Текст книги "Rhymes with Witches"

Автор книги: Lauren Myracle

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

I took a seat. I smelled Peach Schnapps.

“We’ve already done the Human Fly and the Box Your Brains Out. Me and Little Debs rocked. Didn’t we, Debs?” She slugged Debbie’s arm. “Bam! Knock out, baby!”

“And these two sophomores behind us?” Debbie said. “They were all, ‘Ooo, no! It’s too scary! We’d mess up our hair!’”

“Me and Little Debs were like, ‘What’d you think this was, the prom?’” Anna Maria slapped Debbie’s palm.

“What about you?” Debbie asked. “You maintaining the tangible?”

“Huh?” I said.

Anna Maria cracked up. She told Debbie, “You are such a dork.” To me, she said, “It’s her new way of saying ‘keeping it real.’ Maintaining the tangible, get it?”

“Ohhh,” I said. “Gotcha.”

Anna Maria’s laughter kept coming. “Total dorkitude maximus—that’s my Debs.” She reached inside her jean jacket and pulled out a flask. A cool flask, actually. Silver with delicate etchings, curved to fit against her body. She unscrewed the top and took a swig. “Want some?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Suit yourself. Here, Little Debs.” She handed over the flask. “So. After party at Bitsy’s, right? Should be a rocking good time.”

She and Debbie leaned against each other and snickered.

“Down with the skank,” Anna Maria said.

Debbie lifted the flask. “The skank must die!”

I wasn’t following. But then, they were drunk. Got the part about Bitsy’s house, though. It made my stomach curl, because no one had told me about an after party.

I grabbed the flask and downed a long gulp.

“Go, baby!” Anna Maria said. “Now we’re talking!”

Passing it back, I said, “I’m out of here. Got to maintain the tangible.”

More cackling from the peanut gallery. “You do that,” Anna Maria called. “We’ll see your ass at Bitsy’s!”

“Game’s up, Bitsy,” I said. I sounded whiny, which pissed me off. “Thanks, you know, for including me.”

“What’s that?” Bitsy said. She turned her attention from Bounce-a-Rama, where Stuart Hill was doing moon jumps off a glittering gray launch pad.

“Your after party. Anna Maria and Debbie told me.”

Mary Bryan blushed; Bitsy didn’t. Keisha dropped her eyes.

“We just …” Mary Bryan started. “I mean, it wasn’t like we didn’t want you to come, it’s just—”

“Of course we want you to come,” Bitsy said. “We didn’t think you’d want to, that’s all.”

“Why would you think that?” I said. “Seriously. You at least could have asked me.”

“You’re absolutely right, and I feel like a prize idiot for being so thoughtless. But it’s all out now, yeah?”

I couldn’t stop fooling with my ring, using my thumb to rotate it around and around my finger. “Were you just going to drop me off and go without me? Wouldn’t that make you feel pathetic?”

Bitsy’s eyes widened. “Sweetie!” she said, as if she were truly shocked and worried. “How could you ever feel pathetic? Don’t you know how much we love you?”

“We thought you were mad at us,” Mary Bryan said. She kind of petted me. “I’m so glad you’re not.”

I couldn’t let it go. I didn’t know what Bitsy was up to.

“Keisha?” I said. “Do you want me to come?”

Keisha looked at me, sadly almost. Embarrassment coursed through me for being such a baby.

“I want you to do what you want to do,” she said. “It’s up to you.”

“Well, I want to go,” I said.

“Superb,” Bitsy said. She turned back to the Bounce-a-Rama, where Stuart had gotten snarled in the harness. “We’ll leave in a jiff.”

I looked past the Bounce-a-Rama to the giant bowling ball, where I could see Phil and Oz at the front of the line. Phil said something, and Oz stuck out her tongue. A chaperone strapped her into the transparent ball, and she rolled down the puffy rubber lane, laughing like mad as her dress tangled around her legs. She careened into the bowling pins with an echoing crash.

We didn’t go straight to Bitsy’s. Instead, we stopped at a house five down from hers, a red brick Tudor with two stone eagles perched at the foot of the winding drive. Anna Maria and Debbie parked behind us on the street. A Jeep full of cheerleaders pulled up last.

“What’s going on?” I asked from Bitsy’s backseat.

“Pit stop,” Bitsy said. She killed the motor and got out of the car. Keisha and Mary Bryan climbed out, too. Reluctantly, I followed.

Debbie, Anna Maria, Elizabeth, Amy, Laurie, and Trish gathered around us. Their voices sounded too loud now that we were away from the Fall Fling. The night air chilled my skin.

“What now?” Anna Maria said. “Should we, like, just walk up and ring the doorbell?”

“We could throw rocks at her window,” Debbie said. She mimed an overhand pitch. “Ker-rash!”

“She’d think it was a gunshot,” Elizabeth said, snickering.

A thread of fear moved through my chest. I glanced up at the house, which was completely dark, and I remembered what Mary Bryan had told me.

Bitsy and Camilla were neighbors.

I turned to Mary Bryan. “Why are we here?”

She avoided my eyes. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“They’re talking about smashing her window,” I said.

“Nobody’s smashing anybody’s window,” Bitsy said. “We just felt sorry for her, right, girls? All alone on the night of Fall Fling.” She draped her arm over my shoulders. “Heartbreaking, really. She’s in desperate need of human contact.”

I shoved her off. “Her parents will call the police. The second they see you, they’ll call the police.”

“Hmm,” Bitsy said, tapping her lip. “No, don’t think so, luv. Her parents are out with my mum, trying to keep up the charade that they’re still dear friends, even without my father to round out the foursome. So Camilla’s on her own, poor dear.”

Anna Maria burped. She’d gotten the flask out again, and schnapps dribbled down her chin. “Little Debs, get a rock,” she said.

“What are we, a band of marauders?” Bitsy asked. “I said no rocks.”

“Then what?” Anna Maria demanded.

Bitsy smiled. She looked at all of us, her gaze lingering longest on me. “I know where they keep their spare key.”

Anna Maria hooted. “Yeah, baby! Let’s get us some ho-bag ass!”

“Aren’t we … aren’t we going to wait for Sukie and Pammy?” Laurie asked. She alone seemed the slightest bit reluctant.

“Sukie’s not coming,” Bitsy said. “Pammy had to take her home.”

“Why?” Laurie said.

“Sukie wasn’t having much fun, let’s leave it at that. But she’ll be right as rain before you know it. Won’t she, Jane?”

I swallowed. “What are you going to do? To Camilla.”

“Nothing,” Mary Bryan insisted.

Keisha looked grim.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Bitsy said. “What do you think, Anna Maria? What was that you told me about those boys at football camp? Somewhere in Florida, I think. Got into the papers and everything.”

“I didn’t tell you. You told me,” Anna Maria said. Her words came out messy. “But yeah, how they held down some freshman and stuck a stick up his ass.”

“Sick bastards,” Bitsy said.

“Said they did it to toughen him up. And you were like, ‘Poor little tyke, bet he was scared out of his mind.’”

“So true. What did he do to deserve it?”

“But Camilla, on the other hand …” Anna Maria said.

“Skank,” Debbie said.

“Whore,” Elizabeth contributed.

“Tight ass,” Amy tossed out.

“Sometimes a girl like that needs a prod on the bum, yeah?” Bitsy said.

“Bitsy, stop it,” Mary Bryan said. “You’re being gross.”

Bitsy rolled her eyes. “Good god, Mary Bryan, you’re as bad as Jane. You don’t think we’re serious, do you?”

She led her henchmen up the drive, leaving me, Keisha, Mary Bryan, and Laurie behind. Anna Maria took a detour into the manicured yard, where she broke off a thick stick from an azalea bush.

“Anna Maria!” Debbie cried, as in, You bad thing! Sniggering, they ran to catch up.

Bitsy turned around. “Laurie? Aren’t you coming?”

Laurie glanced at Keisha, who frowned. But when Keisha headed toward the house, Laurie followed. Mary Bryan, too, until I grabbed her arm.

“No,” I said. “This is crazy.”

“She’s just fooling around,” Mary Bryan said. “You know how she is.”

“Yeah. Exactly.” My muscles were shaky, because I knew how quickly things could change. “What happened to you, me, and Keisha being, like, a force for the good?”

“I didn’t see you doing anything to stop her,” she pointed out.

“Well, you sure didn’t either!”

The others were halfway up the driveway. Anna Maria and Debbie were leading an inane chant of “Kill the skank. Kill the skank,” which Elizabeth and Amy gleefully took up. Bitsy laughed, but didn’t join in.

A knot in the center of me heated up. I felt sick and I felt scared, but I felt angry, too. I started for the house.

“Don’t,” Mary Bryan said. “You’re going to mess everything up.”

I shook her off.

“We have to stay together!” Mary Bryan said. “All four of us, we have to stay together or it won’t work. Don’t you get that?”

“What won’t work?” I demanded. “This? Bitsy’s little games of torture?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Us. The fix. Everything.” She stepped closer. “People won’t like you anymore.”

I looked at her, and I finally got it. Mary Bryan was just as scared as I was, only for different reasons. She thought I was going to opt out. She thought I was going to stand up to Bitsy as a parting shot, and then walk away from their bullshit, leaving them crippled without their magic fourth. I would have laughed if everything hadn’t been so completely shitty.

“I think what you mean is that people won’t like you anymore,” I said. “And you know what, Mary Bryan? I don’t fucking give a damn.”

“You will,” she said.

“Whatever,” I said. “At least I never had sex on a picnic table.” I left her staring after me as I sprinted up the drive.

A white Range Rover was parked inside one half of the two-car garage. Adjacent to the garage was a stone pathway that led to the back of the house, and around the bend I could hear Anna Maria and the others. They were no longer making any effort to be quiet.

I hurried to the back door. “Move,” I said, elbowing Amy in the gut.

“Hey, watch it!” she cried. Then she saw it was me and giggled. “Oh, sorry. Make way for Jane! Clear a path!”

I broke through to see Bitsy gazing at a second-story window, where a light shone from behind the curtains.

“Come now, Camilla,” Bitsy cajoled. “Don’t play hard to get. We just want to spend some quality time with you. Right, girls?”

“The skank loves dick!” the girls caroled. “The stick is dick!”

The curtains moved. Camilla’s pale face appeared, then disappeared.

“She’s going to call the police,” I said, willing my voice to be steady.

Bitsy turned. “Why, look. If it isn’t little Jane.”

“Or if she doesn’t, I will.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

I blushed. Debbie and Anna Maria sniggered, and my hands balled into fists.

“Just leave her alone,” I said. “Maybe she’s not, like, Miss Congeniality, but she never did anything to you.”

“So not the point,” Bitsy said. She jerked her head at a small ceramic poodle to the right of the back door. “Laurie, get the key. It’s under there.”

“Laurie, don’t,” I said.

Laurie, who had taken one step toward the poodle, stopped in her tracks.

“Laurie,” Bitsy said.

“I’ll do it,” Anna Maria said. “Jesus.” She strode across the entranceway and kicked over the poodle, which shattered when it hit the stones. Underneath lay the key. “Nice hiding spot,” she said as she bent to retrieve it. She chortled, her stupid azalea stick still clutched in her other hand. “Real sneaky, ho-bag.”

For a flashing moment I felt absolute panic, because god help me, I wanted to join in. The skank loves dick, the stick is dick …

But I fought against it, because I was not going to be that person. Yes, I was a Bitch. But I didn’t have to be a bitch.

I pushed past Bitsy and Laurie and up to Camilla’s door, where Anna Maria was inserting the key in the lock.

“Give it to me,” I said, grasping her wrist.

Debbie edged closer, as did Trish and Amy.

“Jane,” warned Mary Bryan, who’d joined the rest of the group.

I thought I caught movement at the second-story window. Why hadn’t Camilla called the police? Or if she had, where were they?

“Give it to me or I’ll scream. I mean it. I’ll scream so loud the neighbors will come running.”

“What neighbors?” Bitsy asked. “I’m her neighbor.”

“You’re not the only one,” I said.

She strolled toward me, trying to feign indifference despite the tightness in her jaw. I could feel the force of her hate.

“Anna Maria, unlock the door,” she ordered.

Anna Maria twisted the key.

I screamed.

As Bitsy’s thugs scattered, as Mary Bryan hissed, “For shit’s sake!” and pulled Bitsy out of the back-porch light, I felt something claw my arm. Camilla. She yanked me inside and slammed the door.

“What did you do that for?” she demanded.

I pulled free and pressed my face against a side window. Keisha waited for Mary Bryan and Bitsy by the garage. Then all three fled down the driveway, high heels clattering. Bitsy’s laugh floated through the night air.

Camilla’s phone rang, a sharp, staccato blare. Camilla crossed the room and picked up.

“Hello?” she said. “No, everything’s fine. I’m really sorry. I—” Her lips thinned. “Yes, Mr. Cutter. I understand. Good-bye.”

She hung up. The phone rang again.

“Hello?” she said. “I know. I did, too. But it was just a joke, Mrs. Robinson. It was someone from my school. Okay. Okay. Bye.”

She faced me. “Mrs. Robinson’s, like, eighty years old,” she said. “You practically gave her a heart attack. And Mr. Cutter would have called the police if I hadn’t stopped him. Is that what you wanted?”

I stared at her.

She strode through the house, and after a moment’s hesitation, I followed. She crossed a spacious foyer, opened the front door, and stepped outside. On the other side of the street, a man stood with his hands on his hips at the top of his driveway.

“What’s going on over there?” he barked.

“It’s all right, Mr. Simmons,” Camilla called. “Everything’s all right. Sorry!”

She shut the door and leaned against it. She hid her face in her hands.

“I didn’t …” I said. “I never …” I shook my head, unable to process her reaction. “I was helping you.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said.

I straightened my spine. “Look, I just risked everything for you. Why didn’t you call the cops?”

“And tell them what, that some girls in prom dresses were standing outside my house?”

“No, and tell them … I don’t know. Tell them that—”

“Anyway, Bitsy would have oozed her charm all over the officers, and by the end it would somehow be all my fault. As usual.” She swiped her hand under her eyes in a fast, angry gesture. “And Monday at school everyone would hate me even more than they already do.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” I said. “Anyway, so what? You don’t care what they think.”

The look she gave me suggested otherwise.

“You don’t care what anyone thinks,” I insisted.

“Yeah,” she deadpanned. “That’s right. So you can leave now, because you’ve done your good deed. You can trot home knowing that you’re morally superior to Bitsy McGovern, which, I’m sorry, isn’t saying very much.” She moved so that she was no longer blocking the door. “See ya.”

This was so not what she was supposed to be saying. I didn’t know what she should have been saying, but not this.

“Camilla—”

“Thanks. Really. Now, bye.”

My body hardened with bottled-up frustration. Didn’t she get how screwed she was? How, save for the grace of me, she was dog shit on the bottom of Bitsy’s gleaming black boots?

I kept my mouth shut for maybe a second, and then I lifted my chin and told her everything. About the stealing, about Lurl—practically everything. Camilla tried to resist, indicating her disbelief with snorts of scorn, but I dug in.

“That’s why you’re so unpopular,” I said. I’d followed her into the kitchen, where she’d gone in an attempt to escape me. “That’s why everyone treats you like scum, because Bitsy steals your popularity from you every single week. Don’t you even care?”

Camilla’s breath came short. A hidden anguish vibrated in her voice as she said, “Are you taping this? Do you have a video camera tucked beneath your armpit?”

I spread my arms. “I’m not taping anything. Jesus.”

“Let’s see your purse. Come on, I know you have one.”

She darted toward me, and my veins surged with adrenaline. I clamped my elbows to my sides and twisted away. Otherwise I would have hit her. I swear I would have.

“They had a key, Camilla,” I said. “Bitsy had your spare key, all right? They were going to come in.”

She looked at me. I looked at her. I wanted to mention the stick, but some things can’t be expressed.

“Well?” I finally said. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“It wouldn’t have worked. We had the lock changed.”

“You had the … what?”

“Some pervert’s been e-mailing me sex messages. He even called and invited me to a Zamfir concert. Are you going to blame that on hocus-pocus, too?”

I felt a sliding down of hope. I didn’t believe the truth at first. Why should she?

But then I saw in her eyes that she did believe—or wanted to, anyway. She wanted it to be true, because at least then there would be an explanation of why life sucked so bad.

“I’ll prove it,” I said. “You can drive us to Lurl’s office in your dad’s Range Rover, and I’ll show you.”

She moved restlessly. “Show me what, exactly? You said Lurl’s office was empty every time you went in. Or are you changing your story to lure me out of the house?” She returned to the front door and peered through a rectangular window. “Are they still out there, waiting by their cars?”

“Their cars are gone,” I said. “You can see for yourself.”

“Uh-huh. And you want me to steal my dad’s car and chauffeur you over to the school so we can break into a teacher’s office.”

“It wouldn’t be stealing. It would be borrowing.” I realized that maybe I wasn’t the one to be clarifying these finer moral distinctions, but I pushed on. “And we wouldn’t have to break into Lurl’s office. I already told you, I have a key.”

“If the school is even unlocked.”

“It will be. Fall Fling, remember?”

Camilla still didn’t trust me. But she didn’t order me out, either.

“When would we do it?” she said. “Right now? This very second?”

She said it like a challenge, but I knew that if we waited until morning, it would never happen.

“Right now,” I said. “This very second.”

The Range Rover was an automatic, but still Camilla manhandled both the gas and the brake to the point that I had to wrap my arms around my stomach.

“It’s not my fault,” she said. She glanced at me defiantly, but her mouth was tight and pale. “I don’t have driver’s ed until next year.”

I doubt it’ll help, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I directed her to my house, where I snuck upstairs to get the key to Lurl’s office and a few other last-minute items.

When I got back in the car, Camilla took one look at the object in my hand and said, “What’s that for?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I fingered the jade comb and thought about the me that used to be, before all this happened.

“And the …” She gestured at my quilted cotton vest, which I’d slipped on over my party clothes. Its sunshines danced ludicrously across my chest. “Why are you wearing that?”

I twisted my body and stared out the window, because if I couldn’t explain it to myself, then how could I explain it to her? I wasn’t sure why I’d put it on, just that it seemed like the right thing to do. I was glad that the J pendant and the teddy bear were out of sight in the backpack I’d grabbed from my desk.

“And I’m the school freak,” Camilla said under her breath. “Yeah, makes a lot of sense.”

“Just drive.”

The school’s parking lot was empty, save for a beat-up Pinto that I knew belonged to Angie Clark, president of the pep club. Down at the gym, Angie and a few of her buddies were probably taking down streamers and loading up trash bags. But Hamilton Hall was deserted.

“Are we going in or not?” Camilla said.

“Chill,” I said. A breeze shook the leaves in the trees, making a dry rustling sound that made me think of bones. The building was right there, only yards away, but my legs stayed planted where they were. It was as if my body knew something that I didn’t.

The wind rose, ruffling my hair, and I quick stepped forward to the basement door. I did a fancy move with the jade comb, and the door sprang open. Although it would have anyway, since the door wasn’t bolted. My lock-picking was just for show.

“Well?” Camilla said.

I took off my heels—too loud—and shoved them into my backpack. Then I slipped barefoot into the unlit building. The yellow on my vest was dimly visible, and Camilla eyed it again and blew air out of her mouth.

“I can’t believe you wore that to school,” she said.

“What? I never wore this to school.”

Camilla gazed at me. “We are at school.”

I pressed my lips together.

“Third floor—that’s where Lurl’s office allegedly is, right?” she said. She marched down the hall. “We better get a move on.”

Ceiling-level fire alarms shone faintly, casting an eerie red light over the rows of lockers. In the stairwells, moonlight streamed in from square windows. What looked normal by day was claustrophobic by night, full of hungry shadows stretching toward us as we padded toward Lurl’s office. Or as I padded, rather. Camilla walked normally, spine erect and arms swinging. I admired her for it even as I resented it.

On the third floor, I banged my shin against what turned out to be a wire Animal Control cage. “Fuck,” I said. Pain bloomed under my skin, and I paused to massage my muscle. Camilla stopped, too, turning around when she realized I was no longer with her, and in the sudden quiet I heard a scrabbly sound. Like claws tic-tacking across the floor.

Clamminess squeezed my insides. “Do you hear that?” I whispered.

“Hear what?” Camilla said in her normal voice.

“Shhh,” I said. I strained my ears, but the noise was gone. We continued on. We reached the corridor that connected the north hall to the south hall, and looking at the heavy door, I was again hit with foreboding. I didn’t want to go on.

Camilla exhaled impatiently.

I tugged it open, and we stepped into the dark passageway. This section had neither windows not fire alarms, so when the door thunked shut behind us, we were thrown into black. My body went rigid.

“Open it back,” Camilla said beside me. Her voice slipped higher up the register. “I can’t see a thing.”

I scrambled for the handle. At first I couldn’t find it, and my panic mounted. Then my fingers found purchase, and I pushed the door open to let in a sliver of gray.

“Use your shoe to prop it,” Camilla said.

“Use your shoe,” I said, still feeling freaked and hoping it didn’t show. But my shoes, safe in my backpack, were delicate silver sling-backs. Hers were some weird kind of sneakers involving velour.

She made as if to return to the main hall. “Fine. Guess it’s not that important to you after all.”

“Wait,” I said. I fumbled in my pack, pushing my shoes aside, and grasped the teddy bear. I jammed it between the door and the frame.

The corridor was still dark, but not as dark, and the quality of the light gave the night a kind of dreamlike unreality. I hesitated, then walked to Lurl’s office. I really didn’t want to do this, but I had the dreadful sense that it was the only way.

I drew the key from my pack. “Okay,” I said. “Here goes.”

“Here goes nothing,” Camilla said.

I turned the key in the lock. I twisted the knob.

A yowl pierced the air, and a mass of fur and muscle drove into my chest. I yelped and tried to get it off me, but its claws dug into my quilted vest.

“Help!” I cried. I pried one paw free, only to have the cat latch back on and climb higher on my shoulder. “Camilla! Do something!”

The cat howled. I shoved. Digging my hands under its front legs, I flung it to the floor. It scrambled to its feet and trotted back over. It meowed and butted my leg. A rumbling purr started up in its chest.

“He likes you,” Camilla said.

I breathed hard and examined my vest, now scratched and ripped. “This would have been my skin,” I said. “I would have been, like, shredded.”

Camilla strode into Lurl’s office and flicked on the lights. One of the bulbs popped and went out, leaving us in half-lit dusk.

“So where’s the great mystery?” she said, scanning the barren room. “You better not have dragged me here just for this.”

I moved forward, but the cat twined between my legs and made me trip.

“Goddammit,” I said.

The cat stretched on its hind feet and attempted to scale me. I winced as it pawed my bruised shin.

“Quit it. I mean it—quit it!”

“I don’t see anything,” Camilla said. She turned to leave.

“Will you just give me a minute?” I snapped. I shook the cat from my leg and tugged the J pendant out of my pack. I jerked the cord, and the J danced. The cat meowed and batted it with its paw.

“You want this?” I said. “Huh?” I dangled the pendant down low and dragged it across the floor. I slung it down the hall, and the cat skittered after it. I closed the door.

“Okay,” I said. “All right.”

“All right, what?” Camilla said.

I pointed to the office’s rear door, the one that led to what I knew must be an empty storage room. Or who knows, maybe not so empty. “In there. It’s got to be.”

“What’s got to be?” she said. But she crossed the room, and I followed. For a moment, she wavered. Then she opened the door.

“Holy shit,” she said.

My blood reversed directions in my veins. Staring from the shadows were corpses, mute and still. Then my brain caught on, and I realized they weren’t corpses—of course not corpses, why had I thought corpses?—but lifesize goddess figures. The room was packed with them. A rough stone goddess with arms out-spread stood by a marble goddess with a swollen belly. A black Aphrodite. A lifesize Kali, goddess of death and resurrection, with her ever-present string of skulls around her neck.

“What the hell … ?” I whispered. The light filtering in from Lurl’s office wasn’t much, but as my eyes began to adjust, I made out bits and bobs of brightness in the gloom. A butterfly barrette sparkled from an ivory snake goddess. A tiny mirror was tucked among the skulls on the figure of Kali. A heavy-breasted goddess held Alicia’s lip balm in her upturned limestone palm.

“Do you believe me now?” I asked. “Can we get out of here?”

Camilla was pale.

“That’s my headband,” she said. She snatched a creamy suede headband from a statue sculpted to look like the Egyptian goddess Isis. “And that’s my necklace! I looked everywhere for that necklace!” She ripped a chain off the tip of a crescent moon, which an alabaster goddess lifted to the heavens.

“Camilla,” I said. “Come on, don’t mess it up.”

She stared at me incredulously. She strode across the room, careless of the offerings she knocked out of place, and reclaimed a silver bracelet. From its links dangled a heart-shaped charm, etched with a B for ballet.

“Stop,” I pleaded. “This isn’t cool.”

“Is there anything else?” she demanded.

I thought of the bobby pin. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“There’s nothing else, I swear.”

We heard a noise, and both of our heads swung toward the source. There. A stain in the darkness.

Camilla rejoined me in a series of jackrabbit steps. The Isis figure tottered as she passed, and a collection of bracelets clinked to the floor.

“What’s over there?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “How should I know?”

Our voices were strained.

“Go look,” she said.

“What? You go look.”

We stared into the shadowy corner. A shape shifted almost imperceptibly. There was a muted thump.

My heart rose in my throat, and I whispered, “Where’s the light? There’s got to be a light for this room, too.” I turned from the shape and found the switch. I flicked it, but nothing happened.

“It’s a cradle,” Camilla said.

I faced it again. Terror fluttered in my chest.

“Go look,” she commanded. “Or I will.”

Everything inside me grew dizzy, and I blamed her. Who was she to throw out a dare? Who was she to imply that she was the one in charge?

I forced my feet to move. The goddess figures seemed to watch me as I approached—it was like being in a room filled with menacing strangers—and the air grew unpleasantly warm. I smelled cat shit and old pee. I stepped closer, and the shape in the corner gained definition. Yes. A cradle, small and worn. A thump as its rockers met the floor.

I peered inside.

A litter of kittens nuzzled against their mother, kneading her torso, butting their heads on her abdomen, suckling her belly.

No.

Not suckling.

A kitten shifted its body, and I saw a flap of the mother’s fur. Another kitten tugged at the flap, and it came off way too easily. Tiny teeth dug into the flesh below.

My eyes strayed higher, and I spotted the incision across the mother’s neck. I must have cried out, because a snow white kitten lifted its head and looked at me. Its pupils were vertical slits. It returned to lapping the clotted blood, and a littermate nosed closer, eager for its share. The cradle rocked harder. A thump and a thump. And under the thumping, something else. A growl, low and menacing. It seemed to come from the walls.

I stumbled back the way I had come. “Let’s go,” I said. “Now.”

I fled Lurl’s temple and retreated through the outer office. I knew I should go back and put everything in order, but all I wanted was to be gone. Gone, gone, gone—and away from what I wished I’d never seen.

“Could you maybe speed it up just the tiniest bit?” I said. I jiggled from foot to foot. Camilla was too far behind me.

“Could you maybe relax?” she retorted. “This was your idea, in case you’ve forgotten.”

She flipped off Lurl’s light and followed me into the hall. She slammed the door behind us.

In the Range Rover, the reality of what I’d done sunk in.

“You can’t tell anyone,” I told Camilla.

She pressed down on the accelerator. “Who would I tell?”

“I’m serious. What you saw is, like, top secret. I will be in so much trouble if you blab.”

She didn’t respond. I hadn’t articulated what I’d seen in the cradle, and I wasn’t about to. But the rest—the goddess figures, the offerings, the low growl which Camilla must have heard—that knowledge alone was enough to make Camilla dangerous.

My fingers found the ripped part of my vest and closed around it. I tried to think without freaking out. I tried to think how to make this all be okay.

“And don’t worry about … you know,” I said. “Because I’m going to fix things. Fix them for you, I mean. I’ll tell Bitsy that she can’t steal from you anymore—but only if you promise not to mess things up.”