Chapter 7
Elias returned to the living room more slowly than he’d left it.
His face was pale, a thin sheen of sweat clinging to his temples.
He paused just inside the doorway, adjusting his glasses with hands that weren’t quite steady, as if giving himself one last moment to decide whether to go through with this.
Erica noticed the hesitation. It was the look of someone assessing risk after already paying the price to be here.
She rose halfway from the couch. “Are you okay?”
Elias nodded, though the movement looked practiced. He pulled a cloth from his pocket and carefully wiped his lenses, buying himself time.
“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes things . . . escalate.”
The word felt chosen, like he was avoiding others.
Liv frowned. “What causes that? I went to a medium once and everything was . . . calm.”
Elias glanced at her. “Was it an individual session?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why.” He gestured loosely around the room. “Group sessions are different. More energy. More appetite.”
Erica felt her pulse quicken.
“Every person draws something different,” Elias continued. “Some spirits feed on grief. Some on fear. Some on desire.”
Chad and Beckie exchanged a quick look.
“It’s like attraction,” Elias said. “We’re drawn to different people. Same goes for spirits.”
Zach rested a hand on Erica’s shoulder. The contact grounded her, briefly.
Elias inhaled, then let the breath out, slow and controlled. He was a man pushing past his own limits out of obligation rather than confidence.
Chad belched. “Do me,” he said, lifting his glass.
The casualness cracked something. He offered himself like a dare, as if nothing up to this point had mattered.
Elias vacillated for a moment, then nodded. “Your full name,” he said. “Three times.”
Chad leaned back, smug. “Chad Harrington,” he said. “Chadwick Harrington. Chad Harrington.”
Erica noticed how he shortened it again at the end, how he reclaimed control even inside the ritual.
The flame ignited instantly. It curled along the edge of the Rolex with surgical precision, bright and clean, as if it had been waiting.
“Bro,” Chad scoffed. “That’s a Panda Daytona. I was on the wait list for three fucking years.”
Elias didn’t acknowledge him. The flame burned steadily, unmoved by his bravado. He lowered his head, then snapped it back up. His eyes moved fast now, darting wall to wall. He looked past Erica’s shoulder, behind Derek, then suddenly fixed on a spot just above Beckie’s head.
“They don’t like you,” Elias said. The voice wasn’t his. It was flatter and colder, stripped of inflection. “They don’t like you at all.”
Chad rolled his eyes and took another sip. “Yeah? Join the club.”
Elias’s gaze twitched, and his jaw tightened. “Oh,” the voice said suddenly, pitching higher in a mocking tone. “Wait.”
Beckie stilled.
“Oh,” it continued. “She likes you.”
The pressure in the room shifted.
“She likes you a lot.”
Something sick settled in Erica’s gut.
Elias didn’t move. He didn’t blink. The words kept coming, now unmistakably in a woman’s voice—crude, invasive, humiliating. “Fuck me, Chad. Fuck me like you mean it. Come on, fuck me hard.”
Beckie’s face drained of color. Her mouth parted, breath shallow and uneven.
“I’m cumming, Chad. Don’t stop. I’m cumming on you.”
Chad’s grin vanished. “Knock it the fuck off.”
The voice only grew more urgent. It whispered now, breathy and insistent, counting down, urging, describing something with horrifying certainty.
“She’s right here,” it whispered. “So close.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” Chad shouted. He lunged forward and grabbed Elias by the front of his shirt, yanking him upright.
The movement was sudden, violent enough to snap the moment apart. Elias convulsed, not from Chad’s grip, but from something leaving.
“What the hell are you doing?” Elias gasped.
The voice was his again, thin and terrified. He clawed at Chad’s hands. “Let go—it’s not—”
Zach jumped up. “Let go of him!”
“What the fuck did you say to me?” Chad snarled, dragging Elias closer.
“It wasn’t me,” Elias pleaded. “It’s the other side—I can’t—”
Chad shoved him hard. Too hard. Elias stumbled backward, his heel catching on the edge of the rug. For a split second, he windmilled, trying to recover, eyes wide with dawning panic. Then he went down.
His head struck the corner of the coffee table with a wet crack, and he collapsed in a heap.
Blood spread fast beneath him, dark and glossy, seeping into the rug in every direction. No one screamed right away. Shock arrived first. A hollow pause where the room tried to understand what it was seeing.
The word leave surfaced in Erica’s mind—too late to mean anything now.