Page 42 of The Unknown

She keeps her eyes closed even as her fingers remain on the glass, her arms stretching over the table as it continues without pause to the other side of the table, ready to spell out yet another name.

M

My heart skips as the glass skids to a stop in front of the letter. It happens again a second later when the glass moves to another.

O

No, I think.This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening.

The glass continues on, pausing at theLbefore looping back around to meet it again.

In that moment, I understand why Violet closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the glass make its inevitable slide to the final letter, confirming the name she already knew it was going to complete.

I do.

Just to make sure I’m correct.

I am, of course, the glass settling at the letter just to the right of Violet.

Y

Molly.

There’s no way any of them could know her name, even if they all saw my audition tape. Not once did I say it out loud. I only referred to her as “my sister,” never “Molly.” Yet seeing the name spelled out like that sends a wave of exhaustion crashing over me. The whole room seems to tilt, when it’s me doing the tilting, like I’m a mere second from passing out.

Somehow I remain upright. Still at the table, still touching the glass as it continues its devious spelling jag, zigging to even more letters.

“E,” Susie says, sounding it out. “L.”

Heather joins her on the next letter. “I.”

“S,” says Julianne, chiming in.

Together, all three finish spelling a name that, this time, is blessedly unfamiliar to me. “E.”

“Elise,” I say. “Who’s Elise?”

“That’s fucking enough!”

The outburst comes not from someone at the table but Ronan, surging from the darkness. At the table, he swats the glass out from under our hands. They remain hovering in midair a moment, touching nothing, as the glass itself smashes against the piano and shatters.

“Which one of you is behind this?”

“Behind what?” Violet says, hand on her chest, looking as breathless and unnerved as I feel.

“That name!” Ronan stalks around the table, eyeing us with rabid suspicion. “One of you told the others to spell it.”

“No,” I say.

“We didn’t,” Julianne adds. “It was Azra.”

This only makes Ronan angrier. He continues to circle the table, so mad his teeth are bared. “Goddammit, there is no Azra! None of this is real!”

Just then, the table jumps.

As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s the only way to describe it. A sudden, inch-high rise that sets the letters atop the table sliding.

It jumps again. Slightly harder this time, returning to the floor with an audible thunk. A few of the letters fall off the table. Others careen together in its center.