From Bad to Cursed (27 page)

D
RIPPING WATER, INSULTED
; a pipe leaking inside a wall somewhere.

The distant, dim orange glow of a night-light.

A headache like a pod of dolphins slamming up against the inside of my skull.

And I was tied to a chair.

Nope, wasn’t shaping up to be a great day.

I let my chin drop and noticed that I was wearing an unfamiliar dress. Then my thoughts came into focus and I realized that I did recognize it. It was one of Megan’s. And on my feet were a pair of Mrs. Wiley’s best shoes—not hand-me-downs, but a pair plucked fresh from her closet. I couldn’t see my fingernails, but I had a feeling they were immaculately painted. I could smell powder and lipstick—presumably on my face—and determined that part of the facial tightness I was attributing to my headache was due to the pull of one of Megan’s hairstyles.

I was dressed for a party. A really important party. But I was still woozy enough to take it in stride. I guess we found lucky number twenty-two, I thought.

That sobered me up.

Because if we were having a party, that meant someone was going to die.

And what about Kasey? Would she come looking for me? What would they do to her?

I was in a small, windowless room. I didn’t bother screaming for help—I didn’t want to attract Megan and Lydia’s attention any sooner than I needed to. Anyway, I figured, they would never have risked putting me in a room within shouting distance of the neighbors.

Behind me, a door creaked open. I tried to let my head fall limply against my chest, but whoever it was had seen the movement.

“Well, good afternoon, Miss Sunshine!” It was Megan.

I didn’t answer.

“Are you ready to celebrate?” she asked. “It’s going to be so much fun.”

I flexed my wrists and felt the pull of tape against my skin.

“How can we graduate if we don’t have enough people?” I asked.

“Who says we don’t?” Megan said, her voice frosting over. “Cheer up, Lex. I brought you a friend.”

I heard the sound of someone being shoved. The door slammed shut, and there was a faint, offended “Ow.”

I knew that
Ow
.

“Kasey?” I cried, straining to look over my shoulder.

“Lexi?!?” She came barreling across the room and hugged me from behind, chair and all. “Oh my God, are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m all right,” I said. “Can you undo my hands?”

“Yes,” she said, going to work. “But tell me what happened! Is Megan...?”

“Evil? Yeah, basically.” I craned my neck to watch her fingers fumble with the tape. “Why are you here, Kase? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, eyes wide. “I called Megan to see if she knew where you were, and she said to come to Lydia’s. So I came, and then they told me you were in the basement, and I was like,
why
, and Megan was like,
see for yourself
, and then she pushed me in here and told me to talk some sense into you.”

I closed my eyes. At least they hadn’t hurt her.

“Lexi, what’s happening? Megan said there’s a Sunshine Club meeting. The last one. What’s going on?”

“It’s graduation day,” I said. “Listen to me, Kasey. You have to play along, do whatever it takes to get away from here before the meeting. It’s not safe for you here.”

“No way. I’m not leaving you,” she said. “Every time you do something alone, disaster. So no. Forget it.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “If they learn the truth, they’ll kill you.”

“But they don’t know, do they?” she asked. “And how would they find out?”

She had a point. They would never have let her in to see me if they suspected she was less than perfectly devoted to Aralt.

I shifted my focus to my hands. “Are you done yet?” I asked. “Maybe there’s something lying around that you could use to cut the tape.”

“Lexi, please. I know there’s something you don’t want me to know about. But whatever they want you to do, just do it. It’s not a big deal. If you got hurt, what would I tell Mom?”

“It
is
a big deal, though,” I said. “Someone’s going to get killed, Kasey.”

“Well…so what?” she said. “It’s not you or me.”

So what?
“What do you mean, it’s not me or you? How would you know?”

“I mean—it doesn’t
have
to be you or me. It could be anybody.”

I gave my hands a tug.

They were no closer to being free than when she’d come in.

“Kasey,” I said, “come here.”

A pause, and a rustling behind me. “We don’t have time for all this, Lexi.”

“Just come around,” I said. “I want to look at you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just want to see something.”

Her voice turned petulant. “There’s nothing to see—”

“Kasey!”

She snapped like a rubber band. “Stop bossing me around, Lexi! I’m trying to save you! Save all of us!”

“Come here.”

She came around and knelt in front of me. “Why won’t you let me help you?” she asked. “I’ve been through this once, remember? This is different. You can’t just smash up a doll and be a hero this time.”

“We can’t let a person die, Kase,” I said. And even if we could—it wouldn’t set us free from Aralt. We’d still be his—his to control, his to feed from, for the rest of our lives.

Kasey’s face fell. “I can’t lose you,” she said, lowering her face and crying softly. “You’re the best big sister in the world. Please just do what they say.”

For a moment, I was touched. Beyond touched. I looked at the shining hair on top of my sister’s head and watched her raise her eyes to me.

Her blackened eyes. Her gray-streaked face.

“You took the oath,” I said.

“So what if I did?”
she exploded, springing to her feet.

The room fell silent.

She drew in a deep breath and let it out evenly. “It’s not my fault,” she said. “They figured it out.”

“How?” I asked. “Without you coming out and
tell
ing
them, how would they figure it out?”

Slowly, she turned around and lifted her hair, revealing her neck. Drawn across it was a long, dark slash, like a sinister smile.

She turned back, her eyes crinkled with something like an apology. “I panicked,” she said. “I knew I wouldn’t heal, so I confessed before they did anything…serious.”

I closed my eyes.

A dark ball of anger was born inside me. Megan and Lydia had invited my baby sister over and ambushed her, held her down and tortured her. And then bullied her into swearing allegiance to Aralt.

I’ll kill them
. I let the thought fill my head for a dark, satisfying moment, and then I pulled myself back.

“But it’s okay! It’s fine. I’m so much happier now. Look, Lexi,” she said. “I’m all for taking a stand—in general—but what choice do you have?”

My chest felt heavy. In the stuffiness of the closed-off room, it hurt to breathe.

No choice.

I had no choice.

“And when you think about it…” she said, “isn’t it almost a little exciting?”

In the dim light, her expectant smile was as sweet as antifreeze.

She reached her hands out, rested them on my knees. I gazed down at the ring on her finger, expecting another one of our shiny gold bands. But what I saw instead was something older—much older.

Around the circle of it snaked a carved gold braid, and its surface was a haze of soft scratches.

A hundred and sixty-seven years’ worth of scratches.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

Kasey glanced at it. “Lydia had it lying around. She said it belonged to a friend of the family who died.”

I closed my eyes tightly.

“For God’s sake, don’t cry,” Kasey said. “You’ll wreck your makeup.”

“Get out,” I whispered.

She drew back. “What?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Rude, Lexi!” She sniffed. “Do you know how much easier this is going to make our lives? Do you think it would have been easy for me to get into college with attempted murder on my record?”

“Go,” I said.

“
Fine
. But if you think I’m untying you now, you’re crazy!” she said, storming out and slamming the door behind her. From the other room, I heard her voice rise. “She’s being
totally
unreasonable!”

A second later, the door opened and Megan stuck her head in.

“I just want you to know,” she said, “that the meeting’s going to start in a half hour.”

“So?” I asked.

“Come on, Lex,” she said, coming inside. To my surprise, she came up behind me and began cutting the tape from my hands. “Think about it. You should be thanking Lydia and me. We took care of the Kasey problem for you. Now you can go through with it and ensure this unbelievable life for you
and
your sister.”

I flexed my hands in front of me, trying to get the feeling back in my fingers.

“I know how much you care about her,” she said quietly. “If you want to know the truth, Lex, I’ve been kind of jealous. I’ll never have that bond.”

I focused on rubbing my wrists.

“Maybe that’s why you weren’t as devoted to Aralt as I was,” she said.

My head jerked up. “I was plenty devoted to Aralt,” I said. “I just decided that free will is more important to me than getting everything I want.”

Hostility didn’t faze Megan. She just gave me a puzzled smile. “Aralt is all about free will,” she said. “You make your own choices. That thing with Carter was all you. You wanted the perfect boyfriend. So Aralt delivered him to you.”

My definition of the perfect boyfriend didn’t include stalking, but I didn’t say so. There was too much truth in what she’d said. Carter had been fine until I started manipulating him.

“One way or another, you’re going to read the spell,” Megan said. “One way or another, you’ll realize how important Aralt is. The mature thing would be to stop whining and start being thankful for all of the things he’s doing for you, even if you don’t deserve it.”

“I’m not doing it,” I said.

She sighed. “So ungrateful.”

“Tashi’s dead,” I said. “And Lydia killed her. I can’t let anyone else die.”

Megan shook her head. “Well, then, the solution should be perfectly clear to you.”

I looked up at her.

“
You
read the spell twice,” she said. “Sacrifice yourself.”

“That’s
suicide
.”

“Suicide, murder,” she said, shrugging. “Until you learn to look at this from a more enlightened point of view, nothing’s going to sound good. I can’t help you there.”

She walked to the door, and I leaned down and began untying the ropes from my ankles.

“Besides,” she said over her shoulder, “we have a volunteer. Good news, Lex—it’s just Zoe.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

I tried not to think of what she’d said, but the thing is, she and Kasey were right. We had to resolve this, one way or another, and as far as I knew, obeying Farrin—reading
Tugann Sibh
and letting one girl die, letting
Zoe
die—was the only way to do it that didn’t involve all of us going insane and dying in a mental ward.

But it could be me. It was such a simple solution. It would save Zoe, my sister, my friends…and I wouldn’t have to live with someone else’s death on my conscience.

The only thing was…

I was scared.

I could no more imagine volunteering to take Zoe’s place as the sacrifice than I could imagine climbing to the edge of a smoking volcano and jumping in.

Coward, I scolded myself. Selfish coward.

Did I really care if someone else died? Or did I just care about making sure it wasn’t my fault? I wanted it all: I wanted the easy way out, and I wanted to be guilt-free. At least my sister and Megan were willing to acknowledge that someone would be dying for them.

Selfish, scared, useless coward.

My breath turned shaky and I felt my shoulders quiver. I held my hands over my eyes, expecting tears, welcoming them, not caring about my dress or my face.

But they didn’t come. I couldn’t cry.

Because you’re afraid to ruin your makeup,
snapped the angry voice inside me.

And I was. I was so afraid.

And so exhausted from the effort of holding Aralt at arm’s length, being an outsider, feeling like I’d failed everyone.

It will feel so good,
said the voice in my head.
It will make you so much stronger.

Just for a second, and then I can keep fighting, I told myself, and then, like a trickle of water under a door at the start of a flood, I let go of just a tiny bit of control.

Immediately, my pounding headache was smoothed into the soft, golden feeling that you get when pain ends suddenly. A sudden shock of well-being.

Tentatively, I let go of one more thread—the guilt I felt over Kasey taking the oath.

She’s so happy, I thought. She finally gets to know Aralt. To feel his presence.

Then, like the thin fibers of a rope snapping one at a time, my resistance began to fall away.

Nothing seemed as bad as it had just a few seconds earlier.

Of course you’re afraid,
the voice purred.
Of course you don’t want to die. Who could blame you?

A bright future began to take shape in my mind. I would get Carter back, but things would be different. This time I wouldn’t manipulate him. I would go to work at the internship and do important things. I’d get a car of my own. My parents would be so proud.