kindly turned up the volume a notch. It was recognizable now as children’s toy music, the kind you got on cot mobiles or musical spinning tops.
“Fuck,” Frankie breathed. They were taken by surprise. They’d assumed she’d make the obvious mistake and pretend to summon the spirit of their father.
“Where’s it coming from?” Derek demanded.
“Sh-sh,” Sera whispered. “I don’t know. Listen…”
As the music continued, Sera could hear her own deliberately increased breath along with the brothers’ uneasy inhalations and exhalations. And then there seemed to be another breath, louder, echoing, almost filling the room. That would be Jilly, breathing through a child’s voice changer into the keyhole from Sera’s flat. She even made the kind of tiny sound that generally only comes from sleeping babies.
Nice touch.
“Edward. Edward, are you there? Will you speak to your family?”
The breathing stopped. The music got louder. Beside Sera, the men were tense as coiled springs, staring into the darkness. Frankie jumped.
“What?” Derek demanded. “What is it?”
“Something brushed against my face!”
“He’s coming,” Sera breathed. “He’s coming. Edward…”
She jerked forward over the table as if she’d been shot, thus activating the little smoke machine Tam had acquired for the Bells’ party, now taped inside Sera’s jeans. The effect, even in the darkness was fantastic. Although the white smoke belched outward as she threw herself back in her chair, when she breathed in as if she were absorbing it, it appeared that the smoke was entering her body rather than leaving it.
Sera breathed deeply several times. She smiled so that it would be heard in her voice. “The spirit that was once Edward Seelie will speak through me. What do you wish to ask him?”
With more than a hint of nervousness in his clowning, Frankie said, “How’s it going, son?”
Sera left a pause, then: “He says he’s not content.”
“Why not?” Derek asked, leaning forward as if he expected the spirit to ask for more money for Sera.
“He doesn’t wish to be summoned for frivolous reasons.”
“Frivolous?” Derek sneered. “That’s a big word for a baby.”
After another pause, Sera said, “Any word is big for a newborn in your world. To a spirit, words are merely an interface.”
The brothers seemed slightly flummoxed by this. As if they’d been so sure of catching her out over their father that they hadn’t bothered thinking of things to ask Edward himself. Eventually, Derek plucked a few questions out of the air, asking things he imagined only his family could possibly know. Sera answered but made no other move to lead the conversation. If they’d done their homework on fake mediums—as she presumed they had—they’d know all about the leading questions asked for purposes of fishing. In this day and age, especially with a computer wiz like Jilly on the staff, there was no need to fish from your clients. At least, not when you had a bit of warning.
She could tell the brothers were baffled because none of this was going how they’d imagined. It wasn’t any fun after all. Sera made it worse by bringing up Frankie’s police record—an assault charge when he was sixteen that she’d guessed he and Derek had covered up from their parents, since neither of the older Seelies had been present in court when he was fined.
“He was only a kid,” Derek defended him.
“Has he confessed?” Sera asked.
“We’re not Catholic!”
She let a pause go by. Then, shooting in the dark for once, she said: “The spirit says confession should be made to the one who pays him.”
“My employer?” said Frankie. “Oh aye. That’s done. Declared it. It’s finished.”
Lying little bastard. “The spirit is displeased.” Sera decided it was time to end it with a bit of genuine suffering. “The spirit is bored here and disappointed in the ones who would have been his brothers.” She let the silence grow, took some satisfaction in her clients’ obvious unease. “He is ashamed of your disrespect for his mother’s suffering. And his father’s. He bids you leave him in peace. He won’t come again.”
She folded herself up, squeezing the last of the smoke from the tiny machine as she exhaled, and again the white tendrils floated into the air and vanished. The brothers dropped her hands at last, as if they stung.
Sera laid her head on the table and breathed deeply.
“What’s happening now?” Frankie asked, his voice too high. “What’s she doing? Is it finished?”
“How the fuck should I know? I’ve had enough. Put the lights back on.”
Sera let herself stir with the light and straightened, shuddering slightly. Frankie already