The Taking (32 page)

Her head tilted and she frowned. “What?”

“Stop using slang,” Nelson whispered behind him.

Shit, of course. “I’ll have Mr. Tradd escorted out immediately,” Chris said, channeling his inner butler. “Is there anything else you want?”

She nodded vigorously. “I want to
die.
”

It was such a plaintive plea, so heartfelt, and anguished, that had she not been squatting in the body of his best friend, Chris would have felt sympathy for her.

“I want to be with them. I don’t want him to own me anymore.”

What the hell was he supposed to say to that? He didn’t want to make Camille angry, and while he wanted to encourage her to leave, he didn’t want that to somehow harm Regan. So he just said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Nelson exclaimed to him in a whisper from behind the video camera. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

Chris shrugged at him. “I panicked!”

Regan crumpled over, face in her hands. When she stood upright again, it was her face, her expression of confusion, her frown. “Chris?” She looked down at herself. “Why am I standing in my bra and panties?” She glanced over to Nelson. “Nelson! Why are you filming me in my bra and panties?”

“You don’t remember what just happened?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Was I sleepwalking? Awake?”

The fear on her face had Chris closing the distance between them and handing her his glass of champagne. “Here, drink this. You’re going to be fine. Nelson, would you mind running down and grabbing Felix?”

Maybe mojo man could explain to them why Regan’s face had melted like plastic into someone else’s.

“And bring more booze up with you,” he added.

He had a feeling they were going to need it.

“How long have I been up here?” Regan asked, after draining Chris’s glass and handing it back to him.

She stepped back into her skirt and zipped it. “I should get back downstairs.” She felt disoriented, but it seemed really, really important to not abandon her guests, especially when the alternative was to actually think about and process what had just happened.

“It’s only been a few minutes,” Chris said. “The food and the alcohol are flowing so no one is going to miss you for another five. Besides, Jen is down there.”

“I had a headache,” she told him, retrieving her blouse from the floor and slipping it on. “Beau showed up and I had a run-in with him.”

Just stick to the facts. Regan felt weak and shaky and, frankly, frightened. But if she ignored the fact that she seemed now to have taken up sleepwalking while awake, maybe it would go away. It was a futile hope, she knew. The unnerving episodes had been escalating, but what was she supposed to do about it?

“Regan. Something totally weird just happened. We need to talk about it.”

Desperate, she tried to button her shirt, irritated that her fingers were trembling. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

Damn it, she couldn’t get the button into the hole and she was going to cry. “Beau said he owned this house before me, Chris. What if it’s true? What if the house I love, my dream house, was owned by my asshole of an ex-husband?”

“Alcroft owned this house?” Felix asked in a shocked voice as he entered the bedroom, Nelson trailing behind him. “Jesus, that explains a lot”

“It does?” Chris said. “It only confuses me. Beau doesn’t have the money to buy a place like this, and if he did, why was it a secret, and how in the hell is it possible that out of all the properties for sale, Regan would buy the very one he owns?”

Felix moved toward her and took over the task of securing the buttons she had abandoned. His presence was reassuring, his words were not. “This house wanted you, Regan. That’s why you loved it, felt compelled to buy it.”

A chill swept over her. “What is that supposed to mean? How could a house want me?”

“Camille’s spirit. She wanted a voice, and it seems she’s found one through you. Sit down,
cherie
, and let’s watch the video Nelson has.”

His voice was so gentle Regan was even more alarmed. Something crazy was on that tape. Otherwise Felix wouldn’t look like he was prepared to calm her forthcoming hysterics.

“Did it actually record?” Chris asked.

Nelson nodded. “I showed Felix already.”

Regan sank onto the edge of her bed, digging her nails into the flesh of her exposed knees. Something was wrong with her. She had known it since the minute she’d moved into the house. The dreams, the visions, the sleepwalking ... it wasn’t normal. If it was a haunting, which she preferred to think it was as opposed to it being her increasing insanity, it seemed more invasive than the stories she had read about and seen on TV documentaries.

Felix sat on one side of her, Nelson the other, the camera in front of them. Chris climbed onto the bed behind her, viewing over her shoulder.

Nelson hit PLAY and there was Chris on the screen, rolling his eyes and making a snarky remark about Beau. Then it cut to her bedroom, to her standing there staring at someone just slightly to Nelson’s left, Chris presumably.

Only it wasn’t her.

Regan made a strangled noise and leaned closer, touching the screen. That wasn’t her face, even though it was her hair, her body, her bra and panties. Something was... off. “Can you make this bigger?”

Nelson fiddled with the camera and suddenly the screen zoomed in on Regan, framing her face. Or what should have been her face. The eyes were rounder, the face more heart-shaped, the nose shorter, the very color of her complexion a richer tone, that of a blonde, not the pink pale ivory of Regan’s brunette skin tone. It was the most profoundly disturbing thing she’d ever seen, and the icy prickles of fear crawled up her back.

“Oh, my God ... I don’t understand. How could that happen? What is it?”

It wasn’t even like her own face was distorted, like a funhouse mirror. This wasn’t her. It was as if someone else was inside her body and pushing their face through hers ... She dug her nails deeper into her flesh, wanting to feel pain, to reassure herself she was real, awake.

Nelson zoomed back out so that Chris moved into view on the screen, blocking Regan until Nelson had shifted the camera to encompass both of them again. “Camille, what do you want?” Chris asked on the video.

Regan shivered, wanting to look back at Chris, ask him why he had thought to use Camille’s name, but not wanting to take her eyes off the recording. Chris squeezed her shoulders from behind as he leaned forward to see the camera better.

“I want him out of my house,” was the answer to Chris’s question, the plea coming from what should have been Regan’s mouth, but wasn’t. The lips were thinner, the voice hers, yet higher. The words were angry, yet not commanding. There was a desperate quality to them.

“Who?”

“That awful Mr. Tradd. I threw dirt at his door to keep him away and yet he’s here.”

Mr. Tradd ... The journal entry. The dream. He was the dreaded fiancé Camille wanted to be rid of. But what was real and what was the workings of Regan’s overwrought imagination? “Oh, my God,” Regan breathed. “Is that really her, or is that me?”

It couldn’t be her. It wasn’t her. That just wasn’t her face. Even if she was sleepwalking, even if she was the one over-embellishing the journal entries in her dreams, she couldn’t produce
that
effect strictly from imagination.

Someone was inside her, in possession of her body, her voice.

Felix’s hand enclosed hers, though she barely noticed. She couldn’t stop staring at the video, at the horrific image of herself with another human being layered over her like Saran wrap.

And she had no memory of it.

“Okay, we can get rid of Mr. Tradd, no problemo. Consider him gone.”

Her head tilted on the tape and she frowned. “What?”

“Stop using slang,” Nelson whispered, not visible but his voice clearly audible since he was so close to the camera.

Chris looked back at the camera with an apologetic shrug, before turning to her, Camille, whoever the hell she was.

“I’ll have Mr. Tradd escorted out immediately,” he said. “Is there anything else you want?”

Camille nodded, making Regan’s hair shake forward onto her cheeks. “I want to die.”

Regan grabbed her throat, suddenly feeling like she couldn’t breathe. She made a gasping sound, well aware she was having a panic attack, but unable to stop it.
I want to die
... It echoed in her head, a horrible, agonized cry of a woman in severe emotional pain. Inside Regan.

Felix murmured, “You’re okay, it’s okay.” He shoved her head down between her legs and said, “Take a deep breath. Just open your throat and relax.”

Feeling the sting as her nails finally broke the skin on her knees, Regan closed her eyes and tried to relax, tried to drag in air. Spots danced behind her eyelids and hot saliva filled her mouth. She was going to pass out.

But if she did, would Camille take her over again? Would she, Regan, ever get back?

Oh, my God. Hysteria swept over her, and she fought for air, forcing her eyes open, pulling a breath into her lungs. She gasped and coughed, the blackness receding, her chest heaving as she sucked fresh oxygen in and out, throwing herself back up into a sitting position, wanting control.

“Okay, that’s good.” Felix massaged her back. “You’re okay.”

Not really. She wasn’t even close to being okay, but she was going to stay conscious if she had to slap herself alert. There was no way she was going to just let someone—something—take her over without a protest.

“Rewind it,” she asked. “I want to see what I just missed.”

“I want to die,” played again, and this time Regan narrowed her eyes and drove back the panic. She studied the face on the screen.

“I want to be with them. I don’t want him to own me anymore.” The first part made sense to Regan. Camille wanted to be with her deceased family. The latter was more confusing. Was “him” Mr. Tradd? And why did Camille feel like he owned her?

“Okay,” Chris said.

“Okay?” That was Nelson from behind the camera. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

Chris made a face. “I panicked!”

From behind Regan now on the bed, Chris added, “I didn’t think it was wise to piss off whatever was in your face, literally.”

“Thanks.” She patted his hand on her shoulder as they watched her image on the tape grab her head, double over, then stand back up, her face normal, mired in confusion.

“How long do you think that lasted?” she asked, feeling like the only way to process this, to stay sane, was to ask questions, apply some kind of logic to something that was illogical.

“What, like two minutes, tops? There’s a timer on the tape, we can figure it out,” Nelson said.

“How is she doing this?” Regan asked Felix. “How is she getting inside me? That is what’s she’s doing, right?”

“It certainly seems that way. I don’t know.” He shook his head, frowning. “Something is a conduit. This house, the journal . . . I don’t know.” He turned to Nelson and Chris. “Would you guys give us a minute? I’d like to talk to Regan for a second in private.”

“Sure,” Nelson said, standing up.

Chris looked to Regan. “Is that okay with you? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Well, as fine as I can be.” She gave him a small smile. “Please make sure everything downstairs is going smoothly, and if you see Beau—”

“Throw him out? Throw a drink in his face?” Chris asked eagerly.

That actually came close to making Regan laugh. She couldn’t quite manage it yet, but it was important to recognize that even though it felt like everything was shifting and changing around her, some things were static. Like Chris’s hatred of Beau, and his sense of humor.

“No. I was going to say if you see Beau, don’t start anything with him. Just ignore him.”

“Damn.”

“Chris.” Regan grabbed his wrist as he started to leave. “Thanks.”

His face softened. “For what?”

“For not running away like I’m a crazy person. You too, Nelson.”

“No problem. And this,” Nelson patted his camera, “will be under lock and key. We aren’t going to tell or show anyone.”

“Thanks,” she said.

Felix seconded the sentiment. “And thanks for getting me. Regan is lucky to have friends like you.”

Regan knew Chris had been suspicious of Felix’s intentions toward her, but he thawed a little at the flattery. “Yeah, you, too,” he said begrudgingly.

They walked out and Regan watched them go, unsure what to say to Felix, or where to start. Her emotions were shredded, her thoughts jumbled.

But Felix spoke first. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

That was never a good start to a conversation. Regan stared at him. “Yes?”

“You know how I said that maybe the house or the journal is a conduit for Camille to enter this world from the spirit world?”