He had no clue who Mr. Tradd was, but he didn’t think it was a hot idea to piss off the possessor. “Okay, we can get rid of Mr. Tradd, no problemo. Consider him gone.”
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.
Chapter Seventeen
“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 ass**le 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.