The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (160 page)

“Can I ask you something?” I said as he sat next to me, but at a respectful distance.

“Just did,” he joked, reaching for the touch pad on the notebook.

“Seriously, though. Why are you being so nice to me? After what I did—”

“You didn’t do that. That was Noelle. I know she made you do it,” he said pragmatically.

My skin burned. “Yeah, but I could have said no.”

James snorted a laugh and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “No, you couldn’t have,” he said. “You were new. A sophomore.
From the middle of nowhere. There’s no way you could have said no to her.”

I checked his expression for any trace of sarcasm or bitterness, but there was none. To him, this was just an accepted fact. Girls under Noelle’s thumb didn’t have the use of their own free will. Did everyone at this school know that?

“Here it is,” James said as a window popped up in the center of the screen.

I leaned in and he hit play and there they were. Marc Alberro, his dark hair slightly longer than it was today, standing in the center of another common room, while Cheyenne read him the riot act. Her hair was longer than shoulder length, as it had been last year, and she seemed shorter than I remembered her. Smaller somehow. She was midsentence when the videographer had started to capture the scene.

“—think this was going to impress me? Fourteen-in-Fourteen?” she shouted shrilly, tossing half a dozen pink and red roses at Marc’s feet. She crushed them under the toe of her Louboutin boot. “I’ve received better presents for
Arbor Day.
”

Marc looked so pale he could have fainted on the spot. Around the room, guys chuckled and nudged one another. At least two dozen of them sat around on the floor, on chairs and on couches, watching Marc’s misery unfold. They must have been holding some kind of party, because there were plastic cups and soda bottles everywhere, along with bags of snack food.

“Enough is enough already,” Cheyenne said. “I am
not
interested in you. So you can stop texting me, you can stop leaving little presents
for me to find all over the place. I already
have
a boyfriend. I don’t need a stalker, too.”

Marc opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a loud squeak.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Cheyenne said with a nasty smile, glancing around the room. “You can all get back to your pathetic video game tournament now.”

Then she turned and walked out of the room. The videographer zoomed in on Marc’s devastated, humiliated face for a split second—the laughter bubbling up in the background—before the feed went black. For a long moment I couldn’t even move. My brain was ever so slowly processing everything I had just seen and heard. Stalker? Leaving little presents for her to find? That sounded eerily familiar.

“Guess you Billings Girls are really into the public breakups, huh?” James said wryly, reaching over to close the laptop.

I sat back on the itchy couch, stunned. Sweet, innocent Marc Alberro? Was it possible? And could he really be a cold-blooded killer?

“Yeah,” I said finally. “I guess so.”

Ivy was at the first sink when I walked into the bathroom that night, still reeling over the discovery about Marc. She was wearing white flannel pajamas and cozy-looking quilted slippers. I was wearing my Penn State sweatshirt and a pair of Easton Academy mesh shorts.

“Got a midnight football game?” she asked with a sneer, reaching for a small pot of some kind of cream.

“Got a midnight facial reconstruction?” I shot back. “Because you could definitely use some softening around the chin and nose.”

Ivy’s jaw dropped a tad, but she recovered quickly, returning her attention to her beauty ritual with slightly more vigor. I placed my see-through plastic bag of toiletries on the back of the sink and cursed the founders of Billings for giving us private bathrooms. I was so not used to meeting enemies right before bed.

Trying to ignore Ivy, I brushed my teeth vigorously and spat.
Ivy smirked and focused on her reflection, dotting her cream under her eyes and rubbing it in. This was the type of thing that had always fascinated me back in Billings. Did seventeen-year-olds really need under-eye cream? I had asked Kiran once and she had told me it was all about preventive measures. Seemed like a waste of money to me. But then, these people had more money than God.

“What? Fascinated with moisturizer?” Ivy asked, glancing at my reflection in the mirror. She held out the pot of cream to me. “You can have some if you want. Might get rid of some of those insomnia circles you’ve got going on there,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You do have a lot to lie awake worrying about these days, huh?” she added with mock sympathy.

My face burned and I grabbed my things. “You are such a bitch.”

“Oh, please. All that time you spent with Noelle Lange, but
I’m
a bitch?” Ivy said with a scoff, twisting the lime green cap back on the canister. “I can’t even hold a candle to her. But one of these days—trust me—that girl is going to get what’s coming to her.”

My breath caught in my throat as I remembered what she’d said to me on the street that night in New York—how she’d singled out Noelle as the only person left in the Billings ivory tower worth taking down. Hauer had blown me off when I’d told him about it, but now here she was, doing it again—and threatening Noelle even more directly. My fingers clenched and I turned my fiercest glare on Ivy.

“Stay away from Noelle,” I warned, speaking through my teeth.

Ivy glanced at me and for the first time looked genuinely interested. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that if you hurt her, or anyone else in Billings, I will personally see to it that you go down,” I said, getting right in her face.

Ivy’s jaw dropped again, her eyes wide, and she laughed. “You’re kidding, right?
Moi?
I’m not the one you should be worried about. I’m not the coldhearted bitch who will step on anyone to get her way. I’m not one who’s so addicted to power she’d actually kill someone to take over a dorm.”

“I didn’t kill Cheyenne,” I said firmly.

Ivy laughed again. “Well, duh. I wasn’t talking about you.”

“Then who were you—”

A cold wave of realization came over me. Ivy was blaming Cheyenne’s death on Noelle. She thought Noelle had done it. Or at least she was trying to deflect her own culpability onto Noelle.

“That girl you all worship is capable of a lot of things you could never even imagine, Reed,” Ivy said, zipping up her black tote. “Just wait until the truth comes out. Then you’ll know. Then you’ll finally see her for what she really is.”

With that, she swept out of the bathroom, letting the door swing closed behind her.

So this was how she was going to get back at Noelle. How she was going to make the ivory tower fall. She was going to get Noelle to take the blame for
her
crime, while trying to drive me crazy by “haunting” me in the process. Was she punishing me for “worshipping” Noelle?
At least she hadn’t succeeded in framing Noelle yet, since the majority of the campus had assigned the guilt to me. I wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

I turned and strode back to my room, more determined than ever to prove that Ivy was the real killer. But how? What else could I do? The Internet had long since been exhausted. Of course, I had hours ahead of me to come up with a new plan of attack: After that little encounter it was obviously going to be another sleepless night.

But the moment I walked into my room, I froze. Something was different. Someone had been there. I could sense it. I quickly scanned the room, looking for anything out of place. Then I saw it. The picture of me and Cheyenne from Vienna’s birthday party last year—the one Cheyenne’s mother had given me to remember Cheyenne by—was tacked to the wall above my bed. My heart started to pound erratically and sweat slicked my palms. How did it get there? Why was it there? Slowly, I placed my toiletry bag down atop my dresser and tiptoed over to the photo, as if it might suddenly attack if I made too much noise.

I gasped when I saw it up close. There we were, Cheyenne and I, smiling broadly with our arms around each other, but you’d never know about the smiles. Because both our faces had been X’d out with black ink.

Trembling, I reached over and snatched the photo off the wall, the tack ripping a hole through the top of it. Hot tears filled my eyes and I tore the photo down the middle. What did it mean? Had someone crossed us out because we were both out of Billings . . . or was the
intended message worse than that? Was this just a follow-up to the pills that had been left in my room?

I was about to tear the photo into shreds when I realized it was evidence. Maybe whoever had left this here had left prints. Of course my prints were all over it as well, but still. I fumbled in my bottom drawer for an envelope and dumped the two halves of the photo inside, then stashed it away in my dresser along with all the other “presents” my stalker had left for me over time. The black balls, Cheyenne’s pink clothing—it was all there except for the pills and place card, which I had tossed.

Slowly, I sat down on my bed, staring at the contaminated drawer. As my breathing normalized I realized there was no way Ivy could have left that photo in my room. She had already been in the bathroom when I had gotten there and had left about five seconds before me. Not enough time to get into my room, tack up a picture, and get out. Did this mean she was innocent? Was she really not my stalker? Not the killer?

No. I refused to believe it. Until I figured out who S.O. was or found out something majorly disturbing about Astrid or someone else, Ivy was still the only person with a real motive. The only person with a psycho stare. The only person who had both a motive to kill Cheyenne and a motive to stalk me. Maybe she had an accomplice. Maybe she’d gotten Jillian or someone else to put the picture up while I was in the bathroom. Or maybe the photo had been there all afternoon and I just hadn’t noticed it.

I quickly opened up my laptop and typed up a new e-mail to Noelle.

Noelle,

I think Ivy killed Cheyenne. You need to be careful. She told me everything about what happened with her grandmother your junior year. She blames you for everything. Please. If you won’t talk to me, at least watch your back.

—Reed

My fingers trembling, I sent the e-mail into the ether, just hoping that Noelle would read it. That maybe there was some tiny soft spot left in her heart that trusted me enough to at least open an e-mail.

Ivy had to be the culprit. She had to be. Because if she wasn’t, then I was truly at a loss. And the enemy could be anyone.

Amberly Carmichael was getting on my last nerve.

As I sat alone at a table in the conservatory on Friday night, she led a group of Billings Girls up to the Coffee Carma counter like she owned the place. Which I suppose she did, technically. But just the counter. Not the entire school. And just to make things worse, the girls she was with—Missy, Lorna, and even Rose, Kiki, and Portia—trailed after her as if she was the new queen bee. As if they were in awe of her. Of a twitty little freshman who would have prostrated herself at their feet a few weeks ago for the mere privilege of talking to them. It was all so very, very wrong.

“Daddy wanted to go to Australia this Christmas. Can you believe it?” Amberly said, loud enough for the entire room to hear. “He has this thing about wanting to surf the Maroubra on Christmas morning and I’m like, ‘
Daddy!
Get a life!’ I mean, I love that he’s adventurous
and all, but he can surf whenever. He already promised the whole family would go to St. Bart’s with the Langes for Christmas, and I was not letting him go back on that one.”

“Surfing in Australia? Oh my God, your dad makes my dad sound like a total geriatric loser,” Missy said with a snort.

“I wouldn’t mind going to Australia with him and watching him surf,” Missy added, dropping her Louis Vuitton bag down on the counter. “I saw him when he dropped you off in September, and he’s pretty much the hottest dad on earth.”

I glanced at Amberly, who looked momentarily grossed-out, as any daughter would be at hearing such a thing, but then she laughed.

“Put your wallet away and order whatever you want,” she said, waving a hand at Lorna. “It’s on the company. Daddy totally owes me.”

I narrowed my eyes at Amberly. She looked different somehow. Softer. Her blond hair was straightened again and tucked back behind her ears instead of overly styled. She wore less makeup than usual, making her look slightly older and more sophisticated. Then there were her clothes. She had unbuttoned her white coat, and underneath were a white turtleneck sweater, skinny jeans, and fringed suede boots with wool peeking out the tops. Her bag was a structured, dark green croc satchel. Looking at the shoes and bag, I realized what had changed. She wasn’t as severely matchy as she normally was. She looked as if she had just thrown the outfit together instead of thinking about it for days on end. Which only made her look cooler.

“Thank you
so
much, Amberly!” Missy gushed, double air-kissing the girl as she retrieved her huge coffee.

“Yeah. This is way cool,” Kiki added in her signature monotone. She had, of course, gotten a mocha frap with double whip and chocolate shavings. All about the sugar, that one.

Damn. Even realizing that I knew Kiki’s coffee preferences made me nostalgic.

Okay, Reed. Get a grip. Back to the task at hand.

Endeavoring to ignore the Billings Girls and how left out I felt, I went back to my list of suspects. I lifted my red pen and finally did what I had been meaning to do all night. I drew a line through Missy and Lorna. When I had Googled them the night before, I had found nothing remotely incriminating or suspect, although I had learned a couple of interesting tidbits. Namely that Lorna had two older sisters, one at Oxford and the other getting an advanced degree from MIT, which might just account for her obvious inferiority complex. And that Missy had had a younger brother who had passed away at the age of eight of leukemia, which made her seem human for the first time ever. But that was it. Nothing else interesting. And when I really thought about it, I realized that neither of them had been acting at all strangely since Cheyenne’s death. Missy had ice in her veins, so I could maybe believe that of her, but Lorna . . . Lorna would never have been able to pull off a murder plot without losing it a little. She would have been paranoid, jumpy, weepy,
something.
But she had never been any of the above. It just didn’t add up.