by Erica Crouch
When she was alive, she told me it was for the best Mama was passed over, that I had the gift in my blood instead of her. Mama never had the temperament for the divine. No one who calls herself “The Great Madame Elena” could ever go on to do anything genuinely great. Her ego was too inflated, her hunger for wealth and fame ravenous. She leaned toward malicious and manipulative instead of altruistic when it came to intent. Negative energy would cling to her like horsehair to velvet.
“It’s Samhain,” I remind her, setting down the sage.
“I know what day it is.”
“The spirits are too close for a séance tonight. It’s dangerous, Mama. I’ve already warded against several dark presences just this morning.”
“Then you’ll ward again tonight,” she says.
“And if it’s not enough?” I say under my breath.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Mama.” I snag my teeth across my bottom lip. “Am I to host…”
“Don’t be foolish. I will be doing the reading, of course,” she says. “It’s an easy mark, made easier by the day. The spirits are close, as you say, and the energy is set for deception. I won’t have to do much to pass a lie as truth with spooks sitting close beside us.”
A shadow passes behind her and I follow the path it takes through the caravan with my eyes. If only she knew how close.
“I can stay here, if you wish,” I say, lowering my eyes to my hands again. “I can ward for you at the mayor’s home and then return, in case anyone wants a reading.”
“I need you with me, Odessa.” She looks over me with resentful eyes. “You’ll unnerve them thoroughly. Add to the atmosphere. My strange, silent daughter with the absent eyes. They won’t want to be in the dark with you for even a minute!” She laughs so hard she dissolves into a fit of coughing—a disgusting, wet sound.
I let the comment slide, ducking my face from her as I put the last of the props in order. I take two bells—placing one at the table and securing the second to the leg of a chair. I make sure the skirts of the tablecloth reach the ground in case Mama wants the table to move or shake in future readings, and I check that the wires are in place for her to tap and tug at accordingly, to move the pieces around the room just enough to startle another dollar out of whatever poor sap believes they’re speaking to a real spirit. The small room is rigged with enough subtle tricks to fool even the staunchest skeptic.
The caravan must always be ready to receive the next customer. There’s not enough time to lay the traps when there’s already someone at the door waiting for a reading.
As I’m setting out the last of the candles to light the space, I catch Mama applying her makeup. She smears greasy color on her eyes and lips. It does nothing but make her look older, but she believes it makes her look more elegant. There was a time when my mother could have been described as beautiful, but she’s become a painted, desperate thing.
She changes out of her dirty clothes into a dark silk gown with even darker bead work. It’s one of her finer dresses; she must really want to impress the mayor’s wife. But she layers velvet robes over it, nearly obscuring the finery, and it instantly cheapens her. The jewelry she piles on herself until she jingles and clinks when she so much as breathes doesn’t help either.
“Isn’t that a bit much?” The opinion skirts past my lips before I can stop myself.
Mama slices me with a withering look, and I have to turn away from her, busying myself striking a match and touching it to the waiting candles. “People expect grandeur. It’s a show, a production. I thought I’d taught you that by now. Without some flash, there ain’t no cash.”
I nod and shake out the matchstick.
“Do we need to review the signals again?” she asks.
“No, Mama.”
“Good.”
We’ve had enough practice swindling customers of their money. Mama’s a fake, but she’s the best fake there is. In all the towns we’ve traveled through, I’ve never found a liar so convincing. She’s brash and observant, and her confidence in naming frauds equals that of someone who has the gift herself—someone without fear of being on the receiving end of such an accusation. But she doesn’t need to actually speak to the dead when she has me at her shoulder.
As a child, I sat through daily lessons where she taught me a code of gestures and ticks that she could use to take advantage of my sight. I went along with it, or I slept outside on the cold dirt ground. It only took acting up once on a particularly stormy January night to learn it wasn’t worth the fight.
“Might as well make yourself useful,” she’d say. “You help your Mama and she’ll keep feeding you.”
The code is not subtle, but most people never notice through their tears. No one looks my way, anyway. Their attention is rapt on the Great Madame Elena, searching in the crystal ball for images that they could never see.
Only Mama sees me over their shoulder, telling her about the loved ones they lost. I scratch my jaw if it’s a male spirit stepping forward, lick my lips for female. If it’s a young child, I tilt my head just so—someone older, I touch my chin. We even have signs for manner of death, and I hold up numbers for birth and death dates. After nearly eleven years of use, the signals have evolved into something more elaborate. Five-year-old me never could’ve guessed she’d need some of the signals I use today.
“Pack a bag,” Mama says. “There are more crystals on the counter, and you know where the mirrors are kept. We need all of our tricks tonight. I want to wring every last dollar from these sheltered socialites.”
“Yes, Mama,” I say, finding the black tapestry bag of assorted occult memorabilia.
I sort through the objects in the bag. Another pack of tarot, a second crystal ball, rune stones, divining rods, cones of incense… There’s more bells and several pendulums on chains. In the hands of the right people, these pieces can work real magic. But it’s the other items in the bag that I need to keep in order—pieces that are meant to stay hidden, tucked under the table or chairs, slipped up The Great Madame Elena’s sleeve.
Mama wasn’t wrong when she said there was an expectation for a séance to be a grand affair. Especially on a night like tonight. With so many people claiming to be psychic mediums nowadays, there is an overwhelming percentage of nonbelievers. Without fanfare, you’re immediately written off as a fraud. If only they knew the real thing isn’t quite so loud.
When you truly commune with the dead, there are rarely any floating chairs. No spirits lay a finger on your head or shoulder. You can’t feel them there, won’t see them, unless something goes terribly wrong.
You don’t want to see them.
You don’t need furniture on strings, gloves on fishing poles, smoke and mirrors or flickering lights. Real séances with real spirits only require your open mind and absolute faith.
Faith is hard to come by, though. No one can see what I see; the voices that come to me in the middle of the night are for my ears alone. I have to find a way to make people believe, and Mama says the best way to sell it is with the wobbling flames of candles, mysterious chimes that sound without a breeze, and vibrating tables.
I’m still not convinced.
A sharp rap on the door snaps my attention to Mama. She adjusts the scarf on her head, the rings on her knobby knuckles. “A customer!”
I extinguish all but three candles in the caravan before I open the door to a waiting woman under a parasol. Mama pushes me out of the way and invites her in with a sweeping arm, letting her voice drop low and pull long.
“The Great Madame Elena has been expecting you,” she says in her grandest intonation.
With an eye roll, I squeeze out the door, skip down the rickety steps of the stout ladder to the cobbles below, and walk next to the woods we’ve parked beside. With spirits at my spine, I stroll the vacant road until the sun begins to slide back down the sky and twilight pushes pink into the clouds.
Continue reading THE EMPATH.
Or, check out her oth
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Madly Deeply, a new adult dark romance inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “Annabelle Lee.”
Lyra, a young adult science fiction, following Orpheus and Eury on the space station Polaris.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
More by Erica Crouch
Dedication
Quote
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Author's Note
Acknowledgements
About the Author
More by Erica Crouch
The Empath
Chapter 1