Vengeance Read Free Page B

Rosen was still experimenting with some spells on her own, the rest of us hadn’t dabbled at all, content to try to get things back to normal. Which also meant that London, Shelby, and Constance had been hanging out with us again. Everyone was back together. Well, everyone except for Missy.
    “Actually, that’s not exactly true,” I said, leaning back in my wooden chair at the head of the table and tucking my brown hair behind my ears. “My architect and contractors have them, of course—”
    “But none of them would send them to the county if they knew it meant getting shut down,” Tiffany Goulborne pointed out. “They’d be out of a job.”
    “True,” I conceded. “But I also sent them to some of the wealthier alumnae.”
    “WTF? Why did you do that?” Portia Ahronian said, clutching the dozen gold necklaces around her neck. “You have enough money to build this thing ten times over.”
    “I know, but I thought it would be nice to get other people involved,” I said. “The more they feel like part of the new Billings, the more they’ll be invested in its future.”
    “She’s right, you guys. We need the alums,” Rose Sakowitz said, looking around at the others. She looked even tinier and more adorable than usual in a pink plaid sundress with her red curls held back by a tortoiseshell band. “Think of how many times they’ve supported us when things have gone . . .” She trailed off.
    “I think ‘awry’ is the word you’re looking for,” Tiffany put in, shifting in her seat. “Like when Cheyenne . . . passed away and we had to elect a new president? They don’t usually have to come up with two presidential gifts in one year.”
    I squirmed a bit, recalling the amount of cash and all the expensive presents that had been dropped in my lap after I’d been elected in the fall—not to mention the very thorough and useful files on the current Billings Girls and our alums that I’d been gifted.
    “And how Suzel told us about the secret passage at Gwendolyn so we could get to the Legacy last semester?” London added, clicking a rhinestone-encrusted compact closed after checking her lipstick. “She’s, like, a total asset.”
    “Seriously,” Shelby said, checking the end of her dark blond braid for split ends. “The alumnae have been keeping us afloat for years.”
    “Yeah, but after everything that’s happened, can we really trust any of them?” Astrid Chou said as she reorganized her paintbrushes inside a funky, polka-dotted carrying case. “I mean, if this was three months ago, you probably would have sent the plans to Cheyenne’s batty mother.”
    I swallowed hard, my eyes flicking to Noelle. She was the only one not participating in the conversation, choosing instead to sit at the far end of the table and page through
Vogue
. My phone beeped loudly.
    “Is your phone possessed or what?” Amberly Carmichael asked, pressing the palms of her perfectly manicured hands into the edge of the table. “It hasn’t stopped since we got here.”
    I groaned, pulling my phone out to silence it. “Sorry.”
    Astrid did, of course, have a point. I always thought Cheyenne’s mom, Mrs. Martin, was a cool woman, someone who loved Billings and would have done anything for us. Until I found out she believed in this hundred-year-old curse and thought that five of my friends and I needed to die in order to break it.
    “I don’t know, you guys. Most of the people I sent the plans to seemed really excited. Some of them even donated money,” I told them. “I can’t imagine that any of them would have wanted to sabotage the project.”
    Everyone around the table exchanged wary glances, as if waiting for one of us to confess. Finally Kiki Rosen leaned forward, wrapping her earbud wires around her iPod before she shoved it into her battered canvas backpack.
    “Okay. Forget who screwed us. The real question is, how do we get unscrewed?” she asked.
    “We have to go back to the drawing board.