Elegy (3 page)

Chapter
FOUR

A
n hour later, the awkward, interrogation-themed tension had almost dissipated. I guess a few peanut butter M&M’s and more than a few sips of stolen wine just had that effect on people. It also didn’t hurt when Jillian told them that my pajamas were previously worn by the actress now prancing around in the chick flick that we were only half watching.

“I can totally see the resemblance,” Mya said, using a bottle of Mrs. Patton’s finest merlot to draw an invisible line between the woman on the screen and me.

“Yeah,” I muttered awkwardly. “My famous aunt just
loves
to share her outdated clothes.”

“Outdated?” Chelsea breathed. “They’re freaking gorgeous. Is that silk?”

Chelsea sat in the chair next to mine, and she moved forward to touch my sleeve. Without thinking, I yanked my arm back before she had the chance. Jillian must have seen the small, insulted O that Chelsea’s mouth made, because she darted forward.

“Amelia has touch issues,” Jillian said defensively, leaning around me. “You know, like a phobia.”

“Oh.” Chelsea gave me a smile that was equal parts polite and weirded-out. Kaylen, however, looked intrigued.

“Really?” she asked. She sat up straighter in her chair. “How does that
work
, exactly? With Joshua, I mean.”

My mouth started flapping open and closed like a fish’s. How did I even
begin
to answer that? Luckily, before I had to craft some believable lie, Jillian faked a loud yawn.

“Bor-ring,” she grumbled. “New subject, guys. Please.”

I could have kissed her. Instead, I gave her a sly wink of gratitude.

“Okay,” Kaylen said. “No more phobia talk. How about a game of truth-or-dare?”

Jillian and I shouted no at the same time, almost as loudly as Chelsea, Mya, and Elyse cheered yes. With the rest of the party on her side, Kaylen grinned triumphantly.

“Four against two. It’s totally happening.”

I groaned loudly and glanced at Jillian. She shrugged, as if to say,
No use fighting this.
I sank into my plush seat, waiting until the very last minute to join the other girls in the cross-legged circle they’d formed around the coffee table. Once there, I folded my arms and prepared myself for the inevitable questions from Kaylen. But to my surprise, Mya jumped in with the first challenge.

“Truth or dare, Jilly?”

Obviously Jillian hadn’t expected that, either. She blinked a few times and then said, “Uh . . . truth, I guess.”

Mya exchanged meaningful looks with Chelsea and Elyse before turning back to Jillian. “Are you in love with Scott Conner?” Mya asked bluntly.

Jillian blinked even faster, as did I.

I knew that Joshua’s quiet friend Scott liked Jillian; his feelings were written all over his face, every time he looked at her. But I had no idea that Jillian might feel something for Scott in return, especially not after her misguided crush on Kade LaLaurie this winter.

Now, watching the red stain of a blush creep up her neck, I knew it must be true: Jillian liked Scott back.

“No,” Jillian muttered, after far too long a pause. “Of course I don’t like Scott. He’s like . . . a brother to me, or something. And he’s not even
that
cute. I’m mean—floppy hair is over, right?”

Instead of answering her, the other girls whooped and laughed in triumph.

“Liar!” Elyse crowed. “You
do
! You totally like him.”

Chelsea pointed an accusatory finger at Jillian. “You’ve got a crush on your big brother’s bestie. Admit it.”

“No,” Jillian spat. She chucked an M&M at Chelsea, who caught it deftly and popped it into her mouth. Somehow, this offended Jillian even more. She folded her arms over her chest and scowled at her friends.

“Fine. So I sort of like Scott, okay? I didn’t used to. But after we got back from Christmas break, he just . . . he started to look better to me. Cuter. Funnier.”

I heard what Jillian didn’t say: that Scott Conner, compared to a creep like Kade LaLaurie, looked like Prince Charming. Not that Scott needed the comparison—he’d always been a nice guy. But now, Jillian actually valued that quality. I couldn’t wait to tell Joshua.

Jillian’s girlfriends, however, continued to tease her mercilessly. And for once, she couldn’t seem to muster up any sharp comebacks. So she scowled harder and flopped angrily against the footrest of a theater chair.

“Traitors,” she hissed halfheartedly, after the last bit of laughter quieted. Then she turned to Kaylen. “Don’t think you’re going to get out of this, just because I’m embarrassed now. Truth or dare, Kaylen?”

Kaylen flashed everyone a smug half grin. “I always take the dare. You know that.”

“Oh, I know.” Jillian grinned back, but her smile wasn’t a happy one. “That’s why I already have your dare picked out.”

“Bring it, Jilly.” Kaylen curled her fists and flexed her arms into a strongman position. “I’m not afraid.”

When I saw Jillian’s smirk, I wondered whether Kaylen should have been.

“Okay, if you’re so brave, then why don’t you go get us another bottle of your mom’s wine?”

Kaylen had already started to beam confidently, when Jillian added, “And one of her old pageant tiaras. A
big
one. Which you will wear for the rest of the night.”

The other girls started cackling, but Kaylen paled faintly. I would bet anything that those tiaras, with all their sharp edges and cold sparkle, represented the worst of Kaylen’s fears. Just the thought of stealing one had her broken out in a visible sweat.

Despite the jealousy I’d felt toward Kaylen, despite the fact that she’d thrown herself at my boyfriend last fall, I suddenly wanted to protect her. To keep her from risking her mother’s wrath, and from having to see another tiara again, if she didn’t want to.

“Jillian, I think that’s one too many dares.”

I spoke as quietly as possible, but the other girls heard me. As Kaylen watched me, something in her eyes shifted from desperate to hopeful.

“Actually,” I went on, keeping my eyes trained on Kaylen’s, “I
know
that’s one too many dares. Kaylen will probably get caught stealing the tiara. And if she has to steal something, I’d rather have the wine.”

Faced with a choice between the humiliation of their queen bee and more booze, the crowd quickly chose the latter. As if to demonstrate, Elyse grabbed the bottle from Chelsea’s hand and tilted it back, draining the last few ounces.

“More wine, more wine,” she began to chant softly, once she’d finished off the bottle.

As Kaylen pushed herself up from the floor, her feigned look of boredom barely hid her obvious relief.

“Okay, okay,” she said, moving toward the doors. “I’ll get us another bottle.”

“Two,” Jillian called out, just before the doors clicked shut. Then she whipped around toward me.

“Thanks a lot, Amelia,” she said, dragging out my name sarcastically.

I shrugged, unbothered by the fact that I’d spoiled Jillian’s plans. It was just too bad if she momentarily hated me for it. I’d lost too many friendships to let Jillian ruin one of her own. Besides, Kaylen might be needy and a little self-absorbed, but that didn’t mean she deserved cruelty.

There was enough of it in the afterlife, I’d learned.

Oblivious to my motives, Jillian turned back to her friends, effectively cutting me out of the conversation. I shook my head and smiled.

Oh, Jillian. You are nothing if not yourself.

I settled against the foot of my chair, satisfied to listen in silence for a while. Whether or not I would make friends with these girls tonight, perhaps I’d found an ally in Kaylen.

Or at least I thought I had. Less than sixty seconds after Kaylen returned, passed the stolen wine to her friends, and flopped back into her place in the circle, she turned on me with a wide smile.

“Truth or dare, Amelia.”

My eyes narrowed as I stared back at her. If I was being really honest, I’d thought that Kaylen herself would give me the biggest break, considering what I’d just done for her. But no such luck.

Though I didn’t know her exact question, I knew its inevitable subject: the boy I loved; the boy I’d been through hell for, almost literally.

It should have been an easy choice. I should have picked truth, and then lied like crazy. Fibbed my way through the dark secrets about Joshua’s Seer heritage and my undead status. Provided some vague answers, like “yeah, he’s a good kisser,” or “no, we haven’t talked about what will happen to us after graduation.”

Instead, I lowered my head and flashed my darkest smile.

“Dare, Kaylen. I choose dare.”

Chapter
FIVE

O
bviously, Kaylen hadn’t anticipated my response. She sputtered a bit, floundering to think up an appropriate challenge for a girl she barely knew, and secretly envied. Finally, after exchanging a few pleading looks with her friends, she settled on an old staple.

“It’s almost midnight, so I guess . . . I dare you to summon Bloody Mary in the mirror.” She glanced around the theater, trying to find the right venue, and then pointed to the powder bath. “In there. So we can hear you chant her name.”

I had to choke back a laugh.

My dare is to summon a
ghost
? One that doesn’t even exist?

Instead of outright mocking the dare, I put on my most intimidated face. “I don’t know, Kaylen. That’s kind of a creepy game.”

Beside me, I could see Jillian roll her eyes; she knew as well as I did that a little spinning and chanting in the dark didn’t scare me. Kaylen, however, was fooled: she preened and smiled.

“That’s the dare, Amelia. Unless you want to take it back, and answer a few questions.”

This time, I didn’t have to fake my reaction. “No, that’s okay. Bloody Mary’s just fine by me.”

I paused in the doorway of the bath, locked eyes with Jillian, and tried not to grin. Then I ducked inside and pushed the door shut behind me.

I just stood there for almost a full minute, shaking my head at the idiocy of this task. Most of these girls probably hadn’t played Bloody Mary in years. I couldn’t remember, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t played it in several
decades
.

Still, when I heard someone call out, “The lights are still on,” I flipped the switch.

Even with the thin strip of light filtering in from under the door, the room was surprisingly dark. I could just barely see the outline of my face in the mirror.

I shouted to the girls outside, “How many times am I supposed to spin?”

After a pause, someone answered, “Thirteen.”

“Thirteen?”
My eyes shot open. “I’ll get dizzy and throw up.”

“That’s the point,” someone else said, followed by a chorus of giggles.

I groaned loudly. I suppose this was the true torture of the dare: self-induced nausea in a stranger’s bathroom.

Hurray for girly bonding time.

With a heavy sigh, I brushed the lip of the sink with my fingertips and closed my eyes again. Then I began to turn slowly, using the smooth porcelain edge of the sink to guide my spins.

One
, I counted in my head, while calling, “Bloody Mary,” loud enough for the other girls to hear.

That first chant incited another rash of laughter outside the door, but soon I was too occupied by the task of staying upright to listen. Spinning in tight, measured circles proved much harder than I’d thought. By the fourth repetition, my feet began to tangle; by the sixth, my head starting spinning in full force; by the eighth, I wasn’t even sure if I could keep myself vertical.

Nine
, I counted, starting a new circle. As I spun, I fumbled for the sink’s edge but lost my grip before it could steady me.

Ten.

I tried to plant my palm against a wall for a moment’s support, but my hand slipped and bumped roughly against the next wall in my rotation.

Eleven.

Maybe I’d tried too hard to ignore the girls outside the door. Or maybe I’d grown too dizzy to hear them. Those were the only reasonable explanations for why they’d suddenly stopped talking. Why they’d stopped making any noise at all. But that wasn’t possible . . . was it?

Twelve.

Actually, it
was
possible. The other girls had definitely stopped giggling or talking. I couldn’t hear the droning background noise of the theater’s surround sound, either. It was as if the world outside had gone weirdly silent while I spun.

In my final, dizzy rotation, I felt the strangest sense that—even in the unnatural quiet—something waited. Something watched.

Thirteen.

“Bloody Mary,” I whispered, ending my last turn with a desperate grab at the sink.

My feet skidded to an awkward stop and I bent over the basin, sucking in deep breaths as I tried to suppress a sudden wave of nausea. Below me, the drain seemed to circle itself, spinning and spinning around the center of the bowl. The sight of it made me even dizzier, so I looked up instead.

The new view wasn’t much of an improvement. My face moved in the mirror, shifting from one corner to the other. Fractured pairs of eyes danced like bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope: green on the left side, green on the right; green above, green below.

Gray in the middle.

My vision abruptly corrected itself and I stumbled backward, away from the face in the mirror. Mostly because it wasn’t mine.

The pale skin and crew-cut hair; the cold, soulless gray eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses—that was Kade LaLaurie, smiling back at me from the place in the mirror where my face should have been.

Kade, the murderer; the crazy person; the dead guy who should have currently occupied a dark corner in hell instead of this bathroom mirror.

His nasty grin widened as he held one finger to his lips, soundlessly telling me to keep quiet.

As if I could even muster the will to scream right now.

I thought briefly about calling forth my glow. Even if I didn’t really understand how it worked, it hadn’t failed me before—especially when I’d needed it to incinerate demons. But a specter on the other side of a bathroom mirror? I had no idea how to fight such a thing.

Still, something about Kade’s continued, mocking smile helped me find my voice.

“What do you want?”

My whisper sounded harsher and stronger than I’d expected. Hearing it, Kade dropped his smile. With a cold glare, he cocked his head to one side and scrutinized me. I don’t know exactly what he saw, but his smile returned. He lifted one finger to the interior of the glass and tapped it ever so slightly.

Assuming that a fight would follow, I braced myself. But instead of attacking me, Kade suddenly vanished behind a pane of frost. The entire mirror iced over, hiding him from view until I couldn’t even see the obscured outline of his figure.

For a moment, nothing else happened.

Then slowly, letters began to appear in the frost, traced there by an invisible finger. As I watched, the letters scrawled backward to form words, starting with the bottom of some message and moving toward its beginning. Nothing about it made any sense until the last word completed itself.

At that point, I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing.

In even, flawlessly aligned block letters, the message read:

YOU

OR THEM.

ONE DIES PER WEEK UNTIL YOU JOIN US.

I understood its meaning perfectly: the message came from the darkness itself.

From hell.

Before my mind could process this fully—before I even had a chance to breathe—the ice melted, crashing onto the sink and floor in one noisy wave.

My feet were soaked, my hands were shaking, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the mirror. Kade had vanished, leaving nothing but the image of a pale, terrified girl in his place.