The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (152 page)

Behind Hauer, I saw a group of girls walking in a huddle toward Pemberly. One of them noticed us and lifted her chin, and another girl turned.

Ivy Slade.

Her coal-black eyes fixed on me, and a cold bolt of ice slammed into my heart. She looked at Hauer and a sly smile lit her pointy face. Clearly she was already calculating how quickly she could spread the news that the cops were talking to me, but I didn’t care. All I could
think about was her story. Her hatred of Billings. Her promise that she would bring us all down.

After the Billings fund-raiser she had told me everything. How the Billings Girls had forced her and the other Billings hopefuls to break into her grandmother’s house her sophomore year to steal a family heirloom. How they had tripped the alarm, which had caused her grandmother to have a stroke that ultimately killed her. How Noelle, Ariana, Cheyenne, and the other Billings Girls had left Ivy there to cope with the tragedy herself.

If Cheyenne had definitely been murdered, then Ivy was, in my opinion, suspect number one. The girl had motive seeping out her pores. She had practically told me straight out that she was going to get revenge on Noelle as well as destroy Billings. Plus, I already knew she was capable of very bad things. Ever since Cheyenne had died, someone had been stalking me. Leaving artifacts from Cheyenne’s life tucked around my room for me to find. Taking that video of me and Dash and sending it to the entire student body. It was Ivy. I was sure of it. My certainty, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that she’d stolen the love of my life, Josh Hollis.

“Ivy Slade,” I said under my breath, as the girls turned and continued on their merry way.

“What was that?” Detective Hauer asked, curving his shoulders against the wind.

“Ivy Slade,” I said more loudly.

The detective sighed and blew on his chapped hands. “Reed, we already talked to her,” he said finally. “She’s not our girl.”

“Talk to her again,” I told him through my teeth.

“Reed, we can’t waste our time on—”

“I’m telling you, Detective, it’s not a waste of time,” I said, my blood racing now. “That girl is capable of murder. I know she is. And she hated Cheyenne. Last week she even threatened Noelle.”

This caught his attention. “Threatened to kill her?”

“Well, no. Not in those words, but—”

Suddenly, the detective looked extremely tired. “Look, unless you have some real evidence against the girl, there’s nothing I can do.”

His tone was condescending and impatient. Like I was just some stupid kid spreading rumors. I retightened my fingers around the strap of my duffel bag.

“You haven’t gotten the whole story,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “Believe me.”

Hauer blew out a sigh and looked up at the starless night. “How about we start with your story?” he suggested. “I know we already talked about the . . . uh, letter, you received from Ms. Martin’s e-mail account the night she died and your contentious friendship with her. But I need your official statement. Where you were at the time of Ms. Martin’s death . . . who you were with. . . .”

I felt fire burning from my eyes. He needed
my
statement when a psycho like Ivy was strolling around campus free and clear?

“You want my statement? Fine. Here it is,” I said, drawing myself up straight. “At the time of the murder I was asleep in my bed while my roommate was asleep in hers. I woke up to the sound of screaming and ran down the hall to find the president of my dorm dead on the
floor of her room. That’s all I know. Now why don’t you go interview someone with, oh, I don’t know, a motive?”

Hauer gave me an exasperated look, but I no longer cared to humor him. I turned around and stormed up to Billings, suddenly feeling more confident than ever that I could take on Noelle and the rest of my friends. Had to love a good adrenaline rush.

At least Detective Hauer was good for something.

I was all confident bravado until I walked into the Billings foyer and got that eerie, sickening feeling that I had just caused an abrupt silence. Slowly, I turned toward the parlor. From my vantage point I could see a few of my Billings sisters crowded onto the gold brocade love seat. Astrid Chou glanced over at me and quickly slouched down, drawing her hand up to her cheek as if to hide her face.

Dead silence. Aside from the cozy crackling of the fire, there was nothing. My mouth was dryer than a sandbox.

Move, Reed. Move.

I placed my bags on the floor and walked toward the parlor, stripping off my coat, scarf, and gloves as I went, since my inner thermometer was now registering about four thousand degrees. With each inch I could see a bit more of the room, and by the time I reached the door, my suspicions were confirmed.

Every last Billings Girl was gathered around the parlor. Portia
Ahronian, Shelby Wordsworth, London Simmons, and Vienna Clark were on the couch, all avoiding my gaze. Kiki Thorpe, Missy Thurber, and Lorna Gross were crowded onto the love seat next to Astrid. Tiffany Goulbourne and Rose Sakowitz sat in the straight-backed chairs in front of the flat-screen TV. Even Constance Talbot and Sabine DuLac were there, sitting on the floor with their legs curled under the coffee table. And at the head of the room, perched in the wingback chair near the fireplace, was Noelle Lange. Her thick dark hair was pulled back in a bun and she wore a black turtleneck sweater and a black and gray plaid skirt. Huge diamonds sparkled in her ears. Her full lips twisted into a semblance of a smile as she looked me in the eye—the only person able to do so.

“What’s going on?” I said tentatively. The sound of my voice made a few of the girls squirm. Cleary this was a scheduled meeting. Clearly they had all known to get back to campus early for this. And clearly, Noelle was at the heart of it.

I stared at Sabine, who stared down at her knee-high leather booths. Why hadn’t she warned me about this?

“Perfect timing, Reed,” Noelle said, leaning back. Her elbows casually perched on the chair’s armrests as she coolly looked me over. She lifted both hands, palms up, and her dark eyes sparkled merrily. “We just voted you out.”

The earth tilted beneath my feet. She couldn’t have said what I thought I’d heard. Not so cavalierly. She couldn’t. But no one was laughing like it was a joke. No one even moved. I gripped the back of the love seat, my sweaty fingers pulling on Lorna’s wavy brown hair.

“Ow!” Lorna protested loudly, sitting forward to free herself.

“What do you mean, you voted me out?” I breathed. Suddenly everything in the room was distorted. The faces, the furniture, the flames leaping in the fireplace. It wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

“You have an hour to pack your things,” Noelle said, standing and smoothing her skirt. “There’s a single waiting for you in Pemberly.”

My mind reeled, making me feel dizzy, unsteady. Grappling to stay focused, I looked around at my so-called friends. At the people with whom I had shared so much. At the girls who had voted me president just two months ago.
Unanimously
voted me president. We studied together, shopped together, gossiped together, got over hangovers together, bitched about parents and boyfriends and teachers together. They were my friends. The first real girlfriends I had ever had. The first real family I’d ever had. They couldn’t do this to me. They wouldn’t.

“No. You guys. You can’t just—”

“Sure we can,” Noelle said with a smirk, stepping over outstretched legs and designer shoes to stand before me. “The residents of Billings decide who lives in Billings, remember? And we decided we don’t want a backstabbing bitch living here.”

My grip on the love seat tightened. I couldn’t breathe. I stared into Noelle’s cool brown eyes, searching for the punch line. Waiting for her to laugh and tell me she was just messing with me like she had so many times in the past. We were friends. Practically sisters. And yeah, I had messed up, but didn’t a person even get a chance to beg for forgiveness before . . . this?

“No,” I said finally. “No. I don’t believe you.”

I tore my eyes from Noelle and looked around again. I looked at Tiffany, who had always been so levelheaded and good-natured. Who had always been a voice of reason. She simply turned her face to the side, giving me a view of her perfect cheekbone and smooth cocoa skin. I glanced at Rose—sweet, don’t-rock-the-boat Rose—but her eyes were trained on her lap, her red curls hiding her face. Portia rolled her big green eyes when I looked her way, and the Twin Cities studied their perfectly manicured nails. Only Constance and Sabine looked at me, silently begging for forgiveness.

The reality washed over me. It was true. They had all turned on me. They had voted to kick me out of the dorm I had just saved for them—the dorm I had raised five million dollars for in order to keep Headmaster Cromwell from shutting us down. The dorm I had lived in all last year—longer than many of them. This was my home. And they were taking it away from me.

“Who voted me out?” I asked, my voice clear as a bell.

I was angry and desperate and grasping at straws, but I needed to know. I needed to know exactly who had turned on me. And I couldn’t just surrender and slink out of there with my tail between my legs. I refused.

Noelle scoffed at my question. Everyone else exchanged troubled glances. Disbelieving glances. Like asking them to tell me which of them were traitors was so very gauche. As if I cared about gauche right then.

“Who voted me out?” I said again. “I want to know.”

Missy Thurber’s hand was the first to go up. Shocker. Girl and her Chunnel-size nostrils had always hated my guts. But then, ever so slowly, more hands started to rise. Lorna’s, Shelby’s, Portia’s. Even Kiki, Rose, Tiffany, and the Twin Cities had voted against me. People who a week ago I would have counted among my good friends. Only three sets of hands stayed firmly planted in their owners’ laps.

Sabine, Constance, and Astrid had taken my side. That was it. That was all I had. Three real friends.

The burning dread in my gut slowly hardened into heavy, cold, sorrow.

“Sorry, Glass-Licker,” Noelle said with a tilt of her head. “Looks like you’re going back to where you’ve always belonged.”

Back to where I always belonged? Was she kidding? She was the one who had always told me that I belonged
here.
She was the one who had insisted that Billings House needed me. How could she possibly look me in the eye and say that?

Noelle started by me, brushing my shoulder with hers. Indignant anger flared beneath my shock, and I heard myself speak.

“I don’t think so.”

Everyone in the room sucked in a breath. I wasn’t even sure that I still wanted to live there, knowing they had all turned against me. But I wasn’t about to give Noelle the satisfaction of seeing me go down without a fight. Not a chance.

“Excuse me?” Noelle said incredulously, swinging around to face me.

“That whole ‘Billings decides who lives in Billings’ rule doesn’t apply anymore, remember?” I said, summoning all my courage to square off with her. “Not since Headmaster Cromwell overruled it at the beginning of the year. I’m not going anywhere.”

Noelle’s eyes cut through me like tiny little knives. She didn’t even have to speak for me to know she’d already found a way around this.

“You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” she said, looking down her nose at me. “But when I single-handedly delivered the Crom a check for more than five million dollars to use as he pleases, he pretty much intimated that I can do whatever I want around here.”

Single-handedly? As if I hadn’t worked my ass off on that fund-raiser.

“And what I want is you out,” she finished, her lips curving into a smirk. “Don’t make it worse by getting all pathetic and whiny about it.”

My face burned like I’d been in the sun for four days straight. She was loving every minute of this. Loved humiliating me in front of everyone. Loved seeing me suffer. I hated her so much in that moment, I wanted to tear her hair out. And yet, I still wanted her to change her mind. Still wanted her to put her arm around me and tell me everything was going to be fine. I still wanted her approval. The fact that I had potentially lost it forever might have been the most devastating realization of all.

“Come on, ladies,” Noelle said to the room. “I brought back some gifties from the city.”

Just like that, everyone was out of their seats, happily bustling for the door. They all slipped around me as if I were a muddy puddle they were trying to avoid. I just stood there. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to. And after what they had done to me, I wasn’t about to get out of their way. It was a small defiance, but it was all I had.

“Noelle, please don’t do this,” I said under my breath, stepping up to her once the room was all but empty. I didn’t want to beg. I didn’t want to explain myself while my blood was still hot with anger. But I sensed this could be my last chance. “I was drunk. I thought you guys were broken up. I am so,
so
sorry.”

For a split second I saw the depth of the hurt Noelle was feeling reflected in her eyes and it stopped my heart. I had destroyed her. My best friend. The person who had been there for me through some of the worst moments of my life. I had hurt her beyond all repair. All of this, this huge scene, was just her way of protecting herself. Her way of saving face. My guilt compounded exponentially. I deserved her punishment. I did. But did it have to be this?

Suddenly, she turned her head to the side and blinked. When she looked at me again, the imperious stare was back.

“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Dash was and is mine. And even if we had been broken up, you don’t go there. Not with a friend’s ex.”

I blinked and Noelle smirked.

“Yes, Reed. I know you’re dying for an update, so here it is. Dash
and I are still together and we’re always going to be together,” she said. “One moment of weakness on his part is not going to change that. Especially when you so clearly threw yourself at him.”

That was beyond untrue.
Dash
had been the one to invite me to one of the secluded tents on the roof at the Legacy.
Dash
had been the one to initiate things once I got there. But clearly either he or Noelle had decided to rewrite history so they could move on with their life together. Somehow, all the blame was being laid squarely on my shoulders.