The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,44

patient’s file, but my notebook is blank. Nothing from the session? That’s not like me at all.

Ellie leaves without another word, her steps small and quick. Never mind the lack of notes. Something doesn’t seem right. Ellie returned Jacob’s file this morning. I swear she did. But nothing’s out of place in the cabinet. And Jacob’s file is in order. There are notes dated today, a few anyway. Nothing’s missing from my desk. The necklace is still in the drawer.

But the color in Ellie’s cheeks, the way she spoke. Am I being paranoid? Or do I need to keep an eye on her, too?

I sit. Steeple my fingers. An email arrives from the information website, and my stomach lurches with anticipation. I scan the attached list, comparing it to the old. Not even one new addition. The same Laurens. The same information.

I groan behind clenched teeth. I feel as though I’m a puppet dangling from someone else’s strings. And I don’t like it at all.

End of day, I shove my laptop in my bag. Check my pockets for keys. My office phone rings and I think about not answering, but I put on my professional voice and say, “Dr. Cole speaking.”

Silence on the other end.

“This is Dr. Cole. May I help you?”

The silence grows even larger.

“Is someone there?”

There’s a hint of movement. An exhale.

“Who is this?” I say, trying for forceful. In control. I can hang up anytime. But I clutch the phone even tighter, ignoring the tension in my fingers, my other hand splayed like a starfish on my desk.

An inhale. A syllable, unintelligible. The voice feels wrong. My spine turns arctic, my mouth Saharan.

Who are you?

What are you?

Then they’re gone. Hissing through my teeth, I drop the phone as though it’s poison. Bite the side of my fingernail, loosening a bit of cuticle. Bite it again, pulling until it hurts. Until there’s blood.

We had to bleed.

My arms are awash in goose bumps.

When we did the ritual, she said we had to bleed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THEN

“Take off your shoes and sit inside the circle,” Becca said.

One by one, we stepped over the thirteen candles Becca had arranged and sat cross-legged. I sat facing the staircase, Rachel to my right, and Gia across from me. In the middle was a plate with another candle, unlit, matches, a needle, and a bunch of Becca’s mom’s scarves. The room smelled of fruit, baby powder, and vanilla. The corners were all shadowy.

A couple months ago, I’d read a book where people were trying to summon the devil and they did a ritual inside a circle of candles. Thirteen candles. I’d told Becca about it, too, so I knew that’s where she’d gotten the idea. In the book, the main guy used a knife to cut their palms and they all drank the blood. When the devil came, he ripped off all their heads, but I didn’t think the Red Lady would do anything to us. I didn’t think she’d show up at all, even if she was real. Which she wasn’t, no matter what Becca said.

Becca took the open spot in the circle, her back facing the shadowed end of the basement, and said, “If you want to see the Red Lady, you have to make yourself bleed, and then you have to be blindfolded and say the right words. You have to prove you can do it, prove you want to see her.”

Rachel was breathing fast, her lips parted. Really scared, not fake scared. I glanced at the needle and stifled a grin. When we were ten, Becca and I had pricked our fingers to be blood sisters.

“If we wear blindfolds, how will we see her?” I said.

“Do you want to accidentally look in her eyes?” Becca said. “And wake up with dirt in your mouth? Or not wake up at all?”

“I don’t,” Rachel said.

“But how will we know she’s here if we can’t see?” Gia said.

“We’ll know. We’ll see her here,” Becca said, tapping the side of her head.

Yeah, in our imaginations. But I said, “How do you know?”

Her gaze locked onto mine, and we stared without speaking, like in a don’t-blink contest. I didn’t know why I was trying to make her mad. Rachel and Gia were watching us, but they kept quiet. In the past week and a half, I’d seen Becca once and not even for that long. Every other time I’d called, she’d said she was too busy to hang out. But she wasn’t now that Gia was back