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Bridget’s green eyes narrowed. “Would you like to speak to her?”

He should leave the table, put as much distance as possible between himself and this woman who had promised to torment him.

But to his surprise, he nodded.

“Join hands,” she said, and the others scrambled to obey. Phineas was the last to comply. Bridget cleared her throat, her eyes fluttering shut. “Spirit, if you are present in this room tonight, make yourself known.”

The room was silent for a long, tense moment before⁠—

Tap.

“Did you hear that?” one of the sisters hissed.

Tap tap.

Short vibrations rattled the table, in different places each time. As though an invisible hand rapped on the wood to get their attention.

He sucked a breath through the tightness in his throat and focused on Bridget, ignoring how perspiration pasted his shirt to his neck and spine. Surely she was rapping a fist beneath the table—but her hands were clasped with her neighbors’. Impossible.

A blast of frosty air swirled around his feet, as if a ghostly hand grasped his ankles. Goosebumps erupted up his legs, and he shivered. Answering tremors came from the others.

“Do you feel that?” the other American sister asked. “It’s so cold!”

“The spirits draw energy from the room to manifest,” the medium intoned. “We might⁠—”

She cut herself off, her attention flying to the necklace. Good God, it moved. Small twitches, as if supernatural fingers attempted to pick it up.

The chilled air needled his lungs. One by one, the candles guttered, leaving the chandelier swaying in the inexplicable wind.

The rabbit-fearing woman on his left gripped Phineas’ hand in a punishing hold, and despite his best intentions, he clutched back. The medium seemed oblivious to her stunned guests, her lashes vibrating against her cheeks as the locket continued to twitch on the table.

“Oh spirit in this necklace,” she said, “speak to us. Is this…” Her eyes opened wide, the green irises piercing him like a blade. “Christina. Is that you?” Phineas’ pulse raced out of control.

“Look!” The woman on his left dropped his hand to point at the mirror, the same mirror in which he’d checked his reflection earlier. He’d seen nothing unusual then, but now, clear as day, a single word was scrawled across the glass.

YES

The only other man at the table shoved his chair back and stood, pointing a trembling finger. “This is nonsense,” he blubbered, but his wife grabbed his sleeve and yanked him into his seat.

Bridget, however, was eerily calm. “Please, sir, give the spirit a chance to speak. Christina, if that is you, what do you have to say?”

Damn him to hell, Phineas wanted to hear. He needed to know what she hadn’t said before she’d died, and if something remained unsaid⁠—

“She says—she says she misses you, Lord Valebrook,” the medium whispered. The locket jolted on the table. “And she loves you.”

His insides chilled. “She loves me,” he echoed dully.

Bridget nodded, the green in her irises flashing. “Very much.”

A sick, nauseating laughter surged in his chest, and he barely restrained it as he pushed to his feet. If a spirit was in fact communicating, it wasn’t that of his late wife. “That’s enough.”

He reached for the necklace, but the medium snatched it up first. “My lord, you should stay⁠—”

“I’m not staying.” He jabbed his hand towards her, palm up. Damn him, it was shaking. “That’s mine.”

Reluctantly, as if it pained her, she dropped the locket into his waiting, trembling palm. Phineas spun on his heel and bolted from the room.

If he hadn’t been convinced before that the medium, whether she called herself Madame Bridgette or Bridget, was a fraud, he certainly was now. Christina had never loved him, nor had he loved her. And they’d built a serviceable life out of that honesty. But the understanding had never once stopped it from hurting, and something in his chest cracked open anyway, an old, stupid hope he thought he’d buried with her.