Ominous (7 page)

“Demetria Rosewell and Paige Ryan have decided to donate a few million dollars to the school to have Billings House rebuilt,” she said snidely.

My heart skipped an excited beat. Billings was going to be rebuilt?

“Why do I have a feeling that’s not everything?” Noelle asked, lowering her fork.

“Well, Demetria has been convening with the board the past few nights, coming up with a list of requirements for admission to the dorm,” Missy said. “But they’ve already decided on one thing.” She turned and looked me in the eye. “You, Reed, won’t be getting in. Not after all the trouble you’ve caused this year.”

My heart dropped and my fingers curled into fists atop the table.

“In fact,
none
of you will be in,” Missy said, making sure to look each of the others directly in the eye. “The board asked me for a list of the girls who were the most disruptive influences during all that mess with Cheyenne and Sabine last semester, and I was more than happy to provide it.”

“Missy,” Lorna said from the far end of the table, “you didn’t.”

Missy’s cruel eyes slid over to her former best friend. “You chose your side. Now I’ve chosen mine.” Her mouth twisted into a wide grin. “Ta, ladies!” she said, twiddling her fingers at us. Then she turned on
her heel and strode off. Constance shot me an uncertain look, ducked her head, and followed, with London behind her.

“This. Cannot. Be happening,” Amberly said loudly.

I looked across the table at Noelle, whose face was so red I thought she might start to melt. Then suddenly Sawyer was there, looking sheepish with his hands in the pockets of his slim-cut gray cords. He wore a white shirt open over a black band T-shirt.

“Hey,” he said tentatively. “Are you okay?”

“Is it true?” I said, looking up at him through my lashes.

Sawyer gritted his teeth. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I would’ve told you, but I only found out this morning.”

“Why?” Noelle asked. “Why would your father go to them instead of my dad?”

Sawyer turned a little green, and I could tell that whatever he had to say next, he was afraid of saying it.

“
They
came to
him
,” he said. “And when they did, my dad called your father to check … to make sure he didn’t want to try to outbid them or something. See, Dad didn’t want Billings back at all, but apparently the school needs the money so … I guess he figured whoever would donate the most could control the project.”

“He told you this?” Tiffany asked.

“No. I overheard him this morning.” He turned to Noelle. “On the phone with your dad.”

“And?” Noelle and I said at the same time.

Sawyer closed his eyes for a moment, as if gathering his strength. “He said no. He said he didn’t want to have anything more to do with
Billings, and he didn’t want his girls anywhere near it either.”

My face burned and my eyes met Noelle’s across the table.

“His
girls
? WTF?” Portia said. “Have you got some secret sister we don’t know about, Noelle?”

The other girls laughed halfheartedly, but I felt the orange juice traveling back up my throat. This—all of it—was very not good.

“Obviously, Sawyer misheard,” Noelle said through her teeth, staring me down. “And don’t worry, ladies,” she added, lifting her hair over her shoulders. “I’ll get to the bottom of this. There’s no way I’m leaving Billings in the hands of a loser like Missy Thurber.”

“Sorry I couldn’t get us passes off campus,” Josh said. He dimmed the lights to a romantic glow and sat down across from me at the small pedestal table he’d placed in the center of the art cemetery. Arranged on its small wooden surface were boxes of steaming Thai food, everything from lemongrass chicken to coconut rice to salmon with mango sauce. “After everything that’s gone on in the last year, I guess Hathaway’s finally cracking down.”

I smirked as I reached for the chopsticks. “Or he just hates both of us.”

“That too,” Josh conceded. He lifted his wineglass full of sparkling champagne. “Still, I think I did pretty well.”

I picked up my glass and clinked it with his. “I’ll second that.”

We looked into each other’s eyes as we sipped our faux champagne, and I felt a twist of anticipation. When it came down to it, the art cemetery was the best place we could possibly be. Because all I could
think about was kissing him, and kissing him in a way that probably couldn’t be done in a public forum.

“You want to forget the food?” Josh asked suddenly.

I dropped my glass on the table with a clang. “Good plan.”

We both stood up and collided with each other, his lips on mine before I could even catch my breath. He cupped my face with both his hands and tripped us sideways into the old-fashioned love seat pressed up against the wall. My feet hit a set of gilt-framed paintings as I fell on top of Josh, knocking the whole stack over with a terrific clatter, but neither of us even paused. I fumbled my hand up under Josh’s sweater and was met with the rough fabric of his chambray shirt.

I pulled away, my lips buzzing. “Can you?”

“What? Oh yeah.”

He sat up to tear his sweater off and I sat back to give him room. As he flung it on the floor, I went right to work on his buttons until I saw a hint of his bare chest, and then I kissed it. He leaned back again as I kissed my way over his collarbone, up his neck to his ear, and then found his mouth again. He let out a little moan as he kicked off his shoes. Then he shifted sideways, kind of tossing me aside so that we were lying facing each other, my back against the back of the couch.

I felt like we hadn’t been alone together in weeks, even though it was only days, and from the frantic direction of Josh’s hands, I could tell he felt the same way. It was like he wanted to touch every inch of me as quickly as possible, all the while kissing my lips. He pulled back suddenly and looked directly into my eyes. It took a moment for me to
catch my breath. My hand was inside the opening of his shirt, holding onto his waist.

“I love you, you know,” he said, trailing a fingertip down my cheekbone.

“I love you too,” I said.

Then he laid his palm flat on my cheek. His fingers were unbelievably warm and his breath was ragged on my face. “But we’re not gonna do this here.”

I looked up into his eyes. “We’re not?”

He leaned in and kissed my cheek, then my temple, then my forehead. “We’re going to do this, don’t get me wrong. Just not … here.”

I swallowed a lump that had formed in my throat and exhaled. My head dropped forward and I rested my face against his chest. He placed his chin atop my head and just held me. He was right, of course. We couldn’t have our first time together be here. In this place where Dash McCafferty and I had confronted Thomas Pearson’s brother, Blake, after Thomas had died. This place where Sabine had drugged Josh and tricked him into hooking up with Cheyenne. It had always been our place before that, and we’d made it our place again since. But it was tainted. And Josh and I—we deserved better.

“Are you mad?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head as best I could.

“Will a present make it better?” he asked.

I lifted my chin to look up at him. “Always,” I said with a laugh.

He sat up and I did too, adjusting the skirt of my dress, which had ridden up a considerable amount. Josh took a deep breath and
blew it out, like he was relieved to have gotten through that conversation. I smiled and put my hand on his back. For some reason, in that moment, I loved him more than I could have imagined possible.

Glancing at me over his shoulder, Josh leaned forward and tugged something out from under the couch. It was a dark gray book with weathered yellow pages. When he placed it on his lap, I could just make out a gold date embossed near the bottom right corner.

1915–1916

My heart all but stopped “Is that—?”

“The Billings School for Girls annual,” he said, holding it up so I could see the spine. “Complete with class photos.”

“Shut. Up!” I said, grabbing for the book. He held it away—over the arm of the couch—like we were suddenly playing one-on-one out on the basketball court. “Where did you get that?”

“I dug it out of the archives this afternoon.”

I got on my knees and made another grab, but his arm was annoyingly long. He lifted his other hand to stop me and my butt hit the cushions again.

“What?” I asked petulantly.

“You have to promise me one thing,” he said.

“A gift with provisions? I don’t like it,” I joked.

He smiled and placed the book in my hands but kept his own heavy palm on the cover, holding it closed. “If she looks different in the picture than she did in your dream, you’ll drop this,” he said. “No
more midnight treks through the woods, no more listening to people who appear in your dreams. Promise me you’ll drop it.”

I looked at him, the words crowding my throat, but I couldn’t seem to let them go. His green eyes turned serious and he looked at the floor. “Reed, I just … I want you safe, okay? That’s all.”

“I know,” I said. “I get it.”

And I did. Because after everything, that was all I wanted from him, too.

“I promise. If she looks different, I will drop it,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said. He lifted his hand from the cover.

I hesitated, looking at him uncertainly. “Josh? What if she
does
look the same?”

His eyes clouded with concern. “Then … I don’t know.” He nodded at the book. “Page twenty-two.”

I hungrily skipped to the designated page, rushing by ancient print and grainy black-and-white photographs. When the book fell open to page twenty-two, I stopped. Because there, staring back at me from a sepia-toned photograph set in a large oval, was Elizabeth Williams. The dark hair, pulled back from her face. The creamy white skin. The almond-shaped eyes. Her expression was serious, more serious than I would have predicted. There was a slight smile on her lips, but sorrow in her eyes. Eyes that I knew would have been green if the photo were in color.

Because Elizabeth Williams was the girl from my dream.

Tentatively I touched my fingertips to the page, feeling the depth of her sorrow within my chest. Beneath the photo was the inscription
ELIZABETH JUNE WILLIAMS
and below that, one word,
ELIZA
. So she’d really been called Eliza. I liked it a lot more than Elizabeth. It was less stuffy somehow.

“The thing is …,” Josh said slowly, putting his arm behind me on the couch, pressing his hand into the cushions near my hip. “The thing is … she looks like you. A
lot
like you.”

“Really?” I said, tearing my eyes from the photograph.

Whatever Josh saw in my eyes made him blink. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s her.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as we both looked down at the picture again. “Reed. I have to tell you something.”

“What?” I asked, breathless.

“The other day, when I said I had a nightmare and you were in it? And that I woke up from it the same time you woke up from yours?” he said.

I pressed my tongue into the top of my mouth. “Yeah?”

“That wasn’t a joke,” he said. “I actually did have that dream. I just … didn’t want to freak you out.”

My head went light and fuzzy and it took a moment for me to focus. “What was the dream about?”

Josh slumped back into the couch and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I don’t remember. I know you were in trouble. I think someone was … trying to kill you.”

My heart dropped to my toes as his hands dropped from his eyes.

“You screamed to me for help, and then I woke up.”

I breathed in and out, trying to normalize my body. Trying to stop
the rushing blood, the screaming thoughts, the terror and—oddly—the excitement that seized my heart at once. I turned my head and stared down at Eliza Williams, silently begging her to tell me what it all meant.

“Okay. That’s … okay,” I heard myself say slowly.

Josh sat forward again and looked me in the eye. “What the hell’s going on, Reed?”

I touched the locket around my neck, the metal suddenly so warm it reddened my fingertips. “I wish I knew.”