I sit at my desk and type the numbers into the ledger. That's my job. Number four today was a teacher, fifty-two years old, wanted to speak to his wife of thirty years. The machine behind the wall hummed at a frequency I could feel in my teeth. Jack was in there with her, using the same voice he used with everybody—low, slow, the kind of voice that makes you want to believe him.

When she came out, she was crying. Not the ugly crying. The good kind. The kind that means something inside you just unclenched. She thanked Jack like he was a saint. I watched her walk to the subway with her shoulders back and her head up. I went back to my desk and typed her number into the ledger.

It's all fake. The machine, the voice, the whole thing. Jack uses infrared cameras to make "apparitions" on the wall—heat signatures that look like faces if you're already expecting to see one. The subsonic generator underneath the floor makes you feel like something's in the room with you, even if you can't see it. And then Jack talks to you in that voice and asks you the right questions at the right time, and your own mind does the rest.

I don't care. I'm not here to judge. I'm here because three months ago I lost my job at the accounting firm, and Jack offered me a position at twice what I was making. He never asks about my past. He never asks why I'm here. He just hands me a ledger and tells me to keep the numbers.

The plant on my desk is dying. It was dying when I started. I water it sometimes. Sometimes I don't. It doesn't matter either way.

---

Her name was Lily. She came in on a Tuesday, which was unusual—most people prefer evenings, when the fog rolls off the Hudson and makes the whole neighborhood feel like it's underwater. She was twenty-two, maybe younger. Dark hair pulled back in a way that suggested she hadn't had time to think about her appearance. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

"I need to see my sister," she said. "Please."

Jack was behind the glass partition, adjusting the infrared camera. He caught my eye and gave me his usual smile—the one that says he's got this handled. He came out a minute later, wiping his hands on a handkerchief.

"Sit with me, sweetheart," he said to Lily. "We'll find her."

I stayed at my desk. I had done this a hundred times. Watch Jack work, type the numbers, collect the paycheck. It was simple. It was clean. It was nothing.

Jack guided Lily into the chair. The machine hummed. The subsonic frequency started—I could feel it in my jaw. Jack's voice dropped into that register, the one that makes people open up.

"Tell me about your sister," he said.

"Her name was Emma," Lily said. Her voice was thin, like a wire about to snap. "She's twenty-four. She's been missing for three months."

"Close your eyes," Jack said. "Think of her. Not the last time you saw her. Think of the time you feel most connected to her."

Lily closed her eyes. Her breathing changed. I could see it in the way her shoulders moved—slower, deeper. She was going under. Jack was good at this. I would give him that.

"Emma," Jack said, and his voice came out softer, warmer, like someone who knew her. "Where are you?"

Lily's mouth opened. What came out was not what I expected.

"She's by the water."

The room went quiet. Jack stopped. I stopped. Even the machine seemed to pause.

Lily's eyes were still closed. Her breathing was steady. She was still in the trance.

"By the water?" Jack said carefully.

"River," Lily said. "She's by the river. She's cold. Tell her she's cold."

Jack looked at me over her shoulder. I looked back. The wire had snapped.

---

After Lily left, Jack came out from behind the partition. He took off his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. For the first time since I'd known him, he looked shaken.

"How did you know about the river?" I asked.

Jack didn't answer right away. He poured himself a glass of water with hands that were slightly unsteady. "The police never released that information," he said. "The river detail. Only the investigators knew."

"I know," I said.

We stood in silence for a long time. The plant on my desk was brown at the edges now. I had forgotten to water it again.

"Mark," Jack said finally. "Did you hear that? Really hear it?"

I thought about it. "I heard her say it. I don't know what it means."

Jack nodded slowly. "I've been doing this for twelve years. I've made a hundred thousand people feel like their dead loved ones are still with them. I know how it works. I built how it works." He looked at me, and for a moment his smile was gone, and he was just a tired man in a room full of machines. "But I don't know what just happened."

I went back to my desk. I picked up my pen. I looked at the ledger with its hundred and forty-seven names and numbers. I looked at the dying plant. I listened to the subsonic hum of the machine next door, that low vibration that sounded like something calling from very far away.

I didn't write anything in the ledger. I just sat there, listening to the hum, wondering if the world was bigger than the things we use to explain it.

The plant on my desk did not get watered that day. It did not get watered the next day either. It didn't matter. It was already dead. I was still deciding whether I was.