11. LO #5
But the only thing Sunniva’s whole charade is making me feel is pure, unfiltered anger.
“She’s taking advantage of them!”
“She is.”
“And bringing up my mom!” I try to think of anything else to say, but I can’t. There aren’t enough words in the English language—in any language—to express how frustrated I am.
“I don’t know how she knew that about my mother,” I say, my voice softer now.
My emotional outburst leaves my body just as quickly as it entered.
I fight off tears. “I’ve been wracking my brain to make sense of it, and I just can’t.
I don’t know how she would’ve known. She didn’t even know we were coming today, so it’s not like she could’ve done a deep dive on me and found, like, an obituary or anything. ”
Stevie takes my hand and I realize I’ve been ripping into the skin around my fingernails. I haven’t done that since my mom was still alive.
“It was unfair of her to bring it up either way.” Stevie’s voice is gentle. I’m surprised she’s not immediately shooting it down and telling me I’m being an idiot for falling for anything Sunniva said or did. Or that I’m an idiot for bothering to get upset about any of it.
Between her soft words and touch, I have to remind myself that isn’t a thing between me and Stevie.
We might’ve had sex last night—into this morning—and her touch might be really nice and her words are so comforting, but I’m not going to go there.
I’m not going to be the girl who thinks too much into it and gets hurt.
“Something about all of this feels really terrible, though, right? Like, weird?” I gnaw on my bottom lip.
“Whether all of this is actually real or not…I don’t know.
I don’t have the ability to know. But the way she’s using it, this approach of having basically unlimited access to ghosts or pretending to and exploiting loved ones and the deaths of loved ones… ”
“It’s gross, I agree. And I think it might catch up to her eventually. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know people usually can’t get away with playing with stuff like this for too long.”
I smile a little bit. Stevie smiles, too, tilting her head down so she can look me in the eyes.
I move my hand away from Stevie’s, suddenly nervous from how intimate this moment feels.
Stevie’s face remains unreadable and neutral—probably because I am actually thinking too much into this moment and the handholding was purely platonic.
“Was this enough to finally convince you my house is haunted?”
“It’s a compelling argument—all of it does feel like a strangely perfect explanation.
But I don’t know if I’m sold on Sunniva having some means of communicating with the other side.
Or whatever.” Stevie thinks it over for a beat, quiet from next to me.
“Actually, I think I know exactly who can be our translator for whatever the fuck just went on in there.”
Stevie lifts her hips so she can pull out her phone from her back pocket. She clicks around and then puts the phone on speaker.
“Hello,” a voice that is distinctively Valerie’s rings out. She drags out each syllable of the word, making me smile.
“Hey—it’s Stevie. Question for you.”
“Bring it on.”
“We just met with that woman from the website and she’s…pretty intense,” she says, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead through the windshield instead of looking my way. “I guess she’s some kind of medium and she can, like, speak to the dead.”
“Hm,” Valerie says. “And we have reason to believe this is true?”
“Does it help that we saw her do it?” I ask. “Or, like, supposedly saw her do it?”
“I mean, yeah.” She’s quiet for a beat. “How did she speak to them?”
“Some kind of spiritual practice, I guess. It seemed almost witchy. She had this, like, homemade Ouija board kind of thing.” Stevie still talks with her hands even over the phone. Even through all my frustration with Sunniva, I find it deeply charming.
“I mean, some people theorize that you only find evil spirits in Ouija boards. They wait until someone is stupid enough to invite them in and then enter our realm from there.”
“So you think the ghost living in my house is evil?”
“There’s really no way to know. Have you asked the ghost?”
“We haven’t exactly gotten around to it,” Stevie deadpans.
Valerie is unaffected. “There’s a decent chance she brought something into your house that can’t leave. Or maybe just won’t leave, which is the scarier option because it raises the question of why. Did you get any insight into who it could be?”
“Just that it could be basically anyone. She said she talks to five or six spirits a day. It sounds like people have been using her as a resource for this shit for years, and Lo’s house used to be the hotspot.”
“It could be anyone,” Valerie says.
“Yeah, that’s what I just said,” Stevie responds.
“No, I mean—it could be anyone . Just because those are the people she tried to speak to doesn’t mean those are the only people she spoke to.
Or who she actually spoke to. Like I was saying, some spirits want to take advantage of things like this.
If they see a chance, they’ll take it. They’ll say anything, pretend to be anyone.
It’s why it’s such a delicate and protected practice—or at least, why it should be. ”
I blink, processing what Valerie is saying. “That’s…ominous. And vaguely threatening.” I lean closer to the phone. “Is there anything we can do?”
Valerie draws in a breath. “You might need to call in the big guns for this. The house probably needs a cleanse of some kind.”
“So you believe she’s really doing this?” Stevie asks.
“I mean, you guys saw her perform a ritual that you know she’s done at Lo’s house countless times, and there’s some kind of paranormal presence there—you tell me,” Valerie says, and Stevie and I wordlessly lock eyes, unease written all over her face.