“No. Just a headache.”

“Bad one?”

“Bad enough.”

“Regular, or was it one of those hinky, weird-ass, Twilight Zone ones that you get?”

“Something like that.” I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me.

Twilight Zone. That’s what my friend liked to call it whenever I would engage in any form of psychic detection or supernormal communication. He was accustomed to the peculiar psychic events that had seemed to plague me for the past couple of years, but he still had his own unique branding for them. He had a whole handful of euphemisms-“la-la land,” “out there,” and even just plain “weird,” but Twilight Zone remained his favorite. I guess I couldn’t blame him for the interpretation though. Even I wasn’t always comfortable with the paranormal excursions myself, but then, I also didn’t always have control over them either. And, while a certain amount of mysticism comes along with being a practicing Witch, at times I felt almost as if I had plugged directly into the main switchboard of the “other side.”

Disconcerting is just about the nicest word I could use to describe it. You don’t want to hear the others.

“So why didn’t you call me?” he asked.

“And do what? Tell you I had a headache?”

“Hasn’t stopped you before.”

“Actually, when I’ve called you in the past I’ve had a little more to say.”

“Yeah. Maybe so.”

“So, do you want me to meet you?”

“For what?”

“To go to this crime scene?”

“No, actually. I was just calling to make sure you were okay.”

The meaning behind his words was quickly apparent to me. For a number of reasons, I was most likely at the top of Porter’s hit list; not the least of which was the fact that I had shot him. Of course, he was trying to kill me at the time, so I didn’t have much choice. However, since he had already tried once, we had every reason to believe that he would do it again.