Ominous (Private 13)

“Nobody planted this, Noelle. Eliza Williams may have been crazy, but she wrote these pages,” I said. “Whether or not any of this really happened, she believed that it happened.”

Noelle glanced at me, her skin suddenly waxen. My experiment had clearly scared her. She took a step back, groaned, and covered her face with her hands.

“If you want to believe all of this, then you should probably have all the facts,” she said. Her hands dropped, leaving behind momentary red fingerprints on her pale skin.

“What facts?”

“Well, there’s something else,” Noelle said. She looked at the pages and the book instead of at me, and tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat all casual. As if we were discussing the latest issue of Vogue. “And you’re not gonna like it.”

My heart hit my toes. Suddenly I realized the dorm had gone silent. Everyone had fled but us.

“What?” I said.

“Catherine White? This person who turned into some thing that cursed our family?” Noelle said, looking me in the eye. “She was a distant relative of Ariana’s.”

“Yes, Vienna, all bodyguards are welcome,” Noelle said into her cell that night, rolling her eyes over her shoulder at me as she sat down on the chaise in front of her personal fireplace. “Okay. See you soon.”

She ended the call and tossed the phone onto the settee next to her.

“That’s everyone,” she said, sitting back as if exhausted.

We’d just called all of the Billings Girls—including Missy, Constance, and London—most of whom were staying somewhere in the city, and asked them to come over. Ivy had been on her way to her home in Boston but had told her driver to turn the car around. Kiki, who lived in California, was staying at her aunt’s place in Brooklyn, and Amberly’s parents had put her up in a suite at the Waldorf with a pair of armed guards, and her mom was on her way out from Seattle via private jet to be with her.

“Missy was the hardest sell,” Noelle said. “But she’s coming.”

“Good,” I said flatly.

I dropped the magazine I’d been furling in my hand onto the bed and walked over to sit on the edge of the cushioned settee. Noelle’s bedroom, on the second-from-the-top floor of her parents’ opulent Upper East Side home, was roughly the square footage of the entire Billings House—or at least it seemed to be. Aside from the huge bedroom with its four-poster bed and massive fireplace, her suite had its own kitchen and bath, a living room, and a closet that could have fit both my bedroom and my brother’s inside of it. Right now we were lounging in the cozy alcove adjacent to the foot of her bed, a real fire raging in the brick fireplace as snowflakes began to swirl outside the huge windows overlooking Central Park. With four guards placed throughout the house at her father’s orders, I felt completely safe, and with the insane spread of food the cook had sent up for us upon arrival, I also felt cared for. Not that I had been able to eat a single bite.

“What are you going to say to them when they get here?” Noelle asked, crooking her arm behind her head and leaning back into it.

“I’m going to tell them what I found,” I said. “One dream could have been a fluke. Two were a coincidence, but three?”

“So you really think you’re psychic?” Noelle said doubtfully.

“I don’t know, but I know that if I dream about your death next I’m going to warn you,” I shot back.

We both turned to look at the fire. I watched the flames dance and thought of the flickering candles in Eliza’s story.

“I have to ask you something,” I said.

“I had a feeling,” Noelle replied patiently.

“If you knew all along that Catherine White was related to Ariana … why didn’t you tell me?”

Noelle blew out a sigh and sat up straight. She crossed her legs at the knee and placed her hands on either side of her on the delicate brocade of the chaise.

“Reed, it was ten million years ago,” she said slowly. “I didn’t think it mattered. To be honest with you, I’m still not sure that it does.”

I let that one roll off my back. “But how do you even know?”

Noelle pressed her fingertips into the corners of her eyes for a moment, as if fending off a nasty headache. Then she stood up and walked closer to the fire, crossing her arms over her chest. She stared down into the flames for so long, I thought she’d forgotten I’d asked a question.

“At the end of our junior year, Ariana did a genealogy project for her sociology class,” Noelle began. “She was always into that stuff and she took the project seriously—a lot more seriously than everyone else. While she was doing her research, she found out that her great-great-grandfather’s sister, Catherine White, had gone to Billings at the turn of the century.” She paused and looked up at the painting above the fireplace, a colorful, abstract rendition of the original Billings House that Noelle’s father had commissioned for her a couple of years back. “I’ll never forget how excited she was. She came running back to Billings like she’d just found out she was descended from royalty or something.” Noelle looked at me over her shoulder. “She figured the relationship proved she was a legacy so she could get an invite to the Legacy the next year.”

I narrowed my eyes, thinking back to all the invitation and plus-one drama last fall. “But she didn’t.”

“No. It turned out you had to be a direct line,” Noelle said, sounding almost sad. “A great-great-great-aunt wouldn’t cut it.”