The Evil Within (8 page)

“What you just said . . . ” I began.

“Shouldn’t be discussed in public,” she finished.

She looked over at Mandy, then at me. She gave me a nod that I couldn’t interpret precisely, but I was pretty sure I had the gist.

“Come after classes. I’m in Stewart.”

Right. I’d seen her in Stewart, when I went there to plot strategy with last semester’s ally—Rose Hyde-Smith. Rose, who had broken into Jessel with me, and discovered so many secrets . . . and whose eyes had eventually turned black, and who had tried to help Mandy kill me. And who didn’t remember any of it, either.

Rose was seated at the Stewart table, in a wacky outfit that was a combination of Amy Winehouse and
I Love Lucy
—bouffant hair, red-and-yellow paisley scarf and red hoop earrings, and a black sweater with big red buttons. Spotting me, she waved with both hands, and then blew me kisses.

“You okay?” Ida asked me, approaching me with her tray of practically nothing—just scrambled egg whites and tomato slices—for breakfast. Tea.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just hard to get back into the swing.”

Ida pulled a sad face. “No kidding.” Then she brightened. “But I have a total jewel of gossip, speaking of swinging. Gretchen Cabot has a thing for Mandy’s brother.”

“That
is
scary,” I opined.
In ways you cannot begin to comprehend.

“Well, he is kind of hot, in a savagely mad King Henry VIII kind of way.” When I obviously didn’t connect, she said, “English history? First he boffs them, then he cuts off their heads?”

“You find that attractive?” I jibed.

“Well, actually, Miles Winters is a bit too Aryan for my taste. My parents are modern Iranians, but I wouldn’t push them past their limits.” Her grin turned mischievous. “I mean, I might boff him, but I wouldn’t bring him home.”

“Oh, eeew,” I protested, working overtime to sound only mildly disgusted.

“I’m just kidding. He’s Mandy’s brother.” When I didn’t say anything, she said, “I am not a fan of Mandy’s
anything
, not since Kiyoko . . . ” She trailed off. “Mandy wasn’t nice to her.”

“No, she wasn’t.” She was so not-nice to her that she killed her.

She
killed
her. This wasn’t about dead birds and gossip. This was about a frozen body in a lake, and me nearly dying, and Mandy just sitting over there, laughing while she pushed food around her plate. Who knowingly started all this by inviting Belle to possess her. It hadn’t happened to her by accident, as it had with me. She had
made
it happen.

I clenched my jaw. God, I really did hate Mandy Winters. I hated her down to my soul. And I hated Belle just as much. They were two evil bitches who deserved to die.

But did I hate them enough to kill them?

CLASSES ENDED at three thirty; then there were extracurriculars, which included all the sports teams. So while Julie was busy kicking soccer balls in the powdered-sugar snow, I was at Stewart at three thirty-five, ready to talk about dislocated souls. If Shayna knew about the possessions, maybe she knew some way to get rid of Celia without killing Mandy. I would give
anything
, everything I had, if that were true.

I was shaking as I rapped on the front door. Stewart was a new dorm, with brick faces and lots of windows trimmed in white, very airy. Very not vintage Marlwood, which was Victorian and dark.

The door opened, and Rose, not Shayna stood on the threshold. Her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she was wearing purple sweats shot through with cheesecloth and a black cashmere dove wrap sweater with the ends dangling around her knees. She had on black socks with white peace signs on them. She threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek. My anxiety skyrocketed. I was desperate to talk to Shayna, and I had to do it alone.

“Oh my God, Linz, come in, you’re frozen,” Rose said. “Don’t you remember how to dress for these climes?” She reached forward and shut the door as she urged me inside. “Did you get my Christmas card?”

“No,” I said.

“The one with the puppy in the stocking? No? Maybe I got your address wrong. My parents turned Christmas into the OK Corral. They’re getting divorced. It’s in the tabloids. I’m glad you don’t read them.”

She quickly shook her head. “Don’t say you’re sorry. It’s completely irrelevant to my real life. But how’ve you been? You look tired.”

She walked me into the common room, where three of the other Stewart girls were studying. Shayna was not among them.

“We’re making hot chocolate,” Rose said. “Shayna,” she bellowed, “Linz is here.”

“Coming,” Shayna announced.

“So.” Rose led me down the hall to her bedroom. I looked at her autographed poster from Cirque du Soleil in the red frame and a tie-dyed goose down comforter practically floating on her bed. Matching pillows were squashed into a nest and a book in French lay beside a dirty plate—looked like hummus—and a can of Red Bull on its side. New items were a poster of the rocker David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, very glam and metro, and a vintage yellow rocking chair. She’d threaded strings of yellow and red beads through the arms of her
de rigueur
Marlwood chandelier. “We’re in my room,” she yelled.

She plopped cross-legged onto her bed and folded her arms over her chest. I perched on the edge. I was very nervous.

“Mandy’s already throwing down,” she said. “You should have heard her rip Gretchen Cabot for talking about Miles. Like no one is even allowed to say the hallowed name of incest boy.”

Troy’s dimpled face popped into my mind. I wonder what he would think of his poor, terrified girlfriend if he’d been there. My heart registered further insult.

“I’m surprised
Gretchen
didn’t end up dead in the lake this morning,” Rose went on.

I stared at her. She waved her hands.

“I know, sorry, that was tacky. Rest in peace, Kiyoko.”

“Hey,” Shayna said from the door. Stewart girls favored after-class warm-up clothes; she had on beige cashmere and gold hoops that glittered against her perfectly shaped long cut. Her dark eyes took in the scene—me on Rose’s bed, Rose sitting up semi-possessively, angled toward me. She was holding two steaming coffee cups. “The cocoa’s ready.”

“Cool,” Rose said, smiling at Shayna. “Thanks.”

“C’mon, Lindsay.” She looked at Rose. “We’re studying.”

“Oh.” Rose’s face fell. She looked from Shayna to me and back again. “I . . . see.”

Awkwardly, I got up off her bed. Shayna handed me a cup and I passed it to Rose, as if that had been Shayna’s intention. Rose took it, slurping noisily, then smiled at me.

“When you guys are done, we can walk to dinner together,” she announced. “Us three.”

“That’d be great,” I said. “Shayna’s totally helping me catch up in trig.” I sounded like a moron, but I was uncomfortable.

Shayna led me out, down to a room at the end of the hall. She opened the door and I went in, to a room furnished more cheerfully than I had anticipated. She had an abstract oil painting on the wall beside a poster of a gorgeous girl who bore a resemblance to her. The girl was lying on her side, on what appeared to be a sheet of Lucite lit from underneath with blue lights, holding out a shiny red apple. Suggestive shadowing implied that she was naked.

Shayna’s bedspread was white decorated with purple and red tulips. She had covered her chandelier with a large purple paper star decorated with silver wires. On her desk were several plastic containers of silver, black, and green beads, a pair of pliers, and a spool of stringing wire.

And on her nightstand was a five-by-seven picture of Kiyoko and her, wearing matching pink feather boas and cheap rhinestone tiaras over what appeared to be baggy peasant-style dresses. They were blowing kisses at the camera.

She handed me the other hot chocolate and gestured for me to take a beanbag. She was wearing what looked like red thread on her left wrist. I remembered reading an article about all the Hollywood celebs who were wearing them, but I didn’t remember why.

She saw me looking at it and said, “My stepsister got this in Israel. It’s for protection.”

I sank down, flashing for a brief moment on the horrible vision I’d had in the shower. My hands shook, and I silently cleared my throat, struggling to reboot.

“My parents didn’t want me to come back. I’m here for Kiyoko.” She swallowed hard. “They murdered her.”

I closed my eyes for a few seconds, struggling to keep it together. Wondering if I could trust Shayna. “They . . . they tried to . . . ”
Kill me too
, I added silently. I couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t.

She leaned forward and gave me a long, penetrating look. Beneath her perfectly applied makeup, there were deeper, darker circles around her eyes. And I saw that she’d gone heavy on the blush. The actual Shayna was washed out and pale. “Why did you come back?”

I felt Celia’s icy presence flooding through me. Was she warning me not to tell?

“Tell me about the
dybbuk
,” I said.

“I never really listened to all my grandmother’s old stories. Until . . . now.” She gave me another look. “It’s usually the ghost of a dead person, someone who’s not done here. Earth, I mean.”

“Not done,” I ventured. “Like they have a grudge?”

She smiled her cynical smile, pulling up the left side of her face, her lips pursed tightly together. “I guess you could say that.”

“And . . . they’re evil?”

“Not always. But yeah.” She ran her hands through her hair. “The
dybbuk
that’s possessing Mandy Winters is most definitely evil.”

The dybbuk that’s possessing Mandy Winters.

“Take it easy,” Shayna said, leaning forward and easing my hot chocolate to my lips. It was an intimate gesture, and it made me more uncomfortable instead of less. I didn’t know Shayna. But who
did
I know anymore?

“What about the ones that aren’t evil?” I asked.

“They’re usually spirit guides. Helping you to complete a task.” She appraised me. “Are you okay?”

“Define your terms.”

“They possess people who have the same kind of psychic makeup as them,” Shayna said. “So, say you’re a vindictive, insane
bitch
, like Mandy . . . ”

“No, helping you. How do they help you complete a task?”

She thought a moment. “Well, say you’ve been bullied all your life. Like Kiyoko was. You need to stand up to people. So a
dybbuk
might come into you to give you courage, and help you. Help you so no one can hurt . . . ” Her voice caught. She picked up her pliers and played with them. “But that didn’t happen to Kiyoko.”

I tried to get Kiyoko to talk to me about Mandy,
I thought.
She was scared to. And then . . . she died. I could have tried harder. Maybe I could have saved her.

Silence grew between us. I struggled not to see Kiyoko’s frozen face. Her eyes had been unnaturally shiny, as if someone had sprayed silver over her corneas. According to the autopsy results, that shininess was proof that she had drowned, not frozen to death. I didn’t remember how I’d found that out, but it had terrified me.

Now I thought I knew why it scared me so badly. Either Mandy had succeeded in drowning Celia in one of those huge tubs in our bathroom, or had threatened to so many times that Celia’s terror of drowning had become part of our shared nightmare. Then why was I so afraid of fire?

Shayna pulled out the top drawer of her desk and brought out a little white candle in a lavender votive holder and a pack of matches. She lit the candle and we watched the flame for a few moments. The orange flicker made me uneasy for some reason, and I finally broke the silence.

“What
do
you think happened to Kiyoko?”

“Mandy happened.” Shayna hunched her shoulders. “Mandy’s possessed, that’s for sure. And she’s got some way to convince her little ass-kissers to let themselves be possessed, too.”

Bingo.
Shayna knew exactly what was going on.

She looked hard at me, as if daring me to contradict her. I didn’t.

“So,” she said. “You know, too. I thought so.”

“Why?” Had I given myself away?

“You really stood up to Mandy the night of Kiyoko’s prank. I liked you so much for that. So I started watching you. And you were watching Mandy, because you were so protective of Julie. You
knew
Mandy was dangerous. And you didn’t let her hurt your friend. . . .”

That was all true. It hadn’t even occurred to me that someone outside Mandy’s cabal would be watching me. Like all the other girls at Marlwood, I’d centered my attention on Mandy and never looked anywhere else.

She reached out her left hand, the one with the red string. I took it, startled by how thin it was. It was like encircling a small bundle of sticks.

She began to cry. “I couldn’t help Kiyoko.”

“I couldn’t, either,” I reminded her, welling up. We shared a moment of silence, and as I tried very hard not to see Kiyoko’s blue-white face and frozen hair, I began to feel very panicky.

“I’m not crazy,” she said between sobs. “I’m not.” Her mascara started to smudge and I handed her a tissue from the silver box on her nightstand.

I squeezed her hand just a little harder. “You’re not.”
Or else, we both are.

Taking a deep, ragged breath, she forced herself to stop crying almost as quickly as she had begun. Shayna was strong. I could be, too. I
would
be, too.

“So, how do you get rid of them?” I stared down at the steam rising from my chocolate. “D-do you have to kill the person they’re possessing?”

“
What?
” Her voice was shrill. She looked at me as if I
were
crazy.

I didn’t return her gaze. I was afraid that if I did, she would know what I was thinking. So I took a sip of cocoa. “Kiyoko died,” I pointed out.

“No. No, that’s not it at all.” Then she jerked. She got up off her bed and walked quietly to her door, signaling me to be quiet as she pressed her ear up against the door and listened for a second. I watched her. She half-turned her head, and pressed her finger to her lips. Then she put her hand around the knob. As she began to turn it, she looked at me and grimaced, the color draining from her face.

She came back to the bed. “Someone was in the hall,” she whispered. “Maybe Rose. If they know that
we
know—”

I began to tremble harder.

“You can’t tell Rose about this,” she said. “Swear to me.”

“How do you get rid of it?” I whispered, my voice rising. I had to know if what Celia wanted . . .
no
.

No.

“Swear to me,” Shayna insisted. “Don’t tell Rose.”

“Okay. I swear.” I waited.

Shayna beckoned me over as she picked up a pen. She grabbed a piece of notebook paper and wrote.

An exorcism.

I blinked at her.

“That’s how you get rid of . . .
them
.” She let that sink in, nodding faintly as I processed. I wanted to jump up and down. I wanted to make her promise me she was right. If we could do
that
, then we wouldn’t have to kill Mandy.
I
could get exorcised. Whatever that meant.

“We need to find out more about this place. About what was going on here when the
dybbuks
were still living people.” Shayna fell silent and looked at me as if to say,
Your turn.

I hesitated. Could I trust her? Could I really?

She narrowed her eyes, her forehead wrinkling, pursing her lips. I gripped my cup; the warmth seeped into my palms, but the rest of me went cold. Very cold.

Can you help with that?
she wrote.

Before I could answer—not sure what I would say, how much I would reveal—someone knocked hard on her door.

“Yo,” Rose bellowed. “Chow time.”

Shayna didn’t move, only kept looking at me, and my face prickled. I took the pen from her.

Yes
, I wrote.
I can help with that
.

Shayna took the piece of paper and folded it in half, then half again. Then she dipped one corner in the candle flame. It ignited. I watched the flame and began to lose myself in my fear of fire. I felt the heat, smelled that awful gas odor . . .
kerosene
, I thought.

I leaped out of the beanbag and staggered backward to the door. I hit it with my back.

“Put it out,” I begged. “
Put it out
.”

She dumped it into my cup of cocoa. Stared at me.

“What happened to
you
?” she asked.

“Guys, c’mon,” Rose yelled.

“Lindsay, tell me,” Shayna said.

The knob on her door turned. Rose was on the other side. Shayna stared at me with wide eyes.

“Coming,” she yelled back.

“I have these terrible nightmares,” I whispered. That was the truth. Not all of it, but it was something. “About fires. And drowning.”