I clutched Anson Monroe’s death certificate in my hands, staring down at the date he died until the frigid autumn air made the joints in my fingers ache. Wallace had long since left, having done what she came here to do. It was clear from the pitying look on her face that she expected this news to force some kind of reckoning within me and make me decide Horace was just a figment of my imagination.
As I trudged up the stairs to my apartment, I checked my memories. Wallace couldn’t be right. Horace was very, very real.
True, only one other person said she could see him, and she had been lying. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t actually seen him. And just because nobody else had been with me any of the other times he appeared—
I drew to a halt on the second-floor landing.
She hadn’t been in the room while Horace was there, but Elizabeth walked in right after he vanished from her massage room the month before. And she had been able to smell something. She hadn’t known what it was, but she hadn’t liked it.
That wasn’t in my imagination. The memory of Elizabeth covering her nose at the strange, bitter scent Horace left behind was all the proof I needed.
He was real.
He wasn’t Anson Monroe, but he was real.
And Graham had been with me in that basement. He had photos of the strange mix of runes and symbols Horace left behind. So that was real.
I sprinted the rest of the way up the stairs and dug out the box of letters from Darlene’s house. There, on top of neatly bundled stacks of correspondence, was a slip of paper with an address on it. Graham and I had both assumed the address belonged to Anson Monroe, but if he had been dead for two decades, the house belonged to someone else.
Whoever owned it had to be Horace.
I lifted out the piece of stationery and took a photo of it, then sent the picture to Wallace.
Thanks for looking into Anson for me. It really means a lot, I typed. I hate to ask, but I need one more favor to put my mind at ease about all this. Are you able to find out who this property in New Mexico belongs to?
After hitting send, I sat on the floor with my back against my bed frame, clutching my phone in my hands and staring at the screen until my eyes burned.
After what seemed like an eternity, Wallace replied, I’ll try.
As I moved to put the address back in the box, the matching handwriting on the top letter caught my eye. I pulled out Anson’s note to my mother and reread the brief message.
I’d like to pick up our work where we left off—I think we can crack it. You always were my most promising student.
Anson’s death certificate had been issued in New Mexico, so he must have followed through on his plans to move there. That would explain why he was able to attend my mother’s funeral as well. What were the odds he moved that far without starting to work with my mom on astral projection again?
It didn’t seem likely. They had to be working together. And if they were, he could have had something to do with her death.
No, that didn’t feel right. I knew I was making another assumption, but I preferred to call it following my gut. The circumstances around my mother’s death were too eerily similar to Camila and Elizabeth to not be connected. Horace was the link.
You always were my most promising student.
The letter dropped out of my hands and onto the floor.
My mother wasn’t Anson Monroe’s only student.
Who else had been learning from him in Seattle and New Mexico? Who else had been trying to unravel the mysteries of astral projection?
Did that person manage to cross over before or after they started calling themselves “Horus”?
Before or after they killed my mother?
The letter tore along the decades-old fold lines as I gripped it. All I had were questions. Every answer took me five steps in the wrong direction.
Horace could be anyone.
He could be anywhere.
The only way to reach him was the way he had reached me: through the astral plane. But even after talking to Gabrielle, I was no closer to figuring out how to get to him in either world.
My phone pinged. Another message from Wallace waited on the screen: NM property tax office is closed. I’ll call again on Monday.
Monday. Two full days away. And even if she was able to get me a name, what then? Back to looking through phone books and combing through social media, hoping they used their real name on their profile and a Horus beak as their picture or something?
Wallace was right. I was a dog with a bone, and there was no way I could sit on my hands for two days just waiting to find myself at another dead end. No. I might not be able to go to Horace, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t bring him to me.
Horace wasn’t the only psychic who knew how to set a trap.
Two could play at that game.