The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (316 page)

“I don’t know. You’ve practically been living this book,” Ivy said. She shrugged and lifted it back onto her lap. “Whatever it was, it was written by Eliza. Her handwriting’s on the pages before and after,” she said, lifting her shoulders again. “Guess it was something she didn’t want anyone to read.”

I slumped back against the side of my bed, feeling—ridiculously—betrayed. “Yeah. I guess not.”

Slowly I flipped back to the front of the book of spells. The first page was a careful, intricate drawing of intersecting circles. I ran my fingertips over the design, thinking of Eliza and wondering what she’d felt the first time she’d seen this book. Touching my fingertips to the locket—which, as always, felt warm against my skin—I turned to the next page: The Initiation Rite. I felt a flutter inside my chest, recalling what had happened when I’d read the rite on Friday. I looked up at Ivy tentatively. She was staring right at me.

“What’s up?” she asked.

I licked my lips. “What if we recited this incantation?”

She looked at me, her face a blank slate. “Why, exactly, would we do that?”

“I don’t know.” I lifted a shoulder. “For fun.”

She gave a thoughtful frown, then shrugged. “Okay.”

She closed the BLS book and set it aside, angling for a better look at the book in my lap. One thing I loved about Ivy Slade: She was always up for anything.

I laughed. “That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”

She looked at me with a wry smile. “Why not? Nothing’s going to happen.”

I tilted my head, hoping she was right. She had to be right. Because even if I believed that Eliza Williams had actually visited me in a dream, and even if I thought it was weird that the gold locket always felt warm, and even if my candle had gone out then relit itself, it wasn’t possible that magic actually existed. It just wasn’t possible.

“We need candles,” I said.

“Why? You need to make this charade official?” Ivy joked. But there was something serious behind her eyes. Maybe she was more freaked by my finding the locket in the woods, and by the fact that Eliza really had been in my dream, than she’d let on.

“Okay. Forget it,” I said, disappointed.

Ivy scooted over next to me and crossed her legs so that our knees were touching. I moved the book so that it laid across both our laps, half on my thigh, half on hers. “Okay. Ready?” I said. She nodded and we began to read.

“We come together to form this blessed circle . . ..”

Both of us paused, looking at each other. We weren’t exactly a circle.

“Let’s hold hands,” Ivy suggested. She pulled her hands out from under the book and we clasped our fingers together over the pages. “Okay. Start again.”

“We come together to form this blessed circle, pure of heart, free of mind. From this night on we are bonded, we are sisters.” I looked at Ivy here and we both smiled goofily. “We swear to honor this bond above all else. Blood to blood, ashes to ashes, sister to sister, we make this sacred vow.”

That was when the lights went out.

“Holy shit,” Ivy said under her breath.

I sucked in some air, still clinging to Ivy’s hands. It was just like the other night when my candle had died. Then both our cell phones rang at the exact same time, their tiny screens lighting up to cast square beams from the floor to the ceiling. I let out a noise that was half gasp, half squeak.

“Okay. Okay. Calm down,” Ivy said, gripping my fingers so hard they hurt.

She released one of my hands and grappled for her phone. “It says ‘unknown caller,’” she said, staring down at the screen, which cast a glow over only half her face.

I swallowed hard and grabbed my iPhone. My throat went dry. “Mine too.”

Then both screens went dead in our hands. “Ivy. There’s something
I have to tell you,” I said in the darkness, my breath shallow and quick. My whole body prickled with sweat. “The other night, I said the incantation by myself in the basement at the chapel. And when I did, there was this sudden wind, and my candle went out, and two seconds later, it relit.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me this
before
we said the stupid thing together?” she hissed.

The door to my room opened suddenly, and Ivy and I both screamed. Noelle took one look at us and leaned into the side of the doorway. She was backlit by the hall light, which meant that only the electricity in my room had died. She held a tri-folded letter.

“What the hell is this?” she asked.

Then her eyes flicked to the book of spells, which had fallen off Ivy’s lap, but still laid halfway on mine. Yeah. I was never going to live this one down.

“Are you kidding me?” she said, standing up straight. “You guys! We are
not
witches!” she hissed, glancing over her shoulder into the hall.

Ivy and I looked at each other, my right hand still clinging to her left. Noelle hadn’t seen what we’d just seen. And even though her sudden, larger-than-life presence had brought me somewhat back to reality, the niggling belief I’d started to have when Josh showed me Eliza’s picture the night before was starting to grow.

Maybe . . . Was it possible? Could we be witches?

The moment the thought occurred to me, I laughed out loud. Because how ridiculous was that?

“We were just messing around,” Ivy said, dropping my hand and standing up. She wiped her palms on the back of her jeans and rolled her head around, cracking her neck. Her dark ponytail swung down her back and I took a deep breath at the sudden normalcy. Even my skin was starting to cool down.

“Good.” Noelle hit my light switch and the overhead lights popped on. I looked up at them, startled. “Because
I
have something to show you guys,” Noelle said, taking a couple of steps into the room. She turned the page around, holding it in both hands to show us. “I just got into Yale!”

“Are you serious?” I blurted out, jumping up. I grabbed the letter from her fingers and read the first couple of lines. “Noelle! Congratulations!”

Throwing my arms around her, I hugged her hard. Tears sprang to my eyes as it hit me full force that she would be gone next year, for real this time, but I told myself this wasn’t about me. Yale was what Noelle had always wanted. She’d be at school with her boyfriend, Dash McCafferty, and the two of them would surely be the power couple on campus. Plus, New Haven wasn’t that far from Easton. As Ivy League schools went, it was the best possible outcome for me.

“That’s great, Noelle. Congratulations,” Ivy said as I released Noelle. She even managed to sound sincere. “Did you call Dash?”

“Of course. I expect a huge box of Yale crap in the morning,” Noelle said with a giddy laugh. “But right now, we party.”

“What?” I asked, glancing at the clock. It was already past ten.

“You heard me. We’re going to the chapel. Get your crap together, bitches,” Noelle said. “It’s time to celebrate.”

Kiki cranked up the sound on her new iDock as the rest of us danced in a circle with Noelle at the center. She threw her arms up over her head and swung her heavy hair around, dancing for all the world as if there was no one around but her. It wasn’t like Noelle to let loose to quite this degree, but then, she’d finally secured her future and she deserved this celebration.

Plus, she’d already downed an entire bottle of Taittinger on her own. So I’d also never seen her quite so drunk.

“Go, Noelle! Go, Yale! Go, Noelle! Go, Yale!” Amberly chanted along with Lorna and Rose, their fists pumping in the air. Vienna swigged from a champagne bottle with one hand, recording the party on her Flip with the other. She was swaying a bit in her high-heeled Ferragamo boots, and I could only imagine the tape was going to be nauseating to watch. All I could do was hope the whole thing wouldn’t end up on Facebook later that night.

Noelle bent at the waist, then flipped back up again, trying to execute some kind of sexy move, but she fell backward instead. She tripped into my and Ivy’s arms but quickly righted herself and cleared her throat.

“Tiffany’s turn!” she shouted, tossing her hands up, then grabbing Tiffany and dragging her into the center of the circle.

Tiffany blushed but obliged, doing a few hip-swinging moves in the middle before whipping out her camera and clicking off some random shots of the rest of us. That afternoon, she’d also gotten her acceptance letter to the school of her choice, the Rhode Island School of Design, abbreviated as RISD, which everyone pronounced “Rizdee.” She’d gotten into their prestigious photography program, even though she’d neglected to inform them of her famous father’s identity. I bet money they were going to be psyched when they eventually did find out, though. Tiffany’s dad, Tassos, was one of the most sought-after fashion photographers in the world.

“Go, Tiff! Go, RISD! Go, Tiff! Go, RISD!”

“Portia’s turn!” Tiffany called out, twirling Portia into the center of the circle.

“Go, Portia! Go, Sorbonne! Go, Portia! Go, Sorbonne!”

Portia went right into a series of moves that looked like something out of a stripper-pole exercise video. Everyone whooped and laughed, and I found I couldn’t stop smiling. As much as I was going to miss my friends next year, their excitement and happiness were infectious now. Finally, all three of them got together to bump and grind in the middle of the circle, and Vienna climbed up on the first pew for
a bird’s-eye view of the action. While everyone else started hamming it up for the camera, Ivy grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the makeshift snack area—one of the choir pews where we’d set up a few bottles and a bunch of boxes of chocolates Vienna had stashed away for this exact purpose.

“What’s up?” I asked Ivy, even as my stomach clenched. I knew exactly what was up.

“Okay, I know I said not to freak, but we have to talk about what happened back in your room,” she said, pressing her fingers together to form a sort of steeple in front of her chest. “What the hell
was
that?”

“Technology glitch?” I surmised, laughing nervously.

“Right,” she said with a dubious expression. “The lights in just your room go out, then both our cell phones ring at the same time with no one at the other end. How do you explain that?”

“Uh . . . ” I racked my brain, trying to think of something that would sound reasonable. “Solar flare?”

She rolled her eyes. Behind us, Vienna and Lorna attempted to hoist Portia up on their shoulders.

“Reed, come on—”

“No, Ivy,
you
come on,” I replied. For some reason I was finding it far easier to doubt the whole thing once someone else started to believe in it. “What are you trying to say, really? You don’t really think something happened when we said the incantation. I mean, do you really think we’re—”

“Really think you’re what?” Astrid said, reaching past me to swipe a chocolate.

Ivy and I looked at each other, snagged. I stalled by grabbing a chocolate of my own and shoving it in my mouth. As I bit down, I almost gagged. Ugh. Hazelnut.

“We were just saying how lucky they are that they all got into their first choice,” Ivy improvised.

“And I was just saying . . . do you really think we’re not going to get in to ours?” I added quickly, toying with the locket around my neck. “Ivy’s totally superstitious, so she thinks our chances are somehow, like, less now.”

Astrid just looked at us, one cheek filled with chocolate, making her look part chipmunk.

“What do you think?” Ivy asked.

Astrid chewed slowly and swallowed. “I think you losers should stop worrying and start partying.”

She grabbed both our hands and dragged us back toward the dancing, shoving us into the center of the circle, where we joined Portia—who was back on her feet—and Noelle and Tiffany. Noelle grabbed me up in her arms and, with an incredibly straight face, started to lead me in what I think was a cha-cha. Laughter bubbled up in my throat, and I vowed right then and there that I wouldn’t think about Eliza Williams or the book of spells for the rest of the night.

Tonight was about my Billings sisters—the ones who were alive and well and by my side. Not the dead ones who were haunting my dreams.

The lights on the dance floor throbbed to the beat of the music, which vibrated the floor beneath my feet. Every step was uncertain as I tried to weave my way through the crowd, shoving a bare-backed sumo-wrestler type with my elbow, taking the pinpoint stiletto of a black Louboutin in the toe. Everywhere I looked there were unfamiliar faces, all distorted by punk makeup and dyed hair.

Where was she? I knew she was here somewhere, but everyone was so tall, so sweaty, so . . . bizarre.

Suddenly, someone slipped past me, the silky smooth fabric of a black robe tickling the skin on my arm. I felt a cold whoosh in my lungs as the figure passed, and I turned for a better look, but whoever it was had already disappeared into the crowd. Then, out of the corner of my eye, another robe. My heart caught with fear. This person stood stock-still in the middle of all the mayhem, face completely covered by the heavy, black hood. But I could tell I was being stared at,
so I quickly turned away . . . and slammed right into another hooded figure, its chest so solid I bounced off. I wanted to reach up and rip the hood free, find out who or what was underneath, but something told me not to. Something told me I wouldn’t like what I found. Sweat popped up along my brow as I whirled off, fighting the crowd, desperate to get away. I tripped over someone’s outstretched leg and suddenly found myself at the edge of the dance floor.

I took a shaky breath and laid my hand flat over my locket. Before me was the lobby of Billings House. There was the gleaming oak banister. The faded gold wallpaper. The framed photos of former Billings Girls lining the walls. The ancient but pristine Oriental carpet in the center of the floor. And there stood my friends. All of them. Wearing their black dresses, holding their candles. They smiled at me over the flickering lights. Noelle Lange, Kiran Hayes, Taylor Bell, Tiffany Goulborne, Natasha Crenshaw, Cheyenne Martin, Shelby Wordsworth, Vienna Clark, London Simmons, Rose Sakowitz, Portia Ahronian, Ariana Osgood. I looked down and saw that I was wearing a bleached white robe. My hair was combed out over my shoulders and gleamed in the candlelight. I felt warm and safe and at peace. Like those apparitions in their black garb could never hurt me. Then someone took my hand. I looked over and smiled.