The Heaven

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com First Simon Pulse hardcover edition February 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Kristina Cook Hart Al rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Designed by Mike Rosamilia The text of this book was set in Berling LT Std. Manufactured in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cook, Kristi. Haven / by Kristi Cook. — 1st Simon Pulsehardcover ed. p. cm. Summary: Violet McKenna’s life started fal ing apart when a premonition of her father’s murder came true, but at a new school, Winterhaven, she finds friends with psychic gifts and an al uring boy whose destiny is entwined with hers in a critical—and deadly—way. ISBN 978-1-4424-0760-2 (hardcover) [1. Psychic ability—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Boardingschools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Orphans—Fiction. 6. New York (State)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.C76984Hav 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010021803 ISBN 978-1-4424-0762-6 (eBook) For Vivian and Eleanor, the coolest kids ever. Seriously.

1 ~ A New Beginning I’l never forget that first glimpse of Winterhaven as we pul ed up the long, curving drive—gray stones bathed in the lavender haze of dusk, looking like an oldEuropean university, al flying buttresses and stone spires reaching toward the sky. Leaves in every shade of the autumn spectrum—red, yel ow, orange, brown—littered the ground at my feet, crunching beneath my boots as I stepped out of the car and looked around. This was it—my new home, my new life. Typical y, I had just been dumped there as unceremoniously as had the luggage at my feet. My mom hadn’teven bothered to come along for the ride. Okay, technical y Patsy is my stepmother, but since my real mom died when I was four and my dad married Patsy about, oh, two seconds later, she’s al

I’ve got. She was always clear about her priorities, though—my dad, and her career, in that order. I think I made the list somewhere between the Junior League and Jimmy Choo shoes. To give Patsy credit,though, she had made an effort to spend more time with me after my dad died. I thought we were making progress when she took an entire Saturday afternoon off and invited me out to lunch. But that’s when she dropped the bomb—she’d been offered a job in New York, a once-in-alifetime opportunity, she cal ed it. So less than a month into my junior year, Patsy gave me a choice: stay in Atlanta with Gran, ormove to New York with her. There were no other options, no one else to foist me off on. No living relatives except for Gran, my real mom’s mother. And as much as I adore Gran, I just wasn’t sure that she was up to having me move in with her and Lupe, her companion/housekeeper. After al , Gran was old, set in her ways. I didn’t want to be a burden. And, okay . . . I’l admit that there was more toit than that. Way more. I can’t real y explain it, but once I saw that Winter-haven brochure in the pile that Patsy had dumped in my lap, I somehow knew that this was the place for me. I’d been so sure of it that I’d actual y refused to apply anywhere else. And so . . . here I was. Time to see if my instincts had been correct. I made my way up the stairs toward the largest of the buildings,...