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of an old-fashioned black umbrella. Her blue-black hair streaked with red, Charlotte had on a long steampunk black coat with a high collar and black gloves with scarlet lace on them. The man and woman walking with her were bland rich parents in London Fog raincoats and boots.
    Shayna glanced my way and gave me a wave. I waved back. Troy hadn’t actually believed that our ride together would remain a secret, had he?
    “So, thanks,” I said to him now. “For driving me.”
    He stepped closer. “I-I . . . you’re welcome.” He searched my face and started to say something else. Closed his mouth. I nodded, and turned away, even though I was hurt that he didn’t kiss me goodbye or say anything about meeting up later. Jane would have been proud of me for keeping my issues to myself.
    “Lindsay,” he said.
    I stopped without turning around. “Yes?”
    “I thought I saw something. In the fog.”
    Oh, God .
    Now I did turn around. His hands were in his pockets, and his head was lowered slightly as he gazed down at me. He was grinning. “You were asleep. I almost woke you but it happened so fast. Just a split-second—”
    I kept my voice neutral. “What did you see?”
    He waggled his brows. “I was tired. I was thinking about that old story about the ghost that runs down the bypass. The girl who’s on fire. And . . . I thought I saw her.”
    I felt as if someone had pushed me into the lake; that I was so frozen my hair might break off—
    “I think it was just some light bouncing off the fog, but it was freaky,” he finished, looking a little abashed.
    “Do you think she was really there?” I asked him.
    He laughed. “Naw. But it would have been cool if she had been.”
    “You’re wrong,” I blurted.
    He blinked. “Excuse me?” He slung his thumbs in his jacket pockets and tilted his head. “You don’t really believe in all that stuff, do you?”
    “Of course not,” I said stiffly. “Thanks again for the ride. Bye.”
    “Wait,” he said, but I knew it was time to go. “Thanks for not farting in the car—you know, like your brother said . . . ” he added, searching, I knew, for a way to make me laugh, to recapture the magic.
    I grunted sadly to myself, and headed for Grose, my dorm and one of the oldest buildings on campus, staring down at Jessel, where Mandy lived, on the hill below us. With its four turrets tiled in slate and its hunchbacked shape, Jessel was far more interesting than Grose—and said to be the most haunted. I knew for a fact that that was true.
    The curtains of Jessel were open, but all the windows were dark, except for one—the large, arched window of the turret room that was Mandy’s single. Candlelight flickered dimly, and someone was standing in the window, head bent, staring straight at me. My blood ran cold.
    Mandy Winters was already here.
    Behind Jessel, the inky blackness of Searle Lake winked through the fog. The thick promotional booklet about Marlwood (eighty-four pages) showed glossy pictures of pine trees and wildflowers, extolling the virtues of the campus: three hundred acres of forested land, hiking and biking trails, seventeen dorms, the quaint bell tower of Founder’s Hall, and excellence in education. It failed to mention the nearly thirty condemned buildings where students held all-night parties and occult planning sessions about whom to murder next.
    “Hey.” Shayna came up beside me now, and I nearly leaped out of my skin.
    “God, Shayna,” I said, trying to force out a laugh instead of a scream. “You scared me half to death.”
    “Sorry.” Shayna was gaunt, her cheekbones too prominent, her eyes deep in their sockets. She toyed with a large abstract pendant dotted with diamonds—I had no cause to believe they were anything but real—as she began to walk toward my dorm, then stopped when I didn’t immediately follow.
    “How have you been?” I asked, catching up to her. There were lines of tension around her mouth. I realized that in the two