Heather Terrell - Eternity (v5)

Maybe Piper and Missy had sequestered themselves in the corner because one or both was mad that they hadn’t been named Fal Queen, and maybe that had something to do with their plan. Their former friend Vanessa had somehow managed to ral y an overwhelming majority in order to win the votes. I stopped dead in my tracks. Why was I spending even a minute of my night thinking about them, especial y when Michael and I had made a pact to take a break from our investigation? I pushed al thoughts of Piper and Missy out of my mind so I could enjoy my night.

One of my favorite songs, Coldplay’s “Lost,” started to play, and Michael pul ed me onto the dance floor. He carved out a place for us in the crowd, and then wrapped his arms tightly around my back. I looked up into his green eyes, bright even in the darkened room. For the mil ionth time, I thought how lucky I was to have found him.

The music grew louder, and he pressed his body up against mine. I held on to his strong upper arms and rested my head on his shoulder. The tempo of the song picked up, but Michael slowed down. He lifted up my chin and leaned down to kiss me.

His lips felt so soft, so inviting. I kissed him back and savored the gentle touch of his tongue. As he ran his tongue lightly over my teeth, I began to experience a surge of desire for him, unlike anything I’d felt during the many times I’d been physical y close to him before. But this was no normal desire to kiss him, or go further. This was different than anything I’d ever felt before. This was bloodlust.

We broke off and stared at each other. Michael felt it too. We had to leave the dance floor before something happened. Something we couldn’t control. Something that would freak out everyone around us.

“I’m going to the bathroom to freshen up,” I said, for the benefit of anyone nearby who might be listening.

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, his voice cracking a bit.

“No, no.” The last thing I needed was Michael in close proximity to me. He shot me a concerned look, so I smiled and reassured him. “I’l be fine.”

Michael walked me to the gym door nearest the bathrooms. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and then leaned against the wal , as if he needed its support. “I’l wait right here,” he said, stil breathing a little heavy.

I nodded and opened the door. A little unsteady on my feet—and my heels—I wobbled out into the jarring fluorescent glare of the hal . Blinking in the bright light, I turned right toward the girls’ room. A long line of girls—al waiting to jockey for position in front of the mirror, no doubt—snaked out of the door into the hal way. I just couldn’t face al that aggressive female energy in my state.

Instead, I turned left, passing by the gym doors. Maybe a little walk would help distance me from the urge. I started down an empty hal way, lined with lockers and classroom doors. Funny how the hal looked so unintimidating and smal without al the kids streaming through it. After I cooled down, I turned back toward the gym—and Michael.

Then I heard a whimper from a connecting hal way. Backing up a few steps, I peeked down the hal . On first glance, it appeared empty. But then I saw a smal movement in a darkened doorway, and I heard the whimper again. I hesitated. I real y didn’t want to deal with someone else’s problems tonight of al nights. But the Good Samaritan in me won out over my apprehensions.

Not bothering to soften the click of my heels, I approached the dark niche. The whimper grew louder and became an actual bawl by the time I got there.

“Are you okay?” I said to the girl cowering in the doorway. Her face was buried in her hands, but I could see her upswept auburn hair and her chocolate brown dress. Maybe the poor girl had gotten into a fight with her date.

The girl lowered her hands. At first, al I could see was the welt on her cheek from a hard slap and a long, bloody scratch on her arm, undoubtedly from a fingernail. Only then did I realize that the girl was Piper.

I almost left. Another thankless encounter with Piper wasn’t what I needed. And anyway, it was my special night with Michael. But then I smel ed a strong metal ic odor, and I realized that I couldn’t leave, even if I tried. The smel was Piper’s blood, wel ing up from the deep scratch on her arm. It mingled with the distinctive smel of someone else’s blood. Maybe the blood of the other person she’d fought with. How I could detect and discern the presence of two distinct blood scents was beyond me.

More than anything in the world, I wanted to touch and taste the blood, and not just because I sought information about her and Missy’s scheme.

My instinct compel ed me to do it. No matter the promise that Michael and I made about not tasting anyone else’s blood.

As I reached into my purse for a tissue, I asked her, “Who did this to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a sob.

“Of course it matters, Piper.”

Tissue in hand, I leaned forward as if to dab her wound clean. As I did so, I touched some of the blood from her wound with my fingertip. Then I turned away slightly—ostensibly to reach for another tissue from my purse—and licked it.

The blood burned like liquor as it coursed down my throat and made me woozy immediately. Then two separate flashes struck. Their force nearly knocked me off my heels, and I reached for the wal to steady myself. Stronger than any flashes I’d received from anyone but Michael, they told me everything I wanted to know. And much, much more that I didn’t want to know.

Chapter Twenty-four

Without a word to Piper, I kicked off my shoes and carried them with me as I ran back down the hal . I didn’t have a spare second to make excuses to Piper, and she didn’t deserve them. I needed every moment to get to the gym and stop the figurative bloodshed.

The hal seemed to have doubled in size since I walked down it a few short minutes before, like some hazy, frustrating dream. I longed to fly down the hal , but had to rely on my gangly legs to propel me. The slower gait gave me al too much time to think about the malevolent images I’d cul ed from the blood. And it gave me too much time to think of Vanessa, Missy and Piper’s victim.

Why hadn’t we thought of Vanessa? This summer, she’d been on the outs with the group for trying to unseat Missy from her veritable throne.

Since then, Vanessa had been relegated to the “reject” lunch table, below Missy’s notice. Michael and I had believed that Missy had deemed the cafeteria demotion adequate punishment for whatever wrong Vanessa had inflected on Missy. Not so.

The first flash from Piper told me that, just before Vanessa would be crowned Fal Queen, every single Til inghast junior and senior would receive an email on their cel s inviting them to be Vanessa’s Facebook friend. The perfectly timed invitation would be irresistible to nearly everyone at the dance, who presumably would accept and be transferred immediately to Vanessa’s page. There, via a dummy account, Missy and Piper had posted not only a montage of horrific drunken photos of Vanessa but—worse—entries purportedly from Vanessa that revealed a litany of awful, humiliating secrets about many of Til inghast’s juniors and seniors. It wasn’t normal dirt in those entries, but terrible things like cheating and hidden pregnancies and familial meltdowns. The whole plan was designed to disgrace Vanessa and, through her supposed revelation of so many people’s closest-kept secrets, make her the object of everyone’s hatred. The only redeeming second of the flash was the disgust Piper felt for participating in it. Not that her distaste stopped her, mind you.

But it was the second flash that transmitted a sense of evil so palpable that I felt sick. The flash seemed to come from Missy, the source of the other blood. Through her eyes, I saw her in a tight embrace with some guy. Because she had her head nestled on his shoulder, I couldn’t see the guy’s face, just the fine black fabric of his suit jacket. But I could hear his voice. In the most enticing whisper imaginable, he told her that she was beautiful and deserved the Fal Queen crown more than anyone in the world. Though his words sounded like innocent flattery, somehow they had spurred Missy on to this plan and made her want to bathe Vanessa in metaphorical blood at the moment of her crowning. I saw—in her soul, it seemed—a desire for wickedness and destruction worse than my worst nightmares.