Haunted Air

"I have the first question," he intoned. He lowered his head and raised the envelope on high where it gleamed like a star in the brilliant light. "Ogunfiditimi, hear me. These supplicants come before me, seeking knowledge, knowledge that only you can provide. Heed their requests and furnish the answers they seek."

He shuddered once, twice, then spoke in a flat, sepulchral tone.

"You are not yet ready. You must work harder, hone your craft, and above all, be patient. It will come."

Ifasen looked up and blinked. He lowered the envelope and picked up a slim gold-plated letter opener. He slit the top of the envelope and pulled the card from within. He unfolded it and, to Jack's chagrin, held it by the upper left corner. After reading it he smiled down at Karyn. "Does that answer your question, Karyn?"

She nodded enthusiastically.

Clause said, "What did you ask?"

"I wanted to know when I'll be as successful as Junie."

Junie turned to her. "Didn't I tell you? Isn't he just so amazing?"

"How does he do that?" Gia whispered.

"Later."

Knowing pretty much how the rest of the act would go, Jack pulled out a folded pamphlet he'd picked up downstairs. The cover read THE MENELAUS MANOR RESTORATION FOUNDATION over a grainy picture of this old stone house. So that was where the donations went.

He opened the yellow tri-fold brochure and out fell another, smaller pamphlet, almost the size of the three-by-five billet he'd just filled out. The cover showed a crude illustration of a human silhouette falling into a pit next to the title, "The Trap." He flipped it over and almost laughed aloud when he saw the words "Chick Publications." A Born Again mini-comic. The. opening pages showed a Christian character debunking a self-described cha

Some prankster was slipping Jack Chick's fundamentalist tracts into Ifasen's brochures. How rich.

Jack checked Ifasen, who had a fresh envelope held on high, but this time he skipped the incantation. Maybe he was in a hurry. He shook his head as if trying to clear it, scrinched up his eyes, then shook his head again. Finally he lowered the envelope and cast a disapproving look at Claude.

"The spirits refuse to answer this. They want me to tell you to buy a calculator."

He slit the envelope and unfolded the card-again holding it by the upper left corner. He read: " 'What is the square root of 2,762?' " He frowned at Claude, his disdain palpable. "What did I say about frivolous questions that waste the spirits' time?"

Claude gri

Junie gave him a fierce look and slapped him on the knee. Jack decided he liked Claude.

He put aside the Chick pamphlet and was starting to read Ifasen's propaganda on this house and its history when Gia nudged him.

"Pay attention. You might be next."

Jack refolded the brochure and trained his attention on Ifasen who had raised another envelope. He gave a couple of shudders, then, "Your sister sends you her love from the Other Side. She says she is well and to get on with your life."

Jack couldn't help feeling a chill. He knew the game, knew Ifasen was winging it here, but this was exactly what Kate would say.

Ifasen was unfolding a card, holding it as usual by the upper left corner. "Does that answer your question, Jack?"

"Completely," Jack said softly.

Gia looked at him with wide eyes and grabbed his arm. "Jack! How could he-?"

He cocked his head toward her and whispered, "An educated guess. He's very good."

"How can you write that off as a guess?"

"Easy. Of course, if he'd said, 'Kate sends her love,' that'd be a whole other ballgame. Big problem writing that off."

Another envelope had been thrust into the light, and now Ifasen was frowning again.

"I'm having trouble with this. I sense a number trying to come through, but the seismic static has increased. I'm not sure, but I believe the number is two." He opened his eyes. "And that's all."

Ifasen wore a puzzled frown as he slit this envelope, but when he read the message, he smiled. "Two." He looked up. "Does that satisfy you, Gia?"

"I... I think so," Gia said.

Jack glanced at her and thought she looked a little pale. "What did you ask?"

"Tell you later," she said.

"Now."

"Later. I want to see if he knows where Junie's bracelet is."

"The last envelope," Ifasen said, thrusting it up into the light. He closed his eyes, went through the shuddering deal, then said, "It is not stolen. You will find it in the large blue vase." He looked at Junie who was on her feet. "Do you have a large blue vase?"

"Yes! Yes!" She had her hands pressed against her mouth, muffling her words. "Right next to the door! But that can't be! How could it possibly get in there?"

"The spirits didn't say how, Ms. Moon," Ifasen told her. "They simply said where."

"I've gotta go! I've so gotta get home and check that vase!" She ran up to the podium and threw her arms around her psychic. "Ifasen, you're the best, the greatest!" She turned to Jack and Gia and Karyn and Claude. "Isn't he fantastic! Isn't he just so incredible!"

Jack joined the applause. Nothing incredible about Ifasen, but he was good. He was very good.

3

"Sweet Jesus!" Lyle Kenton said when their uninvited guests were finally gone. He'd already dropped his Ifasen persona; now he dropped into the recliner in the upstairs sitting room and rubbed his eyes. "What happened here tonight?"

His brother Charlie, no longer the subservient Kehinde, gave him a reproachful look from where he leaned against the couch, taking tiny sips from a Diet Pepsi. That was the way he drank: no gulps, just lots of quick, tiny sips.

"Ay, yo, Lyle. I thought you was eighty-sixin' it with taking the Lord's name in vain."

Lyle waved an apology with one hand and twisted one of his dreads in the other as he reran the past hour through his brain. Not the laid-back Friday night he'd pla

"I tell you, Charlie, when I saw Moonie standing there on the front porch with that crowd behind her, I thought we were cooked. I mean, I figured she'd tumbled to your little visit and brought down the heat."

Of course, on further reflection, he'd realized that if it really had been the heat, Junie Moon wouldn't have been with them.

"Coulda been worse," Charlie said, pacing back and forth in front of the couch, a deep purple velvet affair that had come with the house. Everything in the room-the furniture, the upright piano, the murky landscapes in gilded frames on the walls-had been here when they'd bought it ten months ago. "Coulda been the banger who done the drive-by."

Lyle nodded, feeling his neck tighten. Just last Tuesday night he'd been standing by the picture window in the waiting room downstairs when a bullet whizzed right by his head. It had punctured the pane without shattering it, leaving a hole surrounded by a small spiderweb of cracks. He'd dug it out of the wall, but since guns weren't his thing, he couldn't tell what" caliber it was. All he could be sure of was that it had been meant for him. The incident had left him shaken and more than a little paranoid. He'd kept the curtains pulled ever since.

The reason, he knew, was that a lot of well-heeled clients had started migrating from the Manhattan psychics to Astoria since Lyle had joined the game. None of those players was happy about it. A slew of angry, threatening, anonymous phone calls over the past few weeks had made that clear. But one of them-hell, maybe a group of them-had figured that phone calls wouldn't cut it and decided to play rough.

But Lyle hadn't called the police. They say the only bad publicity is no publicity, but this was an exception. A sensational story about his being shot at could be pure poison. People might stay away for fear of being caught in the middle of a shoot-out between warring psychics. He could imagine the quips: A trip to this psychic might put you a lot closer to the dearly departed than you intended.