The Evil Within by Nancy Holder Read Free Book Online

weeks between Kiyoko’s death and our winter break, I had never said a word to Shayna, never comforted her. I had been lost in my own angst. And too busy trying to stay alive.
    “Well, you know.” She looked at her dad, who had stopped to wait for her about twenty yards ahead of us. She lowered her voice. “There’s a welcome-back party,” she said. “At that creepy lake house. You know the one?”
    I nodded. “Who’s going?” I looked over at Jessel. The figure in the turret room hadn’t moved.
    “Whoever can sneak out.” She smiled cynically. “It’s the Marlwood way.”
    “Are you going?” I asked her.
    She gave me a long, measured look, as if trying to decide something about me. Her expression didn’t change as she stopped playing with her necklace and dropped her hands to her side.
    “Oh, yeah, I’m going,” she told me. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
    I had the sense that she was trying to tell me more than I was hearing, but I just flashed her a quick smile as we reached the door to Grose. The Marlwood Academy crest, a carved M surrounded by leaves, jutted from the center. Like a stop sign , I thought. But I opened the door, wondering if Shayna wanted me to invite her in. Shayna had never hung out with me before. Maybe none of her friends had arrived yet. The fog had messed up everyone’s schedule.
    “Okay, so, I’ll see you there,” I said. The sooner I got to the business of getting rid of Celia, the better. And maybe seeing all the girls again would give me some idea how.
    Just then, the little golf cart with my luggage pulled up on the walk. I wished I didn’t care that Shayna would see my low-rent luggage, but it still embarrassed me.
    “I need to call my parents,” I said gently. “Check in. And . . . recharge.”
    Her cheeks reddened.
    “I won’t tell her,” Shayna said. “That you were talking to Troy in the parking lot.”
    So that’s how it looked , I thought. People will assume he and I ran into each other here at school. No one else will know he drove me up here . . . unless he tells them.
    “Thanks,” I said. Then I opened the door and went inside the second-most-haunted dorm on campus.
    Judging by the beautiful burnished luggage placed beside antique canopy beds, and iPods and cashmere scarves dangling from half-opened cherry wood and ebony dresser drawers, some of my dorm mates had arrived. But there was no one else actually in Grose except for my housemother, Ms. Krige, who greeted me in her bathrobe and told me with a yawn that everyone else had gone to bed. I couldn’t believe she was so naïve; or maybe it just made her life easier to look the other way.
    “Be very careful,” she added. “There were some mountain lion attacks over break. They lost a dog at Lakewood.”
    She went back into her room and shut the door. I heard the TV go on. She really didn’t want to know what was going on.
    I faced the hallway. The overhead chandeliers cast pools of light on the waxed hardwood floor, which I disturbed as I walked toward my room. The walls were covered with offerings from the art classes—a lot of them fairly bad—and the overly large eyes of a poorly painted portrait of a girl with an enormous forehead followed my every move.
    I reluctantly changed out of my dad’s socks but I did put my Doc Martens back on. They were a Christmas present from my cousin Jason and his boyfriend Andreas. I also put on the army jacket Jason had given me earlier in the year. I had to choose between it and my mom’s ratty UCSD sweater, which was one of my most treasured objects. After the long day, it was time to switch out the beautiful cashmere sweater for something else. I put on my black long-underwear top—which was kind of sexy-sheer, not that it mattered—and stuck with my old, ripped jeans.
    And I took off the silk crocheted necklace, and put it in the topmost drawer of my dresser.
    My Tibetan prayer beads, wrapped around my left wrist, completed mademoiselle’s ensemble. I