Free The Screaming Season by Nancy Holder Page A

waiting to spring. We thrummed through the mostly empty parking lot, past the dark stained glass windows.
    Then we forked left, down the bypass where Troy had seen the burning ghost, and I could feel my heartbeat picking up. Was she a manifestation of Celia? I was on a scooter, unprotected; what if we saw her? What if she was mad at me for getting rid of her and came after us?
    “Ouch, you’re hurting me!” Miles shouted above the whine of the engine.
    “Sorry.” I tried to unclench my hands. I couldn’t. I was too scared.
    Then I recognized the landscape of my dreams of the screaming ghosts. It was all around us; I had been here with Celia—maybe in my mind, maybe out of my mind. And I had a terrible thought: I had always assumed that all I had to do to end the possession was free myself from Celia. But what if the possession worked two ways—what if my spirit or soul, or whatever it was, could be taken from my body and sent somewhere else?
    “Ouch!” Miles bellowed. He batted at my hands. “Stop it!”

SEVEN
    “I DON’T LIKE motor scooters,” I muttered as we were led to a dark table in the back. I was disappointed. “Roadhouse” was another word for dirty, grungy bar. I hadn’t ever been inside one of those—I was sixteen, and a fake ID could only take you so far—but I remembered the fancy spa Troy had taken me to for dinner and wished we could have gone there instead.
    I sat gingerly on cracked brown pleather upholstery. A varnished wood table separated Miles and me. A red glass candle surrounded by white plastic netting flickered and spit. The silent waiter in jeans and a black corduroy shirt set down two small, greasy laminated menus. We were far away from the other patrons, who were playing pool, drinking beer, and watching a basketball game on ESPN. Miles ordered two Diet Cokes and some nachos without asking me what I wanted.
    After the waiter ambled away, Miles opened the messenger bag and pulled out a stack of rumpled papers, a notebook with a jeweled cover, and a joint, which rolled onto the table. I gaped at it.
    “Whoops,” he said, stuffing the joint back into the bag.
    “You brought drugs on campus? Don’t you know we have zero tolerance?”
    “Oh, sweetie.” He stuck out his lower lip, making a sad face. “You are adorable beyond the telling.” He patted the bag, where the joint now rested. “I guess there’s no sense in asking you if you want to light up after this.”
    “No.” Drugs had always been out back home in San Diego. Jane decreed that they were off-limits. A point in her favor. There were some. No queen bee was without her positive qualities.
    “So.” He didn’t really care what I thought about drugs. He unfolded a piece of paper and tapped his finger on it. It was a list, written in Mandy’s bad handwriting. No queen bee is without her failings, either.
    possessions:
    full moon
    mirror
    candle
    item belonging to dead person
    part of dead person (hair, bone, etc.)
    “Part of dead person?” I cried.
    “Could you please yell louder?” He gave me a look.
    “Where could she find . . . ?” I thought back to my nightmares. I had believed that the ashes of the girls who had died had been thrown into the lake. I had worried that some of those ashes had been left behind in the operating theater and that I had actually walked through them. But Celia had shown me a grave in a forest. Maybe this was why.
    “I didn’t have any of that stuff,” I said. I looked at the list again. “Absolutely nothing. It was broad daylight, okay, except it was foggy. And I got . . . ” I lowered my voice as he crossed his eyes at me. “Possessed,” I hissed.
    “This must have been to get the ball rolling,” he said, tapping the list. “Your girl—Celia—maybe she caught a ride on what Mandy had already started.” It was too weird that he was almost bragging on Mandy’s being first.
    “Well, it was a total accident, at least on my part,” I said. “She told me she did it