knew better.
More than anything in the world, I wanted to walk over there and slap that pretty-boy smirk right off his face. I lurched toward him involuntarily and immediately felt Liam’s arm slide around my waist.
“Don’t,” he said. Never had there been so much meaning packed into one tiny word. The anger was back in his eyes. And on some level I had to admit that I understood. The last time we’d gotten involved, it had ended with me nearly getting charged with manslaughter and Liam almost getting killed. Safe to say things hadn’t exactly gone as planned.
But I wasn’t ready to give up on justice. And nothing made me want to fight back more than watching Alistair dude-hug Bradley. My eyes narrowed as the boys bumped shoulders while Liam’s voice reduced to a low drone I was barely conscious of. Watching them left me feeling light-headed all over again, and I swayed on my feet.
“Kate!” Liam grabbed me by the elbow and turned me around so the boys were out of my line of sight. “They’re getting ready to start,” he said tersely.
“Oh, right. Sure.” I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a fourth-year dressed in a white robe. She was standing on one of the benches and was flanked by two first-years who appeared to be freezing their butts off in outfits better suited for summer. The younger girls trained twin flashlights on the fourth-year to create a flickering spotlight as Porter Reynolds, Alistair’s younger brother and wannabe rock star, gently strummed on his guitar.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Liam added under his breath. “You’ve gotta just let it go.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I wiped them away with the backs of my hands.
“I know this isn’t easy for you, but Grace wouldn’t want you putting yourself at risk for them.” He cupped my face in his hands and used his thumbs to wipe away fresh tears before they even had a chance to fall. “You’re never going to win this. If you had a chance, they wouldn’t bother playing.”
“I know.” And I did. There was no doubt in my mind that Liam was right. But that didn’t make it any easier to give up.
The fourth-year’s voice began to ring out over the crowd, carried through the quiet cemetery by the sharp winter wind. “ Ad perpetuam memoriam; ad vitam aeternam .” In perpetual memorial; to eternal life. She began to slowly read off the list of names, the paper fluttering in the breeze. Some—like Abigail Moore, a woman who’d fallen victim to a Sisterhood initiation gone wrong in the ’50s —I recognized, but most were just an endless series of first names that sounded like last names followed by thirds, fourths, or even fifths, depending on how long the family had been rich.
I remembered hearing the same monotonous list of names with Grace and Maddie while we hid behind the mausoleum. It felt like a million years ago that we’d barely listened to the endless litany of Pemberly Brown’s fallen students, too busy ogling fourth-years and giggling from the shadows. It was as though instead of names we were hearing the words “This will never happen to you” over and over and over again.
But here I was, about fourteen months later. Grace-less.
My entire body stiffened when I finally heard the fourth-year call out Henry Rowenstock’s name. He’d died of leukemia when we were in lower school, and his name had been last on the list a couple years ago, so that could only mean one thing. Liam squeezed my hand as the fourth-year took a huge breath.
Seth looked down at his feet, and I felt the entire crowd shift and turn toward me. No matter how hard I tried to fight them, the tears still pooled in my eyes, and my throat began to close up as the girl wrapped her lips around Grace’s name. But just as the sound left her lips and I prepared to hear my best friend’s name, a piercing scream shattered the night instead.
Chapter 6
The sound tore through the quiet like shards of glass exploding at an