"Of course not. I'd never get a good reference that way, right?"

"I'm not a good one to ask. When employees quit Scene-2-Clean it's usually sudden and they run away screaming or crying."

"Riiiight. Well, in the real world we give two weeks notice," Dawn said. "Anyway, he's hiring a temp from an agency until I can finish off my two weeks, and I'm going to go up at the end of each day to train for an hour or two. And get this-he's going to pay me almost double what I'm making now! That's not even the best part. He seems like a really nice guy. Not like the a.s.s I'm working for now. Dr. Irwin is kind and considerate. I'm going to love working for him. Don't you see? It's just like Madame Maeva predicted."

"Hmm," Sadie said, flipping channels once again, trying to find a show that wasn't about cops or crime scenes.

"You know, if Madame Maeva can help me find a new job, I bet she could find you a man."

Before Sadie could respond to that comment, Dawn put her on hold to take an incoming call from Noel and then left her in limbo so long that Sadie realized she'd been forgotten and hung up.

Half an hour later it occurred to her that she had the television tuned to a bad cooking show and still had no idea what they were making. Thanks to Dawn, her brain had been tuned instead to Madame Maeva of the Psychic Cafe. The more she thought about the woman and her so-called knack, the more an interesting idea percolated in her mind.

With another shot of sambuca for courage, Sadie found Madam Maeva's Psychic Cafe listing in the phone book and dialed quickly before she could change her mind. Since it was just after eleven, she was mentally preparing the message she'd leave on the company's machine.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Unfortunately, Madame Maeva herself answered the phone. Sadie was tempted just to hang up but Sambuca was a powerful persuader.

"h.e.l.lo?" Madame Maeva said again.

"This is Sadie Novak."

"Yes, I know."

"It doesn't take a psychic to figure that out. Lots of people recognize my voice," Sadie said, immediately going on the defensive.

"Actually, I have caller ID."

"Oh."

"But you weren't calling to test my abilities over the phone."

"No, I'm calling to set up an appointment. You never finished my reading."

"I can't give you a reading-at least not without vomiting all over you."

"But it was a two-for-one deal," Sadie protested. "It's false advertising to offer two for one and then back out on the second one."

"Tell your sister that she can bring someone else. Anyone else."

"I'll be honest-I'm trying to locate someone and I don't know where else to turn."

"I don't do missing persons."

"I wouldn't ask unless it was important." Sadie stopped short of begging. Maeva was quiet, but Sadie could sense her wavering. "Look, this guy is at the very least a thief who tried to frame me. At worst he may have murdered two people."

"Fine." She sighed and relented. "Come in tomorrow morning when I open at nine, but if I throw up, you pay double my regular rate."

"Deal," Sadie said and added silently, with the devil herself.

10.

The jangle of the door chimes sounded shrill in the quiet of the Psychic Cafe. The store had just flipped its little sign from SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED to COME ON IN, WE'RE OPEN. The same clerk read a book behind the counter and nodded a h.e.l.lo to Sadie.

"I can bring you right in," she said, getting to her feet and adjusting her peasant skirt.

The woman led the way down the short hall, past the bright red door Sadie and Dawn had gone through before. At the end of the hall, she opened a canary yellow door for Sadie.

Madame Maeva sat behind a desk in a room lined with filing cabinets and bookshelves filled with hardcovers that ranged from business to how-to topics. The entire room screamed office efficiency, not clairvoyant voodoo. It was a far cry from the dark room where they'd sat on the floor.

"No comfy pillows?" Sadie asked, taking a seat in one of the stiff-backed chairs on the other side of the desk.

"I thought it would be best if we kept a desk between us," Maeva explained. "I was a little surprised to hear from you so soon. Usually the true skeptics take longer to come around, if they ever do."

"You were right about Dawn's job. She found a better position in the same building." She held up her hand. "Don't get me wrong-that doesn't mean I've turned into an instant believer. It's just that I'm a little desperate here." She pulled her chair closer to the desk. "So, how do we get started? Do we hold hands again, or what?"

"No offense, but I'd rather not touch you," Maeva said, shrinking back and wrinkling her nose with distaste.

"None taken, but for the record, I don't dance with the dead."

"I never said you dance with the dead. I said you walk with the dead."

"Whatever." Sadie waved it away. "I do bio-recovery cleaning. I cleanse the vicinities of traumatic or unattended deaths."

She took a business card from her wallet and pushed it across the desk to Maeva, who examined the front and back.

"Who's Zack Bowman?" she asked, regarding the name and phone number printed on the back.

"An employee. And friend. He takes the business calls if I'm not available, so I printed his number on my cards."

"Does he also walk with the dead?"

"Look, since the deceased is long gone before I arrive on the scene, I can a.s.sure you there is no dancing or walking involved."

"Cut the c.r.a.p," Maeva barked. She folded her arms across her chest and regarded Sadie coolly. "You know exactly what I mean. What are you? A guide? A doorkeeper?"

"I don't even know what that means."

"I am a medium, a clairvoyant as well. I can get a reading off most people and have often been successful in making contact with those on the other side."

"Your mother must be very proud." Sadie chuckled sarcastically.

"Why do you pretend to be a disbeliever? You can't possibly still be in denial of your own abilities?" She impatiently drummed bloodred fingernails on her desk. "Oh, I get it. You think you're the only special person on the planet." She drew quotes around the word "special" and laughed throatily.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Like h.e.l.l you don't," Maeva snarled. "The minute I touched you, I knew your power was as strong as my own or greater. Lay it on the line, sister. What are your talents? Do you hear them? See them? Offer them s.e.xual favors? What exactly do you give to the souls of the dead that makes them seek you out?"

Sadie didn't want to have this conversation. She'd fought for five years to keep her abilities secret from as many people as possible. She didn't want to open up a Sadie's Psychic Cafe and offer specials of the week for helping the dearly departed. The entire thought appalled and repulsed her.

"I should go," she announced, getting to her feet.

"So you're afraid-is that it?" Maeva asked, leaning back in her chair. "You think as long as you keep your little talent a secret, you're not like me. You're not a freak."

Taking a deep breath, Sadie sat back down and reconsidered. Like it or not, she was running out of options for how to handle the Toth situation.

"Sometimes when I'm cleaning a scene, the spirits approach me. They talk to me. Some are quite chatty, but others not so much. It's not something I control. I don't call on them-they just show up."

"Interesting. Why do you think they come to you?"

Sadie shrugged. "Probably because n.o.body else can see them."

"That's not it. They must want something from you. Can you clearly see their physical presence, or do you just get a feeling that they're in the room?"

"I can see them as clearly as I see you. Their bodies usually appear to me as they were when they died. Sometimes that part can be a little gross."

"And they just talk."

"They talk and I listen."

Sadie couldn't help but fidget in her seat. This kind of discussion unnerved her. She didn't want to find out that her own abilities were being advertised on Maeva's bulletin board or Yellow Pages ad.

"n.o.body can know," Sadie said, her voice pleading.

"Someone must already," Maeva said. "I can't imagine you've kept it totally hidden. Your sister hinted of something when she was here, but of course you cut her off."

"Doesn't matter."

Three people knew of her ability-Pam, Dawn, and, of course, Zack. Even they could barely conceal their desire to call her a weirdo. She was sure of it. Yet here she was, spilling her strangest secret to a woman who defined weird by vocation.

"I can keep a secret," Maeva a.s.sured her. "But tell me, what do the dead talk about?"

"Sometimes they have a message. Other times they're in denial about their own fate. I try to help them realize that they have to let go of their presence here and move on. Most of the time it helps, and they sort of glimmer, fade, and poof! they're gone."

"Poof?"

"Poof."

Maeva threw back her head and laughed for a full minute. Sadie was fuming.

"What the h.e.l.l's your problem?"

"Nothing," Maeva chuckled. "It's just good to come across someone as strange as myself."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"I bet you inherited your talent," Maeva said.

"You'd lose that bet." Sadie sniffed at the thought of her mother or father having any kind of super natural abilities.

"Hmm. Lots of times these kinds of things are inherited like brown eyes and blond hair. You must've been scared to death as a child when you first had some mutilated corpse show up to talk about the weather."

"Nothing like that happened when I was a kid. This is all kind of a recent addition to my repertoire. It showed up after somebody in my family died."

"I see." Her eyebrows rose. "You're not the first to become aware of a talent after a traumatic event. Go on."

"Well, the first few times it happened, of course, I thought I was losing my mind." She closed her eyes and blurted out, "So I went into therapy for a while."

"Did it help?"

"Yeah, it helped convince me I was crazy and that if I continued to tell people that I saw dead people I'd be locked up."

"So you ignored it."

"I tried to, but it wouldn't go away." Sadie shook her head at the memory. "Eventually I found it was easier to help the dead than to run screaming in the other direction. It took a while to realize they wouldn't hurt me and it scared the h.e.l.l out of me. Still does sometimes," she admitted. "But I guess I've gradually gotten more used to it, and I enjoy being able to help them."

Maeva nodded knowingly. "You said the spirits fade most of the time, but what happens when they don't choose to go poof?"

"I can't force them to leave. I can only suggest it's in their best interest. If they choose to remain here, I think they stay in a kind of limbo. Maybe they wander the earth haunting whoever or wherever." Sadie chuckled and waved her hand. "Could we please talk about the real reason why I'm here?"

"No." Maeva held up her hands in a halting motion. "You've already told me you're looking for a guy who is a criminal of some kind. Like I told you and your sister, I prefer that the person I'm reading think and focus on their question, not tell me out loud. If I know everything in advance, then I get readings that involve your emotions, but nothing that's necessarily true to the situation you're concerned about."

"Fine. I promise to think and focus."

"Do you want the session taped?"

"Sure."

Maeva took a new ca.s.sette out of its wrapper, slid it into the recorder, and pressed the RECORD b.u.t.ton.

Sadie reached her hands across the desk, but Maeva shook her head.

"There's no way on G.o.d's green earth I'm touching you. We're going to have to try things a little different. The message may not be as clear, but it's the best I can do."

She got up and closed the blinds on a small window, then turned off the overhead fluorescent lights, plunging them into semidarkness. Maeva took her seat and cleared a stack of papers from the center of her desk. She instructed Sadie to lean forward with her elbows on the desk and to put her hands up.

"Turn your palms toward me and I'll do the same."

There they sat, with their elbows on the desk and their palms facing each other in a ridiculous kind of suspended high five.