Under a Spell

“‘Sixteen-year-old high school student Gretchen Von Dow was reported missing by parents Lola and Howard Von Dow after failing to return home from school Thursday afternoon. Police are investigating .’”

My stomach turned in on itself. “That’s it? That’s all there is?” I yanked the article down the screen and maniacally scanned for something else, something with more meat on Gretchen and her disappearance. “There isn’t even a photo. Or a ‘she went missing from here.’ Didn’t anyone care?”

I could hear the crack in my voice, could feel the hot sting of tears behind my eyes. “Didn’t anyone look for her?”

Will’s voice was soft. “I’m sure someone looked for her, love.”

“But—but—” I flopped the cover back on my iPad. “No one did anything. And I—I didn’t even know her. I didn’t even know she went missing. None of us did.”

“It’s not your fault, love,” Will was saying, his voice soothing. “You were just a kid.”

“And I was totally wrapped up in my own stupid issues. I was giving myself home perms and crying over the Backstreet Boys while my classmate was snatched. Probably hidden away somewhere. Tortured. Words carved into her flesh.” The image of Cathy’s ravaged body flashed in front of my eyes and I heaved.

“You need to relax. You couldn’t have done anything even then. You thought she was a foreign exchange student.”

I suddenly stopped crying and used the back of my hand to swipe at my wet cheeks. “Yeah. I did.” I pinched my bottom lip. “Why did I think that?”

“What do you mean?”

I slumped back against the locker. “Well, why would I just assume—I mean, we had foreign exchange students, but Gretchen—” I squinted, remembering. “She didn’t look all that foreign.”

“Maybe she told you she was from a different county. I used to tell birds I was Australian. Upped the mystique. Every girl wants to bed a bloke from Oz.”

“No.” I shook my head, using my fingernail to trace a line of grout. “I was social napalm. No one told me anything. At least not directly. And you’re disgusting.” I sighed. “Maybe it was just a rumor.”

“Who would start a rumor that a girl who had gone missing was actually just a foreign exchange student on her way back to the mother country?”

I bit my lip. “The person who made her disappear.”

At that moment, the bell rang. I pushed myself up from the linoleum as students flooded out of their classrooms, the bell soon drowned out by the flurry of conversation and the general din of movement.

“A bunch of bodies,” I heard someone say.

“Bones, like, thousands of them,” someone else whispered.

“Hey, Ms. Lawson!”

I looked up from the sea of navy blue to see Miranda, arm raised, a wide grin on her face. I took one step closer to her and then she was gone, girls closing over the small hole she made in the crowd.

“Miranda?”

“I think she needed to sit for a spell.” Fallon’s lips were right at my ear, her voice serpentine, like a black snake winding its way into my brain.

Just as I was about to respond Fallon was washed down the hall, too, the only remainder of her a high- pitched giggle mingled with Finleigh and Kayleigh’s.

“Miranda!” I yelled, pushing my way through the crowd. “Miranda!”

Miranda was on her butt on the ground—just as I had been—and probably with the same dumbfounded expression. Her books were strewn around her and I crouched down hurriedly, gathering her things, feeling every bit like I was stepping back into my own high school life.

Miranda pushed herself up, her cheeks blazing red. “Thanks, Ms. Lawson,” she said, taking the books I held out to her.

I smiled. “You can call me Sophie. I’m not working here anymore.”

Miranda’s face fell. “You’re not?”

“No. I’m needed elsewhere.” I sounded like a dumb superhero, but Miranda didn’t seem to notice. “Did Fallon just shove you?”

“No. No, I just tripped. I’m clumsy.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “I was clumsy in high school, too. You don’t have to take that, Miranda. Bullying is a crime. Or, you know, a lot of what bullying has become is. You can talk to me.”

Miranda took a step away from me, a cold front going up. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself. But thank you for the public service announcement.” She whipped around and ducked into a classroom.

I sighed, and turned just in time to see the swarm of girls parting like the Red Sea, their voices dropping away until only silence remained.

And then I knew why.

Framed in the open doorway and against the mid-day fog was Vlad. His eyes scanned the crowd and he licked his lips, a tiny triangle of blood-red tongue running across them. As gross as it was, he was stunning against the gray backdrop, his usually helmeted hair slightly mussed by the wind outside, his thick, deep navy peacoat buttoned up over what I was certain was an unattractive Dracula-style puffy shirt. I saw his dark eyes scan over the sea of ardent adorers before he caught mine.

The door snapped shut behind him, and it was like every girl had been released from her silent trap. The murmuring started and reached nearly deafening levels immediately, ponytailed heads snapping between Vlad and the girl he may have been looking at, a plethora of whispers of “how’s my hair?” and a Sephora’s worth of lip gloss being whipped out and applied.

“Sophie!” Vlad’s deep voice cut through the crowd and all was silent again, though every mouth was open, every eye fixated on me, every onlooker completely floored that he was looking for me.

If he hadn’t been Vlad—my manager, my roommate, Nina’s BloodLust-playing teen nephew—I would have kept up the mystique, let the girls ogle me in wonder while I rewrote what never happened in my high school past. But it was Vlad and I was miffed.

“What are you doing here?”

Vlad edged his way through the girls and I held my breath, half-expecting a series of fainting spells as he made contact with the girls.

I bent my head when he approached me and pinched my lips together, trying to talk as discreetly as possible. “You better not be using a glamour.”

Vlad grinned at me. “That’s the funny thing. I’m not.”

I rolled my eyes and cocked out a hip. “What do you want?”

“Nothing, but Lorraine said I should give you this.”

He held out a royal-blue velvet shoulder bag. I wrinkled my nose. “I already have a purse.”

“It’s not the purse. She wanted you to have what’s inside.”

I frowned, then popped open the purse. I immediately snapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God, what is that?”

Vlad just shrugged and tossed some senior one of those “how you doin’?” head bobs.

The smell that was coming from the innocuous-looking bag was noxious to say the least. Kind of like a cross between Steve’s socks and flaming garbage.

“She said you need it for protection.”

“From what?” I pulled the bag shut. “From anyone with nostrils in a forty-five-mile radius? And why does she suddenly think I need protection?”

“I don’t know.” Another head nod as the girls went back to normal motion—although the majority of them seemed to find one reason or another to brush their breasts up against Vlad. “She said you put something on her desk and there was something dangerous in it or something.”

I gaped. “She said there was something dangerous in the photos or something? What was dangerous, Vlad?”

He shrugged. “I don’t remember. Something. What’d you put in the photos?”

“There was a picture of Battery Townsley, a picture taken here at the school, a receipt—”