Private 12 - Vanished (21 page)

Noelle rolled her eyes and sighed, but sat down. Mrs. Lange grasped Noelle’s hand atop her leg. Suddenly, my chest was filled with this overwhelming and unexpected lightness. Seeing this woman’s hands clasping Noelle’s and mine in the exact same way made me suddenly feel like Noelle and I were perfectly and totally equal. For the first time ever. And then, another wave of headiness hit me even harder.

Noelle and I were sisters. Sisters. I had an actual sister. Who just happened to be the person who had alternately tortured and protected me during the past two years. Which, actually, kind of made sense. Wasn’t that the way sisters treated each other?

“Haven’t the two of you ever wondered what makes you so special? What makes Billings so special? Why you were both chosen to become Billings sisters?” Mrs. Lange asked.

“I thought she got in because you were in, and I got in because psycho Ariana Osgood wanted me in,” I said acerbically.

She pursed her lips once more. “Ah, Miss Osgood. So much misplaced potential.”

My brow knit at her nostalgic tone. Ariana had turned into a coldblooded murderer. How could anyone talk about her like she was missed?

“I can see why you might think that, Reed,” she said, squeezing my hand, “but it’s more than that. Everything happens for a reason.”

I felt a chill of recognition go down my spine as Mrs. Lange released our hands and stood. Noelle and I looked at each other with a sort of wary excitement. We both felt that something monumental was about to happen. Something huge.

Mrs. Lange walked over to a small, ornately carved wooden box sitting on a table in front of the window. When she opened it, I could see the dark purple velvet lining the inside. She removed an old-fashioned key, long and gold with a delicately scrolled knob, attached to a purple cord.

“Go to the chapel,” Mrs. Lange said quietly, her eyes shining as she dangled the key in front of us. It caught the sun streaming through the window, glinting in the light. “You must go tonight and you must go together. Everything depends on this, girls.” She stepped forward and placed the key in my hand, then placed Noelle’s hand over it, so that it was nestled between both our palms. Then she looked into our eyes and smiled. “Go to the chapel, my sisters. All the answers are there.”

It was a clear, frosty night, the stars out by the thousands overhead as Noelle and I trudged up the hill on the outskirts of campus and ducked into the woods. Neither one of us spoke, the crunching of the snow beneath our feet, the rhythmic bursts of our breath the only sounds around us. I tried not to think about the night I’d so recently spent alone in the woods, scared for her life, scared for my own. Tried not to think about how it was all a joke, a test of some kind. All I wanted to know right now was what lay ahead.

We arrived at the old Billings Chapel, its spire rising up against the stars, and we both paused for a moment to take in its stark, white beauty.

“Do you think it’s possible that the old bat is just off her rocker and we’re doing all of this for no reason?” Noelle said suddenly.

“You tell me. She’s
your
grandmother,” I said sarcastically.

“And yours,” she replied.

“Right. But you’ve known her slightly longer.”

Noelle smirked. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”

We shoved open the heavy door of the chapel and it let out its now familiar creak. Moonlight streamed in through the stained-glass windows, casting colorful shadows all over the room. I smiled, noting for the millionth time how the Billings Literary Society had taken the once dirty, abandoned space and made it cozy and welcoming. The floors had been swept clean, there were fresh candles in the many sconces lining the walls, and up on the platform around the pulpit was a collection of colorful silk pillows, plush chenille throws, and even a fur blanket Vienna had left behind after our last meeting.

I walked over to the first sconce and lit the two taper candles with a match. Then I took them both down and handed one to Noelle.

“Have you ever seen any lock this key would fit?” Noelle asked, tugging the key out of her coat pocket and holding it up.

“No. But I haven’t been looking for one before now.”

I turned around and started along the right side of the chapel. Noelle took the left. I passed through the first arch in the wall, into the storage area with all the old wicker collection baskets, the shelves full of dusty old hymnals. Nothing. Through the next arch was a tall bookshelf, packed from top to bottom with bibles, more hymnals, and a stack of ceramic bowls and cups. Again, nothing. As I stepped out of the archway, Noelle emerged from the one across the chapel. I raised my eyebrows. She shook her head.

I crossed the room to her and together we walked into the old chaplain’s office. There were more bookshelves in here, these mostly bare, and a rickety old desk and chair.

“What about the drawers?” I asked.

Noelle placed her candle into an ancient, brass candleholder atop the wooden surface and tried the drawers. The first two slid open with no problem. The third she had to struggle with since it was welded shut from years of moisture and warping, but it finally flew open.

“Nothing but crumbling paper,” Noelle said, throwing her hands up and letting them slap down at her sides.

Holding my candle aloft, I carefully moved around the small room. We hadn’t cleaned up in here, so there was still a thick layer of dust on every surface. I saw a small box on one of the bookcase shelves and moved in to take a closer look. As I did, something on the floor caught my eye and I froze.

It was a scratch—a deep, arcing scratch in the wooden floor. It extended out perfectly from the edge of the bookcase, out into the room. Suddenly my heart was in my throat.

“Noelle, come here,” I whispered.

“What? What did you find?” she asked, lifting her eyes from the book she was perusing.

“I’m not sure. Just come here.”

Noelle dropped the book on the desk and walked over. “Okay, but why are you whispering?”

I paused. “I don’t know.”

I took the candle and walked around the side of the bookcase. “I think maybe this bookcase swings out,” I said, nodding at the floor. Then I walked around the other side and blinked. “Oh my God. Hinges.”

Noelle’s eyes widened. “No way. A secret passageway?”

I grinned. “Let’s find out.”

I placed my candle into an empty sconce on the wall and slipped my fingers into the small space between the wall and the bookcase. Noelle did the same, our arms interlacing.

“One, two, three,” she said.

We pulled, and the bookcase swung open like a door. Behind it was another door, small and white, with a keyhole just above the doorknob.

My mouth was completely dry. “Try it,” I said.

Noelle whipped out the key again and shoved it into the lock. She looked me in the eye and turned. The click was so loud we both jumped. She turned the doorknob and the small, wooden door swung open with an eerie, groaning wail. I’d never seen Noelle look so scared in my life.

“Get the candles,” she said, her breath short and shallow.

I did as I was told and handed her one. We held them both out in the doorway. Their flames danced as they illuminated the top of a slim, winding staircase.

“Okay. So maybe the old bat’s not entirely off her rocker,” Noelle said.

“Unless we’re about to walk into a tomb full of dead bodies,” I replied.

Noelle narrowed her eyes at me. “Thanks for that image. That’s exactly what I needed right now.”

Then she took a deep breath and stepped onto the staircase. It creaked beneath her weight, and she pressed her free hand into the wall to steady herself.

“Wait,” I said. “Are you sure you want to go down there?”

“All that matters is what lies ahead, right?” she said over her shoulder. “What’s the matter, Glass-Licker? Ya scared?”

I rolled my eyes. “Lead the way.”

So she did. Slowly, carefully holding on to the wall all the way, we descended the winding staircase into the ice-cold basement of the Billings Chapel. At the base of the stairs, we each held our candles out in front of us, the flames flickering like wild now, since our arms were trembling.

The room was a perfect circle. Tapestries decorated the walls, and a set of chairs stood in a smaller circle, all facing a thick, wooden book stand that was directly at the center of the room. I took a breath and counted. There were exactly eleven chairs.

“Maybe the BLS didn’t hold their meetings upstairs in the actual chapel,” I said quietly, staring at the bookstand. I could just imagine Elizabeth Williams standing behind it, the Billings Literary Society book open in front of her. “Maybe they held them here.”

“This is it?” Noelle asked. “This is what she sent us here to find? A basement and some old chairs?”

“Wait a second.” I took a couple of steps into the room, reaching my candle out in front of me. “There’s a book on there.”

Noelle and I glanced at each other. That same sizzle of anticipation I’d felt back in the presidential suite went through me now. Together we walked forward, sliding a pair of chairs aside to enter the circle. We parted at the bookstand and walked around it, coming together again in front of the open book.

The pages were yellow with age and covered in dust. I reached out one hand and swept it across the pages, clearing an arc of the tiny script. My heart caught as I recognized the handwriting.

“Elizabeth,” I breathed. “This is Elizabeth Williams’s book.”

Noelle reached out and closed it, kicking up a huge cloud of dust. The silt filled my nostrils and mouth and we both coughed, waving our hands in front of our faces as the air cleared. When it did, we stared down at the inscription in the center of the leather cover, the words as clear as day. Whatever I’d been expecting, whatever I had thought Mrs. Lange was talking about when she’d told us we were special, that Billings was special—when she’d asked us if we’d ever wondered why—it had not been this.

The inscription read:
THE BOOK OF SPELLS
.

Even at the tender age of sixteen, Elizabeth Williams was the rare girl who knew her mind. She knew she preferred summer to all other seasons. She knew she couldn’t stand the pink and yellow floral wallpaper the decorator had chosen for her room. She knew that she would much rather spend time with her blustery, good-natured father than her ever-critical, humorless mother—though the company of either was difficult to come by. And she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that going away to The Billings School for Girls was going to be the best thing that ever happened to her.

As she sat in the cushioned seat of her bay window overlooking sun-streaked Beacon Hill, she folded her dog-eared copy of
The Jungle
in her lap, making sure to keep her finger inside to hold her place. She placed her feet up on the pink cushions, new buckled shoes and all, and pressed her temple against the warm glass with a wistful sigh. It was September 1915, and Boston was experiencing
an Indian summer, with temperatures scorching the sidewalks and causing the new automobiles to sputter and die along the sides of the roads. Eliza would have given anything to be back at the Cape house, running along the shoreline in her bathing clothes, splashing in the waves, her swim cap forgotten and her dark hair tickling her shoulders. But instead, here she was, buttoned into a stiff, green cotton dress her mother had picked out for her, the wide, white collar scratching her neck. Any minute now, Maurice would bring the coach around and squire her off to the train station, where she and her maid, Renee, would board a train for Easton, Connecticut, and the Billings School. The moment she got to her room in Crenshaw House, she was going to change into her most comfortable linen dress, jam her floppy brown hat over her hair, and set out in search of the library. Because living at a school more than two hours away from home meant that her mother couldn’t control her. Couldn’t criticize her. Couldn’t nitpick every little thing she wore, every book she read, every choice she made. Being away at school meant freedom.

Of course Eliza’s mother had other ideas. If her wishes came true, Billings would turn Eliza into a true lady. Eliza would catch herself a worthy husband, and she would return home by Christmas triumphantly engaged, just as her sister, May, had.