Sabrina shook her head as she slid into the blankets. “I’m beginning to believe…” She trailed off. Was she really about to admit—? “This isn’t an infection. Tristan, Marion. Brandon. Something has to connect them.”
“You’re not giving into the haunted house theory?” Linda scoffed, but Sabrina was starting to get better reads on her friend’s faked emotions, and there was something scared in Linda’s questions.
“Not exactly,” Sabrina said. “But something outside the realm of science.” She sucked in a gasp as her heartbeat skipped, a normal palpitation, a result of stress on her body.
“That’s ridiculous.” Charity groaned. “Remember who brought us here.”
Deja, who had to know more than she let on. Sabrina ran her hands along the journal she’d stuffed into the lip of her shorts. She tore at the last remaining polish on her nails as she put herself in the shoes of her sleeping companions. They would never believe her. She let the situation unfold around her. Her body would give in if she didn’t care for it. If the house was haunted, if the woods were vengeful, she’d need to save her energy for something more crucial than talking them into it. Plus, her mind would work better after a few hours shut-eye.
“I need to sleep,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Sleep’s like time travel.” Linda turned down the hall lights, and the three women rested outside Marion’s door. Sabrina hoped she would hear Marion should she leave in the night. In a freshly bitter way, she also hoped Marion would wake with her lips stuck together, unable to speak again. She tossed and turned until she drifted into some kind of slumber, her mind moving in a hundred strange directions. The house creaked and moaned beneath them, and for moments at a time, Sabrina felt as though she slept not on wood but atop undulating pillows of flesh. Then she would wake a little, and the wood would go hard beneath her again.
• • •
Sabrina woke coated in sweat so thick it was like she’d been swimming. And as she shook the wet droplets off her hands, she rose from the soaked-down blankets. She shivered as the cool hall air caressed her. She touched a fixture to test if the metal felt weird on her skin—a sign of fever—but she noted nothing out of the ordinary.
In Marion’s room, she pressed two fingers into the skin at her wrists, but she caught only the faintest pulse. When she pressed the same fingers into Marion’s neck instead, the woman groaned and swatted.
“I’m trying to help you,” Sabrina said.
Marion grabbed her wrist as Sabrina tried to count the beats of her rival’s heart.
“I knew you’d come back for me.” She rubbed her cheek against Sabrina’s hand. “I knew you’d be well again.”
Frowning, Sabrina pulled away. Marion’s pulse was slow, but she was a fit woman. It didn’t yet worry her. While Tristan was running a fever, Marion was cold to the touch. Their illnesses might be connected, but Sabrina didn’t understand how.
In Tristan’s room, lying still and hot, he seemed more helpless than he’d ever been with her. But it was she who was helpless, with no medical supplies, no way to carry him to safety. Even knowing the risk of contamination, she stretched beside him, pretending it was the end. It was over. She’d won.
Day Five
Chapter Thirty-Five
Linda
Charity and Linda napped unsoundly. When Charity nuzzled her head on Linda’s shoulder, Linda stroked her hair, and they drifted in and out of the world controlled by dreams. Even knowing she should be horrified at the events unfolding, Linda thrilled to touch the woman. The last few days had been long and terrible, but like Charity had admitted, they had been excellent, too.
Once her legs ached from the hard floor, she shrugged out of the makeshift sleeping bag and ventured downstairs for breakfast. Through the foyer windows, the first sunrise painted the sky like a still-life of egg and smoke. As seconds passed, the manor danced with color. It was an odd hour, but time meant nothing—only the day, number five, which told her they had two days to go before rescue.
In the dining room, Sabrina hunched over a bowl of dry oats.
“Those taste better if you heat them, you know.” Linda slid into the chair beside her. “Preferably, with some water. Or milk.”
“Too much work.”
Linda slipped the bowl from under Sabrina’s nose. She took it to the stove. She filled a pot with water and set it to boil. She waited. The silence was kind now. It seemed like forever since it was tense. When Linda finished cooking the oats, she poured the porridge back into the bowl and presented it to Sabrina, but Sabrina didn’t take a bite. Instead, her chest folded onto the table, knocking the oatmeal to the ground.
“You really never wanted Tristan?” Sabrina said.
“I never did.” Linda went to the counter and uncorked an old bottle of wine, then poured it into two orange juice glasses. She set one beneath Sabrina’s nose. “But I want him to get better.”
Sabrina nodded and tilted her glass against her lips, letting the wine drain down her throat.
“Hey, question: why do you want Tristan so much?” Linda said. “The real reason.”
Sabrina breathed in deep and set her empty glass down. “It’s what I was born to do.”
“Girl, what?” Linda leaned in. “You weren’t born to be on reality TV.”
Sabrina nodded. “My mother wished so hard for me to marry rich and well, to save the family through my looks alone, that it had to come true one day. It was her intention. It was what we both wanted.”
“Intention? You sound like you took The Secret to heart.”
“She wasn’t a new-age faker. She put her energy into the world, and it came back to her.”
“Good things just happen. So do bad things. It’s not energy and intentions.” Linda shook her head. Back at The Groom mansion, Linda’s new nurse friend was rational, a woman who came on the show because she was having trouble meeting a man. A professional woman with a good head on her shoulders. The house wasn’t haunted, but it had possessed Sabrina. “The world is founded on rational explanations.”
“Then what’s happening here?” Sabrina knocked against the wall. “That goo that came out of the walls, the noises, Brandon hanging himself, Tristan?”
“Honestly, those things aren’t what scare me the most.”
“Then what scares you?”
“You.”
Sabrina’s forehead creased. “Why me?”
Linda took Sabrina’s hand. Sabrina tried to let go, but Linda held tight. “This place has done something to you. You’re not destined to wed Tristan because your mom wanted you to get married someday.”
