I tore the corner off a sugar packet. Poured it in. Stirred. Tore another one.
"My dead mother-in-law."
"In a mirror?"
I stopped stirring. "How did you know that?"
"Mirrors are the easiest pathway. Especially for beginners." Lori sipped her cappuccino like we were discussing the weather. "Your aunt used them too. That's why she had so many. Different mirrors, different connections."
The collection of antique mirrors in the spare bedroom. The ones covered with sheets.
"Okay." I set the spoon down carefully. "I need you to explain what's happening to me, because right now I'm about sixty-forty on stress hallucinations versus brain tumor and I'd really love a third option."
Lori folded her hands on the table. She had a no-nonsense quality that reminded me of the head nurse at the hospital where I'd had Carmen—the kind of woman who'd tell you to breathe, and you'd breathe, because she clearly wasn't going to put up with any alternative.
"Third option: you're a medium. You can see and communicate with the dead. The ability runs in families, and it frequently activates during major hormonal shifts. Puberty sometimes. Pregnancy, occasionally." She paused. "Menopause, more often than you'd think."
I picked up the sugar packet again, then put it down when I realized I'd already emptied it.
"That's insane."
"That's Starfall Bay." Lori leaned back in her chair. "This town has always been a thin spot. Something about the geography—the way the bay curves, the mineral deposits in the rock. The barrier between the living and the dead is thinner here. Always has been. People with latent abilities, they come hereand those abilities wake up. The hormonal changes just—speed things along."
"My aunt." I said it quietly. "She was really?—"
"A medium. A strong one. She helped a lot of people in this town, and she helped a lot of people like you. Women whose gifts came on late, who thought they were going crazy." Lori's voice gentled, just slightly. "She would've been the one sitting across from you right now if she were still here. I'm a poor substitute, but I'll do."
My throat tightened. Aunt Amelia. I'd visited her cottage as a kid—long weekends in the summer, the smell of the ocean and those herbs in her kitchen. She'd been warm and strange and she'd always looked at me like she was waiting for something. I'd thought she was just eccentric.
"What about you?" I asked. "You said you looked like me twenty years ago."
"I'm a healer. Different gift, same trigger. Hit menopause at forty-seven and suddenly I could feel other people's pain like it was my own. Nearly lost my mind before Amelia found me." She smiled—brief, practical, like even her smiles had a job to do. "I was a nurse for thirty years. Thought I was imagining things. Overworked, overtired. Amelia sat me down, same as I'm doing with you, and told me the truth."
"And what, you just—believed her?"
"Not at first. Took about a week. Then I healed a woman's migraine by touching her shoulder and something in me just—knew." She fixed me with those blue eyes. "You already know too, Gina. You wouldn't be sitting here if you didn't."
I wrapped both hands around my coffee cup. The ceramic was warm and solid and real, and I held onto that.
She wasn't wrong. That was becoming a theme—people telling me uncomfortable truths I couldn't argue with. First Rosaria, now this retired nurse with her sensible shoes and herpockets full of tissues. I wanted to say it was crazy. I wanted to finish my coffee and go home and chalk this up to a weird morning.
But I'd heard Rosaria's voice in the grocery store. I'd seen her in the produce scale. And the avocado she'd told me to pick was sitting in a bag at my feet, and it was the best avocado I'd ever chosen in my life.
"I don't know how to do this," I said. "Whatever this is. I don't know how to be a—" The word stuck. "I can barely figure out how to work the thermostat in that cottage."
Lori reached across the table and squeezed my wrist. Her hand was warm, and for just a second, the tension headache I'd been carrying since three a.m. eased. Just a fraction. Just enough to notice.
"You don't have to figure it out alone. That's the whole point." She released my wrist and picked up her cappuccino. "Come to Bayberry House tomorrow night. Eight o'clock. Tammy Logan's place—you've probably driven past it, big Victorian with the wraparound porch. There are others like you. Like us."
"Others." I blinked. "How many others?"
"Enough to fill a back room." Lori smiled again, warmer this time. "We'll help you figure out the thermostat too, if you need it."
I sat with that for a moment. The coffee shop buzzed quietly around us. A barista called out someone's name. Outside, a woman walked past with a golden retriever, both of them moving with the easy rhythm of a town where nothing terrible was supposed to happen.
Except something terrible had happened. Rosaria had been murdered. And according to her, I was the only one who could do anything about it.
And now, apparently, there was a support group.
