Page 43 of Waysider
House Shadowripper was on the outskirts of campus.
Finch walked on Cass’s right, and Bradley was on her left. Their voices floated through the night in an excited, never-ending stream. Candice and Tammy had opted to stay behind. Justin vanished before they’d even left the house, of course.
They passed other students on the path, and Cass tried to block out their conversations, too. It was the same one Finch and Bradley were having.
Everyone was talking about the body that had been found.
Cass didn’t want to think about it. She still didn’t want to think about what happened in class, either. But if she blocked out her thoughts, she heard what her roommates were talking about, and if she tried to ignore them, she started thinking about all those glowing threads on the music box and hearing Professor Horn’s voice snapping, Don’t touch it!
As a result, she’d picked up bits and pieces about the Chapel Victim, which was apparently what everyone was already calling her. The police had been called, and the entire area was cordoned off, but that hadn’t prevented information from slipping out. So far, they knew the victim had been a student here. A girl. The circumstances of her death were unknown, in any official capacity. They all knew, though—someone had to put her in that wall. And Cass could still hear the sound of her wet, broken sobs from the day of the earthquake. The day she’d finally broken free of her prison.
“Here we are!” Finch said, her voice a pitch higher than usual. Cass pulled her mind back to the present and glanced over at her roommate. Finch’s smile was overly big as she arched her head back and gazed upward. Cass looked up, too.
The house itself was a dark green, with a black-painted porch and purple-framed windows. The effect was meant to be charming, Cass thought, but the thick clusters of ivy had a menacing look. Their small band of misfits went up the porch steps, and Cass could already hear music coming from inside. This moment was as familiar to her as climbing out a window or making out with someone in the backseat of a car, and yet, Cass’s sense of unease only grew. It was all she could do not to turn around and go right back to House Wayside.
A girl sat beside the front door. She held a wad of cash in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There was a tattoo on her hand, a small shape on the skin between her thumb and index finger. She wore a cropped bolero-style jacket and thick eyeliner. Cass didn’t see a pin anywhere on the girl’s clothing. Her legs went on for miles, but somehow, she made sitting on a small stool look effortless. Someone stood in front of her, and the Waysiders stopped, listening to their interaction in silence.
“Not a chance, you child,” the Shadowripper said in a bored tone. The other girl burst into tears and ran down the porch steps, brushing past Cass and her roommates. The supermodel rolled her eyes. “Fucking Dreamwalkers. So emotional. You can go in.”
It took Cass a moment to realize she was talking to them. Apparently Finch had been taken by surprise, too, because her voice was unnaturally high again as she blurted, “We can?”
“Yeah. Sin told me he invited you. Wayside, right? You have that confused look. Like abandoned kittens.” The girl lost interest in them, her gaze shifting to the cluster of boys that were coming up the steps. “Get lost, Saunders.”
“This is discrimination!” one of the boys protested. His three friends made sounds and shouts of agreement, clustering on the stairs behind him.
The Shadowripper’s eyes narrowed. “No, it’s learning from past mistakes. You never did replace our coffee table from the last time, and we had to cover that giant hole in the wall with a poster of Tom Cruise. I hate Tom Cruise.”
Cass and her roommates went inside, and the argument on the porch cut short when Bradley closed the door. “I Melt With You” greeted them. The party was already in full swing, and there were red Solo cups everywhere. Cass smelled a burst of sweat, hairspray, and beer.
“This is totally tubular,” Finch whispered, looking around as if she’d never seen anything like it before. Cass watched her roommate, smiling a little. Her smile faded when a terrible squealing sound cut through the music. As Cass winced, a voice boomed through the house, nearly unintelligible because of the microphone feedback.
“Uh oh. Did I hear someone say the word ‘soul?’” Bradley asked.
Cass shrugged. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”
Finch shook her head. “They know better. The last time someone tried to have the soul debate—”
“Einstein’s theory,” someone announced. A collective groan traveled through the room.
“Piper, please, not tonight,” another voice said, the tone pleading.
They reached a wide doorway, where a huge crowd had gathered. A girl stood at the front of the room. Her arms shifted in exaggerated movements as she spoke, making her plastic bangles clack. “…all energy beings on the quantum level,” she said. “We’re made up of atoms and neutrons. We have an energy aura that surrounds our living bodies. This aura is created by the millions of electrical currents that are created through our bodies. Our brains create waves, a form of pure energy that is transmitting our thoughts, what we see, what we feel.”
“Take the microphone from her!” a male voice called.
Piper ignored her hecklers and stepped over a wire, tugging at it so the long cord was behind her. The microphone released another high shriek, and everyone in the room groaned or winced. Piper just sniffed and pushed her black-rimmed glasses to the bridge of her nose.
“When we die,” she continued, “the aura that constantly surrounds our bodies leaves. We lose six ounces on the instance of death. What is this six ounces, huh? There’s only one obvious answer. This energy, this aura, or you may even call it your soul, is carrying the information of what we used to be. If it can do this, then why couldn’t it also carry our intelligence? If it can carry our former intelligence of our previous life, then it should be able to interact with us intelligently. When we see this aura, we call it a revenant. But there’s—”
Someone else had finally grabbed the microphone. Piper tried to wrench it away. They were still struggling when Cass lost interest, turning away to explore the rest of the house. Bradley and Finch were so absorbed at the spectacle that neither of them seemed to notice as she left.
As she put the living room behind her, the music’s volume rose again. Cass felt it pound through her bones, and there was something comforting about the sensation. In the past, she’d liked being at the center of a party, and she thrived in the middle of a crowd, but she also had a habit of wandering. There were times it felt compulsive, as if Cass had no choice whenever the urge stole over her. She felt it now, and she gave in, hoping it would make her feel more like herself. Small images and details imprinted on her mind, pushing out everything else. She saw the bright end of a cigarette, tendrils of smoke rising into the air. A boy with a rattail spilled beer on her arm, its cold splash a welcome relief from the suffocating heat. Cass caught a glimpse of a girl’s bared breast as she passed a couple practically fucking in the hall.
The girl’s eyes widened at the sight of her. “Holy shit, are you the—”
Cass ignored her and kept going, shouldering past. Seconds later, she found herself entering the kitchen. It was huge, even bigger than the one at Wayside. Cass looked around curiously, noting the black and white tiles, the oak cabinets, the row of stools tucked beneath the counter. She caught herself wondering if Sinister ever sat on those stools. She also wondered about the other Shadowrippers that lived here.
There was no sign of them now, whoever they were. Of all the people in here, filling the space with their voices and laughter, there only seemed to be voyants from every other house. Their pins flashed and glinted. A butterfly, a tree, a rose. But no snakes.
