Dream Eyes

everyone has had the experience of walking into a room or a location that gives off a bad vibe.”
    “I know. But in my case the reaction is a little over-the-top.”
    “How bad was the Summerlight Academy?” he asked.
    “I was miserable at the time, but looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was very lonely at first and I was scared, but I soon met Abby and another talent, Nick Sawyer, there. The three of us bonded. I’m not sure why. We just did. We stuck together until we graduated, and we’re still very close. We’re family. The other good thing about Summerlight was that I met Evelyn there. She was the one who helped me deal with my talent.”
    “But most of the time you use it to do your psychic counseling work.”
    “I prefer living clients.” She smiled over the rim of the glass. “They pay better.”
    That surprised a laugh out of him. “I can see the upside.”
    She stopped smiling and wrinkled her nose. “But living clients are also incredibly frustrating. I can pick up a lot of impressions when I view their auras, but those impressions are not helpful if I can’t get context. To obtain that, I need cooperation from my clients. That isn’t always forthcoming.”
    He raised his brows. “Are we, by any chance, talking about me now?”
    “We are.”
    “I’m not one of your clients,” he said very softly, very deliberately.
    “True,” she agreed. “But that could change. I’ve got room on my schedule.”
    “Not a chance in hell.”
    “Fine. Be like that.” She finished off the rest of her wine and set the glass down. “Your dreams, your problem.”
    “That’s how I look at it.”
    “At least you’re not one of those clients who pays for dream therapy and then fails to take my advice.”
    He smiled. “Does that happen a lot?”
    “Oh, sure, all the time. Clients book a session, spend forty minutes telling me about their dreams to give me context, I do an analysis, put them in a trance and help them rework the dreamscape until we discover the unresolved issues involved. Then we talk about the issues and I offer advice. The clients go away and return a month later complaining about the same problems.”
    “Because they didn’t follow your advice?”
    “It’s very frustrating.” Gwen shook her head. “I suppose I should be grateful for the repeat business but—”
    She broke off because he had started to laugh. She watched him, her eyes widening with a mix of curiosity and bemusement.
    He was even more surprised by his laughter than she was. It had been a while since he’d been able to laugh like this. A couple of people at a nearby table turned to look at him.
    He finally settled into an amused smile and reached for a chunk of bread.
    Gwen narrowed her eyes. “What’s so funny?”
    “You, the psychic counselor, wondering why people pay you for advice and then ignore the advice,” he said around a mouthful of the bread. “Talk about naive. But it’s rather sweet when you think about it.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “People ask for advice all the time. They go to their friends for it. They talk to virtual strangers at the gym. They pay doctors, shrinks, therapists and psychics for advice. But very few people actually take the advice unless that advice happens to be something they are already inclined to do.”
    “That’s a very insightful comment.” She wrinkled her nose. “Still, it’s one thing to have a person reject my help flat-out like you did. It’s something else altogether when people pay you for expensive dream therapy and then ignore it. Do you know how disheartening that is?”
    “Sure, I’m a consultant, remember? The pay is good in my line, but almost no one ever follows a consultant’s advice.”
    She furrowed her intelligent brow. “I hadn’t realized that.”
    “Look on the bright side: at least we both get paid for the advice we give.”
    “There is that.”
    The waiter put the plates of broiled salmon down in front of them and departed.
    Gwen examined the salmon for a few seconds and then looked up.
    “Do you think we’ll be able to find Evelyn’s killer?” she asked.
    “Sure.”
    “You sound very certain of that.”
    He shrugged. “The case looks simple enough. It will take a while to sort out, but it’s just a matter of following up on the leads. Plenty of those.”
    “I wish you had been around two years ago when Zander Taylor was stalking the people in Evelyn’s research study. Maybe he could have