Free The Screaming Season by Nancy Holder Page B

to hide from Belle and the other five.”
    “Hide.” He set the paper aside and opened up the notebook. “They’re all dead. Why not, you know, let it go?”
    “They’re angry. Terrible things were done to them. Celia . . . ” I stopped. It had become second nature to me to brace myself for repercussions when I started talking about Celia.
    Miles leaned toward me, locking gazes with me. His eyes flared.
    “Celia?” he whispered. “Celia, Celia . . . ”
    Come to me.
    Come to me.
    They said if you said it five times . . .
    “Don’t,” I said. “If she’s gone, I don’t want her back.”
    Something flickered over his face. I was an idiot. He wanted Celia to show. He wanted to see how it worked, maybe even talk to her. Maybe he wasn’t even interested in helping Mandy either.
    No. He loved her . Me? I was just convenient. Help me?
    Only if it worked out that way.
    I wanted to stomp off, show my outrage, but he had the transportation and Mandy’s notes. I had never fully trusted him, so it wasn’t like I was getting any big surprise here.
    “Let me see everything,” I ordered him, grabbing the jeweled notebook before he could stop me. It really was beautiful, with purple and green stones set in embossed swirls decorated with gold. I had started a journal when I came to Marlwood. I’d fancied myself quite a writer. My killer personal essay was what had snagged me a place on the wait list, despite my precipitous drop in GPA. But I’d learned very quickly that some things were best not written down.
    “I want to see your news clipping,” he said, “when you move back in.”
    The waiter chose that exact time to return with our Diet Cokes and an oval red plastic container loaded with tortilla chips and pale orange cheese goo, a few sad little jalapeños scattered over the mound.
    “Yum,” Miles said appreciatively as he scooped up a chip and carried it to his mouth. A purple flush crept up my neck. I recalled the last time he’d used that word: kissing me. He bobbed his head, inviting me to partake.
    “Not big on ’em,” I said, mostly to make a point that he should have consulted me before ordering.
    “Yeah-huh.” He pushed the container toward me. “I won’t, you know, dump you once we figure this stuff out. I said I’d help you, and I will.”
    I didn’t believe him. “What if the only way Mandy can get free of Belle is by doing something to me?” I asked, and the purple flush continued its march across my face.
    He froze with a chip halfway to this mouth. “You scamp. Celia’s already told you how to free yourself, hasn’t she? You are supposed to do something to Mandy .”
    “No.” I turned the page, to another list.
    possessions in basement:
    portrait
    group photos
    china doll
    mourning brooch (lock of hair?)
    There was a sketch of a floor plan labeled B . For “basement,” I supposed. I blinked as I visually traced the layout of Jessel’s basement. It had the L shape that reminded me of a hunchback when I looked down on it from Grose. Running along the back, where Mandy had written DOOR , were two lines that led into the basement from a ninety-degree angle, then appeared to rise up out of the L shape at an incline. She had written TUNNEL! And continued the angle, connecting it to a trapezoid, she had marked ATTIC .
    So Mandy had known there was a tunnel in the attic, which I had stumbled upon—literally—when I lost my balance trying to escape from the haunted wheelchair. I fell through the thin wall into the tunnel . . . and the wheelchair had followed me. Followed me. How had I stayed sane after that?
    Maybe the wheelchair wasn’t really haunted, I thought. Maybe she rigged it up to move when I was up there. She had had access to all kinds of high-tech spook-house equipment, which her dorm, Jessel, had used to make the most elaborate haunted house that I’d ever been to outside of a theme park. She had also souped up the old library for one of her legendary pranks, terrifying