Resurrectionists (56 page)

Maisie held the cards in her hands, still a little dazed. “I don’t even know how to lay them out.”

Mila talked Maisie through it, the shuffling, the centring on Mila’s spirit vibration, the laying out.

“What if I can’t remember what they all mean?”

Maisie asked.

“You don’t even need to, not really. They have no power in themselves. They are merely springboards for your thoughts.” Mila tapped the first card. “Go on. Read for me.”

Maisie turned the first card over. She recognised its face and knew its meaning, but just as she was about to open her mouth to recite what she had learned a few days ago, another kind of knowledge overtook it and she said. “You are in love with a man named John, or Jean. I’m not sure which.”

Mila smiled. “Very good. It’s Jean.”

Maisie was about to ask how she could possibly know it, when something else came to her. She had to say it. Not to say it would be as hard as stopping herself from vomiting. “He’s already married.”

Mila’s smile froze on her face. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Maisie said, embarrassed.

“No, no,” Mila said, her forehead creasing up.

“Please, tell me more.”

“He has no children. His wife is a teacher. God, how do I know this stuff?”

“Don’t question. You’ll short-circuit the flow.”

“He has no intention of leaving her.”

“Why hasn’t he told me?”

Maisie had a block. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do with your question.”

“Repeat it in your head, darling, while you’re connected to Spirit.”

She repeated the question in her head,
Why hasn’t
he told her?
And there was the answer, waiting for her.

“Because he knows you won’t continue to sleep with him if he does.” Maisie heard what she had said and felt herself blushing. “God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Mila, I have no faith in what I’m saying. What if it’s just garbage? What if I’m just making it up?”

Mila uncrossed her legs and stood. “May I use your phone?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll call Jean. I’ll find out for sure.”

Maisie shuffled the cards back into the deck. “I don’t want to do this any more.”

“Make us some tea. I’ll join you in the kitchen just as soon as I’ve spoken to him.”

Maisie made tea and opened a packet of biscuits. Tabby wandered in, sniffed around and settled on one of the kitchen chairs. Maisie sat down next to her and waited for Mila to finish on the phone, apprehensive. Hopeful. She wanted very badly for her reading to be accurate. Something about reading the cards felt so right. When she connected herself to that great well of energy at the centre of the universe, and pulled from it the answers to Mila’s questions, she felt as though she fit somehow, like she had finally fallen into the right place in the jigsaw, instead of having her corners bent into the wrong gap. For the first time, she could imagine being satisfied to devote her time and energy to the one task for the rest of her life. She could see in her mind’s eye a little shop in an arcade, soft music playing and dim lights, herself sitting among it, drawing information from that source to tell to people who needed help or guidance. The promise of peace, of contentment, hovered close by. Nearly within her reach, but she tried not to reach out for it too desperately.

Ten minutes later, Mila joined her, laying the tarot pack on the table near her left hand.

“Well?” Maisie asked.

“You were right.”

“I’m sorry.” She was too excited to infuse her voice with any sincerity.

“You did me a favour.” She grasped one of Maisie’s hands. “Maisie, you have such a power. For a firsttime divination, the accuracy and the detail are quite remarkable. I want you to finish the reading.”

“I don’t know if I can. I’m kind of . . . disconnected now. And I don’t want to meditate for another three and a half hours.”

“It won’t take so long from now on. Once you’ve touched spirit one time, you never forget how it feels. The preparation will become shorter and shorter, until you’ll find you need only blink to be ready.” Mila poured tea and reached for a biscuit. “We shall do some more exercises tonight. I doubt that Sacha will come back as he has to work early in the morning.”

Maisie sipped her tea, absently scratching Tabby behind the ears. “Do you think I’ll be able to make a living out of it?” she ventured.

“Is that what you want?”

Maisie nodded. “I think I’d like that. And then I wouldn’t have to go back to the orchestra.”

“I’m sure you could do it. Many people far less talented than you make a great deal of money telling fortunes. With your ability, you could probably do a number of things. Spiritual advice, contacting dead relatives for people, auric readings, psychometry, prophecy . . . but you have a lot of work to do.”

“I’m willing to learn.”

Mila pushed the pack of tarot cards across the table to her. “Go on then. Finish the reading.”

She did, and was surprised by how the ideas came to her – she told Mila things that she couldn’t possibly have known, read her as easily as if the information was written all over her, delved into her past and present as effortlessly as she could call up the details of her own, and predicted events for her future which Mila said were logical possibilities. Finally, when she had finished, feeling exhausted and elated, she pushed the cards across to Mila.

“You read mine, now,” she said.

Mila shook her head. “I can’t.”

“It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“I can’t do it with you.”

“Why not?”

“You’re so much stronger than me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Mila touched her hand softly. “You have a very great power. If I tried to open up with you around, I wouldn’t be able to control it. This dark energy is coming off you in waves.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“You’re right to fear your power – fear is a kind of respect. But you can learn to control it.”

“But where is it from?” Maisie pushed her hair behind her ears, an anxious gesture. “I don’t really understand it – you talk about powers and the Gift and energy, but it means nothing to me. I’m completely ignorant of all this stuff.”

“When you get back home, find yourself a good spiritual teacher. The right person will come along if you’re looking, and he or she will help you find your guides. Find somebody who can teach you how to be spiritually healthy, not just somebody who can show you how to do the tricks.” She tapped her finger on the table to make her point. “A power like yours can be dangerous if not balanced with the right amount of spiritual awareness, something which, unfortunately, you lack.”

Maisie bit her lip, thinking.

“You have more questions?” Mila prompted.

“Have I inherited this power from my grandmother?”

“Probably, but your grandmother was not as strong as you. She had a rather ordinary power which she employed extremely effectively.” Mila paused before continuing, as though weighing up what she would say next. “I have been wondering, since I met you, if you and Sybill would have got along.”

“Why?”

“Because Sybill would have been very envious of you, I think.”

Maisie considered this. “Was she a nice person?”

“She could be nice. But at times she wasn’t. She was always wonderful with Sacha and me. Generous, funny, such a wicked sense of humour.”

Maisie finished her tea and took her cup to the sink, began putting the biscuits back in the packet.

“And can I lose my power?”

“No, not unless you give it up.”

“I could give it up?”

“Of course. If you wanted to.”

“I could just say, ‘Go away, I don’t want you any more’?”

“You’d probably have to find somebody willing to take it. Another psychic, a spiritual group.”

Maisie paused, leaned on the back of a chair. “Why didn’t I know I had the Gift?”

“I can’t say for sure. I think you should ask your mother.”

“My mother? She doesn’t believe in any of that stuff. She’d say I was deluded.”

Mila shrugged. “She knew you as a child. If something had happened, she’d remember.”

Maisie knew she was never going to ask her mother for advice on psychic development. “I don’t know about that.”

“Don’t dismiss it out of hand,” Mila said. “People are deep and complex, and not at all what they seem sometimes. You are too quick to judge – that is why you always find yourself judged.”

Maisie smiled politely, but the comment bounced off her. It sounded too much like something Cathy would say, and she knew the world didn’t operate quite so tidily.

When somebody died in Solgreve, it was always slightly more shocking and sad than it would have been anywhere else in the world. So when the Reverend got the call early on Monday morning that Douglas Smith had passed in his sleep in the early hours, he was shaken and unaccountably disturbed. He had made the necessary phone calls, spoken with Dr Honour and the constable, and Douglas’s body would be taken down to Whitby sometime the next morning.

He knew the reason he couldn’t bring himself to visit Elsa until late in the afternoon was because she frightened him a little. And that made him feel like such a silly old man – for he was an old man – frail and nervous and afraid. But it could not be put off forever. It was his duty to offer comfort to the bereaved. He was unsurprised when Margaret King answered his knock at the door. She was Elsa’s neighbour and they were very close.

“Come in, Reverend,” she said, and her top lip seemed somehow stiff, as though she had resolved she would not smile at him. He guessed then that he was losing favour in the parish.

The house smelled of old pot pourri and rising damp. He wiped his feet on the doormat and entered the house. Margaret closed the door behind him.

“Elsa, the Reverend’s here,” Margaret called, leading him down the hallway.

Elsa didn’t reply.

“She’s in her bed,” Margaret said to him. “She’s feeling poorly.”

“Of course she is.”

“It was so unexpected.”

Only in Solgreve could that be said about the death of an eighty-seven-year-old man. “Yes. A terrible shock.”

Margaret led him to Elsa’s bedroom. The

curtains were drawn against the weak winter light. Her white hair contrasted with the dark maroon sheets and pillowslip. She sat in bed with the covers pulled up to her waist, staring towards the closed curtains. Margaret hurried in and took the spare chair next to the bed, so the Reverend had no choice but to stand.

“Elsa?” he said, tentatively.

She turned her head slowly and looked at him.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said, taking a hesitant step forward. “The whole village will miss –”

“This wouldn’t have happened if not for
her
.”

The Reverend was taken aback. “I don’t

understand.”

“It’s because
she
’s here, isn’t it?” Elsa spat. “She’s like Sybill, she’s a witch and she’s undoing our good luck. We’ll all become ill and die.”

“Elsa, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the girl,”

the Reverend replied, trying to keep his voice even.

“You know we can’t live forever. Perhaps Douglas would have died much earlier if it wasn’t for –”

“When are you going to get rid of her?” Margaret King demanded. “I agree with Elsa, she’s a witch. She’s bringing harm to the village.”

“You made a promise,” Elsa said. “Get rid of her.”

“She didn’t respond to the Wraiths. They couldn’t get into the cottage.”

“Then get her killed, for god’s sake!” Margaret King cried. “Before she kills all of us with her witchcraft.”

Did Elsa and Margaret really believe what they were saying? “Her . . . power, whatever it is, can’t hurt us,” the Reverend protested.

“Like Sybill? How long before she’s out there, digging up the cemetery?” Margaret said. “Mark my words, it will happen. And then it won’t just be Douglas who’s dead before his time.”

Elsa nodded curtly. “It might even be you,

Reverend.”

It didn’t work like that
, he wanted to scream. But he wouldn’t tell them how it really worked. That was his burden alone to know. The Reverend cleared his throat and took a step back. “I’ll see myself to the door, shall I?”

Elsa had returned her attention to the drawn curtains, as though she wanted to look beyond them but hadn’t the heart to face the day. Margaret stood but didn’t move towards him.

“I seem to remember a community meeting, not long ago,” she said. “And you promised that if she wasn’t out of here by the end of the month . . .”

“Yes, I remember that too.”

“And it will be done.”

The Reverend put his hands behind his back so she couldn’t see them shake. “Yes.”

“You have a week,” she said.

A week. He knew it was a week. He had been

watching the calendar as closely as they had. As he walked home along the cold, main street, the shivering afternoon wind piercing his overcoat, he turned the problem over and over in his mind.

“Maisie Fielding is not Sybill Hartley,” he said. He congratulated himself on finally remembering the young woman’s name. Maisie was not Sybill, and she did not deserve Sybill’s fate. But he didn’t know how he could divert the course of events, not with the village so opposed to her being here. How long before Elsa and Margaret’s mad notion that Maisie was undoing their good health spread to the wider community? And of course they’d all believe it, because they wanted to believe it. If only the girl had responded to the Wraiths. She was too brave for her own good.

He let himself into his house and closed the door firmly behind him, hung his coat and hat on the stand by the door. In his dim kitchen he put the kettle on to boil and contemplated where his duty lay. He wanted to warn the girl, but couldn’t without betraying the others, without drawing attention to what happened here. He had no idea how much she already knew, but he couldn’t risk leading her into information that she had no right to know.

But he couldn’t let her die. He liked her.
Yes, admit
it, Linden, you like her.
She was young and pretty and seemed bright and sincere. If he had had a family, if she was his own granddaughter he would be proud of her, would have her over for afternoon tea and ask her to tell him what was happening in her life. And he would listen and be warmed by her company and her youthful vitality. Perhaps he was being an old fool, but he did not want to see her come to an unpleasant end. What to do?