Chapter One
I have always been an observer.
Even as a child, I watched the world unfold before me, as though it were a play in which I had no role. At forty-two, that habit remained--watching, analysing, questioning--but rarely engaging. The last twenty years had passed in the measured cadence of routine, my marriage to David a steady, predictable current. We had built a life together, but I could no longer ignore the sensation that I was a ghost now drifting through it.
And then Rita and James moved in next door.
They arrived in a flourish of opulence, buying the sprawling mansion that David and I had once considered but ultimately passed on. At the time, we convinced ourselves that pouring our resources into renovating our old Queenslander was the wiser choice.
Now, I wasn't so sure.
They had torn down the Queenslander and we had watched a flurry of concreters bricklayers and landscapers sculpt a mansion, that made it clear that it it was private. But a spectacle nonetheless--a towering monument to something decadent, pulsing with the hum of unseen machinery, its overall shape that it resembled was a series of cubes sitting on top of one another. I thought and David agreed that it looked like an apartment building that could occupy at least twenty people and brass accents catching the sun in ways that made it seem alive.
Rita was small, but her presence made her a colossus. Her name carried weight in the underground circles of the amateur porn industry, whispered in reverence and scandal. She was power incarnate, unashamed of her dominion over flesh, machines, and money. But it was Betty who captivated me.
Tall, striking, Betty moved like something crafted for pleasure--graceful, languid, but sharp, as though she could gut you with a glance. The moment our eyes met across the garden fence, something shifted in me. A slow awakening, an unravelling of something I had long believed to be dead inside me.
Our first conversation had been nothing more than a casual greeting, but the undercurrent had been there--an unspoken recognition. Betty's eyes held mine a fraction too long. A hint of a smirk had played at her lips before she turned away, leaving me with the peculiar sensation of being studied and scanned all over. Whatever it was it left me shook but happy.
Then there was James.
If Betty was a force, James was a void--pulling, consuming, inevitable. There was something unsettling about the way he looked at people, as if he could slip into the quiet spaces of their minds and plant himself there. I had once overheard David describing James as "a man with a talent for making people forget themselves." I had laughed at the time, dismissing it as envy. But now, standing in their opulent foyer, the air thick with the scent of burning incense and mechanical oils, I felt it. He had what I would definitely call BDE.
The weight of his presence stayed with one.
Betty had invited me over. A harmless visit, a neighbourly drink. I hadn't expected Rita to be home, nor had I expected James to watch me so intently from the far end of the hall/parlour. I could tell the cubes in the roof seen by the outside
"You don't drink?" His voice was smooth, but not soft. It had an edge that made it impossible to ignore.
"Not often," I admitted.
"Pity," Rita murmured, swirling the amber liquid in her glass. "You seem like a woman who could use an indulgence."
I smiled, but didn't reply. The moment stretched, electric, before Betty placed a hand on my lower back--just the ghost of a touch. Barely there, yet enough to send heat roiling through my spine.
James watched.
And something inside me whispered: Be careful.
My empathic ability, which was so much more than cold reading, as they would discover later, told me something had begun.
**
That night, I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind a tangled mess of thoughts. Betty's touch had been fleeting, but its warmth still lingered on my skin. I could almost feel the press of her fingers, the quiet certainty in the way she had claimed that space.
And I had to admit to a curiosity as to what her brother had between his legs.
David slept beside me, breathing in deep, steady rhythms. He had barely noticed my absence earlier. If he had, he hadn't mentioned it.
I turned onto my side, staring out the window. The mansion next door loomed in the darkness, its boxy spires cutting against the night sky. A faint glow emanated from one of the upper rooms, flickering like candlelight. I imagined Rita there, lounging in some impossibly decadent chamber, dressed entirely in outrageous lingerie, drink in hand, watching the world with the quiet confidence of a queen.
