“Great. You just jinxed us,” Kiki Rosen said, pausing on the third step of the Easton Chapel and turning around to look at the rest of us. A stiff breeze kicked up her hair, half of which she’d recently dyed neon-green. “We are so screwed.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled as Astrid hooked her arm through Kiki’s and dragged her inside. Together, the two of them looked like a colorful tear sheet from a comic book.

“Speaking of the chapel, Reed, when’s the next meeting of the BLS?” Tiffany Goulbourne asked quietly. She’d been bringing up the rear, scrolling through some photos on her camera with Rose Sakowitz. Tiffany was never without her camera, even though with her perfect warm brown skin, almost six-foot height, and perfect bod, she could have definitely been posing in front of one rather than shooting from behind one. She whipped out her BlackBerry as she approached, ready to type the meeting into her calendar. Tiffany had always been one of my more responsible friends, but unlike the rest of them, she seemed to be getting more organized the closer she got to graduation, instead of less. The other seniors had slowly started to slack, copying homework assignments or faking migraines to get out of class. But not Tiffany.

“We’re in need of some girl bonding,” Rose added, looking a little pale beneath her mass of red curls.

“Um . . . honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it.” I looked off across campus toward the woods around Easton, where the Billings chapel stood. Suddenly, I itched to skip morning chapel and dash over there. I wanted to check the place out, see if there was anything Noelle and I had missed last night—any more clues to what Elizabeth Williams and her friends had been doing with a Book of Spells almost a hundred years ago.

Ironic, considering that just a couple of days ago I’d been seriously pondering the idea of never coming back to this place. After Noelle had faked her own kidnapping, I’d all but decided I wouldn’t be returning to Easton Academy this semester. I was done with all the insanity, the selfishness, the entitlement. But then Mrs. Lange had explained that the whole thing had been her idea, and had lured me back here with all this mystery and talk of what was to come, and I’d fallen for it like a satellite plummeting back to Earth.

“Why don’t we do it tonight?” I suggested. “I’ll send out a text later.”

“A text about what?”

Josh appeared over Tiffany’s shoulder and her eyes bulged out like she was afraid we’d just been caught. What Tiffany didn’t know was that I’d already confided in Josh about our secret society—back when he’d been trying to help me figure out who’d snatched Noelle. She and Rose didn’t need to know that, though. I didn’t want them thinking I’d betrayed their trust just because Noelle had taken a spa sabbatical.

“Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about,” I joked, pulling him toward me. We touched noses and I smiled, inhaling that very particular Josh scent of evergreen soap and dried paint.

“I missed you,” he said.

“I missed you, too,” I replied.

“Ugh. Let’s go inside before we catch whatever cheesy grossness has sickened these two,” Noelle joked.

She and the other girls jogged up the marble steps as Josh and I kissed hello. He opened his coat and wrapped it around me along with his arms, nestling us together in a warm Josh-and-Reed cocoon. As I cuddled against him and deepened the kiss, I wondered how I ever could have imagined leaving here—leaving him. Next year, Josh would be off to college and we’d hardly ever see one another.

“We need to do something. Go somewhere,” Josh said quietly, pulling back. He lifted one hand and gently brushed his fingertips across my cheek. “How long has it been since we’ve gone on a date?”

I narrowed my eyes, pretending to think. “Since forever?”

“All right, then. With your permission, I’ll make a plan,” he said, touching his forehead to mine. “ASAP.”

“ASAP sounds good,” I replied.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Josh said suddenly.

My eyes popped open and I turned around. Headmaster Hathaway strode toward us from the direction of Hull Hall with Demetria Rosewell in tow. My first thought was, Double H is going to miss morning services. But I realized in the next second that this was not the pertinent fact here. Nor was Demetria the “she” to whom Josh had referred. Striding along behind them was Paige Ryan. The daughter of the person who had recently tried to murder me multiple times in St. Barth’s. Josh shot her a scowl as she walked by, but all she did was grin. A few steps past the chapel, she paused and looked behind her.

“Missy! Are you coming or not?” she asked.

Missy Thurber, my worst n

emesis at Easton, jumped away from Constance Talbot and London Simmons and scurried after her cousin Paige. She also gave me a grin as she hurried by, but hers held a lot more meaning. It was an “I know something you don’t know”grin.

My heart sunk inside my chest, and I looked back at Constance and London. The two of them turned and hustled inside, avoiding my eyes.

“What was that all about?” Josh asked, entwining his fingers with mine.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “And I don’t think I want to know.”

“I love the idea of a party to honor the seniors,” I told Amberly that night as we kicked back on the floor of the Billings Chapel. “Do you want to put a committee together?”

“Yes! I’d love a committee!” Amberly said, clapping her hands.

I could see a few of the girls wince at the idea of being roped in by Amberly and toiling under her direction, but it was her idea, so they’d just have to deal. We were just finishing up our meeting when Amberly had very formally presented a “piece of new business” as if we were at a board meeting, rather than sprawled out on silk pillows, chenille blankets, and fur throws in a deserted chapel. Rose had provided the refreshments tonight—gourmet cupcakes shipped in from New York City—and there were crumbs, sprinkles, and coconut shreds everywhere. Vienna Clarke groaned, her hand across her flat stomach, a bit of chocolate stuck to the corner of her mouth.

“Okay, if there are no other new points of business,” I said, “then I’d say we’re adjourned!”

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