Murder on the Astral Plane (A Kate Jasper Mystery) by Jaqueline Girdner Read Free Book Online Page B

cats,” Wenger’s voice boomed out, and Kettering’s head bounced up, with a crack into the table’s edge.
    Femur and Tibia raced out from under the table and into the next room.
    “I knew they were cats,” Kettering insisted, rubbing the back of his head.
    No one laughed. Not out loud. But Kettering must have heard our internal snickers. Because his smile was gone, completely gone.
    He focused his new glare on Zarathustra’s face, which now wore the first smile I’d seen on it all day.
    “You,” Kettering said, pointing. “Your turn.”
    Zarathustra drew himself up to his full height, a vision in black leather and piercings. His smile was gone now too. Sullen young manhood had returned.
    “You’re not fitting me up for this trauma-drama,” he muttered. “You wanna know my type, read Nietzsche. You got him in your stack of books—”
    “Zarathustra,” Justine’s voice warned, and suddenly she sounded like an aunt. “Answer the man in correct English, please.”
    “Ah, Aunt Justine,” Zarathustra objected. Justine glared at him. He seemed to shrink a little. “Fine, I’m a Taurus. I don’t know nothin’, excuse me, anything about this enneagram, Myers-Briggs trash, and I was born on April twenty-eighth.”
    Kettering wrote it all down and then turned to Barbara and me. He was still glaring, and there was a lump on his head where he’d hit the table. I hoped it hadn’t addled his brain. At least not any further.
    “Enneagram, the adventurer,” Barbara told him, rank, file, and serial-number style. “Myers-Briggs ENTP, Pisces, March first.”
    She turned to me, inviting me to follow suit, but I wasn’t sure how.
    “Well, I’m a Scorpio,” I said. “I’m not sure about this enneagram stuff—”
    “You’re a five,” Barbara whispered in my ear.
    “I’m a five—”
    “Fives can disintegrate into paranoia,” Kettering muttered. I turned to glare at Barbara. “Insanity with schizophrenic tendencies—”
    “All the enneagram types can disintegrate,” Barbara pointed out. “Just look at threes.”
    Kettering turned to look at Tory. The smile returned to his face. Was she a three? I couldn’t remember.
    “Myers-Briggs?” he asked me.
    “Probably an INTP,” Barbara answered for me.
    “Hmm,” Kettering murmured. It didn’t sound good. “And a Scorpio. What’s your birth date?”
    “November eighteenth,” I told him.
    Kettering’s head came up. “Wow!” he yelped. “Mars rules the eighteenth. Mars! Violent, destructive, unstable—”
    “And a Scorpio on top of it all,” Tory chimed in helpfully.
    I could feel the shift as each pair of eyes turned to my Scorpionic face. And suddenly, I wondered how well scorpions ran.
     
     
    - Five -
     
    “So, you’re a Scorpio,” Wenger said thoughtfully. I cringed, waiting for the verbal blow. “Well, that makes two of us,” he finished.
    It took a couple of seconds for his words to sink in. Then I got it. We shared an astrological sign. All right! I straightened my shoulders as much as I could, scrunched up on Justine’s kitchen floor. Then I tried on a tentative smile.
    “Maybe that’s why you’re always on the scene when a murder happens,” Wenger added, squinting his heavily lidded eyes in my direction.
    I swallowed my smile, feeling it dissolve in the cauldron of acid which had replaced my stomach. Damn. I knew this would happen. I turned to Barbara for help. She shrugged her shoulders, not looking as smug as usual. If there was anything worse than Barbara looking smug, it was Barbara looking worried.
    “That’s why I came to this soiree,” I explained to Wenger, trying to keep from rushing my words. Trying to keep my voice slow and calm. “Because my friend here said that all this murder stuff had to do with bad karma or something. I don’t know why I can’t go into a room full of people without someone dying. Do you think I like it? All I want to do is be able to walk around without stumbling over dead bodies. I