by Lisa Graff
“Uh . . .” I glance at Jax. “Yes?”
“Wonderful,” she says. Her mouth is a straight line. Not a smile, not a frown. “Follow me.”
And just as I notice that the door to the hallway marked X has vanished—it’s not ajar, it’s not open, it’s just not—the woman heads straight in that direction. When she reaches the mouth of the pitch-black hallway, she turns her head to look at us.
“Well?” she says. “Are you coming, or aren’t you?”
NINE
THE HALLWAY MARKED X does not light up as we walk through it. It stays dark, and gets darker, as we follow the woman in gold. It’s growing so dark I bump right into the wall. All at once, the spot sparkles, lighting the path for a brief moment before fizzling back into darkness.
I touch the wall again, and the harder I press, the brighter the spot becomes.
“I see you’ve found our night-lights,” the woman in gold says. She does not slow her pace. Jax and I rush to keep up, trailing our hands along the wall to light our way. As we move, the light catches the gold of the woman’s dress, all the way down to the hem.
When we reach a grand staircase with a twisty iron banister, the woman pulls a pin out of her hair, long and skinny like a pencil, and her dark hair cascades to her shoulders. She stabs the hairpin down into the knob of the banister, making the knob light up like a streetlamp. The rest of the stairs begin to brighten, too, the glow traveling up the steps and the banister until the entire staircase is illuminated. Without bothering to check if we’ll follow, the woman starts to climb.
My skin is tingling with curiosity, but beside me Jax looks like he wants to sink into the floor. I give him a hand-flash, making a question with my eyebrows. But he only shakes his head.
Together we follow the woman in gold.
The landing of the second floor is bathed in murky light, so it’s easier to follow the woman as she twists and turns through new hallways. We walk for a long time, and just when I think she must be leading us in circles, she stops. I nearly trip over my feet trying not to plow into her.
To me, this hall looks exactly the same as all the others. But the woman presses an invisible spot on the wall, and an entire panel swings open, revealing a hidden room.
No, an aquarium.
I blink in the new light, taking in the sight of all the fish and coral and water. Every wall of this huge room, floor to ceiling, is glass, with a world of sea creatures behind it. The woman waves us inside, and as soon as we enter, the panel swings shut. Fish all around, no exits anywhere. In the center of the glowing room sit two old-timey couches, with a coffee table in between. The woman in gold is gone. It’s just me and Jax, and the fish.
“Um . . .” I say slowly. Because as much as I would like to be freaking out right now, I feel like I need to hold it together for Jax. “So this is cool, right?” There’s a large purple octopus behind the glass to my left, who floops his way lower in the tank until he is just above our heads. “Hey there, buddy.” I tap on the tank to greet him.
And just like that, the octopus vanishes in a sea of cloudy blue ink. No sign of him anywhere.
“Whoa,” I breathe. “That was—”
As the dark ink begins to clear, I see the octopus stuck to the glass, just inches from my face. And where each of the creature’s tentacles meets the glass, a letter is formed in ink.
My skin tingles again.
“Welcome, both of you.”
Jax and I spin around at the voice behind us. Although I’m certain there was no one else in the room a second ago, now Roger Milmond is stepping out of a watery corner. He’s wearing a dark suit and fancy shoes. Somehow even the stubble on his chin looks more polished than yesterday.
“How’d you do that?” I ask Roger, gesturing toward the octopus, whose inky message is still pressed against the glass. Roger’s a magician, I know that now, so while all this stuff is pretty creepy, I know it’s just tricks.
My question makes Roger smile. “Seems to me you ought to ask the octopus,” he replies.
So. Weird.
“It’s good to see you again, CJ,” Roger says when he reaches us. “And this is . . . ?” He looks at Jax.
“Jax,” I reply, because I’m not sure Jax knows how to speak anymore.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
Jax doesn’t shake Roger’s hand, which is maybe not the worst decision he’s ever made.
Roger returns his attention to me. “So Nic sent her niece to yell at me, did she?” he asks.
“Huh?” Why would Aunt Nic want me to yell at him? “We came because of the message. ‘Take heed.’ That was you, right?” I turn again to the octopus in the tank. “I mean, obviously.”
“Well.” Roger folds his arms over his chest. “You two sleuths tracked me down all by yourselves? Impressive.”
“We had help from Spirit,” I reply. And when Roger tilts his head at me like he’s confused, I say, “What is ‘take heed’ supposed to mean? Am I in trouble?”
Roger thinks that over. “Depends on how you define ‘trouble,’” he replies.
Obviously I’m going to have to be a lot clearer.
“How did Spirit tell you to contact me?” I ask. “What am I supposed to be looking out for? And what do you know about my mom?”
With each question, Roger’s eyebrows rise higher, until I worry they just might leap off his forehead.
“Why don’t we have a seat?” he says when I finish. “We have a lot to discuss.” He gestures toward the coffee table between the two fancy couches. “Care for a snack?” Even though I know the table was just empty, now there are three gold-rimmed teacups set on saucers, filled with steaming hot chocolate. There’s a plate of cookies, too.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
As Roger crosses to the farthest couch, I set a hand on Jax’s shoulder. “Want to leave?” I whisper. Because as much as I want to stay and figure things out, I think it would be good if Jax still had two arms afterward. Jax only shakes his head, so together we sit ourselves down on the stiff couch across from Roger.
“First things first,” Roger says as he leans forward to pick up his teacup. He takes a sip. “Good cocoa.” He swirls the cup, then clacks it back into its saucer. “That message about taking heed was from me,” he goes on. “No spirit told me to leave it for you. And I’m afraid I don’t know anything about your mother.”
My tingly excitement shifts quickly into disappointment, but I do my best to trust in Spirit. I need to follow the path they lead me down, no matter how twisty, and I’ll get where I need to go.
“So why did you want me to ‘take heed’ then?” I ask Roger.
Roger studies my face for a moment, then glances into his teacup, as though trying to decide something. He downs the rest of his drink in one swig.
“I like you, CJ,” he says. “You remind me of myself when I was a kid. I suppose that’s why I was trying to warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“CJ Ames,” Roger says very seriously, “your entire world is about to change.”
And just like that, I’m tingling again. I lean forward in my seat. But whatever I’m expecting to hear, what Roger says next is not it.
“How much do you know about what your aunt does?” he asks me.
It seems like an odd question, but I do my best to answer it. “I know she has the Gift,” I say. “I know she helps people connect to their loved ones. I know she’s helped me.”
Roger nods, taking that in. “I thought you’d say as much.” He gazes down into his empty cup before saying, “And do you know what it is we do here, CJ, at Le Char Mer?”
“Besides lure kids into creepy fish rooms?” I ask. I really wish this guy would get to his point already. “Jax said you guys put on magic shows.”
“Indeed.”
With that, Roger stands and strides
to the far wall. When he waves his hand, somehow all of the fish and water and anemones behind the glass disappear, and what emerges instead is a view of the first floor of the mansion. A theater, I realize, when I rise from my seat—backs of heads, a stage in front. It’s what you’d see if you were sitting inside the tech booth at the back of an audience. Onstage, a man in a suit gestures to a woman in a chair beside him—the same woman in the gold dress who led us here, her hair pinned back up against her neck.
“They can’t see us,” Roger says as Jax slowly joins us at the glass.
Like fish in an aquarium, the man and woman onstage go on with their business without paying us any attention. The man says something we can’t hear, and the shoulders of the audience members rise and fall with laughter. But when the man claps his hands, the woman in gold disappears in a puff of smoke, and the chair along with her. I press my hands to the glass, mesmerized.
“Where . . . ?” I begin.
“Just watch,” Roger tells me.
It takes a moment for me to spot it, but when I follow the crowd’s pointed fingers, I see her—the woman in gold is floating above the audience in her chair, waving as she makes her way back to the stage.
When I turn back to Roger, I see he’s sipping from his cup of hot chocolate again. I don’t know when he refilled it. “Do you know what that magician and your aunt have in common, CJ?” he asks me.
“That guy’s name is Nick, too?” I guess.
Roger takes another sip. “They’re showmen,” he replies, like that should’ve been so obvious. “They both put on a great performance, and charge people to see it. The difference is”—he pauses to swirl his teacup—“this crowd knows it’s all an act.”
“What Aunt Nic does isn’t an act,” I tell him. “It’s a Gift.” This isn’t the first time someone’s doubted my aunt. Lots of people don’t want to believe what she can do—because it does seem unbelievable. But this is the first time I’ve had to explain it from inside a fish tank. “Ask anyone she’s done a reading for, and they’ll tell you. She knows things she never could’ve, unless she’d been talking to Spirit.”
“And there’s the trick!” Roger says, waving his saucer hand wildly. Suddenly his voice is booming, powerful, like he’s the one onstage. “The amazing Monica May Ames can tell you the ages of your kids, the names of your bosses. Even the color of your car.” He jerks his head back to the stage, where the man in the suit is showing an audience member the inside of his top hat. “Magicians have been doing the same sort of trick for centuries. It isn’t hard to dig up information about a person before you meet them. And the internet’s made it a whole lot easier. Give me your email address and I can tell you what type of cheese you had on your sandwich yesterday. Magicians call that sort of trick ‘hot reading,’ because the performer goes into the show already warmed up.”
I’m not tingly anymore. I’m angry. “My aunt is not a performer,” I tell him. “I’ve been with her when she’s passed a person in the grocery store, who she’s never in a million years met before, and she starts talking to Spirit for them, right there. She doesn’t need tricks. She has the Gift. Now.” I have no idea what Spirit wanted me to learn here, but they’re going to have to find another way to tell me, because I’m leaving. “If you’re not going to tell us anything useful, maybe you could at least show us how to get out of here.”
“The exit’s that way,” Roger says, gesturing back where we came in. The octopus still has his tentacles suctioned to the glass. The first two letters in his message—H I—are starting to run, the letters growing longer and smudgier. “Press the brass plate on the floor.”
“Great, thanks.” But there’s one more thing I need to know before I go, and Roger better give me a straight answer this time. “Why did you pretend to be a TV producer?” I ask. “Why did you have to get Aunt Nic’s hopes up that you were making a show about her, when you obviously think she’s some sort of phony? That was just mean.”
It’s Jax who answers for him.
“You are making a show, aren’t you?” he says to Roger. “Only”—he still scratches his arm, but more slowly now—“it’s not the sort of show Nic thinks it is.”
Roger smiles in this way that makes me think he might be a supervillain, and we’ve wandered straight into his lair. If I didn’t know Spirit was watching over me right now, I’d probably be mildly petrified. “Smart,” he says to Jax. Then, to me, he explains, “I am a TV producer. But I may have . . . misdirected your aunt a bit. I’m working on a show that exposes her for the fraud she is. When I’m done with Monica May Ames, no one will trust her to read the phone book. Hopefully, they won’t trust any other mediums, either.”
I narrow my eyes at Roger. “Hey, Jax, can I see your phone for a sec?” I ask over my shoulder. “I need to call Aunt Nic now and tell her to come kick this guy’s butt.”
Roger only smiles what is definitely a supervillain smile, while Jax digs in his pocket. “You’re more than welcome to call your aunt, CJ, although I’ll have to get Dana to escort you to the gardens first, since there’s no cell service in the mansion.” As I grab Jax’s phone, I see Roger’s actually right about that one. “But I do wish you’d give me a little more of your time. You might even want to help me with my little project. The major networks would be thrilled to land an interview with an insider like you, someone who could spill the beans about your aunt’s tricks. There’s good money in it, too.”
I can’t believe this guy thinks I’d turn against my own aunt just for some cash. “I told you. She doesn’t have any tricks.” I tug on Jax’s nonitchy arm, and we head for the exit.
“Maybe you won’t listen to me,” Roger calls as we walk away. “But I hope you’ll listen to someone else.”
And then there’s a new voice filling the room.
“Now, who’s the one with the sister? Died of cancer?”
I whirl around. The wall that just moments ago gave us a view of the stage below is now showing me Aunt Nic, talking to her audience. For a sliver of a moment, I think she must be in the first-floor theater, too—until I notice Jax and myself standing right beside her. This is a recording.
“I’m getting a name,” Aunt Nic continues. I can see traces of sea life swimming behind her face on the glass, which is maybe weirder than anything. “Starts with ‘M.’” This recording is from yesterday—the day Spirit sent me the first message that led me here. “Marie, maybe, or Mary?”
Roger stands in front of Aunt Nic’s image, but he’s not watching her. He’s watching me.
He sips his hot chocolate.
“I’m Mary!” shouts the woman in the audience, jumping out of her seat, just the way I remember. And Aunt Nic rushes over, me and Jax right behind her.
Just like that, the recording freezes. A clown fish flits past Aunt Nic’s nose.
“Funny how she knew that,” Roger says between sips. “She couldn’t have known Mary’s sister died of cancer, right? Not unless she heard it from the dead sister herself.”
I let out a growl. I know I should leave, but I hate that this jerk is gearing up the whole world to think such awful things about Aunt Nic.
“You really are dense,” I tell Roger. “You think my aunt is finding dirt on every single person in her audience? We book five-hundred-seat theaters. You know how long that would take? She doesn’t do that ‘hot reading’ stuff, or whatever you called it. She has the Gift. And she uses it to help people.”
“I agree with you about one thing,” Roger replies. “I don’t think your aunt uses hot reading, either.”
“Fabulous! So glad we’re on the same page. Leaving now.”
I’m busy searching for the brass plate on the floor when Roger says, “Your aunt is a very clever woman, CJ. Far too clever, I’d say, to use a trick like hot reading. No. What she does—what I hope to convince the world she does—is called ‘cold reading.’ And it’s much more
sophisticated.”
At last I find the plate on the floor—shaped, of course, like an octopus. And as soon as I stomp on it, the glass wall swings outward, and the real octopus in the aquarium with it. The first few letters of the creature’s message are nearly vanished now. It’s hard to make out anything besides C J A M E S.
I step into the dark hall, Jax right behind me.
“Your aunt doesn’t dig up dirt about her victims beforehand,” I hear Roger say as I go. “She manipulates them into handing their information over to her, without them ever realizing they’re doing it.”
And that’s when I finally get it, what Spirit was trying to tell me with that first message. Take heed. Roger may have stamped those words on my skin, but no matter why he thinks he did it, I know better.
Spirit has been warning me about him.
I stomp back into the room, over to the frozen image of Aunt Nic holding Mary’s sister’s scarf. Spirit sent me here, I realize, to stop this creep from spreading lies. “You said Aunt Nic gets people to tell her information about themselves,” I say. Jax slowly steps back my way, too, although he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. “But she doesn’t. This woman”—I flail my arm at the image of Mary—“Aunt Nic knew her name, right from the beginning. And she knew her sister died of cancer. And nobody told her that but the sister’s spirit.”
At that, Roger raises an eyebrow. “Did your aunt know those things, though?” he asks.
“You heard it.” No wonder Roger doubts Aunt Nic’s Gift. He’s not even paying attention. “You saw it.”
“Sure about that?” Roger tilts his head, and suddenly the frozen image behind him zooms backward in time. “Let’s watch again.”
And so we watch, once more, as Aunt Nic calls out, “Now, who’s the one with the sister? Died of cancer?” And then, right after that, “I’m getting a name. Starts with ‘M.’ Marie, maybe, or Mary?”