“Thanks, Reed,” Kiki said, placing the book down and taking her homework page, as it were.
“Yeah, sorry it didn’t work out like you wanted,” Constance added, her paper fluttering slightly as she took it.
I looked at them both—the two who knew they were potentially in more danger than the rest of us—and swallowed back a warning that would probably only make them feel worse.
“Thanks for humoring me, you guys,” I said.
They closed the doors behind them and about a minute later, I heard a loud group laugh as they waited for the elevator. Humiliation burned in my very bones. My friends were out there laughing at me.
“I don’t get it,” I said, turning to Noelle and Ivy.
“I know.” Ivy flopped into one of the dining chairs, which we’d pushed off to the side, and slumped so low her hair hung down the back almost to the seat. “I swear I felt different after the first time we
said the incantation. And I
know
I made that painting fall and those doors slam.”
“Plus I didn’t start having the dreams until after I’d said it,” I added, leaning back against the table.
“Do you think there’s something in what London said?” Ivy mused, folding her hands over her flat stomach. “Maybe it didn’t work on Tiff and Amberly because they didn’t believe in it, and maybe having two or three nonbelievers in the group weakened the incantation?”
I stood up straight. “I was just thinking the same thing!”
“You guys have completely gone off the reservation,” Noelle said.
I flinched. I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“I don’t believe any of this crap either, but my candle relit,” she said, gesturing toward the pile of singed-wicked candles on a side table. “This is all one big ridiculous joke.”
Ivy and I looked at one another, stunned and annoyed.
“But you said it yourself,” Ivy countered, sitting up straight. “We got those candles at Pottery Barn, so how do you explain the fact that, like, eight and a half of them blew out, then relit?”
“I don’t know, Ivy,” Noelle said, throwing her hands up. “Maybe that gust of wind only squelched them for a second and then they came back. We’ve all seen that happen before. And maybe it hit Tiff’s, Amberly’s, and Portia’s more directly and that’s why theirs didn’t relight.”
“So how do you explain the wind?” I asked.
“This house is like a hundred years old,” Noelle said, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s always been drafty.”
Ivy and I rolled our eyes in unison.
“Whatever. I don’t care if you guys agree with me,” Noelle said. She grabbed the candles up in bunches and walked over to a thick metal garbage can near the door. “All I know is, your experiment didn’t work. And there are still a bunch of nutbars out there who believe in this curse thing.” She punctuated her points by throwing the candles into the can with a clang, one by one. “So if you don’t mind, I’d like to focus our time and energy on finding out who those people are, and stopping them.”
She slapped her hands together.
“Because when I find them,” she said, “I am going to take absolute pleasure in personally kicking every one of their crazy little asses.”
Then she turned around and flounced over to her bathroom, slamming the door behind her. A moment later we heard the bath running and the stereo flick on.
Ivy sighed and pushed herself up out of her chair. “Is it lame that I really thought it was going to work?” she asked.
My eyes darted to the offending spoon. “No,” I said weakly, sadly. “I wanted it to work too.”
“Happy birthday, dear Reed! Happy birthday to you!”
I looked around the dining room at all my friends, my heart warm. I couldn’t believe they’d all come out to Croton just for me, but there they were, gathered in my family’s dining room, singing their hearts out with glee. My mother placed the birthday cake down in front of me, candles ablaze. I looked up at her before making my wish, knowing she’d be smiling back at me with pride. But then my heart stopped. It wasn’t my mother at all, but a black-robed figure, its face hidden by a huge black hood. I gasped and looked around.
Noelle placed a paper noisemaker between her lips and blew. Sawyer Hathaway and Upton Giles exchanged party hats. Thomas Pearson laughed and slapped Dash McCafferty’s shoulder as he doubled over. Over in the corner, Astrid, Lorna, Kiki, and Constance danced while London and Vienna checked out my huge pile of gifts. None of them seemed to see the dozens of black-robed figures
dotted among them, stiff as corpses in all the merriment and chaos.
“Blow out your candles, Reed,” a gravelly voice said in my ear.
I looked up at the creature who stood where my mother should have been. The heat from the candles blazed unbearably hot and my vision wavered. All the colors blurred around me. The balloons and streamers, the brightly hued dresses and crazily wrapped gifts—all of it faded together just as the voices and laughter swelled. This was too much. I was going to pass out.
Take a breath, Reed. Focus. They’re here for a reason. They’re going to hurt someone else
.
I forced myself to stand and took a lurching step forward. Instantly I tripped over something solid and Thomas caught me by the arm.
“Watch out, new girl,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling mischievously.
“Have a nice trip?” Gage put in, earning a round of laughter.
“Sorry, I—” I looked down and screamed. At my feet was a dead body. A girl, her face hidden beneath the bright paper tablecloth.
I turned around to run and tripped again. Another body. Another hidden face.
“No!” I screamed, clutching the first arm I could grab onto. “No!”
“What’s your problem, Glass-Licker?” Ariana sneered down at me.
My heart clenched. I backed away from her and this time tripped backward, falling down hard. My hand came down on someone’s torso. When I lifted it again, my fingers were coated in blood.
“No!” I screamed. “No! Someone help me!”
I reached up to my friends, but they didn’t hear. Portia and Rose
walked by me, stepping over dead limbs like they weren’t there. Tiffany shouted something unintelligible and everyone laughed. My heart pounded frantically in my ears. Why couldn’t anyone hear me? Why couldn’t they see? The floor was covered with dead girls and all they could do was stand there and laugh?
“Help me! Somebody! Please, please, help me!”
Suddenly someone grabbed me by the shoulders and whirled me around. The person opened desiccated lips and screeched,
“You don’t belong!”
I sat up in bed, screaming loudly enough to wake the dead. Noelle grabbed my hand just as Ginny, Goran, and Sam banged into the room, guns drawn. I cowered back toward the headboard and curled into a ball, attempting to catch my breath.
“What is it? What happened?” Ginny asked, holstering her weapon as she crossed to the bed. All I could do in response was whimper as the other two guards took off in opposite directions to check the other rooms.
“It was just a dream,” Noelle answered for me. She ran a hand over my sweaty hair. “Reed? What happened? What did you dream about?”
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes closed in an attempt to blot out the images. But closing my eyes only made the memories more vivid.
“Was it Kiki? Constance?” Noelle pressed.
“No,” I blurted, opening my eyes again. “It was . . . I don’t know what happened. All I know was it was my birthday . . . and there were dead bodies everywhere.”
Noelle’s mouth set in a tight line. She looked at Ginny as she continued to stroke my hair.
“It’s gonna be all right,” Ginny said reassuringly. “We’ve got the party covered. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I nodded and let Noelle wrap her arms around me. Unfortunately, after everything that had happened, Ginny’s words meant nothing to me. It had been a vivid, powerful nightmare. And lately, all my nightmares had been coming true.
Since first arriving at Easton last year, I had attended some elaborate parties. Birthday celebrations on yachts, fund-raising parties at swank New York City locales, clambakes in Nantucket where the most basic thing on the menu was barbecued lobster meat in sweet-cream butter sauce. Not to mention the Legacy soirees—huge events with elaborate settings, attended by the most overly indulged, ridiculously privileged, stunningly beautiful kids on the Eastern Seaboard. But my seventeenth birthday party blew them all out of the water.
If I hadn’t been so distracted trying to keep an eye on all my friends, I would’ve been having the time of my life.
The Lange mansion had three huge party-appropriate rooms on its ground level. First there was the grand foyer, with its marble floor, winding staircase, and two-story ceiling. Then there was the ballroom, which had literally hosted balls at some point in its history, and could therefore adequately hold upward of two hundred guests.
Finally, there was the dining room, which boasted fireplaces at both ends and normally held a gleaming oak table long enough to seat forty people comfortably.
Tonight that table had been removed and replaced by several cozy seating sections for people to lounge on while they noshed on seafood skewers and swigged five-hundred-dollar champagne. Colorful bubbles floated across the ceiling, and the sound of waves was being piped at a subtle level through dozens of hidden speakers. On the low tables at the center of each seating section were the aquarium centerpieces Noelle had promised, and along the walls stood elaborate arrangements of coral and sea anemones, which had somehow been animated to sway lazily, as if they were actually growing from the bottom of the ocean. The ballroom was set up for dancing, with colorful mesh eels dangling from the ceiling, undulating eerily and flashing different hues to the beat of the music the DJ was spinning from his booth. The walls had been papered with light blue and aqua green swaths of fabric, which heaved like waves, and actual sand dunes lined the walls.
I hadn’t spent much time in there, however, because my friends had been keeping to the dining room, huddled together at two of the comfy seating areas. Whenever they did move, they were easy to track, since they stayed in a clump as they shuffled from room to room. Ironically, they reminded me of that old children’s book,
Swimmy
, in which Swimmy the fish teaches his tiny friends to swim together in the shape of one big fish in order to keep the larger predators away. Just like the tiny fish, my friends were sticking together for safety.
I was glad they were taking the threat seriously, even if they hadn’t believed in the book of spells. Unfortunately, Kiki hadn’t arrived yet, and her absence was starting to make me tense. Especially considering she and Constance—who was currently downing a shrimp cocktail to my left—were the two under the greatest threat.
“You don’t have to hover, you know,” Noelle said, looking up at me as the latest group of well-wishers edged away into the crowd. “I can keep an eye on everyone.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind,” I replied.
I glanced over my shoulder toward the corner where Goran and Sam were stationed. They had agreed to keep a reasonable distance so as not to cramp our style, but I always felt their eyes on me. Not to mention my mom’s and dad’s. At the moment they were standing a few feet away from the bodyguards, chatting with Constance’s parents, whom they had just met. Luckily, Noelle’s mom and dad were elsewhere. I’d yet to see my mother in the same room with my biological father, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to—ever. Imagining how that scenario might play out made my head feel like it was going to explode.
Noelle got up onto her knees and leaned her hands on the back of the couch on which she, Portia, and Rose were sitting. “I didn’t do all that planning just so you could stand there and not enjoy it. Go! Dance! Find your floppy-haired boy toy. I’m on babysitting duty.”
I laughed and lifted one shoulder. I hadn’t seen Josh yet tonight, and I couldn’t wait for him to arrive. “Well, if you insist. . . . Thanks, Noelle.”
She shooed me away and I finally turned, noting how Sam hopped into action the second I stirred. I greeted a few more guests as I moved through the door and into the foyer—some faces familiar, some completely new—and made my way into the ballroom. All the while my senses were on high alert, and I made sure to keep an eye out for anyone out of place, any strange movement, any prying eyes.
The music in the ballroom was so loud the floor shook beneath my silver shoes, and my rib cage seemed to radiate the beat. I paused for a moment to get my bearings in the relative darkness. I heard my brother, Scott, let out a whoop from somewhere near the center of the dance floor, and all I could do was hope he wasn’t making too big of a jackass out of himself.
“Reed! There you are!”
Suddenly I was caught up in a quadruple hug. I recognized Kiran Hayes’s signature flowery-musk scent before I ever got a look at her face. When I pulled back, there she was in all her supermodel glory. Just the sight of her brought back so many memories of my first days at Easton and Billings that my eyes flooded with tears. She wore a dark green dress with an elaborate ruffled collar that grazed her razor-sharp cheekbones and accentuated her olive complexion. With her was Taylor Bell, another of my first friends at Easton. Her curly blond hair was pulled back in a crazy ponytail and she wore an off-the-shoulder blue jumpsuit that made her look as slim as Kiran. The third set of arms belonged to Natasha Crenshaw, my former roommate and still good friend, whose royal blue dress was conservative but still accentuated her every curve. Her long black curls had been
twisted into an elaborate bun at the nape of her neck, and her dark skin shone under the strobe lights.
“Guess Noelle gave you a heads-up on the color scheme,” I said with a smirk, noting how their outfits complemented the décor.
“It’s good to have friends in high places,” Kiran demurred, taking a sip of her champagne. “You look amazing!”
“Thanks,” I replied, looking down at my own dark aqua dress. The silk skirt floated around my knees like a cool breeze, and the portrait neckline played down my athletic shoulders. I’d found it at the foot of Noelle’s bed that morning, inside a huge white box with a pink bow. The card read
HAPPY BIRTHDAY—WALLACE LANGE
. I had a feeling Noelle had actually picked it out, but I appreciated the gesture.