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At any given point in time, there were about a hundred thoughts tumbling around in Alexis Rose’s mind. She didn’t bother to give them all equal attention; the important and/or brilliant ones tended to float to the top just when she needed them.
That brilliance might not always directly translate from her brain to her mouth, at least judging by the way David looked at her when she talked sometimes. Then again, that could just be his face.
A sampling of those thoughts as she let herself into her empty room and made straight for the bathroom mirror to reapply lipgloss that afternoon: how to get Twyla to stop adding radishes to her smoothies, that time in Marrakesh with the guy who kept denying it but totally worked for MI6, slipping some of her dry clean onlies into David’s pile, whether or not it was time to bring back one-shoulder looks. And, ugh, was there some kind of gas leak? The motel never smelled good, exactly, but this was so much grosser than usual.
Each and every one of those thoughts dropped straight out of her mind the second her mother’s voice floated in from the connecting room.
“Alexis.”
Alexis froze, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Her hand stopped halfway to her mouth, lips already pursed, just as the constant thrum of her thoughts fell silent. Air caught in her throat, a hard knot she couldn’t swallow down.
While her body refused to move, what felt like every muscle as taut as that high wire she’d had to cross to get out of that fortress in Jakarta, her mind kicked into overdrive. Even more than usual, her thoughts raced, too fast for her to pick them apart.
Except for one.
Run.
As always, Alexis ignored that instinct. If she always bailed the first time the thought occurred, she wouldn’t have, like, half of her best stories or any of her greatest escapes.
“Yeah?” she called back, the upward lilt to the word totally intentional and not just the result of a weird tremor in her vocal cords.
“Come in here, dear.”
It took far too long for Alexis to put down her lipgloss and leave the bathroom. It took even longer for her to step over the threshold between her room and her parents’, some undefinable sense that felt like dread nearly screaming at her to get out now while she still could.
What was up with that? This wasn’t sneaking past the sultan’s guards because his son could hold his breath for, like, a really long time. This dumpy little town might have thrown a lot at Alexis, but what did it have that could rattle her.
Straightening her shoulders and calling up a confident grin, Alexis strode into her mother’s room.
And almost immediately wished she hadn’t.
The awful smell was somehow worse in here, rotting eggs combined with burning, intense enough that Alexis looked around for smoke. Did her mom have the space heater on? It was definitely hot enough, practically ten degrees warmer in here. That would be one thing, but with a possible gas leak? What the hell was she thinking?
Maybe nothing for all Moira Rose seemed to notice the strange, practically oppressive atmosphere as she sat at the vanity meticulously grooming one of the girls. Then again, that was a Moira Rose specialty; she’d mastered the art of tuning out undesirable input well before crossing paths with Johnny. The rhythm of her hairbrush, stroking through the finest hair available to custom wig-makers remained even and unbroken.
“Uh, hello?” Alexis said, annoyance over being ignored overriding the creeping certainty that something was very, very wrong. “Did you need something?”
“I require many things, Alexis,” her mother replied. “Very few of which I believe you could provide me.”
“Ugh! Rude and unnecessary. You called me in here!”
“So I did,” Moira said, oddly flat. It was only then that Alexis realized everything her mother had said so far lacked that signature Moira Rose cadence. There was none of the lilting dance that Alexis had been hearing since before she was even born. “And like a good little lamb, you came straight to me. Surely it won’t all be this easy.”
Whatever the hell else was going on, at no time in her life had Alexis ever had the intention of being easy. Not unless there was a really amazing yacht and no-limit AmEx on the line.
Already edging toward the door, telling herself this was just like the time she was at the same party as Jared Leto and she just could not deal with his whole thing, she laughed. “Lamb? Wasn’t that what you used to call David?” she said, knowing it wasn’t true. Pet names had never really been her parents’ style. It didn’t matter though. She’d nearly cleared the bed and had a straight shot to the door.
Moira’s hand stilled, hairbrush only halfway through Lola’s long, dark tresses. Alexis halted, heart pounding away in her ribcage, feeling far too much like a rabbit just before the trap snaps shut. Frozen in place, she could only watch as her mother’s head slowly swiveled toward her, the dread mounting with every second until they were looking each other dead in the eyes.
There was a scream building up somewhere in Alexis’s gut, and the moment she opened her mouth, she was sure it was going to come out.
Because that— That was not her mother.
It might be wearing Moira Rose’s face and clothes and speak with her voice, but the entirely black eyes looking at Alexis, hungry and amused, belonged to something else. Something inhuman.
“Is this for some audition?” Alexis babbled, even though she knew she was just grasping at straws. Her feet remained stubbornly rooted to the floor. “Because this was, like, not a good look when you did it on Sunrise Bay.”
Her mother’s mouth curled up, but there was no joy in the smile. The rotting egg—sulfur, her mind finally supplied—and smoke smell intensified, heat building in the room. Alexis broke out in a sweat, and her hair was going to be so flat— but that wasn’t the point.
“That, my dear, was merely the rehearsal,” Moira, or whatever had taken over Moira’s body, replied. “This, I think, will be a much more gratifying performance.”
Alexis couldn’t help the high, hysterical giggle that burst out of her. “Love that,” she managed, meaning it less than she ever had in her life. Which was saying something considering she’d said the same when Ryan Lochte told her about the movie script he was writing.
“Hm. Yes. A performance,” said that cold, utterly wrong, entity inhabiting her mother. Clearly, it was warming up to this idea, though. “That would require an audience wouldn’t it? You will bring one back to me.”
Without waiting for a reply, her mother turned back to the wig, apparently taking Alexis’s acquiescence for granted. She resumed brushing, and Alexis was back in control of her limbs again.
She only stumbled once on her way out the door.
Once she’d taken a moment to heave in lungfuls of fresh air, Alexis straightened and set her feet on the road into town, her fingers already flying across the screen of her phone.
She had no intention of following that thing’s instructions, just like she had no intention of just letting it have her mother, but that didn’t mean she intended to handle it alone.
Phone to her ear, Alexis only had to wait two rings before the line was picked up.
“What do you want and why aren’t you just texting me like a civilized person? Did someone die? Oh my god, you cannot tell me—“
“David,” Alexis said, cutting off her brother’s spiral before it really had a chance to get going. “I need you to not flip out—“
“Flip out? When was the last time I flipped out?”
“Ugh, David. We cannot get into this right now.” Then, before her brother could respond: “Mom’s been possessed.”
There was a long, long silence.
“Hello?” Alexis said, unsure if he was just processing or the terrible service had dropped her call.
“I’m sorry,” came David’s voice, distant and hovering between horrified and amused. So, the average Wednesday afternoon for him. “I think Stevie must have slipped me a very strong edible because I could’ve sworn you just said—“
“Mom’s been possessed.”
“... that.”
“Yeah.”
There was another silence, but this one seemed to just be David taking a deep, centering breath. “Okay. Okay. I’m at the café. Come here, and we’ll”—the laugh he let out, sharp and disbelieving, was so familiar that Alexis couldn’t help but feel reassured—“figure it out.”
It wasn’t a plan, but it was something.
Agreeing, she told him she’d see him in a few and hung up. The dread coiling in her stomach didn’t go away, but the knot loosened. Just a little bit, but enough that she could finally breathe deep.
David might not be most people’s first choice for help in a crisis, but he’d always seen her through; she couldn’t ask for anyone better. And, honestly, she doubted she could get anyone on such short notice.
But mostly, she couldn’t ask for anyone better.