Superstition Read Free

ghosts that she believed in.
    A thin smile played on Ellie's lips at the thought, but died almost at once. It would have been so nice, she couldn't help thinking, to have had it all thirty years ago.
    But still, better now, far better now than never.
    Joanna Cross found a seat toward the back and to one side. It was a vantage point from which she could see everything without being conspicuous. It was already enough that she was younger than most of the people drawn to this place and others like it. Even the staff was largely middle-aged or older, apart from some of the behind-the-scenes and maintenance people, who didn't on the whole have much contact with guests.
    There was, however, one trance medium who couldn't have been more than thirty, but he was the exception. And he was talented. His séances involved a luminous tin trumpet that floated in the dark and through which spirit voices spoke. Occasionally billowing clouds of ectoplasm spewed forth from his body, taking on the forms of dead departed loved ones of the sitters, while glittering points of light skipped and shimmered over people's heads. That it was all just some gigantic conjuring trick was obvious to Joanna. The only thing that amazed her was other people's inability to see what they didn't want to see, and their willingness to believe what they wanted to believe. Or needed to.
    That was what got to her. On one level it was just silly but relatively harmless. On another it was the merciless exploitation of people who had suffered loss and tragedy and who needed help. Instead they had been tagged as suckers and taken on a cynical ride that, more often than not, would leave them penniless. That was why Joanna was going to put Ellie and Murray Ray where they belonged: in jail if she could, but at the very least she meant to expose and ruin them as a warning to others of their kind.
    And there was no shortage of others like them. Since she had started researching these articles for the magazine, Joanna had been amazed at the size of the psychic industry. From the corner clairvoyant and palm reader to organized compounds like this, it was a business that turned over millions, maybe billions of dollars every year—most of it in cash, with the rest largely sheltered by well-meaning but misguided legislation that allowed any fraud to pose as the founder of some church and claim charitable status. That was no doubt why the auditorium in which Joanna now sat was referred to on the plan of the Camp Star-burst compound as “The Cathedral.”
    Her gaze drifted from one to the other of the glittering glass and mirror structures on the walls at each side of the stage. They were, in all their vulgar ghastliness, an obvious reflection of the “starburst” theme. And behind one of them, Joanna knew, was the place from where Ellie Ray was able to look out, as she was probably doing now, and control the proceedings.
    Joanna looked down at her watch. It would be starting soon. With any luck, for sure if she had her way, it would be the last séance that would ever be held in this place.
    The pattern of swimming fish and drifting sea anemones disappeared from Ellie's computer screen as she hit a key. She called up the file that she'd assembled earlier in the day when she got the list of who'd be coming. They were mostly first- or second-timers who'd heard about the place from friends. Handled right, most of them would be good for several visits, and some of them represented potentially rich pickings. These latter would be singled out for longer individual séances with key mediums in the next day or two.
    Ellie scrolled the information up the screen. Everything was there, all the information she needed, ordered, concise, and detailed—and duplicated in the box files that she kept for backup. Of course, she would have to put the right names to the hundred-fifty-odd faces out there, most of them belonging to people she had only spoken to for ten or fifteen minutes at the most.