The London Séance Society Quotes
"The spirit they meant to conjure tonight was not of the everyday sort, but nor were any of the ghosts Vaudeline invited to come forth."
"Vaudeline, aged thirty, was known throughout the world for her skill in conjuring the spirits of murder victims in order to ascertain the identities of their killers."
"Lenna didn’t want to mourn, not yet. Before she mourned, she wanted vengeance."
"Spirits are unpredictable, especially the ones we seek—the victims."
"We are not there to be delicate with our emotions. We are there to solve a crime."
"Grief was weakness, and there was nothing so dangerous in the séance room as weakness of any kind."
"Something cannot be an illusion if it still exists after we think it has gone. Including the fossils and stones you obsess over."
"The mission of the London Séance Society is to provide clairvoyance and mediumship services throughout the city of London, with the intent of providing peace to mourners and satisfying the populace’s growing curiosity about the afterlife."
"If ghosts existed, Eloise would have communicated something logical."
"Life and death are not as black-and-white as I want them to be."
"Just when I realize that my stubbornness might be the problem, she and I must go our separate ways."
"She quite liked you, Lenna, but affection is not always tangible. I hope you will still believe it exists."
"I’ve let you explore quite a lot already."
"It has all begun to feel a tad unfair."
"Do you know his movements, his whereabouts? We’ll need to pay a visit to those locations, if feasible."
"Clairtangency relates to the energy transferred by a person into the things they touch."
"In Paris, we do not stifle our longings."
"Spirits can also act upon us—they can do things to us, make us feel things that should otherwise require flesh or touch."
"Always, Evie would come first."
"Even death can't keep a secret forever."
"I must find a way to unlock the truth."
"Cursed be the keyholes so artfully placed in that corset."
"In my mother’s parlor, the fire crackled, throwing sparks and disturbing my reverie."
"A sinking feeling settled in my chest, heavy and cool."
"She was hiding in plain sight."
"Energies are most powerful when someone is under duress or in the throes of passion or even very angry."
"The needle began to move and point at certain letters, and he claimed to interpret its movements."
"No matter how many documents or so-called ghost-hunting implements I put in front of her—and no matter how outlandish they were—she always inspected them carefully, without judgment or accusation."
"Her hunger for information became a sort of game for me."
"Evie’s thoughts on what really went on with the Department of Spiritualism."
"In spite of this, she glanced sidelong at Vaudeline, feeling defensive of her, terribly fond of her."
"Men want to feel pursued, but still superior. They want to feel understood, but not exposed. They want control over you, but they want to believe you’re a fool, unaware of it."
"Everything must be so terribly simple. A hypothesis, either proved or disproved. Black-and-white."
"The drawer’s bottom panel was not the bottom at all. It was a false panel; there was a hidden compartment beneath."
"She'd been in search of this since Evie's death—it had been conspicuously missing from her desk and her satchel—and here it was now, in Lenna's hands."
"The Society has marred the art of spiritualism and turned it rotten, but this is not even the worst of it."
"What of the last few months had been real, and what of it had been illusion?"
"The truth could extinguish affection."
"A cobalt blue aura flashed in her left eye."
"Stone walls, wrapped tight around wooden casks of whiskey, gin, and wine: the blaze would be extraordinary."
"We gather around this table in a spirit of mourning and mystery."
"Suum corpus relinque," Vaudeline commanded.
"Something like joy—utter glee—sparked inside of her as she reveled in embodiment once again."
"For all of the illusions I’d construed, the frauds I’d fashioned, I’d never asked for this."
"All Hallows’ Eve, the night she had helplessly stood by while the police declared her sister yet another unfortunate victim of London’s sordid underbelly."
"What a charade, the whole idea of truth. There’s no money in truth."
"I knew there was something. I knew I was not disappearing, not really."
"The secrets of the afterlife were what I’d always lusted after."
"Indeed, Mr. Volckman appeared to be the source—the fountainhead—of the Society’s rogue behavior."
"You killed Evie," Lenna said to Vaudeline, but she was speaking to Mr. Volckman, the man within.
"If only a man could die twice."
"And spirits, she now knew, were capable of more than mischief."
"Evie was gone. And yet she’d taken him down with her."
"Before the explosion, as I lay writhing in agony on the stone floor, I believed there was no greater crime, no greater evil, than what Evie had done to me."
"Desire didn’t require trying of any kind. Desire wasn’t wrested out of someone."
"How deliciously familiar it had all become: the coolness of Vaudeline’s skin against her lips, the tiny freckles in the dip of her collarbone."
"Being tangled up with Vaudeline, the taste and smell of her, the way Vaudeline gasped and relinquished control over herself... It was intoxicating."
"As was their ability to share, without hesitation, their affections for one another—no restraint in their intimacy, no ambiguous notes folded up as hexagons."