There was a long silence after the séance ended. Clasping her hands together, Eve rose and bowed her head, thanked the spirits, and rang the bell again, closing the channel on their living side.
Eve collected the small nubs of the matches used to strike the séance candle and sprinkled their remains into the base of their new ash, offering thanks to their new little start of healing green life. Nothing of ceremony, large or small, she felt should ever be wasted. There was energy in everything, the chance for a benediction in the least of things.
“Dupont,” Eve said, turning to her team. “We’re going to have to find a way to get a warrant and search his viewing parlor—by the book or we’ll lose our chance—and I’d rather not involve Greta or her sister.”
“What did the spirits mean, making those ‘in comfort uncomfortable’?” Antonia asked.
“I think that’s about your monitoring box,” Gran replied. “The experiments upon us were done by someone with means. That related case is the Prenze family.”
“Is there any direct correlation between Prenze and Dupont?” Antonia asked.
I think so. I don’t know how I know…but I feel it, Jenny signed. Eve and Gran, who both understood sign, nodded.
“Jenny feels a connection, and her instinct is rarely wrong,” Eve stated to her team.
“When I corral the Prenze I met at the soiree for a chat in my parlor, you girls won’t have any problem posing as my help?” Gran asked the mediums. “Each of you could play a critical role.”
The four colleagues agreed to whatever Gran would ask of them.
“Prenze will come for tea, and we’ll have to determine any role in this mess. Now, it’s time to go home. I won’t have you exhausting yourself.”
It was true. As much as Eve wanted to press forward, to dive in deeper into a séance, to the point of a trance, pushing herself only made her ill and her colleagues more vulnerable.
“That isn’t an option, Eve Whitby,” Gran said with a gentle smile, her own psychic sense picking up on her direct thoughts. “I know that look of yours. Nothing can be solved all at once. Let’s take what the spirits gave us and look deeper tomorrow. We’ve got inquiries to make.”
Rising from the séance table, Eve went to a long wooden table by the front of the room that they used as a repository for evidence, where the curious box sat. Lifting a wooden milk crate from the floor below, she placed the monitor inside, brushed the soot off her hands from its edges, and stood by the door. “Whatever this is Mosley detached needs to go with us.”
Gran made a face but didn’t argue. Eve took the device with her as she carefully descended the stairs, maneuvering so her petticoat wouldn’t catch on her boot—it needed mending, and she hadn’t had time or interest. Hailing the largest carriage available at the corner, Gran had it brought round and ushered everyone to it. Eve hung back with the box.
“You be careful with that,” Gran cautioned, gesturing to the box as the driver came around to take it, lashing it to the back ledge.
“It’s…inert Gran,” Eve countered, “unhooked from the electric that powered it. I doubt it can do anything to us in this state, not after Mosley was done with it.” As Eve climbed up into the carriage and gathered her skirts close, Gran doing the same with help from the driver, she added in a murmur, “Please tell me he never did whatever he did to people. The box was blackened and smoking, even he was, wisps curling off him when he brought it in.” Eve and Gran sat together on one bench. Cora and Antonia took the opposite. Jenny was all too happy to sit on Gran’s lap for the journey back, eager for the chance to be close and indulge in their guardian angel’s care.
“Your ‘friend’ Mr. Mosley mentioned doing his work as paying penance,” Cora added, closing the carriage door behind her. “What does that mean? Was he ever a killer?”
“Mosley is an electrical inspector,” Gran said carefully. “Hired by Ambassador Bishop. Suffice to say he’s handy when needed. The Bishops and I are quite glad he’s on our side.”
Eve suppressed further questions, shuddering when she thought about Mosley’s sparking eyes. It made her think of the shadowy man at her window, unnerving, unwelcome. She wanted to ask Gran about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak of it, as if doing so would summon him. Hoping the visitation had been just a nightmarish projection from her own tired, worried mind, she kept silent. One terror at a time.
It wasn’t long until the carriage turned onto Waverly, and Eve and her colleagues disembarked. Gran remained in the cab, which would take her up Fifth Avenue. Eve waited for the driver to unlash the crate holding the device, which he handed to her while her colleagues went up to unlock their door.
“Talk soon, love. Pace yourself,” Gran instructed from the open carriage window, wagging a finger at Eve, who nodded.
Once everyone had settled in at Fort Denbury, Eve knocked on the large arched door at the side of her entrance hall. That door connected her residence to her parents’ home. No immediate answer, so she rang the bell.
Her mother answered and gestured her in with a smile. Eve leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “What brings you to our side, love?” Natalie asked, glancing around her, out of habit, to be sure no spirits had followed Eve across despite the meticulous warding of the threshold.
When Eve turned sixteen and the spirits were the most unruly they’d ever been, insisting that Eve work on their behalf, it had so troubled their family that Gran suggested Eve have her own space, insisting that Maggie would be there to help. Separate spaces had improved family relations immeasurably, and their living daughter was always welcome. The Ghost Precinct spirits knew Eve’s parents had been plagued by supernatural traumas and the ghosts respected the boundaries her parents set. Maggie once mused it was good that spirits be subject to some limitations.
“Is Father here?”
“Yes, he’s going over case studies in the library. Did you happen to hear his news?” Natalie asked, her green eyes alight with excitement.
“What? Did he get the position?” Eve whispered.
Her father had been trying to get a position at Bellevue Hospital for some time now, but despite his incredible accomplishments founding clinics in London and New York, the competitive leading hospital in the country hadn’t had a general practitioner opening for years, certainly not one that paid well. Eve had stopped asking about it because she didn’t want to bring him pain if he still had to say no. Her sense of pride and calling in her own work came from his example.
“Yes, he did!” her mother said, tears in her eyes, and Eve threw her arms around her.
“Oh, thank God, finally!”
This was bigger than the prestige of the institution; this was about survival. Her father being a British lord meant nothing beyond pomp and circumstance back in England and was of little use here. All of his holdings had been liquidated by villains, his estate overtaken and burned to the ground. New York valued money over titles. Their family had had very little when Eve was born, but thanks to Gran’s help and the hard work of Eve’s father, not to mention her mother’s tutoring of American Sign Language, they’d gotten by. It was another reason Eve had taken work as soon as the opportunity presented itself; she knew she could help keep roofs over loved ones’ heads and food on her own table.
“Would you like coffee or tea?” her mother asked, drawing back and moving toward a small rear kitchen designed for quick refreshments rather than full meals.
“Coffee, please, thank you! Father!” she called. “Congratulations!” Eve cried, running to the library and embracing him as he stood and strode out from behind his desk. “It’s about time they took you on!”
He lifted her up in a huge hug, laughing. The relief was palpable, and the dark circles that she remembered so often beneath his eyes from late nights and constant house calls were gone. He looked years younger; his piercing blue eyes danced and his handsome face beamed.
“We should throw you a party for your new position!” Eve said. “Have you told Gran? She can plan it. We can invite all of the city’s greatest talents—”
“No, no, none of that,” her father said, his cheeks reddening.
Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury, was an earnest, modest man who was born wanting to help people. The fact that he had hardly any ego was for the best; considering that every person Eve had ever met exclaimed how good-looking he was, he’d have been a holy terror otherwise.
“I want no fuss,” her father continued. “I’m just very glad to be with the premiere medical institution in this country, finally.”
“As you’ve always deserved,” Eve said proudly.
Her father placed his hand on a stack of medical journals.
“As you asked, I’ve been sorting these to give you the relevant articles.” He shifted the stack toward Eve. “What I’ve been able to find so far in the sparse wilderness of early brain mapping theory. I’ll continue sharing anything else I find.”
“Perfect, thank you. That’s exactly what I want to discuss with you.” She leaned in and spoke more quietly. “Remember during Gran’s abduction, the tests we thought were being performed on all of us? Remember Gran mentioned a device?”
“Of course.” Her father shuddered.
“I’d like to ask you to take a look at something we think is related. Would you be so kind as to come to my parlor?”
Just then her mother brought in cups of coffee for them both. “What’s in your parlor that can’t be discussed here?” she asked, with a distinct edge to her tone.
“A device,” Eve replied. “Found outside my office. It’s a possible monitor.”
Regarding any evidence or an item relating to a case or query, Eve wished to have it examined on her side of the fort, out of respect for the boundaries her mother tried so hard to erect. Her father was less strict about what he would and wouldn’t entertain and promised her she could come to him anytime. Her parents refused to talk about their haunted past, to Eve’s ongoing chagrin. Her mother had kept a diary in the early days of her parents’ unconventional courtship. Every year Eve had asked to read it, and every year she was told “when you’re older.” She’d given up.
Still, despite her discomfort, her mother strode across the threshold to Eve’s side with her husband, looking around warily as Eve held open the hefty wooden door. Her mother crossed into the entrance hall adorned in dark wood paneling, jewel-tone wallpapers, and burgundy upholsteries. While her mother didn’t like seeing or interacting with ghosts, she hated it more when her father involved himself on his own. For as long as Eve could remember, her mother had been overprotective of her father to a point Eve found maddening, but Gran quietly explained that if she hadn’t been so careful and so strident, her father’s mind would have been irrevocably lost years ago, insisting that Natalie had been his only reliable tether to sanity.
Early in Eve’s life, her mother had asked Eve to make a choice. It was either her parents or the ghosts. Gran had played diplomat, explaining to Natalie the error in her ways; Eve’s mediumship was too powerful to turn off, and that was an unfair, impossible request.
But Eve could still feel that question hanging in the air, that eternal hope of taking sides, as if her mother were still trying to take her hand and draw her away from everything supernatural. The fierce look in her mother’s green eyes seemed eternally to ask her to choose them for once. Just once? It was there even now, a glimmer of hope on her lovely face as Eve put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. She couldn’t. If she did shut out her gift, then it would be she who would be irrevocably lost, her sanity torn to bits by the spirits demanding to be noticed and heard.
“Where is the implement in question?” her father asked, stepping farther into the main hallway.
“In that box,” Eve replied, gesturing across the threshold of the open parlor doors toward her séance table, where the box sat at the edge. Glancing about, none of her colleagues were downstairs so she assumed the rest of the precinct mediums were taking personal, quiet time in their rooms upstairs.
Eve entered the dim parlor and turned the knob of the gas lamps, intricate glass sconces leaping to warm life, her parents following close behind. “This was planted outside our offices. When Gran disappeared, we found her with tabs and wires attached to her temples leading to a cabinet with cylinders like these. As for the ticker tape, I’m not sure what it’s trying to record.”
Her father came closer and peered at it.
“Don’t touch it, Jonathon,” her mother warned.
“Wasn’t planning to,” he replied. “This whole thing looks like it was burned in a fire.”
“Well, I’m not sure if that was the device’s fault or Mr. Mosley. Do you know him? He seemed, well, a bit…electrified. Odd man.”
“Oh, Lord,” her mother muttered under her breath.
“What, do you know him?” Eve asked.
“Your father did, once,” her mother replied wearily, “but good riddance. I’ll never forgive the Bishop family for putting your father in such danger and in such volatile company!”
It was a comment Eve had heard before. The fact that Eve deeply admired the Bishops and their psychic talents wasn’t a fight she wanted to pick at the moment. Clara and Rupert Bishop had moved north to Tarrytown when Clara’s ability to harness and interpret energy made the city too ‘loud’ for her Sensitivities. When Gran had gone missing, Clara found Gran via Eve’s memories and tracing her present location. It was like nothing Eve had ever seen. But she couldn’t convince her mother to trust Ambassador Bishop and his talented wife. She’d tried, and lost, before.
“I’ll take this box to the department at Bellevue,” her father said, with clear excitement. “Their mental studies department is unmatched. They’ll know what to do—”
“No, you’re not taking that anywhere,” her mother countered. “You don’t know what it does and if it is, in fact, inert—”
“But we need to know what it was doing, Natalie. If this relates, as it very well might, to early brain studies, perhaps even brain mapping, why, this is critical research, and it shouldn’t be utilized by villains. We need to know far more than they do.”
“I want you to destroy that thing,” her mother declared. “I don’t want it in either of your hands.”
Her parents began to quibble about the fate of the box and the cylinders therein.
“All right, don’t fight about it, you two!” Eve pleaded. “Please,” she added, trying to maintain a gentle tone. “We have to make sure no one else is made a lab experiment or being somehow controlled.”
An idea occurred to Eve that could serve multiple purposes and excuse another moment with Horowitz.
“I’ll have this thing taken to whomever you recommend, Father, by someone else in the police department. The findings can be shared with all of us, but I’ll have the device returned to an evidence room rather than my office— Nne of our hands on it anymore. I’ll even set it outside overnight, on the balcony. All right? I’ll have a pickup arranged tomorrow afternoon. Father, please think of who at Bellevue should examine it. And Mother, if you could please have some tea ready for whomever I bring by?”
“Thank you, I will,” her mother said, breathing a little easier.
The idea of bringing Detective Horowitz by to take this box, serving as a helpful party, was the best way, in Eve’s mind, to introduce him to her family. This way they would see him in a capacity that showcased their foremost relationship as a business one while hopefully noting him as likeable enough that they’d not pressure her to take on other suitors. She had every confidence in the detective’s ability to be charming. Just thinking of him made her smile.
The solution Eve offered seemed to defuse the tension, and she gestured that they return to her parents’ side of the fort.
“If you’d like to look over any of the articles I gathered, I can decipher some of the medical jargon for you,” her father offered eagerly.
“I would love that, thank you, Father. Let’s finish that coffee—and I want to hear all about Bellevue and their innovations. I daresay you can teach them a thing or two!”
Eve put her arms around each of her parents as she ushered them back to their side of the fort, the tension in her mother’s shoulders easing the moment they crossed from Eve’s darker threshold into the brighter lit, pastel décor. Night and day. If Eve kept her house like her mother’s, she wouldn’t be able to see any of her ghosts against all of the brightly lit rooms filled with whites, lavenders, and powdered blues. But the contrast did lift her mood.
Later that night, after sating herself on fascinating theories about brain activity, likening it to a sort of radio transmission, Eve returned to her wing and heard a soft voice reading a lilting Irish tale. Antonia was reading a bedtime story to Jenny upstairs and affecting a brilliant Irish accent. Perhaps Jenny’s loving parents, who had orphaned her when they died in a church boating accident, were helping the story along; Antonia was the best of them at channeling voices and vivid details. Eve listened at the base of the stairs, a smile on her face as Antonia spoke of fairy transformations.
After a long moment, Eve decided she would gather her thoughts by journaling. Taking a seat on a brocade divan, she wrote by the light of a stained-glass parlor lamp. Cora came into the room.
“Notes for your book about the precinct?” Cora asked.
One of the chief reasons Eve had wanted to create the precinct was to improve the relationship between the living and the dead, to make ghosts less frightening to the average person. She was writing a book detailing what the dead taught her about a good life. But she hadn’t been inspired to write lately. Her channel had been so muddied.
“I doubt this will end up in the book.” Eve gestured to the pages. “It’s very personal. I’m trying to write down details about Gran’s disappearance and everything that happened with us at that warehouse. I don’t trust the vagaries of memories. I should’ve done it right away.”
“To be fair,” Cora replied gently, “you blacked out after a migraine was going to tear you apart. You couldn’t have done it in the instant.”
“We haven’t even processed what happened to us in that warehouse, Cora, and what that box outside our office might be. Everything today brought up a wave of nerves and nausea.”
Cora nodded. “You’ve let Detective Horowitz distract you. I can’t say I blame you; if I had someone to distract me…”
Eve sighed irritably. “I know you’re skeptical about him, but honestly, we’ve been following up on case leads of mutual interest. I don’t know how else that reads to you.”
“I came here to work with you, Eve. Visions told me to come and be with you. So just as you’re protective of your purpose with this precinct, so am I. I’m not here to just be an assistant. I’m here to be a powerful Sensitive.”
“And you are,” Eve said, reaching out to clasp Cora’s hand. “You amaze me. Not to mention the force of your psychometry. Don’t you know by now I could do nothing without you and your strength?”
There was something indiscernible in Cora’s dark eyes, and Eve wished she understood how to be a better friend and colleague to her.
“I think I’ve put too much on you,” Cora stated. “I need to be more my own person, not to live solely for this precinct, here in your house. You’re a very strong personality, Eve, and I think I need to find my own way a bit.”
Eve gulped. “Do you…wish to resign?”
“Heavens, no. I want to just give you and myself more room rather than resenting you for not being my everything. I don’t mean to say that in a way that makes you uncomfortable.”
“You’ve never made me uncomfortable, Cora. You are, I’m ashamed to admit, wiser than me. You’re my equal, and I consider this department yours as much as mine, do you know that?”
“You’ve never said as much, as you’ve insisted you be the one standing in the way of any criticism. But I appreciate hearing your confidence in my leadership.”
“It’s getting late,” Eve said, rising and moving to embrace Cora, who held on tightly for a moment before slowly letting go.
“And I promised my parents I would leave this outside,” Eve said, gesturing to the milk crate with the device inside. “It’s like my mother thinks things will get possessed or something.”
“Well, maybe for her things did.”
“I’ve given up trying to figure it out, but I suppose one can’t be too careful. Good night, my friend.”
Eve ascended the stairs, Cora a few steps behind her, the two of them taking opposite directions at the top landing. Moving to a set of small French glass doors, Eve turned a latch and opened one of the doors, peering at the cylinders again before setting the crate down against the exterior railing.
Her gaze darted around in a fearful sweep, afraid she’d see the cruel jaw and the shadowed face of that eerie man again. But nothing.
Crossing to her room, she noticed a note on the small writing desk against the window that looked out onto that balcony beyond, the paper catching a glow in the moonlight. She didn’t remember setting anything out, but when she got closer, her blood chilled again.
“Margaret Hathorn,” she murmured to the sky.
A cold chill answered at her back. “Evelyn Whitby,” the ghost replied. Whenever Eve called Maggie by her full name it was a summoning, and the resulting chill was a comfort.
“Look at this.” Eve gestured to the paper. “I’d nearly forgotten about it in all the tumult. When you went missing, I went into a trance. This is what I wrote, trying to find a trace of you.”
She showed Maggie a portion of what she’d taken down in a fit of automatic writing when the ghost had first disappeared.
Whispers and cold, whispers and cold.
All there is. Drawn in, something was wrong, I was found, now am lost.
Someone is very wrong. The children know. Don’t let anything in, not the monstrous hum.
“This last line is what struck me most, then and still.”
Don’t play God lest you play the Devil instead.
“My God, Eve. You captured my thoughts in the darkness, what I thought and felt when I was blinded in the Prenze mansion. There was something about that man that felt like he was playing God with me, with others, in that death photography too. I wish I could untangle it, but it’s all a mess. I’m so sorry—”
“No, dear, you’re sifting through trauma, as we all are. You were taken, just as I was, as Gran was—violence against us. It’s a mess, it hurts, and it’s terrifying.”
“Thank you for understanding.” The spirit stared at the paper. “Having this validates that I existed, even in darkness. I know you don’t know this yet, but the hardest thing about being a ghost is proving you exist. It’s demoralizing.”
“I empathize, my friend. I will always seek to keep you tethered here for as long as you wish. But…just as Cora seems to be needing to define herself beyond me, beyond this demanding life, if you”— Eve blinked back tears—“do need to go, I don’t want to stand in the way of your peace.” The idea of losing any of them was painful, but the idea that she could demand too much of those she loved and in doing so possibly hurt them was also humbling. Her heart felt wide open and raw.
“Heavens, no, not yet. We’ve more divine mysteries to discover together, dear one, before I go on to my undiscovered country!”
“But you’ll tell me?” Eve pleaded. “You won’t stay on just for me—”
“When this soul is tired, you’ll see that it’s tired. I’m not tired. But you, in that mortal body, should rest.”
Eve tried, but she kept glancing out the window for fear of moving shadows.