Amber Foxx [Foxx - Shaman’s Blues

Prologue

M ay 2010, Santa Fe , New Mexico

L isa, love, no, you cant, not yetgive me another week. A month. Something. Jamie Ellerbee parked his bicycle against the side of the coffee shop, phone in hand, as he undid the clip that kept his jeans out of the chain. He couldnt see a place to park in view of the window, and hed lost or misplaced the lock as well as the helmetthe clutter in his place was unmanageable. After five months, he still couldnt bring himself to unpack much. Maybe he could take the front wheel in with him.

I told you last month, this is it. His ex-girlfriends voice took on a firm, teacherly tone. The one she no doubt used when a physics project was late or a test had been failed. They had met as high school teachers, music and physics respectively, and parted over his decision to leave the job. That, and the consequences. Im not managing your career any more. That was just to get you through thethe transition.

The transition from being a teacher to being a full-time musician, as well as the adjustment to no longer living with her. That was one long year, half of it without her. The year he fell off another rock.

Youve done it so well, love. He knelt to try to undo the quick release wheel with one hand while holding the phone with the other, and tipped the bicycle into an elderly man. Oh Jesus, Im sorry. Are you all right?

Jamie? Lisa sounded puzzled.

Hit some poor oldSir?

The man glared, slapping a hand across his crisp white pants as if swatting off a fly, smearing the bicycle grease. His dry, pale face creased and furrowed, and his jaw worked. Something dark and jagged in the man, something wounded and bitter, seemed to grow.

Here. For the cleaners. Jamie pulled out his wallet and handed the man a twenty. The man with the elegant but injured pants stuffed the money into his no-doubt money-filled pocket. Jamie returned his empty wallet to his worn-out jeans. Lisa? Still with me?

On the phone, yes. In life, no. I told you, Im with someone new now. I need to have a life with him, and I cant be putting in fifteen hours a week working for free. Its not a hobby. And Im not your girlfriend. Youre on your own. Times up.

His heart raced, and anxiety rose up like a flock of birds. Youve been brilliant. Youve helped so much.

Thank you. But

The world grew narrow, darkness rising up from the sidewalk to wrap around him. Just teach me how youve done it. Can we do that?

I already tried. You should have been paying attention.

Bloody prim and proper teacher again. I wasnt. Sorry. I fucked up. The birds in his chest began to swirl and flap their wings. Can you teach me?

No. Hire someone. Get a professional manager if you cant do it yourself.

Im broke.

Thats your problem.

Lisa! Please, not yet.

Youre the one that quit his job, spent all his money on camping and climbing and biking gear and God knows what else. Im done. Goodbye. Youre a grown man. Act like one.

Act like one. It hurt, but she was right. He was almost thirty now, ought to be able to take care of himself. As Jamie turned off his phone, it dropped from his hand. Shaking. He couldnt go in and meet his friends in this shape. He had to get away before something broke, before his soul flew out the top of his head.

Still holding the wheel, he started to bolt, the crowd closing in on him, tourists as thick as a dust storm. One of them approached, a fat woman in pink shorts, holding his phone.

Are you all right?

She looked kind. Kind, worried, and even a little frightened, tiny chips and fractures in her field, the rosy glow pulsing and then breaking.

Thanks. He took the phone, amazed that he could speak, as half a voice creaked out of him. Yeah. Ill be all right.

You sure?

How bad was he acting? What had he done? The birds rose again as he nodded a silent yes to her and ran, half-blind, down an alley to the parking lot. No one around, just cars. Quiet. Leaning against the rough adobe wall of the back of a shop, he closed his eyes and let himself take a gritty slide into a squat on the ground, dropping the wheel. With a last, desperate trace of vision and strength, he pulled up Lisas number over and over without dialing it, finally deleted it, and dropped the phone again. Time fell into a hole, a shaking, sweat-drenched void.

Abandoned. Cut loose. Hanging over What Next Canyon without a harness, looking at the next big fall.

Chapter One

O n the second floor of the Healing Balance Store in Virginia Beach, Mae Martin-Ridley worked with a client in a small room with green tree shadows painted on the walls. The store was a sprawling emporium that encompassed a health food store, an organic foods caf, and a New Age bookstore downstairs, with yoga classes, energy healing, and psychic services upstairs. Mae provided the latter two. Holding a plastic, feather-topped stick in one hand, and a quartz point in the other, the tall red-haired young psychic held still, eyes closed, while a sturdy woman of around sixty sat in the chair opposite, her face taut with worry.

Opening her eyes, Mae said in her soft Carolina accent, Seen her, Ms. Harris. Got a real good look. Shes all right. Hiding under a big ol wrap-around porch with white stairs.

The client gasped, and her hand flew to her heart. Thats under my neighbors porch. My goodness. Two doors down. Poor kittys probably been there for days.

Mae handed the cats toy back to the owner, and stood and shook her hand as Ms. Harris prepared to leave. They do that, run close to home. You may have to crawl under and get her.

Ms. Harris pressed Maes hand again. Thank you so much.

Mae watched her go, and smiled. Shed made this woman happy. The final client at Healing Balance.

The final night on the East Coast. The end of what felt like a life. The beginning of the next. Mae wasnt really about to be reincarnated, but as she took a last look at her healing room, she felt she was getting close to it in one lifetime.

Sort of fitting to end up with a lost cat. Her first realization that she had a psychic gift had come with finding her mothers runaway cat. People were harder, but she could find them as well. She could find diseases and past secrets, too, see all sorts of things most folks couldnt. Her husbandsoon to be ex-husbandhadnt been able to make peace with this change in her when she accepted and began to use what her mountain granma had called the sight.