Intersections Read online

  "Can't say as I have."

  "What about a town called Gallow's Grove?"

  She stiffened, and I knew that rang a bell. Nothing ever rattled her. "No."

  "Are you certain?" He must have noticed as well.

  She waved it off. "What about Gallow's Grove?"

  "Madame Nephthys is one of the more prominent mediums there. She is, in fact, more powerful than any psychic I've ever encountered. They say she can summon the dead as easily as you mixed that drink. I just spent a week with her myself and I can tell you with absolute certainty that her talent is unequaled. The things she told me... That she showed me..." He shuddered. "I hoped to convince Harry to see her, but..." The muscles around one eye twitched and he took a deep breath. "Regardless, I suppose it fitting one of the Irregulars visit her. If you became convinced, then surely Harry would come see her as well."

  I read the expression on his face. And then he and I can be friends again, it said.

  Persephone stared at him over the rim of her glass and smiled. "And what will you gain out of my proving she's a fake?"

  He laughed. "I don't think you'll be able to. I believe her gifts are not only genuine but beyond the ability to reproduce."

  "You said that same thing about Margery Crandon."

  Shifting in his seat, he smoothed his mustache with one hand. "Yes. Well. I still believe that Crandon is genuine. Harry may have been able to replicate her gifts, but just because a painter can mimic the image of a sunset does not mean the sun never leaves the sky."

  "Given up on your other theory, then? The one about Harry's debunking skills?"

  I leaned forward at that, curious what Sherlock Holmes thought of my mentor's mentor.

  "I'll pay two thousand dollars," he said, ignoring her question. "Plus expenses."

  I almost jumped out of my seat and kissed him. Two thousand dollars was a year's salary in those days and we needed every dime we could get our hands on since Old Man Gale cut off Seph's allowance. I don't know how much debt she was in that year, but her lifestyle could not have been cheap. They say the parties in The Great Gatsby were based on one of her shindigs. She went to school with Zelda Fitzgerald, so I'd believe it.

  Persephone almost choked on her drink at the offer. She leaned forward, placing the glass onto the coffee table, and folded her hands over her knee. Like that and she was the very picture of composure again. "That's an acceptable amount."

  "Boy, ain't it," I said.

  Sir Doyle smiled and opened his mouth to say something, but she held a finger up and silenced him.

  "But don't think for a minute I'll be compromised," she said. "Whatever I find, that's what's being published, regardless of how it makes anyone look."

  "Agreed," he said and extended a hand.

  Rather than shaking it, Seph held hers out, palm down, as though she were a queen accepting fealty. I thought he might balk at that, having been knighted by actual honest-to-God royalty. Instead he grinned and kissed the back of her hand. Men always did. She played them like violins. Or us, I guess I should say. In the end, she played me, too, I suppose.

  On the train to Gallow's Grove the next morning, I asked what Doyle's theory about Houdini was.

  "It's absurd, really." She closed the folder she'd compiled of news stories about Gallow's Grove's Spiritualists. "He believes our Harry is a powerful medium, one so powerful he can disrupt the abilities of other mediums. Harry hates that theory, but he refuses to show anyone how he does any of his illusions, even the ones reproducing psychic shenanigans, so I suppose he's earned it all with his secrecy."

  "If he never shows anybody," I asked, "how did you learn?"

  She smiled and patted my knee before turning to stare out the window as the city gave way to countryside.

  2

  Founded in 1875, Gallow's Grove was built atop the site of an old county jail. They say three hundred men were hanged there before the Fox sisters came. "The Mothers of Spiritualism," as they were called, spent a month at some kind of tent revival nearby, talking to the ghosts of the hanged men, and it wasn't long until a Spiritualist community sprang up on the site. It had quickly become the kind of place where tourists flocked on vacations and the anniversaries of deaths, eager for an entire town of psychics, mediums, and con artists to prey on their grief.

  At first glance, it didn't look much different than any other small upstate town. The houses were modest wooden constructions, two stories and a porch in most cases. A dozen or so large Victorians filled out the place, most with "Room for Rent" signs in the window, a few even going so far as to call themselves "Inns." Trees lined the streets and crowded the buildings, their early November colors intense to a kid like me used to the gray brick of the city.

  When we arrived, the mayor himself greeted us at the train station. Simon Carmichael was a large man, handsome, fighting hard to give the impression of old money. That trying is what gave him away. Old money had an effortless snobbery to it while his suit and hat clung awkwardly to him and he smiled a bit too much.

  "Miss Gale," he said and extended a hand.

  She stood there eying him for a breath too long. "Why, hello."

  He turned to me. "Mayor Carmichael," he said. "But you can call me Simon. I thought I'd drive you two into town."

  "Connie," I said and shook his hand. "Why's the mayor picking us up?"

  “I was here helping my parents off.”

  He motioned to another train platform where a man who could be his twin if not for the graying hair and lines around his eyes pushed a wheelchair. A woman sat in it, thin and pale, a blanket wrapped around her and a tight green turban on her head. A coughing fit took her and the man leaned over, rubbing her back and whispering into her ear.

  “Your mother?” Seph asked.

  “Doctors say it’s a disease of the nervous system. She’s on her way to see one now.”

  His father glanced our way and frowned as if he heard us talking about his wife.

  “We were prepared to take a taxi cab,” Persephone said. “It sounds like you may have had enough for one day.”

  "Are you kidding me?" He grinned. "I’m just glad the timing worked out. I mean, here you are, an expert trained by Harry Houdini and sent here by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to prove the truth behind Spiritualism. This might be the biggest thing to ever happen to this town.”

  "You're a Spiritualist, then?"

  "I'm a capitalist, Miss Gale. Where others see ghosts, I see dollar signs." He laughed and, strangely enough, she did too. It would have sounded sleazy coming from anyone else, but from him it was charming, sincere even. Honesty was rare in our trade, after all.

  "A hereditary trait?" she asked.

  "The Senator taught me everything I know," he said. "Except how to laugh. That I get from my mother."

  "Wait," I said, playing catch up and not liking it. "Your Pops is a Senator?"

  "State Senator. Need a hand with your bags?" He didn't wait for an answer and grabbed them up.

  It was strange watching this man carry our things. The son of a New York State Senator and the mayor of this town, waiting on us? It didn't help that Simon seemed too young to be mayor. Too young and too kind. In my experience up until then, authority figures tended to be ancient and crotchety. But Mr. Mayor couldn't have been much older than Persephone. I guessed his father got him into office. That's how I'd always heard politics worked, anyway.

  He escorted us over to his automobile, a gorgeous red Lancia Lambda. I whistled.

  "I just picked this up a few days ago," he said and ran a hand along the metal before opening the passenger side door. "It's the only Lancia in a hundred miles."

  Persephone took his hand and climbed in.

  "She's a beaut," I said and crawled into the back with the bags.

  His gaze on Seph, he went: "Yes, she is."

  Honest he did.

  I rolled my eyes but Persephone, weirdly enough, didn't seem to mind the corny come on.

  The car breezed down bumpy