Private 8 - Revelation (20 page)

"Good night, Reed," he replied, trying for a bolstering smile. I turned to my dorm mates, my shoulders rounded, and we all crowded into an elevator. They grilled me, of course, on what was going on, and I explained to them briefly, shocking the crap out of all of them. But I guess it couldn't be a secret anymore. Someone was after me. And apparently they were after Ivy, too. These girls deserved to know why Pemberly had been put on red alert.

"Sorry, guys," I said, as the elevator stopped on my floor and I stepped out. "This whole police presence thing is all my fault."

"Don't worry about it. Gives me something new to blog about," Shane said, waving a hand.

"Let me know if you need anything," Diana added.

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Then the doors slid closed and they were gone.

I turned and trudged down the hallway to my room. All along the way, dorm room doors were open and the girls inside were whispering in hushed tones, trying to figure out what was going on. I didn't have the energy to stop and tell any of them what I knew. My brain was completely fried. Everything I had thought was true had turned out to be false. And Ivy being stalked as well? That was a curve I had not remotely considered.

I took a deep breath and opened the door to my room. Ivy Slade was sitting in my desk chair, facing the door, her legs crossed at the knee and her arms crossed in front of her.

"Oh, good. You're here," she said, getting up and brushing right by me to slam the door and sequester us in. "You and I are long overdue for a chat."

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"So!" Ivy said, striding into the center of my room before turning to face me. She tilted her head to the side. "I hear you think I killed Cheyenne.""They told you I was the one who turned you in?" I asked, stunned.

"No. Of course not. But the Easton PD isn't exactly a crack outfit," she said sarcastically. "I overheard at least five different people mention your name. So, what? Please tell me what you think would ever motivate me to kill the best friend I ever had."

I turned away from her and unbuttoned my coat with trembling fingers, stalling for time. What was I supposed to say to the girl?

The truth. It was clearly time for the truth.

I slipped my coat off, shivering in my flimsy dress, and faced her. We were a mere two feet away from each other, thanks to the tight quarters.

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"You're the one who told me how much you hated Billings," I explained. "It was so obvious that you blamed Noelle and Ariana and Cheyenne for your grandmother's death. I figured you finally got your revenge. Plus you're always talking about how Noelle is going to get what's coming to her and how you're going to bring us all down. You threaten my friends every chance you get!"

Ivy laughed and shook her head, as if I were just so naive. "That's just talk, Reed."

"Yeah right," I snapped back. "You have done a few sketchy things since I've known you, Ivy. Ostracizing Easton from the Legacy, trying to take down our fund-raiser. Come on. How was I supposed to know those threats were empty?" She actually appeared to be pondering this. Seeing my point. She reached over to my dresser and toyed with one of the branches on the mini Christmas tree Sabine had given me, avoiding my gaze.

"And what the hell do you mean, the best friend you ever had? You hated Cheyenne," I added.

Ivy snorted a laugh and tipped her head forward for a moment to look at the floor. "Maybe at the end, but that doesn't mean I completely forgot about ten years of friendship. Haven't you ever had a love-hate relationship?"

My mind immediately flashed on Noelle, but I said nothing.

"So that's what you based this whole thing on?" she asked, lifting her pointy shoulders. "A couple of stupid pranks I pulled and some story I told you at the fund-raiser?"

My heart quivered nervously. Here it was. The moment of truth.

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"No. That wasn't all," I said. I leaned back against my desk chair and braced myself. "I kind of snuck into your room and found the jewelry box and the broken necklace and the photo of you guys with all the faces X'd out but yours."

"You went through my stuff!?" Ivy shouted. She turned and put her hands on top of her head as if she were trying to keep her brain from exploding. "Oh my God. Forget Cheyenne. I might just have to kill you!"

"Ivy, you've gotta understand," I said, sounding desperate, and hating that I sounded desperate. I could not believe that I had been put in the position of begging for forgiveness from this girl. It was like the whole world had been turned upside down. But she was right. I had totally violated her privacy. And for no good reason, it turned out. "I thought you had been in my room half a dozen times before. I thought you were stalking me. I had to do what I had to do."

"What? Stalking you?" she asked, breathless. Then she stared at the wall as if she were slowly remembering and processing something. "Omigod, that's why they were asking me all those questions about you and your room and your e-mail." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "They kept showing me this picture of you and Cheyenne with your faces crossed out like the one they found in my room. I was so confused."

"That picture showed up on my desk last week, so when you had one just like it in your room, I thought... I thought you were trying to send a message or something."

Ivy glared at me, her black eyes sharp. "I don't know who messed

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with my photo or yours," she said. "But it wasn't me."

"I get that now," I said, as much as I hated to admit it. I took a deep breath. "Look, I saw the box hidden in your room and I figured you must have gone back to Cheyenne's room to retrieve it. I figured that the broken necklace inside and the box itself could be used as evidence against you, so you stole it back."

Ivy shook her head. "Damn, Reed. Not that it's any of your business, but I got the box in the mail from Cheyenne's mom about two weeks after she died. She knew it was mine and figured I might want it back. I don't even know how the necklace got inside."

I turned and dropped down on the edge of my bed, resting my face in my hands and my elbows on my knees. "I was so sure it was you," I said through my fingers. "I was so sure it was over." "Well, I'm sorry to disappoint," Ivy said sardonically. "But I'm not a murderer or a stalker."

"Then who?" I said, dropping my arms down and looking up at her, my back hunched in exhaustion. "Who the hell killed her? Who's doing all this?"

Ivy gave me a look like it was so completely obvious. "Oh, I don't know... Noelle?"

A laugh escaped my throat. "Not this again."

"Why not? She had the motive--wanting to get back into Billings. She knows all the secret ways to get on and off campus. Plus we all know she's evil and she has a reason to mess with both of us--me because I turned down her precious invite to Billings, you because you tried to take over while she was gone. Not to mention scoring with Dash," Ivy

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said matter-of-factly, leaning back against my dresser. "Nice work on that one, by the way. He is hot."

"She's not evil, just powerful," I said, ignoring her last comment. "There's a difference."

Ivy rolled her eyes and scoffed. "You really need to open your eyes and see her for what she is, Reed. This whole loyalty thing is pretty pathetic at this point," she said, gesturing at my room to remind me of how I'd gotten there.

"Whether I'm pathetic or not, Noelle has an alibi that's almost as airtight as yours," I said, grabbing my pillows and folding them behind me so I could prop myself up. "She was at a charity event in the city all night, and there are pictures to prove it."

"No way," Ivy said. "Way," I replied.

"Dammit," she said under her breath. I knew the tone. She was as disappointed that it wasn't Noelle as I was that it wasn't her.

"I can't believe we're having this conversation," I mused.

She looked at me and smirked. "Yeah. Neither can I." She took in a breath and let it out audibly, then stood up straight. "Well, if it wasn't Noelle, and it wasn't me," she said facetiously, holding her hands up to her chest, "then who the hell was it? Because if you take the indomitable Ms. Lange out of the equation, you're looking like a pretty good suspect."

I felt as if I had just been slapped and sat up straight. "Excuse me? "

"Hey, if you dish it, be prepared to take it," Ivy said, lifting her palms. "You stood to gain the most from her death. You guys were

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publicly feuding. You lived right down the freaking hall from her. Who better?"

"It wasn't me," I told her, though I had no real proof. "I mean, I know that sounds lame, but... Cheyenne was moving out. She was out of my life. I had no reason to kill her. I--"

"Don't stress. I don't really think it was you," Ivy said, looking me up and down. "You're far too... Little Orphan Annie."

Whatever that meant. "I've looked into a few people, but I'm at a serious disadvantage since I wasn't here last year," Ivy said, strolling the two steps to peer into my broken closet. "I don't really know who she was hanging out with... who she was dating...."

"I could fill in some of the blanks there," I offered, without really thinking.

She turned to me, eyebrows raised. "Could you?"

I felt a slight surge of excitement--tentative excitement--and stood. "And you could fill in the blanks from the years before," I said slowly. "Anyone who might be holding a long grudge. People I don't even know about."

For a long moment we eyed each other, neither one of us willing to make the next move. Just looking at her, I was still having trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that she wasn't the enemy. That she hadn't been the one to plant all those awful little gifts and send the e-mails. Ivy Slade was innocent. And, like me, she was also a victim.

"Do you think you could do it? " Ivy asked finally, squaring off with

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me. "Do you think you could work with your ex's girlfriend? "

Oh, right. There was still the little matter of the fact that she was routinely tonguing the love of my life. It took all my self-control not to cringe.

"If it puts an end to all this crap, then I'll try," I said. "Two heads are better than one, right?"

After the briefest hesitation, Ivy stuck out her slim white hand. "So they say." We shook on it and part of me felt as if I were making a pact with the devil. But then, the devil would probably have ways of getting things done that I could never even dream of. Maybe a marriage of good and evil was exactly what we needed to figure this thing out. Before our stalker decided it was time to get rid of us--for good.

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***

I spent most of breakfast on Saturday morning watching Josh and Ivy and trying to read their body language. Had she told him about our new arrangement? What had he thought of the gift I'd given him? Had he even gotten it? I took small bites of my oatmeal and willed him to look over at me just once, but he never did. He seemed captivated by Ivy.

Which, of course, sucked.

Plus there was no way I could even attempt to get him alone after breakfast, because Ivy and I had agreed to meet back at my room as soon as we were done and try to figure out what our next move would be. I said good-bye to Diana and the others, who were headed to the library to study for finals, and hightailed it back to Pemberly, keeping my head bent against the cold. After making it through the crack security in the lobby, I only had to wait in my room for five minutes before Ivy arrived. She knocked and actually waited for me to open the door. That almost never happened in Billings.

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"Hey," she said, shedding her white coat and cabbie hat as she breezed by me into the room.

"Hi." I waited nervously for her to say something about my gift to Josh. To confront me about making a play for her boyfriend. Just thinking of her being proprietary about him left a sour taste on my tongue.

"I brought my list of suspects," she said, yanking a piece of paper out of her black and white tweed bag. "Of course they've all been crossed off now except you."

She was acting completely normal. So either Josh hadn't received my gift after all, or he'd decided not to tell her about it--which could be interesting. If he was keeping it a secret, that meant it had touched him--that it meant something to him. Trying not to hope, I looked her list over. It was well worn, with notes in the margin and a coffee stain at the top. Clearly she had been working on this as hard as both Marc and I had. Apparently she really did care about Cheyenne.

"I wonder how many other people have taken this up as a hobby," I said, turning and sitting down at my desk.

"What do you mean? Is there someone else?" Ivy asked. She perched on the edge of my bed, tugging down on her short black skirt.

"Marc Alberro. He used to have a thing for Cheyenne. Plus he kind of thinks he's going to be the New York Times' next ace reporter," I explained. "So he was investigating too."

"Never heard of him," Ivy said with a shrug.

"I guess that's me filling in the blanks then," I replied.

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"I guess so." She leaned back on her hands. "So let's see your list." I handed mine over. Ivy smirked as she took it in. "So you did investigate some of the Billings Girls."

My face turned pink, though I wasn't sure why. I focused on my computer, bringing up a Google search screen in case we needed it. "Of course I did."

"I'm just surprised. I thought you guys were all about sisterhood and loyalty," she said, her words dripping with disdain.

"I'm not an idiot," I told her, snatching the list back from her. "One of my 'sisters' tried to kill me last year, in case you hadn't heard."

"Oh. Right," she said with a trace of chagrin. "Ariana. Who knew she would turn out to be such a psycho?" She looked at me sideways and sat up straight. "Maybe she's the one who's been stalking you. Or us."

My heart skipped a terrified beat. The very idea of Ariana lurking in the shadows of my life made my skin crawl. But I brushed the feeling aside. "Not possible. She's locked up in some asylum or something. "

"Or so they say," Ivy said with a leading smile.