Chapter Thirty-Seven
As the eighth chime from the clock silences, I shove aside my seething anger and move into the dining room to begin the séance.
The guests lie in wait, seated around the large center table.
Additional tall stools are scattered at the tables around the edges of the room, but this show is standing room only.
The drugged guests touch one another’s faces.
“You’re so beautiful when your face drips off your skull like that.
” “Thank you. I love you. What was your name again?”
This should be cake.
Spirit usually pushes through eagerly in a crowd this large, anxious to connect with their loved ones. I sit at the head of the table and perch on the edge of the tapestry cushion. I think at Spirit, You sure are quiet.
Spirit raises chill bumps up my arm. It is literally giving me the cold shoulder. They are fulfilling their promise of abandoning me if I continue this charade.
I’ve never done a reading without a little push from the Other Side.
In all my readings, I try not to know too much, to lean too far in, but I always glean enough information from Spirit to make a lasting impression.
With Spirit going mute, I have to rely on sheer storytelling to appease this crowd.
Hundreds of pairs of eager eyes watch me. I inhale, exhale.
Please, Spirit.
I try to state this rather than ask it. But is that even possible with that word, please?
“Welcome, friends. My name is Lady Rose. Tonight we will connect with the Other Side, and I will deliver messages from your loved ones who have crossed over.”
Someone in the crowd sniffles.
“You will see on the table a variety of tools—a Ouija board, some tarot cards. I don’t anticipate that we’ll need these with a crowd this large. Spirit is eager to speak with you.”
Ahem! I push at Spirit.
Nada. Nothing. Silence.
My whole life I’ve wanted these voices in my head to be silent. And now is when they choose to comply? Infuriating. Everything and everyone irritates me this evening.
“Let’s join hands and close our eyes, please,” I intone.
The guests hesitate, then lightly fold their fingertips into one another’s palms. Their eyes flutter closed, then open, then ease shut again. This is not a crowd that trusts easily. Noted.
“You can trust me,” I say, just above a whisper. “This is a place where you can let your guard down. You don’t do this often.”
One woman gasps sharply. Hammer meets nail.
I don’t need the tricks Nirav set up for my show—these guests are blotto—but I can’t resist using them.
This crowd deserves all the deceit I can dole out, don’t they?
They are here, after all, feting this horrible human Blanck.
Whatever trickery I can use to make them feel the same depth of loss that I feel, every minute of every day, the better.
“Breathe,” I instruct. The shuffling of clothing and the quiet tinkling of jewelry slowly subside. I shift under the table, and there, tied around the leg to my left, is the fishing wire. Both my hands are holding the hands of others—intentional, that. “Are you there, Spirit?” I ask.
Ask.
I nudge the wire with my knee.
The chandelier overhead sways. Tinkles. Several of the guests’ eyes shoot open and upward. They gasp.
“Ah, thank you for joining us,” I say. There is a note of sarcasm in my voice, and the real Spirit, the actual Spirit, harrumphs like a toddler, showing me an image of a scowling child.
Okay, fine. I’ll keep up the theatrics.
I touch the toe of my ballet slipper to the underside of this table, until I feel the pull of the magnet in the tip of the pointe shoe connect with the magnet above.
I draw circles with my ankle. The planchette on the Ouija board begins to move, with no one touching it.
The guests shake their heads, eyes wide.
They look to one another, Are you seeing this?
I have reduced myself to tricks.
Harry Houdini, standing nearby, scoffs.
I smile at him. Showmen know showmen. He does not smile back.
“Do you have a message for us this evening, Spirit?”
Stop this right now, Stella.
That’s the message.
You are treading into evil territory here.
I shake that off, no. That is my own conscience, giving me these messages. Spirit surely believes in justice. Spirit will come through for me as they always do.
Stella, our message is obvious:
We are NOT to assist you in this plot.
Goodbye, Stella.
I scoff. Okay, right. Goodbye. I know it’s dangerous, opening this portal here, in front of the man who murdered 146 souls. The dark souls will surely leap at this opportunity to share their wrath. But this is my part of the plan. My part of the revenge. I push forward, despite the danger.
“If you have a message to share, tell us now.”
It’s time for the bells and smells portion of the show.
Kiyoko, whose hands are neatly tucked inside her kimono, shakes a leather horse strap covered in bells.
This part is a gamble, but the size of the room, coupled with the bells muffled by layers of fabric, means the befuddled guests cannot tell where the noise is coming from.
Heads swivel, trying to find the source of the sound.
I lock eyes with Pax, dressed in his crisp caterer’s uniform, as he ducks into the parlor, across the foyer.
He is right on time with this part of the plan.
Moments ago he looked lost, injured, but now he’s jagged.
Harsh. He is a bomb, ready to explode. It is just a moment, our connection, and then he disappears. It disappears.
I reach into my pocket and retrieve a weeks-old hard-boiled egg. I roll it slowly on my knee, and the shell cracks. The terrible sulfur stink slowly fills the room. The guests recoil, gag.
“You are definitely here,” I say, and attempt a light chuckle. “Give us a message.” I’m light-headed. Because of the smell? Because of the lack of noise in my head? Does sanity make one light-headed?
Blanck rattles the ice in his drink and snorts. “It looks like your ghosts are mum tonight, lady.”
“Do you have a message, Spirit?” I prod through gritted teeth. “I think I’m getting a message from a John… or a Joseph…?”
This is a stalling tactic. Everyone has a John or a Joseph who has crossed.
But the woman immediately to my right gasps, pulls her hand from mine, and lays her fingers on her chest. I tilt my head ever so slightly at her.
Kiyoko moves behind her and withdraws a light feather.
She runs it gently, discreetly, across the woman’s bare neck.
The guest begins weeping. Under the table, I tug the embroidered tablecloth, and the glasses of wine in front of the weeping guest and the gentleman beside her both topple. He leaps up, and I quickly give the empty chair a shove with my foot. The guests are enthralled.
“Joseph is here,” I say, and I tip my head at the empty chair. “He thanks you for giving him a seat.”
Come ON, Spirit, I urge. Give me something here!
Spirit must take pity on me, or more likely on my guest, because it flashes a series of pictures: pencils and books and feather quills.
“Your Joseph was a writer? Or a scholar of some kind?”
The woman’s eyes are fully glassy. She nods eagerly.
I love and hate this job.
I get a flash of ice—large ice, like a glacier, then of some kind of bird. “A penguin?” I say aloud, before I realize it. The woman’s eyes widen.
But these messages of penguins and scholars: The images stab through my thoughts like a piercing migraine, rather than in gentle, fuzzy imagery.
“Yes! My boy was studying penguins when he—” Her voice catches, and she looks at her hands in her lap.
Chill bumps rise on my arms. I assume it’s because Joseph wants to say something else about penguins.
But I am wrong. My whole body seizes and I know almost immediately that by relaying this message, I have unleashed terror. I cannot move, the horror envelops me so completely.
One of the other guests sucks in a loud breath. “Look!” he says, and points at the large mirror over the fireplace.
Smoke from the fire and the candles on the mantel are discoloring the amber mirror, tinting the glassy surface a dull ashy black. All but the words. There are unmistakable words scrawled there:
HELP US
One guest screams.
The temperature in the room plummets to freezing cold. We can suddenly all see our breath. The guests shiver uncontrollably.
This part—this chill. This is not part of our show. I glance at Kiyoko, at Clarice. Their eyes narrow at me, as if I’m creating this scenario.
I am not creating this scenario.
Am I?
I feel weak. A rush of heat washes over me. I am hot and cold at the same time. Feverish.
This séance is going awry. Spirit shows me an image of a rapidly unspooling thread. I try to catch hold of it, to wind it back onto the skein, but my palms burn and blister.
And then, there they are: the three figures, two tall, one in a wide-brimmed hat. Shadows, on the edge of my vision, tasting metallic and raw. I have invited them here, opening this portal, and they are happy to terrorize. They step toward me. My heart races.
There is a terrible pressure here, like the sensation of being far underwater in the darkest parts of the sea. Our eardrums throb, pulse, and the guests all work their jaws, straining for release against the agonizing pain.
The temperature of the room whiplashes, and now there is heat. So much heat. The air pulses in waves. We immediately sweat. Slowly, flames creep through the cracks in the floorboards, as if coming from below. Outside the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, flames bend and lap at the glass.
Surely this is another of my hallucinations. Surely I am the only one seeing this. I squeeze my eyes shut to clear the images.
The guests scream. Panic. Terror fills the room. I am not the only one seeing this. We are experiencing this horror together.