Chapter 8
Kate woke in the middle of the night to someone groaning, speaking gibberish, and then heard a heavy groan again.
She turned to Simon and realized the sounds were coming from him.
She sat up in bed and leaned closer, wondering what was going on.
It was not so much praying but maybe someone fervently trying to convince themselves of something.
She listened harder, trying to see if this had anything to do with the woman he kept seeing, the woman who kept destroying his peace of mind because he couldn’t seem to help her.
These people in his visions seemed to come and go of their own volition, and it’s not as if he had a choice apparently, which drove them both batty.
Just as she did with her cases, he would dive into these vision issues, do something about it, then get back out again.
Yet they didn’t seem to have that option here.
She listened a little longer, and his voice rose and fell in volume.
She noted a feminine quality to his tone, but she couldn’t tell if it was because he was channeling someone or speaking to someone.
She also couldn’t believe the term channeling was a part of her thought process now.
Kate struggled with the whole concept of channeling, but it did seem to fit here because she certainly wasn’t hearing Simon’s voice.
When the feminine-sounding voice rose almost to a shriek, Kate lost her temper and snapped, “Knock it off. If you need help, ask. Otherwise just leave him alone.”
The place went silent.
She flopped back down onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She waited the better part of half an hour before Simon’s calm but amused voice kicked in.
“That’s one way of breaking up a session.”
She groaned, then rolled over to see him, those magical eyes looking at her with amusement, and muttered, “I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t stand her caterwauling anymore.”
He blinked several times. “Her?”
She frowned and nodded. “Let’s just say it sounded like a her.”
He nodded. “I got female all the way on it myself, but when you said sounded, I—”
“Yeah,” she interrupted. “Sounded, as in you were her.”
He frowned at that, rolled over on his back, and stared up at the ceiling.
Kate added, “And I get that probably doesn’t make you happy.”
He didn’t say anything, but it was obvious her choice of words wasn’t necessarily the best in that moment.
She explained, “Look. I didn’t know quite what to do about it.
Her voice just kept getting louder and louder.
I should probably … record it next time, so you have an idea of what you sounded like. ”
“How about you don’t?” he muttered, quiet but firm.
“Because that would feel as if I were crossing the line, betraying a boundary of some kind?” she asked him.
He sighed. “Yes, and I know it sounds foolish.”
“No, it’s fine,” she noted. “The only reason I would do it would be so you could hear what she’s saying.”
“Then I would probably be scared to go to bed at night,” he shared, turning again to look at her. “Imagine if you were doing these things while you were sleeping, and somebody decided to make a point of letting you know.”
She groaned. “Fine, I’ll erase that thought from my brain,” she muttered. “And I probably shouldn’t send her away.”
“Did you send her away?”
“I told her to stop her caterwauling. And basically, if she wanted your help, she should just ask for it. Otherwise she should just shut the fuck up.”
He stared at her in astonishment, then burst out laughing. And kept laughing. When he could stop enough to speak again, he told her, “That’s my Kate, right to the point. Don’t waste my time. Don’t waste anybody’s time.”
“Right,” she declared. “What’s the point of doing all this if we can’t help? If we can help, tell us how. And, if we can’t, let us off the hook.”
He started to chuckle again. “If I could figure out how to make her do all that, I wouldn’t feel as if I’m wasting so much of my time on a day-to-day basis.”
“Exactly,” she cried out. “And just listening to you, listening to her, I know she wants help, but I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about it.”
He didn’t say anything. He just reached over a hand, clasped hers, then whispered, “If only I could figure that out …” And he just let his voice trail away.
She nodded. “I know I shouldn’t get upset. I suppose if we took a close look at what she’s trying to do in that state, from God-only-knows what position she’s in, we could do more to help.”
Simon sighed. “I just don’t know how.”
“And the doing more to help part,” she acknowledged, “sounds as if we have the ability to do something. And, of course, if you can’t do something, you’re just being tortured by it all for no apparent reason.
” His smile was bright and, as always, full of love.
As he looked at her, she sighed. “I guess I screwed up again, huh?”
“No, not at all,” he declared. “In a way, waking up to you snapping at me like that, I knew instinctively that you weren’t mad at me, but your words? … They were so Kate. It was just you all the way. Somebody was disturbing your sleep and wouldn’t get to the point.”
“It’s not even that she was disturbing our sleep,” Kate explained, “but, yeah, maybe that’s part of it because God knows we need sleep.
It’s more that she’s been tormenting you, and you’re getting all these visions, and you want to help, but you don’t know how.
And, if she can’t give you information on how to help, what’s the point of bothering you? ”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment.
“Did you ever talk to your grandmother about this?” Kate asked.
“Of course, but not in a way that came with clear instructions or a clear way to handle it. For the most part, as you well know, I didn’t want anything to do with it back then.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” she muttered. “That was then, but how about now?” He snorted at that, and she grinned and rolled over. “I do have a suggestion on how to take your mind off it.”
“Oh, do you now?” he murmured, his eyes alight with interest. He rolled over, tucked her into his arms, but then he yawned and snuggled right beside her.
She leaned over and gave him a kiss. “Just sleep. These visions, they always drain you.”
“They do,” he murmured. “Although I could be persuaded otherwise.” Yet his words were already slurred, and he drifted off to sleep in her arms. She smiled and held him close, for her mind was spinning over this woman who seemed to have the ability to contact him.
When he surfaced a few minutes later, he grumbled, “Your thoughts are too loud. Shut them down.”
She snorted and obediently rolled over and tried to sleep.
She did sleep a little bit. She dozed off before eventually getting up and taking a shower, with the intention of going to work early, at least getting something accomplished that way.
It had been a pretty rough night in the overall scheme of things.
And the last thing she wanted at this point was for anything else to go wrong.
Not that anything was necessarily wrong, but it was pretty darn hard to maintain cohesiveness or whatever when everything was backed up in her brain.
If she could just find a way to let her brain unwind, that, in itself, might help.
She climbed into bed again, just thinking.
When she rolled over the next time, she realized, in spite of herself, she had fallen asleep again.
It still wasn’t necessarily time to get up, but it was certainly time to consider moving.
She managed to get up again, cursing herself for not doing something constructive when she’d been awake the last time.
Now she just felt groggy and slow to get at anything mentally.
By the time she had washed her face, brushed her teeth, run her fingers through her hair, and dressed for work, she smelled coffee.
Following the delicious aroma, she entered the kitchen.
And, of course, there Simon was, perfectly dressed, sitting at the table, shaved, clean, and ready to go.
She sighed. “How come you always end up looking as if your day is perfect and as if you haven’t had a crappy night?
” He chuckled, while she kept ranting on and on about it.
“You look perfect, and I just end up dragging the night with me and feeling as if I’m carrying the burden of it as I head into the day. ”
He looked over at her. “I’m not sure what to say to that,” he began, “except what years of experience tells me. If it’ll be a bad day, the only thing I can do to combat that is to make it a slightly better day by being prepared and ready.”
“Right,” she grumbled. “That is such a you answer.”
He looked at her, surprised. “You really did have a bad night, huh?”
She shrugged. “I should have just gone to work early that first time I got up, instead of falling back asleep, because that just made things way worse in my head.”
He didn’t say anything at first, studying her carefully for a moment. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No,” she muttered, with half a smile. “I just need to shake the cobwebs from my brain and shift back over to my workday mode and get ready for whatever is ahead of me. Hopefully something new will break in this case.”
“And hopefully no new victims.”
She stared at him, horrified. “Don’t even say that. That would be terrible.”
“I can’t believe you have potentially more than one in this strange Christmas-themed murder scenario as it is. It just seems completely wrong on so many levels.”
“Yep. I hear you. At the same time, I’m not sure what options we’ve missed, if any,” she admitted, with a shrug. “It’s not exactly a common MO.”
“You should know by now that you haven’t missed anything, right?”
“No,” she stated, her tone bitter. “It’ll just take a bit more digging to confirm nobody else is out there. Reese’s working on it.”