Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) (46 page)

Shelly!
I was so caught up in the argument that I
didn’t even realize that she wasn’t present for the battle we
were waging. She was my biggest supporter and she always
found a way to calm my dad when he went all demonic on me.
How could she just abandon me at a time like this?

“Where is she anyway? Did Drill Sergeant Matthews
order
her
to be silent, too?” I barked back at him.

“Nope,” he said with a sarcastic sneer, “She silenced
herself—something
you
should start doing right this very
second. Shelly took a sleeping pill and didn’t hear my
ringtone when I got the text. I was about to wake her when I
realized she was more your ally than she was mine so I let her
sleep.”’

Now I wasn’t just angry, I was confused. Text? What
text was he talking about?
Once I started to analyze the
situation, none of it seemed to make any sense. What made
my dad decide to come looking for me in the middle of the
night anyway? The only times he and Shelly visited me after
bedtime
were
the
nights
I
woke
up
screaming
from
nightmares. Plus, I locked
two
doors to keep them out just in
case. I glanced over at my bedroom door long enough to see
that he hadn’t chopped through it with an axe like in the
movie
The Shining
. There were so many questions swimming
through my brain.
Whether or not he would answer them
remained to be seen, but one thing was certain. I
still
wasn’t
going down without a fight.

“What text are you talking about? I’m not giving you
what you want until I get some answers.” I said defiantly.

“You want to see the text? I’ll show you the text,” he
said as he pulled his phone out of the pocket of his robe. “I
don’t know who sent it, but at least I know there’s one person
in this town with good moral fiber. That being said, I’m pretty
certain that it didn’t come from one of
your
friends.”

Ignoring the snide comment, I angrily snatched the
phone from his hand.
I was anxious to see the anonymous
message that led to him finding me with Lucas. I had to read
it and reread it multiple times before I could even wrap my
brain around the whole situation.

“If you aren’t ready to be a grandfather, you need to
find your daughter immediately, Dr. Matthews.”

For several minutes, I just stood there staring at it and
shaking my head. The sender’s number was unfamiliar to me.
Who could possibly have sent that text? The only person who
knew I was with Lucas was Zach.
He knew
why
we were
together, though. He knew I was in danger as long as Jackson
was
on the
loose.
Could he
have been so afraid
that
something else was going on between us that he sent my dad
to look for me just in case? Would he be desperate enough to
risk my life out of pure jealousy alone? I didn’t want to think
so, but it was the only logical conclusion I could come to. If it
was
from Zach, whose phone did he send it from?
all about my
anger—at
least for the
moment
Forgetting
anyway—I

began questioning my dad about the origins of the mysterious
text.

“You have no idea who sent it? You don’t recognize
the number at all?” I queried, unwilling to believe that the
answer wasn’t plainly staring one or both of us square in the
face. The message was clear and concise—obviously
meant
for my father to read. It wasn’t vague in any sense of the
word. The sender knew my father, knew me, and knew that I
was sneaking around behind Dad’s back at the time they sent
it. I had to know who it was from.

“I don’t know who sent it but frankly, I don’t care. My
concern right now is for you and the bad reputation you’re
giving yourself. Charlotte’s Grove is a small town, Ruby.
Everybody knows everybody else’s business here. Do you
really think that you sleeping with multiple boys is going to go
unnoticed? I didn’t raise you to act like this. Your mother
must be turning over in her grave right now knowing that her
precious little baby is hell bent on becoming the town slut!”

The anger I’d pushed to the side when I found out
about the text rapidly seethed to the surface. How could he
say so many hateful things all at once?
We rarely ever talked
about Mom—why would he bring her up at a moment like
this? And in such gruesome description? I was so mad that I
couldn’t think straight. All I wanted to do was throw
something just as hateful right back at him. So I did.

“I envy Lucas, you know. I can only dream about how
good it would be to find out that
I
was adopted. At least then,
I would know that out there somewhere I had a father who
might
listen
to me—a father who might not
take some
stranger’s word over the word of his own daughter. You’re a
sorry excuse for a dad. I wish Mom was alive and
you
were
the one turning over in your grave right now.” I delivered my
monologue of animosity with a surprisingly
calm
tone of
voice—until my final line. “I hate you!” I spat out at him
venomously.

“Okay, that’s it! Your keys, your phone, and your
laptop, NOW! I’m done playing around. I don’t trust you one
little bit.
When you
get home from
school
tomorrow
afternoon, there won’t be a single door in this attic left on its
hinges and the wall in your closet will be fixed. Every door in
this house will be locked and as you found out tonight, I have
the only set of keys that will open every last one of them,” he
said as he produced an antique looking key ring from his
pocket and jingled them proudly in front of me.

I didn’t go down without a fight, but I did go down.
There wasn’t any more argue left in me. All I wanted was for
him to get out of my face, out of my room, and out of my life. I
grabbed the things he demanded from me and shoved them
into his hands without a word. The sooner he was gone, the
sooner I could lie down in my bed and cry.
Just when I
thought I was alone, he returned with one last biting remark.

“And if you expect me to pay for college, you’re going
to Trinity in the fall. And that’s final.”

I got zero sleep that night because there were so many
things on my mind.
If I wanted to go to college—which I
definitely did—my choice in schools had just been made for
me. Sending me to Trinity meant separating me from Zach
and practically pushing me into Lucas’s waiting arms. But
Dad would expect me to be a pre-med major and that wasn’t
what I felt like I wanted to do with my life. Why couldn’t he
just listen to me—to what
I
wanted—for a change? I hadn’t
figured anything out yet and I was running out of time and
support.

There was a crazed, psycho lunatic stalking me and I
was losing backup on a daily basis. First Zach and now Lucas.
Geez, I wouldn’t even be able to lock myself in my room now if
I needed a safe place to hide. At this point, I didn’t even want
to see my dad let alone try to explain things to him again. I
didn’t even want to talk to Shelly about it. There was only one
other person left—Rachel.

But I wasn’t even sure
she
would listen to me without
judgment. She wasn’t very pleased with me concerning the
Zach/Lucas dilemma and I hadn’t spoken to her much since I
started thinking that Drake was guilty.
And how was she
going to react when I told her that Zach was most likely the
one who sent
my
dad the mystery
text?
It came from
someone close to me, someone who knew without a doubt
that I was with Lucas at the time. Zach was the only living
soul with that knowledge. Didn’t he realize the kind of
damage it would cause me?
And just a few hours ago, I
thought being forgotten for Valentine’s Day was the end of the
world.

I got ready for school early but stayed in my room
until Shelly came looking for me.
My dad would have already
filled her in on my misdeeds and subsequent punishment and
she would want to discuss it. For some reason, though, I had a
feeling that she wasn’t going to believe me this time. I was
right.

Without
a
single
hint
of
her
normal
bubbly
personality, she curtly informed me that there was still some
bacon and eggs left for me in the kitchen and that she would
be driving me to school in exactly 30 minutes. That’s it.
That’s all she said. She didn’t even want to hear my side of the
story. She believed the things Dad was telling her about me.
She believed what an unknown stranger claimed I was doing.
If Rachel didn’t take my side on this, I didn’t know what I was
going to do.

I didn’t really feel much like eating but knew that if I
didn’t, I would be starving before lunchtime. Cold as ice—
both the bacon and the eggs had clearly sat on the table for
quite some time before they were offered to me. As I stood
there
watching
my
plate
go
round and
round in
the
microwave as I reheated them, I couldn’t help but compare
myself to it. I, too, seemed to be going in circles—in constant
motion yet never getting anywhere. School was the only thing
that seemed to be going my way and graduation was looming
on the horizon. Something had to give soon—it just had to.

So of course when I needed school to be the highlight
of my day, it wasn’t. Zach was absent. Rachel claimed that he
had the flu, but I wondered if maybe he was just too afraid to
face me because he knew I would know that he sent my dad
that text. I tried to convince her to go to the library with me
so we could talk with fewer people around but she said no.
She had a paper due sixth period that wasn’t finished so she
needed to spend time in
the computer lab without any
interruptions. Even Mr. Raspatello found a way to make my
day worse.

Once role was called, he sat down at his desk and
called for me to come forward. Usually, our little discussions
were about how much he liked my latest creative writing
assignment. Sometimes he even asked me for suggestions on
what I thought the class might enjoy writing about next.
I
never had any reason to fear our one on ones…until now.

“Ruby, I want to talk to you about making financial
arrangements
for those building improvements we talked
about,” he said sternly.

What? It took me a minute to figure out that he was
referring to the window I broke on Halloween, the window I
swore I would pay for but forgot all about. Months later when
my life was in complete shambles, he was suddenly worried
about restitution. His timing was horrible, but I did promise
to pay for it if he kept knowledge of my crime a secret.

“Sure, Mr. Raspatello. How much money do you think
we will have to raise?” It couldn’t be that expensive to replace
a window, right?
I had about a hundred dollars left in my
bank account and this coming Friday was pay day. I didn’t
really want to hand him every last cent I had but the sooner it
was
paid for,
the
sooner I could forget about the
whole
incident once and for all.

“Three thousand dollars.”

“
Three thousand
?” Oh my God, was he
serious
? Three
hundred was about all I could afford. I couldn’t just ask my
parents to help!
Even if I told them the honest truth, they
wouldn’t believe me. I guess I didn’t need to worry about
college after all.
With this kind of expense hanging over my
head,
I would
be spending
the next few years
as
an
indentured servant to the Charlotte’s Grove High School.

“Yes, three thousand dollars. I asked Principal
Lascher for the replacement cost this morning and told him it
would be paid for in full courtesy of the Black Raven Society. I
figured you could get the club up and running and come up
with some ideas for fund raisers. We need to get that bill paid
for before you graduate.”

Okay, slight sense of relief at the fact that he didn’t
expect me to fork the money over right away. But I certainly
didn’t need another project resting on my shoulders.
Everyone seemed to want something from me lately. “Help
me
find Crimson.” “Help me
track down
my
adoptive
parents.” “Marry me and become my twisted serial killer
bride.” Not to mention the fact that I was expected to make
huge decisions about college that would affect the rest of my
life.
I wanted to find a nice warm hole, crawl inside, and
hibernate until all of my problems were resolved.

“Okay, but I don’t even have the first clue of where to
start as far as fund raising goes. I’ve barely participated in
extracurricular activities let alone organized one.
Tell me
what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

Mr. Raspatello shook his head no. “This is your
project—you need to find a way to make it work.
My only
advice is that you need to find yourself a partner—preferably
a junior so that whoever you choose can keep the Society
running this fall. It’s your job to figure out the details. I’ll give
you until next Friday to find your successor and come up with
three ways you plan to raise enough money.” With that, he
picked up his newspaper and turned to the sports page.

Conversation over, I guess. Now what? I barely knew
anyone in this stupid school and everyone I
did
know was a
senior. There were two juniors in my AP English class but I’d
never
spoken
a
word
to
either
one
of
them.
Petra
Kalishnikov, the Ukrainian foreign exchange student, barely
even spoke English and would be on the first plane home at
the end of the semester. That left one other choice—Brooke
Morgan.
And I was pretty certain that the girl
hated
me.
Honestly, FML.