Page 59

The ghost could not remember the last time he’d been touched.

Miriam’s eyes went unfocused. And something moved out from her stillness. Attention, poured like warm water, working its way through him.

“What’s she doing?” Sally whispered, loudly.

“Shh,” said Nicky.

The attention moved. Down, and inward. The ghost felt himself being read like he was a wall someone was knocking against, inch by inch. It didn’t hurt. But it was bizarre.

And then Miriam went completely still.

“Oh,” she said, very quietly.

“What?” the ghost asked.

She didn’t answer. Her attention traced the edge of something, once, twice, outlining a shape inside him that was entirely hollow, like she was peering into a room whose floor was missing, and he suddenly, urgently did not want her in there.

“Stop,” he said.

She stopped. Her hands dropped to her lap and her attention withdrew while the ghost stood at the end of his tether with the whole family staring at him.

Miriam sat back in her chair. “Leo. I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

“For what I assumed.” She turned to the table — to Nate, to all of them. “This spirit can’t be cleared. Not by Nathan. Not by me. Not by anyone.”

“What?” Richard set his glass down. “What do you mean, not by anyone?”

“I mean there isn’t enough of him to take hold of.” Miriam kept her eyes on the ghost while she said it, which the ghost appreciated and hated at the same time. “He’s been torn.”

The word dropped into the room and sat there.

“Torn?” Nate repeated.

Miriam’s hands stayed folded in her lap, but her thumb pressed hard against her knuckle. “Something was taken from him and carried away, and what’s standing in front of me is what got left behind.”

The ghost didn't know what to make of that.

The family started talking. Around him, over him, about him — and he heard all of it from a strange distance, because some part of him had snagged on the word torn and couldn’t think past it.

“Carried away,” Caleb said. It was the first thing he’d said since the examination began. “Carried away how?”

“With intent.” Miriam looked around the table. “A medium did this.”

Chapter

Eleven

Nate had never experienced silence like this at his mother’s dinner table. For long seconds, nobody said anything.

Nobody could imagine one of their own damaging a ghost.

Jonah was the first to find his voice. “A medium?” he said. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“How can you tell?” Caleb asked. His hands rested beside his plate, his attention fixed on the space next to Nate with the same hard concentration he brought to difficult work.