading, but they never apologize. It's all part of the business. Do you want to tell me about it?"

While both psychics kept their clients' secrets where outsiders were concerned, they had agreed when Mariana had first started working at the store that there would be no secrets between the two of them. Mariana thought of Deirdre as the psychic equivalent of a consulting therapist. Although Deirdre was no older than Mariana, both women in their mid-thirties, Deirdre had acknowledged her psychic talents at a younger age and had been a professional for years. For Mariana, the awakening had been later and more difficult, and it was still hard for her to discipline her talents to the constraints of the business.

When Mariana had met Deirdre, shortly after both women had lost their husbands to murder, she hadn't thought they would become friends. She still wasn't sure they were friends. So much about them was different: what they read, what they watched on television, even physical characteristics. But as she looked at Deirdre, with her short, curly blond hair and blue eyes, and thought of herself, with her long, dark hair and dark eyes, she knew that the deep similarities were more important than the surface differences.

"She dreamed her husband is a terrorist. I think it's a metaphor for what's happening in the marriage. And I hope she isn't in danger," Mariana said.

"You could always call David, see what he thinks," Deirdre said.

"Don't, Deirdre. I don't think this is a job for the police, and David would think I wanted to talk to him." Mariana had learned to deflect Deirdre's light jabs, but she wished that Deirdre hadn't mentioned the police detective. There were too many uncertainties in that relationship-if she could even call it that-and she didn't want to deal with them now. Maybe never.

"Then you need to let it go," Deirdre said. "Another psychic shower to clear your chakras, and then get ready for the next client."

"I don't have a next client."

"But you will."

Deirdre was right. Mariana had two more clients that afternoon, neither of which had terrorist dreams. By the time she was through for the day, she was ready to leave all client concerns behind her at the store.

When she reached the small apartment above a garage a few blocks from the beach, her home in Ventura until she could figure out where to go next, Miles and Ella were waiting to be fed. And Mariana had to feed herself as well. After dinner, she settled down for an evening of watching television, curled up on the bed with the two cats.

She was laughing at an old movie on one of the cable channels when the phone rang.

"Are you watching the news?" Deirdre asked. "If not, turn it on. Your client was murdered. You may want to call David after all."

Deirdre hung up before Mariana could argue with her.

And there it was on the local news. Jean Cullen had been murdered, stabbed to death when she apparently surprised a pair of burglars. Her distraught husband, Eric Cullen, sobbed for the camera. Mariana had been wrong-it was a matter for the police.

Mariana waited until morning, after an almost sleepless night, before she picked up the phone and called David.

He returned her call just as she was getting ready to leave for the store.

"The woman who was murdered last night, Jeannie Cullen," Mariana said. "Her husband did it."