Intersections Read online

  Rose answered the door almost immediately. "Good morning, Constantine."

  "Morning." I shuffled my feet, cap in hand, more than a little embarrassed.

  "Would you like to come in for tea and a cookie?"

  "Thank you, but... Well... Is Nephthys around?"

  "She's not doing any readings today."

  "It's not that."

  "And I don't really want her interrogated like some criminal."

  "Oh, no. I'd never. That's Seph's - Persephone's - skill anyway. I'm bad at interrogating."

  "Then what on Earth do you want?"

  I was at a loss, not really certain myself what I wanted. Luckily, feet pounded down the stairs behind her.

  "Mama," Nephthys said as she bounded into sight. "We're just going for a walk."

  "A walk? In this weather?" She pointed to the sky.

  Nephthys slipped on her coat. "He wanted to know where the cemetery was and I thought it might be a gesture of goodwill to show him. Extend an olive branch and all that."

  "I don't see that we're the ones who need to extend anything." Rose crossed her arms and stared at the sky. She didn't buy it, I could tell.

  "I'll have her back in an hour," I said and placed a hand over my heart. "I swear."

  She considered it as Nephthys scooted past her and onto the porch.

  "Alright." Rose didn't sound too happy about it. "But if it starts raining on you, duck into Mr. Fitzsimmons's barber shop to wait it out."

  "Okay, Mama." Nephthys gave a wave of her hand as she trotted down the walk.

  Waving to Rose myself, I hurried after her.

  "Thank God you're here," Nephthys said. "I was going crazy in there."

  "Why's that?"

  "Mama hasn't wanted me to do anything - no readings, no nothing - until this whole murder mess is over. I told her it is over but she said that, until Simon Carmichael has been taken to the county jail, she's not comfortable. I think she's afraid of Persephone."

  "Most people are."

  "I'm not," she said. There was no anger behind it. She simply stated a fact.

  "Did you know the girl? Caitlin?"

  "A little." She plucked a twig from a bush as we turned a corner and the houses became fewer and fewer. "I’d seen her a few times on my night walks. She didn't believe in what I do. In any of it. Her parents dragged her along a few times but she got nastier about it each time and it interfered with the energy of the séance, so she stopped coming."

  She pulled tiny leaves from the twig, each drifting to the ground as it left her fingers to be taken by the wind and swirled away. I was afraid to ask her what I was thinking, afraid it would insult her and our walk would be over before it had really begun, but if I didn't ask it would have driven me nuts.

  "Do you believe in what you do?"

  Laughing, she shook her head. "You think I'm a fraud, too."

  "No, I just... I don't know. I really don't."

  We were quiet for a long while.

  Finally, I asked if she'd ever heard of a shut-eye.

  "A what?"

  "A shut-eye. It's a term used in stage magic."

  "No. What is it?"

  "Well, it's complicated. But basically, sometimes, a magician is so good at his tricks, they stop feeling like tricks. Happens mostly with mind-reading and whatnot. A magician can get so good at telling people things about themselves, things he couldn't possibly know under most circumstances, that he starts to believe he really does have some kind of supernatural power. That's a shut-eye."

  "An illusionist who stops seeing the illusion sounds like a wise man to me."

  I couldn't help but laugh at that. "Yeah. Maybe."

  She stopped in front of a towering oak tree, the wind blowing her hair about her face. Gathering it in one hand, she pulled it behind her. "When I was six or so, I woke up in the middle of the night from some bad dream or another. My room was pitch black, the drapes drawn and the door closed. I could barely see a foot in front of my face, but there it was. A tiny little hand reaching out from the black and holding my own. I couldn't breathe, couldn't even scream though I felt one bubbling up inside of me. Then this little voice said, 'I used to have bad dreams too.' And then it was gone."

  With everything I'd seen and been taught over the last year or so, I knew better than to believe some medium's personal ghost story. But hers was different. There was no wide eyed wonder that had been practiced to the point of perfection. There was no pronouncement from the spirit about how she needed to go forth and help people. And she wasn't bragging about the encounter. Telling it, in fact, seemed to make her smaller.

  "That was the first time I saw my brother Francis. I'd seen Papa several times after he passed over, but I was little and hadn't even realized he'd died. To me, it was just like when he'd come home from being on the road. But this... This was different. It scared me and made me so sad. Francis hadn’t even turned four when he'd died." She sniffed back the tears gathering in her eyes. "Once I got used to it all, we played a lot together. He hasn't come to me in a few years now. Guess I’ve grown too old. I miss him."

  I didn't know what to say to any of that and so I just stood there, hands in my pockets, staring at the trees swaying in the wind.

  "Cemetery's this way," she said and we turned onto a gravel road winding up into the hills.

  The storm came and we crowded together in the doorway of an ornate tomb. Nephthys said that one of Gallow's Groves founders was interred inside, a wealthy widow who had poured most of her fortune into building the town and drawing the country's greatest Spiritualists there to live. The tomb itself was dark gray stone, an angel with hands held in eternal prayer carved above us and leaning out over the doorway, rain water pouring from the tips of its outstretched wings and dribbling from its elbows. An iron grate behind us sealed a pitch black hole like a cave, a musty cold radiating from inside. The stone beneath us alternated between dry spots rough against my palms and slick places where moisture gathered.

  The sky, as dark as the stone, lit with the occasional flash of lightning. Thunder cracked the air and seemed to shake the very ground beneath us. The clean smell of fresh rain filled the air and small drops were occasionally blown onto our already damp clothes and faces. Nephthys leaned against me, my arm around her, and it wasn't long until we were kissing again.

  I don't know how long the storm lasted, but it simultaneously felt brief and eternal.

  She finally pulled away as the worst of the storm passed, pressing her head against my shoulder and watching the still dark sky, the occasional thunderclap now sounding from a distance. We didn't talk, simply sat and held one another as we waited for the rain to pass.

  When we approached her house later, she told me it might be best if I kept walking.

  "Mama will be mad," she said. "We've been gone a while now and I'm soaked."

  "I understand."

  "Will I see you again before you leave?"

  "Neph, an army of the Hun couldn't keep me away."

  She laughed and pulled her hand from mine. "Good. Guess you better head that way now." She pointed down the street that split off and lead to the inn.

  "Guess I better."

  Smiling like a damned fool, I skipped off.

  "Connie," she called out.

  I stopped and turned.

  "Persephone's seen him too. That's what he told me."

  "Who?"

  "Francis," she said. "Our brother."

  Then she turned and hurried down the street.

  15

  Seph's room was empty when I got back and the shed doors closed, so I left her to it and worked on my reading the rest of the day. I was getting better. Good enough to read signs like the one she'd posted on the shed and get through some kiddie books, but still not ready to read one of Sir Doyle's novels on my own. For some reason, after spending the day with Nephthys, I was anxious to hurry my studies along.

  The next morning, Persephone sipped coffee at the breakfast table as I walked in.