Chapter 17

“You!” a voice whispers harshly into my ear. “Arise!”

“What…who are you?” I squint in the dark and am able to make out two girls in our room, both wearing all-black outfits and ski masks. One stands guard at the door while the other hovers over me. Across the room, Julia’s bed is empty.

“Who…”

“Dress! Now!” The girl nearest me tosses some clothes at me.

My fuzzy brain clicks into gear: Bell Book and Candle. I am being initiated.

I fumble with my jeans and boots and try to place a face to the voice. Is that my roommate? No sooner have I shoved my arms through my jacket sleeves than a blindfold is slipped over my eyes and tied behind my head by gloved hands.

“Let’s go,” says the girl, as she pushes me roughly across the room.

As we head out the door, I smell jasmine.

I am led out of the dorm, past the field house, and through the quad. I have a fairly accurate map of Darby Prep’s grounds in my mind. Plus it’s not too difficult to figure out based on certain terrain we are traversing – like the long staircase down Chalmers to the quad and the flat stone steps leading past Skinner.

Scents and sounds filter through my blindfold: the screech of an iron gate, the smell of old grease, the clatter of footsteps on a tiled floor. The echo of an empty corridor puzzles me and makes me question the number of girls in our initiation group. Am I the only pledge? Are there three of us or thirteen or thirty? I can’t tell.

My feet stumble and blindly, I reach my hands out to steady myself. One of the girls grabs my arm and instinctively, I thank her. She grunts and then we are on our way up a staircase.

“Now, stop!” a voice commands.

I stop.

The smell of jasmine grows stronger as one of the girls brushes past me. I hear a door open and then I am pushed.

A fumble of steps, a rustle of clothing, and then silence.

“Hello?” I whisper. “Julia?”

I listen for a moment but hear only a slow steady breathing. One person.

“Julia?”

“So be it!”

Fiona. That’s Fiona Geddes.

Every hair on my body stands on end. Where am I? What’s going on? Is it over?

A bell rings a few feet away from me, its jingle clear and insistent.

Then I hear the thud of a book being slammed closed.

And smell the scent of a candle being snuffed out.

Bell, book, candle.

A window-paned door clicks shut behind me.

“Hello?” A lock turns. “Hello?”

I’m alone in the room. I know it as surely as I know my own name. I can sense no other heartbeat pounding, can feel no other body beside me, can hear no other breath but my own.

I peel back the blindfold and wait a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

I’m in the headmaster’s office, that much I can tell. But why am I alone? Where are the other pledges?

My hand reaches for the light switch on the wall and flips it on.

I gasp.

The entire office has been torn apart: the headmaster’s leather chairs have been slashed open and the stuffing ripped out; his paintings and diplomas have been yanked off the walls and thrown to the floor; red and black paint covers the Oriental rugs in a thick wet mess; books from his shelves lay in haphazard piles, their pages in balls and bits.

But the worst is on the other side of the room.

O’Brien’s computer lay in pieces on his oak desk. Carved into the side of the desk are the initials, CB.

Calliope Bellflower.

I search the rest of the desk’s surface but there is nothing, just my own initials, solely implicating me in the vandalism.

Am I being hazed? Or set up?

I reach for the door knob but no matter how I tug and twist, it won’t turn: I’ve been locked inside the room. But why? Who would do this? And who would want me to appear responsible for it?

It’s painful to look at the destruction surrounding me. I want to close my eyes but I have to stay alert and I have to get out of here!

There’s a window behind the headmaster’s desk but I’m on the second floor and it’s a long jump to the ground. I may be fairly nimble but I’m wearing duck shoes and I’m sure as heck not Spiderman.

As I contemplate the various ways I can get out of here without calling my aunt to come rescue me, I hear something that suddenly lights a fire under my butt.

A police siren.

I don’t have all the time in the world to figure out an escape. I have mere minutes. And this isn’t simply campus security coming to investigate in an electric golf cart but actual Darby Cove officers in a squad car.

I can feel my heart start to race and my skin get clammy beneath my clothes. Sweat forms under my arms and across my back, as if a dam had opened.

I am most surely going to get caught.

“Don’t panic,” I tell myself. “Don’t get crazy. Don’t let yourself…”

Shift.

Don’t do it.

Don’t.

Feet – booted and masculine – pound down the corridor outside O’Brien’s office, getting closer. I have maybe another minute or two of freedom. How best to spend my time?

Contemplating the many ways I will seek my revenge on Fiona? Because surely, she is the only one who could have put this together. She’s the president of Bell Book and Candle, the daughter of the town’s mayor. She has access and privilege…

…and she doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like me hanging around Julia. She doesn’t like that Julia wants me around. She wants to control us all.

This is her fault.

The door flies open and two officers rush in. I hear their hearts beating out of sync.

“Hands up where I can see them!”

Still facing the window, I raise my arms slowly above my head and for one bizarrely incongruent moment, wonder if my armpits are as stained as they feel.

“Stay right there! Don’t move!”

How did they know I was in here? Did Fiona set off an alarm? Or make a phone call to someone in town?

Why are town cops here and not school security?

I feel the cop get closer, can smell the pepperoni pizza he ate for dinner, can hear the squeak of his boots against the floorboards.

“Hands on the wall!”

I lean forward and do as instructed, trying to remain calm. The second cop enters the room and begins inspecting the damage.

The first officer kicks my feet apart and begins patting me down, no doubt searching for the knife that carved up the desk, the paintbrush that matted the rugs, the sledgehammer that smashed the computer.

I don’t like being touched.

My hands on the wall begin to shake. I can feel my fury rise straight up the back of my neck. Every muscle in my body twitches, every nerve is on edge. My rage is coming on full-force and there is no earthly way for me to stop it.

“All right, turn around.”

Even if I want to.

“Now.”

I turn to face the cops. They look visibly surprised to see me.

The one who patted me down pales. “Oh, uh, we didn’t expect…”

“We thought, uh…” the other adds helpfully.

Both officers glance sheepishly at each other. They are probably mid-thirties, soft in the middle, and their navy blue uniforms with yellow piping make them look like Boy Scouts – chubby Boy Scouts.

I notice the name tag on the first cop’s breast pocket: Harrigan. The other’s is Olsen.

Harrigan puts his hand on his holstered gun and twiddles his fingers there. “I’m awfully sorry about this but we’re gonna have to arrest you. Vandalism is a serious business.” He sounds almost respectful.

Olsen takes a step forward. “Darby Cove and Darby Prep have zero tolerance policies, Miss Geddes.”

Geddes? Oh god, no.

I shifted.

Much as I want to, I don’t have time to examine what this means. I can’t be arrested as Fiona Geddes – and then turn into Calliope Bellflower in the back of a squad car or behind bars at the police station!

“You’re going to what?” I hear my voice – Fiona’s voice - ask coolly. I feel arrogant and self-righteous. I don’t know who these asshole pinheads think they are but there is no way they’re going to arrest me.

“Sorry, miss…” Harrigan reaches behind his back for his handcuffs but Olsen stops him.

“We don’t need those, do we?”

Harrigan reluctantly agrees. “You’re probably right.” He lowers his voice, apparently assuming I can’t hear. But during the shift, I hear everything.

“The mayor’ll squeeze our nuts if he sees his precious daughter cuffed.” Harrigan nods at me. “All right, miss. If you’ll just follow me down to the car.”

“We’ll get this all settled at the station,” Olsen adds from behind me. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for everything.”

Not a chance, I think as I cautiously follow the cops. My brain clips along at a million miles a second. I have to bolt before I get into that squad car or I will be utterly screwed. My eyes seek out possible escape routes.

It has to be the window.

“We weren’t expecting you,” Olsen is saying. “When we got the call…”

Now! It has to be now while they’re distracted.

I stop in my tracks suddenly, causing Olsen to bump into my back, then I swing around and kick him from behind, directly into Harrigan. While they scramble to get up and get to their weapons – which I know they will be reluctant to use since I am Fiona Geddes, daughter of the Exalted Mayor Himself – I rush to the window, fling it open and scramble through feet first, followed by legs and shoulders, and finally manage to cling to the very edge of the sill by my fingertips.

I have to let go. I know this. And it will probably suck.

I hold my breath, as if I’m about to drop into a swimming pool, and allow my fingers to release the window. Thanks to the slick icy bricks, I slide down the wall like a rocket.

My arms and legs scramble to grab hold of something – anything – that will offer resistance to my descent. A whoosh of cold, sharp air crisps my eyelashes as wind rushes past me. A couple of feet from the ground, my jacket snares a concrete sill, preventing me from crushing my ankles and knees beneath my weight. Thank god for small favors.

Every ounce of breath gets knocked out of me when I land. As I lay on the ground, my lungs struggling to bring in oxygen, I panic and begin to hyperventilate. I try to calm myself, to relax the muscles in my chest that are contracting so tightly it feels like I have a belt wrapped around my neck.

Breathe, breathe, slowly, in and out…

I stand and shake bits of leaves off my clothes and catch my reflection in the first-floor window. Fiona Geddes stares back at me.

I have no choice; I take off into the woods before they can find me with a single thought pounding in my head.

I shifted without the aura.