Deadly Forecast: A Psychic Eye Mystery by Victoria Laurie Read Free Book Online Page B

“I’m fine,” I told her, squaring
     my shoulders and turning again to the scene.
    I stared at it with unfocused eyes for a long time, sorting through all the energy
     swirling and tumbling around the area. It took me a while to sort it all out because
     there was so much emotion clouding the ether. Pushing my radar away from current time,
     I tried to find my way back to the time of the explosion, but I had to push past a
     great deal of stuff to get there. There had been the urgent energy of the firefighters
     who had worked to contain and put out the blaze, the anxiety of onlookers who’d witnessed
     the explosion or the aftermath, and finally the small thread of energy that was most
     unsettling, the vibrations of the five women who’d been caught in the explosion.
    The second I felt them, I focused hard and followed the thread. And then I had the
     energy of one woman in particular—and what’s more, I actually had a strong psychic
     connection to her. She seemed to come out of the fog and chaos of the scene to step
     right in front of me—and although I couldn’t see or hear her, I could certainly sense
     her.
    She felt heavy against my energy—and she felt full of panic. I knew in an instant
     that I’d connected to the grounded spirit of one of the women killed in the explosion,
     and for a minute I didn’t know what to do with her.
    I realize that most people think that all psychics are the same, but we’re as diverse
     as specialists in any given field. Under the “psychic” umbrella, there are mediums,
     healers, energy workers, and folks like me—psychic forecasters who predict the future.
     While I can sense a grounded spirit just as well as any medium, communicating clearly
     with one really isn’t my forte. The ability to actually “hear” a spirit is called
     “clairaudience.” As a psychic forecaster, my dominant sixth sense is clairvoyance,
     which simply means that in my mind’s eye I “see” images that allow me to predict the
     future. Alternatively, spirit mediums rely on clairaudience to “hear” spirits and
     converse with them. They often have some clairvoyance as well, but it’s their clairaudience
     that dominates. Unfortunately, with clairaudience, either you have it or you don’t,
     and I’m more in the “don’t” category.
    So I wasn’t very confident about attempting to communicate with the grounded soul
     banging on my energy, but this woman was pretty insistent, and I felt such sadness
     for her that I sucked it up and went for it.
    Hi, my name is Abby,
I mentally told her.
I can try to help you, ma’am.
(Little-known fact: ghosts
can
hear our thoughts if we direct them at the spirit, so there’s no real need to speak
     out loud to them should you ever encounter one.)
    What I got back wasn’t so much a thread of conversation as it was a wave of emotion.
     Relief mixed with panic, and confusion, and then that pleading sense to help her,
     but there were no words exchanged. I was back to my own frustration for lack of clairaudient
     skill.
    But then I had an idea, one that I’d never tried before, and I hoped it’d work. I
     shut my eyes and envisioned my FBI badge, and I even went so far as to put my hand
     over it as it dangled from my neck.
    That panicked pleading subsided, and I knew she was tryingto work out what I was saying. I then envisioned the inside of my office—specifically
     the room where I conducted my readings. I mentally called up the image of the last
     client I’d read for and then in my mind I drew a plus sign.
This,
I said in my thoughts while wiggling my badge,
plus this
—I again called up the image of my office—
is what I do.
    With relief I felt her make the connection, and I knew she understood that I was telling
     her I was an FBI psychic.
    Encouraged, I told her to fill my mind with an image for what she did, and immediately
     I saw a woman with black hair and heavy makeup standing in a pink and green beauty
     salon, cutting