Last time on Gemma, making guys want to rape you is power, Mother Elena is crazy and broken, and Gemma and Kartik almost have sex in their sleep.

I will say this for the book, stuff happens.

This chapter opens with the specter of Assembly Day, when parents come to visit…if they love you enough.

Pippa is still horribly embarrassed by her seizure, and she doesn’t remember the leadup to it either.

“It’s shameful, isn’t it? My affliction.”
Felicity laces tiny flowers together into a crown. “It’s no more shameful than having a mother who’s a paid consort.”

So they’re all confessing their hidden secrets. Gemma considers admitting to hers, but she hesitates and the conversation moves on.

They ask if her family’s coming, and Gemma thinks of her grandmother’s last letter, where she attempts to be reassuring but mentions she’s having health issues she attributes to caring for Gemma’s father, who is sitting quietly staring into space now.

The next topic is the spiritualist, and they consider asking her to contact the girls from the diary. They get into another joking argument that leads to Felicity untying the rowboat Pippa’s lying in so it starts to drift. She throws an oar after her, but not close enough, and Pippa falls in trying to grab it.

I’m remembering the brief vision I had just before Pippa’s seizure, remembering the chilling sounds of splashing and Pippa’s strangled cry from somewhere under murky water.

So Gemma freaks out and rushes in, only for Pippa to be fine and a bit annoyed by her fuss. Gemma doesn’t care, she’s just relieved Pippa’s fine and almost sends them under again by hugging her.

I’m really glad we’re seeing actual friendship, the endless mean girl thing is wearying.

Although I may speak too soon.

“Now, where’s Felicity got to?”
The bank is empty. It’s as if she’s vanished. But then I see her disappearing into the woods, daisy crown perched on her head. She walks casually and easily away without so much as a backward glance to see if we’re all right.

I don’t actually see the problem with this, only Gemma was worried. But it’s our ending for the chapter and it’s definitely set up to be ominous. Perhaps the idea is that Felicity is another Sarah.

Next chapter we visit the spiritualist.

Pippa, naturally, just eyes the crowd for any potential husband who’s younger than the good sir Bumble.

They sit down near LeFarge. A man seated behind them comments that it’s all trickery and slight of hand.

“I have heard about her gifts from a cousin who is very close to a dear friend of the sister-in-law of Lady Dorchester,” Mademoiselle LeFarge asserts. “She is a truly remarkable medium.”
The gentleman smiles. His smile is kind and warm, like Mademoiselle LeFarge. It’s a pity she’s engaged, for I like this nice man and think he’d make a very lovely husband.
“I’m afraid, dear lady, dear mademoiselle, ” he says, drawing out the word, “that you have been deceived. Spiritualism is no more a science than thievery. For that’s all this is—very skilled dodgers stealing money from the bereaved for a little glint of hope. People see what they want to see when they need to.”

Frankly he sounds like a dick. You don’t go to the church to hiss in people’s ears about how it’s all a sham, and you don’t go to spiritualists to spend the time arguing with people who want to be there either. It doesn’t matter if he’s right, and incidentally, we’ve already learned ghosts exist.

My heart is squeezed tight in my chest. Is it possible that I see my mother, my visions, only because I want or need to? Could grief’s hold be that strong? And yet, the scrap of cloth.

And yet what? The obvious answer here is that the cloth is just her making the vision real, and even if that isn’t the conclusion she’d naturally jump to, the diary itself referenced the ability to bring back power to the real world where you can change things.

Anyway, the guy says he’s Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard which I guess gives him an excuse to be here beyond just sneering at people. Were there actual official inquiries? I know that there were debunkings.

“You’ve come, no doubt, to contact a loved one? A brother or dear departed cousin?” He’s fishing but Mademoiselle LeFarge can’t see that he’s interested in more than her preoccupation with the occult.

…I feel Gemma’s become brighter than me, because I’m not sure what he’s fishing for here beyond the obvious occult thing.

They see the medium do the first person and the guy chatters about how fake it is and how the guy’s obviously an accomplice. Apparently he’s flirting with LeFarge.

A few more ghosts appear.

With some she asks questions that seem very broad, but the grieving audience members always rush in to tell her their stories. It seems almost as if she leads them on, getting them to supply the answers without her help.

It’s really not so obvious that a sheltered sixteen year old girl would immediately pick out the trick.

Anyway, Felicity senses an opening and goes for the kill.

“Oh, please, madame,” she says, sounding as if she’s on the verge of tears when she’s really fighting back waves of laughter. “My friend is far too modest to ask for your help. Could you please help a girl reach her dear, departed mother, Mrs. Sarah Rees-Toome?”

Gemma hisses a bit of protest, but when the medium agrees, she starts thinking about what if the woman actually can contact her real mother?

Of course, that’s not what happens. The medium doesn’t sound like her mother would talk so she asks false questions, which the medium immediately plays along with. Gemma is blind with rage as she thinks she’d like to show this woman a look at the real other side.

And a vision triggers.

“Bloody ’ell! Where am I?” Madame Romanoff is Russian all right, by way of Bow’s bells. “Wot kind of devil are you?”

Oh, fuck you book.

Oh sure. You could say it’s really just that a lot of the spiritualists actually were people of lower birth. But what sort of skilled conwoman instantly reverts to the speech she’s spent so much time practicing out of her voice? The reveal here is not simply that she’s fake. It’s that she’s ignorant and lowborn and therefore unworthy of Gemma’s admiration. The two are conflated – because spiritualism is a sham, she’s of common blood.

I’m in the realms. And they are as real as the screaming little thief next to me.

Before, she was just called an actress, but when her true class is revealed, the adjectives just start piling on.

And then she sees the dead and panics more.

The mist is crawling. They start to come out, one by one, till there are twenty or more. The dead. Hollow-eyed. Pale-lipped. Skin stretched shiny-tight over bone. A woman in rags carries a baby at her breast. She’s dripping wet and strings of slick, green vegetation hang twisted in her hair. Two men stagger forward, arms outstretched. I can see the rounded knob of bone where their hands have been chopped clean off. They keep coming, their mouths all making the same hideous murmur.
“Come to us. You’ve come to us.”

Gemma, of course, is somehow not even slightly perturbed by the zombie band and just holds up a hand to make them stop and starts interrogating them about if any of them is Sarah.

“Tell them to go away,” Madame Romanoff says. She grabs a tree limb from the ground and swings it wildly in front of her, warding them off and grunting in fear.

Grunting. Grunting, really. Why not just straight up call her a pig?

Gemma catches a glimpse of her mother’s blue dress and decides to chase after it. But first, she decides to ask the spiritualist’s real name – it’s Sally Carny, yes really – and tell her that hey, going off for a bit but stay there and she’ll bring her back when she’s done.

“No! Don’t you leave me ’ere wif them, you li’l slut, or I’ll carve your creepy green eyes out when we get back! You see if I don’t, now!”

Book, no matter how hateful you make her it won’t make me forget how hateful you’ve already been.

Gemma doesn’t care and heads off, finding a Buddhist temple. It reminds her of time spent with her mother and the very thought causes flowers to bloom to become even more like she remembers. She can’t see her mother, but she can hear her, and her mother says that she can’t stay long because there may be spies in the woods. Gemma asks what’s happening, and her mother says she has great power and must use it or else it’ll wither away and be gone forever, but she has a very special destiny if she does use it. Whoa wait, that sounds suspicious. We don’t even know for sure this is her mom.

In fact…Gemma is clearly influencing this space to be momlike. If someone else was around trying to feed her false information, what if the memory-bubble she’s in alters whatever’s around her to make it sound more like she remembers? So it’ll sound convincingly like her mother because she’s already decided it must be.

We know there’s something else here that wants Gemma’s power, and Kartik said that making something that looks like her mom as a lure is within its abilities.

Gemma says people told her not to use the power.

Mother’s voice is calm, knowing. “The Rakshana. They’re afraid of you. They are afraid of what could happen if you fail, and more afraid of the power you’ll have should you succeed.”
“Succeed in what?”
“Bringing back the magic of the realms. You are the link to the Order. Their magic lives in you, my love. You are the sign they’ve been waiting for all these years.

Ominouser and ominouser.

At this point she does repeat the warning about Gemma being in danger and Circe looking for her, but she’s impressively unhelpful as to what’s actually going on, just telling Gemma that she shouldn’t look for Circe because Gemma’s not strong enough yet, and she definitely shouldn’t try to get revenge. Which is exactly what I’d say if I were Circe myself, aware that Gemma was probably already warned so it’d look suspicious if “Mom” didn’t mention the warning too, but making sure it’s directing Gemma away from actually doing anything to me.

“How do you know all of this?”
The edges of the lilies start to turn. They brown and curl under, leaves dropping to the stone floor.
“Our time is up. It’s no longer safe for you to stay. Go back now.”

And I’d make up some excuse once Gemma wanted real answers. The “Mom” here has behaved extremely weirdly – she forces Gemma to chase her, won’t actually appear, and is giving vague information, all under the excuse that it’s just she’s in danger from the other, real threat. It’s exactly how to trick someone.

Gemma is told that if she wants to talk, she needs to go through the door to the garden realm instead of the misty forest.

The light goes so bright, it blinds me. I have to cover my eyes with my arm. When I open them again, the temple is a barren ruin, the dirt floor littered with shriveled flowers. She is gone.

So in conclusion I wouldn’t trust this. But then again, I might if I was mad with grief because my mom had died, so I’m certainly not going to fault Gemma for it.

On her way back she runs into her teacher’s fiance. Well, that explains why she’s teaching instead of marrying, then.

He asks her to carry a message back to her teacher, that he still loves her and he’s still got the muffler she gave him.

When I return to Madame Romanoff, otherwise known as Sally Carny, she’s singing old church hymns in a shaky voice. The dead have all gone, but she’s still holding on to that tree branch for dear life. She sees me and nearly jumps into my arms. “Please take me back!”
“Why should I take you back after the cavalier way you treat people who are grieving for their loved ones?”

Book, Gemma, the both of you stop being such enormous dicks.

I feel I should point out here that she’s not taking advantage of people beyond getting them to come to her shows. This isn’t modern faith healing or other bullshit, where the goal is to fleece the audience until they bleed, and as it’s a strictly upper-class affair, it’s not like the cost of admission is much of a hardship either.

I mean, yeah, it’s bullshit but I don’t get where Gemma sees her actually doing harm. “Cavalier” way? She’s telling everyone that their loved ones are happy. Considering this is the death-ridden hellhole that is most pre-modern times, and well before the modern psychiatric understanding of depression or the invention of drugs for the same, you can easily say she’s helping.

Gemma does admit grudgingly that it’s not like most women have better options, so she just tells the woman to never tell what she saw here and to pass on the message to her teacher.

Sally puts an arm about my shoulders. “But Miss . . . wot would you think a joinin’ up wif me and me boys? Wot wif your gifts and me promotion, we could make a fortune. Fink on it. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
“Fine, stay, then.”

Christ. Why exactly is this wrong? We just established Gemma can actually talk to the actual dead.

Gemma doesn’t even have a flash of guilt when the woman understandably panics at the thought, just thinking that now she’s sure the woman will keep her mouth shut about what she saw.

She manages to get them back and it turns out only a minute has passed in the real world. The message is passed along and then it’s time to go.

Back with the other girls, everyone’s excited and wants to know what it was like, but Gemma is snappish and says it’s all bull.

“Gemma Doyle, you are an absolute horror,” Cecily grouses.
“Yes,” I say, ending my one-minute reign as Queen of Spence.

Ignoring, of course, that Gemma’s already one of the top wolves thanks to her connection with Felicity.

Anyway, the whole thing with LeFarge’s message has convinced her to take smile at the Inspector guy so Gemma considers it a net win.

On the way to the carriages Kartik yanks her into an alley, because an Indian boy kidnapping a sixteen year old rich English girl isn’t a terrible idea at all. Apparently Kartik is now a hardcore stalker, because he saw the whole thing and he guessed she did something. Gemma tries to deny it and Kartik just pushes harder.

His smirk is contemptuous. He’s waiting for me to tremble and agree to his terms. But something inside me has changed tonight. And I cannot go back.
I bite his hand and he yelps, dropping my wrist.
“Don’t you ever speak to me that way again,” I snarl. “I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do?”
He growls at me. “I am Rakshana.”
I laugh. “Ah, yes—the great and mysterious Rakshana. The powerful brotherhood who feel threatened by things they cannot understand and have to hide themselves behind a boy .” The word hits him as if I had spit. “You’re not a man. You’re their lackey . I don’t care about you, or your brother, or your ridiculous organization. From now on, I shall do exactly as I wish and you cannot stop me. Do not follow. Do not watch. Do not even attempt to contact me or you’ll be sorry indeed. Do you understand?”
Kartik stands, rubbing his wounded hand. He’s too shocked to say anything. For the first time, he’s utterly silent. And that’s how I leave him.

Ah, yes, feminism. Nothing is more feminist than implicitly agreeing that men totally still can boss you around, it’s just that all the guys around you just are merely little boys and therefore even further below you on the pecking order. Next up, saying only the man who can beat you at some task can own marry you.

It really does seem like “Mom” is not a healthy influence. Even if we assume that reopening the realms in general isn’t a terrible idea, Gemma here is just charging ahead with blind confidence, sure that she can completely blow off anyone else’s warnings.

The chapter ends with Gemma deciding they need to call another meeting of their own Order. Because not only is she sure she can handle the power, she thinks dragging along all her friends is fine too.