“Stop what? What do you see?” Madame asked.

“Horses. Stop them! No!” Elizabeth cried desperately.

“What is happening?”

“No, stop!” she screamed, not a female scream but a deeper one of agony.

“What is it?” one of the other women demanded. “Who is it?”

“Aaahhhh!” Elizabeth cried. “It hurts! It hurts! Save me. I’m dying!” Another guttural scream and she fell sideways onto Cindy’s mother, who let her slip to the floor, unconscious.

A moment of stunned silence became a cacophony of questions and commands and distress as Madame called for Persephone and everyone around the table began to argue about the best way to revive her.

Eventually, Gideon’s voice demanded to know what happened and his strong hands lifted her to a sitting position. Someone waved the smelling salts beneath her nose. She turned away and moaned and finally had to bat it away before they suffocated her with it. She allowed her eyes to flutter open, and then she moaned in dismay. “Not again.”

“What did you see?” Cybil demanded. “Do you remember?”

“Let her get up off the floor, at least,” Gideon said, his annoyance apparent.

She let him help her up to sit in her chair. The rest of the participants were clustered around her except for Madame Ophelia, who would be stuck in her seat because of the telephone connection. Elizabeth looked up at Gideon and blinked. “I think I’d like to go home.”

“We’ll go at once,” Gideon said, but the others drowned him out with their protests.

“You have to tell us what you saw.”

“It must have been awful!”

“Can you remember anything at all?”

The questions came one on top of the other so that she couldn’t even keep track of them.

“I don’t know,” she said finally, rubbing her temples with her fingertips. “I just remember being terrified and then pain and . . . and darkness.”

“You said you were dying,” Andy’s mother said.

“No, not me,” Elizabeth said, then covered her mouth with both hands. “I mean . . . Gideon, will you take me home?”

“Who was it?” Cindy’s father demanded. “Whose death did you see?”

“I don’t know,” she cried, pushing to her feet. “Please, Gideon.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and escorted her out with the others in their wake, still demanding answers. They had all just reached the waiting area when they heard a disturbance out in the street. Horses running much too fast for city driving, especially since they had to make their way through motorcar traffic. Frantic cries of the driver and another voice shouting, “Stop!” Horses whinnying in terror, and finally the screams of pain.

“What on earth . . . ?” Gideon muttered, but they couldn’t see a thing because of the heavy draperies over the windows.