“Alright, so how do we make me a one night medium?”

It was only a few hours later and they were back in Iris’s shop. Noah was back in the metal folding chair, doing his best not to just get up and leave. Andrew sat beside him while Iris was standing by the counter nearby, flipping through her notes before they got started with whatever horror was about to occur. And Liv was a little further back, standing as far from Iris as possible while still being inside the shop.  

Liv had insisted she wanted to be here. Noah tried to tell her she didn’t have to, not for this. But then Cleo had said she would keep Mia at home with her so Liv could go, so he stopped arguing. But Noah could tell she was nervous. Even in the daytime, the boarded up windows made it eerily dark in here. The one repaired window had its shade down, so most of the illumination came from a lamp on the front counter.

“It’s not like a twenty-four hour thing,” Iris explained, and Noah briefly considered rewording the question. “It’s more of a…” She trailed off, trying to find the right word. “Well, it’s temporary. Usually, I mean. There can be side effects, but-”

“Iris,” Andrew said softly.

“Sorry. So, essentially, being a medium is having the ability to open a door in your mind to spirits,” Iris said, clearly trying and failing not to cast a guilty look toward Olivia. “It’s generally something you’re born with, or a power that activates at some point in your life. You can open that door between yourself and the spirit plane. Right now in your mind, Noah, there is no door, just a wall. But the phone is working between you and Billy, and his voice is muffled behind the wall for the rest of us. If that makes sense.”

“Sure.” That made fuck-all sense. He wanted to leave. After all his talk for so long about doing what had to be done, Noah wanted to get up and fucking leave. 

 “In most people, that door is firmly shut or doesn’t exist at all,” Iris continued. “What I can do is help you build the door, then close it again when we’re done. You can allow Billy in and he can use you to talk. It’ll also help with the pain from Billy’s energy, probably. Having the door there will allow you to set it aside, kind of siphon it off like someone with natural abilities can do with traumatic memories that aren’t their own. It takes some training and getting used to in long term situations, but for you, it should prevent any more headaches like-” She cleared her throat with a guilty look at him this time. “Like before.”

“And have you ever done this before, Iris?” Olivia asked, her voice suspiciously light.

“No,” Iris admitted.

“Can Celine do it?”

Noah’s stomach sank and the last lingering bits of the headache flickered back to life. Olivia was glaring steadily at Iris, who looked like she was trying to hide how offended she was as she turned around. “What?”

“Celine Beckett,” Olivia continued. “Can she do it? Or anyone else? You just said you’ve never done this before.”

“Celine’s not here, though,” Iris said. “I-”

“Iris, I don’t trust you,” Olivia snapped, all lightness dropping away. “And I don’t trust that you’re capable of doing whatever it is you’re planning to do here.”

So this was why Olivia had joined. To make sure Iris didn’t break Noah beyond repair. He should have expected it. Noah was trying to temper his impatience at the delay and only the fact that it was close to being outweighed by his fear helped him do so.

“Olivia, I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

Olivia scoffed and folded her arms, though Noah could see she was shaking slightly. “Now’s not the fucking time,” she said. “We are discussing opening him up to be possessed, intentionally this time. And you’re talking about going into his mind to do it, after that shit you and your friend pulled. This isn’t about me, Iris, or what happened to me. This is about you and your overconfidence and how it’s eventually going to get someone killed. And I’m not going to fucking let it be Noah.”

The room was silent and Iris looked sick. Glancing at Andrew, Noah could see that he didn’t look any more comfortable than anyone else. He looked guilty, which reminded Noah of him saying he dreamed about Noah leaving. Not that he blamed Andrew for what had happened. Iris either, really. He’d been the one who pushed her to re-hypnotize him after she’d pulled him out of it when things started to get out of control.

But Olivia had a point and, despite the confidence he’d been trying to project after spending so long fighting to get them moving again, Noah was still terrified at the idea of Iris changing things around inside his head. 

“Look,” he said, breaking the silence. “We need all the help we can get, right? And I’d way rather have someone work with this kid who already has an open door, but apparently he’s not going to do that. So if Celine’s already done this before, then let’s see if she’ll do it again. What’s the harm in asking?”

Iris nodded quickly, her face red. “Fine,” she said. “No, I understand. We can call her right now.”

——

It turned out Celine had done this before. Twice, in fact, about seven years earlier, though she wasn’t able to go into detail over the phone. She was at the House of Pizza when Noah called her, but agreed to come over as soon as she could. Thankfully, this only meant about fifteen minutes of awkward silence before Celine walked in the front door. 

After a few minutes of catching her up, she looked at Noah. “I know how to do it,” she said. “It would be similar to the door idea that Iris was talking about, but that’s not exactly what this is. We can’t just close the door for you when it’s done, it doesn’t work like that. I think of it more like a cut that will heal up and scar over time.”

“What is it going to do to me?” he asked, trying to ignore the guilty way Iris was hovering nearby.

Celine looked far too compassionate right now, and that made him want to leave even more. “You already have an injury in there,” she said, and he swallowed hard. “I’m not going to reopen it completely, but I am going to make a small cut in your energy to open that ability to connect.”

The chair creaked beneath him as he almost stood up. All his muscles moved to get up and get him to safety. “I do need to warn you that there’s no guarantee that everything will close up after,” Celine said. “You need to have all of this information before you decide. You might still see spirits, possibly permanently, and there’s nothing I could do to prevent it. It’s a small chance, but it’s still a possibility.”

He looked at Olivia, who nodded at him. “There’s no way to stop seeing them if that happens,” Celine continued. “We’ve looked for a solution for Olivia, but there wasn’t anything beyond what we’re already doing. That might end up being the case for you as well. Do you understand, honey?”

Andrew looked over at Noah and Noah avoided looking back. Andrew was going to try to keep him from doing it and that was going to cause another fight when they were so close to getting an answer. But there were no alternatives that Billy, who was getting more and more delicate, would accept. 

And this didn’t seem so bad in the grand scheme of things. Not that it was going so well for Liv, but Noah was going in far more prepared than she had been able to be. And he might not have to deal with it at all.

Olivia stood up, looking pale. “Excuse me,” she said, walking straight out the front door.

Without a word, Noah followed after her and, squinting in the bright sunlight, quickly spotted her leaning against a tree between Iris’s shop and the building next door. “Liv, you okay?” he asked as he approached.

“I just needed some fresh air,” she answered, as though she didn’t still look like hell. “Just give me a minute.”

“If you want to leave, it’s fine,” Noah said. “We can do this here and I’ll meet you at home later.”

“No,” she said. “Thank you, but I’d much rather stay here and make sure that you’re alright.”

He wanted to argue with that and tell her he’d be completely fine, but there was no point. So instead, he leaned against the tree as well, looking toward Iris’s shop. The window on this side was boarded up too, the leaves scraping against the wood. They stayed in the half-shade of the tree as leaves fell around them.

“For me, it was like opening a door,” Olivia said. “She’s right. I only offered it once, at the hotel. The second time he shoved the door open and forced his way in. But it felt like opening the door to them. Does that make sense?”

Noah nodded, trying to imagine that feeling. Liv smiled wanly at him and squeezed his hand. “Do you want to do this?” she asked.

He went to answer, then she shook her head. “That’s a stupid question,” she said. “Of course you don’t want to. Do you need to do this?”

“Yes.”

She turned to face him. “We’ll be here with you,” she said. “I know you and Andrew have been arguing all summer, but this isn’t just about him anymore, is it?”

Noah laughed slightly. “No,” he admitted. “Well, a lot of it is. I’m in love with him.”

If he expected any shock from Olivia at that, he would have been disappointed. “No kidding,” she said, though her smile was warm. “You’re obviously in love with each other.”

He hadn’t dared let himself think it, even after Andrew had said he loved him. No way, he wasn’t in love with Noah, not when Noah was such a wreck. It was a totally different type of love, it had to be. But Liv didn’t look like she was joking

“I need you to be safe,” Olivia said, serious again. “We all do. I know… I know I can’t keep you safe from everything. But I need to know that you’re not going into this hoping you’ll get hurt. Or not caring if you get hurt. Promise me you’re going to take care of yourself.”

She looked up at him and there was no way he was going to get away with lying to her. “I promise.”

She still looked afraid, but she nodded toward the shop. “We should go back in. Whenever you’re ready.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Come on.”

He smiled at her and turned back to the door, hoping despite her words that she wouldn’t follow him inside. But Liv was right behind him as he walked through the front door.

———-

Iris knew Olivia and Noah were going to leave. There wasn’t a chance they were coming back inside. Noah had been terrified and Olivia looked like she was ready to die as Celine detailed what would go into this plan. And Noah had gone out to check on Olivia, so if she left, he was going to go with her. But now she, Andrew, and Celine were standing in her store and Iris felt like a useless asshole.

“I wonder if I can get Roland – Samuel – to talk to me now,” she said. “In case Noah decides not to do this. Which I wouldn’t blame him for, of course. I just mean…”

She would go in kind and open. She wasn’t going to demand Samuel Alderidge’s presence, she wasn’t going to try to force him to do anything he didn’t want to do. She’d coax him, sure. He wasn’t a scared teenager like Billy, but he was still young and angry at the world. So she would be kind, but encourage him to do this with them. 

But the way his mother had burned Vivien to death was still very, very clear in her mind, the way it was always very clear in her nightmares as well. And even if it hadn’t been Samuel that did that, Iris wasn’t going to be reckless about this. Just firm. And welcoming.

Celine didn’t say anything, she was clearly getting herself focused to perform her own tasks if and when Noah got back. Iris was obviously offended that they’d made her bring in Celine, but she couldn’t argue with Celine’s results. That stitchwork was beautiful, not that anyone else here could see it. So if Celine could do this as well, Iris was sure it would be done with the same amount of care. 

Andrew glanced at Iris with his eyebrows raised. He obviously wanted to leave too, but was staying here out of – not loyalty exactly. No, his loyalty lay with Olivia, obviously. But he was going to help her with this because he had promised to. 

“How do you want to do it?” he asked.

“I’m thinking I’ll try to talk to him in the circle,” she replied. “Not a board, I want to see if he’d be willing to work with me directly. I can do it, but I need him to be willing. I don’t see why he won’t, especially if we’re bringing him to see his mom and best friend. But let me try now before Celine and Noah get to work. If Noah comes back.”

“Is it going to take a long time?” Andrew asked Celine.

Celine opened her eyes and looked at him. “No,” she said. “If he decides to do it, we should be able to set it up pretty quickly.”

“So it’s worth trying to reach Samuel right now?” 

“Yes,” Iris said before Celine could answer.

Celine looked at her and Iris tried not to blush. She was supposed to be a professional, so she needed to let go of her resentments and focus.

She set up her circle, laying out salt and setting up candles, giving herself a little safety valve. Hopefully it would be enough, she needed to be able to break the seal quickly without giving Samuel an out if he got dangerous. Once it was ready, she lit the three candles in front of her, closed her eyes, and called to him.

Samuel, she called in her mind. Samuel Alderidge. Please talk to me. We want to connect with you.

There was nothing as she breathed, and she wondered if maybe her circle was too strong. The image of the fire extinguisher bouncing off of Vivien’s protective shield came to to mind, quickly followed by the gory aftermath. Iris shook the image out of her head. None of that was going to help her right now.

Samuel, she tried again, actively blocking out the thought of Vivien. Samuel, will you speak to me?

She could feel the whispy presence of Billy McBride in the shop, soft and sad. Then Andrew yelled nearby as the wards came down, immediately followed by the sounds of destruction spreading throughout her store. Samuel, she called again, trying not to count the cost of the damaged merchandise in her head.

The force hit her in a way that felt very physical. Her head jerked backward and warm blood began to drip from her nose. Andrew called to her and Iris opened her eyes, moving for the safety valve as blood spattered off of her face and onto the floor. Another force collided with the side of her head, flinging blood across the salt circle. She staggered over to the candles and blew them out as another blow stung across her face. Then, as she opened the circle, Samuel and his anger faded away.

“Shit,” she muttered, closing the door to her mind again with an ease she’d always taken for granted. “He wasn’t…”

She wiped at the blood, smearing it across her hand. “Are you alright?” Andrew asked. “What happened?”

He passed her a tissue and she wiped at her face, cringing as more blood dripped from her nostril seconds later. “He wouldn’t talk to me,” she said around the tissue. “He’s really mad.”

The feeling of that anger left her unsettlingly cold. He’d been mad at Iris directly, she had no doubt about that. Enough people had been mad at her in her lifetime that Iris knew when it was generalized and when it was direct. 

She was sure he had his reason, but what was it? Was it the summoning in the first place? It wasn’t like he’d been at rest, not when he was this angry from the start. What had Iris done that was so bad that it had earned her his fury?

The door opened as she was trying to think of what to do next.

———–

CONTINUE TO EPISODE 32

———–