Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Three
The three of us conclude that the séance should be conducted tomorrow night. A split vote in which I was the decider. After dinner, during which no one again had much appetite, Violet suggested we go straight to the parlor and do it then.
“Let’s just get it over with,” she said. “The sooner the better.”
Ronan, red-eyed and rattled, disagreed. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
“Neither am I, but it has to be done,” Violet replied.
“Listen, I’ve just agreed that there might be a demon on this island pretending to be people we’ve loved and lost,” Ronan said. “Isn’t that enough for one day?”
Violet turned her gaze to me. “What about you, Marin?”
I understood why she was so eager to hold the séance then.
If the past was any indicator, one of us would be vanishing soon.
Yet I also agreed with Ronan. This was a lot to take in, and after another night of next to no sleep, I was running on fumes.
If a séance was needed—and I still wasn’t sure it would help—I wanted to be alert for it.
Especially if the improbable happened and we managed to contact Molly.
That was what ultimately tipped the scales in Ronan’s favor. I wasn’t ready to speak to my sister again. In fact, I doubted I would ever be.
“Fine,” Violet said when I announced my decision. “But good luck getting any of that rest you so desperately need. I, for one, won’t be sleeping a wink.”
Now we’re each in our own rooms, another sign that, despite being in this together, we’re also alone.
And even though I’ve closed the curtains and locked the bedroom door, I don’t feel safe.
Julianne’s absence is as apparent as an open wound.
When I pick her discarded nightgown off the floor, I’m hit with a blast of guilt that, just like with Heather, I couldn’t save her.
If only I’d woken up a minute earlier or run just a little bit faster along the lakeshore, both of them might still be here.
Instead, they are nowhere. A thought that keeps me awake in the flickering light of the bedside lamp, even though my body aches for slumber.
After another hour of guilty thinking and no actual sleeping, I decide to give up and retrieve Daisy’s diary from the parlor.
Maybe one more late-night read will help me notice something I missed earlier—or at least put me to sleep.
With the lamp in hand, I creep out of my bedroom, alert to the rustle of movement in the darkness at the end of the hall.
For a heart-stopping moment, I think it’s Molly, finally giving up on the window and going straight for the door.
But then Ronan steps from the shadows, wearing just a pair of plaid boxer shorts.
Sleepy-eyed and half naked, he looks like a stranger without his glasses, neckerchief, and khakis.
I must appear just as foreign to him, because he squints in the gloom and says, “Elise?”
“It’s Marin,” I say.
He lets out a relieved sigh and comes closer. “Sorry,” he says, although it’s unclear if the apology is for thinking I was his dead girlfriend or for standing there wearing next to nothing. “I could have sworn I—”
“Smelled her perfume?”
“Yeah.” Ronan looks to Violet’s closed door at the far end of the hallway. A strip of golden lamplight peeks out from beneath it, making it likely that she, too, is still awake. “Maybe I was wrong about delaying that séance. Maybe we should just do it now.”
I fear it’s a little too late for that, not just in terms of the hour but our mental states. If Ronan and Violet are, like me, delirious from exhaustion, then trying to contact the dead seems like a bad idea. It’ll be hard to tell what’s real and what’s sleep deprivation.
“I just needed to get out of that room for a bit,” I say. “After what happened with Julianne, it’s not exactly comfortable.”
“Yeah, I get it. If you want, you can sleep in my room.” Ronan’s cheeks turn red enough to be seen in the lamplight as he tries to correct himself. “I didn’t mean with me. Instead of me. And I’ll take your room.”
The blush has now spread down his neck to his bare chest, another reminder that he’s practically naked.
Normally, I wouldn’t really care. In a different time and place, I’d probably take a moment to admire the view.
But the way he has yet to acknowledge it—coupled with the fact that we are an actress and a director unwillingly thrown into the same space—makes me want to remove myself from the situation.
It’s not purposefully inappropriate. Just awkward. Especially when I’m only wearing my nightgown, feeling as exposed as Ronan should be.
“I’m good where I am,” I say, backing away a step. “Just rattled a bit.”
“Me, too.” Ronan takes a hesitant step toward me. “Listen, I don’t want to be alone right now. And I don’t think you do, either. I see no reason why we have to be. I mean, there’s plenty of room in my bed.”
I tell myself I’ve misunderstood. Ronan certainly didn’t just suggest we sleep together. That can’t possibly be what happened. Because that would be wrong, for a dozen different reasons. Yet Ronan makes no attempt to correct himself, and I don’t ask him to.
Instead, I pretend I didn’t hear him.
Because to show that I had means I’d need to respond.
And saying no could have ramifications, up to and including being fired from the movie.
So I stay quiet, head down, about to turn back to my room. Ronan swoops in before I can get there, his lips upon mine, a hand against my back. The feel of both turns my insides to ice, even as my brain’s a conflagration of thoughts.
This isn’t happening.
It can’t be.
This isn’t real. It doesn’t exist. Please be gone.
But Ronan remains there, his open lips pressing against my closed ones, his hand sliding ever so slightly to the base of my spine. I push him away, backing against the wall as Ronan stands there, hard in his boxers, his eyes stirring with both lust and annoyance.
“I thought you wanted this,” he says.
I thought I did, too.
Sort of.
Ronan is ridiculously hot and, yes, I had a crush on him that Violet, in a roundabout way, warned me not to dwell on.
But it was nice to imagine something could possibly, eventually happen.
At some point when Ronan wasn’t technically my boss and we weren’t about to make a movie together and stuck on an island that might also contain a literal demon. But right now, all I feel is…violated.
“I’m sorry,” I finally mutter, shame melting all that internal ice as I hurry into my room.
There, I lock the door behind me and lean against it, ear pressed to the wood, listening to Ronan lingering in the hallway, the floorboards creaking beneath his shifting feet.
I worry that he’s about to knock on my door, kiss me again, force me to actually tell him to stop.
And when I do, I’ll be booted from the movie.
If there’s even a movie left to be made. More than half of the cast is suddenly, mysteriously, unfathomably gone.
Still, I keep my ear against the door, hearing the floorboards buckle as Ronan returns to his room.
Good. Hopefully we won’t cross paths until tomorrow, although I have no clue what to do or say when we do.
I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. Yet I also can’t let him think I’m upset by it.
Even though I am. So much that tears spring from my eyes, which is ridiculous.
All Ronan did was kiss me. Sure, it was weird and unwanted, but not worth crying over.
Right?
I have no idea. But Violet might. The same thing maybe, probably, unfortunately has happened to her. Based on the lamplight under her door, she might have even heard what happened. In fact, she might this very second be waiting for me to come to her and talk about it.
After checking to make sure Ronan is still in his room, I slip into the hallway and scurry on my tiptoes to Violet’s. When I knock on her door, it creaks open beneath my fist.
“Violet?” I whisper. “Are you awake?”
I peer inside, seeing an empty room brightened by two lit lamps, one on the dresser, the other on a table by the window.
Violet’s old-timey Mrs. Semple gown sits neatly folded atop the immaculately made bed, next to an open suitcase full of tasteful separates from designers so high-end I’m sure I wouldn’t even recognize the labels.
Beneath them is something else in the suitcase—a book just visible enough for me to make out the symbol on its cover.
A daisy wheel.
Curiosity tugs me into the room and to the bed, where I remove the book from the suitcase.
It turns out to be a guide to hexology, its pages filled with arcane symbols of all shapes and sizes.
I assume Violet brought it with her as part of research into her character.
Mrs. Semple would know about such things, so it stands to reason that Violet would, too.
But then I notice more books buried beneath the clothes.
A History of Witchcraft in New England. A Guide to Basic Spells, the title in white over a black background. A book emblazoned with a woodcut of a horned beast and a simple, chilling title—Demonology.
Yet the books aren’t as surprising as what I find at the bottom of the suitcase. The object is oblong, plastic and shiny, like a giant beetle. I don’t need to pick it up to know what it is. I used to have one just like it fifteen or so years ago.
What I can’t understand, though, is why Violet has never, not once in all this time we’ve been stranded on New Avalon, told anyone that she has a cell phone.