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“Omigod,” I said breathlessly.
Someone grabbed my wrist and I screamed, whirling around.
“God! Jumpy much?”
Paige Ryan stood before me, her auburn curls back in a plaid headband. I looked across the aisle again and came face-to-face with the girl I’d been ogling. She was Asian American, with dark brown eyes and a petite frame. She looked nothing like Sabine at all.
“Are you all right?” Sam asked, coming up behind me.
“I’m fine,” I said through my teeth. “Did you find them?”
He nodded. “They’re waiting for us at the front.”
I let out a relieved sigh.
Paige looked me up and down. “What’re you doing here?”
“Getting some air,” I replied. “
What are you doing here? I’d think that shopping would be the last thing on your mind, what with your cousin going missing.”
“I needed a distraction,” Paige shot back.
In her defense, she did look rather harried. She wore almost no makeup and had broken out across her forehead. Her gray cashmere sweater was pilly and she was actually sporting jeans, which I was certain I’d never seen her wear.
“Well, good seeing you,” I lied, backing away.
“Hope you get to go back to school soon,” she said through her nose, picking up a coffee mug to inspect it. “At this point you may have to do an extra semester.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
She took a step toward me, cocking her head. “And you won’t be doing any of it in the new Billings. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Then she placed the cup back down on the glass shelf with a clang and strolled away. It was amazing, how much she sounded like Missy. Those two seemed to be a faction unto themselves. With a deep, cleansing breath, I turned around and headed toward the front of the store, my bodyguard in tow.
Noelle, Ivy, and Goran hovered near the door with their shopping bags. I gave them a quick wave as I joined the short line to buy my father his new clock. As the line inched forward I told myself to look on the bright side. Sure, there was a bodyguard tailing me, three of my friends were missing and possibly dead, and I’d just had a run-in with a bitch, but soon I’d have a Father’s Day present for my dad three months early, and at least Sabine hadn’t escaped from prison and started stalking me. Even on the worst of days, there was always a bright side.
We sat in a circle in the middle of Noelle’s private living room. The chairs and the couch were shoved up against the walls, and several gleaming silver trays of pastries and fruit were placed at the center of the cushy, dark pink rug. We’d kept the lights bright, and Noelle’s current favorite playlist pumped through the speakers. Her theory was that if any of the girls realized why they were there before we told them, they’d bolt before we could ever get started. I saw no flaws in that logic.
“Okay,” I said, sitting down between Noelle and Ivy, feeling nervous. We’d decided that making everyone wear full-on white was out of the question, but I’d donned my white roll-neck sweater and light jeans for good measure. I zipped the locket back and forth on its chain and looked around at my colorfully clad friends. “Let me tell you why we’re here.”
“You’re gonna try to make us into witches, aren’t you?” Vienna asked, her mouth full of chocolate éclair. She looked at me over her fingers as she licked them one by one. She was wearing yoga pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt that stretched across her stomach. Stress eating was starting to affect her usually fit body.
No one laughed or scoffed or moved. They all just gazed at me with varying expressions of expectation, annoyance, and fear. So much for them not knowing why they’d been invited.
“I’m not trying to make you into anything,” I replied, glancing at Ivy. “We just … we figured that since there happen to be eleven of us—”
“Left.” Kiki stared straight ahead, her hands pressed flat into the floor at her sides. Her earbuds hung around her neck and her hair looked limp and unwashed. “There are eleven of us left.”
My heart was tight inside my chest. “Yes.”
Suddenly the room felt very warm. No one breathed, it seemed, for an oddly long time.
“We thought it might be fun,” Noelle piped up, turning a palm toward the ceiling.
“And I thought it might help us protect ourselves,” Ivy put in.
“So you really believe all this,” Tiffany said flatly, reaching for the fruit platter and dragging it toward her across the carpet. “You really believe that when you guys said this incantation, you developed some kind of power?”
