Chapter 39

The house looks condemned when we get to it: plywood boarded over every window, driveway already thick with plants ripped from their roots and palm fronds blown from the sky. The property manager is waiting for us inside: a tall, thin man in a baseball cap holding a flashlight. He apologizes to my mother four times in a row, like he called down this hurricane himself.

“Y’all stay in the office,” he says. “Fewest windows in the house. Lots of flashlights in the TV console.”

I glance at Silas; his arms are folded over his chest. There’s something I need to tell you, he’d murmured through the door in Nashville. I think of all the things I’d tell him, if I were brave.

“You got a dog in here?” The property manager looks between us, and Silas lifts a hand.

“Yeah, she’s mine.”

“Don’t let her get outside, all right? One bad clap of thunder, she spooks and you never hear from her again. Seen it a hundred times.”

Silas swallows, looking over the guy’s shoulder like he wants to get eyes on Puddles ASAP.

“And that goes for all of you.” The property manager hands his big yellow flashlight to Mags and makes for the front door. “Stay inside till it’s over. Storm always ends, you just got to ride it out and be smart.”

“Thank you,” Mags says. When the front door closes behind him, the house feels cavernous and forbidding.

Silas says, “I’m going to grab Puddles.”

Cleo says, “I have an idea.”

“I found it this morning.”

Cleo smooths a hand over the Ouija board, set in the center of the circle we’ve made of our bodies. The house’s office is cool and sprawling, and we sit in its middle on the plush carpet. As far from the two windows as we can get. They’re boarded and dark. “In the linen closet off the kitchen.”

“How do we play?” my mother asks. She’s directly across from me, next to Silas. He has Puddles in his lap and it’s taking every ounce of my resolve not to look at him.

Cleo’s mouth drops open. “You’ve never Ouija’d?”

Mom shrugs. She’s still in her show clothes: white slacks, blue blouse with raindrops drying at the shoulders. “Can’t say that I have.”

“It’s a spirit board.” Cleo’s words run into each other, like she’s so excited she can’t get them out quickly enough. In the stark yellow of the flashlight on her face, her eyelashes look spiders’-leg long. “We put our fingertips on the planchette and ask a question, and the dead tell us what they know from beyond.”

I think my mother’s going to scoff—it’s what I’m trying not to do. But she smiles in the shadowy light and shimmies her shoulders like a kid at a birthday party, the excitement wiggling right out of her.

“We should light candles,” she says, and a clap of thunder booms above us so loudly it nearly drowns her out. She’s already standing. “I saw some in the master bathroom.”

“I’ll help,” Mags says, and then they’re gone.

“Wow.” Cleo places the planchette in the center of the board. “She’s amped.”

“I haven’t played this since I was in high school,” Sadie says. We’re supposed to see a dermatologist tomorrow, but I imagine that’s not happening now. “My sister asked for the name of my future husband and instead of spelling something out it just said ‘no.’”

Cleo snorts. “Incredible.”

“I guess I should’ve known,” Sadie laughs. “But of course I just thought it was telling me I’d die alone.”

Mick glances at his phone, bright in the dark. “Can you believe we’re about to play Ouija with Camilla St. Vrain during a hurricane? A video of this whole situation would do numbers. This is the shame of all shames.”

Cleo lets out a sympathetic noise, and when I look at Mick I realize that for someone so wired to social media, he’s been uncharacteristically private this summer. “You haven’t posted about her,” I say, and everyone turns to look at me. “Not once since the tour started.”

“Of course not.” Mick swipes open his phone camera just as we hear Mags and my mom open the door. “We signed NDAs. Doesn’t mean I can’t record it for myself, though.”

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before; of course they signed NDAs. What’s happening here isn’t normal—it’s a business arrangement, and one they aren’t even allowed to talk about.

“That’s more like it,” my mother says, settling back into her place in the circle. She sets a candle on either side of the board, and I don’t point out to her that now we’re all at risk of burning our wrists when we touch the planchette.

“Do you believe in this stuff?” Sadie asks, looking over at her. Their eyes meet, and in the flicker of candlelight the way they smile at one another feels like a mirror. It occurs to me that I’m not the only one who’s grown closer to Camilla this summer.

“In another plane beyond our mortal world?” Mom says, leaning sideways to nudge her shoulder into Sadie’s. “Sure.”

“I guess I more meant the premeditation of it,” Sadie says. “That someone in the great beyond might know our futures before we do.”

“Like fate’s a book everyone gets to read when they die,” Cleo says. Mick angles his phone to catch her face in the candlelight. “And only us mortals have to learn the story as it comes.”

“I’m not sure.” My mother looks at me, smiling. “I don’t suppose there’s any harm in imagining that, though, is there?”

“It’s kind of comforting,” Silas says. He’s running a hand over Puddles’s wrinkly head, her eyes closed under his palm. “That someone knows how the story goes, even though it’s going to be what it’s going to be.”

“Why do you always say that?” Finally, like a magnet catching by inevitable force, Silas looks at me. Everyone else does, too. “‘It’ll be what it’ll be.’ It takes away our freedom of choice. Leaves us no agency at all.”

“Oh,” he says flatly, “you’re talking to me now?”

The silence that drops over us is like the power going out at the theater: unnatural. A strange break in the order of things. Sadie stares at Silas but he doesn’t look away from me. It feels like he’s punched me in the throat, though I know I deserve it.

My mother opens her mouth, but before she can get any words out there’s a crash from outside. The plywood has come loose from one of the windows—it wrenches and slams with the wind, letting in rain that lashes the glass.

“I’ll fix it,” Silas mutters. He drops Puddles into Cleo’s lap and before anyone has time to react he’s turning away, moving into the pooled darkness toward the office door.

“Wait, what?” My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else—someone shaken and unsure. Nashville Audrey. “Silas, wait.” I’ve stood up before I realize I’m doing it. “I’ll come, too.”