Zero Worship: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #6

Chapter 16 - Let the Wrong One In

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There's a zero-percent chance she opens the door after the first knock. She's way too cautious for that. Better to announce myself instead.

"You summoned me?" Zandra says as loud as she can without warbling away the drama in her voice. She listens for any movement on the other side of the door.

Nothing.

Zandra looks for a camera-enabled doorbell. She doesn't find one, much less a doorbell at all.

Figures. Maybe one of those fancy camera doorbells is too obvious. Maybe I'd stick the camera somewhere else if I was trying to be really sneaky.

Zandra feels something is off, and it isn't from the 19 hertz.

If there were cameras, there'd be no reason for the man in the van to wonder who his concubine was cheating with. He'd just look at the camera footage. So what the hell am I doing here?

Someone's soft footsteps approach the door from inside the house.

Well, let's think about this. I'm here because there aren't any cameras. The level of discretion is so high that the man in the van doesn't want to risk there being any camera footage of him and this woman. I doubt he's someone who cares if he's caught with his dick stuck where it doesn't belong. So what's he afraid of?

Zandra stuffs her hands up her sleeves again, monk style, and clears her throat.

Blackmail. That's what he's afraid of. Put it all together. Politics, money, sex, discretion. Yes. Blackmail.

Whatever it is exactly that he does, he traffics in the currency of information. That's something that I'm just a little familiar with. No wonder he likes me, professionally speaking.

Although there isn't a doorbell, there is a peephole. Zandra can almost feel herself being examined from the other side of the door.

"Who are you?" the muffled voice of a woman says.

Twenties or thirties. Accent local to Wisconsin, or local enough. This might be something or nothing, but she asked me to identify myself rather than ask what I want. "What do you want?" would've been perfectly acceptable in this situation, but she went with, "Who are you?" It makes sense that she'd want to know given her peculiar situation.

Now, if I give that answer to her, I'm yielding control of the conversation right away. If I delay my answer, I get the chance to take the reins.

An average person, thinking through all this, would come off as suspicious if they didn't identify themselves right away. They might get told off or—since this is America—shot.

I, however, am not an average person. The mystique of the psychic can explain away those suspicions. It can arouse curiosity.

"I should ask you the same question, child. You summoned me, but for what?" Zandra says, leaning hard into that mystique.

"Why were you digging through my garbage?" the woman says from inside the house.

See? Told you there weren't any cameras.

Also, is that a hint of a Canadian accent I hear in her voice? Ontario is closer to Wisconsin than most of the United States. Let's test it.

"I don't dig through garbage cans, child. I was merely summoned here by the psychic process," Zandra says.

"What's the psychic process?" the woman replies.

Yes. Definitely Canadian. She pronounced "process" as "pro-cess." In the States, it's "prah-cess."