As we continue the rollout of excerpts from That the Dead May Rest, it's time to switch focus to the folks still on Earth. First up: Rosie, who (as mentioned earlier) had some glimmers of psychic ability as a teenager, but has long since written them off as illusions. The only trace they left behind is her choice of profession. She's a medium, with an extensive repertoire of methods to deceive her clients and equipment to help her do so.
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Madame Rebecca (or Rosie, when not in professional mode) sat at the table, the heavy velvet curtains blocking the inconvenient sunlight, and sniffed the incense her assistant Diane had lit, assessing it and finding it good. Not strong enough to irritate nasal passages, but plenty for providing atmosphere, as did the deep bass notes of the music playing at the other end of the house, just at the threshold of audibility. The black tablecloth covered the round walnut claw-foot table, and her painstakingly recruited clients held hands around it, staring at the single candle in the center. The heat was turned up high enough that her clients would welcome it after the February chill — and would be all the more susceptible to the breeze from the fan Diane would turn on at the appropriate moment.
“Welcome, friends,” she intoned. “You have come together out of a shared yearning, a need to reach beyond the boundaries accepted by so many as impermeable, to welcome the spirits who themselves yearn to communicate with us.” She paused to look around the room, projecting warmth without anything so ordinary as a smile. “Now let all distractions and trivial concerns fall away, and open yourselves to the ineffable, as I await the touch of my spirit guide.”
Maybe it was time for a new spirit guide — a man, a warrior or shaman, instead of the Egyptian courtesan she’d been trotting out for so long. She could almost hear the man’s voice, a warm baritone rumble, authoritative and masculine . . . .
Was she bored enough that her imagination had become intrusive? It almost seemed that she was hearing such a voice, that it was even demanding her attention. How ridiculous! She shoved aside the memory of her teenaged years, when her daydreams would be interrupted by the faint echo of mysterious voices, tantalizing, fading in and out. Without the naive hope that the voices would grow louder and prove real, and then the disappointment and anger when they faded away, she might never have seized on becoming a medium. It had been a sort of revenge on those thwarted hopes.
And now she was letting those old memories sabotage her. What expression had been on her face, these last minutes? She had better get down to business.
“She comes, she approaches! Welcome, Aya, gentle helper, and tell me what spirits you bring with you to speak to the living. . . .”
A wearisome time later, after“Aya” had conveyed her messages of love and reassurance, Diane collected payments from the clients and ushered them out. When they were all gone, Rosie pushed back from the table, stood up, stretched, and went to open the curtains. But the sunlight had fled.
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See Wednesday's post for a séance that goes rather differently!
Today's preorder links are for Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Tomorrow, you'll meet Emma.
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