Revelation (Private 8)

them and covering the entire floor. My bed was unmade, pillows on the floor as well. My closet

was open and half the clothes inside had been ripped from the hangers. The Chloe bag had been

tossed in the corner, unclasped and upside down. Two of the three posters Constance had given

me had been slashed in half and the third hung from one sorry tack over my bed. Even the photo

of Scott and me hadn't come through unscathed. The glass was broken and the frame cracked.

I was going to kill Ivy. I was going to kill her.

My hands had just curled into fists when I noticed that all my CDs were fanned out across the

desk, some of them having tumbled to the floor.

CDs. Wait a second. CDs.

Maybe this wasn't Ivy's handiwork after all.

I grabbed the Chloe bag and righted it, then yanked open the small, inside pocket. It was empty.

"Amberly," I said through my teeth. "You little bitch."

She hadn't found the Billings disc, which, of course, didn't exist. But she had managed to find her

precious Carma Card. Plus what was left of my Billings fund money. Both were gone from their

hiding place inside the Chloe bag.

184

My heart rate started to return to normal as my brain accepted the fact that this had not been the

work of my stalker. There was nothing Cheyenne-related about this particular attack. No. Amberly

had done this. The pointless destruction had her immature stamp all over it. Apparently, this was

her idea of "doing things the difficult way."

I groaned as I looked around at the disaster area that was my room, hating the fact that Amberly

had--even in a tiny way--gotten the better of me. Part of me wanted to storm right over to Billings

and steal the stupid Carma Card right back, just to prove a point, but I knew that was never going

to happen. No one over there was going to let me through the front door, let alone allow me to

ransack my old room. I hated that Amberly had managed to get into my room and mess with me,

but there was nothing I could do about it now. I wasn't going to let that twit ruin the rest of my

day--the day on which Ivy might finally be arrested, the day on which I might finally get through to

Noelle and Josh.

No. I was just going to have to deal. And hopefully, by the end of the night, this mess would turn

out to be just a blip in an otherwise perfect day.