Free The Other Side of Midnight by Simone St. James Page B

don’t like to lie at all. You hedge, or you deflect the conversation. When you’re pushed into it, you just go silent rather than lie. It’s really quite fascinating.”
    My hand rested on my handbag. I could feel Gloria’s flask inside, and I wondered what it contained. Gin, perhaps. Whatever it was, I was looking forward to it.
    “I have a theory,” James said softly, “that you lied to us that day we did the tests. I don’t know why, but you did. You’ve been at it quietly for years, haven’t you? Taking clients, finding what they seek. No fanfare, no shows. No newspapers. I’ve investigated over two hundred claims of spiritualist powers since I came home from the war, but I now believe I’m sitting across from the second true psychic I’ve ever met.”
    A psychic, if she is to have a career, must deal with both skeptics and believers. They both bring their own set of problems—skeptics with their endless needling questions, believers with their suffocating faith. My mother taught me that, in the middle of the storm, the medium herself must have only one philosophy:
Believe, or don’t believe. It is up to you.
    Most mediums hoped to convince their marks of their veracity, of course. But the true medium—the one who possesses powers, whether they are recognized or not—must walk away. Otherwise, my mother taught me, we are nothing better than circus acts, trying to create greater and greater feats in front of a disbelieving audience. And where is the peace in that?
    Gloria herself never cared who believed in her; she was always right, and she always knew it. In my own way, I was the same. Until now.
    This was James. Disappointing him, failing those tests, and having him see me as a liar had nearly crippled me three years earlier. I couldn’t have said why. We don’t always choose whose opinion matters to us. Sometimes there is no logic to it. Sometimes there is only faith.
    I let go of my handbag and put my hands on the table, my palms up, my fingers cool. I looked him in the eye.
    “James,” I said. “Give me your hands.”

CHAPTER TEN

    M y hands lay on the table, between my emptied cup of tea and the shaker of salt. I’d removed my gloves when we’d sat down, and my palms were vulnerable and bare. Without a word, James lifted his hands and placed them in mine, his arms flexing under the sleeves of his coat. His palms were heavy, the sliding of his skin against mine sending sparks along the surface of my flesh.
    I looked down at his hands. They were wide and masculine, the knuckles prominent, the thumbs strong. In a flash I remembered the feel of those hands sliding over my ankles, up my calves. They had been firm, certain, and warm. The memory sliced me like pain.
    I wondered whether he had a girlfriend, whether those hands ever touched her, stroked her back, her breasts. I had no idea.
    “What do I do?” he asked, his voice rough and uncertain.
    “Just let your mind go,” I said. “Let your thoughts come. Think of something you lost, something gone from you that you’d like tosee again. Picture it. Picture how you lost it. Whatever floats to mind. Just let it come.”
    “How many people,” he asked after a moment, “think of a lost dog?”
    “Many,” I said. “If you think of a lost dog, you’ll believe I guessed it. So think of something else. Something only you would know.”
    He went quiet again. His hands were warm against mine, a fine charge of electricity moving between us. It was exciting and comforting at the same time. I closed my eyes. I had never done this in a public place before, outside my own sitting room, yet I shut out the world, the voices at the other tables, the clinking of china, the tinkle of a bell as the door opened, the sounds from the street. I let it all wash away.
You are in control, Ellie,
my mother always told me.
Manage your power. Train it. It can be made to follow your will.
    And it could. I could feel it, could feel my mind opening, could feel