the nurse. “Can you wait? She and the counselors can probably see you in a few minutes. There’s no one else in front of you.”
I don’t want to talk to the counselors, but I know there won’t be any other way to get to Nurse Fedder today. After about fifteen minutes, they all come out.
Nurse Fedder spots me immediately. “Kenzie, how’s your finger?”
“Healing. Can I talk to you?”
One of the counselors, an older man, steps forward. “You can talk to all of us. I’m Dr. Horowitz, a psychologist.”
I shake my head and gesture to the nurse. “I just want to talk to Nurse Fedder.”
“Don’t be put off by the profession,” the doctor says. “We can just talk. And this is Pastor Eugene.” He indicates another man.
“Hello, dear,” the pastor says, his voice so gentle and kind I’m almost tempted. But I doubt my questions about a curse would go over big with a pastor.
“Please?” I ask Nurse Fedder.
“I know this young lady.” She reaches for my arm. “We’ll talk in the clinic.”
The shrink looks like he’s about to argue, but another student comes in looking for counseling and helps me out. I follow Nurse Fedder down the short corridor to the same room where she’d bandaged my hand.
She closes the door and turns to me, as pale as I must have been the last time I was in here.
“This is bad,” she says simply.
Whoa. Wasn’t expecting that. “Yes, it is,” I agree.
“I’ve been waiting for one of you to show up.”
I assume she means one of the girls from the list. “We were too busy having a coven in an empty lab downstairs.”
Her expression flickers. “A coven?”
“Talking about curses and stuff …” I eye her carefully, praying for her to look at me like I’m crazy. Like Kylie and Amanda are totally wacked out and there is nothing remotely true about this.
Instead she nods. “This could be a bad year,” she says solemnly.
My weak knees bend and I sink into the patient cot. “What are you talking about?”
She glances at the door like someone might barge in. “We can’t talk here.”
“Why not?” I demand, despising the note of panic that hitches my voice. Why isn’t she just waving this off as nonsense? Has everyone who’s ever been on that list been brainwashed or something?
She sits next to me and closes her clammy hands over mine. “Most of the time, actually almost all the time, the girls on the list are … fine.”
“Fine.” I whisper the word. “What about the rest of the time?”
She closes her eyes and blows out a slow, noisy sigh. “There have been accidents.”
So I’ve heard. Frustration and fear mix into a black ball of nausea in my stomach. I want to know more … but I kind of want to run away and never hear that word again.
“Are you sure they’re accidents? Not …” Murder. “Intentional?”
“They’re fatal. Never anything but bad luck or, more accurately, cursed luck.”
“Nurse Fedder.” I am fighting for calm, trying to ignore the quivering of terror and irritation in my body. “I don’t believe in the supernatural. I don’t believe in a curse.”
Her smile is wry. “No one comes into this believing. But after a while … There’s no denying that the hand of something very powerful is on this list. Something insidious and unpredictable, something that thrives on the unexpected and never leaves a trace of crime in its wake, only the stink of a curse.”
How could someone so smart—trained in medicine and, one would assume, science—fall for this crap?
“Nurse Fedder—”
“Christine,” she corrects. “Call me Christine.”
“What I’m calling you is crazy.” I don’t care what I sound like. “I don’t believe in curses or supernatural garbage or any insidious hands that … whatever you said. I don’t buy any of that.”
She gives a shrug that says it all: what I think matters not one bit.
“I think these deaths might be …” Murder. Levi’s face flashes before me. If someone is accused, it’ll be him. “Not accidents.”
“They’re not,” she agrees readily. “But if you think someone killed anyone who’s ever been on the list, think again. Not one death has ever been anything but a freak accident. No crime, no evidence of murder, no other person involved. Believe me, we’ve investigated.”
“We? You mean other women who’ve been on the list?”
She nods. “We hired a private investigator who found absolutely no shred of evidence that any death was anything but accidental. Of course, there were two suicides.”