She raised a penciled eyebrow at me. I sat opposite her in one of the séance chairs as James prowled the room around us and poked and prodded the table legs. “You’re in the business, then. Come to steal my clients, did you?”
“No.” I reached across the table without asking and flicked open her cigarette holder. Ramona’s cigarettes were a brand I didn’t recognize, narrow and dark with a smoky smell. I picked up her matches and lit one as she watched.
“Have we met?” she said finally, her tone unimpressed.
I took a drag of the cigarette—it sent a plume of pungent flavor down the back of my throat—and shrugged. The horror of what I’d seen was slowly falling away from me and my professional armor was starting to work. The panicked sensation of my powers slipping away from me was fading, along with the headache. As long as I did not think about that woman’s baby, I would be fine. “My name is Ellie Winter.”
“The Fantastique?” Ramona rolled her eyes, angry and trying to hide it. She hunched her narrow shoulders farther forward under their flimsy wrap. “And what about your handsome friend here? He looks like police to me.”
“I take offense to that,” James said, straightening from the crouching position he’d assumed under the table. “I’m not nearly competent enough for the police. I’m from the New Society.”
Ramona glared at him, her pinpointed pupils seething with sudden hatred. “You,” she said to him, my presence forgotten. “You are utter scum.”
“And you are a disappointment,” James replied, placing one hand flat on the table and leaning forward. “Two of the table legs are hollow, you have a pedal under each foot, and there’s an electric fan set up to be tripped by a switch over the doorway.”
That explained the table knocks and the uncanny breeze. Ramona spat at him like a cat. “I’m just trying to make a living. Go away and get out of my business.”
“Not until you answer some questions,” James replied.
“About what?”
“Gloria Sutter,” I broke in.
Ramona turned at the sound of my voice and I watched her try to think through her chemical haze. Emotions crossed her face, frustration and anger and some kind of choking fear. “You think I killed her?”
I held her gaze. “Did you?”
She took a drag of her cigarette, and I admired how she summoned her composure. “I hated her, of course,” she said. She lifted her gaze to me. “But then, so did you. Everyone knew you were rivals.”
I blinked, surprised, and then I glanced at James. He shook his head. “Where did you hear that?” I asked her. “Did Gloria tell you?”
Ramona rolled her eyes. “Darling, I’ve been in this business longer than you think. I hear things. All about The Fantastique, and Gloria Sutter, and how they used to be friends cutting up London. How Gloria had your mother declared a fraud. How you’ve hated each other ever since. Which means I cannot figure out why—no matter how good-looking he is—you would associate with the likes of him.” She gestured violently toward James with her ashy cigarette.
“I’m irresistible,” James said easily.
“You prey on the likes of me,” Ramona shot back. “You have no mercy.”
“I have as much mercy as you had for those poor grieving people tonight,” James said, “as well as everyone in the audience at your stage show.”
“How much money did you lose?” I asked her as she furiously ground out the stub of her smoke. I doused my own, half smoked. “I assume the theater wouldn’t give you your share of the ticket take after that display.”
“Philistines,” Ramona said in disgust.
“What happened that night?” James pressed her. “At the Dubbses’. What did you see?”
Ramona sat sullen for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice was bitter. “Not much. None of them wanted me there, but that was just too bad. I went anyway. We waited around—the marks seemed to be waiting for something. I got drunk as quickly as I could. The marks were clueless—I almost felt sorry for them, except they were shady types themselves.”
I sat up. I hadn’t heard this before. “The Dubbses were shady?”
“It’s a feeling you get, you know?” Ramona shrugged and looked away. “It takes one to know one, I suppose. All I know is that something about that house was all wrong. I would have backed out, but by then I was drunk and there was no way home.”
“All right,” James said. “So you didn’t like the Dubbses. And you were drinking. Then what happened?”
Ramona closed her eyes briefly and touched her fingertips to her forehead. “God,” she said. “I told the police everything, over and over, but they wouldn’t leave me alone. This is a bloody nightmare.” She dropped her hand and shifted in her chair, uncomfortable. “You two have to leave.”
I glanced at James, but he stood unmoving. He did not speak.
Ramona looked at us for another moment, then threw up her hands dramatically, the sleeves of her wrapper flapping. “God, I don’t know. Gloria said she had to get some air, and she left.”
“If you weren’t invited, how did you know the séance was happening?” I asked.
“Figure it out if you can,” she said, baring her teeth at me in a grin. “You just try it, darling—try not being able to pay the rent, wondering where the next meal is coming from. Try living on the few pennies I scrounge up and see whether you wait for a polite invitation. My guess is that you’ll follow the money, just like I did. I was sick of hearing about the great Gloria Sutter, the irreplaceable Gloria Sutter. I wanted a piece of her, and I would have done anything to get it.”