The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (163 page)

“I know. I know. At first I kept it a secret because I didn’t want Cheyenne to find out,” Astrid admitted. “I mean, it’s like breaking the code, isn’t it? You don’t date a friend’s ex, right?”

Apparently not, if Noelle’s reaction to Dash and me was any indication. Josh shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

“Then, after she died, I didn’t want all of you to think I was some backstabbing slut, so I just kept my mouth shut,” Astrid added.

“That was why you didn’t want me to choose Trey off the FYR list!” I blurted. Back when the Billings Girls actually cared about me, they had set up Find Your Rebound to find me an eligible bachelor to help me get over Josh. Noelle had suggested Trey, but Astrid had negged him—supposedly because it would be too weird if I were
to date Cheyenne’s ex. “Because then you would have had to tell me what was going on.”

“The FYR list?” Josh asked.

“Long story,” Astrid told him.

I thanked her with my eyes, relieved to avoid having to explain the whole thing.

“But yes, that was why,” Astrid said, shaking some water off her hat onto the floor. “And Trey was the reason I was with Mrs. Naylor when we found Cheyenne that morning. I had been out all night at Trey’s room playing online games with the blokes and she had just caught me sneaking back in. She was going to bust me, but then we found Cheyenne and . . . I suppose she let it slide.”

Astrid looked down at her feet and I glanced over at Josh. The whole thing was just so out of left field, I felt like I needed some kind of confirmation. “Seriously. All three of you were together all night?”

“Yep. Girl’s a gamer. She put me to shame,” Josh admitted with a smile, reaching over to slap Astrid on the back like she was an old poker buddy

“I can’t believe neither of you told me,” I said, stunned.

“It’s my fault,” Astrid said. “I swore Josh to secrecy.”

“So, are we done here?” Josh asked, glancing at me. “Because I have a lot of work to do . . .”

My heart twisted painfully. He was so eager to get away from me. First I’d talked crap about his girlfriend and then I’d made him reveal Astrid’s dirty little secret. What else could I possibly do to push him further away?

“Yeah. We’re done,” I told him. “Thanks, Josh.”

He gave me the stiffest of smiles before retreating back into the studio.

“I really wish you two crazy kids could work it out,” Astrid said, sounding so sincere that it made me want to slaughter myself for ever suspecting her. For ever prying into her private life.

“I know. Me too.”

I leaned back against the cool brick wall behind me and let everything I’d just learned sink in, realizing that all of this added up to a major positive. Astrid was innocent. She had been with Josh and Trey all night, and Naylor had discovered her sneaking in
after
Cheyenne was already dead.

As of that moment, there was only one suspect left. And her name was Ivy Slade.

Maybe there was still a chance for us two crazy kids—once I got the third wheel carted off to jail.

Sunday, I studied in the library. I studied all day long, from 9 a.m. until well after the sun had gone down. Now that I had only one suspect left, I felt somehow more secure. Like I could take a day off. Take a day off and try to salvage my academic future.

It looked like Ivy had decided to dedicate herself to work for the day as well. She had been hunkered down at a table on the other side of the huge bookcase to my right ever since I had arrived. Every half hour or so, I got up to stretch or go to the bathroom just to make sure she was still there. As long as she was studying, she wasn’t out somewhere plotting against Noelle, or me, or anyone else. She switched study partners throughout the afternoon, allotting Josh a two-hour stint, which was
so
fun for me, but she almost never left her own chair. Easy girl to stake out.

Finally, it was about two hours after dinner, and I had definitely hit my limit. I had read the same sentence in my history text at least ten
times and none of the info had sunk in. It was time to pack it in. But I felt good about my day. I had accomplished a lot. It was quite possible that I could now avoid flunking my finals. A bonus, considering the last thing I needed was to lose my scholarship.

Gathering my things, I stood up and smiled at the other loners who dotted the seats around the table, all hunkered down with their iPods. Not one of them smiled back. Even among the school losers I was persona non grata. But I just let it roll off my back. This had been a good day. I wasn’t going to let anyone get to me. After one last check on Ivy’s position—still taking notes from her English anthology—I headed for the door.

Outside, I pulled my white wool hat down over my forehead and started carefully along the stone path around the quad. Last night the rain had turned to snow, leaving about three inches of pristine white blanket over the grass. The paths, however, had iced over, and even after a daylong battle by the grounds crews, there were still patches of the slick stuff here and there, just waiting to trip up an unsuspecting student. I kept my eyes trained for any speck of black ice.

It wasn’t until I was about ten yards away that I realized I had walked to Billings instead of Pemberly.

I stopped in my tracks, looking up at the tall building that used to be my home, and tears of embarrassment flooded my eyes. How pathetic was I? Pemberly was in the complete opposite direction. Damn my subconscious. Clearly it had a sick sense of humor.

I was about to turn on my heel and rush off before anyone could spot me, when I realized there was music coming from inside. All
the lights were on in the foyer and the parlor. Someone on the first floor had cracked a window, and in addition to the music I could hear laughter. Laughter and talking and music.

The Billings Girls were having a party. I saw Portia and Shelby sweep through the foyer, dressed in jewel-toned cocktail dresses and grasping flutes of champagne.

Just walk away, Reed. Don’t do this to yourself.

But I couldn’t help it. I was drawn to Billings like a junkie in need of a fix. I crunched through the untouched snow, ducked behind a tree, and peeked around the trunk. From there I could see through the huge bay window in the parlor, and the smaller windows in the foyer. And what I saw made me abysmally sad.

They were all there. All the Billings Girls. Everyone dressed to the nines. Fires blazed in both fireplaces and a Christmas tree was decorated in reds and silvers in the corner of the parlor. As I watched, Rose passed out presents from under the tree and a tuxedoed waiter offered a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Everyone looked so happy. So peaceful. So warm. And here I was, staring in from the cold, my shoes filled with rapidly melting snow and tears threatening to turn my lashes into icicles.

Memories of the holiday party Cheyenne had thrown last year flooded my mind. That was the first night I had gotten to know her good side. The first night I had really felt connected to all the Billings Girls, not just Noelle, Ariana, and Kiran. Taylor, of course, had left for home by then. But this used to be my life. This revelry, this decadence, this warmth. It should have still been my life.

Suddenly, two girls stepped in front of the parlor window and sat in the wide window seat, their backs to me. My already cold heart instantly froze over. There was a brunette and a blond. The dark hair and the light. The black dress and the blue. Noelle and Ariana. What was she doing here? Why would they—

No. I closed my eyes and shook my head against the blood rushing through my ears. It couldn’t be Ariana. Of course it couldn’t.

I opened my eyes again and the girl turned to the side to speak to Noelle. My heart started beating again. It wasn’t Ariana after all. It was Amberly Carmichael.

But what was she doing, dressing up as Ariana? Was she
trying
to look like the girl? Because she was succeeding. She was even wearing an aqua scarf—Ariana’s signature accessory. Suddenly I realized that this was why that weird déjà vu had hit me the other day in the conservatory when Amberly had frantically attempted to clean her coat of the latte stains. With her softened look, her straightened hair, her slightly boho clothes, Amberly had slowly started to morph into Ariana.

But why? Why would she want to look like a murderer? Did she think that Noelle would somehow like her more if she emulated the girl’s former best friend? It made no sense.

Suddenly, Amberly turned toward the window and did a double take. She touched Noelle’s arm as if to alert her and I sprang out from behind the tree and ran. I ran straight across the snowy quad, forgoing the icy walkways and cutting my own erratic path through the snow. The last thing I wanted was for Noelle to see me standing out there like some pathetic Oliver Twist–ian waif.

But it wasn’t just that. It was also Amberly. Her transformation had me officially freaked. The girl had to be seriously disturbed if she was purposely trying to emulate a cold-blooded killer.

Maybe, just maybe, Ivy wasn’t the only person on campus worth looking into after all.

The freshman girls always gathered in the bathroom on the first floor of the class building after fourth period. They would scurry in there in a loud, giggling, gabbing clump and spend at least fifteen minutes doing God knows what before reemerging and heading off to lunch. The rest of us avoided that bathroom like it was the source of a festering boil plague. Honestly, freshman girls could be really annoying. They all dressed alike, they all sounded alike, they all looked alike. I could hardly wait for a few of them to mature, grow their own personalities, and infuse a little variety into the group.

But on Monday after fourth period, I broke the upperclassman rules. I walked downstairs and straight into the freshman bathroom. Instantly all their shrieking and laugher died down. There were at least ten of them in front of the long mirror, fixing their liquid eyeliner and brushing their super-straight hair, but at my entrance, they
had all frozen in place like members of some kind of freak, designer-clad mime show.

“I’m looking for Lara and . . . her friend,” I said.

Just like that, the entire room emptied out. Bliss compacts were tossed into Cole Haan bags. A dozen pairs of nearly identical Stuart Weitzman booties hurried past me out the door. Only two girls remained, looking like they’d just been cornered by a rabid pit bull. Lara and Nameless. Amberly’s two sidekicks. Or former sidekicks. Now that she had ascended to Billings, she was freshman-lackey free. I was hoping to use the fact that she’d kicked the ’kicks to the curb faster than last season’s Jimmy Choos to my advantage.

“Hey, there,” I said, dropping my bag on the counter next to the white marble sinks. “Don’t look so freaked.” I looked at the girl whose name I didn’t know. She was kind of mousy, with dark blond hair that fell straight down her back. No bangs. No defining features. Her brown eyes were wide as she stared at me, and she was gripping the sink behind her for dear life. “What’s your name?”

“Kirsten?” she said timidly.

“Nice name,” I said with a smile, trying to get her to relax.

Her lips curled into a small smile. “Thanks. I like yours too.”

Lara, who was a bit taller and had slightly darker blond hair that also hung straight down her back, smacked Kirsten’s arm with the back of her hand and said something under her breath.

“Listen, I know there are a lot of rumors going around about me, but none of them are true,” I told them, crossing my arms over my
chest. “And all I really want to know from you is if you remember the night of Cheyenne’s . . . death.”

I didn’t want to use the word
murder
. I had a feeling Kirsten might faint if I did and crack her tiny skull open on the sink. And that, in the words of acronym-happy Portia, would be VNG. The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, then turned to me.

“Yeah . . . ,” they said in unison.

“Do you happen to remember what you did that night? And whether or not Amberly was with you?” I asked.

Lara’s brow knit, obviously trying to figure out why I was asking. Kirsten, however, jumped right in.

“Oh, yeah. Amberly was totally with us. Amberly’s
always
with us,” she said, waving a hand.

“Or she used to be,” Lara said bitterly. She pushed away from the sinks and took a step toward me, eyeing me discerningly. “What’s all this about?”

Okay, so this girl was shrewd. I knew she was on the paper with Constance, so she was probably pulling a Lois Lane here, trying to sniff out my motive and stuff like that. Live the life of an ace reporter as she imagined it.

“I’m helping a friend out with a story,” I said, thinking quickly. “You know Marc Alberro, right?”

Lara relaxed. “Marc? Yeah, I know him.”

“Well, he’s doing an in-depth piece on where various people of interest were that night, so I told him I’d help out with the interviews,”
I said quickly. I glanced at Kirsten and away from Lara’s prying eyes. “So you guys were all together.”

“Yeah. That was the night we tried out that new workout DVD, remember?” Kirsten said, turning as she yanked a lip gloss out of her bag. She looked at Lara in the mirror. “Some kind of Pilates fusion thing? Our abs hurt for days. And then, in the middle of the night, Amberly knocked over that bottle of water we left out and it woke us all up and you threw your Build-A-Bear at her? Remember?”

“Kirsten!” Lara said through her teeth. She looked at me and blushed. “I do not have a Build-A-Bear.”

I stifled a laugh as Lara’s skin tone deepened. “So Amberly knocked over a water bottle in the middle of the night,” I said. “Coming back from the bathroom, or . . .?”

“Yep,” Lara said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Coming back from the bathroom.”

“No! She went out, remember?” Kirsten said in a scolding tone as she finished glossing her lips. “She disappeared for, like, hours and then snuck back into the room at, like, the ass crack of dawn?” she said, narrowing her eyes as she tried to recall. She lifted a desperate hand in Lara’s direction. “I can’t believe you don’t remember this. You were so mad!”