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How often have you lied, or simply
twisted the truth, in order to protect Felicity from what you
perceived as harm?”
    “That’s different,” I objected.
    “Actually, no it is not. You are simply too
close to see that.”
    “Maybe,” I half-agreed. “But she lied to me
about our relationship.”
    “No, Rowan, she did not. She simply repressed
one of her own desires in order to protect her relationship with
you. She never lied.”
    “You’re splitting hairs.”
    “No, I am stating a fact.”
    “Okay, fine,” I said with a nod. In my heart
I knew she was correct, so further objections wouldn’t do any good.
“So, what else did she tell you?”
    “I am not at liberty to discuss that. Her
sessions with me are confidential, as are yours.”
    “But you just…”
    She cut me off. “I simply told you something
you already knew, because she had told you herself. Please, do not
ask any more about things you know I cannot discuss. Now, continue
your story.”
    “I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with that,
given what you just…”
    “Rowan, you need not worry. Your wife adores
you, which is the very reason she repressed this aspect of her
sexuality to begin with. Believe me when I tell you there is
nothing else you need to know. Now, please…go on.”
    “Well, I don’t really see the point…”
    “I, however, do.”
    “Okay,” I huffed. “Anyway, things really
escalated a couple of days later when Officer Hobbes was found dead
in a motel. This time there was absolutely no question about the
whole B and D, S and M thing. All of the trappings were right there
in plain sight. But, this time there was a new twist to the scene.
Artifacts were present that lead me to believe some sort of
convoluted Voodoo ritual had taken place.”
    “Voodoo?”
    “Yeah, Voodoo. Well, a horribly
bastardized version of it really. I’ll leave out the gorier details
since you asked me to, but let’s just say it was twisted. What
happened in that room may have started out as consensual sex play,
but that’s not how it ended. It also didn’t have anything to do
with true Vodoun religious
practice…it was just sick…
    “What’s even worse is that once again there
was an overwhelming sense of female sexual arousal permeating the
room. Almost to the point of being stifling—for me anyway. It was
then that I was absolutely positive the killer was a woman and that
she had literally gotten off on torturing this man to death.”
    “You felt it deeply, didn’t you, Rowan?”
Helen asked.
    The tenor of her question told me she already
knew the answer, but I gave it to her anyway. “Yeah. From both
sides of the fence, actually.”
    I paused and absently attempted a drag on my
cigar only to find that it had gone out once again. Instead of
relighting it, I simply fiddled with the band, twisting it in an
endless circle.
    “Anyhow,” I continued. “Felicity had a
meeting with a client that morning, so she didn’t go to that crime
scene with me. But, while I was standing there talking to Ben, she
just suddenly showed up. The problem was, it wasn’t really her. She
was acting haughty and abusive to everyone, calling herself
Miranda, and had even started speaking with a heavy Southern drawl.
That’s about the time I started doing the math and figured out she
was being possessed by a Lwa .”
    “Low-ahh?”
    “Kind of a high ranking ancestral
spirit in Voodoo culture. They are more or less the pantheon of
Gods and Goddesses that Vodoun practitioners worship. During rituals they will invite Lwa into their bodies. They call it
being ridden , and the
practitioner is then called the horse for the particular spirit. That’s basically
how the ancestors speak to them from the afterlife.
    “The thing is, though, Lwa aren’t evil beings that run about
torturing and killing. In a rudimentary sense they are messengers.
Because of that, I figured that this particular spirit wasn’t a
generally accepted Lwa but
instead had to be one