“Okay, well,” I choked out, wrapping my jacket around myself. “Thanks . . . ”
“Show me where you took this.”
“Okay, I—”
He took my hand and headed toward the fence.
“Now?” The thought of going back there, ever—
“Yes. He’s what’s wrong over here.” Then he pulled me around to face him. The faded yellow light bleached his face; his eyes looked gray, and ghostly. He bent to kiss me again.
“Let him,” Celia whispered inside my head. “Then he will be bound to you. Then he will protect you.”
I closed my eyes, and sealed my fate.
FOURTEEN
IT WAS DARK, and it was late, and before I was ready, Troy and I were standing outside the derelict library. Poised on the threshold, I listened for banging noises above my head. And I froze. I couldn’t go in there. I just couldn’t.
“This is where I took the picture,” I said. “Right here.”
He gazed around, then took his cell phone out of his jacket and punched on the light function. Trash and spiderwebs shifted in the icy air. He stopped, listening, and turned to me.
“Stay here,” he said.
“I’ll go with you,” I replied. I didn’t want to be alone; so I slid my hand through his, and he drew me close.
“Okay, but be careful. If it’s not Miles, there might be some homeless guy sleeping in here. The Marlwood Stalker.”
“Don’t make fun,” I implored him.
“Oh, I’m not. Believe me.” His voice took on that hard edge again. “I’m so not.”
I didn’t know how I did it, but I walked with him down the hall. It was cold, and it smelled like mud and mold. Graveyard smells.
The first turn led us into the reading room. It was as I remembered it: Bookcases in various stages of disarray lined the cracked walls. More books were scattered on the floor, and here and there old display cases with broken glass fronts stood on spindly legs. There was a rotted carpet over the destroyed wooden floor; across the room, a trio of glassed-in bookcases hung open. Mushrooms and mold spilled down their faces. Piles of rotting books spilled out.
“What a lot of stuff,” he said. He bent down and picked up what appeared to be a ledger book, and shone his light on it. “David Abernathy, M.D. Huh.” He flipped it open. “There’s some kind of class list.” He shrugged and put it in his pocket. “And look at this—”
I had a sudden feeling that we weren’t alone. It was so strong that I whirled around, startling him. He straightened.
“What is it?”
“There’s someone here,” I said.
He froze, listening. I saw his frown, so intense it etched lines in his face and made him look old.
“Where?” he said. He headed back for the hall.
All I could think of were Shayna’s dead eyes. I didn’t want him to look for anything. I wanted us both to get out of there.
“Troy, please,” I whispered, “it’s dark and—”
“If that asshole is here . . . I’ll just take a quick look—”
“Please, no,” I said. “Please, I-I’m just so freaked out.”
I reached up on tiptoe to kiss him, to distract him. The cell phone light was still on and I saw uncertainty waver over his face like clouds. The uneven glow made him look like someone else, someone I didn’t know. For a tiny flicker, I was afraid.
“Lindsay, if Miles is here . . . ” he whispered back.
“I want to leave. Please.”
I kissed him again, hesitantly and slightly embarrassed to be manipulating him like this. Then he sighed, frustrated, and I knew I had won this round.
He held his cell phone up, surveying the hall, looking up at the ceiling.
“You’re sure.”
With another sigh, he led the way down the hall. I kept turning around, half-expecting to see . . . what? A transparent figure floating after us? Miles, laughing his head off? Mandy, Lara, and Alis, with murder in their black eyes?
Unaware, Troy skirted a broken beer bottle, shining the light down to help me avoid the pieces of glass.
“We should come back here again with better light,” he said.
“Sure,” I said, although nothing in me wanted to do that. But I knew we should.
We went back outside; beads of sweat on my forehead practically crystallized in the frigid air. Troy spent a while patrolling while I shivered, hardly able to look at the building. I listened to an owl hooting through the rushing of the pine trees, braced to hear a twig snap, a giggle. I felt split in two—one half of me waiting anxiously for Troy, the other screaming like a banshee through the woods. My fear was reaching a level where one of my two halves was going to win, and I was afraid it would be the banshee.
“I don’t see anything,” Troy announced, coming back to me. He put his arms around me. “You’re trembling.” He kissed me again. “I’m glad you called me.”
“Me too.” I just hoped it had been the right thing to do.
We returned to the chain-link fence, and Troy squeezed back through the hole. For someone so tall, he was very agile. Hard to picture someone like him falling. Easier to imagine his being pushed.
Miles’s target?
“So . . . ” he said. “We’ll come back. And we’ll bust Miles.”
“Thanks,” I managed. “But if it isn’t him . . . ”
“Oh, it’s him,” he said. “God, I’d love to put him out of his misery.”
His words hung there, and I swallowed hard. Then he laughed bitterly.
“Or at least, get him sent back to rehab.”
“Or . . . find out what’s been going on here,” I reminded him.
He patted the ledger book in his jacket. “I’ll keep this, okay? See if I can figure anything out.”
“Thank you.” I sounded humble, and maybe a little pathetic. “I know it sounds weird. But there’s more to this place than we realize. And I just want to be sure everyone’s safe.”
His face grew soft and again, I felt ashamed that I was taking advantage of his protector instinct. But I was desperate.
“You’re so sweet,” he whispered, touching my fingertips with his through the metal diamonds. I knew we had to go; our everyday lives, with school and futures, demanded their share of us. I didn’t know how Troy had managed to get away, and I hoped he wouldn’t get in trouble.
“If anything happens, anything,” he said, “call me.”
“Same with you.”
He kissed me again. “I’ll call you anyway. And . . . Fartgirl? Please don’t think I’m a total jerk. I’ve known Mandy all my life. Our parents are in business together. I know it seems like it’s been going forever but trust me, I’ll get free.”
Even though I was thrilled to hear his reassurances, I remembered my Jane-lessons, and tossed my hair. “Whatever.”
FIFTEEN
January 17
I didn’t sleep. I just waited for the sun to rise, and around five, I ran down to the lake. Celia was there, waiting, staring up at me with tears bubbling on the surface.
“You’re stalling,” she accused. “Get it done. Then I’ll rest.”
Then she would leave me, I interpreted.
“Working on it,” I said. “I have an ally now,” I added.
“Her boyfriend?” she scoffed.
“My friend,” I corrected.
She vanished, and I was looking at myself. And I looked . . . half-dead. Dull eyes with circles under them, pinched face. Like I was halfway to wherever Shayna had wound up.
When I returned to Grose, I found Ms. Krige standing fully dressed on our porch, in a red-checked flannel shirt, a black turtleneck, and black wool trousers. She waved at me and I waved back; as I came onto the porch, she said, “I was worried about you.”
Because, after Shayna, I was the resident loony? I made a show of running in place and said, “I went jogging.”
She looked past me, surveying snowdrifts and icy walkways. “You need to be careful,” she sai
d. “Next time, please write me a note on our board.”
“I’m sorry. I will,” I replied.
“Dr. Ehrlenbach would like to talk to you,” she continued. “She’s . . . off campus. She’ll be back tomorrow. Go during free period.”
“Oh.” On red alert, I followed her into Grose. “Do you, um, know why?”
“She’s visiting with the Maisels.”
Making sure Shayna didn’t reveal anything? Not dissing the school? Destroying her credibility?
“I mean, why she wants to talk to me.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’s just checking in with you, too.” Checking in on you.
I decided to do some checking on my own. After dinner, I headed for our current library, the one we actually used, like, for studying. On the way, I hurried past the commons and then I crossed into the statue garden. The marble statues of the ancient gods and goddesses blended with the snow; their blank faces reminding me of zombies rising from their graves. Apparently, Edwin Marlwood had been very proud of these statues, which was a little off because the goddesses were chesty and the gods were well-endowed. Unlike the naked figures in the frieze over the entrance to the gym itself, the male statues wore fig leaf thongs, but that left little to the imagination.
I tried to remember which goddess statue Mandy used in her prank, bracing myself in case the robotic version was still there. Athena. She stared straight at me with her pupil-less eyes. I flashed a little grin at her to prove I wasn’t afraid; then I bent over in the snow, feeling around with my gloved hands for the locket Charlotte had lost. If it was that important to Mandy, she’d probably sifted through every snowflake in the garden—or had other people do it for her—so I figured I was wasting my time. I began to shiver and gave up. It was just too cold.
As I straightened, something brushed my cheek; there was a flash of white out of the corner of my eye—had she moved? I took a step back, and another, feeling the wrongness of the place. I forced myself to look away, my gaze caught by the frozen figures, so lifelike they seemed to be breathing, then looked back again. Had she moved?
Freaked, I pushed off, weaving my way among the statues, catching glimpses of their faces, afraid I would actually see one turn my way. Puffing, I skidded on black ice, and had to grab onto the very last statue—Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. And I swore she moved; I felt her move—and I almost lost it.
Then I remembered the details of Mandy’s prank: she had wired up a mannequin. Still, I didn’t linger. I flew to the steps of the library, an old brick building covered with ivy, and flew inside.
I rushed past the librarian’s desk—Mr. Claremont was on duty, and he looked quizzically at me as I remembered, too late, that in snow country, you were supposed to stop and kick the outside world off your shoes—and I headed for the reference section. I’d done some Googling on Marlwood’s history, but hadn’t come up with anything, not even the fire. I crossed my fingers that Marlwood’s own library would contain actual archives about its past.
The book stack reached from the floor to about half a foot above my head. To my right stood a bank of flat screen monitors. Two girls from Gordon House were sitting at two computers, clacking on the keys and giggling. They were watching YouTube videos.
One of them saw me and gave me a little wave. I waved back, and then I turned a corner . . . and came face-to-face with Lara.
She was holding a large book bound in black leather. Her emerald eyes widened in surprise; then she narrowed them and smiled thinly, like some evil villainess in a bad high school play.
“Oh,” she said. “I just lost a bet. I figured you’d have left by now. Too bad. For you.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose, but I stood my ground. She rapped the book with her knuckles.
“People are talking about you. Everyone you make friends with dies or goes crazy,” she said. “Do you have a virus?”
I took a step toward her. “Just stop it, Lara, I know.”
She wrinkled her forehead, then tilted her head. She gave it a shake, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, breakdown girl.” She shifted the book in her arm and pressed her palm against my forehead. “Wow, do you have a fever? Maybe you have brain damage.”
I balled my fists. “Don’t. Don’t even try it. Y-you tried to kill . . . ” Suddenly, I felt very dizzy. And confused. I remembered Lara holding onto me, dragging me to a large pile of trash inside the abandoned operating theater. I remembered Rose and Sangeeta preparing to set the trash on fire. I remembered getting free, and running to the lake. There was a boat . . . Troy’s boat . . . I got in, and it began to sink. But I got out, and I swam to the other side of the lake . . . that enormous, frigid lake . . .
Did I dream it? It was as if everything I had been sure of had popped like a soap bubble above my head. Did it happen?
“What did I try to kill?” Lara said.
“At the lake house. You three came after me.” I was sure of that. I remembered that. Yes, I did remember that.
Or had I had a dream?
“What are you on?” Lara asked, peering at me. Her confusion sounded genuine.
I felt the iciness inside me and focused on that—on the reality of our lives at Marlwood. We were possessed.
I looked at her. Really looked. I couldn’t tell if she was faking or if she really didn’t know what I was talking about.
“It’s Mandy,” I said. “Sh-she’s made a deal, a bargain with the dead. And she’s sucked you in . . . ”
“Excuse me?”
“And it’s out of control. Lara, Kiyoko died.”
She caught her breath. Her head whipped backward and I heard her whispering to herself. Then she raised her head and looked at me.
Her eyes were completely black.
“You’ll be dead, too, soon enough.” Her voice was not hers—heavy New York accent, higher pitched—and her smile was huge, and evil, and I took a step backward.
I couldn’t even whisper. I couldn’t make a sound at all.
She tapped the book. “There’s nowhere you can go. Nowhere you can hide. We know who you are. And we’re going to get you.”
I covered my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream. Then Lara jerked hard and rapidly blinked. When she looked at me, her eyes were normal.
“Lara, did you . . . hear yourself?” I asked her. “Did you hear what you were saying?”
“What?” She brushed past me. “When you come back to planet Earth, let me know. So I can go somewhere else. Freak,” she added under her breath.
Lara carried the book over to an empty study table and carefully set it down. Then she pulled out a chair and sat. Flipping it open, she began to page through it slowly, carefully. I watched for a few seconds; then I stumbled into the stacks in the direction she had come, looking for the gap such a large book would have left. I found it on a shelf with the Library of Congress call numbers that began with BF. Other titles: Possession: Hysteria and Its Manifestations, A History of Spiritualism, Revivalism and Possession in American Religious Thought.
Possession.
I began to tremble. So she must know what was happening to her and the others. I kept walking past the shelves of books to a brass drinking fountain. I bent over, preparing to drink—
—Saw two black holes staring at me—
—Celia’s reflection—
—And staggered backward.
A girl seated in a green upholstered reading chair glanced up at me, then back at her book. I bit down on my lower lip and made a sharp left, run-walking back to the entry. Pushing my way out, I stood on the porch and watched the snow falling heavily from the black sky. Fresh drifts had already begun to pile up around the base of the porch, and the lights of the other campus buildings glowed a dull, weak yellow. I couldn’t see a single star, or the moon. Marlwood was closing in on me.
“Let me go,” I said aloud.
The wind howled. The door behind me opened, and I knew without looking that Lara was s
tanding behind me.
“We never will,” she replied. “Ever.”
I pushed away from the porch, racing into the snow, as her laughter trailed behind me.
SIXTEEN
January 18
After the library, I stayed on high alert, but nothing happened to me. I didn’t sleep, only paced, and avoided the head in our room, staring at the darkened windows of Jessel. I knew that if I didn’t rest, I would break down. But I couldn’t turn down my inner banshee. I couldn’t stop screaming in silence.
Then at breakfast the next morning, Mandy joined me in the food queue. She was dressed in an ivory cashmere sweater topped with a soft gray three-quarter-length jacket and a black wool miniskirt. Her hair was up in a bouffant, held in place with a beaded gray clip. She was beautiful . . . and her warm smile would have melted a glacier.
“Linz, sweetie, good morning.”
I said nothing.
“We’re having a party a week from Friday,” she continued, not daunted at all by my coldness. “You know, for my usual sweet BFFs and suckups.” Her eyes were hard. “You should show.”
No way, I thought; but I said, “Why? Is it my turn?”
“Oh, baby.” She grabbed a spoon out of the silverware bay and held it out to me. “You already passed the test.”
I turned my back, aware that the din in the commons was noticeably lower, and people were watching. I was shaking. My coffee was sloshing on my fingers, scalding, but I was so cold I could practically see steam rising from my skin.
I REMEMBERED when my mom was sick, and I had told my dad I wanted to stop going to school and live with her in the hospital. And when he’d asked me why, I said, “Because she’s going to die. And if you loved her, you would quit your job and be with her all the time. She’s lonely, and she’s scared.”
He said some things about how life went on and we had to go on living; and I hadn’t spoken to him for three days. For three days, in fact, I’d hated him. But now, as I walked into the admin office for my meeting with Dr. Ehrlenbach, I got it. I felt as if I had just stepped onto the escalator back at Fashion Valley Mall, struggling to get over my present and move into my future. But life just glided along with you.