TWO

“AN OCTOPUS?” JAX asks, examining my arm, even though I told him there’s nothing there anymore. Just a few traces of inky-blue ash. We’re backstage, in the wings of the theater, before Aunt Nic goes on, and I’m helping Jax balance the shoulder rig so he can get a steady live feed with the camera. Across the darkened stage, I can see Aunt Nic doing her preshow stretch in her “teal Thursday” tracksuit. “You sure you didn’t imagine it?” he says as he snaps in the battery pack.

“Yeah, that’s the thing that makes the most sense,” I say. “I imagined I saw an octopus appear on my arm with letters inside it. Who hasn’t imagined that?”

Jax’s face is still scrunched up like he’s worried I have some sort of octopus-hallucinating fever. “It’s just so weird,” he says.

That’s the first thing he’s said that I agree with. “Definitely. But signs from Spirit don’t always make sense right away. Spirit’s as clear as they can be, but it’s our job to figure out what they mean.” One by one, I pull the three handheld mics from the nearby table and check that they’re flicked to STANDBY before tucking them into my mic belt. I had to poke an extra hole in the belt just to cinch it, because it was custom built for Cyrus, and he’s got at least a hundred pounds on me. “Like, once,” I go on, “Aunt Nic was doing a reading for this woman whose dog kept barking at this tree in her backyard, and Aunt Nic said, ‘It’s a sign from Spirit, you gotta pay attention.’ And then a year later, the woman told Aunt Nic that same tree crashed through her house during a storm—right onto her bed. The only reason she wasn’t sleeping was ’cause she was up early walking the dog.”

“Huh,” Jax says. But I can tell he’s only half listening. He’s staring out toward the stage, scratching at his arm again.

“You’re not freaking out, are you?” I ask him. I really hope not, because any second now the audience lights will dim, and then it’s officially showtime—although for a while it’s just Aunt Nic and the spotlight on the stage alone. She always spends at least twelve minutes—thirteen, if it’s a laugh-heavy crowd—introducing herself and explaining how readings work. But as soon as Spirit leads her into the audience, that’s when me and Jax will have to move.

Jax scratches harder, then stops when he notices me watching. “I might be a little freaked,” he admits.

“You sure you don’t want to swap?” I ask. “Cyrus lets me play around with the camera all the time. I know how to focus and steady it and everything.”

Jax only squints at me, like that’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard. “You can’t run all over with this thing on,” he says, shrugging his shoulder under the rig to lift the enormous camera up and down. “It weighs a ton.” Okay, so maybe he has a point. “Anyway, I know how to use it. I took Media and Tech at my old school.”

Then he stares out at the stage again, and I realize what’s really freaking him out.

“It’s not creepy,” I tell him, securing the last mic in my belt. “When Aunt Nic talks with Spirit, I mean. You’ll see. It’s not like in the movies, where little kids’ heads spin around on their necks. In real life, spirits act basically the same way they acted here on Earth.” Then I say, “‘Take heed’ means ‘be careful,’ right? It’s, like, a warning?”

“More like ‘pay attention.’” Jax isn’t actually scratching at the moment, but that might only be because it’s hard to balance the rig with one hand. I honestly don’t know how Cyrus manages that thing and the mic belt every night. “If it really is a sign from Spirit,” Jax says, yanking his gaze away from the stage, “then what do you think you’re supposed pay attention to?”

I shrug. “Octopuses?” I say.

“I think the plural of ‘octopus’ is ‘octopi,’” Jax tells me. Like that’s the thing to focus on.

“Maybe Spirit’s saying I can pull my mom back with an octopus,” I say, thinking it over. I never knew my mom had emotional energy stored up in octopuses, but . . . “I could take the bus to the L.A. aquarium tomorrow, before the show.”

“Or maybe you’re supposed to go to a sushi bar,” Jax says. “Or learn how to scuba dive.”

I think he’s joking, but he has a point. “I guess I just have to figure it out,” I reply.

That’s when the lights go down. The roar of the audience drops to a hush. And after Oscar’s canned announcement about cell phones and recording devices, Aunt Nic strides onto the stage to loud applause.

“Good evening, Santa Barbara!” she calls out cheerfully. No matter what’s going on offstage, Aunt Nic always puts it aside when the spotlight’s shining. “Welcome, friends, alive and deceased!” There is another roar of applause.

Beside me, Jax has turned his arm into a scratching post again. “Spirit is friendly, I promise,” I whisper.

He nods but does not stop scratching.

“Any of you fine folks ever been to a medium before?” Aunt Nic continues. Light applause. “I bet it was some stuffy old lady with a crystal ball who stunk like Vicks VapoRub, am I right?” The audience responds with chuckles, but I swear she could get a bigger laugh there. I told her nobody knows what VapoRub is. “Well, I’m a little different.” Aunt Nic gives a kick then, showing off her sneakers under her tracksuit. She has seven different tracksuits, one for every night of the week. “What you see is what you get with me. No fake tarot cards or crystal balls or hocus-pocus. Just you, me, and your loved ones. Whatever they say to me, I pass it directly to you, bad words and all.” That’s always a bigger laugh.

While Jax works on scratching his arm off, Aunt Nic explains about her Gift—how it works, when she first realized she had it, and how my mom pushed her to share it with others after she died. I’ve heard her give this speech so often, sometimes I actually say it in my sleep. So I’m mostly thinking about octopuses—octopi?—until Aunt Nic calls out, “Now, who’s the one with the sister? Died of cancer?”

“Come on, newbie!” I whisper, tugging Jax so we can follow Aunt Nic into the crowd, where she’s searching for the person Spirit’s directing her to. We whip across the stage just as the projection screen drops down behind us, missing Jax’s head by inches.

“I’m getting a name,” Aunt Nic goes on. “Starts with ‘M.’ Marie, maybe, or Mary?”

“I’m Mary!” comes a shout. A woman jumps out of her seat, and just like that I rush over with my mics, Jax following with his camera. “That’s my sister Eliza!”

Mary is about fifty, thin, with a bright-green blouse and short hair. As we reach her, Mary’s handing a purple scarf to Aunt Nic. Jax takes it all in with the camera, and the live feed transmits to the screen onstage, so that everyone can see and hear what the lady and Aunt Nic have to say. That was one of Cyrus’s innovations, when we started booking bigger venues, and it’s definitely made our whole operation seem more professional.

I pass a microphone to Mary, who takes it without hardly glancing at me. Her attention is on Aunt Nic, who’s tilting her head, purple scarf in her hand. Mary looks terrified about whatever it is she’s about to hear—or not hear.

“Eliza hasn’t been drawn Far Away,” Aunt Nic says after a beat, and Mary lets out a breath so huge it sounds like a storm over the handheld. “So you don’t need a tether. But Eliza’s thrilled you brought this scarf anyway. She says, That one looked real good on me!”

Mary cries around a breathy laugh. “That’s Liza, all right,” she says, and suddenly it hits me all over again that I may really never hear any more of my mother’s words.

I only get to worry about that for a second, though, before I notice that Jax has the camera focused on me instead of Aunt Nic and Mary. I tug it in the right direction.

“She was smart, your sister, huh?” Aunt Nic is saying. “Used lots of big words?”

Mary thinks about it. “Sometimes, yeah.”

“But she didn’t like to show off. Didn’t want everyone else to feel bad, knowing they weren’t as smart as she was. She was always looking out for other people.”

That gets a huge nod from Mary. “Oh, yeah. Always.”

Aunt Nic smiles back, and I sideways glance at the screen to make sure everything’s in focus. “She’s still looking out for you now,” Aunt Nic continues. “Every day. She wants you to know that. She says, I’ve always got your back, sis, same as before. You and the— You got kids? Eliza’s mentioning kids.”

“Yeah. Just had my first grandbaby.”

Aunt Nic spends a few more minutes with Mary and Eliza before a spirit calls her from a different side of the audience and she races over to make the connection.

It’s hard work keeping up with Spirit. Aunt Nic always ends up darting between one side of the audience and another, like a tennis player chasing a ball. But so far, Jax is handling himself pretty well, especially since there are more obstacles to dodge than normal tonight, with Roger and his two camerapeople grabbing footage of their own.

When Aunt Nic is called to three grown-up sisters, at first my heart aches for them, because Aunt Nic tells them right away their dad was drawn Far Away long ago, and she can’t pull him into our realm to make the connection. But then one of the sisters shows her a doorknob and says, “Will this help? It’s from the door to his den. That’s where he spent most of his time.”

And as soon as Aunt Nic grips it, he is pulled down to Earth.

“Which one of you just got married?” Aunt Nic asks the sisters. “He’s telling me, My daughter looked gorgeous in that dress.” One of the women is so overwhelmed that another sister has to hold her up. “He was there,” Aunt Nic tells the women. “You sensed him, didn’t you?”

While I’m passing out mics to the sisters so they can answer, Aunt Nic tells the crowd, “A lot of folks ask me about tethers—how to know which one thing, of all the stuff you might have, is filled with enough emotional energy to pull your loved one back.”

I tighten my jaw, thinking about families with whole houses of items to sift through. All I have of my mother’s are photos. But those aren’t things she touched and loved and cared about.

“Sometimes it’s hard,” Aunt Nic goes on. “Because the object really can be anything. Jewelry, clothing— Is that a lamp, sir?” She shades her eyes with her hand to peer out across the audience and receives a hoot in response. “Sometimes people walk in here, think we’re having a garage sale after the show.” She pauses for chuckles. “When you find the right object, you feel it, okay? Maybe you’re not a medium like me, you weren’t born with the Gift.” She puts a hand on her hip. “Being honest? Sometimes it’s a gift I’d like to give back.” More laughter. “But even if you can’t hear the words your loved one’s saying, the way I can, you can feel the emotional energy in their tether. It might be a strong, warm sense that overtakes you, or even”—she turns to the sisters again—“what is that smell I’m getting? It’s so him. It’s a weird smell, right? Like chemical-y, or . . . ?” She sniffs the air. “What is that?”

“The burning?” one of the sisters chimes in, straight into the mic I handed her.

Aunt Nic nods, a fast up and down. “Yes!”

And the older sister laugh-cries. “That’s his model trains. The whole den always smelled like ozone from his trains.”

“It’s awful!” Aunt Nic says, and the women all laugh again. She tilts her head. “He’s saying it’s not awful, but—I’m sorry, sir, it really is!”

I wonder what it would’ve been for my mom, her tether. A favorite paintbrush? That pair of orange ballet flats she’s wearing in six different photos I have of her? What am I supposed to take heed of? I think at Spirit as we rush to another loved one. And what does the octopus mean?

The next person Aunt Nic is called to is a woman with her army husband’s dog tags, and after that it’s a young couple who lost a baby. I hate the ones where they lost a baby. I think Aunt Nic does, too, although she’s never said as much. But she usually goes quick with those ones.

“He was so little,” the dad says when Aunt Nic asks about the blanket the baby is mentioning. Only, the man is sobbing so hard he’s having trouble getting words out. “We never even got to hold him before he . . . We couldn’t . . . We didn’t . . .”

As Aunt Nic talks to the boy, a sweet smile crosses her face. “He says, Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m safe and warm here with Spirit. I left that blanket so you and Mommy could be warm, too.”

The woman sob-snots, completely overwhelmed by the message, and before she lets Aunt Nic move on to the next connection, she makes her wait for an enormous hug. The dad, too.

“Hey,” I whisper to Jax as we hustle across the floor. Because he still looks a little freaked. “You’re actually doing really great.”

“Yeah?” He grins.

“I bet by the end of the week, Oscar’ll even let you work the floor all by your—”

That’s when Jax bangs shoulder-first into one of Roger’s camera guys, and the whole audience oohs in horror as they both crash to the ground. We get a close-up shot up Jax’s nose, too, giant on the screen. I swear I can hear Oscar cursing from up on the spot bay.

“Maybe by the end of next week,” I say, helping him to his feet.

As soon as Aunt Nic is positive everyone is okay, she returns to translating for Spirit. “Who had the car accident?” she calls out.

It’s another couple we reach next—older this time, grandparent age. A huge truck of a man with dark skin who doesn’t look too comfortable with the mic I push under his nose. His wife is a kind-looking white woman, short and fat, with an enormous chest.

“It was our daughter,” the woman says. “Ashlynne.” She’s shaking as she holds out an envelope for Aunt Nic. “That was her wedding invitation. We lost her before the wedding.”

Her husband puts an arm around her. “We don’t have to do this, Meg,” he tells her, then pulls his mic away when his words get picked up for the whole audience to hear. “We should go home.”

Jax zooms in on the envelope in Aunt Nic’s hand, and I watch on the screen to make sure everything’s in focus. The letters tower six feet tall.

Mr. & Mrs. Grant & Margaret Ezold

877 Lake Forest Drive

Bakersfield, CA 93301

I hold my gaze on the last line of the address.

Bakersfield.

And just as it hits me that this couple is from my mom’s hometown, the woman says, “Ashlynne knew you, actually. Do you remember her, from high school? Ashlynne Ezold?”

“I think I—” Aunt Nic begins, studying the envelope.

“She was two years behind you in school. I’m sure you remember. She and Jennie June were practically joined at the hip senior year.”

I whip my head back to look at the couple. “My mom?” I say. I’m not supposed to talk to the loved ones. “You knew my mom?”

“You look so much like her,” the woman, Meg, tells me then, with that sadness-smile I always get from folks who know my mom has died. “We were so sorry to hear she’d—” She chokes up again, then finds different words to push out. “I brought something.” She digs through her purse while, beside her, her husband, Grant, slow-blinks toward the sky. I wait for Aunt Nic to relay Ashlynne’s message, because they usually come through right away, but she’s tilting her head like whatever station she’s listening to isn’t tuned properly. At last, Meg pulls out a photograph, a printed-out one, with a crease in one corner. She tries to show it to Aunt Nic, but Aunt Nic’s still tuning, so Meg hands it to me instead. “The girls painted that together, in Ashlynne’s bedroom. Isn’t it gorgeous? She was so talented, your mother.”

I’m looking at a photograph of a long wall with an enormous mural painted on it, floor to ceiling. The side that covers the closet door is a sand dune, with strange skinny flowers reaching toward a blue sky. Seagulls soar above toward a deep, dark ocean, with all sorts of creatures swimming in the water. Fish. Sharks.

An octopus.

“Take heed,” I whisper.

“What’s that?” Meg says.

But before I get a chance to reply, Aunt Nic speaks into her own mic, loudly. “I’m so sorry,” she tells the couple. “It wasn’t your daughter.” And she hands back the wedding invitation.

“I don’t—” Meg begins.

“The spirit reaching out to me is a man,” Aunt Nic clarifies. “I’m sorry.” She takes back their microphones, hands them to me as I fumble, confused. Then she calls out to the wider audience, “Who’s the man, in the car accident? There were no passengers, only him?” A man jumps up, waving his hand, and Aunt Nic bolts off to talk to him, leaving Meg and Grant to sink sorrowfully into their seats.

“CJ?” Jax says when he realizes I’m not following Aunt Nic.

I glance at my aunt, plowing ahead into the audience, and then at the Ezolds, still clutching that photograph with the octopus in it. And as much as I don’t want to, I tell Jax, “Coming!” and hurry off behind him. I just have to trust that if Spirit has gotten me this far, they can get me the rest of the way.