by Jill Myles
Ignoring Brodie’s glare, I headed over to congratulate Jendan and Marla, hugging them both. “Congrats, you guys. Good job.”
Marla patted Jendan’s muscular shoulder with motherly affection. “It’s all thanks to this big guy. He totally killed it.”
“He did,” I agreed, peering into the basket of junk. “What is all this crap?”
Jendan held up a bundle of leaves. “This is sage for smudging a room to drive the evil spirits out.” He put it down and picked up a little electronic hand-held device. “This is an EMF meter that’s supposed to show activity from any sorts of spirits. There’s also a digital recorder so you can get EVPs and some night-vision goggles.”
My eyes widened. “This is serious ghost-hunter stuff, then? Is the house really haunted?” I experienced a flutter of panic at the thought.
Jendan shrugged. “It makes good TV either way, doesn’t it?”
I thought of the noises in the living room when I was trying to sleep. “Can I borrow some of this stuff sometime?”
“You bet. I owe you one,” Jendan said with a grin at me, and Marla nodded. “Take your pick.”
I hesitated and then reached into the basket and pulled out the little tape recorder. This would be useful in a lot of ways. “Thanks.”
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Brodie was at my side, his hand tugging at my arm.
I gave Jendan and Marla a smile and walked away with Brodie, pocketing the mini-recorder before anyone else noticed I had it. “Sure. What’s up?”
Brodie kept a smile on his face as he walked me to the far end of the yard. When we were under the magnolia tree—the only real greenery in our little compound—he leaned in. “Did you tell Jendan and Marla about what Katy and Liam were planning?”
Busted. I crossed my arms over my chest and went for the non-answer. “What makes you think that?”
“Because they were cheering like they’d just gotten the Power Play, not like they’d won a basket of dippy ghost-hunting shit. It looked suspicious.” Anger flashed in his eyes, quickly masked again. “You did, didn’t you? You went and blabbed about this to your boyfriend.”
“First of all, he’s not my boyfriend,” I whispered at Brodie, getting furious myself. “Second of all, do you really think this is the best time to have this conversation? In front of everyone? They’re all staring at us, and they’re going to know something’s up.” I forced a flirty smile to my face and put a hand on his chest, just to make it seem like we were having a personal moment.
“You’re still not answering the question,” Brodie said, and his hands went to my waist, pulling me against him.
I wanted to shove him away in irritation, but I forced myself to put my arms around his neck. “You’re a suspicious dick.”
“I’m suspicious because I know I’m right. Just answer yes or no, Kandis, so I know how to play my game.” And to my surprise, he leaned in and brushed his mouth ever so lightly against my own. Then, he whispered, “Because if you screw me over, I’m going to ruin your game, too.”
That light, meaningless kiss held me frozen. I’d been expecting the flirty embrace to mask our words, but Brodie took things one step further, always. It was like he had no boundaries. Nothing he did meant anything to him.
So why did it send a weird little thrill through my body?
Because he’s good looking, I chided myself. No more, no less.
“I warned him,” I admitted, my breath fluttering against Brodie’s skin. Our mouths were still super close together, and it sent electric little jolts through my body. “Jendan’s playing with me, though. He’s safe. All I told him was that he needed to not come in last. That was all.”
“Okay. Thanks for telling me,” Brodie said.
And then he slapped my ass and walked away.
Outrage blasted through me, and I held stock-still for a long moment. He’d done that on purpose, just because he knew I couldn’t get mad. If I did, the others would think we were doing something other than canoodling under the tree, and they’d get suspicious. My mouth twisted into a reluctant smile of admiration.
Brodie wanted to play, did he? Game on.
~~ * ~~
“Tonight,” Liam said as he stood in front of the eleven people seated on the couches in the living room. He held a cue card in front of him, provided by the House Guests staff, and read from it. “The nomination ceremony will be different. For the rest of the season, you will be nominated on the same night you will be evicted. However, in honor of this first week in the house, tonight a team will be nominated and then voted off a few days from now.” Liam tossed aside the card, and glanced at his partner. “We ready to do this?”
She blew him a kiss. They were so adorable I wanted to puke. If they got to the end? No one else stood a chance.
“Right.” Liam rubbed his hair and gave us that quiet smile that told me he was acutely uncomfortable being in the spotlight. “I have to pick a team to nominate for eviction. Katy and I thought long and hard about this.” He glanced down at his blonde partner, who gave him a small little smile as if sharing a secret. He winked at her, and then he turned back to us. “In the end, we decided to just go with what we thought was fair for everyone, and picked the team that came in last in the reward challenge.”
At my side on the couch, Jendan’s leg nudged mine, as if to say Good call.
On my other side, Brodie nudged me, too. I was starting to feel like I was a punching bag caught between the two men.
Liam clasped his hands and exhaled. “So, tonight, I’m placing the team of Mickey and Lenore up on the block. I hope you guys realize it’s nothing personal, just that someone had to go up.”
“No problem,” Mickey said, a pleasant look on his broad face. He moved to the two chairs designated at the front of the room for the nominated players.
Lenore looked less pleased. She cast an angry look at Liam. “That just cost you the game, young man.”
Liam’s eyebrows went up in surprise, but it was Katy who lost her temper. She stood up, all five foot nothing of her, and put her hands on her hips, facing down the elder woman. “You just got our votes, then. I’m glad we put you up. I hope you’re the first one to go home. I—”
“Katy,” Liam murmured, putting an arm around the blonde’s shoulders and steering her away from Lenore. “Let it go, baby.”
“That was just rude,” Katy muttered, but she slid in close to Liam again, sending another scowl Lenore’s way.
Liam patted Katy’s shoulder and pulled out a blue House Guests card, reading from it. “The final vote will be two nights from now, when the live TV show is filmed again. Until then, the two nominated contestants will be allowed to campaign to try and sway votes to their side.”
“Yeah, good luck, Lenore,” Katy cut in.
Liam shushed his girlfriend again, but there was a smile on his face. The rest of us quietly laughed at small Katy’s fierce rage on her tough-looking boyfriend’s behalf. “Once the vote is finished and the contestant has left the house, you will prepare for the next Power competition and another game twist. Be ready.” He flipped over the card and then shrugged. “That’s all it says.”
“Another twist, huh?” Brodie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Wonder what kind.”
“Nothing good, I’m sure,” Casper pointed out. Several others nodded.
“Well, enough about that,” Mickey said, getting to his feet. He clapped his hands and gave us all a beaming smile. “Who wants a massage, courtesy of their favorite masseuse who needs a vote?”
~~ * ~~
The night before our first live show, I was wide awake long after midnight.
Not because I’d heard something in the creepy old house. I hadn’t since that first night. Not because I was nervous about the live show. I wasn’t. Instead, I listened closely to Brodie’s breathing on the couch across from mine. When I was sure his breathing was even and he’d gone to sleep, I peeled back my blankets and slipped off the couch, tiptoeing out to the ba
ckyard.
I returned to the living room a few minutes later to find Brodie laying on my couch, giving me an expectant look as I tiptoed back in.
Busted. Damn it. He’d been faking going off to sleep.
“Whatcha got there, hotness?” he whispered.
“None of your business,” I whispered back. “How’d you know I was up?”
“You’re totally obvious,” he said. “When you’re agitated, you twitch a lot and can’t sit still. And you were twitching like mad tonight, so I knew you were up to something.”
I sighed and flopped down on one end of the couch, sitting across Brodie’s sprawled legs. If he wasn’t going to get up, I’d just sit on top of him. “That’s right. You caught me. I’m up to no good.”
“As long as it’s something I can edge in on, I don’t care if it’s good or bad.”
There were times when I appreciated having a partner with questionable morals, I decided. I showed him the object I’d hidden in my hand—the recorder.
He looked vaguely disgusted. “More ghost hunting?”
“You wish,” I said. I’d used the recorder for ghost hunting the first night I’d gotten it, but when eight hours of recordings had turned up nothing but snoring, I decided to use it for something slightly more nefarious. “I hid this in one of the flower pots in the smoking area.”
Several of the people in the house were smokers—Marla, Lenore, Sunnie, Fido, and Casper. Jendan was super into fitness, so he was probably the most ridiculously healthy in the house. I doubted he even drank. I hadn’t seen Katy or Liam head down to the smoking area, so I guessed they didn’t smoke. Brodie didn’t, either. Of course, that meant that the smokers often went out to have a cigarette and chit chat, and that meant that the non-smokers were rarely in on the conversations. It was something I’d noticed early on, and I’d considered taking up smoking just to muscle in on the private conversations…but I couldn’t stand the taste or the smell.
Having a recorder was the next best thing, though. Maybe even better.
Brodie sat up as I showed him the recorder, a gleam of appreciation in his eyes. “You are a genius. I could kiss you.”
“You already did,” I replied pertly, but I couldn’t help but smile at his words.
“Yeah, but this time you could act like you enjoyed it,” he teased.
I glanced over at him from under my lashes, curious. Had he thought I hadn’t enjoyed the impromptu kiss? It had taken me by surprise, but…it wasn’t a bad kiss. “I didn’t enjoy it because your kisses don’t mean anything, Brodie. You pass them out like candy.”
He chuckled, unhurt by my tart accusation. “So do I get to listen in on the tape?”
“As long as you promise not to burn me and tell the others I’ve been recording them.” Even Jendan didn’t know I was borrowing his recorder for sneaky purposes. I thought it might seem too shady, so I’d kept the secret to myself.
Plus, I was a little curious about what Jendan was saying about me, too.
Brodie made a ‘cross my heart’ motion on his chest. “You’re my partner. You can trust me to save your ass as long as it’s attached to mine.”
Fair enough. I slid a little closer to him on the couch and we bent over the recorder, listening. The first few minutes were nothing but silence, so I started to skip ahead every few minutes, listening for voices. When I heard someone, I’d rewind and then we’d listen in on the conversation.
We listened to that darn recorder for hours, our heads bent together. And we found out a wealth of information, only some of it surprising.
Mickey was hitting on every woman in the house and failing miserably. That wasn’t surprising.
Lenore was furious that she’d been put up for the vote, and she was busy campaigning to get out Katy and Liam. That also wasn’t surprising, though the viciousness of some of her words was startling—and kind of lame. I lost track of how many times she referred to Liam as a “tattooed hooligan.”
Casper and Sunnie and Fido seemed to be in an alliance together, which worried me. They didn’t trust Brodie, didn’t trust me by default, and had pulled Marla in. Marla assured them that she had Jendan’s vote and that he’d align with them. They wanted Liam and Katy gone ASAP. Not only because they’d won last time, but Katy and Liam weren’t exactly playing the best game. They tended to hang out in their room together and just talk quietly between themselves. Brodie had mentioned to me that his sister was a bit of an introvert, and it seemed that Liam was too. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it came to a game like House Guests? It was pretty much a one-way ticket home.
I mentally counted as we listened to Sunnie and Casper make plans with Marla. Sunnie, Casper, and Marla. They said they had Jendan. Fido was with them. That was five together. Right now, it sounded like they were planning on all voting for Lenore and then pulling Mickey to their side. He’d follow, because he was no doubt upset that Katy and Liam had nominated him for eviction. That would give them six, and if there were eleven left in the house, we’d be outnumbered.
Damn. Week one and I was already on the losing side.
The recorder ran out and clicked off, and I gave Brodie a concerned look. “What do you think?”
He rubbed his spiky blond hair. “I think we’d better not lose the next Power challenge, or we’re screwed.”
I twirled a foot, fidgeting anxiously. “This sucks. If they’re going after Katy and Liam, you know we’re next.”
“I know,” he said grimly. “We have to pull some of them over to our side.”
“I thought I had Jendan, but the way Marla was talking, I’m not so sure. I’d say we could work on Lenore, but she hates Katy and Liam.”
He thought for a moment. “I can probably work on Sunnie. Can you work on both Jendan and Mickey? Mickey likes you.”
I knew he liked me. He’d been trying to give me creepy massages all week. Ugh. “Do I have to?”
“Only if you want to stay,” Brodie said.
Damn. “And we have the twist coming up. That could be anything.”
“It might break us into individuals again. If so, you’ll probably be safe.”
I wasn’t so sure. It sounded like everyone had made deals without me. My feet drummed anxiously, and I tapped my fingers on my knees, thinking hard. “There has to be something we can do.”
“We can win the Power Play.” Brodie shrugged his shoulders. “If not, we have to play it by ear. Just know that if I get nominated, I’m selling you down a river.”
“Like I expected any less?”
~~ * ~~
I fidgeted nervously on the couch. I had one leg crossed, and the foot in the air was bouncing like mad while we waited through a commercial break. Nearby, seated in the two nomination chairs, Lenore seemed to be meditating, and I was pretty sure Mickey had just picked his nose on TV.
Brodie reached over and put a hand on my knee, a silent indication that my fidgeting was noticeable and a dead giveaway of my nervousness. “Sorry,” I breathed to the group. “TV makes me nervous.”
Such a lie. I wasn’t worried about being on TV as much as I was about how the vote—and the subsequent competition and twist—would go. But I smoothed a hand down the simple green dress I was wearing, trying to calm myself. Poker face. I needed a poker face.
The House Guests logo disappeared, and Becky Bradley’s face appeared on the screen, all smiles and big hair. “House Guests, I have the results. In a vote of eleven to one, Lenore, you have been evicted. Please grab your bags and exit the house through the front door.”
We clapped politely, but I felt the pit of my stomach drop a little. Ten votes for Lenore. I’d voted for her since I knew the rest of the house would be voting that way. It seemed everyone had been on the same page. So that meant that either they’d all been talking, or everyone had found the psychic as annoying as me. It was hard to tell, and that made me paranoid.
One by one, we hugged Lenore. I noticed that she ignored Brodie, Katy, and Liam, though she hu
gged me. That didn’t bode well, especially since she’d grouped Brodie in with the other two Racers. That meant they considered him one of ‘them.’ I was probably on the fence, but I could easily be lumped in with them, too.
And that would destroy my game.
We waved goodbye to Lenore as she exited, and then everyone ran for the bathroom to change clothing. We’d been prepped by the voice over the intercom a half hour before the show started. Once the vote-out had finished, we had a ten-minute window while the evictee was interviewed and commercials ran. We had that time to change out of our TV clothing and switch into challenge gear. I switched into a sports-bra, tank top, yoga pants, and sneakers just in time for the bell to chime once more.
“House Guests, please proceed to the challenge area for this week’s Power Play.”
We filed out into the backyard, and I was shocked at how the challenge area had been transformed. The entire roped off area had been raised up, and it looked as if it had been filled in with dirt so the ground was at least two feet higher than it normally was. The raised ground had been set up to look like a graveyard, complete with tombstones, and each tombstone had two names written on it. It weirded me out to see one labeled “Brodie & Kandis.”
Above each open grave, there was a pulley and what looked like an enormous bag.
Liam walked forward and took the card dangling from the first pulley and began to read. “Since I cannot compete, I will be in charge of this competition. This challenge is called ‘Up from the Grave.’ Each team will lay down in an open grave. When the buzzer sounds, I will yank on a pulley and your coffin will be buried. You must then dig yourself out and hit the buzzer above your grave. The first team to hit their buzzer will win Power for this week. As the winners of last week’s Power Play, Katy and Liam may not participate.”
I sucked in a breath. “We’re going to be buried alive?”
“It’s cool,” Brodie reassured me. “We’re on national TV. It’s nothing bad.”