Nothing, in Eve’s mind, could be more sacred than communing with positive, helpful spirits, learning about life thanks to the afterlife. But Spiritualists were often misunderstood, no thanks to all the frauds taking advantage: magicians, not conduits of spectral messages.
The matron who served as a sort of reception desk at the fore of the building, directing those to records or those in the know to Eve and her team, nodded to them all; the sturdy and oft-sour-faced Marie McDonnell peered over the corner of her New York Evening Post, where a headline boasted:
PLANS FOR CITY SUBWAY ROLL FORWARD: The Dream of the 1850s May Soon Be the New Century’s Reality!
The matron looked the girls and their uniforms up and down before snorting a chuckle. “All professional today, are we?”
“Never otherwise, McDonnell,” Cora countered. Eve set her jaw and said nothing, sweeping up the wooden stairs to the next landing. The woman boasted that she was trying to toughen them up and thicken their skin for a man’s world, but Eve didn’t enjoy the matron’s unwelcome gauntlet.
Even if the frosted glass of their office door no longer proclaimed their precinct name, it was their space nonetheless, carved out by Ambassador Bishop, Gran, and none other than former police commissioner, now governor, Teddy Roosevelt.
Morning light pierced through the tall, narrow lancet windows of their office, illuminating dust motes and the occasional flake of coal ash floating like tiny spirits. Beyond, the sounds of business and leisure: the greetings of passersby on this fine day, the shouting hails for hacks or hansom cabs, the thump of papers delivered to stoops and landing beside the clattering of bottles in wooden crates, the unending push-and-pull, give-and-take of the city, its consumption and resupply, sound rolled and crested with the constancy of carriage wheels on cobblestones.
The spirits of the office floated in the same dreamy, hovering quality as the dust. Only Zofia and Vera showed up this morning at their opening hour, each taking a position by a file cabinet at the rear of the room. Maggie remained missing in action, yet again.
Cora excelled at bringing a séance session to order, focusing the minds of the team and opening the door to the spirit world. Eve needed her right-hand woman’s piercing, calm quality now. With a nod shared between them, Eve rung a clarion little bell, forged with a holly leaf for a handle, letting the sound resonate in the space and bidding the mediums focus on the door that was about to open, relegating all other noise and distraction to the background where it belonged.
Tucking the clapper to the bell, Eve set it down on the burgundy tablecloth as Cora struck a match on a painted matchbox, given to her from New Orleans relatives, murmuring a Voudon blessing to Bondye et les Mystères.
“Spirits,” Cora said in a clear, resonant tone, “heed our call for a specific gentleman to come illuminate us. One who came to us, wanting to tell us more.”
Jenny lifted up both hands. The group paused any further sound, Cora letting little Jenny take the reins.
Selective Mutism was a complex condition that affected each person who dealt with it differently.
But in welcoming their intended target, Jenny offered a tiny whisper. “I’m here, Dr. Font. I’m here.”
There was an immediate response from the spirit world. The Corridors between life and death opened, a hallway Eve knew well from her place as ambassador between worlds.
Jenny brought over a small slate, often used for automatic writing when one of them went into a trance. Instead the little girl turned the tables and wrote a note for the spirit in crisp white chalk: Why did you tell me you were sorry, Dr. Font? Come tell us more.
Clearly Jenny had used as much of her faint voice as she felt comfortable with and didn’t assume her sign language would translate through the veil, but no colleague voiced the query, a reference to her prior communication with the doctor. Jenny’s language was valid however she used it. For another medium to ask her question might disrupt the channel of the medium the spirit chose.
Eve glanced at her spirit assets against the wall. They nodded, an indication that an answer was forthcoming. Spirits didn’t intuit others’ thoughts in a psychic sense, but they tended to be a bellwether when another was about to appear.
The transparent, black-clad torso of a wild-haired man manifested over the table.
Jenny wrote on her slate again. Speak to us, Doctor.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him,” Font murmured, his ghostly whisper raspy, adding to the haunted quality. “That I didn’t know how terrible he’d become.”
Jenny wrote a pointed question. Did he kill you?
The spirit nodded. “I suppose, in the end, I knew too much. But I didn’t know that warehouse was a planted body, a poor soul lured to die through the lie of Arte Uber Alles. Art above everything for the sake of nothing.” The spirit’s words were bitter, pointed. “I was devastated by the loss of Albert, but that devastation was soon replaced by terror.”
Scared to death? Jenny prompted on the slate.
“Yes, that’s the last I told my relatives. I was having nightmares of a man outside my window. I thought Albert was haunting me, the greatest irony since he hated ghosts so much. I thought I failed him. I feared he’d terrorize me to the grave. I was led to the Dakota on a pretense of aiding a shut-in elder. When I saw him… Part of me was desperate. You have to understand, there had been a thrall about him, in life. Here I was seeing him again. And if I’m being honest…” The ghost went quiet, bashful.
Jenny motioned encouragement.
The spirit looked at the table below him, and the light of the candle glinted in his transparent eyes. “I suppose I fell a bit in love with him. But I could never have taken his attention away from his one and only love.”
Jenny stared at him, and the rest of the mediums watched the exchange.
“Arielle. His only light,” the ghost explained. “He loved his sister more than life. They were always close. Too close. It became uncomfortable. Perhaps driving her mad…”
Why did he kill you? Jenny wrote. And how could we prove it?
“You can’t prove it. Not unless he kept a record of who he influenced. He was always persuasive, but he got too good at encouraging the worst. I’m sure my death appeared a suicide, thanks to the poison in my pocket and the state of my deteriorating health. It only took a little push; he always knew when those near him were vulnerable. Albert likely feared I was going to tell Alfred everything; the shifting company money, his obsessions with controlling the mind, the changes he was making below their very house in secret, his bond with Arielle… So, he poisoned me with one of his own tonics blended with acid and, I assume, made it look as though I’d just drunk myself to death.”
The spirit circled the table in a floating curve as though he were the hand of a clock.
“After I died, I wandered detached, trying to piece together who I was and how I’d come to my end. One night I found myself outside his mansion. Everything came rushing back. He tried to stop me, but I escaped.”
Jenny gestured for Font to explain how he’d done so.
“There was a device. The culmination of something he was studying when I met him. He was interested in spirit manifestation. What they were tied to and how an electric discharge could disrupt or make them disappear. He tried to vanish me using a trick of his electricity. He likely thought it worked; but I simply faded only to reappear later, and I had to piece everything back together again. He scattered me, and it took me time to remember why I still haunted this earth. It’s why I didn’t come to you sooner. But you…”
He floated down to Jenny’s level to stare into her face. She stared back unflinchingly. “I was wandering in a dark corridor, and suddenly there was a shaft of light ahead of me and your dear young soul was asking questions, reaching out, and I wanted to answer you. I didn’t know who you were, but I wanted to answer you and I want this cycle of misery to
end.…”
Eve’s heart swelled with pride at this exchange proving Jenny a conduit of goodness. A good medium was like a lighthouse to a lost soul, a beacon warning them of the sharp rocks of death’s listlessness, a point to focus on out of what could become an endless void.
Ideally, the dead were called to give the living answers, and the living who could hear them were called to ask questions. To mutually live into solutions. To right wrongs and heal wounds.
How can we end it, then? Jenny wrote. She exhaled slowly, her breath clouding in the spirit’s chill.
“Albert’s soul is lost. The key remains in Arielle and in Albert to stop his final aim.”
“What aim?” Jenny whispered, her face determined even if she struggled with the words.
“To end ghosts as we know them,” the spirit replied ruefully. “There’s a phrase I remember him uttering when he first began designs with wires and sculpture, merging his aims with Dupont’s dread art. ‘Out from under the great arches, oblivion will fly.’”
Screwing up her face, Eve could see Jenny wrestling with words. Antonia reached out and squeezed Jenny’s hand. “You’re incredible, my dear. Take your time and comfort.”
Nodding, bolstered by the woman who had become a soul sister, Jenny returned to her slate and chalk, demanding the next question of Font: What does that mean?
“I wish I knew. I’m not the only one worried nor the only one who has been hurt. And there’s a host of hostages that will be happy to help give you proof, if only we can free them. Follow the money of Arte Uber Alles. You’ll find bodies of sad souls strewn in its wake; you just have to know where to look. But for the living, try to get to Arielle. The bond between siblings may have begun as innocent, but it is now something different.”
There was a scream; a dark shadow swooped over Font’s face and the glow of him was obscured. The candle blew out, and the portal between worlds slammed shut, jarringly, so hard that Jenny, the most open of all of them, was thrown from her chair. Antonia reached out with lightning reflexes and kept Jenny’s head from dashing against the nearest desk.
“Shield, everyone,” Eve instructed. The women closed their eyes and engaged in their own private ritual. It was becoming more reflexive, but it still felt too ephemeral for Eve. She wished she could give them actual armor, not just mental acrobatics. “Prenze must have read him too, casting his dread shadow wherever anyone’s looking too close,” she added bitterly.
A sharp rap at the door startled them.
“Sergeant Mahoney looking to speak with you, ladies,” McDonnell shouted.
Eve went to the door to let him in rather than shouting back. She wasn’t sure what she’d get when she opened the door. She’d like to think of him as a budding ally, but considering the opposition he’d posed to their precinct at first, she’d proceed with caution.
“Sergeant, come in. Any developments since last we spoke?”
He took off his hat, his ruddy face reddening. “Yes. At least, I think so.” He looked terribly frustrated. Eve gestured that he sit in the chair opposite the desk nearest the front of the room, her desk, and Jenny went to their modest refreshments tray where she’d set a steaming kettle of water. She readied him a cup while Cora and Antonia sat at the other corners of the room in their respective desks, attentive.
“I’d have come to you sooner but I couldn’t remember it. Maddening, that.”
When Jenny offered him tea, he took it, thanking her with tender, palpable warmth before turning away. Eve recalled the sergeant had a daughter Jenny’s age, a little Irish lass. He’d lost her. Jenny hadn’t forgotten.
“I am concerned for Alfred Prenze’s health, and by proxy that of his sister.” Eve reiterated what they’d last left on: that Mahoney would try to root out discrepancies, try to learn more about Alfred’s “bouts” of illness—likely drug induced—that she now believed were the times when Albert took over. She’d not yet revealed Albert as alive, as that was a danger for Mahoney to know, but a window into family inner workings could help bring proof of manipulation. “What happened that you couldn’t remember?”
“Alfred asked me to do something, to look into an account. He went into his study and when he came back out, not fifteen minutes later, he told me not to worry about it. But he enforced that. Somehow. As if he tried to will it from me.”
The officer scratched his balding head.
“Then it was like I didn’t have it in my head anymore, what Alfred had wanted me to look into. But I’ve been trying to work at it, to pry it free. It was so much like when I’d black out from too much drink and see only pieces the next day. I hated that. I won’t go there again.” Mahoney shook his head vehemently. “I know what it’s like to lose control, to have a need so big that nothing can fill it.” He shuddered. “I don’t want to go back to those days. To the drink. So I fought it off and remembered the list.”
“That’s wonderful,” Eve encouraged. “Good work.”
“Alfred wanted me to check to see if the Prenze London bank account had been touched, and when, and if that matched or predated his brother’s will. He also wanted me to test every downstairs lock as he felt sure he was being kept from something downstairs.”
“I’m glad that you remembered all this. It sounds very useful.”
“It was like trying to find it again in a fog.”
“I’ve an insight into why you felt so incapacitated by it, if you’re willing to entertain something more fantastical.”
Mahoney sipped his tea and widened his eyes. “Shoot.”
“I believe that powers of mesmerism are being employed.”
He raised a skeptical brow. “Influencing the mind?”
Eve nodded. “I doubt Alfred is doing it willingly; I think he’s being controlled too.” Her instinct was to see if Mahoney would come to Albert’s involvement on his own, hopefully with independent proof. They couldn’t be seen as leading witnesses or jumping to conclusions.
“I don’t want to be under the influence,” Mahoney declared. “Anymore. Of anything.”
“And you don’t have to,” Eve reassured him. “You already discovered the key to fight back.”
“And I’ll be damned if someone is trying to do that to such a good man as Alfred.”
“Then keep rooting around; something’s rotten. See if anything affects Miss Prenze. Please take note of their regular routines and how they’ve changed. If you like, I can send you to someone who can teach you some strategies for blocking the influences.”
“I’m not sure I want to see anyone about metaphysical stuff, miss; your lot is about all I can take,” he said with a chuckle.
Jenny had gone to the largest of their windows and was gesturing to something outside. Two figures came through and hovered there, the panes making crosses through their bodies: a long-haired woman and a little girl in plain dresses, holding hands, staring lovingly at the sergeant. The little girl ran to Jenny, whispered something in her ear, and the two children shared a smile. Antonia put a hand to her heart.
I’m going to tell him something from his family, Jenny signed to Eve and then began writing a note. Eve knew better than to stop her this time.
When Mahoney had last been in their office it had been made clear that his daughter had died of illness and his wife had later committed suicide, but not before having been taken advantage of by a sham Spiritualist. It was not only why he’d begun drinking but also why he’d been so skeptical of the team, not to mention so loyal to the man who had gotten him out of his addiction: Alfred Prenze. Jenny had offered to Eve that they could do a séance for his family and reconnect them, but Eve had stilled her for a later time. This time the little girl was not to be dissuaded.
Jenny handed Mahoney a note. He read and his breath caught in a sharp intake. Tears fell from his eyes.
“Thank you, little one,” he said through a sob, plucking
a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiping his face. “I…you couldn’t have known my nickname for her; my “little lapwing”…so you…you must have a legitimate gift. I am…overwhelmed by this, by her words of love…and will ponder it in my heart.”
The women were quiet a moment as he composed himself. Antonia had silently refreshed his cup of tea and glided back to her desk in the rear of the room. Mahoney’s daughter waved to Jenny and ran off through the wall as if toward a playground or a carousel, something inscrutable in magic and play that many ghosts of children managed to retain, her mother blowing a kiss to her unseeing husband and trailing off after her sprightly charge. The room warmed.
He turned to Eve. “I’ll trust you, then. Send me to your mentor.”
“Ambassador Bishop. Call upon him at the British consulate where he keeps office hours. Tell him it’s about shielding. You can share as much with him as you know; he has been an ally of this department from the first, liaising with Roosevelt in the earliest days.”
Mahoney nodded. He turned back to Jenny. “Thanks again, Miss Jenny. May the angels be ever with you.” He left, closing the door quietly behind him.
No one asked what it was about; they knew. Eve had seen the woman and child hovering around Jenny as she wrote, and she presumed her colleagues sensed Mahoney’s family too.
“Trust him or no, it can’t hurt to have other eyes and minds aware,” Eve said after he’d gone, smiling fondly at Jenny. “You gave him healing, little angel, as only you could.”
Antonia approached just as Jenny wobbled a bit on her feet. Empathic to the height of the gift, Antonia was highly calibrated to each of them, but with Jenny, it was unmatched, clearly her designated guide and guardian. Antonia’s breathy voice was sisterly and stern as she ushered Jenny to a cushioned bench against the wall. “You’ve channeled twice today before lunch. You must take a rest.”
A Summoning of Souls Page 10
