The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (151 page)
I had a sudden flash in my mind of that box I had found in Cheyenne’s room. The silver box with the engraving on the top of the initials
V.M.S.
That must have been the box. Ivy’s family heirloom.
S
for Slade. Cheyenne had actually kept it all this time. How had she lived with that thing in her sight? How had the guilt of what she’d done to her best friend not torn her apart?
“So I was the only one who got arrested that night, though my father had the charges dropped later,” Ivy continued, standing up straight and facing me again. “And last year I went to school in Boston so I could help care for my grandmother, but she was never the same again. The whole family was relieved when she finally passed on this summer, saying she had gone to a better place, but at the funeral no one could even look at me. They all blame me, and they should. It’s my fault she’s gone. Billings’s fault.”
In spite of myself my heart actually went out to her right then. I couldn’t imagine the pain of what she’d been through. How it must have felt to know what she had done. How awful. How incredibly awful.
“So that, Reed, is why I hate Billings. Why I hate Ariana. Why I hated Cheyenne. Why I still hate Noelle,” she said, stepping closer to me, getting right in my face. “Ariana, she made her own bed, but Noelle . . . Noelle is still there. Still walking around like she’s God’s gift, lording her power over everyone. But I know what she really is. What she’s capable of. That’s why I’ll do anything to see the ivory tower fall.
Anything.”
A blast of cold shot through me, even though the air was now still. Any sympathy I’d felt for her a second ago was blown away.
Ivy had killed Cheyenne. Cheyenne’s parents were right. Their daughter hadn’t committed suicide. She had been murdered. By her former best friend.
Suddenly, it all made sense. I already knew Ivy had figured out a way to get into Billings, since she’d been torturing me for weeks. She must have sneaked in that night and somehow orchestrated Cheyenne’s suicide in order to get back at her for choosing Billings over her, for leaving her there all alone with her ailing grandmother. Then Ivy had decided to release her venom on me—the house’s other leader, the new symbol of Billings. She hated us. Hated all of us. And if that look in her eye was any indication, she was capable of murder.
And now she had singled out Noelle. What did that mean? Was Noelle her next victim? Was that how she was going to make the so-called ivory tower fall?
The door behind Ivy opened and Josh stepped through, buttoning up the last button on his coat. He glanced at me quickly, but then looked away, as if it pained him to look me in the eye.
“There you are,” he said, slipping his hand into Ivy’s. “You ready to get out of here?”
I stared at their entwined fingers. He was holding the hand of a murderer. My Josh. My love. Holding hands with evil.
Ivy looked at me triumphantly, smiled, and said, “Definitely.”
Josh shot me one last look as they turned to go, but in my state of miserable panic, I couldn’t read it. Was he disappointed? Angry? Sad? Indifferent? I had no idea. All I knew was that I had to get him away from her. I had to save him. But how? I opened my mouth to speak, to shout some kind of warning, but they were already ten paces away, and before I could get a word out, Ivy turned her head and looked back at me. She looked back at me with a flicker in her eye that stopped me dead. A look that scared me so badly it took the breath right out of me. And then they turned at the corner and were gone.
Traffic whizzed by me on the avenue and a cold rain started to fall. Josh was gone. Dash was gone. There was no one left. No one to tell what I now knew about Ivy. No one to help me figure out what to do.
I was in this alone.
Chapter 15: Enemies Everywhere
Chapter 34: The Easton Holiday Dinner
For B. V., who decided his due date should be the same day as the due date for this novel
The dread was like smoldering black embers right in the pit of my stomach. I knew the sensation well. Used to feel it every day after school as I approached my house in Croton, Pennsylvania, not knowing what might be going on inside. Never knowing in what condition I might find my mother. Passed out with a bottle of pills spilled on the floor? Manically cleaning the kitchen in her pajamas? Angrily waiting to scold me for something I hadn’t done? Yes, I knew dread all too well. I had just never felt dread like this upon my return to Easton Academy.
It was the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, and, thanks to my Billings House fund money, it was the first time I’d flown back to Easton. When I had said good-bye to my parents that morning at the airport I had actually felt a pull to stay. It was so ironic. Now that my mother was better, leaving home was the hard part, and it was coming back to school that was giving me the dry heaves. But who could blame me, considering the pariah I had become at Easton?
The cab driver pulled up in front of Bradwell, the freshman and sophomore girls’ dorm. I paid him and struggled out of the car with my backpack, duffel bag, and laptop. It was frigid outside, and a cold wind whipped through the trees along the drive. I had expected the campus to feel more alive since all the students were supposed to be returning from break. But though there were a few lit windows dotting the brick facades of the three girls’ dorms on the circle, there wasn’t a soul in sight. I took a deep breath and started along the cobblestone walk between Bradwell and Pemberly, my heart pounding with each heavy step as I drew closer to the quad.
I didn’t want to go back to Billings House. I so wasn’t ready.
When I reached the far side of Bradwell, I paused and gazed across the quad at Billings, the tallest dorm on campus. Instantly, the embers of dread burned brighter. It had been just over a week since the Billings fund-raiser in New York City—the event that should have been the most amazing night of my life. Instead it had been the most humiliating. It had been the night when a video of me and Dash McCafferty getting all gropey at the Legacy had been sent out to every cell phone and BlackBerry at school. Everyone had seen me and Dash—my best friend Noelle Lange’s boyfriend—kissing. Touching. Taking off each other’s clothes. Everyone knew what I had done. And no one had talked to me since.
Except Sabine DuLac, my roommate in Billings.
Where Noelle had all but banned me from the Billings table in the dining hall, where Portia Ahronian had organized a Billings shopping trip and excluded me, and where even Kiki Rosen had switched
seats in the library so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge me—Sabine had remained loyal. At least I had one true friend left. One person who had been willing to listen to my explanation. Although, she had always hated Noelle. She probably would have taken my side if I’d shot the girl dead. But maybe now that a few days had passed, some of the others would come around as well. Maybe I could even get Noelle to listen to me.
It was a stretch, I knew. But I was going to have to try.
Halfway across the snow-covered quad, lit only by the quaint, ground-level lamps lining the pathways, I stopped and took a deep breath to steel myself. I was going to march into Billings and I was going to make Noelle listen to me. I didn’t care if I had to scream the whole apology to her through her closed dorm-room door. She was going to hear my side.
My life at Easton depended on it.
A bitter gust of wind whipped my dark hair back from my face and got me moving again. Knees quaking—not from nerves, I told myself, but from the cold and the weight of my bags—I turned up the walk to Billings. That was when I saw a dark figure move toward me. I froze.
“Reed. Good. I’m glad I caught you.”
It was Detective Hauer. The King of Bad News. Just what I needed.
“Detective,” I said. He was all bundled up in a dark wool coat that seemed one size too small for his stocky frame, a tweed hat pulled low over his brow, hiding his dark, usually unkempt hair. His wide nose was red from the cold, and there were visible bags under his brown eyes. The way he looked at me—like a doctor probably looks at
a patient right before he diagnoses inoperable cancer—made me want to run inside, even though I dreaded facing my friends.
“What?” I said finally.
“I just wanted to give you the heads up,” he said, holding his hat as another gust of wind nearly knocked me off my feet. “Since you’ve been so cooperative during this . . . uh . . . tragedy.” Hauer hesitated, his eyes darting away from my face.
What was with this guy? He was an adult and a police officer. He was not supposed to feel nervous when talking to me.
“We’ve found new evidence,” he said. “Your friend Cheyenne Martin . . . She was definitely murdered.”
His words sucked all the air from my lungs and I clutched the handle on my duffel bag, as if that would keep me from fainting dead away. This wasn’t possible. Not again. Not another murder. Cheyenne had OD’d. We had all been there to find her. We had all read her suicide note. She had even sent me an e-mail saying I was the reason she killed herself—an e-mail that had haunted me for months now. Plus, no one had heard a struggle. There’d been no blood, no bruises, nothing broken in her room. How could this be possible?
“What?” I heard myself say as the wind whistled overhead. “You can’t be serious.”
A couple of weeks back Detective Hauer had told me the case was going to be reopened at Cheyenne’s parents’ request, but at the time even he still thought it was a clear-cut suicide.
“Unfortunately, I am,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t understand,” I said, my mind racing. “What new evidence?
How can there be new evidence
now
? She died months ago. She was cremated. Her room’s not even a crime scene—Noelle’s been living there for weeks. What could you have possibly found?”
The detective cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that information is classified.”
“Classified? Is this a government conspiracy now?” I blurted, frustrated.
He leveled me with an admonishing glare. “It’s not for public consumption,” he clarified sternly. “But you should know we’re going to be reinterviewing everyone of interest,” he added, standing up straight. He sounded surer of himself now, and fixed me with a steady-eyed gaze. “If there’s anything else you want to tell me, now is the time.”
“Anything else?” I stood there, unable to think. Unable to breathe. Unable to move. Cheyenne had been murdered. I was going to have to tell the rest of Billings about this. Yeah, right. If they’d even stay in the same room with me for five seconds.
“Yes. Anything at all,” he said.