A Banshee's Wail (The Banshee Curse #1)

Chapter Three

STARING DOWN AT my name scribbled across the envelope, I sucked in a breath. It was the only noise in the room, and all I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears. I didn't recognize the handwriting—not that I would if I hadn't seen it in the past eleven years—and there wasn't a return address. What if I hadn't gotten the letter? What would the person have done then?

     Finally, the silence was shattered. “Are you going to open it, or are you just gonna stand there and stare at it?” Rachel snapped, causing me to jump and whirl around to face her. She smirked, as if she found my surprise funny. Which she probably did. “Well?”

     I glanced behind her, taking in Jane sitting at the desk with a book in her hand. Her grey eyes were wide as she stared at me. “I think you should mind your own business, Misc,” I murmured slowly, returning my gaze to Jane's sister.

     Rachel frowned. “Fine.” She whirled around and fell onto the beanbag chair, turning on the TV and flipping through the channels furiously. The way she pressed down the buttons made me think she was going to snap the remote in half.

     I glanced back down at the envelope, not looking up when I turned to face Sam. “I think I'm gonna take a shower first,” I told her quietly, tapping the corner of the envelope against my palm as I grabbed a few things and disappeared into the bathroom.

     When I came back out, dressed in sweats and a spaghetti-strapped shirt, Sam was gone. My fingers curled around the envelope and I bit the inside of my cheek as I thought. I could feel Rachel's and Jane's gazes burning into the side of my head, like they thought I'd open it right here and now with them watching. They wanted me to read it out loud to them the first time I read it, like I would do that without even knowing what the contents of the letter were myself.

     “I'll be back,” I muttered, heading for the door. I heard Rachel huff with discontent, and the chair Jane occupied creaked as she shifted.

     The elevator doors closed behind me as I stepped into the hall—if you could call it that. It was more like a very small room that kept the elements from hitting you before you actually stepped onto the roof. As I said before, running was my way of getting my mind off of things that were bugging me. Well, since I'd already been running and I couldn't exactly run and read at the same time, I opted for my second way of decompressing: Coming up to the roof.

     The dormitory was a pretty tall building, which made me think that the campus St. James used had actually been used for something else before it'd been turned into a boarding school for orphans. There were nine actual floors that housed the students here, the tenth and last floor actually being the roof. The roof was actually one of the few places that the other students here disliked—which made me love it all that much more. If there wasn't a chance someone would be up here, there was an even less likely chance someone would find me up here.

     My toes curled against the cold cement as I stepped through the door, shivering slightly as the wind blew the wet strands of my hair around. I grimaced and pushed my hair away from my face, hurrying over to the bench-like mound in the middle of the roof. I honestly had no idea what it was doing here, but it gave me a place to sit and watch the sun dip under the mountains, so I wasn't really complaining.

     The envelope felt like it was burning the fingerprints right off my fingers. My heart pounded as I stared at is, wary. I really, really wanted to open it, but at the same time, something was stopping me. Was I scared that this letter could actually be from a long lost relative that I'd never known about? No. Well, okay, maybe a little. It'd been eleven years that I'd been at this hell hole called an orphanage, and not once had I been contacted. Why now?