Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

It never seemed to matter."

Temple eyed the man who stood alone. For all his size both vertical and horizontal, and he must be six feet tall and three feet wide in the middle, he was astoundingly easy to overlook: medium brown hair, thinning; ordinary features, sinking in flesh; lackluster personality, flirting with an edge of depression. Yet he was the one person present, associated with the mediums, who boasted no special psychic role of his own. No wonder he looked dull and laid-back. He was probably just normal!

He certainly was a quiet contrast to a short, balding man with thick, black-framed glasses, whose karate-chop hand gestures punctuated his intense conversation with a colleague. She was a moth of a woman who might be intimidated by such emphatic delivery, a slight, fluttering presence with a receding chin, unfortunate teeth and thinning hair, a woman in gray who seemed to be turning into evasive water as one watched. She wore shifting aqua chiffon as tremulous as she was.

"Agatha Welk." Electra, following the direction of Temple's gaze, let her voice go as dreamy and warm as melted chocolate. "A wonderful, instinctive medium, but very susceptible to spiritual influences. I've heard she's had to be hospitalized twice after successful interventions in some terribly shocking cases of haunting and possession." Electra's voice lowered. "Professor Mangel there has risked his academic career in psychology to write sympathetically on the occult world. He is an observer, like us, not a practicing medium."

Temple nodded. So far, not so startling. None of those present could know that she was the

... ex-fiancee ( such a coy, newspaper-engagement-page expression) ... former lover (now that had a way-of-the-world, hard-boiled ring to it) ... estranged ex-roommate (too coy again, perhaps) ... of a professional magician.

And Max had been just that: professional. He had never pretended that there was anything untoward to his illusions. He would despise these artsy pretenders to psychic powers.

And then the real pretender walked in the door, trailed by a cameraman hidden behind an ostentatiously flaring light.

"God," said Temple, turning away.

Electra blinked, uncertain if Temple was announcing the next player. She squinted at the new arrival. "He's just the Hot Heads reporter who won the special award at the romance convention for the truly terrible takeoff."

"Right. Except that I'm sure it wasn't a takeoff."

"He couldn't have meant that drivel?"

"You don't know Crawford Buchanan. Drivel is his livelihood.

Remember, Electra, you swore on your mother's grave--and this is the crowd that just could resurrect her--that I would not have to brush knee or knuckle with that creep in the seance seating plan."

"My mother isn't dead yet," Electra murmured distractedly. "So that is your ... bete noir .

Rest assured, I will see that you are well insulated from Mr. Buchanan, if that's your wish."

"Devout wish. Gosh, look at these mediums' ESP in action. Amazing how they crowd around the cameraman hoping for their proper place in the sun."

"Not D'Arlene Hendrix," Electra pointed out "Or that strange little woman in the enormous hat. Maybe it's really Bella Abzug... or Dr. Ruth. You know--"

"I know. Maybe the spirits have told those two that they're not photogenic. Oh, Great Caesar's Ghost! Crawford's coming right for us."

Temple grabbed Electra's wrist, and wrung it.

In a moment a glare of several suns transfixed them in its path.

And here we have two quite ordinary souls," Buchanan's era-ready baritone droned,

"participants but not psychics, I believe."

"Oh, no," Electra said. "I'm not at all psychic. I claim to see no more than the nose in front of my face, if I've got my glasses on."

"And the young lady?" Buchanan's disembodied voice drooled from the anonymous safety of the darkness.

Anyone pinioned by the gigawatts of a camcorder light was a deer in the headlights, trapped with no options but flight or sudden impact. Especially when she was cloaked in her landlady's most electric muumuu.

"I'm the obligatory innocent bystander," Temple said calmly. "An impartial observer."

"You don't believe in powers greater than we know?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, but I'm afraid they more often don't believe in us."

"And do you believe that Harry Houdini was such a power, that he will return from the halls of death itself tonight, at the call of these famous psychics?"

"Houdini was at no one's call in life; I doubt he'll dance to anyone's tune in death."

"But if you see him tonight, will you admit to the existence of... unseen forces?"

"If I see him tonight, he won't be an unseen force anymore, will he? But if I do, I'll certainly admit it. Unless he looks like a clever fake."

"And how will you know a clever fake? "

"I'll study the stills from your film. That's a form of magic with a scientific base."

"Miss Temple Barr," Buchanan's voice named her. "A very cool head for the Hot Heads camera, indeed. Time will tell if she remains as cool and unconvinced."

Crawford and cameraman swooped away to focus their dazzle on the White Witch, Mynah.

"You did that very well, dear," Electra chirped in Temple's ear.

"Did what?"

"Stood up to the barrage of questions under those hot lights. Your previous interrogation experience with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has stood you in good stead. Oh, my, that's redundant, isn't it? 'Stood you in good stead'?"

"Redundancy isn't going to be our problem tonight."

"What is?"

"Keeping me from strangling Crawford Buchanan and stewing him in his own juices--that is, oil."

"Don't mention murder, Temple, not even in jest! I'm just a New Age amateur, but I've had a very shivery feeling tonight."

"Shivery?"

"I... sense death. Maybe it's just the death of October, do you think? This is Halloween, after all Or... maybe somebody famous far away will die tonight. They usually do. I mean, die far away overnight, then we read about it in the morning papers."

"Electra--"

"Or it could be an organic death, as in gardening, you know? Maybe it's a bad night for rutabaga. An amateur like me, I could be picking up anything. A star dying in the ... ah, Stonehenge nebula, or whatever. I just have a very, very fatal feeling, but who am I to say? I'm only an aspiring romance novelist, professional justice of the peace and real estate magnate.

Most of my psychic impressions I get from my cat, so it's nothing serious."

"Your cat?"

"Oh. Well, she's not exactly my cat--"

"She?"

"Well, probably. She feels like a she. I've never had the nerve to ask."

"Electra. You can't have a cat without knowing if it's a she or a he."

"You can if it demands a very dim environment, and refuses to leave even to go to a veterinarian."

"You have such a cat?"

"No. Did I say I did?"

"You implied--"

"There you go, jumping to conclusions again. How will you ever observe a seance with an open mind if it's already made up? I've got a notion to seat you next to Mr. Buchanan anyway.

Now there is a man who is ready to believe absolutely anything."

"Amen."

Everyone stopped talking, then turned to look at her, as if she had muttered a profanity.

Once Buchanan and his invisible Siamese twin, the cameraman, had stepped back out of the picture, Oscar Grant took center stage, and began with a hair-toss.

"All right. A word of warning to the tyros present."

"Somebody here is Swiss?" Electra whispered to Temple.

" Tyro' means Amateur.' "

"Oh. I was thinking of the Tyroleans, I guess."

"It is important that you all," he went on, gifting each person present with the hot coals of his brunet gaze in turn, "take this enterprise seriously. The professionals among us will have no difficulty, but the media and a few onlookers are warned not to interrupt the proceedings, no matter what happens. Remain quiet, calm. Allow each of your brains to be an open bay window.