by Kate Brian
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—”
He paused and took a breath. “That’s her,” he said quietly. “Over there. With the white hair.”
I glanced up to find a frail-looking woman with a short white coif being inched away in handcuffs.
“Did you lead me here?” he asked.
“You are the strongest of us all, Reed. You’re the only one who can save them.” Eliza’s words sent a shiver right through me. “Use your power to warn them.”
Was it possible? Had I actually sent Josh a telepathic message? Had I saved us all?
“Where is she?”
I straightened up at the sound of my mother’s voice, forgetting everything instantly.
“Mom!” I shouted.
Her face went slack when she saw me, and she raced over. Josh helped me stand up and I hugged her, clutching her to me as hard as I could.
“Are you all right?” she asked, leaning back and holding my face with both hands. “My God, what did they do to you?”
“I’m okay, Mom,” I said. “I’m fine.”
Behind her, near the door, I saw Grandmother Lange watching us. She had a proud gleam in her eye that made me want to hurl something at her. Was what Mrs. Kane had said about her true? Had she engineered my very existence?
But even as I asked myself the question, I suddenly remembered what Mr. Lange had said that day in his office—that his mother had kept a close eye on all the old families—that she probably knew about me before my own mother did. It was true. All of it. Mrs. Kane and those who believed in the curse might have been nuts, but the people running our side of things weren’t playing with a full deck either.
I glared at her, hating her for what she’d done to my dad. To my mom. To my brother. To me. Even to Mr. Lange and Noelle and her mom. It was like she thought she was God. She couldn’t mess with people’s lives like that, and as soon as I had the chance, I was going to let her know how I felt about her.
As soon as I could get her away from my mother and Mr. Lange and my dad. Who might flatten her the same way he had Demetria Rosewell.
The crowd of officers on the other side of the room shifted, and one of them dragged a handcuffed Mrs. Kane out of a chair. Her makeup was smudged and her hair stuck out around her head as if she’d been hit with an electric shock. She kept her chin high as they led her across the room, but she trembled violently. Clearly she hadn’t expected to end up this way. Clearly she’d had the utmost confidence in her crazy-ass plan.
Suddenly she turned to look at me, as if she’d felt me watching, and sneered. “This isn’t over. You’re trash and you will always be trash.”
I felt a surge of anger and triumph all at once. I pulled away from my mother and Josh, even as they both tried to hold on to me, and strode toward her, my bare feet freezing on the cold cement floor. Clenching my teeth, I got right up in her face, ignoring the forbidding, outstretched arms of the police.
“At least I’m not going to prison,” I seethed. “Have fun rotting in your prison cell with the rest of your crazy friends.”
Mrs. Kane bared her teeth. Her eyes were like an abyss. Dark—so much darker than I’d ever realized. She let out a screech that couldn’t have come from nature, and somehow flung the officer who was holding her to the floor.
Before anyone could move, she had freed herself from her handcuffs, grabbed a knife from the table where they were being bagged and tagged, and flung it, with both hands, at my chest.
“Reed!” Josh screamed.
“No … !” my father shouted.
But I couldn’t move. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t make myself move. It was as if I was being held in place by some invisible force. All I could do was think about how powerful Eliza Williams claimed I could be, and how very, very wrong she was if I couldn’t even step aside to save my own life.
And then, out of nowhere, Mr. Lange flung himself in front of me. The knife pierced his chest with a sickening slicing sound I will never forget as long as I live. And just like that, Noelle’s father, Theresa Billings’s great-grandson, the person who’d given me life, fell to the floor at my feet. His eyes were open, his lungs were still.
I would never get the chance to thank him.
