11. LO #2
I drop my voice lower as if Stevie won’t be able to hear me from her seat next to me. “In the car with me.”
“Just you two?”
I urgently need to redirect this conversation. “Things are going really well. We’re meeting up with a former owner of the house to see if she might know anything.”
“So things are going well with the hot paranormal investigator?”
From next to me, Stevie does a terrible job at hiding her amused grin.
“Things are fine here. We’re doing the big investigation tonight, and then the team is off to the next shoot.
” Even though it’s obvious Stevie can hear Annalise clear as day through my phone speaker, I’m not letting myself get embarrassed that easily.
I’ll avoid Annalise’s questions in whatever way I have to.
“Well, text me with updates. And just know I’ll be disappointed if you don’t at least get her number.”
Annalise hangs up, and I put my phone face down in my lap.
Stevie isn’t even trying to hide the shit-eating grin on her face. “She’s nice.”
“Shut up,” I grumble, smiling, and Stevie laughs.
The building that Sunniva hosts her Self-Connection meetings out of doesn’t look like much more than a family home tucked into a suburban neighborhood.
Every house is built similarly, and all of them are done up in tans and yellows and browns.
Lawns are perfectly manicured and are a perfect lush green.
In the distance, I can see the tops of mountains.
There’s not much else in the immediate area; sidewalks lead in and out of the neighborhood, but they don’t seem to go anywhere.
“Do you think this Self-Connection stuff is super lucrative, or do you think there’s family money behind this?
” I can’t judge—my mom and her parents were connected to filmmaking for the entirety of their careers and were paid well for it.
My former TV job paid for a lot of my house, but the inheritance I’d had sitting in my savings for years definitely helped.
“Who knows—all I know is any amount of money going toward this woman is probably too much.”
“This is not what I was expecting,” I admit.
“What, you imagined some, like, massive compound in the middle of nowhere? We’re still basically in Los Angeles,” Stevie teases.
“I know, it just looks so…plain. It’s like trying to explain to someone that my house is haunted. It doesn’t have that look.”
“Probably because it’s not actually a cult like you’re suspecting,” Stevie says. “I’m sure she’s just some self-aggrandizing woman who was told one too many times that she’s really good at reading people.”
“She read one too many books about psychology and assumed that she could be a therapist without the formal training,” I say, playing along even though I’m not feeling as certain as Stevie.
Something in my gut is telling me that this is some form of a cult—or at the very least, a group that is into some very odd shit.
I’ve seen more than a few people in my acting circle get sucked into all kinds of things, most of them framed as a way of finding themselves or staying true to themselves despite the materialism around them.
One or two went from curious to deeply wrapped up, most of their conversations coming back to spirituality in an empty, selfish way—typically with the goal of improving their careers and not actually wanting to be a better, more self-aware person.
I’ve never had strong feelings one way or another about spirituality or religion.
I’ve gotten my tarot cards read a few times and prayed other times, usually out of desperation for my mom to get better.
But I’ve seen the ways it can be used to reel people in, the harm that it can cause when influence and power are misused, and that’s the part that I do have strong feelings about.
There are a decent number of cars on the street, but it’s hard to tell if they’re neighbors or here to see Sunniva. Stevie parks behind one in an empty spot a few houses down from the address we’re supposed to be going to.
“We’re not going to get murdered here, right?” I ask.
She shrugs, looking around. “I mean, I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know if that’s super comforting, actually.”
Stevie pushes open her car door. “It’ll be fine—come on.”
The sun is already starting to fade in the sky, suggesting late afternoon is around the corner. Just like most days in Southern California, there’s barely a cloud in sight.
We walk down three houses and then head up the empty driveway to the house listed online.
“Are we supposed to just walk in?” I whisper as we head up toward the front door.
“I’d assume so,” Stevie says. As we step up onto the front stoop, the front door opens. I jump nearly a foot in the air, gripping Stevie’s arm in fear.
“Hello,” a woman—who isn’t Sunniva based on the website, unless Sunniva is now suddenly in her sixties—greets us. “New faces. We’re so happy to have you. Welcome.”
“Thank you,” I say, an impulsive response to kindness, even though I’m not sure I’m particularly grateful to be here. Something about this neighborhood, this house, this group, is making me really uneasy.
She steps aside so we can come in. The house isn’t packed, but it’s decently busy. It looks like a standard family home—wood floors, art on the walls. The decorations are tasteful, if not a little like something straight out of a catalogue.
“How did you hear about us?” she asks. I press my lips together. Stevie and I stupidly didn’t come up with a backstory of any kind; I’m now seeing what a bad idea that was.
“Online. We’ve been facing some internal demons, and we’re hoping this might help,” I say before Stevie can answer. I trust her to take care of business, but I also really don’t want eyes on us. Coming across as an outsider in a setting like this feels really risky.
Or maybe I’ve just listened to one too many crime podcast episodes.
“Where can we find Sunniva?” Stevie asks.
“Oh, I’m sure she’s wandering around. Can I get you anything? Water, a snack? We’re about to get started.”
“We’re fine, thank you.” Unsurprisingly, Stevie is skilled at being direct but gentle. The woman doesn’t look offended—or like she suspects anything weird from us. She earnestly just believes we’re here to join one of the meetings or become a member of her group or whatever.
She heads off to go chat with someone else in the house, and we move through the open floor plan. Stevie’s eyes travel across the room, moving over faces.
“There,” I say, spotting a woman walking up the stairs with the same bone structure and hair as Sunniva from the video. “I think that’s her.”
Stevie and I cut across the living room and follow her.
“Sunniva?” Stevie asks. I resist the urge to shush her, the reality of what we’re doing just now sinking in.
We drove all this way to talk to this woman at her house.
We have no idea what she’s capable of, no idea what these meetings entail.
We could’ve easily just walked into the lion’s den without even realizing.
Sunniva turns to greet us when she reaches the top of the stairs.
Stevie and I stand about halfway up, close enough to her to smell her perfume.
“Hello. New faces—wonderful to see,” she says with a smile.
“Typically, I don’t have guests come up here during these meetings, but I assume you’re doing this for a reason. ”
“Yeah, we have a few questions for you,” Stevie says.
Sunniva looks amused more than anything.
She crosses her arms, tilts her head. “Okay,” she says.
She looks simultaneously older and younger in person—she’s gotten light touch-up work done to her face, and has streaks of silver through her hair that I couldn’t see in her video online.
Her clothes are loose and clearly expensive, a silk wrap-around that goes to her ankles that she wears over a dress.
It’s impossible to guess how old she is—maybe a younger-looking fifty, maybe an older-looking thirty.
“I bought your old house,” I say. “We never met during the process, but I found your name in the paperwork I have.”
“Off of West Belford?”
“Yes,” I confirm. Having Sunniva’s attention makes me nervous, like everything I’m saying is somehow the wrong answer.
“Beautiful house. I hope you’re enjoying it—we were sad to leave, but it wasn’t large enough for us anymore.”
“It is really beautiful, but there have been some…” I look for the words, but my brain goes numb as Sunniva’s deep brown eyes bore into me. “Odd things happening. Unexplainable things. And I was wondering if you had similar experiences.”
Sunniva is quiet for a moment. “Why did you come find me?”
There’s no use in hedging around the truth. “There’s something really horrible in that house.”
She’s quiet again and then waves us down the hallway, deeper into her house.
It’s not very large—the upstairs is more compact than the downstairs.
There are doors lining the walls, some of them open and some of them not.
It’s impossible to determine how many people live here, if anyone does at all.
It could just be where Sunniva holds her meetings.
And based on how it doesn’t seem like there are any personal items anywhere in the house—no photos, no mess, no collectibles—I’m guessing that might be the case.
I wonder if she’d used my house the same way.
She goes into what must be the primary bedroom based on the size and opens the closet door. “Did you look into what we do here before you came?”
“A little bit,” I admit. “But not extensively.”
“I work in spiritual healing. That’s why we’re all here—my friends downstairs are all working through their own personal struggles. They’ll come in group settings or sometimes one-on-ones. It’s important work; I argue that it’s necessary work.”
She pulls out a folder of papers from the closet—not what I was expecting, but then again, I don’t think anything Sunniva does is predictable—and shuts the door.