Ominous Read Online Free Page B

been written out by Theresa Billings.
    “This is so freaking cool,” I whispered.
    I looked around the room again, hugging myself against the cold. I imagined Theresa, Elizabeth, and Catherine at the podium, jotting down notes in the book. Had they really cast spells in this room? Had any of them worked? Was that even possible? Or was it a game to occupy their time?
    Biting my lip, I flipped to the incantation near the front of the book of spells—the one that could supposedly turn a group of eleven regular girls into witches. I’d found it that afternoon at lunch, when I’d spent the period holed up in a study carrel at the back of the library. The directions were explicit. Eleven girls dressed in white were required. They were to stand in a circle, each holding a candle, and recite the incantation. A thrill of silly excitement went through me. If it required eleven girls in white to work, then it couldn’t do any harm for me to say it on my own, could it?
    “Like it could do any harm anyway, loser,” I whispered to myself. “This stuff isn’t real.”
    I took a deep breath and held it, squelching an embarrassed giggle. Then I moved my candle over the page and read.
    “We come together to form this blessed circle, pure of heart, free of mind. From this night on we are bonded, we are sisters.” My voice shook with giddy mirth at my own childishness, but whatever. Thiswas fun. “We swear to honor this bond above all else. Blood to blood, ashes to ashes, sister to sister, we make this sacred vow.”
    I heard a creak that stopped my heart, and suddenly a gust of wind shot through the circular room, swirling my hair up off my shoulders and extinguishing my candle. Heart in my throat, I scrambled to my feet, the books tumbling to the floor at my toes. The acrid, birthday-party smell of the candle’s smoke curled through my nostrils as heavy footsteps clomped down the stairs, every groan of the ancient planks like an arrow to my heart, every crack heightening my terror. I pressed my back against the wall, wondering if there was any way to use my candle as a weapon. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, the candle flickered to life again. I stared at the flame, transfixed, my heart seized with fear.
    How could that have possibly happened?
    Just then, Noelle arrived at the foot of the stairs. Her hands braced the walls, level with her ears, and she looked at me with a wry expression.
    “I knew it!”
    “Noelle! You scared the crap out of me!” I blurted.
    “Which you deserve!” she said, tromping across the room. “What are you doing? Please tell me you’re not really taking this stuff seriously.”
    She wrested the BLS book from my hands and looked at it. “What are you, writing a term paper now?”
    I grabbed the book back and, with a trembling hand, shoved the freaky candle at her. As I crouched on the floor, cramming thebooks into my messenger bag, I took a few breaths to steady myself. Obviously the wind had gusted down the stairs when Noelle had opened the door. And as for the candle … it was just a faulty wick. Or one of those trick candles that could relight itself.
    Except I’d never seen one of those that wasn’t birthday-cake-candle size.
    “I was just messing around,” I improvised, shouldering my bag as I stood. “I was trying to figure out whether those Billings Literary Society girls really believed in this witchcraft crap.”
    Noelle, to my surprise, looked interested. “And? Did they?”
    “Some of them, I think,” I said, lifting my shoulders. For some reason, I didn’t want to name names. I felt like I’d be betraying the BLS girls somehow. Opening them up to Noelle’s ridicule. Which was, of course, ludicrous, since all of them had been dead for probably thirty years.
    “Yeah, well, people were a lot more gullible back then,” Noelle said, turning and heading for the open doorway. “Come on. There’s still a mess upstairs and I am
not
hanging out here again if it’s infested with