Unraveled

  UNRAVELED

  The New Adventures of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist

  by

  Cynthia St. Aubin

  UNRAVELED

  Copyright © 2016 Cynthia St. Aubin

  All Rights Reserved

  The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover and interior book design by Dreams2media.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  OTHER MATILDA SCHMIDT NOVELLAS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DEDICATION

  For Prince Reggie, who changed a character I thought I already knew.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Special thanks to Kristin Weyrick for letting me borrow her name.

  My undying gratitude to Kerrigan Byrne, on whose office couch I edited the final version of this story, and Tiffinie Helmer, for being willing to go on another adventure with Dr. Matilda Schmidt.

  And last but certainly not least, deepest thanks to Cyn’s Minions, my most amazing street team, for waiting two whole years for Matilda’s continued story. In the immortal words of Peter Cetera…you’re the meaning in my life, you’re my inspiraaaaation! Yes, he sings that many a’s.

  I counted.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I know what I’m doing because I used to counsel my clients against it back when I still provided therapy to human beings. As it turns out, bouts of passive-aggressive revenge cleaning aren’t as prominent when it comes to methods your average paranormal critter might use to punish their significant other.

  In my experience, they have much more colorful methods of dealing with conflict, including but not limited to ripping out the other’s heart and eating it with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti.

  But as I’m still solidly in the human camp, I’ve resorted to scouring the granite countertops with the force of words I’d rather not say and slamming cupboards instead of doors.

  Like the self-actualized, grown-ass female that I am.

  “What?” The man body-blocking the espresso machine whipped the question over his shoulder before turning to face me. For a moment, I forgot exactly why I had been fantasizing about hurling my mug at the back of his head. Hot coffee and all.

  That’s the thing about my husband. He’s at his most attractive when he’s pissed off. His dark eyes go all molten. His jaw hardens. He looks like he might kill someone and that’s probably because he does so on a daily basis. It kind of goes along with the territory of being a Vegas hit man.

  For those tempted to make a value judgment here about my choice in mate, I’d like to submit two items for your consideration. One: when, like me, you provide therapy to creatures that consider human beings to be a food group, having a husband who is known for busting a cap in deserving asses significantly reduces your chances of becoming an immortal’s post-session snack. Two: my husband only accepts contracts on people he feels the world would be better off without…like murderers and telemarketers.

  I’m kidding about the telemarketers.

  Pausing for a satisfaction survey mid-hit is beyond tedious.

  But back to the allure of my pissed off husband. In those times when every muscle and sinew goes taut and the predatory animal in him hunts to the surface, I remember what it was like when I was still afraid of him, and that’s about when my ovaries do a little jig.

  Fortunately, my ovaries weren’t in the driver’s seat this morning because our ten-month old daughter needed to be dropped off at daycare and I was already fifteen minutes late.

  Again.

  “Nothing,” I said. It’s always the wrong answer, but the overwhelming need to make him draw the problem out of me transformed this into the most satisfying word in the English language.

  “Is this about the car seat?” The demitasse looked small in his hand, his trigger finger scarcely fitting through the ceramic handle.

  “You could have at least asked me.” I had moved on from my assault on the counter and turned my energy to the sprawling mess at the high chair’s base. The baby within, dark-haired like her father and hazel-eyed like me, was well into her meal-time ritual of redecorating the floor.

  “I can’t have the car seat in the back of the car when I’m going after a target, okay? You have any idea how hard it is to be taken seriously in this business when my associates are always finding animal crackers between the seats?”

  “I suppose that means I should bear the sole responsibility for driving Addie to daycare?”

  “I’m not saying that. It’s just, on days when I have an early hit—”

  “Forget it.” I dumped the handful of food scraps into the sink and swooped in to pluck my daughter from her highchair. I was rewarded with a displeased squawk and a liberal application of strained apricots across the front of my blouse. Tears stung my eyes as I remembered that I’d forgotten to pick up my dry cleaning the day before. Nothing to change into. “Shit!” I hissed. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “I thought we weren’t swearing in front of the baby.” A wry twist tugged down one corner of Liam’s mouth as he recited my own edict back to me with more delight than I found seemly.

  “We’re not. Here, take her for a second.” I passed the warm, sticky bundle of my baby girl off to the man who’d helped make her. Leaning over the sink, I grabbed a damp rag and did the best I could to remove the orange smudge. From my swirling, black funk, I became painfully and acutely aware of the happy coos only Liam seemed able to extract from the baby I had only shared my body with for nine long, bloated months.

  And from thence opened the doorway to the laundry list of de-affirmations my head had been home to as of late.

  Shitty wife. Shitty mom. Shitty therapist.

  It seemed I was always failing someone.

  Ever conscious of the clock, I didn’t allow myself the luxury of spilled tears—no time to reapply mascara. Wordlessly, I held my arms out to my daughter, who proceeded to cling to her father’s lapels with all the vigor of a cracked-out spider monkey.

  “Time to go, Addie.” Liam dropped a kiss on her dark, downy head. “Daddy will see you later.” A perfunctory peck on my lips and he was out the door.

  Then began the shrieking.

  It continued as I looped the diaper bag over one shoulder and the laptop bag over the other. Redoubled as I maneuvered down the stairs and into the garage.

  My last thought as I bundled my baby daughter into her car seat was that the paranormal insane asylum I was headed to as my first order of business for the day might actually be an improvement.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I think it would be fair to say I’ve seen some pretty gnarly clients in my time as a paranormal psychologist. The alpha werewolf with a leadless pencil. A leprechaun who thought he was a
lternately St. Patrick and a magical water horse. An Easter Bunny dead set (so to speak) on offing himself in new and inventive ways.

  But a client I couldn’t see—that no one had ever seen—well, that was a solid first.

  “Never?” It wasn’t a word I used often in my practice, and especially not since I’d relocated that practice to Las Vegas—a place where everyone had pretty much done everything. Twice.

  “Never.” Dr. Wolfe of the effulgent caterpillar eyebrows sat across the desk from me, his round face bathed in an odd, carbuncular glow. Outside his windows, red neon flashed as each letter of the building’s marquee begrudgingly lit up and passed out in turn. In keeping with the paranormal world’s tendency to conceal in plain sight, the building looked like nothing so much as a casino to the outside observer. “Godfrey Weyrick is what you call a non-corporeal entity. In all the years we’ve been observing him, no one has ever received a direct visual. In fact, no one even knows what he looks like.” At this, he helpfully turned one of the three computer monitors on his desk so I could look in on a surveillance video of…nothing.

  Nothing but a lidless toilet, an empty bunk, a steel table, a single chair, and a stack of books. I’d have placed a decent sized bet that all but the books had been bolted to the concrete.

  “How do you know that he’s a male if no one has ever seen him?”

  “Because we can hear him. He does speak to us. Generally when he wants something.”

  Just as Dr. Wolfe started to nudge the monitor back toward his side of the desk, one of the books fell from the desk and floated across to the bunk where it split open. Pages up, spine down.

  “He’s an avid reader,” Wolfe pointed out. “We do our best to keep him in books.”

  “What has he read while in custody?”

  “Everything.”

  “So he has a wide variety of interests?” I drew a star next to what might be the first helpful piece of information I’d yet discovered.

  “No,” Dr. Wolfe said. “You misunderstand me. He’s read everything. As in, every book ever written.”

  I’d long since learned not to say the first thing that came to mind. That’s impossible were two words I didn’t have the luxury of entertaining.

  I took a deep breath, acknowledging to myself that, as usual, I was about to go up against an individual far older, smarter, and more interesting than myself.

  “Can I ask why it is you called me?”

  Dr. Wolfe’s watery brown eyes skimmed over the strained apricot stain on my blouse I’d failed to eradicate entirely. “You’re the first therapist he’s ever wanted to talk to.”

  “Did he mention how he heard about me?” Not that I’d ever been successful at tracking how clients found their way to my doorstep when it came time to try and find more, but I figured it was worth a shot at least.

  “Weyrick has been in custody many times over the course of his life, but it seems you came highly recommended by the gentleman who brought him in most recently.”

  I heard myself asking “And who might that be?” though I had a feeling I already knew.

  Crixus.

  The demigod’s name never came to me but on a wave surging up from my toes and treating my stomach to an anti-gravitational flip. Which was nothing compared to what the aforementioned supernatural bounty hunter had treated the rest of my body to in our times together.

  He’d been the one who dragged my first paranormal client kicking and swearing to my leather couch. The one who dragged me kicking and swearing to his bed. The one who’d gone to hell for love of me. The one whose heart I had puréed when I’d chosen Liam. He’d been MIA for the better part of a year now, dropping off the radar sometime before Addie was born but after he’d run across a succulent succubus by the name of Lavinia.

  I acknowledged the stab of jealousy I felt, reminding myself that I was a married woman—if not always a happily married one—and a mother besides. A mother whose hips had grown wider and stomach had gone slack while that immortal hussy Crixus was hooking up with would probably never so much develop a stretch mark goddamn it, because her kind never did.

  “Dr. Schmidt?”

  My head jerked up and I covertly checked to make sure I hadn’t drooled down my own chin while my treacherous mind insisted on reviewing the backlog of memories centered around the demigod’s perfectly formed ass.

  Crixus had that effect on women.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Crixus and I have worked together on a number of cases.” In addition to many household surfaces.

  “So he led me to understand.” By the color rising in Dr. Wolfe’s cheeks, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to elaborate on what Crixus had told him.

  “Do you know how it was that Crixus was able to bring Weyrick into custody?” I asked, attempting to bring the conversation back around to something resembling professional.

  “Catnip,” Wolfe answered matter-of-factly.

  I looked up from my notepad, eyebrow raised. “Catnip?”

  “Which reminds me, you don’t have any on you, do you?”

  At first, I thought this might be an accusation regarding my tendency to accessorize my work attire with smears of Gerber.

  “What? No. Of course not. Do I look like the kind of woman who goes around carrying catnip in my purse?” I glanced down at the stain on my blouse and amended my previous question with a quick “don’t answer that.”

  Wolfe pushed back from his desk and busied himself at the filing cabinet. “There’s a very specific set of rules for handling Weyrick.” He withdrew a laminated sheet and slid it across the desk to me.

  “What exactly has Weyrick done to earn himself an eternity’s sentence here?” Here being Nevada Underground Therapeutic Systems or N.U.T.S. to the layman. A rather unfortunate acronym for the paranormal world’s answer to a home for the criminally insane.

  “Are you at all familiar with how computer programming works, Doctor Schmidt?”

  “Somewhat.” An out and out lie, but after this morning, I didn’t want to admit to just one more area where I was sadly lacking.

  “Good. Think of the universe as an application program interface—an API—if you will. Everything you know, everything you see, is like a graphic user interface governed by a system of protocols, tools, and routines put into place eons ago by entities we are only scarcely able to understand. Clear so far?”

  “Relatively.”

  “Well, in this metaphor, Weyrick would be the equivalent of a software engineer. Someone who knows how to manipulate the code that governs the universe. Sometimes to disastrous effect.”

  I felt a little dizzy trying to wrap my head around the consequences of what Wolfe had said. “So what is the goal of my involvement here, Dr. Wolfe?”

  Wolfe pushed the thick file folder across the desk to me and scrubbed his face with his hand. The friction raised small snowflakes of dead skin in his wiry gray eyebrows.

  “My goal, Dr. Schmidt, is to find out as much from Godfrey Weyrick as I possibly can and to minimize the risk to the general populace while I’m doing it.”

  I knew a little about minimizing the risk to the general populace. After all, it hadn’t been that long ago when Crixus and I were all that stood between some dysfunctional paranormal critter and the world’s imminent end.

  Or had it?

  A faint reflection of my tired face haunted Wolfe’s monitor. Hazel eyes dulled by lack of sleep. Two days’ unwashed chestnut hair in a sagging bun. Not even the slash of crimson lipstick managed to breathe life into my pale cheeks. A woman more immaterial than the one I used to be. Before I had switched to non-human clientele, I had counseled women in my position by the dozen. Exhausted. Overwrought. Attempting to balance new motherhood with a career and a family. Of course, most of those women hadn’t been married to hit men, nor did their careers involve interfacing with non-corporeal beings that c
ould potentially end all life as we knew it. That probably meant something.

  I took the fat file in hand and brought its weight to my lap.

  Wolfe pressed the intercom button on his desk phone. “Trudy, will you have Daniel come escort Doctor Schmidt down to ward four?”

  “Right away, Doctor Wolfe,” a quiescent female voice agreed.

  Wolfe stood behind his desk, signaling it was my turn to do the same. “Stop by before you leave, if you would be so kind. I’d like to know how it goes.”

  “Do you expect me to believe you won’t be watching?”

  “No. But I’d like to talk to you all the same. I believe your fee more than covers at least that common courtesy.”

  Someone tapped on Wolfe’s door.

  “Come in, Daniel.”

  Daniel had the eyes of a cocker spaniel in the body of a Great Dane. Big, rangy, and with skin the color of a good latte. Heavy on the espresso, light on the almond milk. His uniform of gray slacks and a black polo shirt did little to temper the impact of a body that looked like it had been honed in a prison work yard rather than a gym. “You rang?” he said. His voice had the engine rumble resonance common to men of his height.

  “Please escort Doctor Schmidt down to ward four. She’ll be speaking with Weyrick.”

  This earned me a raised eyebrow from Daniel.

  “Right this way, Doctor Schmidt.” The orderly held the door wide and motioned me through with one catcher’s mitt-sized hand. We were almost out the door when Wolfe shouted us back.

  “Be sure to brief her on the security procedures, Daniel. All of them.”

  This coda caught me, but I didn’t have time to think on it before the elevator doors boxed us in.

  “Weyrick doesn’t get many visitors,” Daniel said. “He’s really looking forward to meeting you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Heard Wolfe talking to him earlier today.”

  “And what did he say?”