Chapter 13
The tumbler didn't shatter. It tipped hard against the arm of the beige chair and cracked straight down its side, and the amber liquid ran out in a slow, thick line across the rectangular pillow and down onto the rug. The smell hit instantly — sweet and sharp, like cheap whiskey cut with something chemical.
The man in black didn't raise his voice. He just stared at the spill.
"That's wasteful," he said. His calm cracked for the first time. He stepped forward fast and righted the glass with one hand, his fingers tight around it. "Please stay seated."
Behind the armchair, the line broke.
I'd only ever seen the four of them standing shoulder to shoulder, leaning forward, staring. Now the one on the far left took a half step out. Then the second. Their white dresses brushed the wood paneling and they weren't staring straight ahead anymore. They were looking at me, and at the spill, and at the space they'd been blocking.
The nearest one spoke, and her voice wasn't the layered warning anymore. It was single. Clear.
"Get it," she whispered. "Before he cleans it."
The man was already moving toward the dark wood door, the cracked tumbler in his hand. "I'll pour you a fresh one. You were nervous. I understand."
He disappeared into the hallway for three seconds — just long enough that I could hear a bottle clink against glass in the next room.
I slipped off the armchair and dropped to my knees. My sage green dress pooled around me on the rug. The rectangular pillow was soaked through, and underneath it, the seat cushion had a dark stain that wasn't from tonight.
Behind the chair, in the narrow gap between its back and the wood paneling where the warm spotlights didn't quite reach, something was caught.
I reached in. My hand hit dust and then cloth.
It was a square of fabric, dirty white, the same thin material as their dresses. Folded under it was another glass. Not the clear tumbler he used. An older one, short and heavy, with a chipped rim. Inside it, the amber liquid had dried to a dark, sticky ring. And scratched into the bottom of the glass, faint but there, were four small lines. Four marks.
"Four glasses," the ghost closest to me said. She was crouched now too, though she didn't touch the floor. Her pale gray skin looked less flat up close. I could see the dark makeup smudged at the corners of her eyes like she'd been crying. "We each left one. He never looks back there. He thinks if he keeps the chair facing forward, no one will."
"What do I do with it?" I whispered. My throat was dry. I could hear the man pouring in the other room, the liquid glugging slow.
"Don't let him give you a new one," she said. Her hand hovered over the old glass, not quite touching it. The other three were gathered now, no longer a line, forming a loose half-circle behind me like they were shielding me from the door. "Make him use the cracked one. Make him drink first. That's the rule he broke. He never drinks. If he has to taste it, it turns."
The man came back in. He held a fresh pour — same clear tumbler, now full again to the same perfect level, the crack somehow gone. A new glass. He'd replaced it.
He stopped when he saw me on the floor.
"What are you doing back there?" His polite smile was still there but his jaw was tight. He set the new tumbler down on the side table hard enough that it shivered. "Get up. Please. You're making this difficult."
I stood, my knees shaking, the dirty cloth still in my fist. I didn't show him the old glass. I left it hidden behind the chair leg.
He picked up the new tumbler and extended it toward me again, exactly like before, his arm straight, his calm forced back into place.
"Welcome," he said, and his voice had that practiced warmth again. "Please make yourself comfortable, have this drink."
The four women behind me didn't move. The one who had spoken gave me the smallest nod. Her lips formed the words without sound: Make him.
May you like
I didn't take the glass. I looked at the crack that was no longer there, at his steady hand, and at the wet stain spreading across his rug.
"No," I said. "You have it first."
