Ominous (22 page)

“Mrs. Kane?” I blurted.

So this was why I’d dreamed about Cheyenne. Her mother was behind this.

Cheyenne’s mother smirked casually at me, as if I’d just told an inside joke. “Hello, Reed.” She laced her skinny fingers together in front of her. “I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long … long time.”

I gaped back at her. Cheyenne’s mother had never been anything but polite to me. She’d seemed so strong after Cheyenne’s death. Emotional, sure, but strong. Not at all crazy. Certainly not a person who could mastermind the kidnappings of five of the wealthiest, most connected teenagers in the world—and me.

“Why?” I asked. “What did we ever do to you?”

Her smirk deepened. “Let’s forget about ‘we’ for the moment, shall we? Let’s talk about you.”

Missy let out a wry laugh.

“Fine,” I said, lifting my chin. “What did
I
ever do to you?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Kiki’s shoulders moving back and forth in an almost rhythmic pattern. I hoped she had come to her senses and was trying to get free. I decided to make this conversation last as long as humanly possible so that she’d have some extra time.

“I’m sure by now you know about our four founding mothers,” Mrs. Kane said with a touch of sarcasm. “Of how Catherine White is related to Ariana Osgood, of how Noelle Lange is descended from Theresa Billings, of how you”—she paused here to sneer at me—“have both Billings and Williams blood corrupting your veins.”

I felt a flash of pride and lifted my chin even higher.

“Well, I, too, am descended from that ignominious little club,” she said, shaking a wisp of blond hair back from her face. “Cheyenne and I are direct descendants of Helen Jennings.”

“The maid?” Kiki blurted.

Mrs. Kane’s eyes narrowed and she slowly looked over her shoulder at Kiki. “Yes, Miss Rosen. The maid.”

“What the hell is she on about?” Astrid asked Missy.

“Believe me,” Missy said, “you don’t want to know.”

Mrs. Kane shot them a silencing glare. They both clamped their mouths shut.

“We always knew that if ever the four families were to meet at Easton again, there would be trouble,” she continued. “But we had thought the Williams line had finally died out.”

She stepped closer to me, her shoes rasping against the concrete
floor. She leaned over and peered into my eyes, so close our noses almost touched.

“We should have known better. We should have known Eliza would rear her ugly head again. And so she has.”

Her breath mingled with mine, and it was all I could do not to bite her nose off. She leaned back again and walked away, shooting me a snide look over her shoulder. “Your grandmother made sure of that, didn’t she?”

Mrs. Kane plucked one of the knives from the circular table. My heart sank to my toes.

“What do you mean?” I said, barely able to speak past the burning lump of horror in my throat. “What do you mean, she made sure of that?”

Mrs. Kane cocked her head. “Don’t you know?” She walked over and lifted the knife toward my face. I flinched, and Constance and Lorna started to sob. “You were engineered, my love.” She brought the tip of the knife to my left cheek and I felt a pinprick on my skin.

“No no no no no,” Lorna whimpered, wagging her head back and forth.

“Your grandmother was the one who invited your mother to interview at Lange Industries. She was the one who made certain your mother got the job as your father’s assistant. She dropped in their laps the project that forced them to work late nights, weekends, holidays. To always be thrown together. She knew her son well enough to know what would happen. And as one of Eliza’s descendants your mother is, of course, a whore.”

“Shut up!” I spat.

She flinched and the point of the knife drove deeper into my skin. I felt the hot trickle of blood down my cheek and started to shake.

“Just like you are,” Mrs. Kane continued, her voice singsong. She moved the knife to my other cheek and pricked me there as well. “All of the Williams women are whores, and all of the Lange women are manipulative liars. Guess what that makes you?”

She turned around and dropped the knife back on the table with a clang. “Clean it!”

Someone rushed forward and grabbed the knife, scurrying quickly away. Mrs. Kane turned back to me.

“Ever since you’ve been enrolled at Easton, there has been nothing but misfortune,” she said, her words clipped now, as if she were giving a presentation on stocks and bonds. “My daughter died because of you and—”

“Your daughter died because Sabine DuLac was unhinged,” Astrid spat.

Mrs. Kane blinked and her head twitched slightly. Then she continued as if Astrid hadn’t spoken. “My daughter
died
because you are a walking curse,” she said to me. “And the rest of you have only made it worse.”

She flung an arm around at the others.

“Since you riffraff have been allowed into Billings, there has been nothing but misery and destruction. But now, with your sacrifice, the slate will be wiped clean.”

The knife was returned to its place on the table, and Mrs. Kane’s minion disappeared back into the shadows.

“With the purging of all those who were not properly chosen, all will be set right.”

“You’ve got your facts wrong,” I said. “I was properly chosen. And Missy would have gotten in. She’s a legacy.”

Mrs. Kane
tsk
ed, then sucked in a breath through her teeth. “You were chosen by one and one alone, Miss
Williams
,” she spat. “Ariana Osgood, descendant of the one who cursed us, convinced the others to invite you in so that she could keep an eye on you. And then the little heathen went crazy and started murdering people. Hardly a ringing endorsement, I’d say.”

“What about me?” Missy said, eyeing the knives with terror. “I would have gotten in junior year, like Reed said. You can’t do this to me. It isn’t fair.”

Mrs. Kane ignored her. She lifted her hood back over her head and turned her back to me.

“Begin the ritual,” she said.

And then she melted into the darkness. Instantly, six hooded figures moved into the circle. Each one picked up a knife. My heart slammed into my rib cage over and over and over again as I fixated on the point of the knife closest to me.

“No!” Astrid shouted. “You can’t do this!”

“This isn’t happening,” Lorna said over and over again, still shaking her head. “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.”

Missy continued shouting about being a legacy, and Constance was just screaming out of control. Her eyes were wild as she struggled against her ropes, and I felt as if my heart were slowly tearing with each shriek.

“Reed! Reed!” Kiki cried.

I somehow tore my eyes away from the knife, which was being walked slowly in my direction. The six wielders were muttering something under their breath—something like a chant—but I couldn’t make out the words.

Kiki flicked her head back and I looked down at her hands. She was holding her left hand out, palm to the side, but her wrists were still bound. I looked back at her face, my brow knit.

“What?” I demanded.

She mouthed one word. “
Ventus
.”

She couldn’t be serious. She wanted to try a spell? That was her master plan? Her eyes widened, prodding me. From the corner of my eye, I saw the person before me lift the dagger with both hands. I had about ten seconds to live. I nodded to Kiki, turned my hand so that the palm faced left as well, and shouted.

“
VENTUS
!”

Suddenly, a vicious wind whipped around the room, flinging my hair in front of my face, pelting my blood-soaked cheeks with dirt, stinging my eyes. I turned my head away from it to protect myself and heard knives clang to the floor. Someone screamed. Dimly I saw one of the robed figures crawling across the circle, grappling for a fallen knife. Then Mrs. Kane exploded from the shadows, her hood blown from her face, her hair flying wildly in all directions. She grabbed the figure’s arms and pointed at me.

“Start with her! Start with the Williams girl!”

Shaking fingers closed around the knife handle. The robed figure
stood up and staggered toward me, one hand holding the hood to her head. She lifted her arm and lunged. I closed my eyes, wondering how much this would hurt before I died.

Then there was a slam. The wind died. And someone who sounded a lot like my dad let out a guttural scream.

“No!”

A body careened against my executioner, knocking the figure sideways and slamming it into the floor. My father pinned the person to the ground, his knees on her shoulders, and wrested the knife out of her hands. When he whipped the hood away, my jaw dropped. It was Demetria Rosewell.

“Reed! Reed! Are you all right?”

Josh was in front of me. I began to shake from head to toe, with relief, with terror, with confusion. Had we really just done a spell? Or had the door opened at the exact moment we’d tried, bringing the wind with it? Was Josh really here, or was I dreaming again?

“Reed? Answer me,” Josh said.

But he wasn’t real. None of this was real. None of this could really be happening. In the corner I saw Noelle. And Ivy. And Mr. Lange. And Grandmother Lange. And about two dozen police officers. None of it registered, though. They were all characters in a play. Features in someone else’s reality. I looked back down at my boyfriend, my eyes dry and narrowed, blood still dripping onto my shoulders.

“Reed?” Josh reached up and touched my face with his fingertips. His skin was warm. His fingers trembled. “Reed, please?”

He was real.

“Josh?” I blurted. “Josh?”

“Oh my God, you’re bleeding,” he said.

Someone started messing with my hands. Tugging at the ropes.

“Josh?”

I couldn’t stop saying his name. Something inside of me had broken, and I was like a skipping record.

“Josh? Josh? Josh?”

His face changed. The color drained and his eyes were like pinpricks.

“Get her down,” he growled.

Something slipped from my ankles and my feet were free. A second later my hands were too. I fell into Josh, launched into him, nearly flattened him. I was shaking so hard my head bumped his chin over and over and over again.

“Josh. Josh. Josh. Josh. Josh.”

“It’s okay,” he whispered into my hair, kissing my head, holding me as tightly as he could. “It’s okay. I found you. I found you and everything’s going to be okay.”

The weird thing was, it was almost exactly how I had imagined it a few minutes earlier. Exactly how I’d wished it to be.

“Drink this.”

I sat on a chair someone had found in a corner of the basement, a coarse NYPD-issue blanket over my shoulders. Josh crouched in front of me, holding out a paper cup full of water.

“I’m an idiot,” I said.

Josh blew out a sigh. “Well. I’m glad to hear you say anything other than my name, but I can’t agree with that.”

I swallowed hard. My mouth was full of dust and dirt and blood. I lifted the cup to my lips, shaking so hard some of the water spilled over onto my lap. I sipped just a little, and a trickle of clean coolness slithered down my throat. I stared down at the ring he’d given me. A spot of blood had dried over several of the diamonds.

“How can you love me?” I asked, my voice cracking. “All I do is bring you misery and … and head wounds. How can you even be with me?”

A single tear slid down my cheek and got caught in the crusted
blood, where it stopped and started to itch. Josh laughed quietly. He lifted his hand to cup my cheek, drawing his finger over the spot, driving the itch away.

“How could I
not
be with you?” he asked.

I sniffled. “But I—”

“Reed, none of this is your fault,” he said. “I know you don’t believe that right now, but I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to convince you. You’re not cursed. You’re not unlucky. You’re perfect.”

He hugged me and I leaned into him, pressing my nose into his chest. Over his shoulder, I could see the police rounding up the suspects—the believers. I was surprised that Paige Ryan wasn’t among them, and happy to see that I didn’t recognize anyone else, except dimly from the society pages. I had feared that Susan Llewelyn, once one of my favorite alums, would be part of this, but thankfully, she wasn’t there either.

“Can I ask you something?” Josh asked, whispering in my ear.

I nodded into his jacket.

“Did you try to … send me a message?” he asked.

I drew back, my heart thumping extra hard. “What do you mean? Why?”

Josh swallowed hard, looking freaked. “I was with the police and Mr. Lange, Ivy, and Noelle, and all of a sudden I got this … I don’t know … this picture in my mind. Of a crate of Asti Movanti.”

We both looked toward the door, where dozens of Movanti crates were stacked.

“You … you did?” I asked.

He nodded. “I just sort of blurted it out and Mr. Lange said it was the name of this wine … some failed venture of Mrs. Cox’s. She bought controlling stock in this Italian company or something and the wine turned out to be swill. I don’t know. But anyway, as soon as I said it, Ivy told them we had to check out the Coxes’ house. Because they live right next door to the Langes, and Mrs. Cox … she’s a Billings alum and—”