Free The Screaming Season by Nancy Holder

blank-faced horse heads holding oversized chains in their mouths. On bad nights, I had imagined those horses recording my comings and goings. On worse nights, I could tip my imagination into believing that they turned to look as I passed each one by. Why not? This was Marlwood.
    We zoomed past the infirmary, up the hill, and through Academy Quad, where Jessel hung over the lake and Grose stared down at Jessel. The light was on in Mandy’s room and I pushed myself down against Miles’s back, wanting to yell at him that a little more stealth would be appreciated.
    We went past the new library, the commons, and the gym; then Miles drove straight when he should have hung a right. We were approaching the old library, with its treasure troves of ghosts and mildewing books, one of which had been Dr. Abernathy’s notes on his lobotomy techniques. Troy had found it. David Abernathy killed a lot of girls and turned others into vegetables. His notes about his failures were cold and detached. He was like a Nazi, keeping lists and records. Both Celia and Belle were on the last list in the journal. After the fire, he left Marlwood forever and died of old age in Colorado.
    I tensed. I hated that place. Celia had warned me away from Troy, appearing in the broken glass of one of the library’s cabinets, saying I couldn’t trust him, that he was dangerous. She’d been wrong about him. Being dead didn’t make you infallible.
    There was a light on in the upper story, in the exact location where I had seen the ghost of Mr. Truscott, the madhouse orderly weeping over Belle Johnson’s impending lobotomy. She had seduced him into caring about her. I tapped Miles on the shoulder and extended my arm into his peripheral vision so he could follow my pointed finger. I wanted to see if he saw it too.
    Just before he glanced up, the light disappeared. I tapped his helmet, indicating he should just move on, but he slowed, then stopped and put his foot down. I cringed.
    “Sorry, it’s nothing,” I said. “Let’s go.”
    He looked at the library, then craned his neck around and looked at me. My face prickled. “Are you okay?” he asked.
    “Define your terms,” I answered. I couldn’t help looking back at the library. He followed my gaze, then studied the black mouth of the doorway.
    “What’s in there?”
    “Nothing. Forward motion.”
    He gripped my arm, and a chill shot down my back. This was Miles Winters. No one knew we were here. What had I done?
    He gave my forearm a squeeze. “C’mon, play fair. You’re shaking like a leaf.”
    “Let go of me or I’ll gouge your eyes out,” I said coldly.
    His reply was a cross between a laugh and a grunt, but he did let go. Without realizing what I was doing, I rubbed my arm.
    “What have I ever done to you?” he asked me.
    “It’s not what you’ve done. It’s who you are.”
    “You have no idea who I am,” he retorted. “And what I am is the closest thing you have to backup.” He patted the messenger bag. “I have information in here. And I want to go someplace and sit down and sort through it. With you.”
    He looked at the library, obviously intrigued. “I wanted to get away from Marlwood when we do it. Just in case. But if this place is haunted, then wouldn’t it be perfect to do it here?”
    “No.”
    “But—”
    “No.”
    “Wow. Okay. Fine.”
    I put my hands around him again and we took off, the Vespa buzzing like an angry hornet. Headlight beams hit the trees . . . and farther up, more light reflected against the leaves: The light from the library had turned back on.
    He pointed to the left at a cluster of Victorian-style bungalows and bellowed, “That’s where I’m staying. Too many neighbors,” he added, as if explaining to me why we didn’t hold our pow-wow there.
    Miles downshifted and I held on as the Vespa worked its way up the incline. Above us, on the hill, the Victorian-style mansion that was the admin building perched like a vampire on a rooftop,