Busted Flush

“No,” Isis admitted. “My brother-husband’s visions are sometimes confused. I’m afraid he was a little drunk when he had this one. He gets free drinks at the Luxor. I believe his exact words were ‘zombies and hurricanes.’ ” She covered her eyes. “I’m sorry, my daughter has died and I have been clinging to Hope’s slimmest thread . . . .” Isis fell to her knees, her sistrum vibrating in a white-knuckled shake. “O Nepthys, send me a sign!”

Ellen bent down, hugging the woman hard before she started ululating. “Hush,” Ellen hissed, then whispered in her ear, “I’m the ace you’re looking for, but please, I’m up the sleeve.”

“O Nepthys be praised,” she breathed. “Thank you, O sister.”

“I can’t promise anything. Just get your stuff and follow me.” Ellen rubbed at the bit of Isis’s makeup that had smeared on her own cheek and led her back to the dinghy, placing her satchel with Nick’s precious hat by her feet. “We can speak when we get to my boat.”

The wind was stronger rowing out than rowing in. By the time they were at the boat it was seriously whipping Ellen’s ponytail. Isis’s circlet was at least keeping some out of her face. “Will-o’-Wisp . . .” Isis read the name on the sailboat’s stern. “That is . . . a drowned soul?”

“Yes.” Ellen tied up, clambering up the ladder, then helped Isis ascend with her bag. “Let’s go below deck.” Ellen ushered Isis into the main cabin and shut the door securely behind them. Sound carried, and when dealing with mad monks, one never could be too paranoid.

Isis stood in the middle of the cabin, taking in the Philippine mahogany, the easel, the sketches, the assorted bits and bolts of cloth, and the vintage sewing machine with a half-finished dress strewn inside-out across the galley table. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.” Ellen shoved aside the unfinished dress, making a place for Isis. “I don’t cook, but do you take tea?”

“Yes, please,” said Isis. Ellen nodded. A kettle would have been nicer, but a micro wave was a small luxury for a single woman. She didn’t bother to ask what type Isis preferred—Taylor’s of Harrowgate was good enough for anyone—and in a minute and a half, it was done.

By the time she turned around, the Living Goddess had conjured a bowl of sugared dates, either from her bag or thin air. Ellen didn’t much care which. She set the mug in front of Isis, considering, then sat down opposite. “So,” Ellen said, “what did your, uh, brother, tell you?”

“That only Nepthys, of all gods, can raise the dead. We were bewailing the loss of our beloved Aliyah and . . .” Isis raised her mug, inhaling the steam like an oracle with her bowl, then put it plainly: “Can you help us?”

It had been a long while since Ellen had sat with a client. “Perhaps, but I have to tell you that it’s going to be less than what you want. I have to be up-front about that. The last time . . .” How was she supposed to put it? “My last client was expecting the Second Coming and just got a Broadway Revival. I’m a psychometric trance channeler. Most objects”—she hefted her mug as demonstration—“I can feel the psychic impressions on, like smudged fingerprints or whispers on the other side of a wall . . . but if an object is very important to someone, I can tell that, and if that person has died . . .”

Isis finished her thought: “You can channel the soul of the departed?”

Ellen took a sip of tea, letting it linger on her tongue as she thought of the best way to phrase it. “I think they’re souls, but the dead . . . well, when I call them back from the darkness, they don’t recall an afterlife. They only remember up to the last point they touched an object.”

Isis’s dark eyes were limned with kohl. “My daughter left the world as she came into it, naked and screaming. But at least . . .” Her voice caught. “. . . at least, your gift is kind.” She reached into her bag. “You will spare my darling Aliyah the torment of her end.”

Ellen moved the mugs and the untouched dates aside, making room for Isis to unroll a tightly furled bundle of denim. It was like unwinding a burial shroud, revealing at last a pair of low-rise jeans and a black baby-doll T-shirt with the American Hero logo, the legend EVERYONE WANTS TO BELONG TO THE CLUBS!, and the image of a pretty brown-haired girl wearing nothing more than a whirlwind of glitter, the name SIMOON stenciled below. Isis then added a pair of earrings, small bits of silver and Swarovski crystal in the shape of the Egyptian Eye of Horus, the same as you could get in any Cambridge or Greenwich Village Goth shop. “My daughter wore these her last day on American Hero.”

Ellen blinked. “Your daughter was an ace?”

“We called her Simoon, the child of the whirlwind. Though the name on her birth certificate is ‘Aliyah Malik,’ ‘Malik’ for ‘daughter of the King.’ ”