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He blinks at me, mouth gaping.

“Ada!” my father’s anxious voice carries from down the hall.

Shit.

“Go!” I yell at Jay. “Go have fun with someone else. Hope you get your memory wiped so it makes things a little easier for you. Wish someone could do the same for me.”

“Ada…”

“Now!” I yell.

My father barges in through the door just as Jay shimmers away into the air, disappearing, though I know he’s only right next door.

But not for long.

“Ada,” my father says to me, flicking on the lights, trying to put on his glasses. “What’s happening?”

I’m trying so hard to hide the fact that I’m shaking, that my heart was just ripped in half. “I had a bad dream,” I tell him.

“Are you sure?” he says, looking around the room. “You were screaming. Are you dreaming about clowns again?”

I nod. “Yeah. Clowns. Could you get me a glass of water?”

He frowns. “Sure, of course. Coming right up.”

He turns and leaves the room, and it takes everything in me not to collapse to my knees. I press my hand into my chest, trying to will myself to breathe, to just get through this with my father so he doesn’t think anything is amiss.

But everything is amiss.

And it will never be right again.

My father comes back from the washroom with the glass of water and I take it, telling him I’m going back to sleep, that he shouldn’t worry. He looks so harried that I have no doubt he won’t be sleeping for a while either.

Then, when he leaves, and I’m alone in the dark again, that’s when I let go.

Fall to my knees.

Curled over.

Heart scooped out.

And I’m drowning.

One

December 26th - Seattle

“Imagine I’d be your one and only, instead I’m the lonely one.

You, me, and a lie.”

– I Sat by the Ocean

You can do this.

I know I can.

So why are you nervous?

I don’t know. Why am I having a conversation with myself?

I catch Perry giving me an odd look and have to wonder if she’s picking up on what I’m thinking. It’s one thing to have conversations with your sister in your head, it’s another for you to have conversations with yourself.

Then again, things are fucking weird right now. I expected to spend the day after Christmas in my pajamas all day, eating chocolate, drinking spiked coffee, and crying over Jay, not dressed in Buffy cosplay, standing outside a haunted house and portal to hell, on a rescue mission to get a long-lost friend from the Veil. Not to mention my sister is currently possessed by her husband. Literally.

I suppose I should be happy for the distraction though. The last six weeks since Jay left have been absolute torture for me, full-flung emotional carnage. I’ve cried so hard that even my most waterproof mascara decided to give in, black rivers etched into my face like a canyon of doom. I’ve succumbed to every single broken-hearted cliché that you’ve seen in the movies, from staying in my pajamas all day, to eating ice cream straight from the pint, to watching romantic comedies and bawling my eyes out. My poor dad didn’t know how to handle me other than turning a blind eye whenever I took some of his red wine. And that was every night.

It wasn’t until the other day when Perry pulled me aside and told me that she needed my help that I actually felt useful for once. Like I had purpose. And to be honest, it felt extra good to be needed by her.

You see, I’ve been a bit of a brat lately. Or maybe a lot of a brat. I don’t have much to blame it on, other than the fact that Jay leaving me was totally out of left field and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I still don’t, to be honest. I didn’t tell Perry that we broke up because she and Dex are so damn happy all the time, or at least that’s what it seems like to me. I didn’t want her to look down on me or feel pity. I wanted to seem strong and in control, even though everything inside me was slowly crumbling away.

So I took a lot of it out on Perry. She wanted to talk about what happened, but I pushed her away. I got mean. And so, I’d been grappling with the guilt over that as well as the emotional suckage that Jay put me through.

I figured doing this, tonight, would make up for the fact that I was a less than desirable sister.

And what is this exactly?

To be honest, I’m not sure.

But let me try to get you up to speed before we go into the house of horrors.

So, years ago, Perry and Dex had this frenemy named Maximus, a six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested handsome redhead (yes, they exist) with the most amazing hair (no surprise they called him Ginger Elvis, amongst other less mature nicknames). The three of them had a complicated relationship from all angles. They weren’t like a “throuple” or anything like that (at least, ew, I hope not), but Maximus was Dex’s friend from way back, then when Dex and Perry had a falling out, Max slept with Perry. Perry was possessed at the time (long story), and Max turned out to be a major douchecanoe because he kind of turned on Perry and sided with our parents, who wanted Perry to go to a psych ward.