Chapter 38
Zina
An excerpt from Spirit Mediumship: A Guide to the Intuitive Séance:
Spirits live alongside us, just on the other side of our reality in the spiritual realm or the beyond. But for a true medium, spirits are physically all around, attempting to make themselves known, heard, seen, and understood.
All you have to do is listen.
Most people are too focused on themselves. They speak about themselves, care about themselves, look out for themselves, hear only themselves. As psychics, mediums are in a unique position: We are in touch with our inner selves more than others, but we also listen to outside voices more than others.
Start with your clients. Instead of listening only to their question, listen to them in whole, listen to all that they say. Then listen to others who are not your clients. Finally, sit in a quiet room, with no one to disturb you, and listen to the silence.
You never know when someone will start to speak.
In the following weeks, I spent my days on guard—against the spirit, the police, Olga.
In the evenings, when alone, I practiced awakening my affinity, listening to myself, experimenting with the ritual and routine of holding séances.
I heard the spirits when I reached into the beyond and simply listened.
They were there, as my grandfather’s book said they would be.
It was no one I knew, the spirits I heard likely anchored by the building, the land beneath it, Paris all around.
Occasionally, they spoke; mostly, they were content to just be.
I learned the spirits loved a quiet, flickering warmth.
The more light, the more candles, the more ready and welcoming the atmosphere.
Lilies reminded them of their deaths, so I experimented with other flower varieties until I settled upon a combination of white clover, bluebells, cowslips, and hawthorn.
Instead of cinnamon and lemongrass, I found burning mugwort better encouraged spiritual communication and more quickly awoke my affinity.
Yarrow drove away pesky spirits and the unclean force.
Angelica purified and protected the séance circle.
Rue increased my emotional sensitivity to the dead.
Mandrake drew the spirits I called upon to the table.
My instincts with food and drink had been right.
Spirits loved tea—who didn’t? It was good for the soul.
Sometimes, I would try my hand at baking the pastries or sweets; other times, Katya would help or Inessa would bring over another creation—my favorite being her napoleon torte in the Russian style, with more layers, almonds, and icing than its French counterpart.
I couldn’t stop eating desserts, other foods tasting not quite right.
My nerves were getting the best of me. The spirit, my grandmother’s illness, Mama’s predicament, all weighed on me.
But I needed clients with whom to practice my séances.
I was still wary about leaving the tearoom, given Baba Valya’s precarious health and that feeling of being watched.
And apparently, not by Gabriel. I wished our patrons and clients would return to Samovar.
Not just for the tea and sweets but for their aura readings and fortunes and futures, to commune with their dead and partake in my séances—and not the fraudulent kind Baba Valya had peddled before.
So I wrote a sign to hang up on our newly renovated windows:
Open for Business and After-Hours Fortune-Telling, Divination & Séances
I sent notes to our former clients, too, inviting them to come for a séance or an aura reading or whatever method of divination they desired.
I only hoped the wards would hold against the spirit.
With all of us working to keep them active, he had been more elusive, though I still felt and smelled him everywhere.
My grandmother had bouts of good days, even making her slow, creaking progress down the stairs.
But she ate and drank little and was losing weight rapidly, her coughing frequently keeping her up at night.
She gasped for breath, complained of fever and fatigue, and hacked up greenish-yellow mucus.
She was a shadow of her old sprightly self.
I had to persuade her to see Dr. Misha, and Sergei to teach me the spiritual expulsion, and soon.
At the very least, it would give me something to do besides talk to random spirits and think of Gabriel. Had I done the right thing? Would his sister recover? With Baba Valya resting most of the time, and Katya off with the doctor, I was alone. And, I hated to admit, quite—all right, very—lonely.