Chapter Thirty
Thirty
When Violet and Ronan enter the parlor, it looks exactly the way it did during our initial séance.
Letters and upturned glass on the table.
Candles on the sideboard, lit and flickering.
The only changes between this séance and the first are the number of chairs—three instead of five—and the camcorder inside the mahogany box on the sideboard.
I’d just finished checking its position when I heard Violet and Ronan coming down the hall.
Now the wicker door is shut while, behind it, the camcorder films everything.
Ronan pauses just outside the parlor with his own lamp. The golden light illuminates his face from below, giving him the look of a camp counselor about to tell a ghost story. His voice, though, is the opposite. Flat and bored.
“So, um, do you really think this is necessary?”
“If we’re being stalked by an evil force, then yes,” Violet says.
“How do you know this is even going to work?”
Violet clasps her hands together. “I don’t.”
“I’m desperate enough to try anything,” I say, adding the faintest quiver to my voice. “Even though the idea of contacting Molly terrifies me. But the alternative scares me more.”
I glance over at Violet and see that, so far, my performance has merited a pleased nod.
“Well, let’s hope this does the trick,” she says. “Shall we begin?”
Violet snuffs out the lamps Ronan and I brought in before taking a seat at the table, right behind the letter A. Ronan moves to take the chair at the S, but I rush to beat him to it, mindful of the camera inside the box. Having no choice, he takes his spot behind the I.
We each place two fingers atop the overturned glass as Violet says, “I guess you should start things, Marin. Seeing how you’re the one who did it the other night.”
I nod and lift my face to the darkness swirling above the table, my pulse quickening. Even though I’d known all day that we’d be doing this, the stakes don’t hit me until right now.
This is it.
Likely our only chance to get Ronan to confess to ruining Elise’s life—and to stop him from doing the same to others.
Violet had every right to doubt my abilities earlier in the day.
I now doubt them myself. I think back to Ronan’s advice our first afternoon here.
Take what I’m feeling and use it. And since right now I’m jittery as fuck, I allow those jitters to seep into my voice as I say, “Is there a spirit present?”
We wait, eyes on the glass that Violet and I know isn’t going to move. Not quite yet.
I hope.
In the back of my brain lurks the unsavory idea that we could indeed accidentally contact something.
Azra, maybe. Or whatever’s been raising a ruckus in my cottage.
While not large, the notion’s enough to put me further on edge.
When a crash of thunder sounds outside, quickly followed by a blinding lightning flash, I jolt in my seat.
The timing is so perfect that, if I didn’t know better, I would assume Brad had created a machine to control the weather.
As rain begins to spatter the wall of windows behind us, I make another attempt. “Is there a spirit present? If so, please give us a sign that you’re here.”
This time, the glass moves an inch. Our doing. Not a spirit, although it prompts a gasp from Ronan. Holy shit, he might be falling for it.
“Was that a yes, spirit?” I say.
Violet and I nudge the glass another inch. Then another. Then, both of us sensing that now is the time, we slide it toward the square marked YES. Julianne was right. The glass is easy to move without being noticed. In the darkness, I hear Ronan let out a small, awed “Whoa.”
“Welcome, spirit,” I say. “We have gathered here tonight with the goal of contacting three specific people who now exist beyond the veil.”
Across the table, Violet narrows her eyes at me. I’m laying it on too thick.
“Spirit,” she says, taking over, “please identify yourself.”
I take a deep breath. It’s time for Molly’s entrance.
A queasy, guilty feeling grips me as I prepare to move the glass to the M.
Pretending to contact my sister feels wrong, even if it’s for the right reasons.
It makes me keep my fingers still against the glass as Violet attempts to slide it.
An almost imperceptible push that I hope Ronan hasn’t noticed.
Under the table, Violet kicks my shin. The message is clear: Quit stalling.
I join her in moving the glass, both of us aiming for the M that sits directly across the table from Violet.
But that’s not where it goes.
Instead, the glass curves upward, sweeping toward the letters placed between Ronan and Violet. Panic fills my chest. Like I’m an actor shoved onstage without knowing my lines. I look to Violet, and we converse using only our eyes.
Me: What are you doing?
Violet: I’m not doing anything! You are!
Me: But I’m not!
We keep this up until the glass pauses at a letter to the left of Violet.
D
“Do the rest of you feel that?” she says.
I stare at her from across the table. “Feel what?”
“A chill. Only worse.” Her teeth are chattering now, and she looks around the parlor, troubled. “What is that?”
“I don’t feel anything,” Ronan says.
I do, but it’s not a chill. Instead, I get the same creeping sensation that greeted Molly’s nightly visits when I was five. A feeling that someone else is there. It gets worse as the glass moves on, slipping to the A in front of Violet.
Then the I in front of Ronan.
And the S in front of me.
By the time it comes to a stop at Violet’s right elbow, my body rumbles with fear as forceful as the thunder doing the same thing outside.
This isn’t supposed to be happening.
Yet the glass starts up again, quickly spelling out the same name a second time.
DAISY
I glance at Ronan to see if he’s behind it.
Not likely, judging from his slack-jawed bewilderment as the glass repeats the name a third time.
When I look to Violet next, I see that her eyes are shut.
Not halfway. Not in tiny, peeking slits.
Honest-to-God closed. Even as the glass spells out the name a fourth time.
DAISY
“Wait,” Violet says, her eyes snapping open. “Stop.”
She raises a trembling hand, which quickly drops, slapping against the table. The rest of her body soon follows, slumping forward until her forehead hits the table’s edge. It stays there, lolling back and forth as she says, “I…don’t…feel good.”
Violet’s head slips off the table, her body doubling over so much that I can no longer see her face. Just the slump of her shoulders and the top of her head. I hear her moan, then belch, then unleash a splatter of vomit onto the floor.
“Violet?” I’m by her side in an instant, shaking her shoulders, trying to rouse her from her stupor.
“Is she okay?” Ronan says dumbly. Of course she’s not.
But then Violet’s head rises with a jerk. Like she’s being tugged by invisible strings. A marionette. I jump back, startled, staring at the trickle of brown slime oozing down her chin as her head makes an owl-like swivel.
“The parlor,” she says, looking around with wonder. “How did I get in here?”
Her voice has changed. It’s higher, girlish, with an unidentifiable lilt.
“You walked here,” I say.
Violet blinks at me, uncertainty causing her to bite her bottom lip. “Hello,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Of course we have,” I say, my voice tight. What the hell is she doing?
Ronan watches us, keeping his fingers on the glass in the same shocked way a driver still grips the steering wheel after a crash. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Violet is—”
She looks up at me and says, “Who’s Violet?”
“You,” I say. “You are.”
“Oh, I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”
I start to wobble. Like I’m Jell-O. Like there’s not a bone or muscle or organ in my body except my brain, which now echoes with a single thought.
No. Please no.
“But it’s close,” Violet continues. “My name is actually—”
Don’t say it! my brain screams. Don’t you dare say it!
She does.
Of course she does.
The name a chipper bird alighting off her tongue.
“Daisy.”