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“No matter how it makes you look,” he repeats. “Your attitude toward this speaks volumes,Ms. Laughton.You are blocking this summoning, and to me, that means you don’t really want it.”

“Doctor…” Jin warns, rising.

“Blocking?” I throw up my hands. “How am I blocking? I was sitting there thinking of Anton, imagining him with me. If that interferes, then okay, I was blocking, but not intentionally.”

“Wouldthat interfere?” Jin says.

Cirillo runs his hands through his hair and exhales. “No. It’s the best thing you can do.”

I glare at him. “So I’mnotblocking you?”

“Maybe not.”

“‘Maybe’?”

“I’ve been doing this for nearly twenty years. I can tell when something is blocking. I sensed something that told me to shut this down.”

Shania says carefully, “Whatever spirit you sensed told you to stop?”

“I worded that poorly. Whatever I sensed, which was likelynota spirit, made me decide to shut it down. What I sensed was wrong. I can’t explain better than that.” He looks at the photos and mementos and waves a hand across them. “Is there a chance that isn’t his medal? Or that’s not his old key?”

“As far as I know, they’re legit. The ring obviously is. It matches mine, and it’s inscribed. If you’re concerned, we can remove the medal and key and try again.”

“Tomorrow,” he says. “This session has been disrupted.”

Gotta love the use of the passive tense there.This session has been disrupted.Not that he disrupted it.

Did he really sense something? Or did the malfunctioning device unsettle him and he mistakenly thought that sensation came from outside himself?

All I know is that I’m pissed off, and I want to tell Cirillo he was out of line, but I can’t afford to send our medium stomping off in a snit. We can’t do this without him.

“I’m going to read in the other room,” I say. “I’ll see everyone in the morning.”

Jin’s questioning glance asks whether I want company. I shake my head with a look I trust he’ll interpret correctly. I’m in a mood, and it’s best to leave me alone.

I take my leave of the others, grab my book from the end table, and walk away before I say anything I’ll regret.

THIRTEEN

Yep, I’m sitting in the room that I mocked for being a terrible place to sit. But it’s quiet and it’s small, and instead of being claustrophobic, that’s comforting. It’s me in my little cocoon with a blanket and a book. Even the glassy-eyed dolls seem more like what they were intended to be, friends for a child, keeping them company.

I lose myself in that book, a sweeping family saga filled with death and disillusionment. Maybe that seems the worst possible choice for a grief-stricken widow, but it too is oddly comforting, reminding me that this is the way of the world, and it always has been. Parents lose children, children lose parents, spouses lose partners. And they persevere. They stitch together the tatters of their lives and move on.

The problem is that their situation isn’t mine. They move on to the rest of their lives, refusing to give in to grief when they have so much ahead of them.

How much do I have ahead of me?

How much good health? How much time?

I’ll be waiting.

Those were Anton’s last words, and some days, I find comfort in them, but other days I want to scream that I don’t want him waiting over there. I want him waitinghere.

When we made the vows “till death do us part,” we’d really meant untilmydeath did us part. Not his. Never his.

When a board creaks in the hall, I grumble and glare at the door as I set my book aside, as if I hadn’t already surfaced from its spell.

A hand on the knob, the barest click of the plunger, as if they’re hesitating there, uncertain whether to enter.