Evocation

CHAPTER TWELVE

MOIRA

They arrived at the house on Beacon Hill ten minutes before eleven with a tray of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and a bag of apple fritters in hand. Moira had picked out an eighties, drop-waist ivory dress for the occasion. Its big, puffed sleeves made her feel powerful. Everything about David made her feel like she was too soft, and she hoped the outfit would help to combat that preemptively. Her hair was pulled out of her face into simple, no-nonsense twists, and cherry lipstick was slashed across her mouth like a stoplight. Rhys had also gone out of his way to dress presentably. He had dug a button-down out of his closet that was less rumpled than the rest and reached for his good, shined shoes and an assortment of filigree rings. Rhys’s style of dress had become more subdued since he started working at the library, but deep down he was still a sullen teenager armoring himself against the world with black clothes and smudged eyeliner, and Moira was still the contentious art student desperate to stand out in a sea of conformity.

“We go in, we get out,” Rhys repeated for the third time that day. “Home in time for dinner.”

“Right,” she said, and rang the doorbell.

No one answered, but a window a story above them was thrown open.

“Library,” David called down. “Door’s open.”

The distant sound of music filtered down to the street as Moira tentatively pushed open the huge door and stepped inside. He was playing something raucous enough to fill a stadium, bombastic and yet comforting, like her favorite vintage T-shirt.

The eighties music fit her perception of him, but only if she tilted her head and took it in from a forty-five-degree angle. There was still something charming about the surprise.

They followed the wail of electric guitar up to the library, which David had already taken over with his own brand of organized chaos. Certain books had been hauled off the shelves and arranged into stacks with sticky notes plastered to the top, and a tea table had been dragged out into the center of the room. A portable record player was sitting on top of it, along with a twelve-pack of sparkling water and a carton of cigarettes.

David was sitting cross-legged on the ground with legal correspondence spread out around him, two highlighters in hand as he drained a sparkling water. Moira couldn’t recall ever seeing him in anything less formal than a blazer, but he was wearing an honest-to-God T-shirt and jeans. Granted, they probably cost more than she was willing to spend on a month’s groceries, but she was still thrown off balance by the sight. For a second, he looked half his age.

“You’re early,” he said, not looking up at them as he finished scribbling something in the margins of a printout. “Traffic wasn’t terrible coming into the city, I hope?”

“No,” Rhys said, setting down the coffee and donuts on the tea table. “Can I turn this off, please?”

“It’s about the most inoffensive record I have in the house. You’re lucky I didn’t break out the Whitesnake.”

“It still stresses me out. I can’t work with all that shouting going on.”

“Well, we’re at an impasse then; I can’t work in silence.”

Moira retrieved her mocha from the tray and handed David the large coffee with cream.

“Ah, caffeine, my old friend,” he purred. “You’re a peach.”

“We brought donuts, too.”

“No, thanks. Those don’t fit my macros. I’m a little tied up down here, but why don’t you kill the record before hubby has a fit?”

Rhys stripped off his jacket and rolled his eyes. He was more anxious than he looked, Moira could tell, but he was making a great effort to appear comfortable and in-control.

“I’ll meet you in the middle if you can find something mellow and turn it down to a decibel level that isn’t an assault on human ears,” Rhys said.

“Let Moira do it, then,” David replied. “I’m sure she knows how to cater to your delicate sensibilities.”

Moira was so used to David barely acknowledging her existence that she was caught off-guard by this snippy, bantery version of him, a version that needled Rhys openly and called her ‘peach.’ This, too, was some sort of defense mechanism, she was sure. A second line of protection after his above-it-all, alpha-lawyer fa?ade was pierced. She didn’t know if he was inviting her into tentative good graces, or laying a trap of mockery for her to walk into. But she didn’t have anything better to do with her hands, and this house still made her nervous, so she crouched down next to David and began to flip through the crate of vinyl albums at his side.

“I’m not sure what is all in there,” David admitted. “Can’t vouch for my taste at eighteen. The Crosely isn’t the best quality either, but it’s better than quiet.”

Moira’s fingers deftly flipped through the battered cardboard cases. David at eighteen had a taste for, well… No taste at all. All of the albums were belligerently over-the-top rock bands. And a couple of early aughts pop albums. Nothing that Rhys would find at all palatable.

“You must have been a terror,” she said. “Did you torture your family with this stuff?”

David shrugged one shoulder. “My dad forced me to learn classical piano from kindergarten on, so everything at the opposite end of the spectrum was a breath of fresh air.” He caught her eyeing a Britney Spears album and said quickly, “Some of those are my sister’s.”

Moira pressed her lips together to keep from giggling. He wasn’t as good a liar as the law degree would suggest.

“I didn’t realize you had a sister. Older or younger?”

“Half-sister. Seven years older.”

She retrieved the only album she recognized that probably wouldn’t drive Rhys up the wall.

“Is Fleetwood Mac okay?” she asked her husband. Rhys, predictably, had been drawn by the magnetism of the books, and was examining the stacks left out on the table by David.

“Fine,” he said, peering at one of the sticky notes. “How do you have these organized, David?”

“I grabbed every bit of family history I could find, and then pulled out whatever Evgeni had about psychic ailments or attacks. I wasn’t sure what you were looking for.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure either. Did you draw up that list of symptoms like I asked?”

David held up a lined piece of paper, ripped out of a notebook. “I’ve decided that if it turns out that I’ve got some kind of malignant brain tumor, I don’t want to know. Just let me drop dead in peace.”

“Don’t even say that. And I’m not any kind of doctor, so if you have any reason to think you might be sick, I want you to take yourself to your physician.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let me know if you find anything. I’ve got a ton of reading to do.”

“No rest for the wicked, huh?” Moira said, retrieving an apple fritter from the bag and tearing it into bite-sized pieces. “I guess lawyers don’t get days off.”

“This is my day off,” David said, gesturing to his designer jeans. “No clients, no office hours, no court time.”

“And all that reading is just…”

“Homework. Gotta bill those hours.”

“Here I thought Rhys worked too much. You’re sure you’re not hungry?”

David tossed down his highlighter and stood, pressing his hands against the small of his back and stretching.

“I’ll eat later. I would, however, like to talk to you.”

Moira crossed her arms and felt her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.

“It’s possible,” David began, “that you and I got off on the wrong foot.”

Maybe it was the sheer improbability of the situation, or the bubbling stress of being cooped up in this creepy house with her least favorite person, but Moira couldn’t help it. She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh sugar, you’re gonna have to give me a minute,” she said, almost cackling at the thought of it all. “The wrong foot? Oh, my stars. Let’s not pretend that you and I like each other very much, Mr Aristarkhov.”

“And yet, you’re in my father’s house.”

“Alright, so I came with my husband on a business trip. What about it?”

“You came back because you want something from me. Are we going to be honest about that or just pretend?”

“David,” Rhys warned, but he was too distracted flipping through the books to finish his rebuke, like a parent cut-off mid-lecture by a pressing email.

Moira found she wasn’t bothered. If anything, this fight was overdue. “You’ve got a streak of mean in you as wide as the Atlantic; did anybody ever tell you that?”

David didn’t seem bothered by this accusation. “I don’t really care what people think of me; I care about getting down to the bottom of things. The truth isn’t always nice, Ms Delacroix. No point in acting like it is.”

“And what do you suspect is down at the bottom of me, huh?”

The floorboards creaked overhead, and David’s eyes snapped up. Not an uncommon sound in a house as old as this, but he was paying close attention. The creaking sounded again, this time from another place. Like someone was moving around upstairs.

Startled, Moira looked to David for an explanation. He scowled up at the ceiling in annoyance.

“Rhys?” she asked, her voice coming out thin and high despite every attempt to sound casual. “You hear that?”

Her husband glanced up from the book. He had been examining it so closely that his nose was nearly pressed to the pages.

“Hear what?”

“Listen.”

They listened silently for a few agonizing moments. Then the creaking came again. This time, there were heavy, thudding footsteps to go along with it. There was definitely someone else in the house with them. Had David neglected to mention a live-in housekeeper? Or had someone broken in to go rooting around for valuables?

Just as Moira opened her mouth to ask what they should do, Rhys shrugged and made his pronouncement: “See? Nothing.”

Moira felt like she had been doused with cold water. Nothing? How could he say it was nothing when someone upstairs was so clearly making a racket, getting up to God knows what?

Rhys turned back to his research, leaving Moira stunned. Was she losing her mind? Had she hallucinated the whole thing? But David…

David was watching her with keen interest. He was a little pale, but his eyes burned with every bit of their usual vigor. “That’s very interesting,” was all he said. Then, before she could question him further, he swung his attention back to Rhys. “Any luck?”

“I just started, David; it’s going to take me days just to get all these records in order. Find some way to entertain yourself. Put somebody in jail or something. You’re good at that.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Moira cut in. This was not going to devolve into the Rhys-and-David show. Not on her watch. “Why don’t you tell me who let you get away with not learning to psychically protect yourself? That’s what we’re here for, right? To keep our bargains with each other. I didn’t come all the way out here just to watch you highlight case notes.”

David surveyed her warily, slouching against the upholstered chaise lounge. “In that case, it was my father. He brought me up in the occult community. He didn’t seem to think protection was that important.”

“Brought you up? How old were you? When you started training with him, I mean.”

“I dunno, five? He knew how to look for the signs.”

Moira felt her face soften despite her best efforts. She tried to imagine him as a child, wide-eyed and golden-haired, his tiny hands being placed on a planchette by grown magicians eager to see what he could do. She had heard of children that young being trained to keep their eyes and ears open for the dead.

They usually didn’t grow up quite right.

“That’s a lot of pressure to put on a kid.”

“Well, I’d rather be exceptional than average. Pressure is part of the package.”

There was something about that statement that stuck in Moira’s intuition like a needle pricking her finger while she mended a dress. It was the kind of warning sign that would make her skip a bus she had a bad feeling about, or place a call to a friend when she got the sense the strange man walking behind her might be following her home.

“Okay, then. First things first, I’m teaching you how to ground.”

“Sounds terrible.”

“Which is exactly why you need to learn. Come on over here, indigo child.”

Moira moved to one of the antique couches and hefted two large damask throw pillows onto the floor. She arranged herself cross-legged on one and gestured for David to do the same.

“Lesson one in How Not to Be a Spiritual Danger to Yourself and Others,” Moira said crisply, “is how to root yourself in your own body, no matter where you are.”

“Sounds like meditation,” David said, eyes narrowed. There was a hard set to his shoulders that reminded Moira of a teen mouthing off to a lecturing principal. “I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t see the point in sitting still and not doing anything useful for hours at a time just so I can feel good about myself.”

“You don’t see the point in it, or you’re afraid of it?”

David barked out a laugh. “Afraid? Sorry, what?”

“Lots of people are afraid of being alone with themselves,” Moira said with a shrug. “They’re afraid of what they might find out about themselves, or they’re terrified that the world will stop turning if they step away from the day’s to-do list. Pretty common hang-up, actually.”

“I’m not hung up; I just don’t want to waste time learning some stupid breathing exercise when I could black out at any second.”

Not just scared of siting still, then. Terrified. She had gotten this kind of pushback from clients dozens of times. Generally, defensiveness was a clear sign they weren’t ready for her services. They had to start wanting to help themselves first. But this time, sending the client away to chew on some tough lessons wasn’t an option. David was here, and in danger, and locked into a three-way pact with her and Rhys. She was going to have to forge on ahead, problem client or no.

“Listen to me. I know you don’t see value in this, but it’s the best way I know to help you. That was my half of the bargain, and I’m going to stick to it. It’s not your fault no one told you how to protect yourself. But now you have the chance to learn.”

David’s eyes were still hard with suspicion, but he uncoiled from his fighting stance. “Fine. But you’re up next, Ms Delacroix. And I’m not going easy on you.”

“Fine. My daddy raised me not to shirk hard work. Now close your eyes. Don’t fuss. Just do it.”

David managed to obey while conveying to her with a quirk of his eyebrows that this entire exercise was ridiculous. If it helped him to cooperate, she was willing to tolerate a little attitude.

Moira tried to bring her awareness into her own body, attending to the rhythm of her own breath like there wasn’t a dozen other things fighting for her attention. The fiery competitive streak David roused in her, the clammy feeling on the back of her neck this house gave her, the concern for Rhys’s emotional well-being circling in her stomach like an anxious cat… She tried to let it all go and sink deep down into this moment.

“I want you to become aware of your own body, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. Feel where it’s pressing into the wood floor underneath you. Sink into that point of contact and just take a deep, steadying breath. Breathe into the bottom of your belly, all the way down into the ground, if you can.”

David, to his credit, did as he was told. Moira waited for the rise and fall of his chest to become deep and regular before she went on.

“Now visualize all your excess energy, all the stress and spiritual electricity of the day, sinking down through you into that floor. You walk around all day absorbing it from other people, other places, other spirits. Just let it go. Trust that you’re enough, and that you don’t need all that heaviness clinging to you. Let it go.”

A ripple of some emotion – confusion, maybe – furrowed David’s brow. Moira sat in perfect stillness, observing him so closely that she caught the faint tightening of his mouth, the shallow scoop of constricting breaths. He was running up against that fear, whatever it was. The concept of letting go might be enough to get under his skin; David went through life with his fingers tight on every rein and gearshift.

“There’s no timeline on this,” she said, a little softer. “This isn’t a test. Take all the time you need.”

Moira managed a few steadying breaths before something above her rattled, creaked, and crashed to the ground. She gasped, nearly jumping out of her skin. Rhys was shuffling through papers in the distance as though nothing had happened, apparently deaf to the strange noises. David was still sitting with his eyes closed, face placid.

“That’s so fucking annoying,” he murmured.

Moira clapped a hand over her pounding heart, fear burning so hot within her it came out as anger. “What the hell is going on in this house?”

David opened his eyes with a dramatic flutter. “You’re a smart woman; put two and two together.”

“I didn’t come here today so you could make fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you,” David said, and now he was the one who sounded offended. Was he really so oblivious to his own nastiness, or did he think he was showing her some kind of tough love? Perhaps to a child raised on cruelty and impossible expectations, that’s the only kind of love he could recognize.

“Well, the way you’re acting doesn’t feel good,” she shot back, refusing to let him get away with bad behavior, childhood trauma or no. “Do you understand that?”

“I do,” David said, sounding slightly chastened. “Listen, Ms Delacroix, I… appreciate the effort you’re putting in here. I’m trying to put in effort on my end, too.”

He hoisted himself up onto his feet and held a hand out to her. Moira stared at it for a moment in fury, then conceded and let him pull her to her feet. Standing, they were nowhere near eye to eye, but Moira felt for the first time that he was appraising her on equal footing, as a force to be reckoned with.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You passed your first test.”

Moira didn’t withdraw her hand. She held him tight and looked him in the eye the way her father did when making a deal with a client that he suspected might renege.

Then, inexplicably, she felt David nudge her gently, energetically, through the point of contact. She might have missed it if she hadn’t been paying attention, like brushing shoulders with someone in a hallway. But she was paying attention, and she noticed the way he sent a faint pulse of reassurance into her fingertips. If he had spoken some soothing platitude aloud, she probably wouldn’t have believed him, but there was no Aristarkhov artifice in his touch. Moira could only sense his emotions for a flicker of an instant, but it was enough: he didn’t like seeing her so scared.

Moira probably should have dropped her hand then, but curious as ever, she pressed the issue. She squeezed his fingertips ever so slightly, sending him a clear emotional image of her iron resolve, her refusal to back down or be underestimated.

David snatched his hand back and slipped it into his pocket, as though he had been burned. Behind them, the record came to a scratchy end, filling the room with silence.

“Come back next week and we’ll talk about it,” David said.

“That’s your move?” Moira asked, her fingers still warm from his touch.

“That’s my move. Thanks for the lesson.”

He turned his back on her and flipped the record over. Then he lowered himself back into his sea of paperwork. Moments later, David was a million miles away.