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I try to shake it off as I make my way back inside the castle.
In the end, I find myself being a scaredy-cat, hiding in my room. Yeah, okay, I want my dad, but I don’t call him. Instead, I text Carrie. It’s hard to condense everything that’s going on into a message, but I need to talk to someone and can’t call because she’ll be in class.
She replies almost immediately.Holy shit, Kira, you are an aura! I can’t believe it.
Try being me,I reply.I swear I’m living in crazy alternate reality land.
You’re going to be okay.Maybe it’ll even be good for you.
I’m about to ask how in the hell it’s going to be good for me when a high-pitched scream rips through the air. I bolt upright on the bed. It wasn’t a scream of joy or pain but sounded like a scream of pure terror. Like me with a fireball coming at my face.
Adrenaline shooting through me, I listen intently for afollow-up sound, something to make sense of the scream, but there’s nothing.
Slipping on trainers, I make my way out into the corridor and stop to listen again. Still nothing. I’m pretty sure I heard it come through the bedroom wall, so I try the room beside ours. I have no idea whose room this is, because Laila never told me. I could be stepping on some toes here, but I can’t ignore what I heard.
I knock, but there’s no answer.
“Hello?” I call and knock again.
Still no answer.
“Hello? Are you okay in there?”
When I push down the handle, the door swings open.Maybe the students don’t lock their rooms here.
Or maybe it was unlocked on purpose.
My heart thunders inside my chest. Every one of my senses goes on high alert because right away, I can tell something about this room is not right, starting with the smell. Copper-sweet, like old pennies. Like blood.
Then I see the open window and the curtain blowing in the wind. But the room is silent, so still that it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
I take another step forward, hands balling into tight, anxious fists. “Hello?”
When I push open the connecting door to the bathroom, my hand flies to my face. The stench of blood is much stronger here, and after I pull the shower curtain open, I can see why. A huge pool of blood fills the bowl of the bath.
Instinctively, I stagger away from it, disgusted.
Then I back away fully, but before I turn tail and sprint the fuck out of there, I check the floor by my feet.Sure enough, there are specks of blood trailing across the room, a surprisingly small amount for the huge pool in the bath. Carefully, I follow the blood over to the window and find a smudge of blood on the window frame and even a splash of red on the curtain. The injured person must have left that way.
A voice cuts through my inspection. “What are you doing in my room?”
I turn my head sharply to see a girl standing in the doorway, her legs shoulder-width apart and her chin pulled down to glare at me with cold blue eyes.
“I heard a scream,” I say. “I think something awful has happened.”
The girl hurries into the room.
“The bath.” I point.
I hear her gasp when she finds it. She rushes back to me. “What did you do to Jenny?”
I take a step back as she reaches out to grab me, bumping into the bed. “Nothing. I don’t know who Jenny is.”
Her face turns a shade of vermillion. “Liar.” A dark shadow crosses her eyes, like clouds over the sun.
Then they turn completely black.
Twelve
