Page 21 of Haunted Eclipse

“Don’t ditch Teran while she needs you,” I said.

“Tell you what. I’ll call my friend, Ona Sera. She’s one of the Strega, and they deal with this sort of crap all the time. I’ll set up a meeting. She can sense all sorts of things that live on the astral and etheric planes. It sounds to me like this wasn’t a ghost or spirit, but some sort of creature.” Astra sighed. “Teran went tothe chiropractor yesterday, and she’s better today. I’ll see how things go by tonight.”

“Please, stay with her as long as she needs,” I said, even though I wished that she could come home. Astra made me feel safe in a way few other people did, probably because she had raised me for most of my life.

“Don’t worry, honey,” she said. “Everything will be all right. Talk to you later.”

I brought up the matchmaker’s database again and began searching on male star witches. There were five listed in the database for the entire peninsula. I added Moonshadow Bay to the search perimeters, and that brought the total to six.

I then pulled up a search engine and typed in Starlight Williams’s name, and the words “Whisper Hollow.” A number of links came up. Starlight Williams was known asthesocialite over there, and she could make or break your reputation. I jotted down her phone number and address, and managed to find an email addy for her. I couldn’t very well email her asking her if she knew any male star witches looking for love—that would be weird. But having her information might prove helpful down the line.

I sorted through the six male star witches in the database, taking a closer look at their profiles. Three automatically went on the no-go list. The first was too young, the second was absolutely dying to have kids. The next three, I didn’t get any pings on—my mental alarms were silent. They might work out, but chances are they wouldn’t. I’d been wrong before, though those times were few and far between.

One, however, caught my eye. His name was Jamison Wanderson, and he lived in Port Ludlow, eighteen miles from Port Townsend. He was thirty-two, in Brenda’s age range, and he was five-nine and looked reasonably fit. I read his bio. Heworked at home as a remote software tester, had two dogs and a cat, and he loved reading, hiking, and cooking.

The only red flag I could see was that he’d been on the database for over a year, and his profile had been tapped by a couple matchmakers over that time. I looked at the hidden notes.

There was a section for any matchmaker to leave a note about someone they actually tried to match. None of the clients could see it, if they somehow managed to break into the app, but those of us of us marriage brokers—to use a euphemism—who signed up for the service could access the section. I logged in, looking for any notes.

There was one note, from some matchmaker named Kindra, who said that he was too quiet and sedate for her client. Jamison didn’t seem to have much of an adventurer inside him. That didn’t really trigger off alarms so I jotted down his information.

“Well, he sounds pleasant enough,” I said. “I might as well take a flier on him.” I called Brenda. She answered first thing.

“Hey Brenda, this is Maisy. I have a potential date for you, and I was wondering if this was a good time to run his information by you.” I’d tell her about him, then contact him and—if he was interested—set up a meeting.

Brenda sounded exhausted. “Sure. But, before you start—I had another dream. It was about you. I wasn’t in it, this time. I dreamed that you were home—though I don’t know what your home looks like. Anyway, I dreamed that something was following you, and you went to sleep and it attacked you. I woke up and, once again, felt like something was watching me.”

One dream could be explained away as a one-off. Two dreams, in such a short time? Something had to be up.

“Would you like me to come over and examine your house? I can tell you about your possible date at the same time,” I said.

“Sure. I can’t tonight, but tomorrow I’ll be home in the afternoon. One o’clock all right?”

“One o’clock. And you live at…” I read her address off her file folder.

“Yes, that’s right. I’ll see you at one tomorrow,” Brenda said.

I sat back, staring at my phone. Her dreams worried me. Even more so the fact that, in the second, I was the target. But I tried to shake off the feeling and I prepared myself for my reading with Devon.

At two-thirty,Devon appeared. She settled in at the table.

“Welcome to Clearwater Street, by the way. Your shop is so pretty,” she said, looking around. “Kevin said you used to live in Midnight Point?”

I nodded. “Yes. I left after I turned eighteen. I backpacked through Europe, then moved to Seattle and lived there until two months ago. Now, I’m back.” I gave her a bright smile. “You said you have a relationship question?”

She worried her lip. “Yeah. I think I’ve met someone who I knew in a past life. The chemistry was instantaneous. Now, I’m trying to walk away, but I can’t seem to let go.” She paused, then said, “You won’t tell anybody what I’m about to say, will you?”

I gave her a firm nod. “Right. If you ask, it’s confidential. What is it, Devon?”

“He makes me feel like crap about myself, but I can’t stay away from him. He won’t leave me alone and I just…I can’t walk away. I keep telling Marcus it’s over, but he always manages to draw me back in. I want to know why. Am I under a spell? Is it past life?” She hung her head, blushing. “I feel like such a bad person.”

I bit my tongue. I didn’t like abusers, and it sounded like Marcus was—at the least—psychologically abusive. But I didn’t want her to feel like I was judging her, because it was clear she needed help and I didn’t want to drive her away.

I held the cards, focusing on them. After a moment, I could see the nexus point over the cards. I reached out, opening the pathway for Devon to feed her question into them. The number five appeared, and I was ready.

Then, I handed them to Devon. “Shuffle them five times, please. Focus on your question, and tell me the exact way you phrased it in your mind, so I read the answer correctly.”

She took a deep breath and shuffled them five times, deftly interweaving the cards. She finished, then handed them back to me. I knocked three times on the back of them, then spread them out, curious to see what would come up.

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