The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (262 page)

A sudden bang stopped her mid rant. My heart vaulted into my throat. On the floor, my friends reached out and grabbed one another, terrified.

“What was that?” I whispered, crouching to their level. Noelle did the same, looking wildly around the room.

“It came from outside,” she hissed. “Someone’s out there.”

Quickly, Tiffany, Rose, and Astrid snuffed out several of the candles. Suddenly every inch of my skin throbbed with fear.

Another bang. Closer this time. Amberly shrieked in fear, curling into Tiffany’s side and clutching the arm of her sweater.

“Omigod. Omigodomigodomigod,” Vienna said, rocking forward and back at an alarming pace. “What
is
that?”

“It’s probably just the Billings alumni again,” I whispered, not knowing what to believe. “I’ll go outside. I’ll go talk to them.”

“Reed, no!” Ivy hissed, grabbing for my ankle as I started to rise. “Don’t go out there.”

“Why not?” I asked, somehow speaking past the tremendous lump of black fear lodged in my throat.

“What if it’s not them?” Rose squeaked. “What if it’s . . . something else?”

And then, a stiff wind whistled through the broken windows and doused the rest of the candles.

“Omigod! Reed!” Amberly whimpered.

I felt her fingers scrabble for mine in the dark. I couldn’t see a thing. Not one inch in front of my face.

Another bang. Everyone screamed this time, even me. Then came the unmistakable sound of scuffling footsteps.

“Who’s there?” I shouted.

Someone was crying. Someone else mewling like a cat. Then someone struggled to their feet in the dark.

“Ow!” Ivy shouted.

“What the—?”

Another scream, but this time it was far away. Outside maybe?

“What the hell was that?” Kiki asked, sounding like a five-year-old version of herself.

The loudest bang yet. Someone hugged me from the side, breathing heavily in my ear.

“Reed? Are you there?” Lorna whispered.

“WTH is going on?” Portia said.

“I’m here,” I said. I held my breath for a long, long time. Everything was silent. Silent. Silent.

“Who has a candle?” I said finally.

“I do.”

Tiffany crawled forward, finding first my knee, then my hand, with
her fingers. She pressed the candle into my hand. I reached around to the back pocket of my jeans and fumbled out a pack of matches. I took Lorna’s hand off my sleeve and handed her the candle.

“Take this and don’t move.”

In the pitch black, with my hands shaking, it took ten tries to light the match. When I finally did, Lorna’s face loomed before me in the light, her bottom lip trembling as she held the candle toward me. I lit the wick, shook out the match, and took the candle away.

“Is everyone all right?” I asked. I slowly rose to my feet, my knees trembling in protest, as I held the candle and slowly turned in a circle. Ivy, who was curled up in a ball on the floor, slowly lifted her head. Tears streaked down her face.

“What the hell just happened?” she asked.

Astrid crawled out from behind the pulpit. Rose and Vienna only now released their grip on each other. Tentatively, everyone stood around me, taking deep breaths, checking over their shoulders.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it was just someone playing a prank? Could it have been Missy and those girls?”

“No. Missy?” Lorna said. “I don’t think she’d—”

“Um, Reed?” Tiffany said loudly, her voice strained.

“What?” My heart thumped in fear.

Tiffany looked around at all of us. At Ivy and Rose, Portia and Lorna, Kiki and Astrid, Vienna and Amberly and me. Her eyes were wide with fear as she stepped forward.

“Where’s Noelle?”

“Noelle!”

“Noelle! Are you out there!”

“Noelle! This is not funny! If you’re hiding somewhere . . .”

“Everyone spread out,” I said, my heart beating wildly in terror. “Maybe she tried to hide and fell or something.”

Amberly hugged herself tightly. “Spread out? But what if whoever was out there is still—”

“Amberly! Just go!” I shouted.

I turned and headed for the alcove at the side of the building. Ivy came with.

“Reed, maybe it’s okay,” Ivy said, stepping carefully down the few steps to the main floor. “Maybe she just ran.”

“What do you mean, ran?” I blurted, shoving aside an old dusty curtain. All that was behind it was a pile of tattered old bibles and mouse-chewed wicker baskets.

“She was just talking about not wanting to get caught,” Ivy pointed out. “Maybe she figured it was the headmaster out there and she just bailed.”

My heart sank at the very idea. “No,” I said. “Not Noelle. She wouldn’t just leave us here.” Not the girl who had saved my life on the roof of Billings. The girl who’d whisked me off to St. Barths after Sabine turned on me, even though she was still mad that I’d hooked up with her sort-of boyfriend. The one who had lied directly to Headmaster Hathaway’s face—to her father’s friend’s face—just to get us all out of trouble.

“Are you sure about that?” Ivy asked, raising her perfect black brows.

I was about to respond when Vienna and Portia returned from the hallway on the far side of the chapel.

“Anything?” I asked, my voice echoing throughout the room.

“Nothing,” Portia replied.

“Astrid?” I asked as Astrid and Kiki emerged from the pastor’s office.

“Door’s still locked back there. Nothing’s been moved,” Astrid replied.

Slowly everyone returned from their search, their faces blank and scared.

“Why don’t you just call her?” Ivy suggested. “Maybe she’s walking back to campus right now.”

I felt a jolt of hope and ran over to my bag, extracting my phone from the inside pocket and speed-dialing Noelle. It rang once. Then
twice. Then, a ring tone started to play softly somewhere inside the room. I stopped breathing.

“Where is that coming from?”

Everyone started to look around, bending at the waist, checking under pews, holding their candles aloft. The floor creaked underfoot as we crept around, searching.

“Oh my God,” Portia said suddenly.

“What?” I blurted.

She stood up from behind one of the pews. Hooked around her thumb was one of the thick straps of Noelle’s black Chanel purse.

“Her stuff is strewn all over back here,” Portia said.

I glanced at the spot where Noelle had been sitting, a good fifty feet from where her bag had been spilled. The white bakery box sat on its side, as if it had been tipped over in some kind of struggle. Slowly, I lowered my iPhone from my ear. Portia reached inside the bag and silenced Noelle’s phone.

“Reed?” Amberly said shakily. “What does this mean?”

“I have no idea,” I heard myself say. My voice sounded very far away. “No idea at all.”

We walked in silence back to campus, all of us together in one tight knot. There was no way I was telling these girls to split up now. No way I was going to risk another one of them—or more—disappearing into the night. I no longer cared about getting caught by the Billings alumni committee or by Hathaway or by anyone else.

I just wanted everyone to be safe.

The whole way down the hill, I held my phone in my hand, waiting for it to sing out. Even though Noelle’s phone was tucked away in her bag, which was slung over my forearm, I willed her to call somehow. Maybe she was back at campus already, which meant she could use one of the ancient pay phones. Or borrow someone’s cell. Or break into Hell Hall and use one of the phones there. Anything to let me know she was okay.

But the cell remained silent.

When we arrived at the north side of Bradwell, we paused and
loosened our grips on one another a bit. No one knew what to say, where to go, how to act. The wind whistled overhead, rustling the topmost branches of the bare, spindly trees and all I could think was,
Noelle is out there somewhere. . . . But where?

“I’ll call you guys if I hear from her,” I whispered, trying to look each of them in the eye. “I’m sure she’s okay.”

No I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.

“Just go back to your rooms. It’s going to be fine.”

Slowly, reluctantly, the group started to disband. Amberly slipped through the back door of Bradwell, while the rest of us broke into two clusters—Kiki, Vienna, Astrid, Rose, Tiffany, and Portia headed for Parker, while Lorna, Ivy, and I turned our steps toward Pemberly.

“Do you really think it’s going to be fine?” Lorna whispered, looping her arm around mine.

“It’s Noelle,” I said, forcing a smile. “When is Noelle ever not fine?”

Lorna smiled slightly, but Ivy shot me a look over her head. Like I should be honest. Like I should tell Lorna how scared I felt. Well, I disagreed. No one needed to feel any more worried and uncertain than they already did. As we approached the back door of Pemberly, I kept hoping that Noelle would pop out from behind one of the shrubs or jump out from around the corner and shout, “Gotcha, Glass-Licker!” I kept bracing for it, like it could come at any second. And then I’d yell at her and we’d laugh and hug and everything would be okay.

But she never did.

Ivy used her key card to open our dorm. Lorna finally let go of me as we stepped into the well-lit lobby.

If she doesn’t call or show up by the time I get to my room, I’m calling the police,
I told myself. We parted at the stairs, Lorna continuing on up to the room she shared with Constance. Ivy and I paused outside our doors.

“Want me to come in for a while? We could wait together,” Ivy said.

“No. It’s okay,” I told her.

Because Noelle is already inside. She’s going to jump out and scare the crap out of me and I don’t want you there when she does it.

I hope. I hope, hope, hope.

“Okay, then,” Ivy said, placing her hand on the doorknob of her door. She reached over and gave me a one-armed hug. “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s probably just enjoying making us sweat.”

“Yeah,” I croaked.

With a bolstering smile, Ivy went inside and closed the door quietly behind her. I turned and placed my hands flat on my door, resting my forehead between them.

“Please just be inside,” I whispered. “Please, Noelle.”

I held my breath and opened the door.

“Hey!”

My heart leapt, but it wasn’t Noelle. Josh was kicked back on my bed, the desk light on, reading a folded-over paperback.

“Where were you?” he asked, laying his book aside with a smile. “You cheating on me already?” he joked.

I started to cry. His face fell.

“Oh, hey. Bad joke,” he said, getting up and wrapping me up in his
arms. “I guess we shouldn’t joke about cheating, considering how we broke up. . . .”

“It’s not that.”

I buried my face in his sweater, letting my bag and Noelle’s fall to the floor with a thump.

“Then what is it?” he asked, cupping my face in both his hands and tilting it up. “Reed, what’s wrong?”

How was I going to explain this to him? Where did I start? Should I reveal all about the Billings Literary Society up-front? He was not going to like it. Josh had hated Billings from the beginning, and I’m sure that he was relieved the house was gone. If he knew I’d started it up again, and that apparently starting it up had put me in danger, he was going to lose it.

“It’s Noelle,” I said finally, my voice breaking. “She’s—”

Suddenly, my phone beeped. Or was it Noelle’s phone? I dropped to the floor, scrambling around frantically, dumping the entire contents of our bags out onto the floor. Noelle’s phone was silent. Dark. But where the hell was mine?

“Looking for this?” Josh asked.

He crouched down and stood up with my phone in his hand. The screen was lit up with a text.

“It fell out of your pocket,” he said. “It’s a text.”

He did a double take as he looked at the screen, his green eyes frightened. “Reed? What the hell is this?” he asked.

I snatched the phone away from him. It was a long text, all in
capital letters, and as I read it, my insides slowly turned to ice-cold granite.

WE HAVE NOELLE LANGE. IF YOU GO TO THE POLICE, SHE DIES. IF YOU GO TO HER FAMILY, SHE DIES. IF YOU GO TO THE HEADMASTER, SHE DIES. YOU WILL FOLLOW OUR EVERY INSTRUCTION TO THE LETTER, OR SHE WILL DIE. THE GAME IS ON, REED BRENNAN. THE PRIZE? NOELLE’S LIFE.