The Last House Guest(31)

SUMMER


?????2017





The Plus-One Party


9:30 p.m.

It happened all at once. The light, the sound, the mood.

The power had gone out. The music, the house lights, the blue glow from under the water of the pool. Everything was darkness.

Inside, there were too many bodies all pressed together. My ears still buzzed from the music. Someone stepped on my foot. I heard the sound of glass breaking, and I hoped it wasn’t the window. Everything became sound and scent. Low whispers, nervous laughter, sweat and the whiff of someone’s hair product as they walked by, and then a spiced cologne.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, a breath on my neck. I froze, disoriented. And then I heard a scream. Everything stopped—the whispers, the laughter, the people brushing up against one another. The light from a phone turned on across the room, and then another, until I pulled my cell out of my back pocket and did the same.

“She’s all right!” someone yelled from outside. Everyone shifted toward the back of the house.

I pushed my way through the crowd, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Outside, the clouds covered the stars and the moonlight. There was only the beam of the lighthouse cutting through the sky above, swallowed up in the clouds.

It was Parker, of course, who had her, surrounded by a semicircle of onlookers. At first I could see only a dark shape curled up in Parker’s arms. He rubbed her back as she coughed up water. “Okay, you’re all right,” he was saying to her, and then she turned her face up. Ellie Arnold.

Sadie had known her forever, found her annoying. Said she would do anything for attention, and so my first thought was neither generous nor sympathetic.

But when I crouched down beside her, she was so shaken, so miserable-looking, that I knew she hadn’t done it on purpose.

“What happened?” I asked.

She was soaked, clothes clinging to her skin, trembling.

“She couldn’t see,” Parker answered for her. “She lost her place.”

“Someone pushed me,” Ellie said, arms folded around herself. “When the pool lights went out.” She coughed and half sobbed. Her long hair was stuck to her face, her neck.

“All right. You’re okay.” I repeated Parker’s words and smiled to myself, glad for the dark. The pool was four feet deep all the way across—she was never in any real danger, despite her present demeanor. All she had to do was plant her feet.

I was more worried about the sound of her scream carrying in the night.

One of Ellie’s friends finally made it through the crowd. “Oh my God,” she said, hand to her mouth. She reached down for Ellie’s hand.

“Get her inside,” Parker said, helping her stand. Ellie wobbled slightly, then leaned on her friend as the crowd parted for them.

“There are plenty of towels in the bathrooms, under the sinks,” I said. “Probably a robe somewhere, too.”

Parker looked back toward the house. An amber glow flickered in the window—someone’s lighter, the flame touched to the wick of a candle.

“I’ll go take a look,” I said. From here, we couldn’t tell whether the power had gone out in the entire town or just on our street. If it was just our street, I’d have to make a call, and this party would be over. Better if it was a town-wide outage. Best if the house had been tripped on its own from the speakers and the lights all running at once—grid overload.

Inside, someone had found the rest of the candles and lined them along the windowsills, placing the pillar from the mantel in the center of the kitchen island. The guy with the lighter finished circling the downstairs, and now everything was subdued in pockets of dim light. The faces were still in shadows, but I could see my way to the breaker panel.

The door to the master bedroom down the hall was ajar—at least the commotion had managed to clear out the people inside.

The breaker panel was inside the hall closet, and I used my phone to light up the grid. I let out a sigh of relief—this was something I could fix. Every circuit was tripped, in the off position. I flipped them back one at a time, watching as the lights came back, as people looked around the room, momentarily disoriented by where they found themselves.

At the last switch, the sound from the speakers blared unexpectedly, and my heart jumped.

“Get someone to turn that down,” I said to the guy beside me. The same one who’d accused Greg Randolph of having a fling with Carys Fontaine. “And unplug some of those lights.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a lopsided salute.

I made my way into the master bathroom, where two of Ellie’s friends were hovering around her. Ellie Arnold was clearly both mortified and shaken, and for the first time I doubted Sadie’s impression of her.

“Hey,” I said, “everything okay in here?” Someone had found the towels, half of which were heaped on the floor beside Ellie’s wet clothes. She was wrapped in a plush ivory robe, drying her hair with a matching towel. There were dark smudges under her eyes where her makeup had run. The floor was slick, the water puddling in sections, the mirror fogged. She must’ve taken a quick shower to warm up.

Ellie shook her head, not making eye contact. “Some asshole’s idea of a joke.” She leaned toward the open door. “Well, fuck you!” she yelled.