Emily whirled around to face Malcolm and I immediately felt the pressure disappear from my throat.

“Nothing. We were just talking.”

Her friends all nodded their heads and I did a double-take when I realized that Felicity looked normal. Her skin was flawless. Her makeup perfect. Like she hadn’t ruined her face with dark magic.

What? How?

Ruby had said there was nothing she could do to fix it.

Malcolm crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Emily. Leave these girls alone or I will see to it that you’re expelled from our academy.” He looked at her friends. “That goes for all of you.”

Emily stuck out a hip and put a hand on it like a petulant child. “I didn’t lay a hand on her.”

His eyes snapped to hers. “Ruby has warned you before. I will speak to her about this. I’m very disappointed in you. And you know better than to do things like that in public. Now, get out of here, all of you.”

As we started to walk away, he called me and Laynee back. “Are you girls okay?”

We both nodded.

“Are you sure?”

We both nodded again. I added a yes to make sure he understood; I was pretty sure Laynee wasn’t going to speak.

He said goodbye and we trudged around the back of the building to the Waratah Estate van where Tracy waited for us with Kellie, Kaydan and Justina.

We didn’t say anything about the confrontation with Emily; there was no point. I doubt she’d stop. I was sure that getting Tracy involved would only make things worse.

On the way home, I wondered why Kellie considered Emily a friend. I mean, they were total opposites. Kellie wouldn’t do anything to deliberately hurt someone’s feelings — she just wasn’t built that way — whereas Emily seemed to go out of her way to be a bitch.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Keeping my mouth shut about Sophie was so much harder than I thought it would be. The urge to talk about it, to tell someone, anyone, was eating at me.

I sat alone in my room trying to get the image of Sophie’s bloated body out of my mind. And the smell… My stomach roiled and I felt a little lightheaded, but closed my eyes and thought about other things, wishing Jackson was here to distract me.

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My thoughts kept coming back to the fact that her death was so unexpected. She was just driving home from the shop and now she was gone. Her family devastated. She didn’t deserve that. They didn’t deserve that.

But life is like that. You never know when it will be your turn to leave this world. I could have one day to live, or seventy more years… Oh, I’d forgotten. I was a Descendant. I could have many more years than that.

Your own mortality is a lot to take in. Maybe we shouldn’t waste the time we have. But I had no idea how I could really change my situation. All I could do was press on and keep trying to learn control. Then when I got my life back, I could decide what I wanted to do with it.

Any time I had a chance to be alone in my room, I’d been practicing lifting objects with my magic, but right now, I couldn’t concentrate.

I put my head on my pillow for a while and tried to relax, but the thoughts rushing through my mind were making it impossible.

Why did Sophie have to die? Why is life so unfair like that? What is Emily’s problem? Why does she have to be such a pain in my ass? Why is learning magic so hard? The others make it look so easy. I wonder how many people can see ghosts? Are there more than just me and Jade?

Then my mind changed tack.

Where is Jackson? Why does he disappear and reappear at random times? Is that normal for ghosts?

I didn’t really know much about the whole ghost thing and wondered if I could find any information on the internet or whether I’d just end up with a bunch of weird theories that people had made up.

Probably that and worse.

Anna-Marie called us for tea and my stomach sank. I was starving, but I didn’t want to face the questions about how I found Sophie’s body. Was I ready to tell everyone in the house that I could see spirits?

When I thought about it, it would probably make things easier for me. I remembered overhearing Justina saying that they could do magic in front of me now that I knew it existed. It was probably a relief to them when they didn’t have to be careful around me anymore. It would be a relief for me to not have to hide the fact that I’m talking to ghosts, although talking to them in front of people wouldn’t be a good idea. That would be a bit too much.

Tracy seemed pretty quiet during dinner and I wondered if it was because she knew about Sophie.

Probably.

I tried to answer Kellie whenever she spoke to me, but it was hard to concentrate on what she was saying. Everyone seemed unusually quiet, as if they knew something wasn’t right.

Once we were finished eating, Tracy stood. “Before you go, I have something to tell you.” Everyone stopped what they were doing. Maybe they could sense that what she had to say was really bad. “There’s no easy way to say this, but I’ve been told that Sophie Vella’s body was found today in the Warrigal River. Apparently, her car lost control on River Road just before Yarraman Bridge and she drove straight into the river.”

Everyone talked at once, wanting to know more details, and as Tracy tried to answer, Kaydan asked how she was found. Tracy looked at me as if asking my permission and I nodded. They would find out eventually. Might as well rip that Band-aid off right now.

“Maddie found her.”

All eyes turned to me, wanting to know how I found her.

“Some of you know already, but… I’m a Spirit Seer. I can see ghosts.” There was a gasp and then silence. “Sophie’s spirit came up to me in the main street and asked for my help. She didn’t want her family to keep hoping that they’d find her safe and well. It wasn’t fair to them to keep that hope alive. She showed me where her car ran off the road and into the river and I called the police.”

Justina frowned. “When did this happen?”

“Earlier today when I went to lunch.”

She crossed her arms. “So why didn’t you tell us before? Like, in the van on the way home. We all knew her. Don’t you even care? Is this just some sick way to get back at us?”