Chapter 7. Tessa
Tessa
Reed is here.
Reed can see me.
It’s like a strange lifeline out of this nightmare. I stumble toward him, only realizing when I step in front of him how violently I’m still shaking.
Reed’s eyes are wide with shock, his face pale, as he takes in my trembling frame. “Are you all right?”
“Did you see that? Please tell me you s-saw that,” I stammer, arms clenched at my sides in a feeble attempt to calm the shakes.
“You mean the guy walking straight through you? Yeah, that was kind of hard to miss.”
“I can’t stop shi-ver-ing.” My teeth chatter.
“Neither can he.” He nods behind me. The officer who walked through me rocks back and forth in a chair, arms hugged tight to his chest. He looks like he’s about to be sick.
“When that guy … when he came toward me, through me, or … I don’t even know. It’s like for a moment I lost all sense of myself, but I knew things about him. Personal things.” I’m on the edge of tears, but I can’t let Reed see how freaked out I am. “What the hell is going on?”
Reed’s brows knit together. “Tessa, I don’t think we survived the party.”
“No-no-no-no. That’s impossible. That can’t be true. I’m talking to you right now.”
“At first, I didn’t want to believe it, either, but it’s the only explanation.”
“No. I refuse to believe that.” I turn to an officer measuring the room. “Excuse me?” I ask, but she ignores me. “Please, I have some questions.” Nothing. I get nothing.
“She can’t hear you.” Reed sighs. “None of them can hear you. I’ve been trying.”
I pivot to face the room. “We were at the party last night. Who wants to interview us?” I shout, but no one even turns a head. This cannot be happening.
“Where did you wake up?” Reed eyes me cautiously.
“What?”
“You woke up here, right? In this house? Where was it?”
I glance over at the body under the tarp. It can’t be me under there. I woke up upstairs, not here. “The attic.”
“Huh.” He chews that over for a minute, then reaches out to take my hand. “Let me show you something.” And though Reed’s normally someone I steer clear of, right now he feels like the anchor I need. I hold on to him like my life depends on it.
Reed ushers me down another flight of stairs to the ground floor.
It’s packed here, too, with even more police ignoring us.
A sergeant barks orders over his radio while various officers scour the downstairs parlors for anything left behind.
Reed weaves us in and out of the crowd, careful not to come in direct contact with anyone.
Several twisting hallways later, we find ourselves under the twenty-foot-high vaulted ceiling of the grand ballroom.
I never explored this room last night, though I can see why Tilly wanted to take selfies here.
We’re surrounded on three sides by stately mirrors stretching from the floor to the crown molding, each with delicate designs of flowers and vines etched into the glass.
Overhead is an enormous art deco chandelier, hanging like an upside-down birthday cake, with strings of pearls and tiers of glittering crystals refracting the morning light.
The fog I saw before is pressed up tight against the wall of windows facing the gardens, itching for a way inside. I shiver again.
“This is where I woke up. Notice anything strange?” Reed drops my hand at last.
“Besides that creepy fog?”
“Yeah.” He shivers, noting how it hugs the house.
“Besides that? No.”
Reed rolls his eyes, annoyed. “Seriously, Tessa. This is not a trick question. Look around.”
I step farther into the room. Glance again at the chandelier, the hardwood flooring that’s seen better days, the gorgeous mirrors dominating the walls. And then … oh.
My blood freezes like liquid nitrogen, ready to shatter me into a thousand pieces. I whip my head around to check all three mirrored walls as a deep and mounting sense of doom threads through my veins.
“I don’t have a reflection,” I choke out.
He steps beside me, and we gaze together at the empty room reflected back. A room that doesn’t contain us. “Correction. We don’t have a reflection.”
We’ve been erased. Erased from existence. Just like that. “We’re dead.” As the words slip from my lips, it hits me all at once, the finality of that statement.
Reed merely looks smug, proud he figured it out before me. Like he can’t even let this one moment go without it being a competition between us. “My body’s in this house, too.”
“Where?” I didn’t see another tarp and body upstairs.
He grimaces and walks away from me.
“Where, Reed?” I chase him down.
He sighs. “In the bathroom off the room where you were found. I died in a bathroom. Vomiting, apparently.”
“Oh my God. Did we die from alcohol poisoning?”
“I don’t think it gets more humiliating. My mom is going to be devastated.” He sinks down to the floor, against one of the mirrored walls, head in his hands.
Oh no. My dad. Jillian. Tilly. Do they even know? I came here to this stupid party, the one and only high school party I ever attended, and I died. That’s it.
I lean over, placing my hands on my knees as I start to hyperventilate.
No graduation. No college years or trip with Tills to Nepal. No long life ahead of me with a career, marriage, kids. No dreams to fulfill. This cannot be my story. “This is all your fault!” I round on him.
“Excuse me?” His head snaps up, his eyes full of icy intensity. “What did you say?”
“That it’s your fault, Reed.” I throw the word at him. “I wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for you!” I do my best mocking impersonation of his deep voice: “ ‘Oh, Tessa, let’s have a drink, let’s play beer pong and get shit-faced and live out all my frat boy fantasies. Come on, I dare you.’ ”
“That’s fucking priceless.” He stands to face me head-on.
“I tried to help you last night after your marshmallow of a boyfriend publicly dumped you, and this is how I get thanked? You blame me?” He’s fifty shades of red now, about to go full nuclear.
“You’re the one who jumped up and volunteered for that drinking game, remember? Not me.”
“You cannot be serious.”
He crosses to me, gesturing in my face. “I never would have drunk so much if I hadn’t taken pity on you.”
I swat his hand away, raising my voice. “Pity on me? I didn’t ask for your help or pity. And I recall it was you who started the whole night by saying, ‘Let’s drown our troubles.’ Give me a break. You were looking for any excuse. You dared me to come in the first place.”
“Whoa, slow down with the revisionist history. You’re the one who threw this party, remember? I was debating even going except I had to see what the great Tessa Sinclair was going to pull off.” He practically spits out my name.
“Well, surprise.” I wave my hands in the air. “I didn’t throw the party. That was all a lie.”
His head jerks back. “So, you lied right to my face?”
“Oh, like you didn’t know. You gave me a hard time about the DJ and the keg.”
He barks out a cruel laugh. “Did I think you’d ordered a keg? No, I wanted to see you squirm. But I still believed you when you said you planned it. I was trying to help. Get people excited. You let me brag to everyone about how you were throwing this killer event.”
“How was I to know you were going to tell a million people? I lied to get you off my back. I never asked for your help. I didn’t want it then, and I don’t want it now. I’m leaving.” I head for the French doors at the back of the ballroom leading onto the garden terrace.
“What? You can’t leave.” He races to catch up.
Despite myself, I hesitate. “Why not?”
“Do you really want to walk outside in that?” He points dramatically at the fog swirling against the panes.
It does look ominous. “Who knows what happens when you step outside? You don’t know if time even works in the same way.
You could vanish, never to be seen again. You could get eaten by sandworms.”
“Sandworms?”
“Like in Beetlejuice.”
“Don’t you mean Dune?” I correct.
“No. Beetlejuice, with the sandworms when they go outside.”
I throw my hands in the air. “What are you even talking about right now?”
“I’m talking about—” He lets out a hard breath. “Never mind. I just … until we know more, I don’t think we should leave, that’s all.”
Is it dangerous to go outside? All this talk of monsters is freaking me out.
I start to pace. “So, I’m stuck here. With you.
” I glare at him. “Of all the people to be trapped in this house with. You know what”—I pause my pacing as the thought occurs to me—“maybe we’re in hell.
Maybe this is my own personal brand of torture, having to look at your entitled face every day while you mansplain the afterlife to me. ” I already feel claustrophobic.
“You’re no picnic yourself.” He sneers. “And in case it needs clarifying, I don’t want to be here with you, either.
You’re a high-strung, uptight, egotistical pain in the ass.
And my personal brand of hell is being trapped here while you pathetically weep over your douche of an ex.
Which I’ll probably have to listen to for the next ten thousand years. ”
“Right, because that’s what I’m doing. I’m spending my time weeping over Brandon.” My voice breaks on his name, betraying me.
He stares me down, waiting for me to crack, but I won’t give him the satisfaction.
It’s not even Brandon I’m upset about. It’s needing to be here with someone kind, someone who understands me.
This situation is so upside down I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone.
“Oh no.” He pouts, sticking out his bottom lip. “Are you shedding a tear because life is hard?”
“Newsflash, asshole, life is over.” We fume at each other until I can’t stand looking at his face—all pointed lines, jagged edges, and a harsh scowl—a moment longer.