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J ulia felt nervous, having never visited a medium. She entered the tiled entrance hall of a lovely Florentine home, evidently converted to apartments, and pressed the intercom button under H. DAVENPORT . “Hello, it’s Julia Pritzker.”

“Hello, it’s Helen, come right up,” a woman answered, with an Irish lilt.

The door buzzed, and Julia went inside and climbed a carpeted stairway to the second floor.

She arrived at the landing, and the apartment door was opened by a petite, attractive older woman, with a sleek white bob and hazel eyes set close together over a nose that was small and fine.

She had thin lips, and her mouth curved into a slight smile.

She was fashionably dressed in a black turtleneck, leggings, and ballet flats, and she looked fairly normal, for a medium.

“Nice to meet you.” Julia extended a hand, and Helen shook it, her grip firm.

“Please come in.” Helen turned, and Julia followed her into the apartment, surprised by the decor, too.

She’d been expecting incense and crystals, but this was minimalist chic, Japanese-influenced.

There was a dark sectional sofa with a teak lattice table on a sisal rug.

The white walls were hung with large-scale modern art with thick brushstrokes.

Three windows spanned the back wall, letting in plenty of light.

“What a lovely apartment.” Julia realized she had no idea how to make small talk with a medium. Small, medium, or large talk?

“Thank you. Would you like tea or something else to drink?”

“Water, please.”

“Please sit down. I’ll be right back.” Helen left for a kitchen off to the side, so Julia sat, brushing down her blazer, hoping she was dressed appropriately for the spirits.

“Here we are.” Helen returned with handblown glasses of water and set them down, then took a seat to Julia’s right, perching on the front of the sofa. “Have you been to a medium before?”

“No.”

“First, I will tell you what I tell all my clients. I invite the souls who will come and speak to us, but it is only an invitation. There’s no guarantee any souls will come forward, and I may not be able to reach anybody. It’s not a telephone you pick up and expect someone to answer.”

“Of course not,” Julia said, but that was exactly what she’d thought.

“Poppy tells me you’re an adoptee seeking her birth family and that you’ve been having some experiences that you can’t quite explain.”

“Yes, I’d be happy to fill you in.” Julia organized her thoughts, since she had so much to tell in an hour, like in therapy. “I’ve been having strange experiences, like I think I saw Caterina Sforza and she showed me a—”

“Please, stop.” Helen raised a delicate hand, her fingers manicured. “I’d rather you didn’t say more. I’d prefer not to have foreknowledge.”

Oops. “Okay. I brought some things that might help you contact people, like hair, passports, and some photos—”

“No artifacts, either. Thank you.”

“Okay.” Julia clammed up. She was flunking her session.

“Before we begin, Poppy shared with me that you recently lost your husband.” Helen’s expression softened to gentle lines, bracketing a new downturn in her mouth. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Julia’s chest tightened, a griefburst.

“There is a possibility your husband may come forward to speak with you. There is also a possibility he may not. How do you feel about that?”

Julia felt like things just got real. “I would love to talk to him again,” she answered, trying not to hope as much.

“If he chooses not to, please understand it is not a rejection.”

“Okay.”

“Let me tell you what to expect next. I am going to put myself into a trance, for want of a better expression. My eyes will be closed. I may speak, shout, or become upset, but you need not be alarmed. I will be safe. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m going to begin.” Helen shifted back in the couch, placed her hands on her lap, and planted her feet flat on the floor. She closed her eyes and began breathing deeply.

Julia swallowed hard, anxious. She didn’t know if Mike would come or what would happen. She watched Helen’s lips seal and her chest go up and down, as her breathing seemed to lengthen.

“My goodness!” Helen’s eyes flew open.

“What?” Julia tensed.

“I’ve been rejected as a medium, in favor of you.”

“What?”

Helen looked directly at Julia. “You have abilities of your own.”

Julia’s mouth went dry. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t need my mediumship. You don’t need me to contact these souls. You can contact them. They want you to. They tell me they’re trying to contact you.”

Julia gasped, astonished. It didn’t seem possible. It wasn’t . “Who told you that? Who’s they?”

“I don’t know, but I was asked to leave.” Helen smiled, amused.

“So you’re not going to contact them for me?”

“No, dear. They want you to, and you have a unique ability to receive what they’re telling you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“This can’t be true.” Julia resisted the notion, reflexively. “I’m not a medium, I’m a website designer. I’m a Cancer, Sagittarius Moon, Virgo rising. I grew up in Pennsylvania , for God’s sake.”

“Yet you have these abilities. I’m an astrology adherent, too. I think we are driven by forces that we don’t always understand, some cosmic in origin.” Helen shifted forward. “Julia, have you ever had an experience in which you knew something was going to happen before it did?”

“Oh my God, yes. The night my husband was murdered. I felt like something bad was going to happen, and a man stabbed him to death.”

Helen’s eyes fluttered. “Have there been other times? What about when you were younger? Can you recall the first time?”

Julia hadn’t thought about it until this moment, then it came to her. “I knew I was adopted when I was really little.”

“Tell me. Close your eyes and try to remember.”

Julia closed her eyes, and the memory was there, as if awaiting her.

“We had a house with a back deck, and I was in a playpen.” She could visualize every detail.

The white netting of the playpen. A stuffed pink rabbit she loved.

The warm sun, shining. “My mother was smiling at me, but I knew I wasn’t hers . I knew I wasn’t of her. I always knew.”

“Open your eyes.”

Julia did, shaken.

“You were born with this ability. Those of us who have this ability often experience it at an early age and remember that experience, just like you did. However, many people born with these abilities ignore them as they get older. They talk themselves out of them. They’re seekers, but they dismiss their feelings.

They see them as inconsistent with science or ‘the real world.’” Helen made air quotes.

“In truth, these abilities are consistent with both. My mother had the gift, and she recognized it in me and nurtured my abilities.”

“You inherited this… ability?”

“Yes, like any other.”

Julia wondered if she had inherited it and from whom. Rossi? Patrizia?

“I regret that your mediumship comes to you in a disorienting manner. I hope you can accept it in peace. It is a gift.”

Julia felt like she was getting a diagnosis, but didn’t want the disease.

“I thought I saw the gift in you when you first came in. I’m not completely surprised a soul came forward to confirm.”

Julia tried to understand. “What about Caterina Sforza? Did I see her that night?”

“You tell me. You may have.”

Julia felt a surge of validation. “And when I went to her castle, I felt like I knew my way around. I knew things that happened to her there.”

Helen’s eyebrows lifted. “As if you were channeling her? That is completely possible for you, too.”

“It is ?” Julia asked, astounded. “Look, I know you said you didn’t want information or foreknowledge, but there’s things you should know if we’re going to talk about this.

I was actually being microdosed with a psychedelic without my knowledge.

I know it sounds crazy but it was put in my food.

So it’s possible that I don’t have any ability or gift, it just could be the result of the drug. ”

Helen blinked impassively. “Thank you for telling me, but as I say, I did sense the gift in you. I saw it there.”

“But how do you know I was channeling Caterina? Does that happen to you?”

“It has, from time to time. Perhaps you were channeling her more than communicating with her, but these abilities are related. We don’t know the limits, or contours, of your abilities. It’s way too soon. That will be your lifelong inquiry.”

Julia reeled. “But here’s another thing you should know. I have a friend in a medically induced coma and I believe I heard him say something to me, in my mind. I believe that I communicated something back to him. Is that possible?”

“Again, yes.”

“How?” Julia asked, mystified.

“Rather than answer piecemeal, let me explain.” Helen paused.

“We think of life and death as binary, as in when you’re alive, you experience things, and when you’re dead, you don’t.

But, that is not what I have experienced.

I experience a spectrum of consciousness.

Right now we’re both living, so we have a waking state of consciousness.

We also have a subconscious that governs many of our actions, which hypnotherapists access to help people, let’s say, quit smoking.

Your friend in a coma is yet in another state of consciousness.

He is kept in a state in which the brain is resting. ”

“Yes, the nurse called it a sleep state.”