Half-Truths: New York Times Bestselling Author

by Contreras, Claire

  According to what he’d said, I had five minutes to meet him downstairs. I made sure everything was put away before looking at myself in the mirror. I looked like a creepy nun with this getup. A creepy nun who was wearing a lacy red bra. Turning away from the mirror, I walked over to the window. The woods were behind the house, but there was a big white shack looking thing that seemed to share land with the house right beside us. I hadn’t even noticed there was a house there when we pulled in. It had been impossible to see with all the trees in the way. I craned my neck to get a better look at their yard. There were holes on the ground that looked like a cemetery. I shivered. Were we staying beside a cemetery? I made myself snap out of it and walk out of the room to meet Logan downstairs.

  The hall was spookier now that I was walking it on my own. I could hear a light hum of chatter as I passed some of the doors, so I hurried past those, rushing to the stairs, which I sped down. At the bottom, I found Logan standing there in a black cloak of his own, his face uncovered. Somehow, he looked handsome even in that getup, and you couldn’t even see his athletic frame or washboard abs. His face though, that jawline and those dark green eyes that seemed to be tuned into everything they looked at, made him sexy regardless of what he was wearing.

  “Did you do anything naughty while you were up there?”

  “Did you do anything naughty while you were fantasizing about me in all the lingerie you bought me?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Maybe.” His gaze heated as he looked me up and down. “Are you wearing any of it right now?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “I might be wearing something red.” I leaned in closer and whispered, “but I might not be wearing anything at all. I guess you’ll never know.”

  We stared at each other for a beat. Logan opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by a door opening behind us.

  “You may enter,” Nolan said. His head was covered, but I knew his voice now. “Pull your hood up please.”

  I did as I was told. I assumed Logan did as well, but I couldn’t see very well with the stupid thing on my head. With the limited sight I had, the only thing I could make out was a long dinner table with candles lit all down the middle. There were at least ten others wearing black cloaks in here. I felt a hand at my back leading me, and I walked slowly, careful not to trip over the hem of the cloak. Logan, or who I assumed was Logan, stopped me once I reached the front of the room. A black wall with an enormous gold octopus painted on it was in front of me and a stage was set up there too. An empty stage, save for a podium off to the side, and a large chair fit for a king or queen. The doors opened again, and on instinct, I turned my face toward the noise, but all I saw was a black figure moving to the stage.

  “Tonight, we are welcoming you into our family. You will sign our creed, you will spill blood for us as we will for you, and you will sleep under our roof, which will soon be yours as well. Being part of our family means above all else—loyalty.” It was a female voice, and she paused. “You don’t want to test our loyalty by talking to others about us or what happens behind closed doors here. People who have done that in the past have been banished from The Eight.”

  “The creed consists of five rules, five simple rules that you must follow. Much like the Ten Commandments but even simpler and impossible to forget. You will be summoned at some point throughout the night, but until then, you can relax and unwind here. We usually set up a camping night in which you will share a tent with your partner, so I’ll keep you posted on that,” she said. “That’s all I have for you right now. Welcome, and I can’t wait to meet you all without these stupid cloaks.”

  A few people chuckled. My mind stayed on her words about being banished from The Eight. I wondered if that was what happened to my brother. Had he gotten kicked out for some reason? Maybe for telling Lana about the society? Had that been what pushed him over the edge?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “I don’t understand how everyone can just be so nonchalant about all of this,” I whispered as I sipped on the champagne handed to me.

  “I can’t speak for everyone else,” Logan whispered back. “My mind is still on whether or not you’re wearing underwear underneath the cloak.”

  “You’re such a guy.” I laughed, shaking my head.

  “Last I checked.” He met my gaze as he took a sip of champagne. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged, still staring at me. “I’ll pretend I know.”

  “Let me guess, you’re going to pretend I’m naked.”

  “Fuck no, are you kidding? I’m going to pretend you’re wearing the red lace. That way I can drag it off you with my teeth.”

  My nipples puckered against the cloak. “You’re not supposed to say things like that. You don’t even know if I want you.”

  “Don’t I?” He cocked his head. It would’ve been stupid of me to deny that claim at this point in the game, but I felt the need to add something nevertheless.

  “Besides, I’m not one of your groupies.”

  “I never said you were. If you were one of my groupies, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and your panties would already be on the floor.”

  I tore my gaze from his, ignoring the explosion of emotions inside of my chest. There was absolutely no way I was going to get out of this ordeal unscathed. This was the guy I was assigned as a partner? How? I wouldn’t survive this and it had nothing to do with vanishing and everything to do with my overactive hormones. I drank the rest of my champagne.

  “Slow down on the alcohol, Amelia.”

  I met his gaze again. “You’re not my father, Logan.”

  “Cheers to that.” He lifted his glass. “I’m not telling you to slow down because I don’t think you can handle your alcohol. I’m telling you to slow down because later on, you’ll wish you had. Take it from someone who got shit-faced at this thing and regretted it.”

  “When are you going to tell me about my brother being here? And about Lana?”

  “Can we talk about this another time?”

  “No.”

  “Then we need to head to our rooms because I’m not having this conversation here.”

  “What a coincidence, you want to be alone in a room with me.” I raised an eyebrow. “Is that part of your plan?”

  “What plan?”

  “To find out what’s under the cloak.”

  “I just want to point out that you’re the one who keeps bringing it up, not me.” He set his glass down. It was still full. “Let’s go.”

  We walked to my room in silence. When we reached my door, I stopped walking and turned to him.

  “I want to see your room.”

  He walked to the door beside me, pulled a key out of his pocket, and unlocked it.

  “Why do you keep it locked?”

  “I don’t want any surprises.”

  “Do you think someone would sneak into my room?” My eyes widened as I looked at the wall that separated our rooms.

  “Only if they want me to kill them.”

  I stared at him for a moment, trying like hell to ignore the way I wanted to kiss the hell out of him.

  “So, talk to me about Lana. What happened? You guys said you’d give me answers. I want answers.”

  “The first answer I’m going to give you, you’re not going to like.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Your brother was the last person to see her,” he said. “He left her in the woods.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “That’s bullshit,” I whispered, then a little louder, “That’s bullshit. You’re just saying that because you don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “In trouble for what? We had no communication with Lana. Whenever we saw her, she was either with your dad or Lincoln, and trust me, I didn’t want to believe that about Lincoln either.”

  “That’s bullshit.” I glared, but my anger falt
ered. A part of me knew there must be some truth to this.

  “We were teammates. The year before last, we were partners. Your brother is like a brother to me,” he said, as if to reassure me of their bond. It didn’t. I focused on something else.

  “You have different partners every year?”

  “We take turns. Only eight people are allowed at a time, so if two graduate, two who are still here get new partners.”

  “Who was your partner last year?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Was it a girl?”

  “What does it matter if it was a girl, a guy, or a goat?” He was looking at me like I was crazy.

  “It matters.” The bed creaked as I stood up, placing my hands on my hips. “Did you buy her sexy lingerie? Did you kiss her in order to create a diversion? Did you flirt with her until she uncloaked?”

  “Amelia.”

  “No. I want to know. Is this some sort of sick game? To bed the newbie?”

  “It’s not a game and having sex isn’t a requirement, no.”

  “But you did, didn’t you? You fucked last year’s partner?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re getting all hell-bent about this.” He ran a hand through his hair with a sigh.

  “I don’t know either,” I said, still glaring. “I’ll see you later.”

  If he couldn’t understand why it bothered me that he seemed to have fucked the entire campus, I wasn’t going to bother to explain it to him. I didn’t even know why it bothered me as much as it did, but it did. I stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind me. I opened my room and closed the door, locking it behind me next. I didn’t want to care about Logan or what he did or who he did it with. I shouldn’t care. My blood boiled in my veins. Yet I cared. I definitely cared. My hands balled into fists as I looked at the underwear on my bed. This was a game. I was a game. And he wanted me to believe my brother had something to do with Lana’s disappearance? Fuck him. I went back to the window and looked at the cemetery. The knock on my door came before I expected it, and just as I was turning in that direction, I saw one—a red cloak. Two red cloaks. They were walking the cemetery, looking into the dug up holes. The knock came harder and I had to turn away. When I reached it, I opened it and saw Nolan on the other side. Not the person I’d expected to see.

  “Let’s go.”

  “When do I get a lock to my door?”

  “When they decide to give you one.”

  “Hm.”

  I thought we would grab Logan from his room, but we passed it and continued walking down the long corridor. Nolan knocked on another door. A tall, Indian guy opened it.

  “Let’s go.”

  The guy joined us. In a sense, it made me feel better to know I wasn’t the only new inductee, though my mood soured again when I thought about Logan and the underwear and last year’s partner. He was no better than all the other college assholes out there. I don’t know why I thought differently. He was a star hockey player, a ladies man, a jerk. I mean, the signs were all there.

  By the time we went down two sets of stairs and entered a dark room that looked like a dungeon, I was too upset at myself over the Logan thing to be creeped out. That was, until I saw the shelves that lined the walls and the jars of octopuses aglow inside them. What the hell was this place?

  “Take a seat in the first row,” Nolan whispered, ushering us toward the first row of four wooden bleachers.

  We all sat down quietly, facing some sort of stage in front of us. The wall was black, with a gold octopus painted on it. As I stared at it, a door opened in the center of the octopus, and a person walked out in a cloak. I assumed it was the same person as before.

  “When someone enters the room, everyone in it stands,” she said, and it was confirmed that it was the same person.

  The guy beside me and I stood in unison, our cloaks rustling against one another.

  “You may sit.”

  We sat back down.

  “You may be wondering what this is and why there are octopuses everywhere,” she said. “Rumor has it, the founder of The Eight experimented on sea creatures in a Hydraulic Lab on campus. In the 1960s, there was a flood that shut everything down, and where do you think the octopuses went? Out the window and into the falls below.”

  “Like I said, that’s just a rumor, but as you can see, we do have some of her work.” She waved a hand toward the shelves.

  “The Eight take pride in being one of the only legitimately secret societies left. Our mascot, if you will, is an octopus. They camouflage, they’re calculated, intelligent, and their tentacles are a representation of our members. We’re everywhere. Think of your favorite actor, we know him. The politician you back? We know them. The politician you hate? We know them as well. The Eight will give you options beyond your wildest imagination. Do you want to be recruited by a certain sports team? We can make that happen. Write for a specific magazine or journal? Done. Think of it like a sorority or fraternity but better, because instead of you paying us, we pay you.”

  She continued speaking. “The point is that once you graduate from here, we will expect loyalty in return. We will expect you to answer when one of us calls, just as we’d answer for you. You’re here either because we know you’re going to get far in life, or because your parents or grandparents, or someone before you is also a part of The Eight. Either way, you’re welcome here. We want you to be part of our family. We want you to make the world a better place with us.”

  “While we are in school, we will have different responsibilities. Here, we’re still students, but we can make a difference nonetheless. Don’t worry, you’ll figure out what your task is soon enough. For now, we need to have one last ceremony, the induction. Your partners will come up and stand in front of you now.”

  Movement made me catch my breath. A figure stood in front of me. I knew it was Logan, not only because she’d said my partner, but because of his height, his scent, and the way he blocked my surroundings like a brick wall.

  “Hold your hands out,” she said.

  I did, shakily. Logan placed his underneath mine, cradling them lightly, as if we were carrying a bomb. I glanced up, meeting his gaze, not that I could see much, but it was enough. The others in the room started to hum in unison, just a hum, and I wondered if I was about to be initiated into a cult. My hand shook, but Logan held it steady.

  “Ego fidem meam erga te. Nunc membrum sum de composuit, occasionem dedit,” she said in Latin. “Repeat after me: I pledge my loyalty to you. I am now a member of The Eight and shall make The Labyrinth my home.”

  “I pledge my loyalty to you. I am now a member of The Eight and shall make The Labyrinth my home,” we all said in unison.

  Before I knew what was happening, Logan took his hands away from mine, pulled out a blade, and cut himself.

  “This is going to hurt,” he said, and it was my only warning that he was about to slice my hand as well.

  “What the fuck?” I yelped.

  The person beside me grunted. The girl with him yelped lightly as well. Everyone yelled out some kind of expletive.

  “You are now one with your partner,” the speaker said. “You are now one with us all.”

  Logan turned my hand over and placed it against his as if we were holding hands. My heart pounded, not because of the hand-holding, but because it hurt like hell. He laced our fingers so they were intertwined and even through the dark veil, I could feel him looking at me.

  “That’s it,” she said, “My name is Nora. We’ll formally meet throughout the weekend and next weekend we have a little gala. No more cloaks!”

  With that, she left the room, stepping back into the hole she came out of. I took the thing on my head off with my free hand. Logan did the same. I stared at our hands.

  “Did you trade blood with your last assignment?” I met his gaze. “You know that none of this is sanitary. I don’t even know if you’re clean, and here we are swapping blood instead of spit.”

 
“Do you want to swap spit?”

  “No. That’s not the point.”

  “All of us are clean. That was the point of the lab work earlier,” he said. “Also, stop bringing up last year’s partners. They have nothing to do with us.”

  For some reason, that did nothing to calm me down. I tried to pull my hand from his, but he held on tighter.

  “Calm down. If you do that, it’ll go everywhere. Let it set.”

  “Are you crazy?” I pulled again. “We’ll be stuck together if we let it set. Do you know nothing about how blood works when it dries?”

  “Trust me, I know what happens when it dries.” He chuckled, his eyes lighting up. “Give it a second. It won’t dry. Nolan will bring us damp towels and bandages.”

  As if on cue, Nolan showed up with precisely that. Logan uncurled his long fingers from mine and wiped his hand roughly before turning to me. I flinched after seeing what he’d just done, but he held my hand gently and wiped softly before setting gauze on it and wrapping it in a white bandage.

  “You good?” he asked, as blood trickled from his own hand.

  I nodded. “Do you want me to do yours?”

  “I got it.” His lips twitched.

  I could tell he wasn’t used to help, which made me want to help more, even if he was a huge asshole. I grabbed the towel, gauze, and bandage from his hands, pulled his bloody hand toward me, and pressed the damp towel softly, slowly, until the blood was cleaned up. It was a superficial wound, so I knew it would heal quickly. I covered it with the gauze and carefully wrapped the bandage around his hand, once, twice, three times, tucking the end in.

  “There. Good as new.” I smiled brightly at the job I’d done on his hand, until I met his gaze again and saw the seriousness in his eyes. I lowered his hand quickly and held on to the bloody towel and discarded wrappers from the other things. “So, can I go now?”