“Thank y—”

I ran out of words because, without warning, her body went rigid and her eyes glazed over. “Oh, wow, I’m getting something for you now. How about that?”

My knees turned to water.

“I’m seeing a little blond boy,” she said. “Wearing a hat. He’s your son? No, not your son, your…nephew?”

“My nephew, JJ. But he’s alive.”

“I know, but he’s important to you.”

Thanks for telling me something I already know.

“He’ll become more important to you.”

What did that mean? That Maggie was going to die and I was going to have to marry Garv and be a stepmother to JJ and Holly?

“Sorry, sweetie, I don’t know what it means, I just pass on the message.” And off she went down the corridor, with her lasagne, so bowlegged she looked like she was doing a side-to-side Charlie Chaplin walk.

“What was that?” Nicholas asked.

“My nephew, she said.”

“Not your dead husband?”

“No.”

“Okay, let’s get Mitch over here.” Mitch was deep in discussion with Barb, the car-tire-sandals woman—she was really cool considering she was probably well into her sixties; as well as the funky sandals, her tote bag looked like it had been crocheted out of cassette tapes.

“Mitch’ll tell you about Neris Hemming,” Nicholas promised. “She’s often on TV shows and she even helped the cops find a murdered girl. She’s so good she spoke in Mitch’s wife’s voice. Mitch!” he called. “Mitch, c’mere, buddy.”

“You go on and talk,” Barb said, in a gravelly voice. “I’m going outside for a cigarette. Who’da thought? I marched alongside Dr. King in the civil-rights movement. I fought the good fight in the women’s revolution. And look at me now; having to hide in a doorway like a dirtbag just to smoke a cigarette. Where did it all go so wrong?” She laughed a grouchy heh, heh, heh. “See you next week, guys.”

Mitch came over.

“Okay,” Nicholas told me. “Tell him everything.”

I swallowed. “My husband died and I came here today hoping to get in touch with him. I wanted to have a conversation with him. Find out where he is.” My throat thickened. “Check if he’s okay.”

Mitch understood completely, I could see it.

“I told her about you going to Neris Hemming,” Nicholas said. “She connected with your wife, she actually started speaking in her voice, didn’t she?”

Mitch gave a little smile at Nicholas’s enthusiacomfortable showing up.

Leisl did a little intro, welcoming me, and saying stuff about deep breaths and centering ourselves and hoping that “Spirit” would deliver what everyone needed. Then we were allowed to stop holding hands.

Silence fell. And continued. And continued. And continued. Frustration burgeoned in me. When would this fucking thing start? I opened one eye and snaked a look around the circle, their faces shadowed in the candlelight.

Mitch was watching me; our looks met and collided in midair. Quickly I closed my eye again.

When Leisl finally spoke, I jumped.

“I have a tall man here.” My eyes snapped open and I wanted to put my hand up, like I was at school. It’s for me! It’s for me!

“A very tall, broad, dark-haired man.” My heart sank. Not for me.

“Sounds like my mom,” Undead Fred said, in a slow, gargly voice.

Leisl did a quick recalculation. “Fred, I’m sorry; yes, it is your mom.”

“Built like a brick shithouse,” Fred gargled. “Coulda been a prizefighter.”

“She’s telling me to ask you to be careful getting on the subway. She says that you don’t pay attention, that you could slip.”

After a period of silence, Fred asked, “That it?”

“That’s it.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I’ve got Nicholas’s dad now.” Leisl faced Nicholas. “He’s telling me—I’m sorry, these are his words, not mine—that he’s pissed with you.”

“So what’s new?” Nicholas grinned.

“There’s a situation at work that you have issues with?”

Nicholas nodded.

“Your dad says you’re blaming the other guy, but you’ve got to look at where you’re responsible for what’s happened.”

Nicholas stretched out, extended his arms above his head, scratched his chest thoughtfully. “Maybe, yeah, he’s probably right. Bummer. Thanks, Dad.”

More silence followed, then someone came through for the car-tire-sandals woman—whose name was Barb—and told her to include rapeseed oil in her diet.

“I already do,” Barb said tetchily.

“More rapeseed oil,” Leisl said quickly.

“Okay.”

Another older lady got told by her dead husband to “keep doing the next right thing”; the young frumpy girl’s mother told her that everything was going to work out for the best; Juan, the pomady guy, got told to live in the now; and Mitch’s wife said she was happy to see he’d been smiling a bit more this week.

All meaningless, vaguely spiritual-sounding platitudes. Comforting stuff, but obviously not coming from “the other side.”

It’s all bollocks, I thought bitterly, which was just when Leisl said, “Anna, I’m getting something for you.”

Sensation burned through me; I nearly puked, faintedsm. “She didn’t speak in her voice, but, yeah, I was really talking to Trish. I’ve gone to lots of psychics and she’s the only one who did it for me.”

My heart was beating fast and my mouth was dry. “Do you have a number for her?”

“Sure.” He produced an organizer. “But she’s very busy. You’ll probably have to wait, like, a long time to see her.”

“That’s okay.”

“And it’ll cost you. This is going to hurt—two thousand dollars for thirty minutes.”

I was shocked: two thousand dollars was an horrific amount. My finances were in a shambles. Aidan hadn’t had life insurance—well, neither had I—because neither of us had had any intention of dying and the rent on our apartment was so extortionate that paying Aidan’s share as well as my own was eating up nearly every cent of my salary. We’d been saving to buy a place of our own, but that money was tied up in some funny account for another year, so I’d been living on my credit cards and doing a good job of ignoring my mounting debts. However, I was more than happy to go further into debt for this Neris Hemming—I didn’t care what it cost.