Poor Little Dead Girls (8 page)

There were two, both dressed in black with hoods pulled low over their faces. They just stood there, staring at her as she tried to untangle herself. She tried to yell, but the sound died in her throat, nothing more than a sad, strangled whimper. One of them laughed.

She got to her feet and turned and ran deeper into the woods, falling forward blindly with her breath pounding in her ears. She couldn’t tell if she was being chased — she just ran.

Finally she saw a glow of moonlight and broke through the trees onto the path. She doubled over, heaving and shaking in the dark. She tried to tell herself she had imagined them — she was delirious from the run, from the heat and the dark — but her hands were still trembling as she forced herself to put her headphones back in. She took a long, shaky breath, bouncing a few times on her toes. Then, just as she turned to run back to Keating, she felt a hand close down on her arm. This time she screamed.

“Whoa, whoa, relax!”

The hand on her arm was gone as quickly as it had come, and she leapt back, bringing her fists up in front of her face like weapons. She realized she was shouting nonsense, like she was trying to intimidate a mountain lion. As her vision cleared, her jaw dropped open and her cocked fists wilted against her sides.

Her attacker, who was neither wearing a hood nor, actually, wearing much of anything, was cowering in front of her, holding up his hands like he was afraid she would shoot. In that moment, he looked even more terrified than she did.

“Damn it, I’m so sorry,” he blurted, taking another step away from her. “I wasn’t — I’m not — look, I go to Graff. My name’s Jeremy.”

“Holy creepy stalker in the woods, Jeremy,” she yelled, jerkily wiping the cold sweat from her forehead. “You almost just gave me a heart attack.”

Her heart was still pounding, and she could feel the adrenaline pulsing through her veins. “What the hell were you doing? I think I’m having heart palpitations — for real. If my left arm starts going numb, it’s your ass.”

He bit his lip like he was trying to hold back a laugh. “Deal.”

He jerked his head back down the path. “I just came from Cranston-Wim. I tried to call your name, but I think you had your headphones in.” He motioned to the ear buds that now hung limp around her neck.

“It’s okay, I just … wow, I really thought I was about to get dragged off into the woods and chopped up into pieces.”

“I know, I’m an idiot. I saw you run this way like half an hour ago, though, and you never came back even though you left this.” He held up her gray sweatshirt. “It sounds so stupid now, but I was kinda worried. It’s so dark out here.”

She mumbled a thanks and took it back. She was glad he couldn’t see her blush.

“What are you doing, anyway?” he said.

She sighed. “Trying to get ready for this damn running test. I’m new, and I don’t like running on unfamiliar turf.” She took a deep breath and looked down at her shoes. “Sorry about being so awkward earlier, by the way. I just didn’t expect to see anyone else on the field.”

He smiled. “No worries. It’s Sadie, right? The transfer from Oregon?”

“Yup. Portland. You?”

“San Diego. I’m dreading our test, too. Everyone tells me it’s brutal.”

“Is yours on Monday?”

“Yeah.”

“Ours, too.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Sadie glanced at her watch.

“Well, I should really head back.” She motioned toward the path. “But it was nice to meet you. I guess I’ll probably see you on the field? Next time try not to unwittingly cause my premature death.”

He smiled widely, and she felt her stomach flip.

“Definitely.” He reached up and ran a hand through his hair. “At least I hope so. Good luck on Monday.” He held up his hand in a wave and then turned back toward Graff.

She watched as he ducked under a few tree branches, her stomach now flipping around like a kid three doses behind on his Ritalin. She put her headphones in and turned back toward Keating. Double crap.

“He said what?” Jessica screeched.

Sadie grabbed a striped pillow off of Jessica’s bed and sat down, cross-legged, with it in her lap. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Oh screw that, Sadie. You’re trying so hard not to smile right now.”

Sadie grinned and hid her face in the pillow. “Okay, fine — it was pretty cute. But of course, I made a total ass of myself.”

“No way. He said he was worried about you and that he hoped he would see you soon, so you basically have a date to the next formal already. Un-effing-believable.” She crossed her arms and pouted.

Sadie swatted her with the pillow. “For all I know he’ll turn out to be a complete douchebag who has pet names for both of his balls and talks about himself in the third person.”

Jessica grinned. “Well, he does go to Graff.” She yawned. “Okay, get out of my face already. I need to get some sleep. You should too. First practice is at 9
A.M.
tomorrow. Breakfast at 7:45?”

“Sure.”

“See you in the morning,” Jessica called as Sadie shut the door behind her.

She padded back to her room. The hallway lights were dimmed, but she passed Madison as she was huddled in one of the window bays talking on a bright pink phone. Sadie waved, but Madison just frowned and tapped the face of her diamond-encrusted watch.

Trix and Gwen were both in bed when she got back from the showers, and she could hear one of them mumbling in her sleep. She sat down on her bed and cracked open her laptop to check her e-mail. She had one new message, but she didn’t recognize the sender. It was from an anonymous Keating address, just a jumble of letters and numbers, and the subject line was a single word: Fate. Even stranger was the cryptic message inside.

Sadie’s eyebrows slid toward the ceiling. If this was some kind of motivational message from the school, they really needed to work on their delivery. She was tempted to be creeped out, but she was just too tired and happy to care. It was probably a virus anyway, like one of those scams that e-mails everyone you’ve ever met an ad for generic Viagra and penis enlargement pills. She shut the laptop and lay back on the bed.

She hugged the covers close around her body, closed her eyes, and imagined herself back on the beach with Jeremy. She curled herself tighter into a ball and buried her face in her pillow, holding the image in her mind. Finally, she drifted off to sleep, the faint smell of salt still lingering in her nostrils.

When something woke her hours later, she assumed it was the twins. They had a habit of disappearing right after lights out and then showing up back in bed right around dawn, smelling like smoke and sweaty cologne. She blinked into the darkness and lay still, listening for their slurred whispers and sloppily stifled giggles, but all she heard was the sound of her own breathing and the slow creak of weight moving across old wooden floors.

She stopped blinking and opened her eyes wide, waiting for her pupils to dilate. The room was quiet again, and she told herself she had imagined it. She was still a little freaked out about what had happened in the woods, and she knew she was probably half asleep and dreaming. She closed her eyes and willed her body to unclench, focusing on letting each of her limbs sink fully into the soft mattress. She took a deep breath and tried to let her mind go blank.

Before she could exhale, the blankets and sheets were ripped off of her body. She opened her mouth to scream, but a heavy hand clamped down across her jaw, forcing her head back into the pillow. She tried to kick, squirm — anything to get the hands off of her — but they only pressed harder. As she struggled, a single thought ran through her head: Soon you will know your fate. She tasted something sharp and metallic just before the dark closed in.

At first, all she felt was cold. She was sitting on something hard — a bench, maybe — and her hands were tied behind her back. She was blindfolded and gagged, and some kind of strap was wound tightly across her rib cage. She could feel a rigid cuff wrapped around her upper arm, and the air around her smelled old and stale, like each breath she drew in hadn’t been moved in a long time.

She squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to wake up. Stuff like this only happened on detective shows and in cheesy CIA movies, and she was pretty sure some hot, muscle-y actor wasn’t about to burst in with a SWAT team and rescue her. Some hysterical part of her almost wanted to laugh, but the rest was so terrified she could barely breathe.

She felt a puff of air on her neck, and she stiffened. She told herself it was the wind and repeated the word in her head, over and over, as if she could will it to be true. Then she heard the voice, just inches from her right ear.

“Just relax,” it purred. It was male and patronizing. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

In her mind she was screaming.

She had seen enough low-budget horror movies to know those words usually led straight to death by chainsaw or pickaxe. The screams trickled out as pathetic whimpers, strangled by the wad of coarse cloth pressing against her tongue.

The voice began again. “At least, it’s less messy that way.” It laughed, and she screamed again in frustration.

“Just answer the questions, and you’ll get to go home.”

She stopped.

“Much better. I’m going to take your gag and blindfold off. Promise you won’t scream?” The voice waited. She paused, trembling. Nodded.

She felt movement behind her head as someone untied her gag, then her blindfold. As the fabric fell away, she looked around frantically, searching for some sign of where she was. The room was dark, but there was a single, weak bulb hanging a few feet over her head. It cast a small circle of light around her, and beyond it she could just barely make out shapes in the darkness. There was something large and bulky in front of her, but nothing moved.

She craned her neck and looked behind her, but the voice and hands had slunk back into the shadows.

“Hold still,” it said. “Look straight ahead. Speak only when spoken to.”

She turned and faced the hulking shape, squinting into the darkness. She felt strangely calm now, and she wondered if this was what it felt like to be in shock.

Another bulb switched on ahead of her, then another, and a third, and things started to take shape. The mound in front of her was a large podium, set high on a dais three steps above her. There were three figures behind it, all in black robes with hoods pulled low over their faces. She blinked her eyes rapidly in disbelief. Either she was hallucinating, or she had been kidnapped by a satanic cult that watched way too many horror movies. She figured the odds were about even.

Then the center figure spoke. “Welcome, Sadie Marlowe. You have been summoned to prove your worth in front of the tribunal. We are the Moirae.”

Sadie’s jaw almost hit her chest. The voice was young. And female. The whole thing was some kind of sick joke — hazing, or just a really elaborate prank. Fear gave way to simmering anger.

“I am Clo — ”

“What the hell is a Morray? Someone who celebrates Halloween all year round?” The words were out before Sadie could stop herself.