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Jaime tossed her hair back and brushed the top, allowing her to slant a glance my way, and gauge my reaction. I'd wondered what had driven her back to us. Somehow I doubted she'd really heard the news about Weber and thought "Oh, I should rush back to Miami and help out." Last night she'd mentioned wanting to contact Dana, and now I realized this was probably the real reason she'd returned, that she felt guilty over having misled Dana and wanted to talk to her again. This couldn't help the case, but if it would help put Dana's--and Jaime's--soul at peace, well, there was little I could do here until Lucas came back. So I placed my eleven o'clock phone call to Elena, then left with Jaime.
"She's not there," Jaime said, tossing down her amulet beside Dana's still form. "Goddamn orientation training."
"Orientation?" I said.
"That's what I call it. Other necros have fancier terms. Gotta make it sound all mystical, you know." Jaime rubbed the back of her neck. "After a spirit crosses over, you have a day or two, sometimes three, to contact them, then the ghost Welcome Wagon snatches them up and shows them the ropes. During that period, the spirit is on hiatus. Some kind of psychic door slams and you can scream your lungs out, but they can't hear you."
"I've heard of that," I said. "Then, afterward, you can contact them, but it's harder than it would be in the first couple of days."
"Because they've learned how to 'just say no' to pesky necros. After that, we're as welcome as encyclopedia salesmen. You have to pester them until they listen just to get rid of you. Unless they want something, and then they'll drive us nuts until we listen." Jaime raked her hands through her hair. "This makes no sense. If she's in training, then why--" She twisted her hair into a ponytail. "You wouldn't have a clip, would you?"
"Always," I said, digging in my purse. "With this hair, it pays to be prepared. A drizzle of rain or shot of humidity and it's ponytail time."
"So the curl's natural?"
"God, yes. I wouldn't pay for this."
She laughed and fixed the clip in her hair. "See, now, I would. That's the irony, isn't it? Girls with curly hair want straight and girls with straight hair want curly. No one's ever happy." She glanced in her compact. "Decent enough. Ready for lunch?"
I returned my chair to its place across the room. "What were you saying earlier? About something not making sense?"
"Hmm? Oh, don't mind me. I never make sense. Don't forget, you wanted to check in with the nurse before we leave."
According to the nurse, Randy MacArthur was expected in two days. That made me feel better. Dana might not be coming back, but it would help her to know that her father had been there for her. We hadn't told anyone that Dana was gone. If keeping quiet meant she'd be on the respirator long enough for her father to see her "alive" one last time, then she deserved that much.
As we walked from the clinic, I noticed a balding man across the road on a bench, reading the newspaper. As we headed down the road, he watched us over his paper. Nothing unusual about that--I'm sure Jaime got more than her share of lingering looks. When we'd gone half a block, though, I happened to glance over my shoulder and saw the man strolling on the other side of the road, keeping pace with us thirty feet or so behind. When we turned the corner, he did the same. I mentioned it to Jaime.
She glanced back at the guy. "Yeah, I get that sometimes, usua
lly from guys who look like that. They recognize me, hang around a bit, work up the courage to say something. There was a time, I'd have killed for the attention. Now, some days, it's just--" She shrugged off the sentence.
"More than you bargained for."
She nodded. "That's the bitch of celebrity. You spend years chasing it, dreaming of it, starving for it. Then it happens and the next thing you know, you hear yourself whining about the lack of privacy and you think, 'You ungrateful bitch. You got what you wanted, and you're still not happy.' That's where the therapists come in. Either that or you self-medicate your way into Betty Ford."
"I can imagine."
Her gaze flicked toward me and she nodded. We walked in silence for a minute, then she checked over her shoulder.
"Let's, uh, skip the Cuban place, if you don't mind," she said. "We'll drive someplace else, lose the admirer."
"Sure. Does this happen a lot?"
"Is three or four times a week a lot?"
"Are you serious?"
She nodded. "Now, I have to admit, most aren't middle-aged admirers, just folks who want me to contact someone for them. I don't do private consultations, but people don't believe me. They think they just aren't offering enough money. There was this woman once, a friend of Nancy Reagan's. You remember Nancy...or are you too young for that?"
"She had a thing for psychics." I'd read this somewhere, having been in preschool during the Reagan administration, but I doubted Jaime would appreciate a reminder of our age difference.
"Well, Nancy had this friend--Is this where we're parked?"
"Next lot."
"Jesus, my memory lately...I swear, the holes are getting bigger."
We walked into the parking lot. Though it was midday, tall buildings surrounded the tiny strip of land, wrapping it in shadow.
