Roses Manor, Weston Chapter 21
It was time to admit she felt like hell. Gabriella had taken one of Amelia’s ginger apple tea bags (they were pretty good, she’d have to buy some for home) and parked herself at the computer in the back bedroom to work on Sixteen Roses. Or, more accurately, stare at the screen and wonder what the hell she was supposed to do about those faded stairs. It was tempting to either crawl into the bed beside her and go to sleep, or just wrap herself in the bed quilt while she worked. But that would make it too obvious to James, who was on with her tonight, that she didn’t feel good. And then he might make her stop the case completely.
“Hey, Gabs?”
James’s voice was coming from down the hall. She reluctantly stood up, breathed through the brief head rush, and then walked out. “What’s up?”
James frowned at her. “Are you good?”
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
“Graham got the call too. On his landline at Cleary House.”
Graham’s second job had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of them. So it was the game. Not the Wi-Fi. “Did he catch what she was saying?” Gabriella asked.
“He said she kept saying the name Kenzie.”
Kenzie… that was it. How had she not made the connection? Gabriella hurried back to the computer, ignoring James as he tried to stop her. Her heart was racing and her head was pounding, but if she just got this in, then she could rest. She’d even let James force her to go home.
The game was open to those translucent stairs led to a platform of some kind. There was no apparent way to make them solid. But no, putting in the K made the game shake, then the first stair appeared.
A wave of nausea rocked her and she swallowed hard as James came into the room. In quick succession, she filled in the other stairs and hurried up to the dais. The screen went white and beside her, the energy reader screamed.
And that was when Gabriella knew she was in trouble. Heart hammering in her chest, she turned to James, who was right behind her. She stood up, stumbled, and he caught her. “I need to…” she muttered into his chest.
He started steering her toward the bed, but her stomach lurched and she was throwing up before she realized it. She was distantly mortified to realize she’d probably puked directly on him, but he shoved a tiny trash can in front of her and moved her until she was sitting on the side of the bed. Gabriella sat with the can gripped in one hand as he pulled her other hand toward him, fingers on her pulse.
“I’m calling Doctor Oliver,” James said. “I don’t feel right about this.”
“I need to lie down,” Gabriella said. “It’s the game. It’s not a cold. Fuck, I just…”
She didn’t have the strength to keep going, not that she was sure what she was going to say. Behind James, the screen was still white. Maybe it was broken. Or maybe she won. Who the hell knew? But her dad wasn’t laughing with her as the end credit music played this time. Now James was holding her up as the Princess’s music played almost too quietly to hear, but not too quietly to feel thrumming in her chest.
“Lay down,” James said, clicking on the screen to turn off the brightness, which flickered away into red and black, YOU WON appearing as he pressed the power button and shut the whole computer down. “Come on, you’re okay, hon. Just keep the bucket with you, alright?”
Right, she puked on him. “I’m sorry,” Gabriella murmured, closing her eyes against the headache.
She heard the shuffle of him taking off his sweatshirt, then the thud of it landing wherever he’d just tossed it. “You think you’ve never puked on me before?”
“Can I go home?”
“Nah, stay here,” he said. “At least until we talk to Dr. Oliver.”
“I want my dad.”
She vaguely realized what she’d said as James went quiet, then squeezed her hand. But as she continued to take deep breaths, heart still racing, she knew she’d meant it.
“I know,” James said. “I know. I’ll just… I’ll just stick around for a little while, okay?”
***
She fell asleep shortly after, with James still beside her on the bed. A couple hours later, she woke up feeling a little better, but still rough, in order to talk to Dr. Oliver on a video call. Gabriella was already recovering now that the other computer was off and she was away from the game. It was an energy coming from the game, this confirmed it.
The heart rate monitor was still going too fast, but since it was returning to a normal rhythm, Dr. Oliver was satisfied she didn’t have to go to the hospital. However, since Gabriella lived alone, her only options for the rest of the night were to stay here with James or go stay with her mother.
As much as she’d rather not stay here at work, Gabriella chose that option. She slept through the night for the most part, waking occasionally as whoever was on staff tiptoed in, clearly making sure she was still breathing. But mostly she was caught in a tangle of Sixteen Roses dreams, occasionally broken by the feel of an old game controller in her hand.
The next morning it was like a fever had broken. Gabriella sat up, took a few deep breaths, and spent a minute counting her pulse. It was almost normal. She was hungry and thirsty, but alive.
Apparently it was still incredibly early because when she walked out into the dim living room, the only person in the building was James, who was snoring quietly on the couch. Like she had with Amelia the other day, she left him alone and went into the kitchen to make some breakfast from whatever she could find there.
There were eggs, almost an alarming amount of them, from Graham’s sister’s farm out in Great Barrington. And some bread Graham had made while visiting the same sister the other day, then deposited here and refused to take home with him.
James’s phone alarm went off in the living room just as she was finishing scrambling enough eggs for both of them. He sat up, then stood and headed for the hallway, passing by Gabriella before backtracking to the kitchen.
“You’re okay?” he asked around a yawn.
She felt better than he looked. “Fine,” she said. “I made breakfast.”
“You didn’t-”
“I will eat yours too if you don’t take it.”
He laughed and accepted the eggs and toast she passed him.
***
Her phone rang a few minutes later with an unfamiliar number as they sat on the couch with their breakfasts. Gabriella glanced at it, then ignored it. If it was the sobbing woman again, she was taking a break.
“Let’s skip the game for today,” James said as he put hot sauce on his scrambled eggs. “Maybe for a few days. You look better though.”
“I feel a lot better,” she said. “It was something coming out of the game, the energy reader was going wild.”
“It almost broke,” he said. “Amelia came in for a few hours and we ended up doing some cleansing on the computer while you were sleeping. A little in the room too, but we didn’t want to bother you. And once we moved the desktop out of there, the strange readings cut off pretty abruptly.”
It was a weird thought, that her teammates were cleansing the room around her while she was sleeping, but probably not the weirdest thing Gabriella had dealt with on this job. And if it meant she never felt the way she felt last night again, she was fine with that.
“Jolene wants to talk to you again today,” James said as Fang hopped up on the couch to investigate his food. “And you are required to follow up with her. I will make the call myself and sit in the room until you talk to her if I have to.”
“Of course,” Gabriella said, surprised at the strictness in his tone. “Did she say when?”
The phone rang again before James could answer or explain his concern about her skipping her follow-up, again with an odd number. And again, she ignored it. Fang made a pitiful noise beside her, but Gabriella gently shooed her away from the toast she was eyeing.
The main phone rang, and James reluctantly stood up. “I have to get that one,” he said.
He greeted the caller, then frowned. “Who is this?” he said.
He listened for a few seconds, then hung up and sat down without a word.
“Who was it?” Gabriella asked.
“A recording,” James said. “It was creepy. The whole ‘Our princess is in another castle’, thing again.”
Now Gabriella’s phone rang, shrill and loud even though she’d turned off the ringer. “I’m just going to answer,” she said with a sigh.
James watched warily as she picked up. “Hello?”
“You did well, Gabriella.”
“Who is this?”
“I mean it, I’m impressed.”
The voice was male, smooth. She couldn’t place the age, but something in it suggested money in a way Gabriella couldn’t quite explain. She put the call on speaker and set it on the table beside her coffee. “Please tell me who you are.”
“My name is Daniel Ford,” the man said. “I’m one of the creators of Sixteen Roses. And you are one of our top players, did you know that? Out of thousands of potential candidates, only a few ever reach the level you’re at.”
“And the rest die, do they?”
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that, but it came out anyway. Apparently he wasn’t expecting it, because there was a brief blip in the man’s otherwise unflappable phone manner.
“As far as I know, nobody has died as a direct result of our game,” Daniel said.
Gabriella looked at James, who was scribbling notes on a legal pad. “What do you want from me?”
“To reward your performance in Sixteen Roses. Like I said, it’s a rare talent that can reach this point. You have that rare talent.”
She made a quick jerkoff gesture and James choked on a laugh as he carefully sketched that beside Ford’s words on his legal pad. Behind him, the front door opened and Gabriella saw Madelyn coming up the stairs. She motioned for her to both come over to the coffee table and to be quiet as she did so. Madelyn did both, sitting next to James as she set down her cane.
“There’s a party coming up,” Daniel said. “To celebrate the success of Sixteen Roses. We’ve reached new heights in the past three years and the enthusiasm of such talented players like yourself is responsible for that. So we want to extend our invitation and express our gratitude.”
“And this is where?”
“Our headquarters are in Weston, Massachusetts at Roses Manor. You’re our final champion, so the gala can finally begin. We’ve been waiting a long time, and so have the other champions. It’s Friday,” he continued, and her stomach dropped. Just a couple days away. How long had they been planning this to be able to set it up so quickly? “Fourteen Eighty-Two Mechanic Street in Weston. Other winners have already confirmed their attendance, some flying in from Europe on very short notice to celebrate with us. The invitation is for you and a plus one, of course. You are required to attend. We’ll send a link to your email and once you click that, it is a legally binding contract. Do not test us on that, Gabriella. And of course we’ll send you a proper paper invitation. Seventy-Two Saint Margaret’s Way in Leominster, correct?”
That was the address for headquarters. James looked at her and she shook her head. Of course she hadn’t given the address, but like she’d told him, it wasn’t hard to find. If they had the IP address, then they could find the physical location. And if they had the money – which they clearly did, or at least wanted everyone to think they did – then their access was even simpler.
“The princess will be attending, of course,” Daniel Ford said as all three of them looked at each other. There it was, the reason this was their case.
“G-great,” Gabriella said, with a broad fake smile she hoped sounded more real over the phone. “Sounds great.”
“Excellent. And congratulations again, Gabriella. You did fabulous work.”
The line disconnected. “Well, fuck,” Gabriella muttered. “I’m their last champion and the gala can begin? That’s not ominous. Madelyn, are you my plus-one?”
Madelyn held out her phone to show them the map she’d pulled up. “It’s a mansion,” she said. “And the entrance is a very large staircase. Do we think there’s an elevator?”
James looked up from what he was reading on his phone. “We can check today,” he said. “Mads, you up for driving?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m feeling pretty good.” “Great,” he said. “Alright, road trip. You guys are going to go very carefully check it out. Don’t go inside. Madelyn, I’m not bailing you out for breaking and entering. Once was enough.”
“What?” Gabriella blurted out.
“That wasn’t me, it was Amelia,” Madelyn corrected James primly.
“And I’m sure you had nothing to do with it,” he said. “But first, Gabs, you have a ten o’clock appointment at St. Hildegard’s with Dr. Oliver. Since you’ll be in the area, anyway.”
He smiled at her, and she resisted the urge to groan. Instead, she scooped up the last of her scrambled eggs, then headed to the kitchen to make more toast.
