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I looked around the dining room at all my friends, my heart warm. I couldn’t believe they’d all come out to Croton just for me, but there they were, gathered in my family’s dining room, singing their hearts out with glee. My mother placed the birthday cake down in front of me, candles ablaze. I looked up at her before making my wish, knowing she’d be smiling back at me with pride. But then my heart stopped. It wasn’t my mother at all, but a black-robed figure, its face hidden by a huge black hood. I gasped and looked around.
Noelle placed a paper noisemaker between her lips and blew. Sawyer Hathaway and Upton Giles exchanged party hats. Thomas Pearson laughed and slapped Dash McCafferty’s shoulder as he doubled over. Over in the corner, Astrid, Lorna, Kiki, and Constance danced while London and Vienna checked out my huge pile of gifts. None of them seemed to see the dozens of black-robed figures dotted among them, stiff as corpses in all the merriment and chaos.
“Blow out your candles, Reed,” a gravelly voice said in my ear.
I looked up at the creature who stood where my mother should have been. The heat from the candles blazed unbearably hot and my vision wavered. All the colors blurred around me. The balloons and streamers, the brightly hued dresses and crazily wrapped gifts—all of it faded together just as the voices and laughter swelled. This was too much. I was going to pass out.
Take a breath, Reed. Focus. They’re here for a reason. They’re going to hurt someone else.
I forced myself to stand and took a lurching step forward. Instantly I tripped over something solid and Thomas caught me by the arm.
“Watch out, new girl,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling mischievously.
“Have a nice trip?” Gage put in, earning a round of laughter.
“Sorry, I—” I looked down and screamed. At my feet was a dead body. A girl, her face hidden beneath the bright paper tablecloth.
I turned around to run and tripped again. Another body. Another hidden face.
“No!” I screamed, clutching the first arm I could grab onto. “No!”
“What’s your problem, Glass-Licker?” Ariana sneered down at me.
My heart clenched. I backed away from her and this time tripped backward, falling down hard. My hand came down on someone’s torso. When I lifted it again, my fingers were coated in blood.
“No!” I screamed. “No! Someone help me!”
I reached up to my friends, but they didn’t hear. Portia and Rose walked by me, stepping over dead limbs like they weren’t there. Tiffany shouted something unintelligible and everyone laughed. My heart pounded frantically in my ears. Why couldn’t anyone hear me? Why couldn’t they see? The floor was covered with dead girls and all they could do was stand there and laugh?
“Help me! Somebody! Please, please, help me!”
Suddenly someone grabbed me by the shoulders and whirled me around. The person opened desiccated lips and screeched, “You don’t belong!”
I sat up in bed, screaming loudly enough to wake the dead. Noelle grabbed my hand just as Ginny, Goran, and Sam banged into the room, guns drawn. I cowered back toward the headboard and curled into a ball, attempting to catch my breath.
“What is it? What happened?” Ginny asked, holstering her weapon as she crossed to the bed. All I could do in response was whimper as the other two guards took off in opposite directions to check the other rooms.
“It was just a dream,” Noelle answered for me. She ran a hand over my sweaty hair. “Reed? What happened? What did you dream about?”
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes closed in an attempt to blot out the images. But closing my eyes only made the memories more vivid.
“Was it Kiki? Constance?” Noelle pressed.
“No,” I blurted, opening my eyes again. “It was … I don’t know what happened. All I know was it was my birthday … and there were dead bodies everywhere.”
Noelle’s mouth set in a tight line. She looked at Ginny as she continued to stroke my hair.
“It’s gonna be all right,” Ginny said reassuringly. “We’ve got t
he party covered. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I nodded and let Noelle wrap her arms around me. Unfortunately, after everything that had happened, Ginny’s words meant nothing to me. It had been a vivid, powerful nightmare. And lately, all my nightmares had been coming true.
Since first arriving at Easton last year, I had attended some elaborate parties. Birthday celebrations on yachts, fund-raising parties at swank New York City locales, clambakes in Nantucket where the most basic thing on the menu was barbecued lobster meat in sweet-cream butter sauce. Not to mention the Legacy soirees—huge events with elaborate settings, attended by the most overly indulged, ridiculously privileged, stunningly beautiful kids on the Eastern Seaboard. But my seventeenth birthday party blew them all out of the water.
If I hadn’t been so distracted trying to keep an eye on all my friends, I would’ve been having the time of my life.
The Lange mansion had three huge party-appropriate rooms on its ground level. First there was the grand foyer, with its marble floor, winding staircase, and two-story ceiling. Then there was the ballroom, which had literally hosted balls at some point in its history, and could therefore adequately hold upward of two hundred guests. Finally, there was the dining room, which boasted fireplaces at both ends and normally held a gleaming oak table long enough to seat forty people comfortably.
