Chapter Seven
The smell of cheap incense was so thick it could’ve summoned a sinus infection. Or, presumably, the dead.
Thea sat primly at her grandmother’s parlor table, trying not to cough as Madame Morella, a woman draped in more velvet than a drawing room sofa, moaned softly and fluttered her hands over a bowl of murky water.
The table was scattered with mismatched crystals, a single black candle, and several objects Thea was fairly certain had been stolen from Gran’s curio shelf.
Across from her, Alaric sat stiff-backed in a chair that creaked in protest every time he shifted.
His waistcoat was damp from the drizzle outside, his collar askew, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack stone.
He looked like he’d walked straight out of a gothic painting titled Man in the Wrong Room Entirely.
She almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
Madame Morella let out a high-pitched keen, then whispered in a rasped voice, “They are near.”
“They are always near,” Alaric muttered, not for the first time.
“Hush!” Thea said, elbowing him in the ribs. “Respect the veil.”
“I’ve got a warrant out for whoever’s setting the veil on fire,” he replied flatly.
The medium didn’t seem to hear them. Or she was too deep in theatrical ecstasy to care.
“They are veiled in shadows,” Madame Morella intoned, “but the message is clear…”
She trailed off dramatically. Thea leaned forward, breath held.
This was ridiculous. Absolutely foolish.
But her fingers trembled in her lap, because she wanted it to work.
She wanted a message from her mother. She wanted something, anything—more than just an echo of grief and the weight of unsaid things.
Madame Morella swayed. “The image… the image you seek… already exists…”
Thea blinked.
“The image… of the beyond… where the dead have smiled…”
Alaric’s brow furrowed. “What does that even mean?”
The medium’s eyes snapped open. “The dead have spoken!” she gasped. “And they say—LOOK WHERE YOU’VE ALREADY LOOKED.” Then the table rattled violently. Candles flared. One toppled into a dish of dried rose petals, which sparked and hissed.
Madame Morella shrieked.
Thea stood up so quickly her chair skidded backward. “What did she mean? ‘Already exists’?”
Alaric was already grabbing the candle before it lit the tablecloth on fire. “She’s either a fraud with excellent timing or you’ve got something in that bag of tricks you haven’t checked yet.”
Thea blinked. Her satchel. The photo plate.
She bolted toward the hallway.
“I’ll get water,” Alaric said dryly, handing the still-smoking candle stub to Madame Morella, who had collapsed into a swoon.
Thea didn’t wait. She practically ran to her darkroom, heart hammering like thunder in her ears. Was it possible? Had the camera captured something? Someone?
The words echoed again in her mind as she reached for her satchel. The image you seek already exists.
Thea did not slam her palms on the table.
She very nearly did. But her mother’s tea set was antique bone china, and while her ghostly presence had failed to materialize, Thea suspected Celeste would still find a way to reach across the veil and clip her round the ear for shattering a perfectly good saucer.
Instead, Thea gave the tiniest of nods. A smile. A calm, controlled inhale. Then she said sweetly, “Madame Morella? Kindly get the hell out of my house.”
Madame Morella’s mouth dropped open in affront, her spirit-summoning velvet shawls fluttering with scandal. “Well! I never—”
“I’m sure you haven’t,” Thea snapped. “Which explains the utter lack of spirits.”
Alaric, still damp from Highgate drizzle and crusted with graveyard dirt, stood by the hearth with his arms folded across his broad chest, watching the entire exchange with the kind of weary silence that made Thea want to scream or climb him like a tree. Possibly both.
Madame Morella clutched her selenite rod to her heaving bosom. “The vibrations in this house are—”
“Actual family.” Thea stood, scraping back her chair.
“Real grief. Real memories. Real people. Not parlor tricks and shoddy rhyming schemes and that absolute farce with the shaking table. I brought you here because I miss her, my mother. I wanted to say goodbye, to say that I love her. You made it cheap. Now get out.”
From somewhere in the chandelier above, a faint rattle sounded. And then a pop. The candlesticks on the mantel swayed. The curtains rippled inward despite no breeze.
Madame Morella turned as pale as her powder. “I… Oh dear. I think I should be going before I really stir up something.”
Alaric cleared his throat. “That would be the old pipework.” A lie, delivered deadpan. He gestured toward the door. “Ma’am.”
With a final huff, Madame Morella gathered her mystic paraphernalia in a rustle of velvet and dismay and swept toward the front door, only to yelp as it creaked open on its own.
Thea didn’t bat an eye.
Alaric did. Slightly.
“Leave your card,” Thea called after the retreating form. “So I know who not to recommend.” The door slammed shut behind Madame Morella with such force the hall mirror wobbled.
Silence fell.
Thea let out a long, slow breath and rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Well. That was humiliating.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Alaric said mildly, moving toward her. “Once arrested a man for impersonating a goat and summoning weather. In Brixton.”
She blinked. “Summoning—what?”
“Don’t ask.”
There was a beat of quiet.
Then Thea tilted her chin. “I suppose now you’re going to say I told you so.”
Alaric’s gaze softened. “No. I’m going to say I’m sorry she didn’t come through.”
Thea’s throat caught.
He said it so simply. No pity. No posturing. Just quiet understanding. The kind that felt like balm over every raw nerve.
And then, because she couldn’t look at him a moment longer without doing something utterly stupid, like kissing him again or crying into his lapel, she cleared her throat and turned toward the kitchen. “I need tea,” she muttered.
Her hand brushed the edge of her camera bag as she passed. The weight of it stilled her. Her fingers closed around the satchel, and she turned. Alaric was watching her. Just watching.
“I never checked that plate,” she murmured. “From the cemetery. The one that you said went off on its own.”
He nodded once. “Then let’s see what ghosts your lens caught.”
*
“Thank you for telling me about the attempted grave robbing, and for arresting those fiends,” Thea said, leaning over the tray as the image slowly bled into existence, shadows gathering, outlines blooming in silver and black.
Her breath caught. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the basin.
“Oh.” It escaped on a whisper. Not fear. Not sorrow.
Awe.
Because there he was. Alaric Ward, inspector of Scotland Yard—and apparently an absolute menace to anyone who dared disturb the dead—standing in the center of the photo like a god of judgment and justice.
The camera had gone off at the exact moment he’d turned toward the robbers, cuffs already out, coat flaring behind him like the wings of vengeance. One boot forward. One arm braced like he’d just thrown a man off balance—and his eyes?
His eyes were fire.
Not the color, no. But the look. The fury. The bone-deep promise that no one, not on his watch, would so much as scratch the headstone of someone Thea Blackwood loved.
And there—there between the faint, curling mist that edged the frame—hovered two other shapes. Blurred. Wispy. Just outlines, really, faint as breath on glass. But unmistakable.
Alice Blackwood. Celeste Blackwood. Thea’s gran and her mother.
Flanking him. Beside him. Smiling. Like they’d chosen their champion.
Thea pressed a hand to her mouth. Her throat burned. “He’s really in this,” she whispered. “He means it.”
She looked up at him.
Alaric hadn’t said a word since the image had begun to appear. He stood at the edge of the darkroom, coat damp from the fog, cuffs still looped at his belt. Watching her. Waiting. “What?” he asked softly, voice gruff.
She turned the plate slightly, letting the light catch it. “You’re standing between them.”
He frowned, crossing the space in a few long strides. When he saw it, his jaw went slack. Then clenched. His hand grazed her back. “I didn’t know,” he murmured. “I didn’t even know the camera went off until it flashed.”
“It did,” she said, heart thudding. “They were there. You were with them. Protecting them. And it worked. My camera worked.”
His eyes flicked to hers. There was something open in his face now, unguarded, raw.
She hadn’t imagined any of it. This engagement. This ridiculous, accidental, now-very-real entanglement.
The heat. The longing. The way his name felt like something she knew before she ever said it aloud. It was all real, and she wanted it. God, she wanted it.
She stared down at the image again. Alaric, storm-swept and furious, guarding her family plot like it was sacred ground.
“I think my gran would’ve liked this one,” she whispered, a smile curling her lips.
He blinked. “The image?”
“No.” She looked up. “You.”