Chapter 15
He held the tumbler out again. His hand didn't shake. The amber liquid caught the warm ceiling light and threw a small, clean reflection onto the wood paneling behind him.
I hadn't moved from the beige armchair. The rectangular pillow was still pressed against my lower back, damp where I'd been leaning. The four women stood behind the chair. I could feel them more than see them now, that still, staring closeness. My hands were empty. He wanted them full again.
"Have this drink," he said. His voice was the same as before, calm and polite. "Please make yourself comfortable."
I looked at the glass. Up close I could smell it. It wasn't whiskey. It was sweet and chemical, like flat soda left in a hot car, with something bitter underneath. My throat tightened just breathing it in.
The ghosts had told me what it did. Not all at once, but I'd pieced it together over the last two nights in that room. It didn't knock you out. It quieted you. It made your skin go pale and gray, your hair lank, your voice thin. It made you stand behind the chair for the next girl and repeat the warning you were too late to follow yourself. You will be like us.
I said, "No."
He smiled a little, patient. "You're being difficult."
"I'm not thirsty," I said. The same line I'd used at the start. This time I meant it differently.
He stepped closer. The tumbler was inches from my chest, from the front buttons of my sage green dress. He tilted it slightly toward me, like he could tip it into my hands.
Behind me, one of the women made a sound. Not words. Just breath.
I didn't take the glass. I reached past it.
For two days I'd watched how he held it. Always in his right hand, always at the same angle, like a tray. He never drank it himself. He never spilled it. He kept the dark wood door shut without locking it, because no one who drank ever tried to open it.
My right hand went to the bottom of the tumbler. My left went to the rim. I didn't grab it to hold it. I grabbed it to turn it.
He realized a half-second too late. His fingers tightened but I was already twisting, hard, up and over toward him.
The amber liquid arced out. It hit the front of his black shirt and his chin and splashed across the beige armchair's armrest. He made a sharp, surprised inhale and stepped back. The glass was still in my hands.
"What are you doing?" he said. His calm cracked. It wasn't loud. It was flat and angry.
I could see it working where it touched him. The fabric of his shirt darkened and the skin on his throat where a few drops had landed went suddenly pale, then grayish. He wiped at it with his sleeve and his hand came away dull, like dust.
So that was it. It wasn't for drinking only. It was for keeping. And it didn't care who it quieted.
I stood up. My legs shook so bad I had to put a hand on the armchair to steady myself. The four women hadn't moved, but their eyes were on me now, not on him.
He lunged for the tumbler.
I didn't think. I turned and threw it.
I aimed for the dark wood door behind him. The clear glass hit the paneling just beside the frame and shattered. It was a clean, loud break in the soft indoor ambience. Shards and amber liquid sprayed across the wood floor and the bottom of the door. The smell bloomed stronger, sour-sweet.
He froze. He stared at the broken glass on the floor, at the wet stain spreading into the grain of the wood.
For the first time since I'd sat down in that room, the house made a different sound. A low sigh went through the living room, like air coming back into a room that had been sealed.
Behind me, the stillness broke.
I turned. The four women weren't staring straight ahead anymore. One by one, their shoulders dropped. The dark makeup around their eyes seemed to soften. The gray in their skin lightened, just enough that I could see they had been girls with color once. One of them, the closest to the chair, looked directly at me and nodded. Not a warning. A thank you.
Then they thinned. Not vanished all at once like a trick. They faded at the edges, like breath on a window clearing. The dirty white of their dresses went paler and paler until the warm ceiling spotlights shone right through them to the wood paneling beyond. In three heartbeats they were gone. The space behind the beige armchair was just space.
The man was on his knees now. He was trying to wipe the liquid off his shirt and hands, but it was already drying. His skin had taken on that same flat, pale gray. He looked up at me, and his polite face was empty. He tried to speak and his voice came out thin and hoarse. "Please—"
I didn't answer. I stepped around the broken glass, careful of the shards in my low shoes, and put my hand on the dark wood door. The handle was warm from the ceiling lights. It turned easily.
It opened onto a small hallway. Normal hallway. White walls, a light switch, the sound of a highway far off through a window I hadn't known was there. Apartment building hallway. Not a trap.
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I looked back once. The living room was still there, the beige armchair with its rectangular pillow stained amber on one arm, the shattered tumbler glittering on the floor, the man kneeling in his black clothes, paler and stiller by the second, his eyes fixed straight ahead at nothing.
I walked out. My hands were still shaking. My dress was wrinkled where I'd clutched it. But my skin was my own color. My breath was my own. I pulled the dark wood door shut behind me and didn't drink anything he gave me.
