Wicked (30 page)

32

BE QUIET…AND NO ONE GETS HURT

Hanna, Aria, and Emily slipped out the back door into the cold, wet backyard. The porch was bathed in warm, orangish light, but once Hanna stepped beyond it, she couldn’t see a few feet in front of her face. Off in the distance, she heard a small, muffled noise. The hair on Hanna’s arms stood on end. Emily let out a whimper.

“This way,” Hanna whispered, pointing in the direction of the barn. She and the others started to run. Hopefully they weren’t too late.

The ground was slippery and a bit soft, and Hanna’s strappy, high-heeled shoes kept sinking into the dirt. Her friends breathed hard beside her. “I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Emily whispered, her voice thick with tears. “How could Spencer have let Ian—or whoever A is—lure her out here alone? Why would she be so stupid?”

“
Shhhh
. Whoever it is will hear us,” Aria hissed.

It took mere seconds to cross the vast yard to the barn. The hole where Ian had dumped Ali’s body was to their right, the reflective police tape glowing in the blackness. The woods were beyond, a small opening between two trees like an ominous gateway. Hanna shivered.

Aria rolled back her shoulders and plunged into the woods first, her hands out in front of her for guidance. Emily followed, and Hanna brought up the rear. Damp leaves rubbed against their bare ankles. Sharp, jagged branches brushed against the girls’ arms, instantly drawing blood. Emily stumbled over the uneven ground, crying out. When Hanna looked up, she couldn’t see the sky. The leaves had made a canopy over their heads, trapping them.

They heard another whimper. Aria stopped and cocked her head to the right. “That way,” she whispered, pointing. Her pale arm glowed in the darkness. She pulled up the hem of her dress and started to run. Hanna followed, her body throbbing with terror. Branches continued to assault her bare skin. A giant, spiny bush pressed against her side. She didn’t even realize she’d tripped over something until her knees hit the ground hard. Her head smacked against the dirt. Something in her right arm snapped. White-hot pain shot through her. She tried not to cry out, clenching her teeth together and wincing in agony.

“Hanna.” Aria’s footsteps stopped. “Are you okay?”

“I’m…fine.” Hanna’s eyes were still squeezed closed, but the pain had begun to subside. She tried moving her arm. It felt okay, just stiff.

They heard the whimper again. It sounded closer. “Just go find her,” Hanna said. “I’ll catch up in a second.”

For a moment, neither Aria nor Emily moved. The whimper turned into a sound more like a cry. “Go!” Hanna urged more forcefully.

Hanna rolled onto her back, slowly moving her arms and legs. Her head spun, and the ground smelled like dog poop. The back of her neck began to tingle, numbed from the cold slush. Aria and Emily’s footsteps grew fainter and fainter until she couldn’t hear them at all. The trees shifted back and forth, as if they were alive.

“Guys?” Hanna called out weakly. No answer. The whimper had sounded close—where had they gone?

An airplane soared high overhead, its little blinking light barely visible. An owl hooted, low and angry. There was no moon in the sky. Suddenly, Hanna wondered if this was an incredibly stupid idea. They were out here, alone in the woods, because of a note that surely Ian sent them. They’d been lured out here as easily as Spencer had been. Who was to say Ian wasn’t hiding in the shadows, somewhere close, ready to pounce and kill them all? Why hadn’t they waited for Wilden to come out here with them?

The bushes across the clearing started to shake. Heavy footsteps crunched through the leaves. Hanna’s heart began to thump. “Aria?” No answer.

A twig snapped. Then another. Hanna stared in the direction of the noise. Something was looming in the bushes. Hanna held her breath. What if Ian was hiding right
here
?

Hanna pushed herself up to her elbows. A figure burst out from between the trees, shaking off branches. A scream lingered in Hanna’s throat. It wasn’t Aria or Emily…but it wasn’t Ian, either. Hanna couldn’t tell if it was a guy or a girl, but whoever it was seemed thinner, maybe a little shorter. The figure paused in the middle of the clearing, staring straight at Hanna, as if startled by her presence. With its hood pulled tightly over its head and its face completely in shadow, the person reminded Hanna of the Grim Reaper.

Hanna tried to scuttle backward on her butt, but her body sank uselessly into the mud.
I’m going to die,
she thought.
This is it.

Finally, a hand moved to the person’s lips.
“Shhhhh.”

Hanna dug her nails into the cold, half-frozen ground, her teeth chattering with terror. But the figure took three big steps away from her. Then, just like that, whoever it was turned and vanished, without the slightest sound of footsteps. It was as if Hanna had dreamed the whole thing.

33

SOMEONE KNEW TOO MUCH

The whimper kept growing closer and then farther away, as if it were being bounced around by a mirror. Aria ran through the woods without looking where she was going or checking to see how far she had gone. When she turned around, she realized that the Hastingses’ house was far in the distance, just a minuscule glowing yellow light through the thick, tangled branches.

When she came to a small ravine, she froze. So many of the trees were twisted and knotted, growing improperly. One tree right in front of her split into two, forming a seat between the two trunks. Even when Aria, Ali, and the others had been friends, they’d rarely come back here to hang out. One of the few times Aria had been back here was when she’d staked out Ali’s house to steal her Time Capsule flag.

After Ali had marched to the back of her yard and told the four of them that someone else had already stolen her piece of the flag, the girls had gone their separate ways, disappointed. Aria cut through these woods back to her house. As she was passing a clump of particularly eerie-looking trees—maybe these very trees exactly—she’d seen someone running right for her from the other direction. Her insides had crackled with excitement when she realized it was Jason.

Jason had stopped, a guilty look washing over his face. His eyes immediately dropped to something dangling out of his hoodie’s front pocket. Aria looked too. It was a piece of blue cloth, the same bold cerulean as the Rosewood Day flag that hung in every classroom. There were drawings all over the cloth, too, and words in familiar, bubbly handwriting.

Aria thought about where she’d just been, what Ali had just told all of them.
You’re too late,
she said.
Someone already stole my piece. I’d decorated it and everything.
She pointed at Jason’s pocket, her hand shaking. “That’s not…?”

Jason looked from Aria to the flag, disarmed. And then, wordlessly, he thrust it into Aria’s hands. He disappeared through the trees, back toward the DiLaurentis house.

Aria sprinted home, Ali’s piece of the flag burning in her pocket. She didn’t know what Jason wanted her to do with it—give it back? Redecorate it for herself? Was it somehow tied to the weird fight Jason and Ian had had on the Rosewood Day common just days before? Over the next few days, she’d waited to see if he’d tell her what he’d been thinking and what she should do. Maybe Jason
had
realized they were soul mates, and had given it to Aria specifically because he thought she deserved it. But no instructions ever came. Even when the Rosewood Day administration made an announcement over the PA that one piece of the Time Capsule flag hadn’t been accounted for and that whoever had it should please come forward. Was it some kind of test? Was Aria just supposed to
know
? If she passed, would she and Jason be together forever?

After Aria became friends with Ali, she felt too embarrassed and ashamed to explain the whole debacle, so she’d hidden the piece of the flag in her closet, never looking at it again. If she opened the shoe box at the back of her closet marked
Old Book Reports,
there Ali’s piece of the flag would still be, completely decorated and ready to go.

Footsteps crunched behind her. Aria jumped and swiveled around. Hanna’s eyes glowed in the darkness. “You guys,” she breathed heavily. “I just saw the weirdest—”

“Shhh,”
Aria interrupted. A dark shadow on the other side of the ravine caught her eye. She clamped down hard on Emily’s arm, trying not to scream. A flashlight clicked on, sliding across the ground. Aria put her hand to her mouth, letting out a relieved, shuddering sigh.

“Spencer?” she called, taking a tentative step through the slush.

Spencer was wearing a rain slicker that came to her knees and big riding boots that flapped around her skinny calves. She beamed her flashlight up at them, looking like an animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. The whole front of her black dress was covered in mud and slush, as was her face. “Thank God you’re okay.” Aria took a few steps forward.

“What the hell were you doing out here?” Emily cried. “Are you crazy?”

Spencer’s jaw trembled. Her eyes lowered toward whatever it was on the ground. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said tonelessly, as if she were hypnotized. “I just got a
note
from him.”

“From who?” Aria whispered.

Spencer pointed her flashlight at a massive object next to her. At first, Aria thought it was just a fallen tree, or maybe a dead animal. But then the light danced over something that looked like…skin. It was a large, pale, human hand, curled into a fist. There was what looked like a Rosewood Day class ring on one of the fingers.

Aria took a huge step back, clapping her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

Then Spencer shined the light on the person’s face. Even in the darkness, Aria could tell that Ian’s skin was a ghostly, oxygenless blue. One eye was closed and the other was open, as if he were winking. Dried blood pooled at his ear and his lips, and his hair was matted with dirt. There were big purple welts around his neck, as if someone had grabbed him hard and squeezed. There was something about him that seemed very cold and stiff, as if he’d been like this for quite some time.

Aria blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend what she was looking at. She thought about how Ian hadn’t shown up at his trial yesterday. The cops had run out of the room, vowing to find him. Ian could have been here all along.

Emily dry-heaved. Hanna took a huge step back, crying out. It was so quiet out in the woods, it was easy to hear Spencer’s shaky swallow. She shook her head. “He was like this when I got here,” she whimpered. “I swear.”

Aria was afraid to move any closer to Ian, and kept her eyes fixed on his immobile hand, almost certain he was going to spring up and grab her. The air around him was absolutely dead and still. Far off in the distance, she swore she heard someone giggle.

And then Aria’s cell phone, tucked inside her small, clam-shaped clutch, started to ring. She let out a small “eep,” surprised. Then Spencer’s buzzed, and Aria’s chimed. Hanna’s cell phone, which was nestled inside her now-muddy clutch, let out a bleat.

The girls stared at one another in the darkness. “There’s no way,” Spencer whispered.

“It can’t….” Hanna held her phone by the very tips of her fingers, as if afraid to really touch it.

Aria stared at her Treo’s screen in disbelief.
One new text message.

She glanced back at Ian, his stiff limbs twisted, his beautiful face vacant and lifeless. With a shudder, she looked down at the screen again and forced herself to read the text.

He had to go.

—A

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT…

Yup, Ian’s dead. And our favorite foursome probably wish they were. Hanna’s daddy hates her. Spencer’s broke. Aria’s a hot mess. And Emily’s switched teams so many times I’m getting whiplash. I’d feel bad for them, but y’know, that’s life. Or, um, death, in Ian’s case.

I suppose I could let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, yadda yadda. But where’s the fun in that? These pretty little bitches got everything I ever wanted, and now I’m going to make sure they get exactly what they deserve. Does that make me sound awful? Sorry, but as every pretty little liar knows, sometimes the truth’s ugly—and it always hurts.

I’ll be watching….

Mwah!

—A