Page 97 of The Trick of It

He clenched his teeth together, a thrill running through his spine, and he sank lower in the chair.

She paused, her posture suddenly coming up rigid, and looked at Merlin. “You must not speak during the demonstration,” she said to him, chidingly. “But yes, I will ask.”

Merlin only blinked.

He hadn’t said anything at all. Not aloud, anyway.

She nodded, her hand drifting out in Merlin’s direction. “Some of them,” she said to him. “Not all. Madame Guillotine was not the end. We await you, Martin.”

She breathed out, her shoulders sagging, and shook her head. “Does anyone have a thing they wish to ask our guests?” she murmured, sounding very tired. “A question for the other side?”

Rhys wanted to ask for Willa.

He wanted to ask for his pocket watch.

But he couldn’t find the will to speak.

He heard people ask about missing heirlooms, about pain, about their long-lost dog, about goodness and badness, and finally, at the very end …

“What does it feel like?” Merlin asked gently. “To die?”

Ivanova turned to him and frowned. She batted around her hair like gnats were clamoring to answer, a thousand voices all overlapping.

She snatched up the bottle and blew hard into it again, making a loud horn sound as though she were punishing the spirits for being unruly. And then, she tilted her head to the side one last time, sighed, and nodded.

“It feels different for everyone,” she said. “Some have pain, some have drowse, some have surprise. That part remains a mystery, but it always … hmm …” She paused, listening again, and held her hands up to her cheeks, breathing softly.

“Death,” she told him, “is only an illusion.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

The crowd lingered late into the night, after the lights had come back up.

Madame Ivanova excused herself almost immediately, looking drawn and waxen. Nini and Seph both helped her to her room and called for a restorative broth and a bit of bread, which they had to insist she eat before she slept.

Whether it was simple performance exhaustion or otherworldly consequence for her gift, Seph did not know. What she did know was that the woman was truly physically distressed, and because of that, she put aside her aversion to the peacock feathers, at least until she was freed of her jewelry and stays, and tucked the woman into bed.

She went back to the ballroom and retrieved two jack-o’-lanterns and brought them to her door as well.

Even if her stories about filtering the voices of the dead were nonsense, they might bring her comfort. At this point, Seph was convinced that Madame Ivanova believed she had a gift, even if Seph herself was not entirely convinced about speaking to the dead.

After all, none of her long-passed friends or family had had anything to say tonight.

She supposed she hadn’t really lost a lot of people.

“I was told once,” Nini said quietly, after they’d departed the room, “that Travellers rarely become ghosts. A nomad does not often have unfinished business because transience is simply a part of who they are, beginning and end.”

Seph could only blink at her.

Nini squeezed her forearm and went her own way, apparently wishing to retire early as well.

She was still thinking about it when she found Rhys in the ballroom, and apparently, it showed on her face, because he immediately came to her and asked her if she was well.

“What?” she said, her brow wrinkled. “Oh. Yes. Tonight was … odd.”

“Odd,” he agreed, taking a long sip of his wine. “That it was.”

“‘Twpsyn’?” she asked, looking up at him.