Ominous (11 page)

They’d called me in next, and I was so angry throughout the whole thing I spent the entire fifteen-minute conversation digging my fingernails into the underside of my chair. I told them I was positive Astrid hadn’t left on her own, but when they’d asked me what made me so positive, I had stopped short of telling them about the dream. I wasn’t
that
crazy.

Or maybe I was. Who knew?

The door to my room clicked open and my heart hit my throat. I whirled around to find Josh slipping through the door, looking relieved to have gotten there in one piece.

“Hey,” he said. He crossed the room and wrapped his cold arms around me.

Talk about relief. I sank into him, placing my cheek against his shoulder. “Hey. Thanks for coming. There’s no way I’m going to sleep alone tonight.”

“This is one favor you can ask for anytime,” he joked.

He rested his chin atop my head, and we both looked out the window again. The guard whistled as he strolled toward the front door of Pemberly. I couldn’t hear the tune, but I could see his lips were pursed, a thin stream of steam issuing from them in bursts and starts.

“Did he give you any trouble?” I asked.

“Me? Nah. I move with the wind,” Josh said with a smirk. He turned me around by my shoulders and gave me a long, soft kiss. “It’s getting late. Should we do what I came here for?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

I slipped into bed and he shed his shoes, coat, sweater, and jeans,
tossing them all on my desk chair until he was wearing nothing but his white T-shirt and plaid boxers. I lifted the blankets and welcomed him in. He gave me another quick kiss and I turned around, cuddling back into his arms.

“Sweet dreams, Reed,” Josh whispered, his breath warm on my hair. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

He curled his arms around me and I drew his hands up under my chin, clasping them inside mine. As my eyes fluttered closed, I almost believed he was right.

“Reed? What do you think of this?”

I looked up from the book of spells. Lorna stood in the center of Sweet Nothings, the Billings Girls’ favorite boutique in Easton, with dozens of dresses slung over one arm, their hangers clinking together as she moved. Dangling from her hand was a gold chain, and on the end of the chain was a pendant. A locket.

My locket.

My hand darted to my neck and found it bare. My insides clenched with anger. Lorna had stolen my necklace.

“Reed?” she prompted. “Can you help me put it on?”

The tons of clothes were gone now. She held the chain open around her neck, waiting for me to clasp it. Swallowing my ire, I placed the book of spells aside on the bench on which I was sitting and stood up. Maybe it wasn’t my necklace at all—just one that looked like mine. One step and I teetered on my heels. When I looked down, I was wearing a pair of vinyl, high-heeled boots. They didn’t belong to me, but
I’d seen them somewhere before. For some reason, the sight of them made me tense, nervous, and sad all at once.

I took another step toward Lorna. She turned to face me, as if wondering what was taking me so long, when suddenly the necklace tightened around her throat. Lorna’s eyes bulged and her lips pulled back.

“Reed!” she rasped.

“Lorna!” I took a step toward her. My ankle turned, and I grabbed a rack of sweaters for support.

“Reed! Reed, help me!” Lorna choked.

“She can’t help you.”

The voice sent a violent shudder down my spine as I tried to right my feet under me. Sabine DuLac glared at me over Lorna’s shoulder, her hands clasping the two ends of the gold chain as she pulled. Her black hair was wild and unkempt around her shoulders, and her light brown skin looked waxy, almost gray. Her once-sharp cheekbones now appeared sunken and there were angry red circles around her green eyes. She was wearing a black robe with wide sleeves, the hood pushed back from her face. I tried to take another step, but the heel broke beneath me and I hit the floor. My hip exploded with pain. Sabine snickered as she looked down at me.

“Turnabout’s fair play,” she said.

I realized suddenly that my skirt had flipped up and my underwear was exposed to the world. Out of nowhere, dozens of faces hovered over me, laughing, and I remembered. These were Cheyenne’s boots. The ones she’d used to embarrass Sabine last fall. I turned and looked
up at the spectators—Gage Coolidge, Hunter Braden, Walt Whittaker, Marc Alberro, Sawyer and Graham Hathaway, Upton Giles, Thomas Pearson—and they were all laughing. I opened my mouth to scream at them, to get them to help Lorna, but nothing came out. And they seemed not to notice anything but my humiliation.

“She has no power here,” Sabine said, her French accent thicker than ever. She turned her lips toward Lorna’s ear. “She never had any power.”

Lorna reached out to me with both hands, fingers stretched to their limit. Blood poured into the whites of her eyes. Her lips slowly turned blue. Sabine jerked her backward, cutting her neck with the chain. And then, finally, Lorna’s head lolled sideways. She was dead.

“No!”

I slammed my forehead into the wall and woke up, seeing stars.

“Reed! Reed, what is it? What’s wrong?

Josh pushed himself up on one hand. His chest heaved beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. I sat up, holding onto my head, biting back tears.

“It was Lorna … Sabine … Sabine choked her to death.”

“What?” Josh drew me into his arms. I gasped for breath as I rested my cheek against his chest. I could hear his heart beating and it seemed to be racing even faster than mine. “It was just a dream,” he said. “It’s okay.”

I closed my eyes and tried to believe him, but all I saw was Lorna’s sagging head. Sabine’s evil grin. Astrid being dragged through the
Billings door by Cheyenne. Rose’s and Kiki’s faces that morning when they’d come to tell me the news.

“Josh.” I pulled away. “What if it wasn’t just a dream? What if—?”

“Reed.” He reached out and smoothed my hair with his palm. “Sabine is behind bars. She can’t hurt anyone.”

“Yes, and Cheyenne’s dead, but Astrid’s still missing,” I replied.

I threw the covers off my legs and got up. I couldn’t sit anymore. I had to think. I slid the locket back and forth on its chain, making a rhythmic zipping sound as I paced. “Reed, listen to what you’re saying,” Josh said, looking up at me. “What are you going to do, call the police and tell them you dreamed that Lorna was killed by a girl who’s been locked up for two months?”

“Yes! No,” I said, wringing my hands. “I don’t know.”

“Just take a deep breath,” Josh said, rising. He put his hands on my shoulders. “The Astrid thing might still be a coincidence,” he said. “This could just be a dream.”

“Stop trying to calm me down!” I blurted, turning away from him.

I shoved my hair back from my head and pressed my eyes closed, trying to get those images of Sabine and Lorna out of my head. Trying to will them away. But they wouldn’t go. If anything, the images only grew more vivid. They were stronger than most dreams. Starker. I could practically smell the new-clothing and leathery fresh scents of Sweet Nothings. Could practically feel those stupid boots pinching my feet.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it felt so real,” I said quietly.

Josh blew out a sigh. “Okay, so … what do you want to do?”

I turned and looked at him, gratitude flowing through me. “You believe me?”

Josh’s green eyes were full of pain and distress and concern. “I believe you’re seriously upset, and I believe there’s something weird going on around here. But then … when is there
not
?”

We both managed a halfhearted chuckle.

“Why don’t you call Lorna?” Josh suggested. “Once you hear she’s okay, you’ll be able to sleep.”

I glanced at the clock. It was after 2 a.m. But this was life or death.

“Okay.”

I grabbed my iPhone off my desk and hit Lorna’s speed dial. As the phone began to ring, I closed my eyes and silently chanted.

Please pick up. Please pick up. Please pick up
.

One ring. Two. Three. I looked at Josh, terror seeping slowly into my veins.

“Four rings,” I told him.

He swallowed. “Well, it
is
the middle of the night.”

Five rings. Six.

“Hello?”

“Lorna!” I blurted.

Josh’s face flooded with relief. He put his hands over his eyes for a moment, then dragged them down to cover his mouth.

“Reed? What time is it? Did they find Astrid?” Lorna asked.

Instantly I felt beyond guilty. Not to mention stupid, gullible, and nuts. “No. I’m so sorry. I misdialed. Just … go back to sleep.”

“Oh. Okay.” Lorna let out a yawn. “’Night.”

Then she hung up.

I blew out a breath and dropped the phone on my desk. “She’s fine.”

“Good,” Josh said. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, chewing on the inside of my cheek. Already the images of the nightmare were starting to fade. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Josh said. He gave me a hug and kissed the top of my head. “I’m just glad I was here.”

“Me too,” I replied.

We dropped back into bed and Josh lay down, one arm around me as I rested my cheek on his chest. He held me tightly and I listened to his breath as it eased toward the steady rhythm of sleep. I turned my face toward Josh’s ribs, my nose flattening against his side.

“Don’t ever leave me,” I whispered.

“I won’t,” Josh whispered back.

I smiled and closed my eyes. Seconds later he was snoring lightly. Seconds after that, so was I.

I awoke from a solid, deep sleep to the sound of loud banging on my door. The pinkish purple light of dawn blanketed my room, and I was just blinking my blurry eyes at my digital clock when the door was flung open and Mrs. Shepard, our housemother, looked inside. Normally impeccably dressed, she wore a purple tracksuit and untied sneakers. Her brown hair was back in a ponytail, and there was a line of dried night cream along her jaw.

Josh and I sat up as one, clutching the blankets to our chests. Mrs. Shepard’s mouth was open with an unspoken announcement, but she froze for a second at the sight of Josh. We were so frickin’ expelled, it wasn’t even funny.

Mrs. Shepard’s mouth snapped shut. “Get up and get dressed. All students to the chapel in ten minutes.”

Then she closed the door and was gone. It wasn’t until that moment that I heard the commotion. Mrs. Shepard wasn’t the only
one banging on doors. There were some shouts, a few drawer slams in adjacent rooms, and the sounds of people whispering furtively.

“Oh God,” I said, looking at Josh. The blankets were curled so tightly in my fists the seams were cutting my palms. “Oh God. Josh?”

His skin was waxy and pale, his curls sticking out haphazardly as he whipped the covers off and got up. “We don’t know anything yet. Don’t freak out. Maybe they found Astrid. Maybe it’s fine.”

I took a deep breath and nodded, but I felt as if no oxygen had made it past my nose. Josh quickly yanked his jeans on and reached for his sweater as I tried to make myself breathe. Tried not to think about Lorna. Tried not to imagine the worst.

We dressed quickly and raced across campus with all the other clumps of confused, bleary-eyed students. When we finally shuffled into the chapel, my eyes flicked to the pew where I usually sat with my friends, but no one was sitting where they were supposed to be. Guys were on the girls’ side, freshmen were in the back, seniors along with juniors up front. Josh and I exchanged a glance and slipped into the end of the last pew. I looked around for Lorna and Constance, who was Lorna’s roommate in Pemberly, but I didn’t see them. Josh’s arm had been locked around my shoulders from the moment we walked out the door of my room and it was still there. I leaned into him, noticing the expressions on the faces around me. Kids were scared, confused, tired, concerned. But it was the adults who really disturbed me. Housemothers and male dorm advisors stood along the walls of the chapel, men with their hair sticking up on one side, women devoid of makeup, none of them talking, none of them daring to look
anyone in the eye. Their faces all held slight variations of the same emotion: dread.

“Any idea what this is all about?”

Noelle slid into the seat at the end of the aisle, forcing Josh and me to scoot toward the center. She’d taken the time to brush her hair and swipe on mascara and lip gloss. Apparently I’d gotten my sense of urgency from my mother’s side.

I felt a sudden stab of righteous anger and turned to Noelle. “Tell me you and your grandmother had nothing to do with this,” I said through clenched teeth,

“What?” Noelle said breathlessly.

“Tell me this isn’t another test for me. Or for Astrid and Lorna. Just swear to me, Noelle.”

A flash of irritation lit her eyes, but she blinked it away. “Reed. I swear,” she said, laying a hand on my arm. “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”

I turned away, tears filling my eyes. I wanted to believe her, but at this point, I had no idea what to believe anymore.

“Wait … Lorna?” she asked. “Why did you—”

“This is about her,” I heard myself say. “She’s dead.”

“What?” Noelle gasped.

“Reed, come on,” Josh said, putting his hand over mine. “You don’t know that.”