Page 39 of The Unknown

Interesting.

“So you’re neither?” I say.

“Or both?” Susie adds.

The glass edges away from the tile before looping back to it. Another no. Fine, the others have copped out on answering the question. I resist an eye roll.

“Azra, what happened to the women who were here before us?” Susie says, returning to a question with another obvious answer.

The glass moves faster now, zipping to the letters located between me and Violet, quickly skipping among four of them.

D-E-A-D

Of course.

All of us assumed this.

“How did they die?” Julianne says, displaying no sense of irony, no awareness that this is entirely predictable. Even though she’s the most superstitious among us, she can’t actually think this is real. But when I glance at some of the others, I see the same solemn, expectant expression on the faces of Susie and even Violet. Her gaze follows the glass as it slides around the table. She silently mouths each letter it pauses at, spelling out a word that should surprise no one.

“‘Killed,’” Violet says when the glass finally rests at theDplaced between the two of us.

“Do you know who did it?” I say, forcing them back to a question for which there is no obvious answer.

The glass immediately shoots to theYEStile. Another cop-out. One that brings to mind an improv class I took two summers ago and its overused mantra:Yes, and…?

“Azra,” I say, “will you please tell us, specifically, who killed them?”

I’m surprised when the glass begins sliding without hesitation. I was expecting another pause. Instead, it bops all around the table, wasting no time in spelling out one word.

L-E-A-V-E

Then another.

N-O-W

“‘Leave now,’” Julianne says with a noticeable shudder.

The glass continues to move, repeating the pattern two more times.

“Which one of you is doing this?” Heather says as it begins a third.

“Not me,” Susie says.

Violet shushes them, her eyes wide with wonder. “I think—I think this is real.”

It’s not.

It can’t be.

This is exactly what Brad said it is. Subconscious groupthink in which a hundred tiny muscle spasms move the glass exactly where we want it to go. The only way to prove it is to trick Azra—a.k.a. everyone else—into providing an incorrect answer.

“Someone ask something no one else would know,” I say. “Only you.”

Heather shoots me a withering look across the table. “And how will that prove anything?”

“If this is just our collective subconscious telling us things we already know, then we need to test it.”

“Fine,” Heather says with a sigh. “Azra or whoever you are, tell us the name of my oldest cousin.”