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y the same girl who helped me so turned around and ran.

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left the Billings Girls. Were they really going to call security on me?

If they did, I was out on my ass.

These could very well be my last moments at Easton.

No. There had to be another way in. There had to be. All I had to SMOOTH CRIMINAL

do was find it. And use it to get in. And find my way to Dramble’s office in the pitch black dark and . . .

I better get going.

I stepped backward and tripped over a spigot in the ground. My

palm caught on a rough patch of wall as I went down and I flinched in One single light flickered above the arched entryway to Hell Hall. It pain. I was about to shove myself up again when I saw it. A small win-was a thick wooden door with one long, pebbled-glass window in

dow set low in the ground. It was about a foot and a half tall and four the center. I looked around and took the steps to the door two at a feet wide and looked as if it were made of two sliding panes of glass. My time, hoping for a miracle. One tug on the wrought-iron handle

heart took a hopeful leap. Basement windows. Of course. I had seen told me I had no such luck. The place was locked up tight.

Kiran and her Dreck boy use one before. Apparently this was Easton’s

“Shit,” I said under my breath.

weak link, probably one of those things everyone knew about at this Back down the stairs, I raced into the darkness along the side of school. At least if they had been here more than a few weeks.

the building and felt slightly safer. At least I was no longer right out I crawled over the cold dirt toward the window, the branches of in the open for all the world to see and expel. But as I inspected the the bushes that disguised them scratching at my face. I placed my cold stone walls I realized how very screwed I was. The first floor hand flat against the glass, said a quick prayer, and tried to slide the windows were set high above my head. I slid between two azalea

pane aside. Nothing happened. I whimpered and tried again.

bushes and stood on my toes, reaching for one of the windows. My Nothing. I dug my fingernails between the edge of the glass and the fingertips just grazed the lower sill. There was absolutely no way I window frame and pulled with all my might, holding my breath.

could get up there, even if one of them happened to be unlocked.

Two seconds later I fell backward, nearly ripping three of my

How in God’s name could anyone classify this mission as cake?

fingernails free. The pain was excruciating.

This was impossible.

Screw them. Screw them and their test. Let Ariana fail. Let her see I glanced at my watch. Already four minutes had gone by since I what it’s like.

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But even as I thought it I knew I would never let them down. I