Exclusive Cover Reveal: The Promise of Lost Things by Helene Dunbar

We are so excited to be revealing the cover for Helene Dunbar’s The Promise of Lost Things, along with an exclusive excerpt! Releasing on July 5th 2022 from Sourcebooks Fire, The Promise of Lost Things is available to pre-order from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, plus you can also add it to your Goodreads!

Before we jump into the exciting cover reveal, Helene has a few words to say: “I’m so thrilled to share this gorgeous, moody cover. THE PROMISE OF LOST THINGS is a companion to PRELUDE FOR LOST SOULS. It’s set in the same spiritualist town of St. Hilaire and there are some crossover characters but it has a story all it’s own. I can’t wait to share this with everyone.”

Russ, Willow, and Asher all have their own agendas for St. Hilaire, but one thing’s for certain, no one in this town will be resting in peace.

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE: Russ

In St. Hilaire, New York, everyone talked to the dead.

If you were lucky, or talented, or both, the dead might listen. Sometimes they talked back. Sometimes they made sense. Sometimes they were just a pain in the ass.

I knew it was odd to live in a town filled with mediums whose primary business involved séances, healing sessions, and ghost walks. It was odd to live behind a gate that only opened to visitors – for a price – during the summer when they’d converge on our town seeking answers, comfort, and forgiveness from those who had passed on.

And perhaps it was equally odd to embrace the idea that death wasn’t an end point. Even though, maybe, in most cases it should be.

But, odd as it was, I loved it. I loved the history of our town, which was founded by a group of talented mediums over a hundred-and-fifty years ago. I loved the weirdness of seances and fairy trails and people coming to walk the huge labyrinth on the other end of town. I loved feeling like I was part of something big, something that mattered as well as the fact that I could bring hope and closure to the people who came here. And I really loved being chosen as leader of the Youth Corps made up of all the high school seniors, which might lead to an actual job with the town’s governing body, the Guild, someday.

But first I had to survive high school and the extra training that came with my leadership role.

Today my lesson started the way most spirit-related activities did, with a voice in my ear and a feeling I was being watched, a slight vibration under my chair, and a chill in the air.

I shivered in my wool coat. The chill, which seemed to settle somewhere in my spine and radiate through my body like a spider web, was a reaction to ghosts that most mediums outgrew, but one I guess I was stuck with. I tightened the muscles in my shoulders, locked my knees in an effort to stay still, and hoped Willow Rogers didn’t notice, which was ridiculous because Willow Rogers noticed everything.

“Tell me, Russ” she commanded. She sounded bored as if she’d rather be manning an off-season phone line or working the research desk at the town archives than mentoring me in conjuring the dead. More than that, she looked bored, her dark eyes dismissive and clouded as if her thoughts were far away.

I tilted my head and searched the air around her. “There’s a woman,” I said. “Standing over your left shoulder.” I examined the ghost’s clothing: fifty years out of date. Her hair: a messy blond ponytail. This lesson was so easy; it was no wonder Willow was bored. The spirit could have walked out of my freshman-year textbook. “Melody Thorne,” I said, identifying one of our town’s founders and most frequent ghostly visitors.

Willow stared at me, perfectly still and unblinking, her lips red against her skin as she said, “Continue.”

I tried to tune out the sound of my heart beating in my ear. Narrowed my eyes to focus on the syllables formed by the ghost’s barely there mouth. “You have a…” I leaned forward to listen closer to what the spirit of Melody Thorne was saying. “…a class. No, a meeting. You have a meeting at four o’clock and she’s worried you’ll be late.”

There were no clocks in the room, so Willow glanced at her phone. Her face flashed with annoyance and then cleared before she stood and smoothed down her straight black skirt. “That’s all for today,” she said, which meant I hadn’t done anything she could find fault with. Willow was notoriously generous with her criticism.

I stood and stretched. The muscles in my neck were taut and sore. These weekly lessons were required to help me strengthen my skills as a medium, but they were dull, exhausting, and it was clear both of us were only here out of obligation. I could do this sort of thing in my sleep.

Willow walked to the door of the classroom, her high heels echoing on the parquet floor. Then she turned back abruptly, as if she were trying to catch me off guard. “I overheard Father talking…” she started, her face animated for the first time since she’d walked into the room. “Is it true that Ian Mackenzie speaks to you?”

I inhaled sharply. Willow and I never spoke directly about our lives. We’d talk about school or the Guild or general current events: the museum got a new collection of dowsing rods from the early 1920’s, or did you hear Miranda had something strange happen during a reading she was conducting? But never anything more personal and for me, it didn’t get any more personal than Ian Mackenzie.

I didn’t talk about Ian with anyone. I hadn’t talked about him when he was alive and considered St. Hilaire’s hottest, young medium, even though we were friends with benefits. Or enemies with benefits. Or whatever you call it when you kind-of, sort-of like someone and kind-of, sort-of hate them all at once and yet can’t seem to stay away.

I really didn’t talk about him now that he was dead and haunting me (and only me) and we actually did like each other. Maybe more-than-liked each other. When it came to Ian, those specifics were always hard to pin down.

I answered her question with a tentative nod and waited while she looked me up and down. She had a piercing stare; one I’d often emulated with some amount of success. I knew she had to be irritated that Ian would talk to me and not her. After all, she and Ian had gone to school together, and served on the Youth Corps together. And even though she was only a few years older than me, she was already a member the Guild. More than that, she’d actually been raised by them as a type of collective adopted daughter. She even called Guild President, Clive Rice, “father”.

And Ian? He was Guild royalty. That hadn’t changed just because he was dead.

I was only a high school senior. A senior who was currently student leader of the Guild’s Youth Corps, but still, that was nothing in comparison to either of them. She had to be pissed I had a line to St. Hilaire’s most elusive ghost.

“I suppose it makes sense,” she said narrowing her round green eyes and letting contempt bleed into her voice. “Ian was always motivated more by what was in his pants, than what was in his head.”

I winced. She wasn’t wrong, and despite my determination to stay in control, I felt myself flush. But it was one thing for everyone to know that the ghost of Ian Mackenzie, one of the best mediums St. Hilaire had ever seen, spoke to me. It was another for them to know …assume… Hell, I couldn’t even define what my relationship with Ian had been when he was alive – much less what it was now – there was certainly no way Willow and the rest of St. Hilaire could have a clue.

But Ian and Willow were more alike than either would have admitted and the number one rule for dealing with both of them was the same: Don’t show fear.

I coughed, regrouped, and said, “I’m sure he’d want to send his best to Colin. How is your boyfriend, anyhow?” I had to restrain myself from putting air quotes around the word, “boyfriend.” Colin was Ian’s younger brother. He and Ian had hated each other when Ian was alive and Ian’s death hadn’t changed those feelings. Rumors about Colin and Willow had been swirling around for ages, though “boyfriend” was probably putting a pretty spin on it.

Willow’s eyes flashed, but when she turned back to the door, she didn’t answer. All she said was, “Be here the same time on Wednesday to continue your training.” Then she walked out.