“Hey, can I ask you something?” Linda said, seizing the moment.
“You can try,” Charity said.
“What’s the book that you’re reading?”
Charity laughed. “It’s this weird ghost story. House Ghosts.”
“Oh, my God.” Linda paused for a moment. “You’re kidding.”
“I am not.”
“Did you know we were coming here?” Linda asked, but Charity smirked.
“What do you think?” she said.
At the door to the manor, Charity gave Linda what seemed a punctuation mark to their time together as she pursed her lips and heaved a hefty sigh. As they passed the threshold back into the manor, Charity stiffened. She didn’t glance again at Linda as she strutted upstairs, followed by a lonely cameraman and his camera.
Linda ached in her chest. And elsewhere. Her camerawoman zoomed in on her stricken face. Back in her bedroom, Linda tried to shake it off, but as she freshened her makeup, she thought only of the soft-looking hood above Charity’s eyes. As she flat-ironed her hair, she thought only of Charity’s hair, the cute bounce of it, the one stubborn curl that crept out from behind her ear. How when Charity walked in front of Linda, Linda couldn’t help but focus on the curve of her neck to shoulder—how soft her skin looked there. As Linda stepped into her sparkling black dress, she thought of the fabric in another room, moving over another body. She wondered what Charity would be wearing.
Chapter Six
Sabrina
Sabrina didn’t fuck with ghosts. As she shut the door to her Pepto-Bismol-pink room, she shivered in the chilly old-house air. Falling in love had nothing to do with haunted houses. Nothing good had anything to do with haunted houses. Not that Sabrina had been inside many, but her mom had instilled the fear of God in her when it came to messing with violent forces. Her mother believed that your thoughts formed reality. If that were true, then her mother’s thoughts had ended with her mother’s death, her father’s illness, and her world crumbling to its barest essential: Sabrina and her sister, alone, with her sister caring for Sabrina the way they knew how.
Growing up, Sabrina’s home had stunk of sage and had been littered with crystals and rocks. Her mother had tucked a new stone into Sabrina’s pocket each morning, usually the ones she claimed brought love or beauty.
Sabrina understood none of it, and when her mother died, Sabrina buried her nose in science books and forgot the smells of the cleansing herb.
• • •
The haunted manor didn’t smell like burning sage. Instead, it smelled like mildew, pine, old quilts, mothballs, and something sour and unnameable. Sabrina scrunched up her nose as she lay back in the bed she’d been assigned. In the hall, she heard Charity and Linda talking. The pang of jealousy that moved through her belly made her laugh at herself. The way that Linda looked at Charity wasn’t the way Linda looked at Sabrina; it was more similar to the way that Sabrina looked at Tristan. As their voices drifted down the hall, a knock sounded on Sabrina’s door.
She shook herself awake and answered. Deja stood on the other side. “Can I come in?” the woman asked as she breezed into the room. For once, she wasn’t followed by a camera. For once, Deja shut the door to the eyes of other people. She sat on the edge of Sabrina’s bed as Sabrina sat up.
“Make yourself at home,” Sabrina said.
Deja tilted her head. “You’re not the funny one. That’s not your role.”
“My role?”
“Surely, you’ve thought about your role?” Deja reached out and smoothed Sabrina’s hair at her part.
“I was about to take a nap,” Sabrina said.
“You can’t sleep on this opportunity.” Deja sucked her teeth. “You know, I worked my ass off to get here. You understand? I started as an assistant to some other producer. Real gem of a man. An ass-man, thank God. Ask me how I know. And it took years to get a camera gig. It took more than I thought I’d ever give a job. Now, I’m producer. Ringleader of this circus. I didn’t climb. I clawed. But it was my dream. What’s your dream, Sabrina?”
Sabrina frowned. “I want to find love.”
“No. Your real dream.”
“That’s real,” she said. “It’s what my sister and I—”
“You aren’t going to win this. You do realize that?”
Sabrina’s stomach turned. She had as much of a chance as anyone else. Her sister wouldn’t have sent her to a task that she was incapable of completing. Tristan wouldn’t have kept her if he didn’t see something in her.
“Oh, honey. You’re here because it looks good for you to be here. Makes Tristan look less shallow to consider someone with hips. You think the people higher up than me care about you?” Even though Sabrina tried to move back, Deja’s fingers wrapped around her chin before she could. “You’re not going to win. But you can make a name for yourself. This kind of exposure? It leads to things. Money things. Money’s the goal. It should be, anyway. That’s all we’ve got, women like us.”
“So, you want me to leave?” Sabrina said. “If I’m not going to win?” She choked back a cry. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who cried in front of powerful women.
“No. I want you to fight. You’re not going to win, but you can show these producers that you’re worth investing in. Be bold, Sabrina. Cause trouble. Give us some damn good TV.” As Deja let go, a grin spread across her face. “Earn me that big, final promotion, yeah?”
After Deja left, Sabrina stared at the empty space her body left behind. Deja was a powerful woman; her absence registered in a room. Sabrina would never be that kind of powerful, but, like her mother, she could exude intention. She could sneak her way into his heart. She could start a little fire, unnoticeable until it burned the whole house down. And when Tristan came to her rescue, she could kiss him so hard it sucked the air out of his lungs.
Chapter Seven
Linda
For dinner, Deja had forced the two camerawomen to dress in long muted-green and ocher dresses, with high lace collars. They served the four cast members and Tristan while the two cameramen and Deja filmed.
“This ghost town was founded in the 1880s,” Tristan said, glowing with the expulsion of knowledge. “We thought it would be fun to eat like pioneers.”
“I love it,” Marion cooed.
“This butter here was made at the ranch ninety miles south.” Tristan picked up the butter dish and displayed it to the table—and the cameras.
“You know, my uncle has a ranch in Texas,” Marion said.
