Thicker Than Water (28 page)

“Now, everyone shut your eyes,” Colonel Phillips instructed, walking around the table behind the sitters to be certain they were following his instructions. He nodded at Lucy, indicating they had. She then positioned the stick she had hidden in the folds of her dress between her knees so that it hooked into the edge of the tabletop.

“Join hands to create the energy impulse of the circle. The spirit will be drawn here.”

Mrs. Van Wyck's plump little fingers gripped Lucy's so hard Lucy winced, the woman's many rings digging in. Lucy wondered if she could manage to slip one off onto her own finger.

“Oh, spirits of the departed,” Colonel Phillips intoned. “Join us here on the earthly plane. Make your way from the realm of shadow and mystery.”

“Come to me,” Lucy whispered, as they had rehearsed. “Please, speak to me. Let me know you're here among us.”

Lucy wiggled the stick with her knees, careful to hold her upper body still. She tilted the tabletop this way and that, never releasing her hands from those of the people next to her. Gasps went around the table.

“Whoopsie!” Mr. Von Clare said, his elbow sliding off the edge of the table.

Table-tilting was considered standard spirit behavior, though why anyone would want to invite such clumsy spirits was beyond Lucy. But what the rich wanted, the rich got.

“Is that you, spirit?” Lucy asked. “Will you speak to us?”

“Oh, who do you think it is?” Mrs. Van Wyck asked.

“Can we open our eyes yet?” Miss Carlyle begged.

“Yes, the spirits are here. You may open your eyes.”

Lucy went into trance mode. Her eyes shut, her body went limp, and her head rolled around. She made soft sighing sounds, then fluttered her eyes open. She stared blankly, as if she were seeing into the realm beyond.

“Will you speak to me, spirit?” Lucy asked. Using the stick, she rapped sharply on the underside of the table.

“That means yes,” Colonel Phillips said with excitement. “Oh, this is a receptive group. Very welcoming. I knew that the moment I walked in.”

“Is there someone here you'd like to speak to?” Lucy asked.

One rap.

Lucy listened to the ladies shifting in their seats, the men's anxious coughs. She had her audience enraptured; she could feel it.

“Is it . . .” Lucy paused, building tension. The sitters nervously glanced at each other. Mr. Von Clare had a superior-looking smile, as if he were above it all.
Just you wait
, Lucy thought. But first, she knew she needed to satisfy her hostess. “Is it Mrs. Van Wyck?”

One rap.

Mrs. Van Wyck took in a sharp breath. “Oh, my,” she whispered.

Lucy didn't react, as if she could only hear the unseen spirit. “Will you speak through me?”

One rap.

Colonel Phillips stood behind Lucy's chair. “Just a precaution,” he said softly. “I must always be ready to protect my darling daughter.”

She knew her father did that to heighten the drama, letting the audience believe that something dangerous or shocking might happen.

“Auntie Coraline?” Lucy said in a small child's voice.

Mrs. Van Wyck gasped again. This time there was a deeper, rasping sound to it, as if her breath was catching on her heart. “Oh, Amelia, is that you?”

Gotcha
.

“Auntie Coraline, please don't be sad,” Lucy said. “Thank you for the rocking horse. It was my favorite Christmas present ever. I'm only sorry I couldn't ride it more before I was called away.”

“Oh, my dear girl,” Mrs. Van Wyck said, her voice shaking with tears.

Lucy's brow furrowed; she was startled by the intensity in Mrs. Van Wyck's voice. She forced herself to keep her expression blank.

“I'm here with Mama and Granny Mayweather,” Lucy continued in the little girl's voice. “So I'm not all alone as you feared.”

“Thank God, I'm so glad,” Mrs. Van Wyck said.

Peabody's Blue Book was dead accurate
, Lucy thought. The book was a very useful collection of facts and anecdotes passed among those plying the medium trade. Several of the party guests were listed in it, so Peabody and Colonel Phillips who drilled all the information into Lucy. Peabody said there was a Blue Book for nearly every city these days. Other items were usually picked up through eavesdropping and saloon gossip.

Mrs. Van Wyck's hand trembled in Lucy's, and tears rolled down her chubby face.

“I want you to be happy, Auntie Coraline,” Lucy said. “There is no reason to cry for me.” Lucy hadn't rehearsed this bit, but the woman's emotions were so genuine, so raw, Lucy wanted to give her some kind of comfort. “This is a very happy place.”

“I'll be happy from now on, dear heart,” Mrs. Van Wyck promised tearfully.

“Goodbye, Auntie Coraline,” Lucy said, making her voice fade.

Lucy collapsed against the back of her chair as if the effort had exhausted her. She opened her eyes and looked around in confusion. “Was someone here?” she asked in her normal voice.

Mrs. Van Wyck sobbed beside her. Lucy released her hand and shrank back in her chair. She hadn't known she would have such an effect.

“Papa?” Lucy asked, wanting him to get things under control, uncertain if they should proceed as planned.

“Yes, my dear, a spirit did speak through you,” he said, offering Mrs. Van Wyck his handkerchief “I do believe you gave our lovely hostess some comfort from beyond the grave.” He placed a reassuring hand on Mrs. Van Wyck's trembling shoulder.

“Oh yes, oh yes,
indeed
!” Mrs. Van Wyck gushed, blotting her face.

“Shall we see if there are other spirits hovering? Or have you had enough?” he asked Mrs. Van Wyck gently.

“I'm fine, just fine,” Mrs. Van Wyck assured him. She reached up and clutched his hand. “I'm sure others have those they wish to contact.”

“I'd like to see what else you've got,” Mr. Von Clare said. “I don't imagine there's a spirit who wants to talk to me.” Under his breath he muttered, “I'm not a foolish, excitable woman.”

Lucy's jaw tensed.
All right, Von Clare
,
you're next.
This was going to be good.

“Lucy?” Colonel Phillips said. “Are you up to having another go?”

Lucy nodded. “I'll try,” she said weakly.

She shut her eyes and went back into her trance routine. She threw in a few moans to cover the rumbling of her empty stomach.

“Is anyone there who would like to make contact?” she called out. “Spirits! Speak to me!”

“Help me,” a voice replied.

Lucy sat bolt upright in her chair, her skin suddenly cold with shock.

“Help me,” the voice repeated. A voice not her own. A girl's voice, a voice that didn't belong to anyone in the room. “Why won't anyone help me?”

The world spun around and went dark as Lucy fainted dead away.

“Help me,” Lindsay Miller whispered. She hugged her knees close to her body,. Her limp dark hair fell around her face, blocking her already-narrow view as she rested her forehead on her knees.

CRASH!

Lindsay cringed and dug her nails into her legs, counting that as the fifth broken glass. Outside the closet door a battle raged. Lindsay was hiding in her bedroom, like a soldier in a foxhole. Two weeks ago she had installed the latch on the inside of the door. Without uncurling her body, she ran her hand up the wall and reassured herself that it was locked.

How could Melanie do this to us?
Lindsay slid her face between her knees and rubbed her cheek against the rough fabric of her blue jeans. The truth was, though, this wasn't the first time her mother had done something outrageous and stupid.

Lindsay startled, jerking up her head as she heard another crash. She pushed a coat away from her face.
Plate
, she thought, covering her ears to block out the shouting, the deep, booming voice resonating throughout the apartment. A voice she still had to get used to hearing, a voice that had grown louder over the past few weeks.

Somehow while Lindsay was up in the Catskills, working at a summer camp, her mother had managed to get herself
married.
A courtship, a marriage, and a move to Manhattan had all been related to Lindsay in one rush of insane chatter at Port Authority bus station the moment she had disembarked.

CRASH!

Lindsay bit her lower lip.
An object's position, velocity, and acceleration can be plotted as functions of time. But,
Lindsay reminded herself,
there are a number of variables to consider. The glass and the plate have different mass, which would affect speed. Without knowing the mass ...

She's worse
, crept into Lindsay's brain, interrupting her physics problem.
She got worse while I was gone.
Her face suddenly felt hot, and she wished the closet were bigger. She squirmed, trying to find a more comfortable position, her long legs having nowhere to go.
She's worse
because
I was gone.
She shoved the clothes dangling over her head away from her face.

Lindsay had gotten off the bus and steeled herself in her mother's bearlike hug. She had instantly smelled the sweet-sour combination of alcohol and sweat, and the disappointment rolled up through her like a wave of nausea. Before Lindsay had left for camp, her mom had vowed to clean up her act, had hung the brochure for AA meetings on the fridge, and had thrown out her stash of pot and booze without any prompting.

But apparently the change hadn't lasted. It was then that Lindsay noticed the man with the square face and the thick build standing awkwardly behind her mother.

“We met at a meeting,” Melanie had gushed, clutching his arm and dragging him a few steps forward.

Lindsay had tried to piece it together.
She picks up a guy at an AA meeting and goes back to drinking. What is wrong with this picture?

Somewhere in the blur of words, statements so ludicrous they could hardly be believed, was information that Lindsay knew she had to understand, to process quickly. She had to put aside the clanging in her head, the hollowness of her stomach, the cloud of confusion swallowing her. The news that Melanie had already packed up their one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn and had moved them to her new husband's place in Greenwich Village, where Lindsay would start a new school, and
wasn't it all exciting?

The fight was escalating. It could take hours before they exhausted themselves. Lindsay shut her eyes, wondering if she should risk dashing out to retrieve her MP3 player, her physics textbook. No, it would be more productive if she grabbed her history notes. They were studying nineteenth-century politics, and all those dates and names and various forms of corruption got jumbled inside her head. Elections and newspaper editorials were—

Lindsay slumped against the back wall of her closet, boneless and weary. She reached up and clutched the sleeve of her winter coat, pretending there was someone to hold on to.

“Help me,” she moaned. “Why won't anyone help me?”

 

Lucy heard her father saying her name and a woman nervously asking, “Is she all right? Oh, dear, how could this have happened? This never happened at Sara Schyler's!”

“That's not strictly true,” a man said. “Although it wasn't the
medium
who fainted, but one of the sitters.” He chuckled. “You would too if your dead husband berated you in front of your friends for taking up with a younger man!”

Lucy swallowed. She was terribly thirsty. There was a cold, wet sensation on her head.
Who are these people, and what are they talking about?
Her eyelids fluttered open, and only then did she realize that the reason it was so dark was because her eyes had been shut.

“She's come to!” a very short and sturdy woman announced to the room.

“Dearie dear,” Colonel Phillips said, removing the cold compress from her forehead. “You gave us all a fright.”

“Did I?” Lucy's brow furrowed. She felt very odd—like there was empty space in her head and she was moving in slow motion. Something important had just happened, but she wasn't sure what it was.

“You fainted!” Mrs. Van Wyck exclaimed.

‘Did I?” Lucy repeated, then blushed, hearing how dullwitted she sounded. “I suppose I did.”

“Perhaps if she could have a little sustenance, get up her strength.” Her father's blue eyes were dark with worry; he obviously thought she had fainted from hunger. Lucy was relieved that he wasn't angry that she had spoiled the seance.

The seance! Lucy sat up very straight. That was what made her faint! She had heard a voice—an actual voice! A real, honest-to-goodness voice from the spirit realm!

“Yes,” Mr. Von Clare said. “Let's all have some sustenance. I believe I smelled duck?”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Van Wyck fretted. “I'd expected our spirit circle to go on longer. I don't believe Cook will be ready to serve.” She bit her lip, and Lucy could see she was on the verge of tears. Speaking to dead children and having her party spoiled seemed to have equal impact on the woman.

“No—I don't need any food,” Lucy said. “Please, let's resume the séance.”

“Why did you faint?” Miss Carlyle asked.

“It—why—it must have been the force of my contact with the spirit that caused me to lose consciousness,” Lucy explained, thinking quickly.