The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) Page 17

  “That will be lovely,” he said. “We’ll greet the others together.”

  They walked to the edge of the roof and jumped, descending three stories and landing softly on the grass below. The collection of vampires standing a hundred yards away turned in their direction.

  Smiles came over their faces, glimmers in their eyes, it was as if a brightness overtook the night.

  They weren’t looking at Sergio. These were Daciana’s children, eager to greet their mother after her long absence.

  To welcome her back to life.

  Sergio stood aside as the clan lined up to embrace Daciana one at a time. So very, very good to see you, they said. How wonderful to have you back!

  Daciana practically glowed with happiness.

  “Welcome, my friends!” she said. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you all tonight. I have so many things to tell you. I look forward to catching up with each of you individually before the night is done. But all of that can wait. This is a party, after all! Let us begin the hunt!”

  *****

  Nicky approached the front door of Daciana’s mansion feeling oddly relaxed. There was no need to be on at this party. No need to play her role to perfection, as she had done all last semester. After all, no one at Thorndike cared about Nicky Bloom anymore.

  She opened the front door and stepped inside. The chatter quickly died down, but no one looked at her, at least, not directly.

  She found it marvelously strange. They couldn’t have been more aware of her presence, yet they were pretending not to see her.

  She walked into the foyer, uncertain where she was going or what she was doing. She just needed to get through the room. She needed to turn her back on all these people so they could get back to their conversations and pretend she wasn’t here.

  The casino setup made the foyer a bit of a maze. She worked her way to the back of the room, snaking through rows of students playing roulette, cards, and dice, finally reaching the bar, where she sat on a stool, mercifully alone.

  “What can I get for you, Miss?” asked the boy tending bar. He had long hair and a mustache of peach fuzz.

  Nicky found herself thinking about the Masquerade. At that party too, she had stepped inside and silenced the room. At that party, she went straight to the bar to get a drink served up by someone far too young to be handling liquor.

  “It’s no fun being ignored, is it?”

  The voice was familiar, but in a distant way. Only a few months had passed since Nicky’s last encounter with Kim Renwick, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Nobody likes to be ignored,” Nicky said, turning to face her.

  Kim wore a black gown that draped elegantly to the floor, with a short jacket hugging her shoulders. She walked up to the bar so she was standing right next to Nicky.

  “You know that everyone is looking at us now,” Kim said quietly. “They’re wondering what we’re talking about.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  “We’re talking about you, Jill, and Ryan,” Kim said. “I want to hear it from your lips. Did Jill and Ryan really plan this crazy scheme to put Samantha over the top, or is this another of your games?”

  “I didn’t agree to any game where Jill sent a hundred million dollars to one of my competitors,” Nicky said.

  Kim nodded, her eyes half-closed. “Yes, that’s what gets me too. I have to tell you, when Jill gave her money to Samantha, it made me furious. I was certain this was another scheme the two of you were running and we’d figure it out sooner or later. But then these rumors started about Jill and Ryan, about them using you as a diversion to keep me from seeing the real threat…it’s true, isn’t it, Nicky?”

  “Does it matter what I tell you?” Nicky said. “It’s not like you have any reason to trust me.”

  “No, I suppose I don’t. I just want so badly to hear you say it.”

  “It’s true, Kim. They made me think I was going to win Coronation. They played me for a fool.”

  “I suppose that means we have a common enemy,” said Kim. “In fact, I’d expect that you hate Jill even more than I do.”

  “I don’t hate Jill,” Nicky said. “Everyone’s doing what they have to do to get by, right?”

  Kim laughed. “You don’t really think like that. People who think like that don’t end up at Thorndike. Not unless…oh my God, she used you from the beginning, didn’t she?”

  “I thought we already established that,” said Nicky.

  “Yes, but their plan for you goes back farther than the beginning of the year, doesn’t it?”

  Nicky said nothing.

  “This is so crazy,” Kim said. “And to think that a few weeks ago people thought you were going to win! Now you couldn’t be a bigger loser!”

  “I’m a couple million dollars ahead of you, Kim.”

  “That will change. Once everyone realizes how thoroughly Jill and Ryan used you—you don’t understand, Nicky. You’re going to be the perfect excuse for these people to assuage their consciences. You never belonged here. You were just part of Jill and Ryan’s game. The rest of school will start to understand it soon enough. Second semester is the bigger money, Nicky. I’m going to find a way to get past you. Mary will too. And then Samantha will win and you’ll be the girl in the cage.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Sucks to be you, Nicky Bloom. See you around.”

  Chapter 19

  Let everyone see you. Put lots of memories of you in their minds before they’re totally drunk. Then disappear.

  Those were Eve’s instructions to Jill about how to treat the first hour of the party. You laugh at everyone’s jokes, you hang on Ryan’s arm and let everyone see how happy you are, and you make the rounds of the room more than once.

  The casino theme of the party made it easy to move from one place to another. Every time a game ended and Jill lost her chips she had a perfect excuse to move to another table. Thirty minutes in, she had played blackjack, roulette, craps, and baccarat; she had spent time not just with Mattie and Karmela, but also Sam, Lonnie, Wesley, Geordi, Danielle, and Jacqueline. She had made herself visible to Kim’s little group of loyalists, and said hello to Mary. She brought the same glass of wine with her wherever she went, allowing people to see her sipping from it, and watching as their glasses went from empty to full to empty again.

  Early in the party, everyone wanted to talk about her relationship with Ryan, but after a few glasses of wine, they were content to focus on the gambling games. When one of the servants rolled out a glass orb full of Ping-Pong balls and a huge group gathered to play keno, Jill knew it was time to leave. They were all having too much fun to miss her.

  She found Ryan at the back of a crowd, looking on as a servant pulled a plastic ball from the keno bin.

  “Forty-three,” the servant announced.

  As the crowd let out a disappointed sigh, Jill put her sleeve of poker chips in Ryan’s pocket.

  “It’s time,” she whispered. “Cover for me if anyone gets suspicious.”

  The look on Ryan’s face made Jill think he was going to try again to persuade her to call it off. But when he spoke, all he said was, “Be careful.”

  “I will,” she said. Then she walked out of the foyer and into the hallway.

  Her first stop was the restroom.

  An attendant, a girl maybe sixteen years old, stood in front of the sink holding a towel. She gave a small bow when Jill came inside, her head ducking low enough to expose the hand dryer on the wall behind her. The power outlet was to the immediate left of the dryer. The dryer was plugged into one socket. The other socket was open.

  There were three toilet stalls in the bathroom. Jill went into the middle stall and closed the door. Then she removed her bracelet and, with both hands, began flipping among the charms. She unhooked two rectangular charms and a tiny mushroom from the bracelet, and fit the three pieces together. When she was done, she had created a device she could plug into the outlet on the bath
room wall.

  She took a deep breath, then tapped twice on her earring.

  “Signal received,” came Alvin’s voice in her ear. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Jill listened carefully for movement in the bathroom. There wasn’t any. It was time.

  She flushed the toilet, then, the sound of the running water masking her voice, she whispered, “I’m going to insert the device in the socket now.”

  “Tap three times when it’s done,” Alvin said.

  The mushroom charm from her bracelet was the key to all of this. Now that she had assembled the mushroom together with the rectangles, she could plug it into the bathroom wall and allow the wires inside the mushroom to accept a charge from the outlet. Surrounding those wires inside the mushroom was a circular collet that, upon receiving a wireless signal from Alvin, would squeeze closed, pressing the wires together.

  And shorting out the entire electrical circuit connected to the outlet.

  One more charm to remove from her bracelet before she could go, this one a tiny, silver unicorn. She found it and unhooked it.

  Her newly assembled plug in one hand, the unicorn charm in the other, Jill stepped out of the bathroom stall.

  The attendant gave her another small bow and stepped aside, making room for Jill to wash her hands. Smiling at the attendant, Jill allowed the unicorn charm to slip through her fingers. It dinged like a tiny bell as it bounced on the marble floor.

  “Whoops! Could you get that for me?”

  The attendant crossed the bathroom and bent down to pick up the very flat, very hard-to-grab-onto unicorn charm. It took her a few seconds of squeezing at it with her fingers before she was able to pick it up.

  It was all the time Jill needed. By the time the attendant finally got the pesky charm off the floor, Jill had already plugged her device into the wall and was washing her hands.

  “Thank you,” Jill said as she took back the unicorn.

  When Jill was done washing her hands, the attendant gave her a white towel. Careful not to seem too hurried, Jill dried herself off and left the bathroom.

  As soon as she was out the door, she tapped her earring three times.

  *****

  It took all of ten minutes for the clan to capture and kill a truck-full of humans after they’d been released into the forest outside Daciana’s house. Now, their kills stretched across their laps, the vampires sat in small groups enjoying each other’s company while they ate.

  Sergio, having chosen not to participate in the hunt, was lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping on all the different conversations.

  He listened as they speculated about Renata’s whereabouts, and what could have happened to her house. He overheard vampires voicing their long-held suspicions about Renata’s loyalty, and the discomfort they felt at the obvious conflict between Renata and Melissa.

  As he moved among the conversation circles, he wondered what sort of impact his actions would have on future gatherings like this. Would there still be ceremonial hunts after he bonded with Nicky and left the clan? Would there still be parties at the mansion?

  Would there still be a clan at all?

  For nearly a century he had been doing this for Daciana. The Homecoming Masquerade, the Coronation contest, the new immortal—a cycle that repeated itself every year forever without end, an always-growing clan and an inexhaustible source of money.

  How would they react when they learned that this year’s immortal wasn’t just another of Daciana’s lackeys, but instead, a vampire fully bonded to Sergio? How would they react when they realized he was gone, his bond with Nicky so deep that the two of them had no interest in the domesticated life of the Samarin clan?

  He could hardly wait to share his life with Nicky. For them, there would be no shipments from the Farm, no ceremonial hunts. No, he and Nicky would be true creatures of the night, hunting for their food in the wild, roaming the countryside, never staying in one place for long, using humans when they needed to, but mostly ignoring the larger world. They would lose themselves in each other’s presence, their love rendering all other concerns trivial in comparison.

  And it all started with the ritual. The Coronation contest had drawn them together. Now it would seal their love. When the ritual was done, both he and Nicky would abandon their old lives and loyalties, sacrificing everything for each other, both of them doing whatever it took to be together.

  He spotted Lena on the outskirts of the gathering. She and her bond, Thomas Byrne, had removed themselves from the others. This was the conversation he wanted to hear. He wanted to know why Lena was scowling at Nicky before the party.

  Moving in total silence, he came close enough to hear them.

  “Yes, I’m going to tell her tonight,” Lena said, quietly, “but not until I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You do know what you’re talking about,” said Thomas. “Just tell her exactly what happened. You don’t need to know anything more.”

  “I need to know what I’m stepping into,” Lena said. “As soon as I tell Daciana about that phone call, I’m involved in this mess.”

  “But you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Neither did Bernadette, but where is she tonight? Where is Mark?”

  “Good question,” Thomas said.

  “I can think of two people Melissa would have called that night. There were two of us she thought she could trust. Bernadette and me.”

  “It is troubling that Bernadette isn’t here.”

  “Bernadette and Mark,” Lena corrected. “Melissa and Dominic. Renata too. Everyone who knew something about that phone call is missing. Everyone except us.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find Nicky Bloom and make her talk to me,” Lena said. “If Nicky knows something, I want to know what it is before I speak with Daciana.”

  Sergio closed his eyes and breathed slowly.

  It was all he could do not to tear into Lena and Thomas both and spread their guts all over the forest floor. It was only the ritual that stopped him. The ritual required self-control. He would kill Lena and Thomas later, when they were alone, and he had a chance to find out why they were so suspicious of Nicky.

  A servant came out from the house and began ringing a bell. All around Sergio, the vampires of the clan tossed aside the corpses they were feeding on and stood up to go back to the house. They moved in a pack, walking towards the back entrance that led to the moon room. Sergio joined the group, taking a place right behind Thomas and Lena.

  *****

  Jill stood at the door to the kitchen, peering through the circular window. She saw the control panel on the opposite wall, right where the blueprint said it would be. A small screen, countersunk into the drywall, just inches away from the exit.

  “You know what you have to do,” she whispered to herself. “Don’t think about it, just do it.”

  She flipped through the charms on her bracelet until she found the daisy, then she unhooked it. Positioning it between her finger and thumb, just like Eve had shown her, she squeezed on the base of the charm.

  A tiny laser embedded in the head of the daisy turned on.

  Twirling the daisy in her fingers, Jill focused her eyes on the red dot the laser shone on the wall. Then she held the daisy up to the window, and pointed the red dot at the control panel screen on the other side of the kitchen.

  “Hey Jill, I’m getting a signal from the access panel, but it’s really weak,” came Alvin’s voice in her ear.

  “I’m not inside yet,” Jill whispered. “I’m shining the laser through the window in the kitchen door.”

  “The signal isn’t strong enough through the glass,” said Alvin. “You need to get closer.”

  “I know,” whispered Jill. “I’m just getting ready.”

  Carefully holding the daisy in her fingers, Jill pressed her face close to the glass and looked as far as she could down both sides of the kitchen. No one was in there.

  She t
urned and looked behind her. The hallway was empty.

  “Now or never,” she whispered.

  She pressed her shoulder against the swinging door and pushed her head inside. She knew from the blueprint that the kitchen bent off in an L-shape to her left, and she could hear activity around the corner.

  But there was no one on this side of the room. She stepped all the way into the kitchen and let the door swing shut behind her.

  Across the kitchen, the screen of the control panel that operated Daciana’s alarm glowed a mint green color. The bright red logo of the manufacturer ran across the top of it. Jill held up the daisy charm and tilted it in her fingers until the laser light touched the center of the screen.

  “I’ve got a connection,” said Alvin. “Hold it steady…steady…almost there…okay, we’re in! Mount it on the wall and get out of there.”

  “Mounting it now,” Jill whispered.

  She stepped backwards, careful to keep the laser light in place. When she was all the way to the far wall, she peeled off a foil backing, exposing a tacky adhesive on one side of the daisy charm.

  Maintaining her aim on the control panel, she pressed the daisy into the opposite wall, where it stayed, a tiny silver charm stuck to the wall of Daciana’s kitchen, shining an invisible laser beam at the control panel that operated the alarm and security cameras in Daciana’s house.

  “The daisy is on the wall,” Jill whispered.

  “I’ve got full control of the system,” said Alvin. “Get moving.”

  Right as Alvin spoke the words, the kitchen door flew open. Still pressed against the wall, Jill stayed perfectly still as a girl with blonde hair walked right past her, oblivious to her presence.

  As the servant girl went to the sink, where she rinsed off a silver serving tray, Jill stepped to one side, hiding herself behind a rolling cart of desserts. She couldn’t see what was happening now, but she heard the girl working just a few feet away.

  The girl opened and closed wooden cabinets in rapid succession. She shoved something into the sink and turned on the water.