The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (325 page)

“Yeah, well, I’ve already got a therapy appointment booked for tomorrow morning,” Noelle joked. “Maybe Dr. Markowitz can help me sort out why.”

The other girls laughed and I felt my shoulders relax a bit. Noelle didn’t need any incantations. She was already so powerful. She had the ability to make everyone in the room feel chill, or turn them tense on a dime.

“Really, though, I just thought it might take our minds off things,” Noelle said. “And besides, Reed would just
not
let it
go
,” she joked again, rolling her eyes.

More laughter. I glanced at Ivy, who was clearly not amused, but I didn’t care. If Noelle’s tactic worked to get the others on board, I was all for it.

“So, what do you guys think?” I asked, glancing around.

Tiffany finished chewing her last bite of strawberry and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but fine. I’ll do it—if only to prove this whole thing is a joke.”

“I’m in too,” London said. She glanced at Vienna and blushed. “I think it’d be kind of cool to be a witch.”

“Well, if she’s in, I’m in,” Vienna said, dusting powdered sugar off her fingers. She’d just downed another doughnut. “What do we need to do? There’s no blood involved, right?”

“I’m not doing it if there’s blood,” Rose said, looking peakish.

“There’s no blood involved,” I assured them, feeling a rush of
excitement so sudden and fierce it actually made me nauseous. I nodded to Ivy, who grabbed a small stack of papers behind her and started passing them out. “All we’re going to do is hold candles and say this incantation.”

Rose chewed on her lip as she read the words, kneading her hands together. Tiffany read it through once and put it aside, as if she’d already memorized it. Amberly’s page shook as she held it, and a line appeared between her eyes as she concentrated. I held my breath, imagining that this was similar to how Eliza had felt when she realized her friends were going to join her. They were going for it. They were really going for it.

“This is never gonna work,” Noelle whispered to me, leaning toward my ear.

I lifted one shoulder and bit back an unexpected grin. For the first time in my life, I was certain she was wrong.

As I looked around the circle of my friends, candlelight casting their faces in dancing shadows, I suddenly felt like a complete idiot. Like the ringleader in some crazy endeavor to experiment with some new drug or base-jump off the Empire State Building or get everyone to shave their heads. This little undertaking was just as stupid, and potentially just as dangerous—at least as dangerous as the first two. Not that I would ever admit that out loud. Because I couldn’t take another eye roll from Noelle without knocking her on the head.

Ivy returned to the circle after making sure everyone’s candles were lit. She stood to my left, Noelle to my right. Directly across from me, Rose stared into her flame as if mesmerized and Amberly seemed to be blinking in slow motion. Kiki’s jaw was set in determination, and Tiffany kept checking her watch. Portia toyed with her gold chains, her thumb hooked over the longest two as she ran it up
and down the length of them. Vienna and London whispered, holding hands, and Constance just stared at me, like she’d follow me wherever I wanted to lead.

Somehow that scared me more than any of my nightmares had.

There was a round of deep laughter outside the closed doors of Noelle’s living room, which exited onto the same hallway as the now infamous double doors to her bedroom. The laughter reminded me that time was of the essence here. It had taken a lot of convincing to get all the bodyguards and security personnel to leave us alone in here—Amberly’s had pointed out that most threats came from “someone you know and think you can trust” (preaching to the choir, dude). I figured we had ten minutes tops before the whole army of them came banging down the door.

“Everybody ready?” I asked.

Nods and murmurs rippled around the circle.

“All right. Here we go.”

“We come together to form this blessed circle, pure of heart, free of mind,” I began. I was surprised by the strength of the voices around me, and it squelched my nerves a bit. “From this night on we are bonded, we are sisters.”

I glanced at Constance, feeling a stab of guilt so intense it nearly knocked me over. Once upon a time I had sworn to be her sister, and London’s too, and I knew how betrayed they’d felt when I’d formed the BLS and kept them out.

“We swear to honor this bond above all else. Blood to blood, ashes to ashes, sister to sister.” I closed my eyes for the briefest moment,
knowing what was coming. Or what was supposed to come. “We make this sacred vow.”

I held my breath. A cold wind swirled through the room, and I heard a couple of people gasp. Amberly grasped Rose’s hand and whimpered as all the candles flickered out. I glanced at Ivy, and she gave me a sly, triumphant smile. Then I looked at Noelle. Her face betrayed nothing.

The candles now extinguished, I waited. Then, slowly, they started to flicker to life again. First mine and Ivy’s. Then Noelle’s. Then Kiki’s, London’s, and Vienna’s. Portia’s glowed like a tiny pinprick, as if it were having trouble coming to life, but Rose’s popped up so fast, she took a step back. Amberly stared at her candle, but nothing happened. I blinked, perplexed, and looked at Ivy. Tiffany’s candle smoked for a second but didn’t light. Constance’s candle, however, was flickering merrily.

“That’s weird,” Ivy said.

“Nice trick, Reed. With the wind and everything,” Tiffany said, looking around at the windows. Finding them closed, she cast her glance at the various air-conditioning ducts overhead. “How’d you time that one?”

“I didn’t time anything,” I said. “That’s what happened when I said the incantation the first time. The wind, then the candle. At the time, I thought the wind had come down the stairs when Noelle opened the door, but . . . ”

“There was no wind when we did it,” Ivy said. “Just the cell phones.”

“But my cell phone didn’t ring,” Amberly said, glancing toward her foot where she’d laid her phone on the floor.

“No. It wouldn’t. Because we used the candles this time,” I said, feeling impatient.

“So why didn’t my candle light?” Amberly asked, her bottom lip puffed out petulantly.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“And mine’s barely doing anything,” Portia said, waving it around like a Fourth of July sparkler. “WTF?”

“I don’t know,” I said again.

“So what does it mean?” Kiki asked, her gaze intense. “Are we witches or not?”

“Maybe
we’re
witches and they’re not,” London said, waving a finger at Tiffany and Amberly. “Because, you know, our candles lit and theirs didn’t.”

“Or maybe the factory that makes the quote
magically relighting candles
unquote made a couple of defectives,” Tiffany shot back.

“Tiff, we got the candles at Pottery Barn,” Noelle said flatly. “As far as I know, they don’t do trick candles.”

“So what does that make me?” Portia said. “Some kind of weak-ass witch because my candle barely lit?”

“Maybe you guys just aren’t believers,” Kiki blurted out.

“You’ve got that right,” Tiffany retorted.

Suddenly everyone was talking at once, throwing out theories, debating the reality of what they’d seen. I closed my eyes, the voices colliding and roiling inside of me, stretching my nerves to their breaking point.

And then, suddenly, a whistle split the air. I opened my eyes to find Noelle standing there with her thumb and index finger stuck inside her mouth.

“Everyone shut up!” she shouted.

They did, of course.

“Reed,” she said, turning to me, holding her candle casually at her side. “This is your baby. What do you suggest we do now?”

I breathed in, counted to ten, then swallowed back my confusion, my excitement, my annoyance, and my fear—which was a mighty large pill to swallow. Everyone looked at me, hanging on my next words. I recalled Eliza’s torn diary pages in my head and knew exactly what we should do.

“I think we should try out some of the basic spells.”

“This is one of the first spells Eliza and her friends tried,” I said as we all gathered around the small round dining table near the bay window in Noelle’s living room. It was a spot where she liked to eat croissants and sip black coffee while reading the Style section of the
New York Times
and looking out over the park, or nurse a hangover with the blinds drawn, depending on the day. Ivy, Kiki, Constance, London, and I leaned into the table, while the others crammed in behind us. Tiffany was over by the wall, scrolling through photos on her camera, the picture of indifference. I wondered if she was really uninterested, or if she was just posing as such. But if this spell worked, she would be convinced. All of them would.

If it worked.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” London demanded, pressing her hands onto the surface of the polished table.

I looked down at the ornate silver spoon we’d laid in the center of an old-fashioned doily. Was I really going to try to make the thing
float? Suddenly I felt conspicuously unworthy, like the first time I’d played Grand Theft Auto with my brother’s friends and kept driving my car into pylons while they cackled at me.

“Maybe Ivy should try it,” I said, taking a step back. “We already know you can move things with your mind.”

“Allegedly,” Noelle snorted, fiddling with her hair.

“Fine. I’ll try it,” Ivy said curtly.

She stood so close to the table the edge made a dent in her plaid gabardine skirt. Her dark eyes squinted down at the spoon. I pressed my lips together and crossed my fingers at my sides.

“Levitas,”
Ivy said.

The spoon jerked. Amberly screeched and covered her eyes. Someone else gasped. Tiffany shoved herself away from the wall, angling her chin up as if to see over Vienna’s and Noelle’s shoulders.

“What happened?” she asked.

“It moved,” Amberly whimpered through her fingers. “The spoon moved.”

“I thought it was supposed to float,” Kiki said.

We all looked at Ivy. The spoon lay still, flat at the center of the doily. Her cheeks turned pink and she looked at the spoon again.

“Levitas,”
she said, more firmly this time.

Again, the spoon jerked. It was now at an angle and clearly off center. Tiffany strolled over and peered down at it.

“Please. One of you is shaking the table,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I didn’t,” I said, raising my hands. I was standing a clear six inches away.

“Me neither,” Kiki said.

Everyone turned to London, who was still grasping the tabletop. “What?”

Then she looked down at her fingers, clucked her tongue, and backed away, stuffing her hands under her arms. “It wasn’t me, I swear.”

“Try it again,” Noelle ordered. Her hands were frozen, her fingers tangled near the ends of her hair.

Ivy sucked in an audible breath, clearly annoyed, and took a step back from the table. No one was touching it now.
“Levitas.”

Nothing happened. My heart sank so low I thought I might never be able to hoist it back up.

Tiffany laughed. “See?”

I realized for the first time that I had truly expected the spell to work, and my face stung as if I’d just come in from a jog in the summer sun.

“Why isn’t it floating?” Ivy asked through her teeth.

“I don’t know,” I replied, touching my fingertips to my locket.

The group around the table started to break up and I could practically feel the skepticism radiating off of them. Not to mention their annoyance at me for wasting their time, and their irritation at themselves for having been sucked in. Honestly, I didn’t blame them. I felt the same way. Except my feelings were directed at Eliza Williams and Mrs. Lange.

“Wait,” Kiki said, grabbing the book of spells off one of the chairs where we’d left it. “Come on, you guys. Let’s just try something else.”

“I think we’re done here,” Portia said, lifting her black leather bag onto her shoulder.

“Guys, please don’t go,” I said. “I know you’re upset, but let’s try it again. Maybe we did something wrong. Maybe someone else should try it. It could be fun.”

Amberly, who had more color in her face now that the experiment had failed, flipped her blond hair over her shoulder and tilted her head. “Since when is watching a spoon not move considered fun?”

A few of the girls laughed, hiding their smiles behind their hands. Suddenly everyone was walking toward the door. I could hardly believe they wanted to give up that quickly—but then I suddenly realized what it meant. It meant that they didn’t actually
want
to believe. Not like Ivy, Kiki, and I did.

Maybe Kiki was right. Maybe that was why it wasn’t working. What if all eleven members of the coven had to believe? If I took that theory and combined it with London’s idea, it meant that Tiffany, Amberly, and Portia hadn’t even believed enough to become witches during the incantation. And if the three of them weren’t witches, that would weaken the coven, too.

“What are you thinking?” Ivy asked quietly.

I blinked, really listened to my thoughts for the first time, and felt ill. I was going off the deep end.

“Guys, just wait,” I said loudly.

Thankfully, they all stopped. I grabbed for my messenger bag and pulled out a folder I’d stashed there before they’d arrived. I felt tired all of a sudden—beaten down.

“Just in case any of you is interested, I made copies of the basic spells page on Mr. Lange’s copier,” I said, handing them out. “Practice them at home. You never know. . . .”

Tiffany snatched the page from my hand, folded it, and stuffed it into the side pocket of her camera bag without glancing at it. She walked out without another word. London took one and looked it over, her expression serious. The rest came to me in a begrudging line, each of them taking her paper and tucking it safely away. I had no idea whether any of them would actually pull those pages out again, but how could they not? How could my friends not find this whole thing as intriguing as I did?