Wicked by Joanne Fluke

Nine of them, since Cheryl was no longer with them. Wicked could hardly wait to read them to see who would die tonight.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Tracie made a few changes, and then she smiled in complete satisfaction. This was her best chapter yet! She’d written about death in a flashback, and she thought it was very good. Her main character had witnessed the death of her first boyfriend.
    The flashback was scary, and Tracie shivered as she read what she’d written. Anastasia, her main character, had seen her boyfriend in the arms of another woman. Anastasia had watched them kissing through a lace curtain, and she’d vowed to get even. And then something horrible had happened. Right after Anastasia had taken her vow of revenge, her boyfriend had been killed in a boating accident. Was it fate? Or had she willed it to happen? Anastasia had to resolve her feelings before she could love again.
    Tracie climbed up the steps to the fourth floor to get her pages. No one else was there, and it felt a little scary. She grabbed her pages from the tray and ran all the way back down to her room again. She didn’t like going up to the fourth floor alone, and she wasn’t quite sure why.
    As she stuck her pages in her loose-leaf notebook, Tracie frowned. She hadn’t bothered to check out an important part of her story. Could you really see through lace curtains? Tracie wasn’t sure. And Angela had told them to be careful that the basic facts they wrote about were true.
    There were lace curtains in the library. Tracie smiled as she remembered. She’d run down to check it out. She still had time to revise her chapter if her premise turned out to be false.
    Tracie hurried down the hallway and pulled open the door to the staircase. But she’d only gone down three stairs when she thought she heard stealthy footsteps behind her. She whirled around, her eyes searching the shadows, but nothing was moving.
    â€œIs someone there?” Tracie’s voice was a frightened whisper. Of course no one answered, and Tracie felt very foolish. There was no one else in the stairwell. She was just jumpy because of Cheryl’s death.
    Even though Tracie knew she was being silly, she stopped and listened several times as she walked down the stairs. She felt very relieved when she reached the ground floor and opened the door to the hallway. The lights in the hallway were much brighter, and there weren’t any dark shadows for someone to hide in.
    There was no one else on the ground floor, but someone had come down earlier to set up the library for their meeting. There was a pad of paper in front of every chair with a sharpened pencil on top of it. Nine pads of paper and nine pencils. It made Tracie feel sad that there weren’t ten.
    The big red and white cooler sat on the library table, almost like a centerpiece. Tracie walked over and lifted the lid. There was a variety of sodas inside, and she took out one of her favorites. She popped the tab, took a big sip, and carried it over to the French doors leading to the courtyard. There were lace curtains on the library doors and she needed to know if she could see through them.
    The courtyard was dark, and all Tracie could see was her own reflection in the pane of glass behind the lace curtains. But the girl in her book hadn’t been inside, looking out. She’d walked past the house and gazed in at the lighted interior. Tracie decided to go out in the courtyard and try it.
    She opened the doors and stepped out, into the courtyard. It was dark, but she didn’t turn on the lights. The girl in her book had been out in the darkness, several yards away from the window. Tracie crossed the courtyard to a spot quite close to the pool.
    â€œYes!” Tracie started to smile as she realized that she could see the red and white cooler on the library table. She wouldn’t have to rush to revise her chapter. It was perfect exactly the way it was.
    Tracie sat down in one of