Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley

CHAPTER 22

Lily rubbed at her eyes, trying desperately to figure out what Tobin was going on about.

“Scary sleepover games,” he said. “We just have to do a few of those. And film them. It’ll be hysterical!”

“What are you talking about?” She reached for the mug of coffee he handed her, taking a fortifying sip. The gin and tonics she’d been drinking earlier had mostly worn off, but she was very sleepy at this point, and Tobin was not helping by being confusing and dragging her out of bed.

His bed.

She frowned. That really wasn’t that big a deal. Not that she spent a lot of time sharing beds with people, but . . . she liked the way Tobin smelled. It was hard to describe, probably just some combination of his soap and him. He smelled . . . warm. A little like chai, actually. And sort of . . . she frowned.

Fuzzy?

No, that wasn’t a smell. But being surrounded by his scent in the bed had been like sniffing a hug, somehow. It made her feel warm and sort of sigh-y.

Tobin snapped his fingers in front of her. “I promise it won’t take that long. I don’t think,” he tempered. “You sure you’re okay? I have, um, five-hour energy drinks around here somewhere.”

She shook her head quickly. “Absolutely not. I tried one once, and the stupid niacin flush was ridiculous . . . you know, where your face turns red, because of all the B vitamins? I looked like a cherry tomato.” She thought about it for a second. “Oh, and also, my heart started beating erratically. That’s probably not good.”

“No energy drinks for you, then,” Tobin said, looking appalled. “So. Let’s see.” He guided her toward his whiteboard. “I’m thinking Bloody Mary, Ouija board, and . . . um, something else.”

“Well, that sounds comprehensive,” she joked. She wasn’t as tense as she’d usually be when working, probably because she was so out of it. She needed a full eight hours of sleep to be optimal, and the later it got, the loopier she got. It’s why she avoided all-nighters whenever possible. “What do you need me to do? You’re not going to jump scare me again, are you?”

“No. Although, ideally, this ought to be kind of creepy,” Tobin said, shrugging. “We’ll just have to see how it pans out. But it should be fun. Most videos cover what the games are and why you shouldn’t do them—as in, ‘the devil might get you!’ or ‘you’ll get pulled into an alternate dimension!’—but they don’t show people actually trying them.”

Lily shook her head. “Isn’t this how most horror movies start?” she asked. “Like, they’re messing around with unseen, unholy forces—because they wanted to be famous, or make a movie, or because they’re bored?”

“Well, if I get sucked into hell, I have no one to blame but myself,” Tobin said, setting up some lights and a camera in his living room. “I’m thinking Ouija board, over here. Oh! And candles.”

She watched as he rummaged around, getting a small selection. He adjusted the lights, muttering to himself as he got the camera together. She sat down on the floor by the coffee table, looking at the Ouija board. “Why do you even have one of these?”

“Huh? Oh. I host game night a lot,” he said. “I think I had a plan that we’d give it a try at some point, but we never even opened the box. So hey, this’ll be the game’s virgin run. No other people vibes on it.”

Lily studied him with a smirk. “Tobin Bui, are you superstitious?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “No. Well. Maybe a little. But not really.”

“Don’t you play horror games all the time?” she pressed. “I remember you liked watching horror movies in high school.”

“Eh. Sometimes I like feeling, you know, freaked out. Don’t you?”

She leaned her head back on the love seat cushion behind her. “Not really,” she said. “Besides, I’m usually too busy to be scared.”

He sat down across from her, and she felt his knees brush against hers as he sat cross-legged and tucked himself closer to the surface. “Okay. So . . . shoot. Maybe I should look at the instructions?”

“How hard can it be?” she asked. God, she was sleepy. “I mean, does Hasbro include, like, a book of spells or something? Because I bet they just have a warning disclaimer that says don’t conjure Satan and don’t swallow small game parts.”

He grimaced at her. “I feel like you’re not taking this seriously.”

“I’m just saying—exactly how specific do you think they get?” she asked with what she thought was inarguable logic. “They also make, like, Candy Land, and you don’t see a cookbook in there.”

He rolled his eyes at her, too intent on what he was doing to even deign to reply.

“Wait, wait. We need an intro.” He looked at the camera, doing his signature smile. “Hey-oh, it’s GoofyBui, and we’re continuing the crossover series with EverLily. Today, we’re going to be testing spooky sleepover games—OoooOOooohhh!”

She couldn’t help it. She started cracking up at his lame ghost rendition, and he rolled his eyes at her. She fell over to the floor, then straightened herself out.

“Um. So, yes,” Tobin said, shaking his head at her. “We’re going to start with a classic: the Ouija board. Unfortunately, it’s been years since I’ve been around a Ouija board, and I haven’t read the instructions, but as EverLily here says, how hard can it be, right?” He looked at the camera. “So if we get possessed by demons, you’ll know it’s because Lily told me to wing it, and you probably shouldn’t improvise when it comes to, you know, dealing with the supernatural.”

“Oh, shush,” she said around a giggle. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, anyway.”

“And now we’re headed into horror-movie territory,” he pointed out. “All you have to add is ‘how bad could it get’ or something, and we’re right in a slasher.”

She smiled. Then she put her fingertips on the pointy, teardrop-shaped plastic disc that was supposed to point to the letters. “This look right?”

“Perfect,” he said, putting his own fingers opposite hers, the tips brushing together, much like their legs were. It was surprisingly intimate. She frowned.

“All right. Um . . . I think we’re supposed to call someone?” he grumbled. “Damn it. I really need to read those instructions.”

“Oh, Ouija board spirit . . . or possibly spirits?” she interrupted, closing her eyes and adopting a séance-styled intense expression. “Come and answer our questions.” She paused, then added, “Thanks?”

Tobin laughed. “Well, sure. How could a ghost resist that?” he said, shaking his head. “I guess we ask . . . well, how are we going to know someone’s there?”

“Um, we wait until the pointy thing starts moving?” Lily responded. “I don’t know. This isn’t my area.”

“The pointy thing is called a planchette, I think,” Tobin corrected, and Lily didn’t even think—she just stuck her tongue out at him, causing him to start laughing again. “Anyway, okay. We’ll say, ‘Are you there? Move the planchette if you’re there.’ And then we’ll see what happens.” He looked around. “Um, hello? Anybody there?”

“Mooooooove the pointy thingy if you’re there,” Lily intoned, in her best séance-mistress voice.

The plastic wiggled, ever so slightly, and her eyebrows went up.

“Did you move it?” Tobin asked.

She glared at him. “If you’re trying to scare me again,” she said, “I will throttle you.”

He shook his head. “No, I promise, I’m not going to jump scare you tonight,” he said. He frowned down at the planchette. “So . . . I mean, it was a millimeter, but it did move. Kinda.”

She shrugged. Honestly, either of them could have nudged it. Or there’d been a mild earthquake. “Anyway. What do you want to ask?”

“I don’t know, but I know what we can’t ask it,” Tobin said. “No asking the name of the spirit, or you can get possessed or haunted or something equally unpleasant. And no asking how you die, because . . . ugh, why would you want to know that?”

“You are superstitious!” She crowed it, lifting her finger long enough to point at him. “Ha!”

“I think we need to keep our fingers on the planchette the whole time,” he scolded lightly, and she could not help it. He’d messed with her? She would mess with him. Just a little.

“Maybe we can ask when we’re going to get married, or who our soul mates are,” she suggested.

He gave her a skeptical roll of his eyes. “Sure. And then you can braid my hair and we can write down our crushes’ names with hearts around them in our notebooks.”

“Hey, some guys would like that sort of thing. And it might be cool to find out if anyone could even stand your stupid butt for that long,” she shot back with a grin.

“Fine! Fine. Ouija Board Spirit . . . do I have a soul mate?”

She nudged the plastic piece, gently, subtly, until it hit YES.

“Are you moving it?” Tobin looked a little wild eyed.

“No!” she lied. “And hey—you have a soul mate! That’s surprising.”

“Shut it, you,” he said, but he was grinning. “Um . . . what’s her name?” he asked the open air.

She let the plastic sit idle for a minute, and it scooted a little—he was probably tugging a little, too, she realized. And she wondered what he might want. It never occurred to her that he might be interested in someone. Actually, before she’d offered to spend the night in his bed, it never occurred to her that he might be seeing someone.

The thought was more disconcerting than she would’ve realized.

She smoothed out her expression, then kept her eyes almost entirely closed—just open enough to see what was going on with the board. She nudged the planchette toward letters, slowly, with little jerky motions.

“S . . . T . . . U . . .” Tobin followed along. “Shit! I should be writing this down. Except I’m not supposed to stop touching the planchette. What if it’s a whole . . . P . . . I . . .”

Then he stopped, scowling at her.

“D,” he finished. “So, you’re saying my soul mate is stupid?”

“I imagine that’s a surname,” Lily said, trying for innocent, then bursting into laughter as he shook his head.

“Okay. So that didn’t work so well. How about Bloody Mary?”

She grinned back, still feeling giggly. She had definitely reached the dazed-and-silly stage of sleep deprivation, and it showed. “Why not. What do we do there?”

“We bring the candles in the bathroom,” he said. “And then we’ll see from there.”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug and followed him in.