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“Oh, there used to be a lot of shops like mine. The new age was really big in Santa Fe, but the property taxes have skyrocketed and most of the new psychics have moved farther into the mountains to Taos. Santa Fe’s energy has changed in the last five years, or so. It’s still a very positive place, but Taos has better energy now. I’m not sure why.”

She talked about “energy” like it was an accepted fact, and didn’t try to explain it, as if I would understand her. She was assuming, like so many people did, that if you raised the dead for a living you were psychic in other areas, too. Which was often true, but not always. What she called “energy,” I called the “feel” of a place. Some places did have a “feel” to them, good or bad, energizing or draining. The old idea of genius loci was alive and well in the new age movement under a different name.

“Do you read cards?” I asked. It was a polite way of finding out if she believed she had powers.

“Oh, no,” Donna said. “My gifts are very small. I’d love to be able to read cards or crystals, but I’m only a proprietor. My talent in this life is helping others discover their strengths.”

It sounded like something a therapist who believed in past lives would have said. I’d been meeting enough of them at graveside to know the lingo. “So you’re not a psychic,” I said. I just wanted to be sure she knew it.

“Oh, heavens no.” She shook her head for emphasis, and I noticed her small gold earrings were ankhs.

“Most people who go into the business usually are,” I said.

She sighed. “The psychic I’m going to now says that I’m blocked in this life because of misuse of my gifts last time around. She says I’ll be able to work magic next time.”

Again, she assumed I believed in reincarnation and past life therapy, probably because of what I did for a living. Either that or Edward/Ted had been lying to her about me just to amuse himself. But I didn’t point out that I was a Christian and didn’t believe in reincarnation. There are, after all, more religions on the planet that believe in reincarnation than ones that don’t. Who am I to quibble?

I just couldn’t help the next question. “And have you met Ted before in a past life?”

“No, actually he’s brand new to me, though Brenda says he is a very old soul.”

“Brenda, your psychic?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I’ll agree with the old soul part,” I said.

Edward gave me a look over her head where she couldn’t see him. It was a suspicious look.

“You’ve felt it, too, then, the way he resonates. That’s what Brenda calls it, like a great heavy bell in her head whenever he’s around.”

Alarm bells more likely, I thought. Aloud I said, “Sometimes you can make your soul heavy in one lifetime.”

She gave me a puzzled look. She wasn’t stupid. There was intelligence in those brown eyes, but she was naive. Donna wanted to believe. It made her an easy mark for a certain kind of liar, like would-be psychics and men like Edward. Men who lied about who and what they were.

“I’d like to meet Brenda before I go home,” I said.

Edward’s eyes widened where she couldn’t see them.

Donna smiled delightedly. “I’d love to introduce the two of you. She’s never met an animator before. I know she’d get a kick out of meeting you.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. I did want to meet Brenda, because I wanted to see if she was truly a psychic or just a charlatan. If she was professing to abilities she didn’t possess, it was a crime, and I’d turn her in. I hated seeing supposed psychics take advantage of people. It was always amazing to me with the number of genuine talents around, how many fakes still managed to prosper.

We were passing a restaurant decorated in more blue and fuschia tiles with small daisy-like flowers painted in the edges. There was a mural on one wall showing Spanish conquistadors and breechcloth-clad Native Americans as we came down the escalators. I was still managing to balance my carry-on without any trouble. All that weightlifting I guess.

There was