Chapter 69: Séance

I loved Pain. She was great. I adored how she took herself and everything she did so seriously. It was part of her charm. But I found myself sitting there with smirking Alison on my left and the silently slouching Quaid on my right.

There was no way I was holding his hand.

Pain insisted we sit on the floor. "Connects us better to the Earth," she said while I bit the inside of my cheeks and didn't explain to her that a) we were already connected and b) it was kind of necessary to have actual dirt present if she wanted to make the connection stronger.

"Have you done this before?" Simon's eyes were huge behind his glasses.

"Of course," Pain said. "Many times."

"And it works?" Beth and Simon exchanged the look of the gullible. Suckers.

"It does," Pain said. "Almost too well."

Right. Whatever.

While she carefully drew a pentagram on the floor in the middle of our circle with chalk, I caught Quaid watching me and looked over before I could stop myself. His eyes held mine for a long t