by Kate Brian
“What do you mean, missing?” Ivy said.
“I woke up this morning and she was gone,” Rose said. “Her bed was a mess, which isn’t unusual, so I figured she was in the bathroom, but she never came back. Her wallet’s in the room and so are her art supplies, her iPod. She’s just gone.”
“Maybe she just went out for a morning walk,” Ivy suggested. “Maybe she wanted some exercise.”
“Astrid is allergic to exercise,” Kiki said, holding herself tightly around her waist. “Something’s wrong.”
“Have you told anyone?” I heard myself say.
“The headmaster knows,” Rose replied. “I just spent the last half hour in his office telling him over and over again that I didn’t hear her leave.” She pressed her fingertips to her temple. “Why am I such a deep sleeper?”
I glanced over at Noelle, who shot me a questioning look. Not so long ago, she and her grandmother had faked her kidnapping. Was it possible they were behind this, too, somehow? Noelle looked convincingly clueless, but she’d proven to be a good actress in the past. But why would she and her family want to mess with Astrid?
Or maybe Astrid was messing with us. She was the one who’d accused Noelle of scaring the bejesus out of us. Maybe she’d somehow found out that it had all been a joke and was getting back at us by pulling the same prank. It was definitely something she would do, with her wicked sense of humor. My panicked heart slowed slightly in relief at the thought, but then I remembered my dream. And I freaked out all over again.
At that moment the double doors opened with a bang, and in walked Headmaster Hathaway, trailed by four policemen in full uniform. Someone’s walkie-talkie was bleeping and beeping and crackling, and once again the dining hall went silent. I looked over at Noelle again and she, like everyone else in the room, looked startled and sick. We’d been through this too many times.
“Attention, students!” Headmaster Hathaway shouted, stopping at the top of the center aisle. His skin looked gray under the glowing lights. The cops fanned out around him, standing in a line with their feet in wide stance, as if they were readying themselves to handle a stampede. The headmaster cleared his throat and lifted both hands.
“No one panic, but we have a situation.”
Headmaster Hathaway had imposed a curfew. Everyone was to be in their own dorms by 8 p.m. and in their own rooms by nine. The campus, meanwhile, was crawling with cops. Some in uniform, some in plain clothes, all with stern body language and serious “don’t mess with me” glares. There was no chance we were going to be able to sneak off campus to the chapel without being stopped, or at the very least followed. So I sent out a text telling everyone in the BLS to meet me in my room at 7 p.m. No excuses allowed.
Of course, I didn’t need to add that last warning. Everyone showed up, most of them early. We all wanted to be together, to reassure one another that everything was going to be all right. I had a bad feeling that what I was going to tell them wasn’t going to reassure anyone.
I stood in front of my closed dorm room door. My friends were all gathered on my bed and on the floor. Everyone except for Kiki, who was pacing in circles near my closet like a caged animal, and Noelle, who had claimed my desk chair and was looking at me like she knew what was coming and was not happy about it. Oh well. Not even Noelle could have everything her way.
“You guys,” I began, my heart fluttering with nerves. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
I looked Noelle in the eye. It was time for complete and total transparency. I’d kept so many secrets, had so many hidden agendas in the past two years. I was tired of lying.
“Noelle and I are sisters.”
Noelle’s eyebrows shot up. I guess she didn’t think I was going to lead with that. But it was something that was going to come out sooner or later, and I felt like I had to tell them in order for the rest of the story to make sense.
“What?” Amberly blurted. She looked at Noelle as if personally betrayed. “Noelle? Is that true?”
“Yes,” Noelle said, keeping her eyes trained on me. “Half sisters. It turns out my dad had a bit of trouble keeping it in his pants back in the day.”
Vienna and Portia snickered, while everyone else seemed stunned silent. As distraught as I was, even I smiled. I should have known Noelle would find a way to make the telling of it less painful.
“So that’s why your dad’s paying for her party,” Portia said.
“Great,” Kiki snapped, pacing away from the corner. “What does it have to do with Astrid?”
I froze for a moment. I hadn’t forgotten why we were really here, and I didn’t want anyone else to think I had.
“I’m getting there,” I said. “Just … hear me out.”
And I told them everything. How Noelle and I had found the book of spells. How I’d said the incantation by myself that night and what had happened. How I’d dreamed about Eliza Williams and found the locket, and about the yearbook and how Eliza was definitely the girl in my dream. And then I told them that Ivy and I had said the incantation again, and what had happened directly afterward—that the lights had gone out and our cell phones had rung. Aside from some squirming and exchanged glances, my friends stayed mostly quiet.
“Now here’s the part I’m really freaked out about,” I said, my throat dry. “Last night I had another dream.”
Kiki, who had stopped pacing as soon as I’d uttered the words “book of spells” and had been engrossed ever since, looked at me with an expression that was somehow both wary and intrigued. “About what?” she asked. “Was it about Astrid?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I dreamed that she was kidnapped.”
“You did?” Ivy blurted, standing. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I thought it was just a dream,” I said.
“Well, who kidnapped her?” Kiki asked. “I mean, in the dream?”
I bit my lip, knowing this was not going to go over well, and fiddled with the locket. “Cheyenne.”
There was a long, loaded silence as everyone in the room locked eyes with one another. And then they all burst out laughing. Everyone but Kiki and Ivy, who just looked sick to their stomachs, and Noelle, who shook her head, like, What am I going to do with you?
“Thanks for that, Reed,” Tiffany said, getting up and patting my shoulder. “We all needed a good laugh.”
“You guys, I know this sounds crazy!” I said as they all began to rouse themselves from their seats. “But first the locket is right where my dream led me and then Astrid goes missing right after I dreamed she was kidnapped? Isn’t that a little—”
“Coincidental?” Rose said gently.
My mouth snapped shut as I realized I’d been arguing in favor of me being psychic. Or at the very least superintuitive. Which was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to be. I’d been hoping they’d tell me it was just a fluke, but now that they were, I felt somehow … betrayed. What was wrong with me?
“She’s right, Reed. Please,” Amberly said, shoving her arms into her coat. “This is a little self-important, even for you.”
I felt that one like a shot to the heart. “What? I’m not trying to be self-important. I know it sounds crazy, but I need your help. I’m afraid to go to sleep. What if I have another dream? What if we’re all in danger or what if—”
“Reed, come on,” Noelle said. “I know we’ve had a lot of drama around here in the past, but this is Astrid. Personally, I think everyone’s overreacting.”
“What?” Kiki blurted, her eyes on fire.
Noelle shrugged. “Doesn’t she have a history of doing stuff like this? Bailing from schools, freaking out her parents, trying to get attention?”
“It’s true. She actually once called herself the Rebel Without a Clue,” Lorna said with a laugh. There were a few amused twitters throughout the room, and I felt my shoulders slump.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she showed up here tomorrow morning with some souvenirs from Dollywood or something,” Noelle con
tinued.
“No. She would have told me if she was going anywhere,” Kiki said, shaking her head as she clutched her arms at her sides. “Or she would have left a note for Rose.”
“So because she didn’t inform you guys, that means Reed’s seeing the future in her dreams?” Tiffany said incredulously.
“And besides, weren’t Astrid and Cheyenne, like, BFFs?” Portia said, pulling her hair out of the collar of her coat.
“Yeah, I mean, if Cheyenne was going to come back from the grave to kidnap anyone, it definitely wouldn’t be Astrid,” Vienna joked.
This time the laughter was louder and everyone started for the door.
“Unless Cheyenne missed her and just wanted to hang,” Amberly added, preening as she earned an even bigger laugh.
I felt desperate as they started to file out into the hallway past me. I didn’t know what I was hoping for anymore, but I loathed feeling like I was the butt of some joke when I was just trying to help.
“Hey guys, I almost forgot to tell you—I volunteered with the headmaster to head up a group of students to put up flyers in town,” Tiffany said, lifting her camera bag from the floor and settling the wide strap on her shoulder. “If you want to come with, we’re meeting on the chapel steps tomorrow after fifth, and we’ll get excused for the rest of the day.”
“I’m in,” Portia said.
“Me too,” Rose added.
“You’ll be there, right, Reed?”
There was something in Tiffany’s question that sounded like an admonishment. Like she was taking me to task for wasting their time. Like she half expected me to say no, because helping find Astrid wasn’t something a self-involved person like me would do.
“Yes,” I said firmly, even though I wanted to shake her for not taking me seriously. For not caring enough to listen. For not trusting me. “I’ll be there.”
“Good,” she said in a condescending tone.
She walked out and I wanted to slam the door behind her.
“If it’s any consolation, Reed, I believe you,” Ivy said.
I turned around. She, Kiki, and Noelle were the only ones left.
“I do too,” Kiki said.
“You do?” I asked.
She lifted her shoulders and walked over to my desk, where the book of spells sat closed atop my laptop. Carefully she ran her finger-tips over the embossed circle design. “There are a lot of things in the world no one can explain, and even more things no one ever talks about. I’m not about to claim witchcraft isn’t real, just because I’ve never seen it for myself.” She took a breath and hugged herself. “I actually think it’d be kind of cool to be a witch.”
I gave her a small smile. I wasn’t sure I was a witch, but at least she’d made me feel a little less crazy.
“Personally, I think you’re nuts, but I love you anyway,” Noelle said, picking up her Birkin as she headed for the door. “But I have to love you. You’re my sister.”
She smirked, lifted her hair over her shoulder, blew me a kiss, and walked out.
I stared out the window that night, watching one of the newly hired security guards make his circuit of the pathway outside the dorms. As the day had gone on, the police presence had thinned, replaced by private security personnel brought in by the school. The gossip was that with no ransom note and no evidence of a struggle, the police were hesitant to categorize Astrid’s disappearance as a kidnapping, or anything else sinister, until she’d been gone for more than thirty-six hours. As Astrid’s best friend, Kiki had been interviewed for longer than any of the rest of us, and she’d come out of the headmaster’s office red in the face and looking like she wanted to take a bite out of someone. Once we calmed her down, she told us that, just like Noelle had theorized, the police thought Astrid had simply split. Kiki told them that if Astrid had run off she would have taken her iPod, her favorite vintage Doc Martens, and her sketch pad, all of which were still in her room, but they’d simply told her not to go anywhere in case they wanted to talk to her again.
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.”
