The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (311 page)

There was a glimmer of pride in her voice, and I felt it in my chest. I’d made my grandmother proud. Weird. Noelle and I looked at each other, then out the window. Mrs. Rosewell was shaking hands with Mr. Hathaway, nodding in a satisfied way. The sunlight glinted off Mr. Hathaway’s wide smile. There was something foreboding about it. Like someone was making a deal with the devil, but I wasn’t sure which side was good and which was evil. All I knew was that I didn’t like it.

Noelle and I exchanged a glance. What if we
could
bring Billings back? Wouldn’t it be worth it to hear our grandmother out?

“No. No way.” Noelle shook her head and stepped away from the window, as if she was shaking herself out of a daydream. She tossed her things onto her bed. “We are
not
witches, Grandmother. This is not some CW summer series.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Mrs. Lange said.

“It means this conversation is over,” Noelle replied. She plucked the phone off the dresser and held it in front of her mouth. “I’ll call you later, Grandmother. We’re late for breakfast.” Then she ended the call before Mrs. Lange could protest.

“Well,” I said. “That was rude.”

“She’ll get over it,” Noelle replied, shoving the phone into the rust-colored Birkin bag she was currently using for her schoolwork. She turned and sat down on the mound of her comforter with a sigh. Her shoulders slumped slightly. “I’m sorry, Reed.” She looked up at me tentatively. “For everything. The whole faked-kidnapping thing
was her idea. She kept talking about birthright and us being sisters and how you needed to go through this test to prove that I mattered more to you than anything. . . . She said if you passed, then we’d have our reward. I thought it was just another one of her eccentric projects to pass the time and figured she was going to . . . I don’t know . . . give us the keys to some villa in Spain I’d never heard about so we could bond this summer.” She sighed again and her eyes fell on the book, which I still held clutched to my chest. “I never would have said yes to any of it if I knew she was batshit crazy.”

“It’s okay,” I said, releasing my grip slightly so I could look down at the worn cover. “I can see how she could be really . . . persuasive.”

A tingling sensation sprang to life in my chest and traveled down my arms and into my fingertips, making the book feel warm in my hands. I never would have said this to Noelle in a billion years, but there was this teeny-tiny part of me that wondered . . . what if Mrs. Lange
wasn’t
crazy? What if what she’d said was true and we could wield some kind of power? I’d seen some insane stuff since I’d started school at Easton last fall. Nothing supernatural, of course, but definitely crazy—things I never would have thought were possible even two years ago. What if this was possible too?

“Okay, forget this.”

Noelle plucked the book right out of my hands and tossed it back onto the mess of her bed. My fingers felt cold suddenly, and I tucked them under my arms.

“I say we concentrate on more important things,” she said, her brown eyes bright.

“Like what?” I said, trying not to look over her shoulder at the book.

“Things based in actual reality.” She reached for her black-and-white plaid coat and opened the door for me, but I hesitated. “What?” she asked impatiently.

“Do you mind if I take that?” I said, gesturing toward the book. “I mean, if you’re not going to look at it—”

“Seriously?” She walked to her bed, picked up the book, and held it out to me. “It smells like rotting garbage and mold.
Please
take it.”

I reached for the book, but she snatched it back toward her shoulder, giving me an appraising glance. “As long as you promise me you’re not going to try anything in it. Because I really don’t think I could be friends with someone who actually believes in this crap.”

I held her gaze. “I promise.”

Her eyes narrowed further, but after a long moment she handed the book over. I stuck it in my messenger bag and pulled the flap down over it.

“As I was
saying
,” Noelle said as we stepped out into the hallway. “I think we should talk about throwing you the most kick-ass seventeenth birthday party in the history of birthdays. You’re a Lange now. I’d say you’re well overdue.”

Instantly, my shoulder muscles coiled.

“I’m not a Lange.”

I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, but it didn’t entirely work. The thing was, I barely even knew Noelle’s dad, and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to. But I was certain that I didn’t feel like part of their family. I was a Brennan, and I always would be.

Noelle rolled her eyes as she started to close the door behind us. “Whatever. Daddy did call you, right? He said he left you a message.”

“Yeah. He did. I just . . . haven’t gotten around to calling him back yet,” I told her.

I’d gotten the message yesterday morning, right after I’d left the hotel where Mrs. Lange had given us the key and sent us on our wild-goose chase. My mother and I had hit a diner for lunch and had just sat down in our booth when the phone rang—an unrecognizable 212 number. Later, after listening to the message, I’d lied to my mother and told her it was my boyfriend, Josh. Because how was I supposed to tell her that the guy who’d fathered me all those years ago was now calling me up, saying he wanted to be a part of my life? She’d chosen my dad. Chosen to forget her mistake and leave my biological father behind. And now . . . because of me . . . he was back.

So as of this moment, I had no intention of returning his call.

“Actually, Noelle, I wanted to talk to you about that . . . . Can we keep this whole sisters thing between us for now? If that’s okay with you,” I added quickly.

She froze with her hand on the doorknob. “Why?”

“I just . . . I don’t want to deal with all the questions and explanations and everything until I’m a little more used to it,” I said.

“Wow. I would think you’d be kinda psyched to be my sister,” Noelle said. Only she would have a big enough ego to say something like that without a hint of irony or self-deprecation.

“It’s not that,” I told her. “It’s just . . . it’s kind of humiliating,
you know? I’m going to have to tell everyone that my mom cheated on my dad with your dad.” I looked at my water-stained leather boots, mottled after days of tromping around campus in the snow and sleet. “There’s no getting around that.”

Noelle’s expression changed utterly. It was pretty clear she’d never thought of the whole thing from my perspective before. “Yeah. Okay. I get it.” She closed the door with a bang. “But you still deserve a party.”

She had me there. Given that she’d faked her own kidnapping, scared me to death, and made me jump through multiple hoops to find her over the past couple of weeks—I’d say I deserved whatever good things she wanted to throw my way. A party might be just what the psychoanalyst ordered after everything I’d been through recently.

Her eyes flicked over me as if she was noticing my outfit for the first time and did not approve. “Where’s your coat?” she asked.

I glanced down at my jeans. “Oh. I guess I forgot it.”

She shook her head, walked back inside, and came out two seconds later with a stark white wool trench. “See? You should
definitely
be psyched to have me as a big sister. I’m already taking care of you.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile, slipping my arms into the sleeves of the expensive coat. She’d always taken care of me, and we both knew it. Until that last little escapade of hers, anyway.

She closed the door, took a big breath, and blew it out. “Okay. Let’s start with location and date. I’m thinking the city, on your actual birthday, since it falls on a Friday. Unless you’ve got some better plans back in Bumblefart, P.A.”

I tried not to bristle at her insult to my hometown. I’d gotten used to it over the past couple of years, but somehow, now that she was of the opinion that I’d never belonged there, what with the Lange blood in my veins, it felt more personal. I might not have loved my hometown, but it was my home. And I did love my family, including my father, who would always be my dad, no matter what.

“No,” I said. “No plans. I think a party in New York would be perfect. But it’s only a week away. Can you really pull something together that fast?”

She ducked her chin. “Try to remember who you’re talking to.”

“Right. Silly me.”

As we walked down the hallway toward the stairwell, I felt the weight of the book knocking against my hip over and over again, and I itched to steal back to my room and open it up—check out those notes Elizabeth Williams had written in the margins, see if I recognized any of the other handwriting. Maybe I’d have a chance to do it later, when Noelle wasn’t around. Because even though I didn’t believe in spells, I was sure she would tell me I was ridiculous for caring about these girls who had lived almost a hundred years ago.

But I did. And I was dying to know more about them.

“So you bailed from school for two weeks so you could go to some
spa
in Sedona?” Portia Ahronian said, lifting her fur-lined hood over her head as we walked toward the chapel after breakfast. She tucked her thick black hair inside the hood, untangling some strands that had gotten caught up in one of her many gold necklaces. “What about all your homework? And your tests?”

“Hathaway had them e-mailed to me,” Noelle lied casually, lifting a shoulder. “When your father helps the headmaster land his job, he tends not to say no to you.”

“And why, exactly, did you have to scare the bejesus out of us the night you left?” Astrid Chou asked, popping some contraband cereal from her hand into her mouth. She dusted the sugar from her hands, then slipped on her colorful yarn gloves, which she had attached to the sleeves of her purple coat with kiddie-style glove savers—an accessory only quirky Astrid could get away with on an upscale campus like
Easton. “I honestly think Amberly almost had a coronary, and as the only one among us who knows CPR, I was not about to go there.”

“Hey!” Amberly Carmichael protested, her pert pink lips twisted into a pout. “You wouldn’t save my life?”

Astrid shook her black bangs off her face. “
Maybe
. But only if you promised me that red Chloé bag of yours.”

My friends laughed and I could tell none of them were really still angry with Noelle for the prank she’d pulled on the night of her “disappearance.” Everyone was just glad to have her back, safe and sound. Of course, I hadn’t had a chance to tell her that I’d told Ivy Slade she was actually at home with her mom, but that was a flub that could easily be glossed over if Ivy started asking questions.

“Sorry about that, guys,” Noelle said, returning to the subject as our feet crunched over the salted stone walk. “I was just messing with Reed. I owed her one, and you guys just got stuck in the middle. But I promise—no more drama for the rest of the semester.”

“Great. You just jinxed us,” Kiki Rosen said, pausing on the third step of the Easton chapel and turning around to look at the rest of us. A stiff breeze kicked up her hair, half of which she’d recently dyed neon green. “We are
so
screwed.”

Noelle rolled her eyes but smiled as Astrid hooked her arm through Kiki’s and dragged her inside. Together, the two of them looked like a colorful tear sheet from a comic book. I swallowed back a lump of foreboding as I watched them disappear. Kiki was right. Around Easton, no one should ever promise a lack of drama. It was like tempting the fates.

“Speaking of the chapel, Reed, when’s the next meeting of the BLS?” Tiffany Goulbourne asked quietly. She’d been bringing up the rear, scrolling through some photos on her camera with Rose Sakowitz. Tiffany was never without her camera, even though with her perfect warm brown skin, almost six-foot frame, and athletic body, she could have definitely been posing in
front
of one rather than shooting from behind one. She whipped out her BlackBerry as she approached, ready to type the meeting into her calendar. Tiffany had always been one of my more responsible friends, but unlike the rest of them, she seemed to be getting
more
organized the closer she got to graduation, instead of less. The other seniors had slowly started to slack, copying homework assignments or faking migraines to get out of class. But not Tiffany.

“We’re in need of some girl bonding,” Rose added, looking a little pale beneath her mass of red curls.

“Um . . . honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it.” I looked off across campus toward the woods around Easton, where the Billings Chapel stood. Suddenly, I itched to skip morning chapel and dash over there. I wanted to check the place out, see if there was anything Noelle and I had missed last night—any more clues to what Elizabeth Williams and her friends had been doing with a book of spells almost a hundred years ago.

Ironic, considering that just a couple of days ago I’d been seriously pondering the idea of never coming back to this place. After Noelle had faked her own kidnapping, I’d all but decided I wouldn’t be returning to Easton Academy this semester. I was done with all the insanity, the selfishness, the entitlement. But then Mrs. Lange had
explained that the whole thing had been her idea, and had lured me back here with all this mystery and talk of what was to come, and I’d fallen for it like a satellite plummeting back to Earth.

“Why don’t we do it tonight?” I suggested. “I’ll send out a text later.”

“A text about what?”

Josh appeared over Tiffany’s shoulder and her eyes bulged out like she was afraid we’d just been caught. What Tiffany didn’t know was I’d already confided in Josh about our secret society—back when he’d been trying to help me figure out who’d snatched Noelle. She and Rose didn’t need to know that, though. I didn’t want them thinking I’d betrayed their trust just because Noelle had taken a spa sabbatical.

“Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about,” I joked, pulling him toward me. We touched noses and I smiled, inhaling that very particular Josh scent of evergreen soap and dried paint.