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Aliya held the clammy hands of the tall, pale, rail-thin hipster in front of her. Her client couldn’t have been older than 25, and even though she was four years younger than him, the boy felt so young sitting across from her.
“So,” the boy said. “Can you feel her? Can you feel grandma?”
Aliya did not like that phrasing. She wondered what the boy thought it meant to sense the dead. The boy, that’s what she’d been calling him in her head. Aliya felt bad that she'd forgotten his name, but she felt even worse that he was sitting close enough to her that she could smell his breath. An awful mix of mint gum and onion wafted over her face every time he spoke.
“Yes, I think, your grandmother is trying to break through the veil.” Aliya lied. His grandmother was not in the room. In fact, she was no longer even in the veil. His grandmother had passed on.
But, there was a ghost in the room attached to the boy. He appeared to be an older man; stern, well built, and he held a perpetual sneer of contempt for the boy sitting in the chair across from her.
He was what had shown up when Aliya had begun the summoning ritual Using the boy as a tether. And he had been an unpleasant spiteful ball of energy ever since.
“Grandma’s here?” The boy looked around the room.
“Tell me about her. About grandma,” Aliya prompted.
“Shouldn't you already know?” The boy asked, his lips tightening. “Can’t you talk to her or something?”
He didn't know she wasn't really talking to him, but the man behind him. The man was currently trying to escape into the store proper, and getting angrier and angrier every time he ran into the barrier that kept him in the backroom.
Aliya was proud of her store. It was located in a college town because she was pretty sure campuses or some sort of hippie commune were probably the only places where her store could exist.
Magic for the mundane. Spiritualism for the mortals. Power for the depleted. She owned, ran, and maintained a shop that sold the supernatural to non-supes.
The supe community hated it, but Aliya knew all too well what it felt like to be outside looking in. It wasn’t like they’d ever confront her. For all the supes knew, she was mundane herself. She’d always had to carve out her own place.
And anyway, didn't some wise person somewhere once say that the best place to hide was in plain sight?
The shop itself was small, but bright and open. Shelves lined the walls filled with crystals, beads, and various other spiritualist accouterments. Potted vines hung from the ceiling in baskets held by hemp rope. Plants dotted every available surface. Some for healing, some for blooming. Behind the counter, dried herbs lined the shelves in jars. Above those, were teas she’d mixed herself with plants from her home garden.
The energy of life, safety, and healing suffused the area. It oozed comfort, and the atmosphere vibrated subtly with power. Cardinal crystals charged as light streamed in from the giant open front window.
The backroom she was in with the boy was separated from the storefront by a beaded curtain, and a door, that was open at the moment. It was enough to make her sessions private, while making sure she was safe, in case of trouble.
Aliya wasn’t helpless, but she also wasn't stupid. She knew better than to lock herself in with people who were already skeptical of her powers. People who might react poorly to her divining.
For a five-foot nothing, 100 pounds soaking wet, black woman in the United States? College town or not… Aliya knew intimately that the world wasn't safe, and danger could come from anywhere. She shook off her thoughts and turned her attention back to the boy, and the angry ghost lurking in the room, looking for cracks in the barrier.
Now that man, he looked like somebody who knew about violence. Not an instigator, no, but the kind of dirtbag to laugh while somebody else kicked a dog. A witness, which was perfect, because she needed information.
“Yes, of course, I’ll just ask grandma about herself,” she said to the boy, before turning to the ghost. “Tell me about yourself.” The ghost didn't have much energy to him, and his eyes sparked defiance, but he knew the score. The fact that Aliya could see them, was a rare, and precious thing to ghosts. He needed something from her, which meant he had to play nice.
“My name is Bryce Walker,” said the ghost. He had an accent, something rich and southern, though his voice itself was high and thin. Smarmy.
“What is your relationship to…” Aliya hesitated on the name, “my client.”
“Thyme is my nephew,” Bryce said. That's right, the kid's name was Thyme. Aliya remembered thinking ‘of course it was’, then being unable to stop that old nursery rhyme from going through her head.
“Tell me about grandma,” Aliya said sweetly, like she was using the name as a title, or a term of endearment instead of speaking to a whole different ghost. Ever mindful of the client in the room.
“She was old, and fat, and mean with money. I don't think that woman liked anyone, let alone loved them. Except for her birds. Those damn birds.” The ghost’s face got impossibly more pinched and sourer.
“How is she? Is she doing well?” Thyme asked. He craned his head around to look behind himself, where Aliya’s gaze was fixed. “Grandma? Grandma, we need to know grandma. The will wasn't notarized, we need to know.” Bryce pressed closer, drawing on his meagre power to try to influence the area beyond the veil. The fine hairs on Thyme’s arms sprung to attention and he whipped his head back around to face Aliya. “Did you feel that?”
Aliya’s eyes pinched briefly before she smoothed her expression once more, leaving the kid to his existential crisis.
She had three kinds of regulars. The loving, the hateful, and the greedy.
“Do you know anything about the will?” Aliya asked the ghost. Bryce rolled his eyes.
“She locked the notarized will away in the damn birdcage. The giant contraption got a false bottom. My sister and I knew about it, but Cheryl got sick, and I got dead.”
Aliya suddenly felt bad for judging the kids so quickly. Sure, he was here about money, but the kid’s mom was in the hospital, and that sucked. Aliya knew. She turned back to the boy, to Thyme with a bit more compassion.
“Your grandma kept birds?” Aliya asked. Thyme’s head snapped up from where he was staring at their joined hands. His hands tightened around hers and he looked straight into her eyes.
“Oh, my, God.” He punctuated each word with a brief pause, wafting onion-mint into her face. “You're the real deal.” He said, staring at her with a bit more awe than the initial boredom, wariness, and hope he’d radiated when he first came in. Aliya watched his aura flare around him, as he nodded. “Yeah, she had birds. Love birds, they lived together. She had, like, this huge cage thing, it took up a whole wall in one of her downstairs rooms.”
“Big house?” she couldn't help herself from asking.
“Doesn't even cover it.” Thyme’s smirked, and his aura flashed with avarice. OK, so there was definitely greed there. Aliya felt a little bit better about herself.
“Do you still have them? The birds?”
“Yeah, they're at the place. The help keeps them,” Thyme said.
“I wouldn't be surprised if the hag left everything to them” Bryce sneered. Yeah, Aliya wasn't going to touch those family politics if she could help it. And she could.
“So, the will?” Thyme looked at the spot behind him, then back at Aliya.
Before she could answer, the phone at the front of her store rang.
Aliya extricated her fingers from the boy's clammy hands, tugging them gently when he tried to hold on.
“So sorry, one moment.”
She was glad for the brief reprieve, and surreptitiously rubbed the moisture from her fingers against her denim-clad thighs as she pushed her way through the beads and into the storefront. Bryce tried to follow her, but she just smirked at him as she plucked up the phone, answering it before pulling sanitizer from under the counter.
“This is Allsight, Aliya speaking. What can I help you with?” She gripped the headset with her ear as she squirted the sanitizer into her hands and rubbed it in.
“Aliya? It’s detective Jane, are you available to consult on a case?” The voice on the other end asked. Aliya’s froze before she grabbed the hand lotion she kept next to the sanitizer and began applying that.
“When do you need me?”
“How quickly can you be on the scene?”
“Location?”
“The university. Dorms.” Jane said in his clipped manner.
“Give me 30, I'm wrapping up with a client.”
“See you there.”
Aliya dashed into the backroom. Bryce had disappeared, and Thyme was scowling at her.
“Is this how you always treat clients?” He asked. One perfectly manicured fingernail tapping the wooden table in front of him. Aliya paid him no mind as she collected her jacket, and tucked her cell phone and wallet into her second-hand jeans.
“The will, it's in a false bottom under the birdcage.” She said as she shrugged on the light coat. Thyme grimaced. Probably thinking about the same thing Aliya had when Bryce had told her.
Bird poop.
Aliya paused in her actions and smiled tightly at the man-child still sitting in the chair.
“Allsight is closing for the day, I’ll take your payment upfront.” She said, not so subtly ushering him out.
She grabbed her keys out of the locked drawer as she charged Thyme, before waving him away.
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As she locked up behind herself, all she could think about was the case, and how glad she was that she’d have enough for rent.
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