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. Shewanteda 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 absolutefarcewith 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.”
