The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (164 page)

My heart skipped a beat as I took this information in. Disappeared for hours? And Lara was trying to cover it up? Did that mean that Amberly went somewhere she shouldn’t have gone? Did she have time to—

“It wasn’t dawn, Kirsten, it was more like two a.m.,” Lara corrected
her friend. “I remember that because it was still totally dark out and we had to turn the light on to clean up the spill.”

Two a.m. Cheyenne had still been alive at 2 a.m. She hadn’t even gotten back to Billings from the headmaster’s office until almost one thirty, and then we’d had our fight. And I remember some paramedic saying the estimated time of death was more like 4 a.m. Which would mean Amberly was tucked back in her bed when Cheyenne died. Unless, of course, Lara was wrong—or lying. In any case, where Amberly had gone in the middle of the night was a mystery.

“You’re sure it was two a.m.,” I said, looking at both of them.

“Positive,” Lara said. “Kirsten likes to overexaggerate.”

“She’s right. I do,” Kirsten said with a giggle.

“Well, thanks, girls.” I shouldered my bag and tucked my hair behind my ear. “That’s all I need to know.” I paused before striding out the door. “Say hi to your bear for me,” I threw over my shoulder.

I smiled as I walked out the door, even though I’d just proven that bitchy blond upstart innocent. These days, I had to find the fun where I could get it.

Tuesday at lunch I sat with Diana, Shane, and Sonal as they quizzed one another on French vocab words they would need to know for their final. Since I wasn’t taking French, I was able to tune them out and stare off into space. Which basically meant I was staring at the Billings table.

Noelle and Amberly sat across from each other at the first seats near the aisle. Noelle in her usual chair, Amberly in my old seat—which was also Ariana’s old seat. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and she wore a pressed white shirt under an aqua-colored, cable-knit sweater vest and a gray skirt, plus a light blue scarf. When I squinted, she looked exactly like Ariana. Was I the only person around here who had noticed her transformation? Was I the only one who was totally creeped out by it?

“Have you guys noticed anything different about Amberly lately?” I asked my tablemates, interrupting the vocab round-robin.

“You mean like the fact that she’s gone from sniveling bitch to bossy bitch in less than a week?” Shane replied, taking a bite of her ham sandwich. “Has to be a record, even for Easton.”

Diana and Shane giggled. Sonal covered her mouth with her hand to keep from spitting her chicken salad everywhere.

“Well, that and . . . isn’t she kind of dressing differently?” I asked.

They all leaned in to see the Billings table better. After a moment Diana shrugged. “Still preppy and peppy,” she said. “I swear that girl has at least one cable-knit sweater in every color in the universe.”

“I thought Seattle girls were supposed to be more, like, earthy,” Sonal commented, tossing her long black hair behind her shoulder as she sucked at her teeth.

“Apparently Amberly didn’t get the memo,” Shane replied.

“But she doesn’t look like she’s trying to emulate anyone else?” I prodded.

They glanced over again. “Laura Bush?” Shane suggested.

Then they all cracked up laughing and got back to their work. So much for that. Maybe it was just because I had known Ariana better than they had. Or maybe I was just trying to see something that wasn’t there. And there was always the chance that I was getting a tad obsessed with this whole Cheyenne murder thing.

I was about to return to my lunch when Kiran’s ex—Dreck Boy James—walked by Noelle with his tray of food. She said something to him as he passed—something I couldn’t hear, but which cracked up the other girls at the table. James paused for a moment, turning beet
red. For a second I thought he was going to say something back, and I willed him to do it. To just stand up for himself. But instead he ducked his head and kept walking.

Noelle smiled happily to herself as she sipped her water, and suddenly all those feelings from that awful day last year came flooding back. The terrified look on Kiran’s face when Noelle had told her they knew who she was dating. How Noelle had basically blackmailed her into breaking up with James. How atrocious and nauseated I had felt when I had been the one forced to do it. As much as I had grown to love Noelle, I wished that just once she could get a taste of how she made other people feel. Just once I wished someone would blackmail
her
or make
her
feel less than worthy.

At that moment I so wished I hadn’t destroyed that Billings disc. It would have been such perfect blackmail material. If I still had it, I could use it to get her to listen to me. Get her to finally hear my side. Maybe even get myself back into Billings. Damn my temper. Why did I have to go and crack the thing in half without thinking ahead to—

And then, just like that, an intense wave of heat overcame me. Just like that, epiphany. I could have made a copy of the disc. I hadn’t, of course, but I
could
have. All I had to do was make Noelle believe that I still had the information and the upper hand was mine. For the first time since she had booted me from Billings, I felt an exhilarating thrill of possibility. For the first time I could taste my comeback.

I knew I would have to put my Noelle plan into action ASAP, before I lost my nerve. The only problem was, the girl never went anywhere alone. If I had any shot of getting her to listen to me, she was going to have to be solo, because when other people were around she wouldn’t be able to give me an inch. That would be perceived as a weakness, and she couldn’t have that.

So that night I called Sabine and asked her to keep an eye on Noelle for me. If the girl did happen to leave Billings on her own for any reason, Sabine was to call me. Much to my surprise, Sabine didn’t even ask me why I needed this info. She probably just assumed I was going to try to beg my way back into Billings. Right end game, wrong method.

The call came in the next morning. Early. My heart was in my throat as I fumbled to answer my phone, unaccustomed to sudden blasts of music at such an ungodly hour.

“Hello?” I said, breathless, trying to shake the sleep from my head.

“Noelle and Amberly just left for Coffee Carma. They’re meeting up with their party planner to visualize decorations for the pre-Kiran thing before Coffee Carma gets crowded,” Sabine whispered to me. “I know she’s not alone, but it’s close. It might be your only chance.”

“Thanks, Sabine,” I said, tossing the covers aside.

“Good luck,” she replied just before I turned off the phone.

I dressed quickly, throwing on a black turtleneck sweater and pulling my hair back into a ponytail. In the bathroom I threw some cold water on my face and looked at my reflection. I looked tired and pasty, but I was just going to have to make the best of it. I grabbed my Chloé bag and my books and raced from the dorm.

The campus was cold, gray, and mostly deserted, the once pristine snow now decimated by a thousand muddy footprints. I passed by Mr. Cross on his morning stroll and slipped into Mitchell Hall. My heart bounced around in my chest as I approached the conservatory and I took a deep breath, endeavoring to compose myself. Noelle could not see me looking anxious or tentative. I had to appear in control. Confident.

“I’m thinking color. Lots of garish, over-the-top color,” Noelle was saying as I entered the room. Her voice echoed in the high-ceilinged space as Amberly and the party planner followed her along the window wall. She wore a black knit dress, black tights, and black boots, while Amberly wore a very similar outfit, but in white. With the blue scarf, of course. “I’m sick of white twinkle lights. Enough
already. Let’s get hot pink and red and purple. Let’s make it a sultry, glam Christmas thing.”

“Brilliant,” the party planner said, making a note on her clipboard. She was a tall, lithe woman with shorn red hair and tiny square glasses. Her kelly-green wide-leg pants were beyond trendy, and they made her waist look like it had the same circumference as a soda can. “Simply brilliant.”

“Everyone’s just going to
die,
” Amberly gushed.

Noelle shot her a brief look of scorn, and I knew exactly what she was thinking—
so
gauche. Hadn’t someone already died? So apparently, Amberly wasn’t totally perfect in Noelle’s eyes. The thought awoke a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest.

At the Coffee Carma counter someone fired up the foam maker and the noise caught the threesome’s attention. They all turned and spotted me hovering.

“Oh, look,” Noelle said, looking down her nose at me. “It’s my stalker.”

The party planner’s eyes widened in alarm. Her trembling hand went right to the oversize beaded necklace at her throat. Clearly Easton’s reputation as the murder capital of the private school world had gotten around. And I guess I did look a little wild-eyed, considering what I was about to do.

“Seriously, Reed. It’s getting a tad pathetic,” Amberly added with a sniff. “And if you’re looking for an invite, keep looking.”

Noelle and Amberly both laughed and turned back to the window. The party planner followed suit, pointing out the challenges of the
floor-to-ceiling windows and listing a few ideas of how to deal with them.

“Noelle, enough is enough. I need to talk to you,” I said, my voice strong and clear as a bell in the wide room. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

Noelle
tsk
ed and slung her thick hair over her shoulder. “So dramatic.”

That was it. I walked right over to her, grabbed her arm, and forcibly pulled her away from the others.

“What are you doing?” Amberly blurted.

Noelle actually tripped sideways, taken off guard by the physical attack. But the moment she composed herself she pulled away, smoothing the front of her knee-length dress.

“You did not just touch me,” she said.

“I’m sorry, but I had to get your attention,” I told her under my breath. “Have you even read any of my e-mails?”

Amberly had almost reached us, but Noelle held up a hand, stopping her in her tracks. The girl looked confused for a moment, unsure of what to do, before she sullenly returned to the party planner.

“Uh, no,” Noelle replied. “Those little missives have been directed straight to the recycle bin.”

I pressed my lips together, frustrated. “You shouldn’t have done that. I—”

“Miss Lange? Everything all right over there?” the party planner asked.

“Fine,” Noelle replied, lifting a hand. “This won’t take long. Why don’t you two talk Christmas trees? I’m thinking faux, faux, faux. Maybe something in feathers.” She looked at me again, her brown eyes bored. “Go ahead. What could possibly be so very important?”

“I think Ivy killed Cheyenne,” I told her, my pulse quickening. “In fact, I’m about ninety-nine percent sure she did it. And I think she’s going to come after you next.”

Or me,
I thought, dread radiating through my stomach as I recalled the pills and the defaced photo of myself and Cheyenne. But there was no reason to bring my own peril into this conversation. In order for me to keep Noelle’s attention, this had to be about Noelle.

Unfortunately, all she did was let out an incredulous laugh that filled the room. “Ivy Slade? That girl does not have the balls. Nice try, Glass-Licker, but no sale.”

She started to turn away from me. Classic Noelle egotism. Didn’t she get that she was in danger?

“Okay. Let me rephrase,” I said, putting on my best condescending tone—one I had learned from Noelle herself. One I knew she would respond to. “What if I told you she’s still pissed about how you, Cheyenne, and Ariana left her alone at her grandmother’s her sophomore year?”

Noelle whipped around to face me again. I’d never seen her react so automatically, so fiercely. Normally she took a moment to pause, consider, and collect herself before reacting to anything.

“What do you know about that?” she asked, going pale.

I allowed myself a moment of triumph. Finally I’d done it. I’d actually gotten her to feel that paranoid uncertainty that she made others feel every single day. She didn’t appear to enjoy it any more than the rest of us did. And I wasn’t even close to finished.

“I know everything,” I said, lowering my voice and taking a step closer. “Including the fact that Ivy blames you, Ariana, and Cheyenne for her grandmother’s stroke—and death.”

Noelle blinked, her eyes filling with something that looked a lot like fear. I was getting to her. She was finally, finally listening to me.

“Don’t you think it’s all a little suspect?” I asked. “Ivy comes back to school this year and Cheyenne ends up murdered within a month? Ariana’s in an institution, so she can’t get to her, but you . . . you’re right here. You’re next.”

“Why are you doing this?” Noelle asked, her voice strong but her eyes uncertain. “Why are you trying to scare me?”

“I’m not,” I told her. “I’m trying to warn you. I’m
trying
to protect you.”

Noelle looked me in the eye and for a split second, I could see her start to cave. Start to realize that I was still her friend. That we needed each other. That one stupid night with one stupid guy should not get in the way of all that. But then, out of nowhere, her face turned to stone.

“And don’t tell me. You feel you need to be living in Billings to properly protect me, right?” She let out a short, incredulous laugh.
“You’re really grasping at straws here, Reed. And desperation, by the way, is not becoming.”

“Noelle—”

“I don’t need your protection, Glass-Licker. I don’t need
anything
from you,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know what I think? I think you must have way too much time on your hands over at Pemberly if you’re making up stories like this.
Way
too much time.”

Her smile was mocking. She knew I had been watching her through the window on Sunday night. She knew just how pathetic and lonely I was.

“I’m not making this up,” I said, needing her to understand. “I’m worried about you.”