The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (168 page)

“Is that what you want, Detective?” I asked. “Do you really want another murder on your hands?”

He lifted his weary eyes to me and sighed, then sat back in his chair.

“Crosby!” he shouted, so loud I actually jumped in my chair..

Almost instantly, a skinny guy in a blue uniform scrambled into the room. “Yes, Detective?”

“Grab an evidence bag and some gloves and get in here,” he ordered. “I want this photo dusted for prints.”

“Yes, sir,” the cop said.

My heart leapt as I looked back at Detective Hauer. Was this for real? Was he finally going to help me?

“We’ll look into it,” he said, glancing at the picture on my iPhone once more. Glancing at it as if he didn’t like what he saw. “I’m not guaranteeing anything, but we’ll look into it.”

By the time I got back to campus after making a quick stop at the Hallmark store in town for some supplies to complete Josh’s gift, classes were over for the day. Students were streaming out of the cafeteria following lunch and loitering on the quad before heading to their dorms to start primping and dressing and finishing wrapping their presents. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. If I had strolled back onto campus an hour earlier, I could have easily been snagged for skipping, but now I blended right in.

Praying I wouldn’t bump into Ivy on my way back to my room lest I give away my anticipatory glee, I took the stairs instead of the elevator. My plan was to hunker down alone in my dorm for the rest of the afternoon and wait to see what happened next. If the police did come to arrest Ivy, I wanted to be there to witness it.

I speed-walked down the hall to my room, tugging my scarf from my neck and unbuttoning my coat. There were a few girls hanging out
in front of their rooms, but Ivy wasn’t among them. When I slipped inside, I turned around and closed the door, allowing myself a quick breath of relief. Home free.

Then I turned and faced my room. A gasp of horror escaped my throat.

The place was a complete wreck. The drawers of my dresser yawned open, clothes spilling out of them and covering the entire floor. My bed was unmade, pillows on the floor as well. My closet was open and half the clothes inside had been ripped from the hangers. The Chloé bag had been tossed in the corner, unclasped and upside down. Two of the three posters Constance had given me had been slashed in half and the third hung from one sorry tack over my bed. Even the photo of Scott and me hadn’t come through unscathed. The glass was broken and the frame cracked.

I was going to kill Ivy. I was going to
kill
her.

My hands had just curled into fists when I noticed that all my CDs were fanned out across the desk, some of them having tumbled to the floor.

CDs. Wait a second. CDs.

Maybe this wasn’t Ivy’s handiwork after all.

I grabbed the Chloé bag and righted it, then yanked open the small, inside pocket. It was empty.

“Amberly,” I said through my teeth. “You little bitch.”

She hadn’t found the Billings disc, which, of course, didn’t exist. But she had managed to find her precious Carma Card. Plus what was left of my Billings fund money. Both were gone from their hiding place inside the Chloé bag.

My heart rate started to return to normal as my brain accepted the fact that this had not been the work of my stalker. There was nothing Cheyenne-related about this particular attack. No. Amberly had done this. The pointless destruction had her immature stamp all over it. Apparently, this was her idea of “doing things the difficult way.”

I groaned as I looked around at the disaster area that was my room, hating the fact that Amberly had—even in a tiny way—gotten the better of me. Part of me wanted to storm right over to Billings and steal the stupid Carma Card right back, just to prove a point, but I knew that was never going to happen. No one over there was going to let me through the front door, let alone allow me to ransack my old room. I hated that Amberly had managed to get into my room and mess with me, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I wasn’t going to let that twit ruin the rest of my day—the day on which Ivy might finally be arrested, the day on which I might finally get through to Noelle and Josh.

No. I was just going to have to deal. And hopefully, by the end of the night, this mess would turn out to be just a blip in an otherwise perfect day.

“I cannot believe she did this to you,” Sabine said, shaking her head as she speed-folded my clothes and stacked them into my dresser. Apparently, when Sabine was angry, she was like a whirling dervish. In five minutes she had cleaned up all the clothes, hanging them back in their places and tucking them into drawers. “That’s it. I’ll never talk to that girl again.”

I smiled wanly as I carefully removed the photo of Scott and me from the broken frame. “Thanks, but won’t that make your living situation a tad difficult?”

“I don’t care,” Sabine said, shoving the drawer closed. “Clearly there is something wrong with this girl. You can’t just break into people’s rooms. What is wrong with everyone?”

Good question. I was about to attempt an answer when several male voices filled the hallway. I heard the telltale feedback from a walkie-talkie and my heart skipped a beat. Sabine and I locked eyes.
I felt tingles all over every inch of my skin. This was it. They had come for Ivy.

“Yes, sir. I understand,” Headmaster Cromwell’s voice echoed down the hall. “I understand that, but I have the academy’s lawyer right here and she has looked over the warrant. Everything appears to be in order.”

Quaking with excitement and uncertainty, I crept over to my door and cracked it open. Two uniformed police officers strode by my room along with the Crom, who was on his cell, and a rotund woman in a gray suit who was reading over some legal document. Bringing up the rear was Detective Hauer in his thick wool coat, looking grim. The officers stopped and one of them knocked on Ivy’s door. His blue vinyl jacket swished with every movement he made.

“Ms. Slade? Ms. Crane? This is the Easton Police Department.”

“What’s going on?” Sabine asked, trying to see through the crack by leaning into my shoulder from behind.

I closed the door quietly and looked at her, wide-eyed. “It’s the police. They’ve come for Ivy!” I whispered.

My God. They must have found her fingerprints on my photo. I had finally done something right.

“Right now?” Sabine asked, clutching her hands together.

“What’s going on?” I heard Ivy ask from next door.

“Shhh!” I said to Sabine, putting my hands out and freezing in place as if doing so would help me hear better. All up and down the hall, doors were opening and closing as my floor mates checked out the drama.

“Miss Slade, we have a warrant to search your things,” one of the officers said.

“What? What for?” Ivy blurted, sounding angry.

“Yes, sir. Yes. She’s right here,” Headmaster Cromwell said.

He must have handed Ivy the phone, because in the next second I could hear her rambling right outside my door.

“Daddy! Yes, there are three of them and they’re going through all my stuff! What is going on?”

She sounded on the verge of tears. I would have given anything to have been able to open my door, but everyone was crowded right outside. My appearance would have been way too obvious. So all I could do was stand there and imagine. Imagine how scared Ivy must have looked as she realized she was finally about to be brought to justice.

There was another squeal of the walkie-talkie and a voice came through. “Detective Hauer, sir, we have the Coolidge boy. Should we take him right to the car?”

“Gage?” Sabine mouthed.

“Yes, Officer Crosby. We’ll meet you there as soon as we wrap this up,” Detective Hauer responded.

My pulse pounded in my ears. Now that this was all happening, it seemed so very out of control. Had they decided that Gage was some kind of accomplice? Was I right in guessing that he had lied to the police to protect Ivy? I actually felt a thump of guilt at the thought of Gage being dragged off campus by the police. Who knew I had any sort of soft spot in my heart for that jerk?

“Miss Slade? Care to explain this?” Detective Hauer asked.

“What? Dad, hang on,” Ivy said. There was a pause. “Wait a minute. Who did this?” Ivy asked.

“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t deface this photo yourself?” Detective Hauer said.

“No! No, I didn’t,” Ivy said. “I have no idea who did that, but it wasn’t me.”

I rolled my eyes at her obvious lie. That was it. I couldn’t take this anymore. I opened the door and stood in the doorway with Sabine just behind me. Everyone looked over at us. Headmaster Cromwell with his pinched expression. Ivy, looking waxy and pale, clutching the cell phone through which her father was barking orders. Detective Hauer, holding the X’d-out photo of Cheyenne, Noelle, Ariana, and Ivy in his gloved hand. Even the lawyer lady looked me up and down.

“Miss Brennan, Miss DuLac. This is not a theater matinee,” Headmaster Cromwell said bitterly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Kindly wait inside.”

“Fine. I just want to say one thing to Ivy,” I told him. Then I looked her in the eye. Looked right at the girl who had spent the last two months doing everything she could think of to ruin my life, and slowly smiled. “I hope you get everything that’s coming to you,” I said firmly.

Her jaw dropped slightly, and her eyes filled with confusion and ire. But I didn’t care. I just slammed my door right in her face.

“Wow. That was cold,” Sabine said.

“She deserves it,” I told Sabine, my tone grim. “For everything she’s done to me, to Cheyenne . . . she deserves much worse.”

That night I hummed to myself as I put the final touches on my new-and-improved gift for Josh. I hadn’t felt so at peace in my room since moving into Pemberly. In fact, I had lived a long while in Billings without feeling this calm and secure. But now, the police finally had my stalker in custody. For the first time in weeks, I was certain that nothing bad could happen. For the first time in weeks I felt truly free.

I was washing my hands of this mess. Ivy was now officially the problem of the Easton Police Department.

I slipped Josh’s gift into the small red box I had purchased at the stationery store that afternoon, then affixed the glossy white bow to the top. Satisfied that I had done the best I could, I turned and checked myself out in the mirror on the back of my door. I smiled at my reflection. My long brown hair was pinned up on one side, while the other fell in sultry waves over my shoulder. I wore black mascara and dark red lip gloss I had picked up on that fateful fund-raiser
weekend in New York. Sparkling in my earlobes were the diamond earrings Walt Whittaker had given me last year. The effect was totally simple and totally glam. But the best part was the dress. I was wearing the red Nicole Miller dress Portia had bought for me all those weeks ago. It had only been worn once before, when I’d gone on that awful date with Hunter Braden, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t remember it at all, considering how very self-absorbed he was. The Billings Girls would all remember it, of course, and that was exactly how I wanted it. Wearing this dress meant they hadn’t beaten me. Wearing this dress meant I had risen above.

I just hoped Portia didn’t try to tear it off me like the ugly step-sisters had done to Cinderella. That would not be pretty.

There was a knock at the door and I quickly opened it. Sabine and Constance stood in the hallway, cuddled into their long wool coats. Constance’s red hair was pulled back from her face with wisps hanging down around her cheeks, and she wore more eye makeup than I had ever seen her attempt before. Sabine was looking as natural as ever, but she had woven a small braid into her hair on the right side and clasped it with a tiny rhinestone clip.

“Reed, you look gorgeous,” Sabine gushed, looking me up and down.

“Ready to party?” Constance asked, pushing herself up on her toes in excitement.

A little thrill ran right through my chest. This was the first night of the rest of my life. I grabbed Josh’s gift and my coat on my way out the door.

“You have no idea how ready.”

“So, is anyone making a toast?” Constance asked, taking a sip of red punch.

“No way,” Sonal replied with a snort. “I could never get up in front of the entire school and do that.”

“I know. Me neither,” Constance said. “Worst nightmare.”

Much to my shock, Constance had stayed by my side for the entire cocktail hour—or mocktail hour, I suppose, since only sodas, punch, and sparkling cider were served. Maybe Sabine’s bravery was rubbing off on her. Whatever the cause, I appreciated it. In fact, before long I was surrounded by friends. Constance, Sabine, Marc, Astrid, Diana, Sonal, Shane. For a leper I was doing quite well for myself.

“Really getting a lot of mileage out of that dress, aren’t you, Reed?” Shelby asked, looking me up and down with a sneer as she, Portia, and the Twin Cities strolled by. Shelby was wearing a royal
blue dress I had never seen before, with an asymmetrical, off-the-shoulder neckline and full skirt.

“It
is
the only one she’s got,” Portia added. She was, as ever, sporting her signature green—a slim-cut dress that showed off every single curve.

There was definitely a comeback in there. Something about how Portia only ever wore the same nasty color, but they sidled off before I could respond, laughing happily at their lame insults.

Okay. So maybe I wasn’t doing
perfectly
well.

“Ignore those cows,” Astrid said, laying a cold hand on my bare arm. She was as funky as ever in a punked-out pink dress with black and purple netting over the skirt and a pillbox hat. Her shoes were black lace high-top Converse. “Instead, let’s discuss how the Crom has completely transformed the cafeteria. I expect it took him ages to plan all this. Perhaps he has a soft side after all.”

“I kind of doubt the last part, but it is pretty spectacular,” I admitted.

On every window hung a real fir wreath decorated with pinecones and red ribbons, and real evergreen swags were draped along the walls, strung with white lights as well, filling the room with the comforting scent of fresh pine. All the chairs were covered in green velvet and secured with red bows, and at each china place setting was a small favor of Godiva chocolate, presented in a little red sleigh. But the real main attraction was the clothes. The students of Easton definitely knew how to clean up. Everywhere I looked there were velvet frocks and pearls, wrist-length gloves and kitten heels, tuxes and silk
scarves. It was one big constant-motion fashion show. Even the flasks the guys were hiding in the pockets of their jackets were superchic. Monogrammed or platinum or leather or, in Dominic Infante’s case, Gucci.