Poor Little Dead Girls (37 page)

Everything moved in slow motion. Sadie slid to the side and Pamela’s clawed fingers sliced through the air, stiff and contorted, like talons. They held eye contact for a split second as her weight carried her forward, pulling her closer to the edge. Pamela’s mouth opened in dull surprise as the low stone wall took her out at the knees, then stretched wider in horror as she pitched forward into the darkness. She flailed, twisting back and reaching for Sadie, her face now a mask of naked fear. In spite of herself, Sadie reached back. It didn’t have to end like this. Not with more death.

It was too late.

Sadie’s fingers just barely grazed the papery skin at her throat before she fell, and then there was nothing. No sound. No scream. No splash as she hit the water. No cracking as she hit rock.

She was just gone.

For a moment, everything was silent. Then another wave crashed below, and a gust of wind blew Sadie back down off the wall and onto the roof. She collapsed to her knees and looked down into her hand, shivering with cold and fear and fumes of adrenaline.

In her palm was Pamela’s monogrammed necklace, the clasp bent open at a grotesque angle, and the green stone glinting up at her in the moonlight like a mythological evil eye.

It took her seconds to get back down the stairs and onto the third floor. Whatever they had given her to make her want to jump had worn off, all of those suppressed emotions now flooding her body with white-hot energy. In the ceremony room, she wrenched the musket off of its wall mount, sending screws and bits of drywall raining down around her. She jammed it under one arm and took off.

She found Finn still sitting in his father’s office. He was sitting at the desk, the Order’s logbook open in front of him. He stared at a single page with wide, unblinking eyes.

She leveled the gun at him, but he didn’t flinch.

“Give me the key, Finn, or I swear on that old noseless guy I will kill you.”

Wordlessly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the card. He laid it flat on the table.

“Take it.”

She edged closer. The book was opened to a page she hadn’t seen before.

“You were right, you know.”

He motioned to the page, and Sadie leaned forward. On it was a list of all the potential members who had been deemed unsuitable. She saw her mother’s name near the top, but Anna’s wasn’t on it.

“Mother told me she was unsuitable. She said I had to do it to keep the family strong and prove my loyalty. She said Anna was trying to trick me.”

His face crumpled, and he put his head in his hands.

Sadie didn’t lower the gun. “Pamela was the one who tricked you, Finn.” She paused. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Take the book,” he said, pushing it across the desk toward her. “You’ll need it.”

When she put a hand on the book, he didn’t let go.

“They’ll kill you if you’re not careful, Sadie. They’ll find out where you are, and they’ll kill you, too.”

She grabbed the book and the key off of the table, and she ran.

Sadie opened her eyes. Above her was a white ceiling with a single crack running across it. Dull and flat. Institutional. She took a deep breath and smelled the air. Disinfectant.

She tried to sit up but felt a hand on her shoulder. “Try to lie still, dear. You need to rest.”

A figure hovered into view over her head, and she blinked until it came into focus. Nurse Brennan.

“You Ralleigh girls sure are accident-prone,” the woman said, her forehead wrinkled in concern.

Sadie tried to respond, but all that came out was a low moan.

Nurse Brennan patted her arm and made a clucking sound. “Don’t try to talk too much. You must have had quite a night.”

She felt panic start to creep up the back of her throat, and she swallowed again. She looked around the room. No cops. No security. It was all wrong.

“Why haven’t you called the police? We have to stop them.”

The nurse frowned and patted Sadie’s hand. “It’s normal to be a bit confused, so don’t you worry about it. I don’t think the police are necessary for a bump on the head, though. You’re safe here. Don’t you remember anything that happened?”

Sadie shook her head — a lie. A part of her could still feel the icy stones beneath her feet, and she could see every inch of Pamela’s face as she went over the edge. But after that — after Finn and the book, it all just faded to black.

“Well, a little short-term memory loss is certainly understandable, considering everything you had in your system.”

“How did I get here?”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Jeremy Wood found you on the beach over by Graff. You were passed out cold in nothing but a cocktail dress.” She clucked disapprovingly. “You’re lucky you didn’t get hypothermia. You don’t remember how you ended up out there either?”

Sadie didn’t answer.

“Well, there’s something else I should tell you, as I was required to report it to the Dean.” The woman took a deep breath. “When you first regained consciousness, you were acting very erratically, so we did a tox screen. It looks like you were on some pretty heavy pharmaceutical drugs last night.” She laid a hand on Sadie’s arm and arranged her features into a look of concerned disappointment. “Mixing drugs and alcohol is very dangerous, dear. You very easily could have died. Should have, maybe.”

Sadie’s mind raced. So Finn hadn’t been bluffing. She looked down at her hands, feigning shame. “I’m sorry.”

The woman patted her arm again, then busied herself around the room.

Sadie closed her eyes and laid her head back against the pillow.

“Oh dear, are you tired? I was going to go send your friends in — Jeremy and Jessica Harris have been here all night, would you believe that? But I can tell them to come back.”

Sadie shook her head vigorously and waved at her to bring them in.

Jessica and Jeremy both looked like they had been awake for days. Jessica’s light brown hair lay flat and lifeless against her forehead, and Jeremy’s eyes were puffy and bloodshot. They were both smiling.

Jessica ran immediately to the bedside and hugged Sadie hard. “Forgive me?” she said into her shoulder. “I can’t believe I stayed in that closet, I fu — ”

“No way, Jess. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I never should have gotten you involved in this. I knew how dangerous they were. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Sadie patted her back and looked over her shoulder at Jeremy, who stood a few steps away. He had a sad smile on his face, but it was masking something else that hovered just below the surface. Anger, or maybe guilt. He had an old gray duffel bag draped over his shoulder, and he was still dressed in the gray wool slacks he had worn to the party. Dirty now, the cuffs caked with crusted sand.

“How did you guys find me?”

Jeremy nodded to Jessica. “After they took you, they left the doors unlocked. They must have thought you were alone. Jessica came and found me and told me what you guys had done, and we got a ride back to Graff from the twins’ driver. We didn’t know if we would catch up with you in time, but we didn’t know what else to do. We couldn’t call the police — we didn’t even know if they would be on our side. We were just outside the tower when we heard you on the roof. You were screaming, and I — ”

His voice caught, and he looked away. Sadie grabbed his hand and squeezed.

“I’m okay now.”

He met her eyes. “You don’t understand. We saw someone fall. We thought you were dead.”

Sadie opened her mouth, but before she could speak his arms were around her. She pulled him close, as everything around them fell away.

Finally, Jessica coughed uncomfortably, and they broke away.

“Sorry, Jess.” Jeremy grinned, and the heaviness in the room seemed to dissolve. Jessica punched him in the arm.

“It’s okay. The image of you guys sucking face might haunt my nightmares for awhile, but I’ll get over it.”

Sadie raised an eyebrow. “You guys friends now?”

Jessica nodded. “Being two halves of one badass rescue team will do that.”

“So how did you, anyway? Rescue me.”

“Um … ” Jessica trailed off, looking to Jeremy for help.

“When we saw someone fall … I can’t tell you how that felt.” His voice was suddenly hoarse. “I wanted to kill all of them. I didn’t care. Before we could get inside the tower you burst through the door looking completely insane. You were holding a huge musket, some musty old book, and a broken necklace, and you just collapsed on the ground. All we did was take it from there.”

Sadie nodded toward the door. “And the nurse?”

“We lied because we didn’t know what else to do,” Jessica said. “I mean, someone fell off that ledge, and we had to figure out what you wanted to do before we told anyone. You really don’t remember seeing us last night?”

Sadie shook her head. “I remember being glad to be outside of that hellhole, but that’s it.”

“What about before that? Did you find out anything? Did Teddy admit to killing Anna and your mom?”

She closed her eyes and shuffled through the flashes of memory. “He was behind the eugenics plot, but not the murders … at least not directly.” She took a deep breath. “It was Pamela Cranston, Finn’s mom. She and my mom were best friends in high school, but Pamela was jealous. She faked my mom’s blood test so she would get kicked out of the Sullas, and Pamela could marry Teddy instead. Then when Anna came and Finn fell in love with her, Pamela convinced him she was unsuitable, too.”

“Holy … ” Jeremy collapsed into a chair and put his head in his hands. “Finn killed Anna?”

Sadie nodded. “I think they just wanted to make her look crazy, like they did to my mom. I bet they drugged her too, but when she jumped she didn’t survive the fall. Whatever they gave me made me feel weightless — like I could fly.” She looked down at her hands. “And I wanted to.”

Jeremy lifted his head, eyes bright with anger. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I knew Finn was a creep — all those comments he made about you. But I never thought he was capable of doing something like that.”

Sadie squeezed his hand. “You saved my life. That’s all you should be thinking about.”

She traced the crack in the ceiling with her eyes and wondered what the hell they were going to do. She might have killed someone — someone people would miss — and her only defense was so far-fetched she knew no one would ever believe her.

Suddenly she felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu: the bed, the dingy room, the feeling of dread. It was all familiar. She closed her eyes as the realization washed over her. She was in the exact same position her mom had been in twenty years ago when she had woken up — probably in this exact same room.

She felt Jeremy’s hand on hers and opened her eyes. He was still looking down at her, the concern showing plainly on his face. “What’s wrong? Do you want me to get the nurse?”

“No, it’s okay. I just don’t know what I’m going to do.” She looked into his eyes. “Pamela Cranston is probably dead, and I’m no one. Why would anyone ever believe my story when they find out I had something to do with it?”

Jeremy’s face changed.

She struggled to sit up. “What is it?”

He picked up the duffel bag and placed it carefully on the bed. It was an old lacrosse bag, and Sadie could see his last name written on the side in cracked white letters. He unzipped it slowly and pulled back the flap.

Her eyes widened and she reached out a hand to touch it, just to make sure it was really there. “You kept the book.”

“It seemed important, and I knew we would need proof. How did you even get it?”

Sadie saw Finn in her mind, the tortured expression that had flickered across his face when he realized what he had done. “Finn gave it to me after he realized what his mom made him do.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded. “She manipulated him — convinced him he was doing the honorable thing for their family. He’s so screwed up, you should have seen him when he figured it out.”

For a few moments, no one spoke. Then Sadie sighed.

“Also, I had a gun.”

Jessica flopped down on the bed next to her. “So what are you going to do with it? Use it to blackmail the Cranstons into turning themselves in? Scan the whole thing and put it online?”

Sadie thought for a moment. The book gave her everything she needed to expose them. She could tell everyone what had happened to her mom and to Anna, and she could take down the Order so no one like the Cranstons could ever take advantage of it again. She thought about the other girls — Lillian, Brett, and Olivia, even Thayer — and felt a pang of regret. They would get dragged through the mud if this went public, and from what she had seen in the hospital basement, they were all victims, too. But staying quiet let the bad guys win. Someone had to turn on the lights.

Sadie took a deep breath. “I’m going to take it to someone who will know what to do.” She paused, grim satisfaction spreading over her. “And then I’m going to tell the whole fucking world.”