Sheri WhiteFeather - Always Look Twice

She tilted her head. “It’s hard to say. There are other tribes besides the Navajo that have witches among them.” And his attitude confused her. Why would a man who believed in supernatural beings resent working with a psychic?

Because he envied her power, her mind answered. West wanted what she had. The ability she possessed.

“You better be careful,” he said, reminding her once again that the Slasher was attacking American Indian women.

Like her. And her sister.

She thought about Allie, about how gentle her younger sibling was. Then she glanced at West.

Suddenly his eyes, those odd gray eyes, were glowing.

Like a witch.

Twenty minutes later Olivia took the 101, engaging the gas petal, gaining speed, switching lanes, snarling at the late-day traffic.

She kept telling herself that West’s eyes were a trick of the light, an illusion. He wasn’t powerful enough to be a witch.

Darting past a poky compact, she accelerated again, her vintage Porsche purring with elation, the wind whipping through the convertible, stinging her face. And then she wondered what the hell she was doing.

Why was she on the freeway? She lived in a loft downtown, just minutes from the police station.

Suddenly her vehicle chose its own path, forcing her to fight the wheel.

Battling the entity inside her car, she screamed at it, warning it to leave her alone. Sounds from the road sliced past her ears, fast, furious, overwhelming.

Her tires hugged the lane, spinning like black holes in space. But when she saw the Highland exit, she knew.

She understood.

A ghost, a wanagi in her father’s language, was taking her to him. Not to his grave, but to the motel where he’d blown out his brains.

“All right,” she whispered. “I’ll go there.” The wheel on the Porsche was no longer locked, but her destination had been forged just the same.

She drove to the motel, a place she’d been avoiding for years. Aside from a fresh coat of paint, it looked the same, an attractive building on a side street off Sunset Boulevard, with yellow trim and a swimming pool surrounded by empty lounge chairs.

She parked in front of Room 112 and stared at the heavy beige drapes in the window.

Now what? she asked herself. What difference did this make? She’d been having visions about her dad since the night he’d killed himself.

She’d seen it happen before he’d pulled the trigger.

But her mad rush to save him had failed, even with Detective Muncy’s help. They’d called a list of motels in the Hollywood area, working in alphabetical order, checking registries, trying to pinpoint the location in her vision.

Olivia stared at the drapes again. The Z-Sleep Inn had been the last place on their list, a motel they’d never gotten the chance to call.

Instead, another guest had heard the shot and reported it to the front desk.

In the end Joseph Whirlwind had been found, alone on the bed, blood gushing out of his nose and mouth, the back of his head splattered on the wall behind him, chips of his skull imbedded in the plaster.

A biohazard removal company had cleaned up the mess, but no one could erase the recurring vision from her mind.

She looked up at the sky, knowing it was going to happen. Unable to stop it, she waited, her heart pounding with anxiety, with memories tangling like vines.

Then suddenly the familiar image sluiced through her brain, as vivid as a horror film bursting with surround sound.

She could hear her father’s erratic breathing. He paced the room, passing the unmade bed. The quilt was a pleasant shade of blue, mottled with a green-and-yellow design. Joseph wanted to shred it.

Edgy, he glanced at the.44 Magnum on the night-stand. It was an old gun, a weapon he’d had since the seventies. Dirty Harry style, he thought, wishing he’d had a career like Clint Eastwood.

But Joseph was Lakota, an actor who refused to play parts that stereotyped his people. His agent kept telling him to get over it, to take whatever work he could find.

Joseph shook his head. He had pride. And honor.

He picked up the note he’d written to his daughters, studying it one more time. He’d tried to word it simply, to refrain from the drama that had destroyed his life.

Steeped in emotion, he tucked it into an envelope, holding it, ever so briefly, against his heart. His girls were adults now, young women old enough to take care of themselves. He wasn’t abandoning them. He was freeing them from the depression that swallowed his soul. Besides, he told himself, he was already dead. He’d ceased to exist on the day his wife had left him for another man.

When he climbed onto the bed and reached for the pistol, Olivia’s heart went weak.

Don’t do it, Daddy .

She opened her eyes, but the image wouldn’t go away. She wanted to hate her mother. Except, it was her father placing the gun barrel in his mouth and pulling the trigger.

The high-powered blast reverberated in her ears, killing Joseph Whirlwind instantly.

She waited for his spirit to leave his body, praying he would find peace. Yet there was nothing but the aftermath of his suicide haunting the room.

Olivia went straight home, anxious to see her sister. She found Allie in the kitchen, humming to a Beatles song on an oldies radio station. The kitchen, like the rest of the loft, was decorated in Allie’s eclectic style, with thrift-store treasures and shabby-chic collectables.

Allie was a full-time artist and a part-time art teacher at a senior citizen’s community center. She had a way with elders. With kids and animals, too. She spoiled a black cat, a stray she’d named Samantha that hissed at everyone but her.

Olivia stood back, watching her younger sibling. Although they were only a year apart, eighteen and nineteen when their dad had died, she’d always been protective of Allie.

And for good reason. Most of the time, Olivia’s sister floated through life, ignoring her surroundings. At the moment she wasn’t paying attention to anything except the health-food groceries she was arranging in a walk-in pantry.

“What if I was the Slasher?” Olivia said.

“What?” Allie spun around, her waist-length hair whipping across her body. She wore an ensemble of Southwestern-style clothes, gauzy fabrics decorated with turquoise jewelry she’d bought at a pawnshop.

“You didn’t even hear me come in,” Olivia told her. “I could have been the killer.”

“The door was locked. You have a key.” Allie stacked several cans of vegetarian chili on an already crowded shelf.

“That’s not the point. You’re oblivious.”

“I have street smarts.” The younger woman gestured to a nearby window, where designers, retailers, manufacturers and apparel marts converged in the Fashion District. “Look where we live.”

Olivia shook her head. Their loft was located above a trendy little shoe store and a gourmet coffee bar that baked fresh muffins throughout the day. Even now, the aroma of banana-nut bread wafted through the air, along with the scented candles Allie routinely burned. She existed in a dream world, right along with the fantasy creatures she painted.

“I’m going to teach you to shoot.”

Her sister’s dark skin paled. “No. Not after what Dad did.”

“You need to learn to protect yourself.”

“Not like that.” When Allie cocked her hip, the shiny belt cinched at her waist made her look leaner than she already was. She was tall and graceful, stunningly lithe. Their mother had been a dancer when she was young. Olivia and her sister had inherited Yvonne Whirlwind’s long shapely lines. Of course Olivia had inherited more than that.

Their mom was psychic, too.

The woman who’d walked out on them, she thought. The woman who’d purposely disappeared.