“I told you, I’ve been thinking about you since the day we did the tests on your mother. But when that journalist recently dragged up my old paper and put it in the newspaper, it brought all of it back. I have very good instincts. And I was curious.”
You know how I get when I’m curious. Everything spun. I reached for my handbag and patted it, looking for cigarettes so I’d have an excuse not to look at him. He’d been investigating me. “It was a shock,” I said, “that newspaper article. I thought it was over, that no one would ever read that paper again after my mother died. But there it was in the newspaper, all about how Gloria supposedly had proven psychic powers, and my mother did not. As for me, I escaped the reporter’s notice, but I believe the term used in the original report was ‘inconclusive and unproven.’”
“We thought we were being objective, Paul and I,” James said. He was referring to Paul Golding, the head of the New Society.
“Objective,” I said.
“Yes.” He took a bite of steak. “That’s the scientific method—pure objectivity. That has always been Paul’s goal, to have the supernatural examined with the same objectivity brought to biology and chemistry and other forms of scientific study. We were certain, at the time, that we were being objective when we published those results. But now I’m not so sure.”
“What in the world does that mean?”
His gaze traveled over me as it had in Trafalgar Square, frank and assessing and almost rude, except for the fact that it made me blush like a schoolgirl. “The results Paul and I had from Gloria were unprecedented, and we were rather excited about it. It was heady. I think now that we got carried away, allowed ourselves to be influenced by her opinions. We looked for the results we expected, which is a scientific sin.” The half smile surfaced again, this time apologetic. “In short, Ellie, I think we underestimated you.”
I stared at him. A rush of feeling came over me, gushing from some long-buried recess, and I struggled with it, suddenly blinking back tears.
James’s smile faltered. “Is something wrong?”
I swallowed and bit back the feeling, regaining control. “No one has ever said that to me,” I managed. “But at least you admit it. That you believed Gloria and not me.”
He put his fork down. “I believed Gloria was a true psychic, yes. I still believe it. But Gloria never told the truth. Not completely. She hid what she didn’t feel like revealing, or she fudged around essential facts. But you, Ellie—” His voice lowered, grew almost quiet. “You don’t lie as easily. You don’t like to lie at all. You hedge, or you deflect the conversation. When you’re pushed into it, you just go silent rather than lie. It’s really quite fascinating.”
My hand rested on my handbag. I could feel Gloria’s flask inside, and I wondered what it contained. Gin, perhaps. Whatever it was, I was looking forward to it.
“I have a theory,” James said softly, “that you lied to us that day we did the tests. I don’t know why, but you did. You’ve been at it quietly for years, haven’t you? Taking clients, finding what they seek. No fanfare, no shows. No newspapers. I’ve investigated over two hundred claims of spiritualist powers since I came home from the war, but I now believe I’m sitting across from the second true psychic I’ve ever met.”
A psychic, if she is to have a career, must deal with both skeptics and believers. They both bring their own set of problems—skeptics with their endless needling questions, believers with their suffocating faith. My mother taught me that, in the middle of the storm, the medium herself must have only one philosophy: Believe, or don’t believe. It is up to you.
Most mediums hoped to convince their marks of their veracity, of course. But the true medium—the one who possesses powers, whether they are recognized or not—must walk away. Otherwise, my mother taught me, we are nothing better than circus acts, trying to create greater and greater feats in front of a disbelieving audience. And where is the peace in that?
Gloria herself never cared who believed in her; she was always right, and she always knew it. In my own way, I was the same. Until now.
This was James. Disappointing him, failing those tests, and having him see me as a liar had nearly crippled me three years earlier. I couldn’t have said why. We don’t always choose whose opinion matters to us. Sometimes there is no logic to it. Sometimes there is only faith.
I let go of my handbag and put my hands on the table, my palms up, my fingers cool. I looked him in the eye.
“James,” I said. “Give me your hands.”
CHAPTER TEN
My hands lay on the table, between my emptied cup of tea and the shaker of salt. I’d removed my gloves when we’d sat down, and my palms were vulnerable and bare. Without a word, James lifted his hands and placed them in mine, his arms flexing under the sleeves of his coat. His palms were heavy, the sliding of his skin against mine sending sparks along the surface of my flesh.
I looked down at his hands. They were wide and masculine, the knuckles prominent, the thumbs strong. In a flash I remembered the feel of those hands sliding over my ankles, up my calves. They had been firm, certain, and warm. The memory sliced me like pain.
I wondered whether he had a girlfriend, whether those hands ever touched her, stroked her back, her breasts. I had no idea.
“What do I do?” he asked, his voice rough and uncertain.
“Just let your mind go,” I said. “Let your thoughts come. Think of something you lost, something gone from you that you’d like to see again. Picture it. Picture how you lost it. Whatever floats to mind. Just let it come.”
“How many people,” he asked after a moment, “think of a lost dog?”