Michael’s time was short. Breath wheezed over his dry tongue and down his phlegm-filled throat, squeezing into his lungs with spikes of breathlessness. Dulled under the doctor’s ministrations, the seizures were increasing. They couldn’t stop swift attacks or save his life.

But they ensured he wasn’t in any pain—he couldn’t feel anything at all. Not even where his wife held his hand between palms that gave no warmth. Heat came instead from the great roaring fireplace, which kept the snow-flaked chill at bay. He’d asked for the curtains to be left open so he could see the snow fall.

The children loved snow. Their blue eyes were wide with trembling tears as they stood at the end of the bed. They ignored the snow to stare at him. Swamped with sadness, they did not understand, and Michael ached to reassure them. He smiled, remembering how they’d been last year, bursting with wonder and cheeky delight at the wrapped packages under the tree. This was no time of the year to die in front of one’s offspring. Michael’s one regret.

“Please,” his mother begged, “don’t go, don’t leave us, it can’t be you. You’re all I have left.” She held his other hand, hers clawed with age but gentle. Her weathered face bore the marks of tragedy: a lost husband, two lost sons. At least the others had been in the line of duty as honorable deaths in the Great War.

Michael couldn’t imagine going to greet them in the beyond because he’d caught a chill.

“Don’t fret,” he mouthed the words, unable to give them sound with the breath left in his body. “I’ll tell them you love them.”

He tried to promise her, but she sobbed harder at his voiceless assurances. The children darted their eyes between him and their grandmother. When her wails became too much, his wife signaled a maid to usher the silent children away. Michael didn’t want them to go. He needed them to be the last sight his dying eyes withheld. Their blond heads turned away, white bedgowns fading to blurs in his weakening vision.

Michael tried to call their names, but his utterance turned into a cough that left him gasping and he shuddered, agony rising to the surface again.

“Doctor,” his wife murmured, “please ease his suffering.”

The doctor and nurses struggled to hold him as the seizure took him. Excruciating seconds dragged on as they jabbed the syringe into his arm, which pierced him like a blade. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

Yet not as much as the pain in his chest and throat that climbed to his tongue and teeth. God, even his teeth ached.

The drug slithered through his system, and Michael was so used to its soporific effect that it was a welcome balm. He’d die soon, essence and thoughts slipping away as his vision narrowed on his wife.

Her pale face was masked by the fine coating of powder clinging to her skin, eyes brimming not with sorrow but relief. He knew her so well, for the years she’d done a wife’s duty, bore his children, and taken care of his home. But she was young, younger than him. It was at her insistence he walk home that rainy day and she hadn’t called a doctor when sickness claimed him. She’d always thought him weak, and now she’d inherit it all on behalf of his son.

He didn’t fear for himself any longer, but he wished he wasn’t leaving his children with her.

Even as the light faded, all he could think of was their enormous, innocent eyes compared to the cool indifference of his wife…

*

Letitia inhaled, coming out of her reverie as she avoided the final moment of Michael’s death. His spirit slipped through the veil beyond, and she a solitary witness to his passing, which had not been without regret. He’d carried the ache to protect his children, but he could stay no longer.

They would have to fend for themselves.

“He died on Christmas day,” she said whisper-soft, her own throat raw. “How sad for you.” Letitia uttered it without thought and regretted being so careless.

“My son.” The black-clad woman at the table wept, bringing Letitia back to the candlelit room. Her head spun with the vision’s aftereffects. Placing her hand flat on the table she grounded herself, touching the cool walnut surface, concentrating on the whorls in the wood and ignoring the other things on the table. Her gaze drifted to the carpet—thick wool, threaded in a Turkish pattern of cream vines swirling on a black background, red blossoms adorning their branches— and across to a candelabra of wrought iron, holding aloft six fat white candles; a measure of lost time given how far they’d burned down. It shouldn’t have been such a long session, but the man’s death had dragged on for days, though Letitia’s experience flashed by in a mere twenty minutes.

Too long, Letitia thought, before focusing on the sobbing patron.

The older woman was Michael’s mother, Mrs. Peabody, and Letitia could see what made him a devoted son. The gray hair in a severe bun, the hands clawed from arthritis and some other muscular tension, the dark eyes so piercing in her pale face. But his mother brimmed with kindness and love and was bereft without her family.

It was the dainty woman beside Mrs. Peabody who was the viper here.

Cold blue eyes stared at Letitia, who could read the disdain in the wife’s face just as she could sense the edge of her emotions. Letitia’s abilities allowed her to experience the wife’s personality in the form of elemental conditions—a crisp breeze on her face, icy and unpleasant. Letitia focused instead on the reddened eyes of the mother.

“I saw him, in a bed, the fire was going but Michael wanted the window open to see the snow fall.” Letitia used the room’s description to confirm her vision. “You have three grandchildren, two girls and one boy. Blue eyes like their mother, but they have their father’s blond hair. He had pneumonia and passed away last Christmas. Michael wished he hadn’t died in such a fashion, not compared to his brothers or his father. He wanted to be brave like them.”

Her verdict set off Mrs. Peabody. The old woman’s grief flooded Letitia in the profound sense of rain, falling without cease. The wife’s unsympathetic gaze narrowed again, and Letitia ignored it. Whether the watchfulness came from suspecting Letitia’s perception of the wife’s unhappy marriage or disbelieving of Letitia’s gift, it didn’t matter.

Letitia cared first for her patron, Mrs. Peabody.

“Ma’am,” Letitia said, using the American preferred manner of address, “please don’t distress yourself. Your son may have died before his time, but his last thoughts were of his family. He has gone to join the rest beyond the veil, and he passed with no real regrets but that he left the children behind.” A small lie that omitted his fear of his wife’s intentions, but it didn’t matter if it would comfort Mrs. Peabody. Letitia laid a gloved hand on the older woman’s, and the mother accepted, squeezing it as much as she could with her fingers the way they were, crooked and disconcerting with their long nails.

“Could you please look for my husband?” she pleaded, “or even my other sons?”

“I am sorry,” Letitia said, drawing her hand back, “but reading the veil between life and death exhausts me. You may book another session if you wish.”

She let the invitation drift, not reaching for her appointment book. They’d had to wait a week to see her, even though she’d arrived in Los Angeles months before. Despite the few other spiritualists lurking within the city, Letitia’s reputation was taking care of itself. But she would have to take care to avoid the kind of trouble she’d found in England. She was no charlatan with parlor tricks or a spiritualist with little training who would lead them astray.

“Please, whenever you can fit us in, money is no issue,” Mrs. Peabody begged as the wife pouted. “Ease the pain of my grief. All I have of the world is my grandchildren and this beautiful woman my son called wife.”

Letitia picked up her ledger, ignoring the protest forming on the wife’s parting lips, and noted down a time next Tuesday evening. Mrs. Peabody accepted, and Letitia penciled in the time, date, and name.

“Thank you so much,” Mrs. Peabody said, repeating thanks as Letitia ushered them out. The wife still bore a delicate scowl on her sculpted brow, pausing as though about to say something. Letitia met her gaze, unperturbed, and the wife appeared to think better of it and helped her mother-in-law down the stairs.

Letitia closed the door behind them.

With a sigh, she snapped on the electric lights, grateful the city was more civilized than the poorer parts of London. Taking the stifling veil off, she straightened the black lace that rendered her face unrecognizable. Patrons could see vague features through the gauze but little else, and Letitia preferred it that way.

It kept an element of mystery about her, and she was less identifiable should she run into a client. The marks of her past were distinctive enough to be recognizable. She welcomed the anonymity of the veil and the distance it gave her from her client’s distress.

It was her words that mattered, the authority of her voice and the conviction of truth in what she said. Anything else would perhaps cause clients to think she was a fraud. She was the very essence protecting them from false spiritualists like the one that had led her down this dark path.

A medium who convinced grieving war widows and mothers she could commune with their dead husbands and sons. Dying in glorious battle, serving their country, they returned home in a box, nothing but a placating piece of paper and a scrap metal medal to mark their contribution.

It sickened her.

Letitia brought the families a peace she would never see.

Hanging the veil on the back of the apartment door, a prompt so she didn’t forget to put it on for her next session, Letitia took off her gloves and prepared to pack away the tools of her visions. The first had to be the scrying bowl. Made of black glass, it was full to the brim with crystal clear water, a similar glass dish underneath catching any spillage. Letitia took a brass elongated spoon and disturbed the oiled surface of the water. The swirls fractured, breaking apart to reform and change shape, and she ignored the pictures within when she picked up the bowl. Nudging aside the curtain with her knee, she held the bowl and the dish with one hand so she could undo the latch and open the window.

Cold air blew over her face, the chill shivering away any lingering fog from the session. With great care, Letitia emptied the bowl into the garden a story below. Oil-infused water sprinkled onto the kitchen’s sage bush, and Letitia knew the shrub would cleanse any taint staining the water.

Without closing the window, she let the breeze flow into the apartment to remove the musky scent of dragon’s blood incense. Letitia bought it from the local Chinese market.

She may be a stranger to them, but they knew her craft. It lay in the bowl in her hands she was careful to dry with soft cotton and put back in its special witch hazel box. She took a key from the pocket of the black brocade dress she always wore for such sessions and locked the box where it sat on a cupboard. The bowl was her most prized and dangerous possession, and the bitter memories of when she was without it swirled in her mind before she banished them. It didn’t stop hairs pricking up on the back of her neck, a shudder sent skittering over her skin. With the window open, she hadn’t sensed that the cool draft’s source came not from the window but the door.

A man stood on the landing, top hat low over his shadowed face. His broad shoulders, covered by a gentleman’s cape, filled the doorway. He waited for her, unmoving in his perusal. The intrusion outraged Letitia, as did the silent scrutiny and the indecency of opening her door without invitation.

“How dare you? Please leave.” She crossed the room, intent on slamming the door shut.

“I hear your skills are…legitimate.” The baritone of his voice only added to his ominous presence, but whatever fear he meant to instill in her fell flat in the face of her ire.

“And you, sir”—she gave the address with derision—“need no introduction to state your bad manners.”

“Forgive me,” he bowed low, but not enough to take his eyes off her, “I didn’t know this was an apartment and not an office. I wanted to see what you would do after they left.”

Letitia guessed he wanted to see her face, as she always wore a veil. Either when she went out with her hat, an acceptable social norm, or when she was with her patrons.

Her patrons were wealthy—they had to be to afford her services—but she had to supply believable results, ones that would give closure to their grief. Letitia’s familiarity with sorrow ran so deep there was seldom a misstep when she spoke to her patrons, voice full of consoling sympathy. Some, however, could become irate, forcing her to revert to the steely tone she’d once used as a schoolteacher. The same sternness returned now as she stared at the stranger.

Long, narrow face, less handsome than it was striking. Eyes soft green as new spring leaves, but with a severity that contradicted any gentleness in him, along with thin lips and raised brow.

A glance at his ensemble, dark as it was, showed the glinting diamond pin surrounded by sapphires at his throat that was almost lost in the folds of black silk. He wore a matching wool waistcoat, silver pocket watch chain hanging from its buttons. His black-gloved hands rested on the top of a large thick cane, and it would not surprise Letitia if within was a sword. How passé.

But Letitia could ill afford to offend him.

“Now you’ve had your turn,” he said, with an amused quirk of his lips at her inspection. “Can we discuss business?”

“I do not have more than one session a night,” Letitia said, “and not without a prior engagement. You will need to book an appointment.”

She turned on her heel, eyes drifting to the veil. He’d already seen her face, so it would draw attention to her fear to don it now. Crossing the room, she picked up the black leather appointment book on a sideboard and returned to the door. He hadn’t moved, except for where his gaze followed her movements. She pretended not to notice his examination as she read him.

Letitia stretched her senses. His temperament formed a hot wind, the heat of the desert, pervasive and endless. It made her skin itch, and she fought not to scratch the bead of sweat gathering on her temple.

Physical manifestation of her sensory perceptions was the sign of an overwhelming persona.

Either that or a dramatic one, she thought, as she scanned her entries for an availability.

“Do you perform your sessions here?” he asked, and she nodded, scanning the book. The book denoted a little over a week of appointments, but something made her keep turning the pages of days he couldn’t see. The sensation of his personality on her skin hadn’t abated. Whomever he looked for in the beyond might not wish to be found. She always investigated her patrons before performing a session.

Death in wars was terrible, and accidents and sickness were far less traumatic but carried intense grief and regret. The elderly were a rarity and passed in a confused peace.

Murder was the one death she would not accept under any terms. The longer she stood there, the surer she became that she didn’t want to perform any services for him.

“My apologies,” Letitia said, hopeful she could put him off with an excuse, “I’ll need a preliminary appointment and then a secondary one for the actual session, and I’m unavailable for another three weeks―”

“I can’t wait that long,” he said, reaching into his suit pocket to pluck out a brown envelope. “If you require a provisional report to better assess the situation, you can come by my office in the morning, where I will have legal paperwork for matters of confidentiality. I believe most of your consultations are in the afternoon, so it should not interfere with your appointment book.”

Letitia snapped the ledger shut. “I have other errands I must attend to tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t asking you, Ms. Hawking.”

She had guessed he’d spoken to one of her patrons, which would explain his presence on her doorstep, but now she was certain. Only during private consultations did she give her name, and only to those who treated what she gave them with due dignity. All clients had to meet her conditions, and each made a substantial payment for her service. It varied on the time passed and the trauma of death, but each one carried a price—for them and for her. Letitia always finished her sessions by asking patrons for their discretion and giving out a card with a telephone number and times to call. She was happy for a client to refer her to others, but rather than call he was here in person, making demands. He was not the kind of clientele she sought, especially one connected to a patron who had broken her request for privacy.

“I don’t appreciate your tone of voice,” she retorted, “or opening my door without invitation like a common thief, never mind you haven’t even bothered to introduce yourself.”

“I believe I’ve already apologized for my error,” he said, and Letitia would have responded in kind, but he was instructing her again. “And under the circumstances of your profession, I’m being more than reasonable in my request as well as reimbursement for your time.”

He attempted to hand her the envelope, and when she didn’t accept, he dropped it where she still held the ledger. It brushed her bare fingers, and a shadow grew behind the stranger.

The captivating dark absorbing her being, Letitia fumbled for the mental defenses against a true apparition, stunned as she was by its vivid form.

A cloud of darkness without face or features hovered over the man’s shoulder, but deep inside it, she sensed it staring at her. Broad arms that could have grasped her in its embrace lay by its side. Letitia couldn’t draw breath to scream at the darkness within the figure, the soul-sucking despair rendering her voiceless at the shadow’s presence.

Before she could gather her wits, the stranger left with a swirl of his cloak, and the figure vanished. Letitia stood several seconds more before slamming the door shut, bolting it, and reaching for an ornamental ceramic jar by the door. Hands trembling, she uncapped the lid and sprinkled the crumbling white contents across her threshold. Salt, the purifier and protection against the unwanted. She did the same to the windows, shutting the open one while checking the rear alley behind her second-story rooms. There was nothing there but the kitchen herb and vegetable patch and empty cobblestones. Still, she drew the curtains tight before going straight to the narrow fireplace hidden behind a wrought-iron screen to throw more logs onto the fading embers. Usually, she would have let it die, but not tonight.

Letitia trembled before the oncoming wave. Shaking started deep within her, the growing fear of being helpless rising with every breath. An uncontrollable scream bubbled in her throat and she couldn’t allow it to pass.

Pulling a plain handkerchief from her pocket, knotted in a ball, she shoved it in her mouth. The wadded material became saturated with saliva, thick and choking, killing the demonic noise she wanted to utter in complete and endless terror. When her jaw tried to open to release the foreign object, Letitia slapped both her hands over her mouth, tears welling in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. Falling to her knees, she crouched before the fire, terrified of the dark.

Time passed, but it mattered not, as the emotion of the past threatened to overpower her.

When the tremors faded, Letitia fell onto her stomach in exhaustion, spitting out the mucus-covered cotton onto the carpet.

She lay there for indeterminable minutes, listening to the fire chirping away as the flame swallowed sticky gobs of sap, dancing in delight at the little treasures. It absorbed her gaze, allowing her to drift as she thought on the shadow she’d seen.

No face. No eyes. No personality she could gauge to judge its motivations. It held a malevolence that drove her to absolute dread. She’d reacted in fear. There’d been no logical thought.

Sinking into the scrying bowl and reliving the moments before death differed from seeing a specter with her own eyes. The past trauma awakened memories of horror and disgust of an event so horrendous her rich chestnut curls were streaked prematurely with gray, the same as her honey brown eyes. People mistook them for hazel until they saw the flecks within were not a golden green but silver gray.

So light for such a dark time.

Refusing to let herself dwell on the past, she got to her feet, scrubbing her face with her sleeve in an unladylike fashion and collecting the spit-covered rag. She was about to walk through the doorway that led to her bedroom when she saw where she’d left the appointment book and envelope on the table. She didn’t remember putting them down.

Wary of another vision, she picked up the letter, scanning the room for another shadow, but nothing appeared. Upon examining the envelope left behind by the stranger, Letitia noted a label on one upper corner. It named Driscoll Barristers & Lawyers and an address in downtown Los Angeles, a streetcar ride away.

Letitia flicked it open. Inside were fifty American dollars.

Even with the exchange rate as it was after the Great War, it was near the same amount in British pounds.

An obscene amount of money to meet with a lawyer.

She checked within the envelope, and seeing a note folded there, took it out.

Consider this a gift.

All I ask is attendance. 9 a.m., sharp, at my office.

Mr. Driscoll.