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She shook her head, walked back inside, and came out two seconds later with a stark white wool trench. “See? You should definitely be psyched to have me as a big sister. I’m already taking care of you.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile, slipping my arms into the sleeves of the expensive coat. She’d always taken care of me, and we both knew it. Until that last little escapade of hers, anyway.
She closed the door, took a big breath, and blew it out. “Okay. Let’s start with location and date. I’m thinking the city, on your actual birthday, since it falls on a Friday. Unless you’ve got some better plans back in Bumblefart, P.A.”
I tried not to bristle at her insult to my hometown. I’d gotten used to it over the past couple of years, but somehow, now that she was of the opinion that I’d never belonged there, what with the Lange blood in my veins, it felt more personal. I might not have loved my hometown, but it was my home. And I did love my family, including my father, who would always be my dad, no matter what.
“No,” I said. “No plans. I think a party in New York would be perfect. But it’s only a week away. Can you really pull something together that fast?”
She ducked her chin. “Try to remember who you’re talking to.”
“Right. Silly me.”
As we walked down the hallway toward the stairwell, I felt the weight of the book knocking against my hip over and over again, and I itched to steal back to my room and open it up—check out those notes Elizabeth Williams had written in the margins, see if I recognized any of the other handwriting. Maybe I’d have a chance to do it later, when Noelle wasn’t around. Because even though I didn’t believe in spells, I was sure she would tell me I was ridiculous for caring about these girls who had lived almost a hundred years ago.
But I did. And I was dying to know more about them.
“So you bailed from school for two weeks so you could go to some spa in Sedona?” Portia Ahronian said, lifting her fur-lined hood over her head as we walked toward the chapel after breakfast. She tucked her thick black hair inside the hood, untangling some strands that had gotten caught up in one of her many gold necklaces. “What about all your homework? And your tests?”
“Hathaway had them e-mailed to me,” Noelle lied casually, lifting a shoulder. “When your father helps the headmaster land his job, he tends not to say no to you.”
“And why, exactly, did you have to scare the bejesus out of us the night you left?” Astrid Chou asked, popping some contraband cereal from her hand into her mouth. She dusted the sugar from her hands, then slipped on her colorful yarn gloves, which she had attached to the sleeves of her purple coat with kiddie-style glove savers—an accessory only quirky Astrid could get away with on an upscale campus like Easton. “I honestly think Amberly almost had a coronary, and as the only one among us who knows CPR, I was not about to go there.”
“Hey!” Amberly Carmichael protested, her pert pink lips twisted into a pout. “You wouldn’t save my life?”
Astrid shook her black bangs off her face. “Maybe. But only if you promised me that red Chloé bag of yours.”
My friends laughed and I could tell none of them were really still angry with Noelle for the prank she’d pulled on the night of her “disappearance.” Everyone was just glad to have her back, safe and sound. Of course, I hadn’t had a chance to tell her that I’d told Ivy Slade she was actually at home with her mom, but that was a flub that could easily be glossed over if Ivy started asking questions.
“Sorry about that, guys,” Noelle said, returning to the subject as our feet crunched over the salted stone walk. “I was just messing with Reed. I owed her one, and you guys just got stuck in the middle. But I promise—no more drama for the rest of the semester.”
“Great. You just jinxed us,” Kiki Rosen said, pausing on the third step of the Easton chapel and turning around to look at the rest of us. A stiff breeze kicked up her hair, half of which she’d recently dyed neon green. “We are so screwed.”
Noelle rolled her eyes but smiled as Astrid hooked her arm through Kiki’s and dragged her inside. Together, the two of them looked like a colorful tear sheet from a comic book. I swallowed back a lump of foreboding as I watched them disappear. Kiki was right. Around Easton, no one should ever promise a lack of drama. It was like tempting the fates.
“Speaking of the chapel, Reed, when’s the next meeting of the BLS?” Tiffany Goulbourne asked quietly. She’d been bringing up the rear, scrolling through some photos on her camera with Rose Sakowitz. Tiffany was never without her camera, even though with her perfect warm brown skin, almost six-foot frame, and athletic body, she could have definitely been posing in front of one rather than shooting from behind one. She whipped out her BlackBerry as she approached, ready to type the meeting into her calendar. Tiffany had always been one of my more responsible friends, but unlike the rest of them, she seemed to be getting more organized the closer she got to graduation, instead of less. The other seniors had slowly started to slack, copying homework assignments or faking migraines to get out of class. But not Tiffany.
“We’re in need of some girl bonding,” Rose added, looking a little pale beneath her mass of red curls.
“Um … honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it.” I looked off across campus toward the woods around Easton, where the Billings Chapel stood. Suddenly, I itched to skip morning chapel and dash over there. I wanted to check the place out, see if there was anything Noelle and I had missed last night—any more clues to what Elizabeth Williams and her friends had been doing with a book of spells almost a hundred years ago.
Ironic, considering that just a couple of days ago I’d been seriously pondering the idea of never coming back to this place. After Noelle had faked her own kidnapping, I’d all but decided I wouldn’t be returning to Easton Academy this semester. I was done with all the insanity, the selfishness, the entitlement. But then Mrs. Lange had explained that the whole thing had been her idea, and had lured me back here with all this mystery and talk of what was to come, and I’d fallen for it like a satellite plummeting back to Earth.
“Why don’t we do it tonight?” I suggested. “I’ll send out a text later.”
“A text about what?”
Josh appeared over Tiffany’s shoulder and her eyes bulged out like she was afraid we’d just been caug
ht. What Tiffany didn’t know was I’d already confided in Josh about our secret society—back when he’d been trying to help me figure out who’d snatched Noelle. She and Rose didn’t need to know that, though. I didn’t want them thinking I’d betrayed their trust just because Noelle had taken a spa sabbatical.
“Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about,” I joked, pulling him toward me. We touched noses and I smiled, inhaling that very particular Josh scent of evergreen soap and dried paint.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I missed you, too,” I replied.
“Ugh. Let’s go inside before we catch whatever cheesy grossness has sickened these two,” Noelle joked.
