I arrived at the Ace of Cups on Sunday powered by caffeine, sugar, and anticipation—but not sleep. My conversation with Grey at Elizabeth’s memorial left me unbalanced, and I felt hyperaware of my psychic energy whenever I tried to fall asleep. As my mind neared the edge of consciousness, I imagined I could feel the next world lapping gently at my feet like the waves of a very deep lake. It pulled at me, inviting me to walk into the water. I considered giving in; I wanted to have a real conversation with my mother or even hear Camila’s voice.
But before I could give in, a sudden fear gripped me. My eyes flew open. I couldn’t let go of consciousness. I couldn’t let the current take me. I was sure that if I did, I would never wake up again.
Then drowsiness would sneak back up on me, and the cycle repeated again and again until I gave up and went down to the kitchen to make coffee.
Now I sighed heavily as I stared up at the wide, two-story building that anchored the far end of The Enclave. I was so tired that climbing the short flight of stone steps to the bar’s front entrance seemed like an impossible task.
“Carry me up there?” I asked Graham.
He frowned. “Are you sure you should even be here? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look like you slept at all.”
I wanted to give him crap about how you never tell a woman she looks tired but lacked the energy. “I’ll take a little nap after work.”
“Okay…” he said uncertainly, glancing up at the late afternoon sky. “It’ll be night then, so maybe take more than a nap.”
“I will, I will.” I waved a hand impatiently. “I just need your help getting up the stairs. Come on, it’ll be romantic. You can carry me up over the threshold like in the movies.”
“In the movies, those people have just gotten married and the threshold is to their honeymoon suite, not the local bar. Plus”—he hoisted Striker’s carrier—“you know she doesn’t like to share.”
“Fine,” I grumbled.
With genuine effort and focus, I made the climb. If I wasn’t so excited to be doing a proper investigation again, I think I would have toppled backward halfway up and tumbled down the stairs like a Slinky. But I knew that at the top waited the promise of doing what I loved doing best. Even if Graham refused to carry me up the stairs, my driving need to use my gift propelled me forward.
Inside the pub, a heater vent belched hot air at us, prompting me to shrug out of my coat and hang it on the row of hooks along the waiting area’s wall. As I did, the aroma of freshly baked soda bread tickled my nose.
I perked up a bit. Since opening in the summer, the Ace of Cups had quickly become one of my favorite places in Donn’s Hill. The building had originally been a boarding house for miners, but the main floor had been completely gutted and redesigned to fit a gastropub. The public space now looked like a castle basement: stone walls, rounded doorways, and a steeply curved ceiling that was cozily close to the ground at the edges. Graham hated sitting in any of the booths along the perimeter. I didn’t blame him; I was short enough to sit comfortably, but he had twice bumped his head when getting up to use the bathroom.
We were frequent customers despite Graham’s enmity with the ceiling for one reason: the food.
Hearty stews, fish and chips, colcannon, and soda bread were best sellers, and it was here that I had been introduced to a battered potato masterpiece called boxty. The owner rounded out the menu with American bar favorites like fried pickles and nachos, and her Sunday brunch—complete with mimosas—brought in crowds from the surrounding counties every weekend.
All residents of The Enclave were required to have some kind of connection to the psychic industry that made Donn’s Hill famous. Despite being exempted from the rule due to the nature of her business, the owner leaned into the spirit of the town by claiming her bartenders all had the gift of second sight. No matter what drink you ordered, they could sense the drink you really needed.
Or in my case, the dessert.
“Mac!” Alexi Ash, owner and chief mixologist of the Ace of Cups, waved at me from behind a row of beer taps. “Come here. I saved something for you.”
The brunch rush was long over. I weaved through empty tables and leaned against the ornately carved bar. Caramel and honey liquids glittered under spotlights, and a rainbow of liquor labels advertised the fact that the bartenders here could make you any drink you could name and a few you couldn’t.
“Busy day?” I asked.
“Off the walls,” Alexi confirmed. “I expected a slump when the cold weather hit, but it’s been nuts all weekend. I don’t know what witchcraft Penelope is working to keep the crowds coming, but I’m going to need to hire some more staff.”
“Lots of customers, lots of orders,” I mused. “Any leftovers?”
Her corkscrew coils bounced as she skipped down to the dessert case and back. With a grin that rivaled the Cheshire Cat’s, she slid a small plate holding a quadruple-layered slice of chocolate cake across the bar. Silky ganache dripped down the white cream cheese frosting, and to an untrained observer, it looked like a regular slice of Death by Chocolate. But I had long since learned that desserts at the Ace of Cups were rarely as simple as they seemed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Whiskey and stout cake. It’s our special this week.”
Despite the heavenly aroma of cocoa swirling above the plate, I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not much for heavy alcohols. Whiskey is a little…” I couldn’t think of a word to describe it that wouldn’t insult my host’s taste, so I didn’t finish the sentence.
She rolled her brown eyes and reached for the plate. “Fine, if you don’t want it—”
I snatched it out of her reach. “Hey, I didn’t say I won’t eat it.”
“Attagirl.” Alexi leaned to the side and waved at Graham. “Is that Striker in the carrier?”
“Yeah. Yuri let you know she’s part of the crew, right?”
“I figured she would be. Mind taking her into my office until everyone gets here? We can’t have animals in the restaurant area.” She pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “I’m just closing up for the day. I’ll find you guys wherever you are after we lock up.”
I carried my cake into her office, which was richly furnished in blocky faux leather chairs and a heavy mahogany desk. Once the door was closed behind us, Graham gingerly released Striker from her carrier.
“Not a single scratch on the furniture, okay?” he warned.
She stared up at him with defiant eyes. The message was clear: if she did or didn’t do anything, it was because she wanted to.
“Are you going to hang out for the investigation?” I asked Graham as I took a bite of the cake. It was surprisingly sweet, with no hint of the bitterness I usually associated with hard liquors. The cream cheese frosting was tangy and bright, and the cake itself was fluffy and moist. I thought about offering some to Graham, but that would leave less for me.
I didn’t share.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I love your company, but if you have other plans, I understand.”
“What about”—he glanced around the empty office and lowered his voice to a whisper—“Horace?”
At the name, I automatically reached up and touched my necklace to be sure it was still there. “I was thinking about him a lot at the memorial yesterday. For a while, I was convinced he was there.”
Graham pursed his lips. “Was he?”
“I don’t think so. No, I know he wasn’t. Especially after talking to that friend of Elizabeth’s.” I stroked Striker’s fur as I remembered my interaction with Grey. “She knew I was psychic without even asking. She could feel it. And I think I can feel it too. Like with Stephen.”
“I keep telling him he’s got a real gift. He says it’s all in the stones.”
I rolled my eyes. “He tried to sell me that line too. But I swear I can sense his talent. And I think I would be able to feel power as strong as Horace’s.”
Graham looked doubtful. “Did you feel Elizabeth’s power? Or that woman you were talking to at the funeral?”
“I think so. I mean, I didn’t think that’s what I was feeling, but I was so instantly drawn to both of them. If I meet someone who could be Anson, I’ll watch for that feeling.”
He seemed unsure until we heard Yuri’s voice outside the office door. Graham stood to kiss the top of my forehead. “I’ll just be over at Stephen’s. If anything weird happens—and I mean anything—call me.”
“I will.”
As Graham left, Yuri pulled a flat cart into Alexi’s office. Stacks of equipment cases were tethered together to keep them from falling off as he eased the cart over the raised threshold. Striker’s tail poofed, and she scurried under the desk to escape the contraption, but I whistled in approval.
“Pretty cool, right?” Yuri asked as he unclipped the bungee cords.
“I love it,” I said. “I thought I’d have to help schlep those up the sidewalk two at a time.”
“Our new production assistant had the idea. It’s his cart.” Yuri glanced back into the bar. “Where did he go? He was just—ah, Kevin, this is Mac, our medium.”
The newbie stepped into the room shyly, and I wondered how he had gotten past the door. He didn’t look nearly old enough to be in a bar. He had the skinny frame of a high school student, and his pasty chin and cheeks were devoid of even a hint of hair.
There was something familiar about him, though. As I squinted at him, he coughed and tucked a long strand of straight black hair behind his ear.
My eyes went wide. I did know him. It was just a little strange to see him wearing jeans and a hoodie. The last time I saw him, he’d been wearing a floor-length robe while getting strangled by a fake psychic. “Fang?”
Heat filled his otherwise chalky cheeks. “You can call me Kevin, if you want.”
I stared at him for a second before turning my frown on Yuri. “You know he’s a fraud, right? He scams tourists by pretending he can read palms.”
“Yes, Kevin was open about his—shall we say—checkered past.” Yuri clapped the younger man on the back. “It is behind him.”
“I closed up the shop,” Fang said hurriedly. “Gave up my lease. I’m sleeping on Stephen’s couch. I don’t want to lie anymore. I want to help people.”
I didn’t like it. Something about the situation irked me, and I couldn’t let it go. Forgetting for a moment that Yuri had already interviewed and hired Fang, I launched into a line of questions.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one,” he said.
“That’s pretty young,” I argued. “Do you even have any experience?”
Yuri dipped his chin and eyed me over his glasses. “Mac, come with me to check on something while Kevin unpacks the equipment. Kevin, make sure everything on the checklist is accounted for.”
We stepped out of the office, and Yuri closed the door behind us. I looked around expectantly, not sure what he needed my help with.
He didn’t move except to fold his arms across his chest. When he spoke, his voice was low and stern. “Mac, what’s going on?
“With what?”
“Why are you interrogating Kevin?”
I glanced at the closed door and lowered my voice. Fang was close to Stephen, and I didn’t want my criticisms to get back to Graham’s closest friend. “It just feels like a bad fit. I mean, the kid’s a con artist.”
“Was,” Yuri corrected.
“So he claims. What if our viewers find out what he used to do? It’s already an uphill battle with the skeptics out there. Every week, somebody calls me fake in our video comments. They call me a liar. How are we supposed to defend ourselves against those kinds of attacks if somebody on our crew really is a fraud?”
“I won’t pretend to be thrilled about the choices he made in the past. But listen to your words, Mac. Don’t you believe in second chances?” When I didn’t answer, he pressed on. “Gabrielle will be free someday. She will need to find a home, a job. How do you hope people respond to her when they learn about the terrible choices she made?”
I opened my mouth to object. Their situations weren’t at all similar.
Yeah, my inner voice chided. The stuff she did was way, way worse. And you still take her calls. You still let her put you on the prison’s visitor list.
Damn it. I sighed deeply and scratched at my hairline with both hands, sending my hair flying. “Fine. I’ll give him a chance. But I still think he’s too young.”
The corner of Yuri’s mouth twitched upward. “He’s older than Kit was when she and I started this.”
Having soundly defeated all my arguments, Yuri pushed the office door open and gestured for me to go back inside. I found Fang crouched on the floor, dragging a bungee cord back and forth in front of the narrow space between the desk and the carpet. One of Striker’s black paws shot out, and she hooked her claws into the braided material.
Fang giggled. “I see why you named her Striker.”
“Actually, I didn’t. She already had that moniker when I adopted her.” I studied him as he tugged lightly on the cord. “What happened to your accent?”
“Accent?” He glanced up at me, then flushed again. “Oh. You mean my”—his voice deepened and took on a pompous quality I associated with old presidential speeches—“soothing psychic voice?”
In spite of myself, I smiled. “Yep. That’s the one.”
He shrugged. “I don’t need it anymore.”
“What about ‘Fang?’ Where did that come from?”
“It started as a gamer tag. When I opened my shop, I thought it sounded more mysterious than Kevin.”
“Which name do you prefer?”
He was silent for a few moments as he bounced the end of the cord up and down in front of the desk. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor as he said, “I don’t know. I want to leave all that behind, all the lying and scamming. So I sort of feel like I should be Kevin again. But the weird thing is, even though it wasn’t my real name, calling myself Fang never felt like lying. It just felt… like me.” He looked up at me. “Is that dumb?”
I smiled, relieved by his answer. “I don’t think so. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure about it at first. But now I’m having trouble calling you anything else.”
As I spoke, Striker yanked the cord back under the desk and sank her teeth into it. One of her wild yellow eyes shone from the shadows, and her purr was audible even across the room. Our production assistant crouched down to wiggle his finger in front of her face, and she proved that she had some fangs of her own.
“Striker!” I rushed forward and nudged her face away from his hand. “Did she bite you?”
Joy lit up his face. He held up his finger for my inspection. “She’s just playing. See? She didn’t break the skin. She just wanted me to know she could have, like flag football.”
“Brrrllll,” Striker agreed.
Fang rocked back on his heels and hopped to his feet. “Sorry. I got distracted. I’ll finish unpacking.”
“It’s okay. Hopefully Yuri told you in the interview, but entertaining Striker is actually the production assistant’s most important job.”
“Oh, he told me,” Fang said seriously. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag of cat treats.
Striker immediately materialized in front of the desk. She pawed at Fang’s pant leg and yowled vociferously. When he reached down with a treat in his hand, she snapped it right from between his fingers.
“Hey, I need those,” he teased, then gave her a second treat.
Yuri elbowed me. He didn’t say it, but I felt his silent “I told you so” in my ribs. And honestly, I didn’t mind. It had been the fake things about Fang—the bogus accent, the flowery manner, the phony palmistry—that irked me. I hadn’t been able to stand the fifty-year-old Vincent Price wannabe in the twenty-one-year old’s body, but his real personality and bubbling enthusiasm were quickly growing on me.
I helped him unpack the gear and explained what a few of the less-obvious items on the packing list were. Kit’s shorthand had taken me a while to get used to; she preferred nicknames like shinies for the light reflectors and sneks for the extension cords. It was the kind of thing she had only gotten away with doing because she worked with her father, and a fit of laughter nearly overwhelmed me as I imagined her trying to use a similarly ridiculous naming system with Amari’s crew.
I had just finished explaining how the EMF meters worked when there was a tap on the door. A stranger poked his head in, and his face split into a smile when he saw us.
“Oh, good. I’m in the right place.” He stepped into the room and shook Yuri’s hand. Dark circles sagged beneath his eyes. “Sorry I’m late. I totally underestimated how long it would take to walk across town.”
“No problem,” Yuri said. “We were just about to start setting up. Mac, Kevin, this is Noah Westhouse.”
Noah stared at me for a long, awkward moment. I returned the favor with a raised eyebrow, studying his features. Like Fang, something about him was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place his face. He looked older than me, maybe forty or so. He had a large frame with broad shoulders, and his short sandy brown hair swooped up and away from his forehead in a messy pompadour.
Maybe it was just how completely exhausted he looked. Those same dark circles had been greeting me in the mirror every morning for a week straight.
He blinked and grabbed my hand to shake it. “Sorry, I just can’t believe it’s really you. Mackenzie Clair, psychic extraordinaire, in the flesh.”
Heat rushed into my cheeks. I still wasn’t used to people knowing who I was before I introduced myself.
Before I could respond, he moved on to Fang, who gazed at him with a sort of starstruck awe, forgetting to pull his hand away when Noah stopped shaking it.
“Is it true you used to work on First Date Worst Date?” Fang asked.
Noah laughed and raised his right hand. “Guilty.”
“What is that?” I asked.
Fang turned to me, excitement lighting up his eyes. “It was this awesome show where they paired up couples at random and told them they were sending them on this amazing first date. But then everything would go wrong, like the limo would get a flat tire and the driver would pretend not to know how to fix it or all the food at the restaurant would come out with bugs in it.”
I cringed. “That sounds awful.”
“No, it was great!” Fang said. “Some of the people were like, ‘Screw this, I’m out.’ But every episode there would be at least one couple who, like, made the best of it, and you just knew they were gonna make it.”
“Okay, guys.” Yuri clapped his hands together. He was addressing all of us, but I felt sure his next question was just for me. “Are you ready to begin?”
Excited as I was about finally getting to do a proper paranormal investigation again, I hesitated before answering. Our once-perfect crew was now rounded out by a former charlatan and someone with more experience dealing with angry couples than angry spirits.
Hopefully the audience would never know the difference, but the truth was the old Soul Searchers was dead. We were a zombie crew now, a ghost of our former selves.
Even if I was ready, were we as a whole?
It didn’t matter. Ready or not, our first job with the new Soul Searchers was about to begin.