Chapter Twelve - Glass House

The bottle of wine tipped precariously close to the rug as Kate went for another swig, decided propping herself to a sitting position was way too much effort, and set it down with a thunk. It connected with the coffee table, wobbling for half a second before righting itself. Kate flopped back against the floor and stared up at the crystal chandelier. Somebody ought to dust that thing…

She ought to dust that thing. Yeah, that's it. She would dust. Where had Aunt Viola kept the furniture polish? Kate began to giggle. What was she thinking? Aunt Viola didn't have furniture polish. She squinted through her lashes at the thick layer of gray fuzz that clung to the chandelier. Clearly this was a polish-free house.

"Oh well." She gestured with one half-limp arm. "Who's gonna see it all the way up there, anyway?" Then she frowned as another thought occurred to her. "Hey, wait—I'm selling the house." She laughed. "It's not my problem anymore. Let the next person deal with it. Bon voyage!" she sang out loftily.

A chill caressed the side of her face, raced along the bare arm closest to the table, invisible fingers that were gentle but left ice in their wake. Kate shivered, and even in her inebriated state she registered the sudden drop in temperature.

She froze, gripped by the sense that the air surrounding her was suddenly too thick, too quiet. Her breath misted in front of her face and she blinked, but in the next instant the temperature rose. The room was back to normal, so quickly that Kate was sure she must have imagined the entire thing. Her eyes swung first left, then right.

From her vantage point on the floor, all she could see of the immediate vicinity was the living room sofa, that and the two matching chairs. The legs of the three round, knick-knack-covered tables were ornately carved. She reached out one finger and traced it along the scarred wood of the coffee table. This close, it was easy to spot the small pits and grooves in the dark mahogany. The braided rug beneath her back was threadbare and scratchy where it brushed against the skin left bare by her tank top.

The clock chimed nine times and Kate jumped, startled out of her slow perusal of the furniture and the dust motes that drifted down to swirl around her face. What? Her eyes flashed to the ceiling above her head. The fragile-looking glass teardrops were swaying gently back and forth, just enough to dislodge some of the dust on the surface and send it fluttering down in small tufts.

Kate rubbed at her face as a thin rope of dust landed beneath her nose. When her gaze returned to the light fixture high above her head, she blinked. It wasn't moving now.

"Wow … yeah, time to call it a night," she said under her breath.

The room tilted and spun as she rose, using various parts of the coffee table to anchor her body and assist her on the way up. First she gripped the solid pine legs, then slid one cautious hand to the upper rungs of the table. Finally, on her knees now, she gripped the top and sides of the—thankfully heavy—piece of furniture, and climbed unsteadily to her feet.

"Gotta get my sea legs," she muttered, arms akimbo as the room dipped and swayed around her. The blood rushed to her head, and with it, a terrible pounding. But she continued on, reaching out to snag the bottle of wine.

The pounding in her head subsided, and Kate concentrated on putting one bare foot in front of the other, determined to make it to the stairs. Past the entryway and down the hall she wobbled, a woman on a mission to stay upright. Gollum—as she'd chosen to call him—wove in and out around her ankles, his ploy for attention nearly tripping her as she poured all her concentration into making it up the stairs. The bottle tipped forward as she stumbled, its contents sloshing over the narrow rim and raining down onto the cat.

"Oh sorry, kitty…" Kate crooned as the cat danced away from her, shaking its head with all the vigor of a German Sheppard fresh from a bath. The vague amusement Kate was riding high on died a slow death, though, when her new pet went absolutely still.

"Gollum?" she murmured, leaning heavily on the smooth, dark wooden railing, her eyes switching back and forth between the suddenly defensive cat and the ordinary-looking second-floor hallway. Something had made the cat go on high alert, but Kate didn't have the first clue of what that "something" could possibly be.

The light was on, and from her sort-of-halfway-up-the-stairs vantage point, she could see the empty, silent hallway. All of the doors were closed, just as they had been earlier. Or had they been? She frowned, goosebumps raising on her bare arms as the cat hunched its shoulders forward and gave a feral-sounding hiss at … nothing.

The bottle began to grow heavy in her grasp, and Kate decided she'd hung out on the stairwell long enough. With one final, teeth-baring hiss, Gollum turned tail and fled back down the stairs, leaving a trail of wine-colored paw prints in his wake. The pounding had resumed and Kate touched a hand to her head, wanting nothing more than to get somewhere—preferably a bed—and lie down. Tightening her grip on both banister and bottle, she half walked, half dragged herself the rest of the way up the stairs.

She took two steps away from the staircase, until her toes grazed the edge of the ancient runner that lined the entire hallway, its tea rose-and-stem pattern badly aged. She'd thought a good vacuum would put some life back into the rug, but it hadn't made much of a difference at all. The light fixture above her head flickered but went unnoticed. Instead, she followed the faded rose pattern to the end of the hall, to the very last door. This one was open a crack. The glass room.

The narrow strip revealed nothing but a thick, heavy darkness.

She didn't want to go in there. Olivia and Lindsey had cracked jokes about the room and its many possible uses. And in the safe, secure light of day, Kate had smiled and laughed along with them, but now she shivered, peering through the partially open doorway. There was something darkly foreboding about that room … and without realizing it, she found herself standing close enough to reach out and touch the scarred wooden door.

Viola had spent a small fortune on the glass room—why hadn't she replaced the door? Another mystery, and one Kate knew she was unlikely to ever solve. Chill fingers brushed across the back of her neck, setting off another round of shivering through her shoulders, and the next thing she knew, her outstretched hand pressed a little harder on the door. It swung slowly open, the creak echoing through the hallway like a shot. The glass walls reflected the light from the hallway, making the room brighter than it would have otherwise been.

The bottle thunked loudly against the glass as she set it on the mirrored floor. Stop. Turn around. Leave, something—probably the more coherent part of her alcohol-fogged brain—cautioned. But almost against her will, she began to slowly move forward.

She advanced further into the room at a halting pace, loath to leave the relative safety of the doorway. Like the first time she had entered the room, the floor took some getting used to. The seamless glass of the walls and ceiling was strange enough, but there was something especially disturbing about a glass floor.

The mirrored surface reflected the bottoms of her feet back at her and somehow felt insubstantial, like she was stepping forward into a void, like she would fall through at any moment.

But the floor held, and Kate continued to move deeper into the room. Even in her hindered state it was impossible not to wonder at the origins of the glass room. What had it been before? Her brow furrowed. She couldn't recall what this room had looked like before. Probably like the other bedrooms on this floor, she guessed, the memory a hazy, gauzy film in the darkest corners of her mind.

She spun in a slow, vertigo-inducing circle, stumbling once and reaching out to grasp … herself. At least, that's what it seemed like.

Her hand shot out and connected with the mirrored wall at the back of the room, and she pressed with her fingers until her palm was in full contact with the glass, until it was flush with the reflection of her own hand. The cool, smooth glass grew cold—icy—beneath her palm, and the pounding in her head intensified. But, no… Kate listened intently. Her fingers flexed against the glass. The pounding wasn't in her head. It was coming from downstairs. Someone was banging on the door.

Her head swiveled toward the sound—and she froze. Beyond the door, a shadow moved, spilling over the carpet until the darkness slid across the threshold of the room. Downstairs, the noise stopped, and her heart leapt as the long shadow darkened the mirrored floor at the entrance of the glass room. The woman glided into the room a second later.

Kate gasped, certain she was having a hallucination. She turned back to her own reflection, putting her back to the room, squeezing her eyes shut and vowing to never, ever, drink wine again.

Count to three… She opened her eyes, pupils dilating when the hallucination kept coming toward her. Kate's breathing hitched painfully, audibly, as the translucent woman advanced steadily across the room. She wore a filmy white sundress. Her blonde hair was the same shade as Kate's own tawny mane and was smoothed over one shoulder. The two women were nearly identical. Smooth, strong, toned frames, side swept bangs, lightly tanned skin. Kate's hand came up and unconsciously fingered her own loosely waving hair. In contrast, the ghostly woman's hair was stick straight and looked smooth as satin.

Kate's breath rasped out to create a small circle of fog in the mirror, and the blonde woman's berry-colored lips curved into a tight, self-satisfied sort of smile. The expression was clearly bitter, resentful. She's not real. She's not real…

Her feet slid over the floor until she stood directly behind Kate, their eyes remaining locked in the mirror. Please… Kate silently implored, not certain what she was even praying for. Through the mirror, she saw the light flickering crazily in the hallway, growing dim, then too bright, power surging through the old house one second and teetering on the edge of a total blackout the next. Her eyes became wide, terrified orbs, and fear made her vision gray around the edges. She was going to pass out. The woman's dark violet eyes—moving faster than should have been possible—cut to the side, then back again.

Kate shivered, afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. The power winked out a moment later, leaving the room dimly lit with an eerie silver light that defied all logic and explanation.

The blade the blonde woman produced, seemingly from the thin, frigid air, glinted lethal and sharp. Kate's mouth formed a round, horrified O a split second before the woman slammed the blade into her side. The ghost-woman may have looked wispy, but there was nothing insubstantial about the cold steel blade as it pierced Kate's skin. Pain lanced through her, and she gasped as the woman pulled the now-dripping weapon away. Spiderweb cracks shot through the glass a foot in every direction as the knife clattered to the floor. Drops of deep crimson splattered the glass, and Kate pitched forward, staring in the mirror in fixed horror at the blood stain spreading across her midsection, soaking the soft fabric of her tank top in angry, vivid red.

She collapsed, the wound in her side pulsing painfully, pumping her blood—her life—onto the floor around her. She tried to scream but couldn't draw in a deep breath. She tried to move but managed only to turn over as the light began to fade. The last thing she saw was the woman's feet, dirty and bare as the apparition moved toward the door, black dirt streaking the glass in her wake.