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imaginary husband tonight. Was that what she wanted to hear from him? That
he loved her, how sorry he was and how much he still missed and desired her?
    He wished his sin had only been an affair. That he hadn’t
left her destitute, alone, forcing her to give up on her dreams of film acting
and twist her gifts into this deception. Yes, she was rich, but her eyes no
longer sparkled the way they had when taking her bows in the theater after
playing Juliet or Eponine.
    Was her show really all a lie?
    Sometimes he thought she could hear him. She would speak to
him out loud, as if he were there, but chattering to herself, supplying answers
that he wouldn’t have chosen. He replied anyway, knowing it was futile. But
then, every so often, it wasn’t. She’d ask a question and he’d state the
response and she’d smile a little wider, her perfect, white actress teeth
shining out between red lips, and he felt that somehow, miraculously, he’d
gotten through to her.
    Maybe this fake psychic nonsense she’d taken up after his
death wasn’t so phony after all, he’d think.
    Then she’d laugh about something else, a comment from her
own mind, not his, and the moment would be over.
    He must make her hear him. He would use every bit of
strength he had to reach out to her and warn her about the man who had cut out
her husband’s heart while it still beat in his chest.

Chapter Three
    Haunted
     
    Minerva woke in her dressing room to a nasty headache and
blurred vision. She was lying awkwardly on a chaise longue, Rachel’s concerned
face staring down at her. Blonde strands had escaped from the younger woman’s
bun and she looked more stressed out than Minerva had ever seen her.
    “Oh thank God,” Rachel spluttered.
    Minerva wetted her lips. She struggled to sit up. She shook
her head and the world seemed to move with it. “Did they get him?”
    Rachel’s brow wrinkled. “Who?”
    “The guy—the one with the blood on his hands.” The image was
burned into her retinas, the dark-haired man with glasses, holding the heart
high, red meat slippery and wet between his pasty fingers.
    “Blood? What are you talking about?” Rachel’s voice rose
with concern.
    “You didn’t see him? He was right there.” She remembered him
standing at the edge of the stage staring up at her, pink tongue pressed
between his lips, dark eyes fixed on hers behind the frames of his glasses,
blood dripping from his hands onto the white studio floor. “Security didn’t
notice him?”
    Confusion filled Rachel’s face then settled into
understanding. “Nerv, an ambulance is on its way, just stay calm.”
    She thinks I’m seeing things.
    Was she seeing things? How could security have missed a man
in the front row holding a human heart?
    How do I know it was human?
    She wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to convince Rachel.
“No ambulance, please. I fainted, that’s all. I got mixed-up.”
    “What happened, Nerv? I’ve never seen you lose it like that.
Not since…” Rachel’s voice trailed off. Minerva knew the unspoken ending—not
since Bram’s murder. And the aftermath, finding out he’d gambled away their
savings.
    But she had no answer to what had happened. And she wouldn’t
get one from Rachel. She steadied her voice, playing a character, the calm,
unperturbed psychic. “I don’t know. Weird guy gave me the creeps, I guess.”
    Rachel’s voice was filled with worry. “Weirder than usual?”
They’d encountered trouble in the audience before. It came with the Sex
Psychic territory—stalkers who thought Minerva’s erotic persona was solely
for them, abusive exes who wanted her to find their girlfriends, and generic
creeps who wanted her body and didn’t understand that the entertainment had
finished when the cameras stopped rolling.
    Minerva had handled them all with aplomb and no fainting.
She could understand Rachel’s worry—she was worried too. But she didn’t want to
scare her friend until she knew what was going on.