Ominous (Private 13)

I hesitated, looking at him uncertainly. “Josh? What if she does look the same?”

His eyes clouded with concern. “Then … I don’t know.” He nodded at the book. “Page twenty-two.”

I hungrily skipped to the designated page, rushing by ancient print and grainy black-and-white photographs. When the book fell open to page twenty-two, I stopped. Because there, staring back at me from a sepia-toned photograph set in a large oval, was Elizabeth Williams. The dark hair, pulled back from her face. The creamy white skin. The almond-shaped eyes. Her expression was serious, more serious than I would have predicted. There was a slight smile on her lips, but sorrow in her eyes. Eyes that I knew would have been green if the photo were in color.

Because Elizabeth Williams was the girl from my dream.

Tentatively I touched my fingertips to the page, feeling the depth of her sorrow within my chest. Beneath the photo was the inscription ELIZABETH JUNE WILLIAMS and below that, one word, ELIZA. So she’d really been called Eliza. I liked it a lot more than Elizabeth. It was less stuffy somehow.

“The thing is …,” Josh said slowly, putting his arm behind me on the couch, pressing his hand into the cushions near my hip. “The thing is … she looks like you. A lot like

you.”

“Really?” I said, tearing my eyes from the photograph.

Whatever Josh saw in my eyes made him blink. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s her.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as we both looked down at the picture again. “Reed. I have to tell you something.”

“What?” I asked, breathless.

“The other day, when I said I had a nightmare and you were in it? And that I woke up from it the same time you woke up from yours?” he said.

I pressed my tongue into the top of my mouth. “Yeah?”

“That wasn’t a joke,” he said. “I actually did have that dream. I just … didn’t want to freak you out.”

My head went light and fuzzy and it took a moment for me to focus. “What was the dream about?”

Josh slumped back into the couch and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I don’t remember. I know you were in trouble. I think someone was … trying to kill you.”

My heart dropped to my toes as his hands dropped from his eyes.

“You screamed to me for help, and then I woke up.”

I breathed in and out, trying to normalize my body. Trying to stop the rushing blood, the screaming thoughts, the terror and—oddly—the excitement that seized my heart at once. I turned my head and stared down at Eliza Williams, silently begging her to tell me what it all meant.

“Okay. That’s … okay,” I heard myself say slowly.

Josh sat forward again and looked me in the eye. “What the hell’s going on, Reed?”

I touched the locket around my neck, the metal suddenly so warm it reddened my fingertips. “I wish I knew.”

“She really does look like you,” Ivy confirmed, looking from the open yearbook to me, then back down again. We were sitting in the center of my dorm room, her with the BLS book and me with the book of spells, comparing the two and trying to figure out which dates in the BLS book corresponded with which spells. It was amazing how careful Eliza had been. Nowhere in the BLS book did it mention spells or witchcraft or anything other than regular old meetings, gatherings, parties, and community service projects that the secret society had done. “You have the same jawline. And the eyes … Do you think you could be related?”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

Because that’s what the old me would have said. The one who was a product of two no-names from Pennsylvania. But now that I knew I was a Lange, who knew where the hell I’d come from—who my ancestors might be? Still, Noelle had never mentioned being related to Eliza Williams before. She would have claimed that connection if it was there, wouldn’t she? I took the book from Ivy, closed it, and set it aside on the floor. She went back to studying the BLS book and I went back to the book of spells.

“Did you notice there are some pages missing from this?” Ivy asked, turning the book toward me on the floor. I leaned forward to see the spot she’d opened to and, sure enough, there were a few jagged tears down the center of the book. Carefully, I ran a fingertip over their edges, feeling a shivery sense of apprehension.

“How did I not notice that before?” I asked.

“I don’t know. You’ve practically been living this book,” Ivy said. She shrugged and lifted it back onto her lap. “Whatever it was, it was written by Eliza. Her handwriting’s on the pages before and after,” she said, lifting her shoulders again. “Guess it was something she didn’t want anyone to read.”

I slumped back against the side of my bed, feeling—ridiculously—betrayed. “Yeah. I guess not.”