LEMNISCATE by Jennifer Murgia Read Free Book Online Page A

remind you? She
hates
me and there’s no way I’m pretending she’s my new BFF.”
    “Then you’ll never know. Besides, if she does have her claws in Garreth, wouldn’t you want to help him?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Your mom is trying to throw you two together anyway, it’ll just look like you’re trying to make her happy. Just be careful, something strange is going on with her. I don’t know what. But based on your dream and that night, it’s too weird to ignore.”
    Ryan took a swig of his coffee, but I just stared at mine. I always knew Brynn was trouble, I just never realized it might be more than I bargained for.

Chapter Ten
     
    I drove by the cemetery on the way home. I didn’t want to; the car just seemed to go that way, which figures. It used to be Claire’s car.
    The conversation with Ryan played over and over in my head. My insides felt funny.
    Ryan seeing Claire really threw me for a loop. I knew she was on my mind, why else would I have written the email-to-nowhere? It was too strange that all this would surface the day after sending it. Staying mad at Ryan was hard. He could have helped Claire, but more than anyone, I understood that things were very strange that night. Just as Claire wasn’t Claire, Ryan wasn’t Ryan.
    They were all unaware of Hadrian’s existence, that he was responsible for the way they had behaved. I thought about what Ryan had said, about me being the one Brynn wanted to watch fall from the roof. God, she was going to be in my house for dinner and the girl had wanted to
kill
me?
    I couldn’t help wishing Brynn had been on that ledge. As much as I hated her, though, I knew that was wrong. Brynn and her friends had also been victims. Their guardians were corrupted, transforming them into twisted humans who no longer knew right from wrong. But things didn’t go as planned. I shuddered at the thought. Thankfully, Garreth showed up in time to help me.
Garreth.
I let out a big sigh, and started to wonder if maybe Brynn’s guardian was still corrupted.
    I pulled into the cemetery past the black iron gate held open during “visiting hours” by a thick tattered rope. Claire’s car trailed around the winding loops, past the little shed that stored God knows what and up the incline toward her grave. I never went to her funeral. I couldn’t bear it. I had only visited her grave in a dream and it wasn’t pretty. It certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to remember her.
    Sloping around the bend of Japanese maples, I let the car come to a stop and idle. I was tempted to get out and walk through the sodden grass to look for her marker, but I stayed put. It felt colder here. As I reached to turn the heat up something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.
    Piles of leaves had been raked, ready to be bagged and taken away. They looked darker than usual, soggy and wet from the never-ending rain we’d been having. Pressing my nose up to the glass for a closer look I tried to make out the colors. The once brilliant foliage was now faded and grayed, reduced to muck. They barely stood out against the crunchy-turned-mushy brown and black . . . wait. Why were there black leaves? Then I realized they weren’t
all
leaves. Raked up among the rot were black feathers. I squinted and rubbed my hand across the glass, wiping clean the condensation from my breath.
    They were poking out randomly, the black down was clumped, held together by thick quills. Like the feather from the puddle. Like the feather from my locker this morning. There were so many, as if a raven had gotten into a vicious fight with another animal and lost. But there were too many feathers for one bird to lose.
    Unless, the bird was huge.
    Unless, the bird was the size of a man.
    An icy chill spread down my arms and I pulled away from the window. Suddenly I was freezing cold. I cranked the heat dial up to the highest setting but the warmth from the vents wasn’t going deep enough to kill the chill. I drew in a deep