Free The Liar Society by Lisa Roecker

place, dark eyes flashing. She didn’t say a word—silence was the unspoken rule—but handed me a white cloak exactly like the one she wore. She gestured that I should put it on, so I pulled it over my T-shirt and pajama pants.
    She smiled and gave me a white candle that she lit with the one she held in her hands. Her face flickered in the candlelight, and her eyes shone with secrets. Again she grabbed my hand, and I followed her to the clock tower.
    The girls were lined up at the plaque that marked Station 2, the clock tower. Tempus edax rerum . “Time is the devourer of all things.” The girls looked ghostly, the candlelight casting shadows where eyes and mouths should be. I couldn’t stop myself from looking for Grace’s face among the white phantoms. My eyes widened a bit when I saw Maddie but no Grace. Obviously.
    I stood behind Naomi and realized that I was the eleventh. I’d be climbing to the top, the last unlucky girl to wait for the ghost.
    One by one, the girls climbed the steps, and one by one the windows leading to the top of the clock tower were lit. If I weren’t so terrified of what I’d find at the top, the sight of them would have been oddly beautiful. But climbing the stairs to meet a ghost hit way too close to home.
    I watched Naomi walk slowly to the tower. Girl number ten. I saw her candle flicker past each window as she wound her way up to the tenth story. When she finally stopped in front of her window, it was my turn.
    I tried to hold my candle steady, but my hands were shaking so much that the hot wax dripped down and burned my skin. My legs were barely able to support my body as I climbed each flight.
    When I passed Maddie on the sixth floor, she turned to look at me. Her face was blank, but her eyes were wide and glossy and sad. God, I missed her. I lifted my fingers in a wave, but she shook her head quickly and turned away. As usual, there was an invisible wall between us that she never let me breach.
    I walked on without a word, a new purpose in my steps. I could do this. I had to do this. I was Kate Lowry, not some lame-ass prom queen who was afraid of her own shadow. If a ghost really was at the top of the tower, I was sure I’d be able to handle it. That is, if you define “handling it” as dropping my candle, booking it down the stairs, and sprinting back to the safety of my bedroom.
    I crept up the final flight of stairs, terrified that the tiniest noise would stir whatever might be waiting up there. The old gears of the clock churned and creaked, and every tick and tock made me jump and search for the girl with the noose looped around her neck.
    When I finally approached the window with my candle, I saw her. She stood in the middle of the courtyard, plaid skirt, inky hair spilling down her back. Her body was turned toward the dense woods that surrounded the campus. But before I could scream, deep voices rang within the tower, slicing through the silence.
    “ BOO-AH-HAH-HAHH! ”
    The voices came from each level of the tower and were followed by piercing, high-pitched screams, one of which was my own. When I swung around, heart pounding, to confront whatever or whoever was there, I came face-to-face with Alistair Reynolds and Bradley Farrow, both dressed head to toe in black.
    I shoved Bradley’s chest, pushing him backward. His large frame only moved an inch, and he held his hands up as if to surrender. But before I could lay into Alistair, I remembered who I’d seen out the window. I whipped my head back around and screamed through the opening.
    “ Grace! ”
    I scanned the dark ground below, looking for her. I locked in on her running into the woods, her hands pushing weeds and twigs to clear the way.
    I took off down the stairs, my candle long since extinguished in my rush to get out of the tower. On each level, girls in white stood with boys in black, all staring wide-eyed at the crazy girl running down the stairs. But by the time I made it out into the open, Grace was