The Spectral City. Leanna Renee Hieber

won’t keep us from making them?”

      “The rhetorical question of the ages.”

      “Your turn. If I’ve taught you anything it’s how to take care of yourself with simple, restorative comforts,” Gran said, handing her the bottle that had been procured for these precise holistic purposes, when the night was young and full of trying work ahead. Eve placed a dab of oil on her finger, touched each temple and pressed hard upon them, trying to open the channel of her third eye, internally blinking between those two temple points, as wide as she could.

      Just then, the doorbell buzzed, a loud, jarring noise letting them know to expect an entrance. Evelyn jumped and grumbled at the raucous interruption, hating the noise.

      “I know you hate the bell, Gran, but my colleagues and I have made it a sensible practice to ring it even if we have keys, so that if someone was mid-trance, they wouldn’t be surprised by a quiet entrance.”

      “That’s sensible and all, I just hate how jarring it is. I’ll be down in a moment.”

      As Eve descended the stair, Cora opened the door with her key and waved at Eve as she hung her coat in the wardrobe. Cora’s hazel-brown skin was dotted with moisture, her black, tightly spiraled curls up in a lace bonnet. She adjusted the eyelet cuffs of her high-necked blouse and unclasped the pin at her collar sculpted in the shape of an eagle, keeping it pressed in her hand as she gave herself more air, as if the evening had strained her breath.

      “Heavens, they won’t leave me be,” Cora stated. Gesturing behind her, she added. “You feel them? Have they all come out on parade tonight?”

      The icy wake that had been trailing behind the young medium two years Eve’s junior caught up and two ghosts burst across the threshold, bobbing frenetically. Winnie and Cyril, who must have been the ones to collect Cora. The two greyscale spirits were transparent and floating, both holding slight clues as to how they died in their appearance. Winnie, a little girl in a choir robe with dark circles under her silver eyes, having died of consumption; Cyril, a young, broad-shouldered man in shirtsleeves and suspenders, a piano player who had been lost to the same fate, years later. The two spirits of different hue and opacity were drawn to wherever music was most prevalent, tied to this, the city of their birth. They were infrequent haunts of Eve’s association, but it was clear they cared deeply for the precinct’s well-being.

      “Margaret’s gone,” the spirits and Cora all stated at once. The effect was quite an ethereal echo of sorrow.

      “She knows, I told her,” replied Zofia from down the hall, a glowing form at the base of the stairs who wafted to the group, refreshing the chill. Cora and Eve shuddered in tandem.

      “Hello, Cora, my dear,” Evelyn called from the upper landing. “I’ll be down with you in a moment.”

      “Oh, hello, Gran,” Cora replied. Evelyn was everyone’s relative. Eve had never met another woman people admired or took on as their own so much. Leading Cora into the parlor, Eve bid her take a seat on the settee.

      “I can hear crying. Not just from our usual haunts, but everywhere,” Cora stated, shaking her head. At the mention of their names, the ghosts entered the parlor from the hall. Cora continued. “I hear the air crying. At least, that’s what it sounds like. Do you hear it like that?”

      “I can’t say I heard crying. What I did hear was a warning. A warning not to ‘let anything in’. Wish I knew what that meant,” Eve said rising as her kettle whistled from the back stove. Preparing the pot and wheeling a tea service in, she set a warm cup before the shivering Cora, who took it gratefully. Eve prepared herself for another late night.

      When the dead couldn’t sleep, the living who could hear them wouldn’t either.

      Either Eve would hold a séance or the séance would hold them. If she wasn’t mistaken, a life hung in the balance in a way they’d never experienced and had never thought to protect against. What would cause an incorporeal being to vanish? How did one kill the already dead?

      Chapter Four

      Antonia Morelli was the next to return, taking her seat silently, young Jenny behind her; the last of their medium quartet.

      Eve didn’t need to say a word or send a wire in times of an emergency. All she had to do was open herself in a certain, clear and unmistakable way—a psychic alarm, a siren’s wail let the souls connected to hers feel her concern and they would, almost always, take their natural places around the circle as soon as was possible.

      Eve and the girls didn’t know much about Antonia’s past. All they knew and cared about was the striking night they had all met, which was telling in and of itself.

      Antonia had knocked on the door mid-séance, in the middle of a hunt for information about an abusive doctor. When Eve snapped out of her trance to answer the bell, there was tall Antonia, brown-black hair swept up into a bun atop her head, dressed in a lace-collared shirtwaist and a plain black skirt, sporting a bruised cheek and a half-smile. She’d worn a hint of rouge and lip color, and her hazel eyes framed by long black lashes were sharply focused.

      “Hello . . .” Eve had begun, but before she could ask if she could be of service, the young woman—perhaps Eve’s age, but it was hard to tell, as it was clear the soul inside was an elder one—had explained herself in a soft, tremulous voice.

      “When I . . . wasn’t what was expected, the spirits said to come here. And . . . I wasn’t in a position to argue. Sorry to interrupt you. I’m Antonia. I wasn’t born so by name, but I am Antonia. I’ve no family, as the sex they assigned to me upon my entrance into this world is not who I am and I had to part ways with them for my safety.

      “The spirits told me Eve wouldn’t mind and, if I spoke forthrightly, would take me as I am, without question. You’re Eve?”

      Antonia had stared at Eve, boldly willing her understanding, and Eve’s senses had warmed to this clearly feminine soul who was so very much like herself—elegant and fierce, brave enough to presume, in fact, demand her safe passage as the woman she had become.

      “I am,” Eve replied. “And who am I to argue with Providence? I’m looking for a new hire, and the universe provides. Welcome,” Eve said, gesturing her in. “We’re in the midst of a séance.”

      “I know,” Antonia replied with a smile that won Eve over entirely. “May I please join and prove myself?”

      * * * *

      That was how they’d begun. Antonia dove in and got right to work. During the séance her first night, Antonia identified and communicated with the spirits of two missing persons, one having fled home only to die of illness and one murdered. This closed two of Eve’s open cases before the precinct had even been officially codified.

      Due to her nearly preternatural understanding of others and their needs, Antonia got along with everyone. The Precinct gave her purpose, belonging, and a safe haven. Now she was here at another critical juncture, and her whole being was alertness.

      The same had been true of eight-year-old Jenny Friel. She had simply arrived, a bright-eyed, bronze-haired little girl in a calico dress, escorted by the ghost of her mother who had drowned in a boating accident with her Catholic parish. Jenny hadn’t been on the boat, but the trauma of losing her mother after having already lost her father when she was a baby back in Ireland cut her voice to the quick and she barely spoke.

      When she had arrived on the stoop and Eve opened the door, Jenny looked up at her, wide green eyes sad but determined, her light brown hair bedraggled. Her Ma floated to her side and explained to Eve the situation, asking if she could help, as the only family she’d had here went down on that boat.

      “Fellow spirits told me my girl would be understood here,” her mother said in a gentle Irish lilt. “Not just because she’s got the gift of Sight, but because she’s gone right quiet . . .”

      Eve had told the spirit that her own mother stopped speaking after the death of her maternal grandmother