Ominous (Private 13)

The two of us started to dig, while Ivy tucked her coat beneath her legs and sat down on a wide, exposed tree root to watch. The ground, frozen solid, made the work slow and frustrating. Every now and then a hard jab with the shovel would yield only half an inch of silt. Still, every second I envisioned myself hitting pay dirt—imagined the point of my shovel hitting something hard and metallic—whatever it was Elizabeth Williams had supposedly sent me here to find. At some point clouds moved across the moon, darkening the woods around us, and Ivy had to flick on the two flashlights she’d grabbed from the emergency kit in our dorm. Soon my shoulders started to ache and my abs got tired of supporting my back. I wiped sweat from my brow, wondering when I’d gone from freezing to overheated.

“Reed?” Josh said. He leaned both hands atop the end of his shovel handle and looked up at me. He was standing in a ditch about four feet deep. There was a streak of dirt from his nose to his earlobe. “Can we stop now?”

I glanced at Ivy. She was shivering in the cold. “How long have we been doing this?”

“Two hours,” she said, without glancing at her watch. She sighed. “This sucks.”

“I know. I thought for sure we’d find something,” I said as Josh clawed his way out of the hole. “Maybe,” I added, realizing how nutso I sounded. But then, they were here with me, and they hadn’t even had the dream.

“Are you sure you’ve never been in this clearing before?” he asked, taking a deep breath. “Maybe you dreamed about it because you’ve seen it yourself, not because—”

“Not because the ghost of Elizabeth Williams wanted me to find it?” It sounded beyond ridiculous, even to me. I couldn’t believe I’d led two of my best friends up here for nothing. “I’m so sorry, you guys. I feel like a complete—”

Just then, the clouds overhead parted, sending several shafts of moonlight down th

rough the branches of the trees. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something glint. Right in the center of one of the piles of dirt Josh and I had produced around the hole.

“Ivy! Shine one of the flashlights over there!”

“Where?” she asked, standing up at the urgency in my voice.

“There!” I pointed at a spot just to the left of Josh’s feet, between him and the trunk of the tree. Ivy did as she was told, and I lost all ability to breathe.

“Oh my God,” Ivy and I said at once.

Josh whirled around as if he expected Elizabeth to jump down from the tree and bite his neck. I quickly skirted the hole and dropped to my knees next to the hint of gold. Using my aching fingers, I pushed the dirt aside until I’d uncovered a large, round pendant. I tugged it out by its chain and let the pendant lie flat in my palm. It was warm to the touch—odd, since it had been buried in frozen earth for who knew how long. An intricate design had been etched into the surface, and I tried to clear the grime away with my fingernail so I could make it out.

“What is it?” Josh asked, hovering over me.

Slowly I stood and polished the tarnished gold on my jacket. Finally I cleared enough of the dirt away to make out the design in the moonlight. Suddenly my head went light, and I reached out to grab Josh’s shoulder for support.

“What?” Josh asked again. “What is it?”

“It’s the same design,” I said, turning quickly to show it to Ivy.

Ivy brought her face low, her eyes hovering just over the swirling circle motif. “Exactly the same,” she said.

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on here?” Josh asked.

I looked up at him, my eyes shining even as my heart pounded with uncertainty and fear. “It’s the same design that’s etched into the cover of the book of spells.”

“So now you’re so desperate for good jewelry you’ll just wear any old thing you find in the dirt?” Noelle said as she sat down in her usual seat at the Billings table: last on the end, facing the door so she could see everyone coming and going. “If you really want something, I’m sure Daddy will get you whatever it is. He’s still waiting for you to call him back, by the way.”

I rolled my eyes and dropped my tray across from hers. The locket felt warm against my skin and it gleamed in the overhead lights, thanks to the vat of jewelry cleaner Ivy had soaked it in overnight.

“That’s all you have to say?” I asked, fingering the locket as I sat. “I tell you that the ghost of a Billings Girl led me to a necklace in the woods near the chapel, and all you can do is insult me?”

Noelle flicked her napkin into her lap and shook salt and pepper onto her sliced hard-boiled egg. One of the crystal shakers clinked against her gold ring. She hadn’t looked me in the eye in about five minutes.

“Noelle—”

“Reed, do you even hear yourself?” she asked finally, resting both wrists on the edge of the table. “You sound like a crazy person. You don’t want to tell anyone that we’re sisters, but you’re perfectly fine running around telling everyone that some dead person led you to a locket in the woods?”

My heart panged with some unidentifiable emotion and I touched the locket again. Just then Tiffany and Portia slid past us to sit in the next two chairs. Noelle shot me a warning look, clearly telling me to keep my mouth shut, as if I needed to be told. She was the only one I was interested in talking to about this.

“Wait until you see the centerpieces I designed for your party,” Noelle said, deftly switching to a more audience-friendly topic. “I’m going with a whole Pisces theme, and I found a guy who does floral centerpieces with tiny aquariums in the bottom of the vases. Real fish and everything.”

“Fabulous,” Portia said, lifting her hair over her shoulder.