The Harrowing

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was something anticlimactic about trooping upstairs, carrying candles from Martin’s table to light their way. The moving candlelight was disorienting, they had to feel their way up along the banisters in the darkness. The stairs creaked more than Robin had ever noticed in the daylight world.

No one spoke. After all their intimacy it was as if they were strangers again. Almost as if we’re ashamed…

Robin was dying to ask, to compare notes, to see if anyone would even acknowledge what had happened. Did it only happen to me? Her face flushed with a sudden paranoia. Are the rest of them all in on it together, setting me up?

With a flash of unease, she remembered the books on the table in front of Martin: Psychoanalysis and the Occult. Dreams and Telepathy.

Was it all going to turn out to be some horrible, humiliating trick?

Robin caught a glimpse of Patrick’s face, startlingly coarse and crude in the candlelight, and she turned away quickly, disturbed.

As they reached the third-floor landing, Martin stopped and turned, about to speak, but Patrick broke the silence first, stretching suggestively. “Well, ladies, I hate to sleep alone on a holiday. What do you say, Marlowe?”

Lisa deftly avoided the arm he tried to drape around her, shot back at him, “You wouldn’t be able to handle me after Miss Tri Delt.”

Patrick leered toward her. “I bet Martin could use a good mauling.”

Martin ducked his head and skittered off into the dark of the boys’ wing.

Lisa exploded. “God, you’re an asshole.”

“You want him back? I can arrange it—for a cut—”

Lisa slapped Patrick viciously across the face. There was a stunned, frozen beat, then in a split second Patrick had grabbed her arm and pinned her against the wall, pressing his body into hers. Both were breathing hard; Lisa’s eyes flamed with fury. The sex between them was palpable.

Robin was frozen against the opposite wall, invisible.

Patrick smiled slowly, pushed back off the wall, releasing Lisa.

“Not worth the sperm.”

“You’ll never know,” Lisa snarled after him as he sauntered off into his own wing. She whirled and slammed through the door of the girls’ wing without a word to Robin.

Robin stood in the juncture of halls, feeling abandoned, bereft. After a moment, she stepped after Lisa into the pitch-black of the girls’ wing—and froze, her heart pounding.

A taper floated before her in the darkness of the hall.

Robin caught her breath, then realized the candle was her own, reflected in a mirror down the hall.

She turned and saw Lisa standing against the wall, watching her obliquely, the light from her own candle flickering on her face. “Want to sleep in my room?” she asked suddenly.

Robin was caught off guard—flooded with paranoia again. Was this part of the game? Get Robin to her room and scare the shit out of her later, when she was asleep?

Then Robin flashed back to the electric feeling of the planchette under her fingers, the ominous quotation the board had spelled out in the end—“The most evil of those half-tamed demons”—and realized that no matter what prank Lisa could dream up, it couldn’t be worse than going back to her room alone.

She nodded briefly. “Okay.”

Lisa started down the long hall, and Robin trailed her in the dark to a door with—

A window? Robin thought for a moment, startled. She looked closer at the door and realized it was a painting of a window frame, looking out on a desert landscape at night, sand dunes stretched out under a huge moon.

Interesting. We’re all so much more interesting than anyone would have guessed.

Lisa handed Robin her candle so she could unlock the door. She pushed it open and let Robin by—into a room like a Moroccan harem.

For a moment, Robin forgot her suspicions and looked around her in wonder at twin beds pushed together to form one big lush bed, draped veils, tin-framed mirrors on the wall, a carved wood screen, big pillows on the floor. Books lay open everywhere, overflowing ashtrays beside them. Robin noticed a Madonna CD case open on top of the dresser. Not what I would have expected of Lisa at all. So Martin was right, she realized, startled. Or did he know Lisa before tonight? She felt another sickening wave of paranoia.

Robin turned and caught Lisa watching her narrowly.

“You have a private?” Robin asked, flustered.

Lisa widened her eyes in mock innocence. “Can’t seem to keep a roommate. Oh well.” She grinned at Robin, tossed her a T-shirt to sleep in. She pulled her own torn sweater over her head, then peeled off her camisole with deliberate languor, exposing a Celtic tattoo on her left breast.

She turned to examine herself in the dresser mirror, stroking her stomach, trailing her hands down her waist. She held Robin’s eyes in the reflection.

God, everything’s an act with you, isn’t it? Robin thought. But there was a charge in the room, electric and titillating.

Irritated, Robin moved to the bed, set her candle on the bed table, and unzipped her skirt.

So we ‘re not going to talk about tonight at all, then?

As she slid off her skirt, Waverly’s prescription bottle fell from the pocket and rolled on the floor, rattling. Robin reached for it, her face hot with shame, but Lisa was too quick for her. She scooped it up and looked at the pills with an expert eye, then turned her gaze to Robin, speculatively.

“How many were you going to take? All of them, or just enough to get you some attention?”

Lisa gasped as Robin grabbed her wrist, held it hard. “I won’t tell. You were moving it, weren’t you?”

Lisa’s eyebrows quirked. She smiled thinly. “Sweetie pie, I swear I thought you were.”

They looked at each other for a long moment Robin felt chilled. Then Lisa shrugged, her eyes sparkling. “Well, well, well. This could get interesting.”

She climbed into bed, flashing long bare legs, and snuggled under the covers.

Robin sat slowly on the other side, confused—and strangely exhilarated.

Lisa twisted down on the cap of Waverly’s prescription bottle and popped a pill, then offered it to Robin. “Valium?”

Robin shook her head.

Lisa leaned to her bed table to blow out the nearest candles, then paused, her face wreathed with the flickering glow. She called out brightly into the shadows, “Night night Zachary. Sweet dreams.” She huffed the candles out.