The Lost Sister. Megan Kelley Hall
store—had tumbled onto the hardwood floor. Maddie grabbed hold of it and turned it to look at the symbol etched onto the other side, but both sides were blank. She hadn’t come across one of these stones since she first got to school. Maybe it was some kind of sign that going back to Hawthorne was a bad idea.
That’s the understatement of the century , Maddie thought wryly.
Closing her eyes, Maddie went through the runic alphabet in her mind. Cordelia and Rebecca could recite the stones and their meanings effortlessly, but Maddie never was able to keep them all straight. Maddie always had to fall back on a little book of rune stone meanings that she came across in a secondhand bookshop.
Tess had once told Maddie that all the women in their family possessed a gift. It was a sort of knowing, a special extrasensory perception. Before that night on Misery Island, Maddie had just started to become more in tune with her abilities, but ever since she left Hawthorne behind, the door to those abilities had slammed shut.
Just then, the name came to Maddie—as if someone had whispered it in her ear.
Wyrd.
The Wyrd stone. That’s right, Maddie thought. Now, what does it mean again ? Blank…blank slate? A new beginning? No, that wasn’t the right definition.
Maddie picked it up and carried it with her as she moved across the room, checking to make sure that all her belongings were packed up. Maddie already shipped most of it yesterday, the big things. But the rest would be traveling with her by train.
Wyrd…Wyrd…Wyrd. Maddie ran it through her head a couple of times.
Standing at the window, Maddie watched as bundled-up students made their way across the icy quad. She dropped her head to the side, closed her eyes, and tried to will the meaning into her head.
“Now, that looks like an invitation if I ever saw one,” Luke said. Before Maddie realized what was happening, his lips were drifting lightly across her neck. He whispered in her ear, “Do you really have to go home, darlin’?”
Maddie laughed, stepping just out of his reach, angry at the rising swell of her heart and annoyed at his teasing. When she turned to face him, however, Maddie noticed his face held no sign of humor. He simply stared into her eyes. So intensely, in fact, that Maddie could swear she felt trembling in the back of her knees.
“Luke…” Maddie let the word hang between them for a few moments, not quite sure what he wanted from her. She wasn’t planning on being one of his “girls,” and he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give Maddie the type of relationship that she wanted.
“Aw, Maddie. You know I love ya,” he said, dimples deepening as he lightened the awkward moment. “Come here and give me a hug good-bye.”
He pulled her into his arms and squeezed tight, too tight. Maddie could feel him inhale deeply, as if trying to identify her brand of shampoo, and then he sighed heavily. They held on for a few moments, a little longer than normal, when his cell phone went off again.
Damn phone, Maddie thought. Probably some beautiful, airheaded, rich girl without a care in the world. Who am I kidding? I’m the girl with the sick mother, the crazy aunt in a psych ward, the deadbeat dad, the disappearing cousin—right now, I don’t even want to deal with someone like me. Talk about depressing. Only Cordelia could get away with having such a crazy life and still have guys falling at her feet.
“Well, gotta go. You know how I hate to keep the girls waiting,” he joked, and pulled her away from him by her shoulders. Maddie didn’t want to look at him, couldn’t look into his eyes. She didn’t know if she hated him or loved him; if she was going to laugh or cry.
Luke tilted her chin up with his finger. “I’m gonna miss that face.”
Maddie gave him a half smile. “I’ll miss you, too, Luke. I—”
He dragged his finger up to her lips, shaking his head. “Uh-unh. I hate saying good-bye just as much as you do.”
Maddie smiled beneath his finger and he leaned in and kissed her cheek, whispering, “Call me if you need me. For anything. Anytime. Seriously.”
Before he headed out the door, they hugged one last time and he murmured something about staying a good girl during her time in Hawthorne. Maddie heard his phone ring persistently as he made his way down the dorm hallway. She rolled her eyes, sighing audibly as she scanned the room, eyeing the packing that still needed to be done.
She dropped down onto her bed, burying her face in her pillow, and squeezed her eyes shut.
Leaving Maine was going to be difficult, Maddie thought as she rolled over and gazed out the dorm window, but going back to Hawthorne…well, now, that would be murder.
As the train moved through the beautiful New England landscape, Maddie knew that she’d never be able to focus on the books or magazines she’d packed for this trip.
“Would you like something to drink?” A woman’s voice jolted her from her thoughts. She had a rolling tray of canned sodas and bottled water. Maddie reached into her travel bag, digging around for some money to get a Diet Coke, when she felt something cool, round, and smooth at the bottom of the bag.
Maddie pulled out the Wyrd rune stone. She didn’t remember packing it. And she still couldn’t remember the meaning.
“Ahem.” The woman coughed to get her attention. “Whaddya want, hon?”
“Oh, sorry,” Maddie stammered. “I guess I’m all set, thanks.”
The woman made a sighing noise as she lumbered past and Maddie closed her eyes, trying to remember the meaning.
She stared out the window, her vision growing blurry as the trees whizzed by. Oh, never mind, Maddie thought. There were more important things to think about. Like what she was in for when she returned home to Hawthorne. Everything she’d been able to avoid for the past year.
Maddie realized she had been squeezing the rune in her hand so tightly that it left a deep red indentation inside her palm. She traced the red line with her free hand, as if it held a deeper memory. Something that was familiar in the darkness of that night…
The Wyrd stone—the meaning suddenly jumped into her mind—was something that could not be known or controlled. Something that could only be determined by fate.
Ironic, Maddie thought as she looked out the window, contemplating her trip home as the outside world deepened to a purple under the darkening sky.
She shoved the stone into her backpack and got a paper cut on her hand. The delicate inner part of her finger had scraped across an envelope that had been left at her door right before she left for Christmas break. She hadn’t had time to read the corny card that was obviously from Luke, so she stuck it into her bag to read on the train.
The thin line of blood ran quickly across her finger and she shoved it in her mouth as she fished the envelope out of the backpack. She was sure it was going to be a hokey Christmas card or a picturesque postcard of some exotic location with a comment from Luke saying, Look what you’re missing.
But it wasn’t any of those things. She pulled the card out of the envelope and immediately she felt sick. It wasn’t a holiday card or a postcard or a silly letter from Luke. It couldn’t have been from Luke at all.
It was a tarot card. A picture of the Grim Reaper adorned the front of it and underneath it was a single word.
Death.
Chapter 3
QUEEN OF SWORDS
One who is austere, stern, unforgiving, and vindictive. Grief, sorrow, and loss can make us wise and insightful, or it can make us emotionally barren, clinging to the rules of what is “right and wrong” without tempering our judgment with compassion.
A s she waited for her daughter to arrive home from prep school, Abigail Crane peered into the mahogany