7
“I finished it!”
…
“Bea, wake up! I finished it!”
I shot upright, my heart thundering in my chest like a deranged drummer. “Finished what? Your last brain cell?” I mumbled, still half-asleep.
A sudden click! and the room flooded with operating-room brightness. Tess was standing there, eyes wide, grinning so big it could’ve scared a clown.
“Are you insane?” I groaned, throwing an arm over my face and collapsing back against the headboard like I’d just survived a war. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I finished the book, Bea. The manual!”
“What, that nineteenth-century relic supposedly written by a French countess who was probably just a charismatic bartender in Montmartre?”
“Bea, please! Show some respect for the Contessa élo?se de Saint-Rouge. That woman was a genius. A Machiavelli of seduction. No—better: a Sun Tzu in a corset! I’ve never read anything so…
strategic. Did you know she was exiled from Paris for being too scandalous?
And do you know what they said about her?
That a single glance from her could ruin a marriage. ”
My eyes struggled to adjust to the violent glare of the ceiling light. I blinked a few times until I finally managed to focus: Tess, perched ecstatically on the edge of my bed, was stroking that damn book like it was a newly adopted puppy.
“What time is it?” I muttered, rubbing my face with one hand.
“Who cares what time it is?” she shot back, her eyes sparkling with euphoria. “Don’t you see this manual is about to change my life? And by extension—yours!”
“So far it’s only changing my sleep. For the worse,” I grumbled. “You barge into my room in the middle of the night—do you honestly think that’s normal?”
“Seduction is all about psychology,” she declared, ignoring me. Her eyes had the wild gleam of a televangelist. “It’s not about beauty. It’s not even about charm. It’s all about levers, Bea. Emotional buttons, pressed at exactly the right moment. It’s like hacking a man’s brain…”
She stood up, inspired, like she was about to deliver an Oscar speech.
“élo?se talks about refined illusions. About appearing unattainable, then suddenly accessible, then unattainable again. A constant hall of mirrors. Saying one thing with words and the opposite with your eyes. It’s an art.
And I… I’m about to become a great artist.”
She pressed the book to her chest with solemn reverence, like she was waiting for a standing ovation.
I stared at her the way you look at someone trying to sell you a mattress on installment at three in the morning.
Rubbing both hands over my eyes, I tried to figure out if I was actually living through this conversation or just trapped in a particularly surreal dream.
“This all sounds like a borderline emotional scam,” I said.
“Scam?” Tess’s eyes widened in outrage. “This is science! Applied seduction!”
She paused theatrically, then lowered her voice as if revealing some esoteric secret.
“You have no idea the twisted techniques I’ve learned from this manual.
The Contessa must have been a monster of intelligence.
A witch. Forget TikTok gurus—this woman could hypnotize, manipulate, obliterate any resistance with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a perfectly timed pause. ”
She paced the room, waving the book like an Olympic torch.
“Nothing is impossible, Bea. Nothing. With what I’ve learned today, I could seduce the Pope. It’s incredible… just think: a simple book, made of paper and ink, yet capable of transmitting talent. It’s practically… telekinesis!”
I stared at her, mouth half open. She, meanwhile, spoke like she was in a trance.
“For an entire day I’ve been in mental contact with élo?se de Saint-Rouge.
She was in 1894, I was in 2025, and yet…
poof! Direct communication. I heard her message loud and clear, like she was talking inside my head.
Do you get what that means, Bea? I was possessed by the wisdom of a woman from another century. ”
“And what do I have to do with any of this?” I asked, shooting her a look that was half-asleep, half-homicidal. “Why did you have to wake me up like that? What was the actual emergency?”
“I… I couldn’t hold it in anymore!” she burst out, waving her hands like she was trying to exorcise an energy too big to contain. “I feel so different already, just after one reading, that I had to share it with someone or I would have literally exploded. Literally, Bea! BOOM!”
I shut my eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled again. “Okay, you shared it. Can I go back to sleep now, or do I need to sign a release form?”
“One second! Just one second. Listen to this gem!” She snapped the book open with all the gravitas of reciting Shakespeare, then cleared her throat.
“ ‘The seductress, if necessary, will wield the pettiest psychological tricks and the most devastating mind games to succeed. The seductress beguiles, deceives, misleads. The seductress destroys… and then stoops to gather the pieces.’ ”
She laughed. A sharp, triumphant, almost villainous laugh. Then she looked at me, waiting for awe. Applause. Something.
All she got was my Sphinx stare. A marble mask, as if I’d been sculpted by a very tired Michelangelo.
But Tess wasn’t about to give up.
“Another one! Wait!” She flipped through the book until she found a highlighted passage. Her eyes shone with mystical anticipation. “‘ The seductress enjoys the finest sex, while all others settle for whatever the convent doles out.’ ”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well? What do you think of that, huh?”
I shook my head slowly, with a blank expression.
But Tess had already locked onto another quote. “ ‘If the enticement is flawless, seamless, then no man alive will be able to resist the seductress.’ ”
She looked at me. Again. For what felt like the thousandth time. With the same expression an illusionist wears while waiting for the standing ovation after the grand finale. Who knows what she expected from me: wide eyes, gaping mouth, hands on my cheeks and a big fat ‘No way! You don’t say!’
Instead, I just said, “And…?”
Tess threw her arms wide. “No man alive, Bea. None. Do you get what that means?” She leaned closer, her eyes blazing like neon lights.
“You thought I was aiming too high, setting my sights on Zane Ryder. Zane Ryder , Bea! A living legend. Six Grammys, three arrests, two ex-wives, and a voice that could melt steel.”
She paused dramatically, then lifted one finger. “But if a woman has a weapon this powerful in her arsenal… do you really think she’d waste it on some nobody? Some guy who asks, ‘Can I kiss you?’ before actually doing it?”
I shook my head slowly. “No, of course not. Much better to go for a guy who writes songs about breaking hearts and getting arrested in Mexico.”
Tess lit up. “Exactly! See? You do get it!”
“Jesus Christ,” I sighed, “I was hoping that after reading the manual you’d tone things down a little.
Maybe get distracted, sure… daydream a bit.
But I also hoped you’d eventually realize it was all nonsense.
Empty theories scribbled by some nineteenth-century proto-influencer with way too much free time. ”
“Nonsense?” Tess echoed, as if I’d just blasphemed in church. “Are you kidding me? Listen to these pearls!”
She launched back into reading with a vibrating voice: “ Be the wound, not the bandage… Make him suffer without touching him… Cruelty is a form of resp ect… Silence is the most seductive scream… Never kiss before the war… ”
She stopped, eyes shining with emotion. “Isn’t it beautiful, Bea? This book is solid gold from the first page to the last. A treasure. The lessons I’ve drawn from it are… what’s the word… inexhaustible? No. Inestimable. Invaluable! ”
She spun around, arms wide like a romantic witch under a full moon. “And I don’t even dare to imagine where this will take me! Because seduction, Bea, is everything. Not just in love. Everywhere. It’s a social force.”
She stepped closer to the bed, solemn as a priestess.
“This book has instantly boosted my confidence. My self-worth. And soon—very soon—it will improve my social and financial standing too. I will no longer be Tess Martini, broke roommate. I will be Tess Martini, femme fatale. Elite influencer. Cultural icon.”
Tess resettled herself on the edge of the bed with ceremonial slowness, then laid the manual down between us as if it were a ticking time bomb.
I watched her in silence, then said in a flat voice: “Okay. So now, infused with all this new wisdom, I imagine you’ve put things in perspective. Like: you’ve realized it was ridiculous to feel bad about Chad, and now you’re going to move forward, live your life…”
“Hell no!” Tess burst out, indignant. “All the negative energy Chad dumped on me—it was fuel, Bea. Motivational fuel! Every ignored text, every silent humiliation, every like he gave to that model with the tattooed eyebrows… it all pushed me toward this evolution.”
She stepped back, then thumped her chest like a gladiator thirsting for revenge. “But it’s not over—not until my transformation from ugly duckling to spectacular swan is complete. And not just on the inside, Bea. On the outside. For everyone to see.”
She came closer to my bed, lowering her voice. “It’s true, inside I already feel like a Queen. With a capital Q. But that’s not enough. Not enough! Everyone has to see it.”
A flash lit her eyes. “ He has to see it. That bastard Chad. I want him to look at me and be blinded by my sexual energy. An energy that, obviously, is no longer aimed at him.”
“Good,” I sighed. “I’m glad you’ve chosen to deal with it this way. Some girls crumble, get depressed, turn into wilted houseplants after a breakup. You, on the other hand, look ready for war—like Kaiser Wilhelm.”
“Damn right,” Tess said, puffing out her chest.
“But let me get this straight…” I turned toward her, narrowing my eyes. “Because there’s one detail I’m still missing.”
“Go on, darling,” she said, with the magnanimous tone of a queen granting a private audience .
“This whole production—the Blitzkrieg seduction, Zane Ryder, the psychological traps, the manual… all of it, you’re staging just to make Chad jealous, right? So far, so good.”
“Jealous?” she scoffed, laughing. “His eyes will fall right out of their sockets. He’ll crawl to my doorstep on his knees, clinging to my ankles, begging me to take him back.”
“Right, see, that’s where I was going…” I raised an eyebrow. “But in the end, do you actually want him back? Is that the real goal behind all this?”
Tess looked at me like I’d just asked if she wanted to marry a pigeon.
“Are you kidding me?” she sneered. “Chad is an insect.”
Then she smiled. Slowly. Dangerously.
“I just want to win .”