Chapter Ten
Ten
Julianne’s unspoken worry that Azra somehow had something to do with Brad’s illness stays with me all through breakfast and beyond. So, when she and Heather banish me from the kitchen, insisting they’ll wash the dishes, I find myself drifting into the scene of last night’s séance—the parlor.
No one seems to have been inside since then. If they were, they certainly didn’t tidy up the place. It looks exactly as we left it, with chairs pushed away from the table and letters strewn all over the floor. Seeing them now produces an uneasy shiver.
I still can’t figure out how everything that happened last night was possible.
I would assume it was more trickery from Brad and Ronan if I hadn’t already busted them before things really got weird.
The fishing line used to move the chair is still tied around its leg, glaringly obvious in the morning light pouring through the greenhouse-like windows.
The end that had been attached to Brad’s leg currently curls across the floor.
I go to the frame that fell off the wall. It now sits face down in a pile of glass shards and shredded butterfly wings. Poor things. Like the women of New Avalon, they deserved a better fate.
The nail from which the frame hung remains embedded in the wall. The wire in back of the frame, though, is snapped, leading me to conclude it really did fall on its own in a display of spectacularly effective timing.
After scooping up the glass and butterfly bits and dropping them into a nearby trash can, I move on to the sideboard, where the candles that mysteriously went out all at once still sit. There’s nothing unusual about them. Just real wax, partly melted, and real wicks, their tips charred.
Next I examine the mahogany box between the candles.
About two feet high and equally as wide, it strikes me as the most suspicious thing in the room.
Especially considering there’s a door in its front covered by a grid of wicker.
Maybe something was hidden inside to make the candles go out.
Or a speaker that produced the whispers only Susie and I seemed to hear.
Yet when I yank the door open, there’s nothing inside but a small coating of dust that makes me think it’s been empty for a long, long time.
I scan the rest of the room, looking for other tricks Brad could have played that not even Ronan knew about.
Since he freaked out at the mention of the name Elise, I doubt he had anything to do with what happened after I noticed the fishing line.
And I know none of the others were behind it because they were just as shocked as I was. Which leaves…no one.
Or does it?
I look to the corner where Loretta had sat.
After deciding the séance should continue, she remained conspicuously quiet, all but invisible in the shadows.
Maybe she wasn’t there the whole time. At some point, she might have slipped away, crawled under the table unnoticed, and made it shudder like that.
I drop to the floor, where most of the letters from last night fell.
The G sticks to my palm as I crawl under the table and feel around its underside.
It’s your basic round table, perched on a pedestal base steadied by three curved legs.
Other than some deep scratch marks where the legs meet the floor, mostly caused by years of being moved around, there’s nothing suspicious.
I even give the pedestal base a push to see if it’s off balance. There’s nary a wobble.
For this table to move like it did, someone needed to have lifted it. A tall order for Loretta. Also, that wouldn’t explain the spelling of names no one else knew. Yes, she of course knows the name of her and Violet’s father. But the others? Including Molly? There’s no way.
Even if Loretta did know all those names, it would have been impossible to make us spell them out. Our fingers were on that glass, not hers. And while I’ll concede there was likely some minuscule nudging here and there, none of us were purposefully moving it around.
I stand and examine the tabletop itself, which also contains no evidence of trickery. The only things on it are nine letters that didn’t hit the floor during last night’s rattling. They now sit willy-nilly, an alphabet soup that at first seems to spell nothing.
But as I draw closer, the letters suddenly seem not so random. Like they’ve been placed there for a specific reason. I start to arrange them, sliding the letters into two distinct lines. When I’m done, a hiccup forms in my chest as I stare at two very clear, very unnerving words.
YOURE
LAST
This is a coincidence. Even though it doesn’t look that way and dread now sticks to my skin like sweat, it has to be.
There’s no other rational reason that, after last night’s jostling, these letters would be the only ones still there, sitting in a manner that spells out the same message I’d heard whispered in the darkness.
I’m still staring at the letters when Susie’s voice rises from the doorway, her disappointed tone sudden enough to startle me.
“Oh,” she says.
I immediately scramble the letters again, although I have no idea why.
I guess I don’t want anyone to know what was spelled out on the table.
More likely, I don’t want to know anymore, either.
When I’m done, I spin around to face Susie, who remains just outside the parlor, also in her period-appropriate clothes but clutching her vape.
“Hey,” I say.
She eyes the table with suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“Investigating.” I see no point in lying. “Trying to prove to myself that what happened last night was fake.”
“Of course it was,” Susie says before sucking on her vape like it’s an oxygen tank and she’s a woman drowning. “It’s stupid to think it wasn’t.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
She lifts the vape. “Trying to find somewhere to do this in peace. Which is clearly not here.”
Before she can speed away in a cloud of vapor and bratty entitlement, I call out, “Did I do something wrong?”
Susie stops and turns my way, her ponytail whipping. “No. Why?”
“Because I get the sense that you don’t like me.”
“I don’t.”
Even though the feeling is very much mutual, hearing it still hurts.
When I was growing up, Susie had felt like a friend during a time when I didn’t have any.
Now, seeing her look of utter disdain makes me feel sad for that younger version of me.
I wish I’d had a happier childhood. Just like I wish I’d chosen someone other than Susie Hutchinson to idolize.
“Can I ask why?” I say.
Susie, caught mid-vape, coughs out an incredulous laugh. “You really have to ask? It’s because you don’t belong here, Marin. Do you know how many auditions I went on before I got a single callback?”
I shake my head. I have no idea.
“One hundred and ten,” Susie says. “Plus dozens more after that until I finally booked a role. Always auditioning with the same girls for the same stupid parts. Some of them were so fucking talented. Like, scary good. And pretty much all of them are now housewives or Realtors or dental hygienists. They gave up a long time ago, which I refused to do. I know I’m not the most gifted actress or singer.
But I worked hard. I paid my dues. Yet here you are, Miss Skin Rash Commercial, taking a leading role you don’t deserve just because Ronan is smitten with you. ”
She returns to her vape, glaring at me as I try to unpack everything she’s just said.
My first thought is about all those other girls who’d auditioned alongside Susie, their dreams unfulfilled.
I was this close to becoming one of them.
The sad, stereotypical actress/waitress who never achieves the first part of that combination.
That could still happen, depending on how the next few weeks pan out.
I next think of Susie herself and how her bitterness is, if not justified, then at least understandable. I’d feel the same way if I were her and saw someone else snag a bigger, better part. Especially if I thought it was because the director was attracted to her.
Which is not the case here. Ronan has no interest in me romantically. He’s certainly not smitten. Unless Susie noticed something I haven’t. For all her faults, she seems to be more observant than the others. For example, Susie was the only other person to hear the sinister whisper last night.
I look to the remaining letters on the table, now a jumble. “What did you hear last night? At the end of the séance?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
I’ll give Susie credit. I almost believe her. But her eyes give away the lie. Real fear sits within them, bright and jumpy.
“I heard something,” I admit. “A voice.”
Susie hugs herself. “What did it sound like?”
“Horrid,” I say, recalling the sandpapery rasp at my ear. That’s how Daisy described it in her diary. An awful hiss.
“And what did it say?”
“‘You will be last.’”
“Mine didn’t say that.” Susie leans against the door, shrinking into herself. She looks so tiny, so impossibly fragile. “It said something else.”
“What was it?” I say, taking a step toward her.
“It said”—Susie pauses to take a deep, shuddering breath—“‘You will be first.’”