Charlie, Jude, and Cybill were walking down the beach now, toward the club. A minute later they’d disappeared from view, and Alice wondered if there’d ever been a time when she’d felt so alone. She knew it was weird—beyond weird, sick, really—to blame a dead girl for her troubles, but she couldn’t help herself. This was all Camilla’s fault. Camilla, no longer living and yet the most alive person she knew. The most powerful, too. Camilla could come between people even if she wasn’t in this world anymore. Could do it easy, without even breaking a sweat. A ghost who taunted as much as she haunted. And it was as Alice was thinking these thoughts that she heard it: the high, silvery tinkling. It might have been the wind chimes hanging above the sliding glass door, reacting to a breeze coming off the ocean. Might have been but wasn’t, Alice knew. It was Camilla laughing at her from the other side of death, from beyond the grave.

Alice laid a palm flat on either side of her skull, pressed as hard as she could. Blocking her ears, though, didn’t block out the sound. Just made it seem like it was coming from inside her head. She loved her sister; she hated her sister. Her sister hated her; her sister loved her. Alice turned and fled, running into the house so big that in it she felt like a doll in a house for humans, through the kitchen, and up the twisting staircase to her bedroom. The laughter followed her every step of the way.

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to bow deeply to my agent, Jennifer Joel. To Jennifer’s assistant, Clay Ezell. And to the team at Razorbill, my editor Jocelyn Davies and publisher Ben Schrank. You’ve all been a pleasure to work with.

And my everlasting gratitude to John Holodnak and Robert Anolik, both of whom have read this book more times than any sinner ought.

A special thanks, too, to Allison Lorentzen, without whom none of this would have been possible.

Special Excerpt

Keep reading for a sneak preview of

THIS SIDE

OF JEALOUSY

the second book

in the INNOCENTS series!