Tai grabs my wrists and squeals again, eyes flashing brighter than neon.

The cramped back room is lit by dozens of candles. Two bookshelves overflow with rotten-smelling books and strange artifacts borrowed from a nightmare: a set of golden teeth, vials of amber liquid swirling with many-legged creatures, and a tiny, misshapen skull (the cat’s victim comes to mind). We settle at a rickety, black cloth–covered table, across from Madame Morency, who peers at us with the heavy-lidded yet sharp eyes of someone who sees too much every day.

“Where are your cards?” Tai asks, examining the empty table before us, like something will push through the cloth at any moment. “Or, like, your crystal ball?”

“I do things differently.” Madame Morency extends her veined, wrinkled hands across the table. “I don’t even need my eyes to have the sight. Now, give me your hands. One each. Don’t be afraid.”

Without hesitation, Tai gives her one, while I wipe the sweat off my left palm onto my jeans and reach out. Her skin is smooth and soft and fine, like a child’s.

Madame Morency shuts her eyes, humming to herself, and a breeze picks up, blowing through the curtain, flickering the candles, and bringing to life the blackened wind chime in the corner. I feel a chill; wasn’t the door closed? Tai looks at me, her eyes wide with the thrill of it.

“Silence,” Madame Morency snaps, and even the wind chime goes quiet. A minute ticks past, the kind that feels as gluey long as an hour. The air is thick with lost memories, with that decayed scent of crumbling brick walls.

When Madame Morency speaks again, her voice is a curious, rasping thing coming from the deepest part of her. “Why did you tell me your mother was dead, girls?”

The hair on the back of my neck pricks up.

“We didn’t say that,” Tai whispers back.

We didn’t say anything about mothers at all.

“The message I am receiving is not coming from the other side,” Madame Morency continues, her hand cooling in mine. “It’s coming from the film between our worlds, the pond scum separating us from them. It says she is not gone.”

I can feel Tai swallow next to me, see the goose bumps colonizing every inch of bare flesh. Her fingers are pale in Madame Morency’s grip, and I can’t feel my own. My eyes are glued to the woman in front of us, with her tightly shut eyes and her craggy face. Looking for signs of mystical truth, of anything at all I can cling to hard.

It says she is not gone.

“Her energy is mirrored across the globe,” she continues. “So strong in places that a lesser psychic would mistake it for the true source. When and where did you last see her?” Madame Morency asks in this wheedling, odd voice. “Be precise.”