Serafina and the Silent Vampire

CHAPTER Five


As Sera emerged from her inner office the following morning to show her new client to the door, she found another, less welcome visitor waiting for her. PC McGowan, the red-haired policeman who’d taken such a dislike to her at the Bells’. Elspeth’s eyes were rolling frantically in his direction to warn her, but Sera had seen him at once, sitting in one of the comfortable waiting chairs.

“See you at five,” Moira Gordon, her client, said with a smile that didn’t touch the sadness in her eyes.

“I’ll be there,” Sera returned, uncomfortably aware of the constable’s glare as she opened the front door for Moira and closed it behind her. And in fact, before she’d even turned, he was in her face.

“What are you going to tell that poor woman? That her dead mother wants her to give you a load of money she doesn’t have?”

“Her mother isn’t dead. What do you want?”

The policeman dragged his bitter gaze away from the window where the tired, not so well-dressed figure of Moira Gordon crossed the road toward the bus stop.

“Nice premises you have here,” he said with unmistakable resentment. “Business must be going well.”

“It’s growing,” she said calmly, “but if you mean it pays the rent on this place, no it doesn’t. I paid five years rent in advance from a legacy.” Namely, Mattie and George’s house, which she’d sold because she couldn’t bear to live there without them.

This obviously wasn’t the answer McGowan expected, but he only grunted before smiling with rather more relish. “There’s been a complaint against you.”

Oops. Have I been careless? “By whom? For what?”

“By Mr. Jason Bell. For harassing him at his place of work.”

Sera grinned with blatant mockery. “Really?”

“There are more annoyances than physical threats,” the policeman said defensively. “We were sent video footage of you breaking into the C & H car park.”

Sera sat down on one of the other waiting chairs. “Goodness. Well, I climbed over the barrier and hung around waiting for him.”

“Why?”

“To be sure he was all right. At least you and I can agree the events at his father’s party were a trifle strange.”

He blinked at that, as though determined not to agree with her publicly about anything. “Well, Jason and his father seem to consider the matter closed. Why don’t you?”

“Ah, Constable”—although she remembered his name perfectly well, she peered at his name tag—“McGowan. If I told you that, you’d assume I was taking the piss. What else did that video show? Fighting?” Men leaping impossible heights and distances, vanishing into dust…?

“Hardly,” said Constable McGowan coldly. “If it had, you’d have been under arrest.” His tone left no doubt that he was sorry not to be able to deliver that particular outcome. Sera was more interested in the fact that Jason must have somehow doctored the tape before giving it to the police.

Or perhaps vampires didn’t show up on camera? Or mirrors? Was she becoming as gullible as the people she’d been known to part from their cash?

“So you’re not here in any official capacity?” she suggested.

He stood up. “Oh yes. Rest assured I’ll be making a full report. In which I’ll state that I’ve warned you to leave off harassing all of the Bell family.”

“I’ve never harassed anyone in my life,” Sera retorted. “And I doubt there are many policemen who can say the same. As for the Bells,” she continued inexorably as his face flushed an indignant if unbecoming rose color, “I’m still employed by Ferdinand Bell to locate his stalker. If Jason comes back to you, you might suggest he take things up with his father rather than the police. Good morning, Constable McGowan.”

She stood dismissively, but as she turned to march away, he reached out to detain her. His grip on her wrist wasn’t angry or rough, but it was firm enough to turn her back, and he immediately released her.

Too late. The vision was already in her mind. Some deep, corrosive grief, a young girl full of life struck down by a speeding car. A sickening thud, screeching tires; blood and tears. And money trickling through worn, old fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“What?” McGowan looked confused but recovered quickly. “Look, I know that woman, Mrs. Gordon. I know the family. The last thing they need is your sort. I’ll be watching.”

“Watching what?” Sera demanded.

“You know,” McGowan said darkly and made his exit.

“What’s he got against you?” Elspeth demanded indignantly.

“He thinks I’m a charlatan who preys on human tragedy.” Of course, he had his own tragedy. Who didn’t? She winked at Elspeth. “Got to make a living somehow. Five o’clock, I’ll be at Moira Gordon’s in Muirhouse.”

“You’ve got an appointment here too at nine,” Elspeth said doubtfully. “Couldn’t you make it earlier?”

Sera frowned. “The Seelie brothers? Damn, I’d forgotten about them.” She combed her fingers through her hair and shrugged. “No, nine it is. It needs to be dark and spooky. Can you remind Jilly and Jack I’ll need them tonight?”

“Do you want me to stay late?”

Sera didn’t miss the note of eagerness in Elspeth’s voice. She gave a slightly rueful smile. “To be honest, Elspeth, I don’t believe you’ll like what you see.”

“Playing tricks, are you?” Elspeth said disapprovingly.

“Told you.” Sera turned and walked over to pick her jacket off the coat hook.

“I’d better stay and make sure you don’t overstep the mark,” Elspeth said severely.

Sera laughed, shrugging on the jacket. “Oh, I will. I so want to rip the Seelies off. See you later—I’m off to visit Ferdy Bell!”

****

She found Ferdy in a somber mood, although he seemed pleased enough to see her.

“My wife’s gone round to check that Jason’s flat is fit to live in,” he said, ushering her into his study as usual, but he frowned as he spoke, as if his mind was on something else entirely.

“How is Jason?” Sera asked casually. “Seen much of him?”

“No, not really. He came round late last night to tell us he was moving back into his flat, even though the decoration still isn’t complete.” He sat at his desk and glanced at Sera. Ferdy wasn’t a tall man but she suspected few people in his life ever noticed that because he had such a big, confident personality. Although retired, he was only in his fifties, still slim, fit and dapper. His dark hair was neatly cut around his shining bald patch, and even in the midst of these troubles, to call them nothing worse, his smooth face radiated health and energy. “He was meant to be staying here until the flat was ready.”

“What made him change his mind?” The garlic and crucifixes all over the house? Did these things work after all? She must ask Blair…

“I don’t know,” Ferdy said slowly. “He seems restless, unlike himself.”

There was a reason for that, of course, but how the hell did you tell any father his only son was a vampire?

Might be a vampire. Let’s not get carried away here, Sera. Blair might still be the ultimate con man. Able to con me.

“And what of your stalker?” Sera asked. “Any signs?”

“No.” Ferdy picked up a pen, twisting it between his fingers. “Do you know, I think it might have been all about Jason?” He dropped the pen and met her gaze, and suddenly his ever-present confidence was gone. “I’m wondering if he…got Jason. The night of the party.”

Sera reached out and patted his hand. With the contact, her instinct to trust the sincerity in Ferdy’s face and voice was confirmed. Like the hour he’d believed his son was dead.

She said, “I feel I should tell you, Jason complained to the police about me harassing him. I did go to his office to speak to him, which he didn’t want. But in the circumstances, I have to ask you what you want to do next. If you’re satisfied your stalker, whoever or whatever he was, is no longer a threat, our agreement is complete.”

Ferdy gazed out of the window at his beautiful garden in the rain. For the first time since Sera had met him, he looked like an old man. Every line on his face seemed to have deepened into a wrinkle; every fold of skin appeared to sag.

At last, he brought his gaze back to Sera. “I may be a foolish old man. I may be senile. I’m sure there are many who think so and wonder how I did the job I did for so many years. But Jason is my life. And Emily’s life. We want our son back.”

After a moment, Sera said quietly, “You got him back.”

“Prove it,” Ferdy said. “Prove that he’s still my son. Or prove he isn’t. Can you do that?”

It was another job, another fee. She got paid whatever the result, which was a great deal for Serafina’s.

She swallowed. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Will you try?”

She searched his gaze. Something else was beginning to gleam in his eyes. Beyond the anxiety and the grief was excitement. Something else to do. She drew in her breath. “What if we find it isn’t Jason?” she asked. “What if we find he’s been somehow…altered?”

“If he’s a vampire?” Ferdy said. Oh yes, there was relish in the way he said the word. Ferdy was dealing with his crisis in the only way he could, and who the hell was she to judge honesty? “What would you recommend?” he asked. “Could he be changed back?”

Sera blinked. “I don’t know. But I think I can find out.”

****

Before she left Ferdy’s, she had another walk around the house and grounds, this time clutching the piece of black cloth that Blair had given her. But time and rain seemed to have washed away all lingering traces from the party. Even Blair’s powerful echo was barely noticeable. Besides, to get any kind of feel from the fabric, she really needed to unpeel Blair’s layer from it, and that seemed impossible. She went back home to her flat to try something else.

Pushing everything away from the middle of the living room floor, she vowed to clear up tomorrow and sat down in the center of the space she’d made. In her lap, she held the piece of black silk and Jason’s cufflink, each covered by either hand. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

She conjured the misty redness by thinking about it, but after a little, it seemed to take on a life of its own and swirled wildly until it gaped to let her glimpse a gloomy room and a desk at which sat two spirits. Spirits in the sense of dead. In the sense, in the feel, that was Blair. Only this was Jason. She could have spoken to him now, and he would have heard her. But that was no longer a good idea. He was at work, and he was asleep. So was his companion. And his companion, although dressed in a smart gray trouser suit, was the owner of the black silk. The woman who’d directed her through the maze to Jason’s body.

She gasped as the mists closed down, swamping her like a deluge of blood. With shaking hands, she pushed the cloth and the cufflink onto the floor and rubbed her forehead.

Who was the female? Someone who worked at C & H? Was Blair right that she had turned Jason? If so, she was hardly the stalker Ferdy had feared. She would have been recognized, surely, as a friend of Jason’s.

She never had much clue as to the time a vision portrayed. It could be years in the past, or it could be the present moment. In this case, since Jason hadn’t been dead for long, it had to be some time in the last couple of days. Or right now.

She threw her head back in distress because she needed to know more, and yet she didn’t want to go back. Those walking dead gave her the sort of creeps she’d never had from any spirit before, even the angry and disturbed who’d troubled her since childhood.

Slowly, she reached out again and picked up the piece of silk. This time, as if the link had strengthened, the female’s spirit swamped her. Blood and greed and fierce intelligence. And obedient adoration for someone or something. She had a glimpse of a house, a room, full of dead spirits. Full of vampires, waiting for the word.

What word?

On the question, she was flung out with such force that she let the silk fall to the floor and wondered in panic if the female vampire had felt her presence. Would she become a target of these creatures? Would alliance with Blair save her?

She rose to her feet, swept up the cloth and the cufflink, and stashed them back in the bureau before heading into the bathroom for a shower. “Drop it, Sera,” she whispered to herself as she stepped under the gently steaming jets of water. “Tell Ferdy to keep his money and move on. It isn’t worth it; Serafina’s doesn’t need this. I don’t need this.”

And yet she owed Ferdy for whatever had happened under her nose at that party. She owed him and Jason, for playing jokes instead of protecting them as she’d promised. She’d broken her word, and if there was one thing she despised above all others, it was that. It had happened to her too often in the past: a lonely, desperate child beginning to hope because an adult had promised something which never materialized—from little things like sweets or a trip to the play park or the cinema, to bigger ones like “You’re family now.” She never was, apart from with Mattie and George.

The old, familiar pain washed over her, and for once, she closed her eyes and let it come. They’d been the only real family she’d ever known. Of course, Sera had been a total cow when she’d first gone to them, a cheeky and unhelpful twelve-year-old, and, because underneath it all she’d liked them and wanted so much for them to like her, she’d been clutching very tight to the hard shell she’d learned was her only protection from real hurt—not hits and kicks, which she could dodge or give back, but the worst kind. Rejection.

But Mattie and George had never rejected her. Patiently, they’d waited and, with kindness and fun, broken through her protective layers. And she had the impression they were almost as surprised as she by the strength of the bond which grew so quickly between them then. She’d loved them fiercely and knew that any good in her had come from them. From them, she’d learned never to break her word, because they never had. Or at least not until Mattie died. Mattie had promised never to leave her, but neither of them had had any control over that. Sera had been upstairs listening to music while Mattie’s life expired only feet below her.

It must have been the shock of life departing that had suddenly alerted her, but by the time she’d bolted downstairs, Mattie was dead, and all the tears, pleading, and hugging in the world couldn’t bring her back. They’d told her it had been sudden, that there was nothing Sera could have done to save her, even if she’d been in the same room. Sera didn’t believe them, because the dead Mattie wouldn’t talk to her. It felt like Mattie blamed her, and from that she began to understand her mother’s silence too.

From a very young age, as soon as she’d understood that the unseen people she’d always “talked” to were spirits of the dead, she’d tried to reach her mother, but her mother never spoke either. And now Sera suspected why. Somehow, she’d been responsible for her mother’s death too.

And for George’s, because even before Mattie’s funeral, social services had come and taken her away again. As a widower, George was no longer a suitable foster parent. Despite all their talk, they wouldn’t allow Mattie and George to have been her real family after all. Reasoning, appeals to their compassion on her own or on George’s behalf, tantrums, rages, pleas, all fell on deaf ears.

At least, they’d let her go to the funeral. Foolishly, she’d imagined that they’d see the pale light of pleasure in George’s grief-stricken eyes when she stood beside him, perceive the strength they gave each other, and finally understand. But they didn’t. They couldn’t get that the only way she and George could survive this tragedy was together. Her instinct had been to cling to George, but she didn’t think he could bear the scene of her being pried off him and dragged away, and so she’d gone quietly.

It wasn’t the end, of course. Escaping the new, apparently more suitable foster parents—a mean-spirited, ignorant couple who had their own kids and regarded fostering as a means of getting easy money—she’d gone to see George whenever she could. She’d tried running away to him, but they’d always found her. They’d always known where she’d be, and yet even that told them nothing. Maybe it was stupid, but she’d always had this idea in her head that if she’d been there, if George could have leaned on her, he wouldn’t have died.

But he did. And she didn’t even try to reach him. She couldn’t bear the guilt of his rejection too.

Gasping, she shook her hair, throwing off the past with the spray. She could change nothing there, but she could still keep her word and do her best for Ferdy. She was aware many people, including PC Alex McGowan, would find this rigid point of honor somewhat incongruous in a con artist of her magnitude, but that was tough. Sera had stopped apologizing for who and what she was a long time ago.

Lifting her face into the water, she wished, briefly, for a normal life. A real job. A husband, and maybe even children one day when she’d grown up herself. Illusions. These things weren’t for her, and most of the time, she didn’t really want them. Except when she was lonely, late at night, usually, or when she was wakeful in the early hours of the morning, wishing for a companion to cuddle, to talk sleepily with and laugh with. Someone to share her morning coffee and indulge her passions a little. She laughed at herself, letting the water run into her mouth. Sera and happy families? Not bloody likely.

A man. She just wanted a man to hold and caress her, make her feel special for a night. And give her orgasms, of course. Sera’s body heated under the shower, from the inside out. In the words of an Irish friend, what she needed was a damn good feck.

Unbidden, the image of Blair swam into her mind, his eyes intense as he touched her throat with his long, sensitive fingers. Blair in his kilt, biting Tam with sensual relish. Blair flying through the air in that car park, oddly graceful, even beautiful, as he leapt and hit and bit… The heated tingling of her body drove straight between her legs, making her gasp. Her nipples felt hard and wanton under the caress of the shower. Oh yes, Blair was one sexy bastard. For a blood-sucking monster.

She slammed off the shower and stepped out, seizing the towel with unnecessary force. Blair was another reason to ditch this investigation.

But already, she knew she wouldn’t. And knew too that Blair was her only asset. She’d go and see him again tonight, after the Seelies, discover if he could shed any light on her visions of Jason and the female vampire. And if vampirism could be reversed.

****

It was difficult to go straight from Moira Gordon’s ghostly child to putting on a show for the Seelies. For a moment, Sera was tempted to tell the brothers just to f*ck off and get a life. But the money was good, so she channeled her anger into creativity.

They were waiting for her when she arrived at the office—two large young men with decent jobs who’d just inherited and sold their late father’s plumbing business for a sizable fortune—seated in the waiting area, laughing at their private joke, although they sobered immediately they saw her.

Elspeth was scowling, her fingers walloping the computer keys with such force that they were likely to break if she didn’t calm down.

“Evening,” Sera said pleasantly. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“You’re all right,” Derek Seelie, the elder brother, said. “We were early.”

Sera cast Elspeth a quick glance of apology. “Go through to the office,” she invited her clients. “I’ll just wash my hands and be with you.”

The brothers exchanged surreptitious glances at that. Clearly, they hadn’t expected to be allowed to poke about the séance room in advance. Nevertheless, a whisper, a snort, and a quickly muffled laugh accompanied them into the inner room.

Sera wiggled her eyebrows ruefully at Elspeth. “Sorry. Everything okay?”

Tight-lipped, Elspeth said, “They think because I’m old, I’m deaf, and they can discuss anything they like in front of me—however unsuitable.”

Sera mouthed the word arseholes. She was aware they’d be recording everything that went on but had no idea of the range of whatever device they were using.

An exchange of looks told her that Jilly and Jack were already in place, so Sera merely winked, went to the bathroom, where she completed her preparations for the séance, and walked through to the inner office.

The Seelies had left the door ajar, presumably to hear any conversation between Sera and her confederates, but it was far enough over to conceal their own activity in the room. Although they were lounging at the round table when Sera entered, she was sure they’d already examined the walls and the floor, tested the locked door that led into her flat, felt under the table, and looked behind the curtains and the picture on the wall. She didn’t mind. There was nothing for them to find.

They smiled at her as she crossed the room, their eyes as blatantly mocking as they could be without being openly rude. Now it was to begin, she saw that their gloves were off. With relish, Sera rolled up her metaphorical sleeves for the fight.

She sat between the brothers, who’d thoughtfully left that chair vacant. She had no objection to being directed there. After all, each place was visible through the keyhole of the flat door.

“Okay,” Sera began briskly. “Before we start, it’s important that you’re comfortable with arrangements here. Do you prefer the door to the main office to be locked or unlocked?”

“What difference does it make?” Derek Seelie asked, and his brother sniggered.

“To me, none,” Sera replied calmly. “But some of my first-time clients prefer to be sure there’s no interference from beyond this room. My receptionist will remain in the outer office until we’re finished here. If you’re uncomfortable with that, we can lock her out.”

“Sure,” said Derek. “Lock her out.”

“The key’s in the lock,” Sera pointed out. “Turn it yourself until you’re satisfied.”

As Frankie, the younger brother, rose to do the honors, Derek said, “Aren’t you bothered about locking yourself in here with two strange men?”

“Should I be?” Sera let amusement fill her voice. “When I have all their details and their cleared credit card payment?”

Derek’s gaze slid free. He nodded at the other door to her flat. “What’s through there?”

“Private property. It’s locked. Feel free to check again. No? All right, let’s begin. Before we put out the lights, I’d like you each to begin to make the connection by naming the spirit you want us to contact tonight.”

Both brothers looked at her intently. Derek smiled. “Edward Seelie.”

She’d been right. Just in case, she and Jilly had done their research on the entire family, but Sera had known when the brothers first approached her with the story of their father passing away that they were lying. Their father’s name was James. Edward had been their stillborn brother, dead a year before either of them was born. While it probably didn’t seem right even to them to get a cheap laugh at the expense of their recently dead father, they could have little real grief for a brother they’d never known. They were just smart-arsed wankers with too much money in their pockets who thought it would be a laugh to debunk the ridiculous female psychic.

Sera was way ahead of them. Or at least, she hoped she was.

She made no comment, merely inclined her head. “Do you have something of Edward’s that I can touch to boost the connection?”

Derek gave a deliberate, taunting smile. “No.”

Sera merely nodded. “Okay. It makes it easier sometimes, but it isn’t necessary. Do you wish to tell me more about Edward?”

“Nah. You tell us,” said Frankie, lounging back into his chair. “It’s what we’re paying you for.”

“Very well,” Sera said evenly. “I’m going to put the lights out now—not, as some people believe, in order to encourage the spirits, but rather to aid my concentration and yours. At the moment, you are my only connection to the spirit we seek. And I am your only conduit. We all need to focus on the late Edward Seelie.”

She rose as she spoke, switched the pale light off, and resumed her seat between the brothers in total darkness. “Close your eyes if you want, but keep your thoughts on Edward.”

“Aren’t we meant to hold hands?” Frankie sneered.

Your funeral. “If you wish.”

They’d been reading up. If they each held her hand, she had less opportunity for manipulating events. And since her hands were so much smaller than theirs, she couldn’t even fool them by getting them to hold each other’s hands instead. Fortunately, she didn’t need to.

She didn’t care for touching them. Physically, they gave her the creeps. On the other hand, she’d pick up their emotions—and their lies—so much more easily. She gave a hand to each and, after a few moments of silence, uttered, “Edward. Edward Seelie, we seek your spirit. Derek and Frankie need to reach you. Come to us; speak with us. I am willing to receive your spirit.”

In the ensuing silence, Sera felt a sweaty finger stroking her palm. She made allowances for possible nervousness, but when it happened again, she said clearly, “If you do that again, Frankie, I’ll break your arm.”

Derek sniggered. Of course, they doubted her ability to break his arm—wrongly, as it happened—but having paid up already, they certainly weren’t willing for her to end the séance at this point. Especially since it would be on tape.

“Was that our Edward talking?” Derek sneered.

“Oh no. That was me. Trust me, you’d know the difference. Shall we continue?”

Since no one said anything to that but sat perfectly still, she repeated her invitation to Edward to join them. After a few moments, she increased the speed of her breathing, let a little more excitement and pleading into her voice as she begged for Edward’s presence.

So quietly that no one could have been sure they were hearing anything at all, a faint tinkle of music passed through the room. The brothers’ fingers tensed. They knew something was happening and were preparing to expose it.

“Speak,” Sera breathed.

The music got a little louder as Jack, with Sera’s stereo speaker facedown in her living room above, kindly turned up the volume a notch. It was recognizable now as children’s toy music, the kind you got on cot mobiles or musical spinning tops.

“F*ck,” Frankie breathed. They were taken by surprise. They’d assumed she’d make the obvious mistake and pretend to summon the spirit of their father.

“Where’s it coming from?” Derek demanded.

“Sh-sh,” Sera whispered. “I don’t know. Listen…”

As the music continued, Sera could hear her own deliberately increased breath along with the brothers’ uneasy inhalations and exhalations. And then there seemed to be another breath, louder, echoing, almost filling the room. That would be Jilly, breathing through a child’s voice changer into the keyhole from Sera’s flat. She even made the kind of tiny sound that generally only comes from sleeping babies.

Nice touch.

“Edward. Edward, are you there? Will you speak to your family?”

The breathing stopped. The music got louder. Beside Sera, the men were tense as coiled springs, staring into the darkness. Frankie jumped.

“What?” Derek demanded. “What is it?”

“Something brushed against my face!”

“He’s coming,” Sera breathed. “He’s coming. Edward…”

She jerked forward over the table as if she’d been shot, thus activating the little smoke machine Tam had acquired for the Bells’ party, now taped inside Sera’s jeans. The effect, even in the darkness was fantastic. Although the white smoke belched outward as she threw herself back in her chair, when she breathed in as if she were absorbing it, it appeared that the smoke was entering her body rather than leaving it.

Sera breathed deeply several times. She smiled so that it would be heard in her voice. “The spirit that was once Edward Seelie will speak through me. What do you wish to ask him?”

With more than a hint of nervousness in his clowning, Frankie said, “How’s it going, son?”

Sera left a pause, then: “He says he’s not content.”

“Why not?” Derek asked, leaning forward as if he expected the spirit to ask for more money for Sera.

“He doesn’t wish to be summoned for frivolous reasons.”

“Frivolous?” Derek sneered. “That’s a big word for a baby.”

After another pause, Sera said, “Any word is big for a newborn in your world. To a spirit, words are merely an interface.”

The brothers seemed slightly flummoxed by this. As if they’d been so sure of catching her out over their father that they hadn’t bothered thinking of things to ask Edward himself. Eventually, Derek plucked a few questions out of the air, asking things he imagined only his family could possibly know. Sera answered but made no other move to lead the conversation. If they’d done their homework on fake mediums—as she presumed they had—they’d know all about the leading questions asked for purposes of fishing. In this day and age, especially with a computer wiz like Jilly on the staff, there was no need to fish from your clients. At least, not when you had a bit of warning.

She could tell the brothers were baffled because none of this was going how they’d imagined. It wasn’t any fun after all. Sera made it worse by bringing up Frankie’s police record—an assault charge when he was sixteen that she’d guessed he and Derek had covered up from their parents, since neither of the older Seelies had been present in court when he was fined.

“He was only a kid,” Derek defended him.

“Has he confessed?” Sera asked.

“We’re not Catholic!”

She let a pause go by. Then, shooting in the dark for once, she said: “The spirit says confession should be made to the one who pays him.”

“My employer?” said Frankie. “Oh aye. That’s done. Declared it. It’s finished.”

Lying little bastard. “The spirit is displeased.” Sera decided it was time to end it with a bit of genuine suffering. “The spirit is bored here and disappointed in the ones who would have been his brothers.” She let the silence grow, took some satisfaction in her clients’ obvious unease. “He is ashamed of your disrespect for his mother’s suffering. And his father’s. He bids you leave him in peace. He won’t come again.”

She folded herself up, squeezing the last of the smoke from the tiny machine as she exhaled, and again the white tendrils floated into the air and vanished. The brothers dropped her hands at last, as if they stung.

Sera laid her head on the table and breathed deeply.

“What’s happening now?” Frankie asked, his voice too high. “What’s she doing? Is it finished?”

“How the f*ck should I know? I’ve had enough. Put the lights back on.”

Sera let herself stir with the light and straightened, shuddering slightly. Frankie already had the door unlocked, and, without troubling to see if she was all right, Derek followed him with alacrity.

Hiding a grin, Sera rose and walked after them into the outer office—and came face-to-face with Blair.

“Jesus Christ!”