The Festival of the Moon (Girls Wearing Black: Book Two)

by Baum, Spencer

  Jill’s phone rang and she jittered so hard she nearly dropped it.

  “Jeez,” she said. “This room—I need to get out of this room before I totally freak out.”

  She looked at her phone. “Thank God,” she said. “It’s Alvin.” She answered the phone. “What’s the word?” she said.

  Nicky couldn’t hear what Alvin said in response, but she could see from Jill’s face that it was good news.

  Without a word to Nicky, Jill turned to leave, saying something to Alvin about “kangaroo code” as she left. Nicky put away all the papers they had taken out and opened the next drawer on the desk. This drawer was empty, save a single envelope. Nicky grabbed it, noticing right away its soft, almost aged texture. She pulled a single sheet of paper from the envelope, neatly folded in thirds, with the remains of a broken wax seal at the fold.

  Carefully, she unfolded it.

  Dear Merv,

  I understand you’ve heard about my little chemistry project. I hope you don’t intend to tell Daciana. Were you to tell her, you can be certain she would take the opportunity to look inside your mind to get the whole story, and when she does, she’ll learn any secrets you might be keeping from her.

  Are you keeping any secrets from Daciana, Merv?

  You are one of Daciana’s most trusted subjects and are handsomely rewarded for your loyalty. What will become of you if circumstances change? What kind of life would you lead if the Samarins weren’t running the show?

  Daciana’s experiment in the New World seems grand to someone who will live and die in the span of a century, but to someone like me, she and her many daughters are no more than a pile of ants.

  I am done squashing Daciana’s little soldier ants one by one. I intend to take out the queen and be rid of the nest once and for all. And when I do, I will kill anyone who stands too close to her.

  Write to me if you would like to discuss this further. I could make use of your talents. I look forward to hearing from you.

  Falkon Dillinger

  Nicky felt a twinge of pain in her little finger as she read the signature, a memory of snapping bones as Melissa Mayhew snapped that pinky in half. Falkon Dillinger, enemy of the Samarin clan, whose name had rescued Nicky from Melissa the night before… Falkon Dillinger had sent a letter to Merv Tremblay.

  For Merv to receive this letter and do anything other than report it to Daciana was treason in the eyes of the immortals. But he couldn’t report it. Falkon had spelled it out for him. There was nowhere for him to go with this letter. If Merv went to Daciana, she would look in his mind and learn about his penchant for human hunting, about the illegal purchases he made from the Farm.

  It was the sort of secret that could blow DC wide open. It was the proverbial skeleton in the closet that could take down the entire Tremblay family and leave all the vultures in town grasping for the remains of Merv’s billion-dollar business. It would ruin Melissa Mayhew, exposing her back door dealings for the rest of the clan to see. It would send Daciana on a hunt across the world to learn what other humans were coming to the Farm to buy fully programmed, completely anonymous slaves, which were a privilege Daciana had reserved exclusively for the immortals in her clan.

  Nicky took a picture of the letter, making sure the entire text was legible in the photograph. This was something the Network could use. Fiery secrets were the fuel that powered DC, and this one was particularly combustible. She folded the paper back to its original form and slipped it into the envelope.

  She opened the next drawer. It was full of handwritten forms. Each paper had a number in the bottom corner and listed a first name at the top: Roddy, Giordano, Hansel, Carolyn, Beatrice…beneath those names was a listing of clinical details. Eye color, hair color, weight, birth date, and so forth. They were like single-page medical histories, one for each slave Merv had purchased from Melissa.

  Nicky took pictures of all the papers and put them back.

  She was about to open the next drawer and see what secrets were in there when she heard something tumble and crash in another part of the house. She sprinted out of the room, up the stairs, and into the foyer, where she found Art half-awake, laying at the bottom of the staircase. He was moaning.

  “Nicky?” he said.

  On the other side of the foyer, Nicky saw Jill approach from down the hall, the phone still on her ear. Her eyes were open wide in a look of panic and she mouthed the words, “What the hell?”

  Nicky waved her off, using her eyes to tell her to get out of here. Before she left, Jill held up her pinky finger and used it to make a stabbing motion. Nicky nodded and waved her off again. Jill ran back to the study, getting out of view right before Art turned his head to look down the hall.

  “Is someone there?” Art said. His speech was slow and slurred. He was awake, but barely.

  “Just the butler,” Nicky said. “You fell down. He was coming to see if you were okay. I told him to go away. I’m going to take care of you.”

  “You always take care of me,” Art said, smiling big.

  Nicky helped him to his feet. She put his arm over her shoulders and grabbed him round the waist. “Where do you think you are?” she said.

  “You’re with me, so I must still be in heaven.”

  “Actually, you’re not quite there yet,” Nicky said. “We still need to go up these stairs. I can help you.”

  “Yes, you’ll help me. You’re my angel,” he whispered.

  They took it slow, Nicky doing almost all the work. She encouraged Art to keep his arm on the bannister, and lifted him from the waist with each step. It was a five-minute ordeal getting up the stairs, and Art was drenched in sweat by the time they reached the top.

  “It looks like my house,” he said. “Heaven is in my house?”

  “You have to lead me to your bedroom,” Nicky said. “Then you’ll truly be in heaven.”

  “Yeah I will,” Art said with a laugh.

  They went down a hall to the right and through a door in the corner. Nicky took Art to his room and had him sit on the edge of his bed.

  “We’re here,” she said.

  “Ahhh….heaven,” Art said. He lay on the pillow, his eyes already closed, ready to go back to sleep. Nicky considered leaving him there and being done with it. He seemed so happy. She hated to ruin this nice moment for him. After seeing firsthand what a terrible, perverse man Art had for a father, she felt pity for him. For all she knew, this might be as happy as life got for Art.

  “Nicky?” he said

  “Yes, Art.”

  “Was that a demon you were talking to?”

  “A demon? I wasn’t speaking with anyone, Art.”

  “You were waving your arms at someone. You were sending him away. It was a demon, wasn’t it?”

  Nicky sighed. She was going to have to ruin Art’s moment of bliss after all. She raised the pinky on her left hand and unwrapped the first layer of the lace bandage, exposing a steel needle laced with Addonox.

  She leaned close to Art. “Yes,” she whispered. “The demon wanted you but you’re safe now. You made it to heaven. Congratulations.”

  She used her left hand to tickle the back of his head. His eyes still closed, he smiled big. Wherever he was, it was a happy place. So sad that she had to take him away from there. The monsters from her own Addonox nightmare still appeared from time to time, sending a shiver down her spine, reminding her what a cruel world she lived in.

  It was a rotten thing to do. But totally necessary. Addonox wiped out several hours of memory on either side of the dreams, and the chance that Art might remember an image of Nicky waving Jill away was a risk she couldn’t take.

  She placed her pinkie at the base of his neck.

  “Good night, Art,” she said. “See you at school tomorrow.”

  “Good night, Nicky.”

  Chapter 7

  Ryan broke up with Jill three days before Halloween. It was a Monday morning. He made a surprise visit to her house and called her cell phone when his
driver pulled up to the curb. He asked if she would ride to school with him that morning. “Of course I will,” she said.

  Of course. Why wouldn’t she ride to school with her boyfriend? She didn’t have the slightest suspicion at that moment what was about to happen to her. She and Ryan had been together for more than a month now. Their relationship was serious business, both emotionally and physically.

  They were madly in love, or so she thought.

  She remembered when Ryan’s driver opened the back door to let her into the car. That first look at him—the way Ryan’s shoulders slumped, his head rested lazily on the back seat, it was like a weight was tied around Ryan’s neck and was making him sink into a smaller version of himself. Had someone died? Yes, only death could make him look so sad. An aunt or an uncle or a cousin—someone close to her beautiful boyfriend had left this earth and he was in pain about it. He needed comfort. She would provide it. She wasn’t experienced in this sort of thing but she wanted to be. She wanted to be the sort of girl you could turn to when you were hurting, who could say the right things, bring forth the right memories, be both candid and delicate. She wanted to love him. The boy she had loved as her own for thirty-eight days had arrived at her home with his heart broken. She would mend it with her love.

  Jill slid close to him in the backseat. She put her arms around him. He hesitated, but eventually he hugged her back, and as Ryan’s driver took them to school, they embraced in the back seat, holding one another for a long time before either of them said a word.

  Jill was the one to speak first. Looking back, this was always the part that angered her most. Why did she have to say anything? Why couldn’t she just let the moment between them last?

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

  Ryan hugged her for another second, then pulled away. He sat in silence for a while. Jill let him. She still had it in her mind that he was being stoic, that he was going through some terrible pain and it was her job to be there for him.

  They were a minute away from school when he said it.

  “We have to break up.”

  Silence.

  “What?”

  “I’m breaking up with you. I’m sorry.”

  “Ryan…I don’t understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. I can’t do this anymore. We can’t do this anymore. It’s over, Jill.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I want to be alone, alright? Because I never should have allowed myself to have a girlfriend. A part of me knew it was a mistake right from the get-go, but we did it anyway, and I wish I could take it all back so I wouldn’t hurt you like this, but what’s done is done, and every day we put it off we make it harder so I’m ending it now.”

  The memory of the conversation grew mushy at this point, the visions clouded with tears, the thoughts overwhelmed with feelings of sadness and betrayal. She was crying by the time they got to school. She told him not to get out of the car, she said he owed her a better explanation than this, but Ryan just said, “I’m sorry,” and he left. He closed the door behind him, and Jill stayed in the back seat, sobbing. She stayed there for all of first period, unable to do anything but cry. The chauffeur gave her a box of tissues. Time passed as she sat in that backseat, but she didn’t notice it. One moment Ryan was closing the door and walking away, the next the bell was ringing, bringing first period to a close.

  She remembered asking the chauffeur to take her home. She remembered going straight to her bedroom and disappearing in darkness. She remembered being a stranger to herself during that time, the grief overwhelming her in a way that she didn’t comprehend. She wanted to move on. She felt like a weakling. She had never thought of herself as one to get destroyed by a break-up. But she had to wait. There was no willing her way out of the misery. It was like an illness that had to run its course, and all she could do was wait for it to pass.

  She emerged from her bedroom feeling utterly alone, and wondered if solitude was her destiny. Look at my mother, she thought. All day, every day, up there in her office, typing computer code, not because she gets any joy from it, but because it’s what she does, it’s what she has to do.

  The fear of becoming her mother drove Jill to the Network, and in the Network she flourished. Ryan Jenson became a memory. He was that guy who broke up with her for no good reason. He was a loser who didn’t know what he had and he let it go because he wasn’t ready.

  Jill had moved on.

  Or so she thought.

  At the Masquerade, they learned that Kim was holding some dreadful secret over Ryan’s head, and everything changed.

  What if this secret and Ryan’s awful breakup with Jill were related? What if Ryan truly cared for Jill, but this secret, and the threat of Kim Renwick exposing it, kept them apart? What if Ryan felt safe with Jill those 38 days they were together, and then Kim came to him with the secret and he got scared?

  What was his secret?

  That was the question that brought Jill to Art’s house tonight in the trunk of Nicky’s car. That was the question she hoped to answer with a terabyte of stolen data from Tremblay Property Management.

  Now, the hack complete, the entire contents of the TPM computer system copied onto the Network’s servers in Colorado, Jill and Nicky rode home in the same BMW that took them here. The teens who had followed Nicky to Art’s house fell asleep in their car just after eleven, and Jill was able to ride back in the front seat.

  “I like this much better than the trunk,” she said.

  “I bet you do,” said Nicky.

  “Hey, while you were on the phone with Alvin, I found something interesting in Merv’s secret room,” Nicky said.

  “More interesting than a necklace that belongs to my family?”

  “It’s a letter to Merv from Falkon Dillinger.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Nicky nodded.

  “What did it say?” Jill asked.

  “Falkon’s up to something big,” Nicky said. “He called it a ‘chemistry project.’ He wanted Merv to join him.”

  “A chemistry project?”

  “He said he was done squashing Daciana’s soldier ants one by one and intended to take out the queen.”

  “Wild. Looks like our friend Merv is getting himself into all kinds of trouble, doesn’t it? What a jerk.”

  “I don’t know that Merv ever responded. I only found the one letter.”

  “Even still,” said Jill. “The fact that Falkon made the advance…he knew that Merv would keep quiet about it.”

  “We’ll need to have someone look into what he’s up to,” said Nicky. “I took a picture of the letter. I’ll email it to you.”

  Jill’s phone started buzzing. She pulled it out and looked at the screen.

  “It’s Annika,” she said. “Probably wondering where I’ve been all day. I got so excited about this break-in that I never called her.”

  “Are you going to answer it?”

  “I don’t know what I’d say to her right now. I promised I’d help her, but I don’t know what help I can give.”

  “What kind of help does she want?” Nicky asked.

  “She wants to make sure Shannon is safe. She wants to make a run for it at the end of the year so she and Shannon can live happily ever after.”

  “Don’t we all,” Nicky said, quietly.

  “I know I do,” said Jill. She pressed the button to send Annika to voicemail. “Hey, did I hear your phone ringing in there tonight?”

  “Yes,” Nicky said. “Sorry. I should have turned the ringer off as soon as we got you inside. Hope I didn’t disturb your work.”

  “No, it didn’t disturb me at all. Who called you?”

  Nicky paused for a second. “Tommy,” she said. “He wanted to talk about my outfits for Brawl in the Fall and the Date Auction.”

  “Did you decide something?”

  “He’s going to come over tomorrow for a fitting,” Nicky said. “You’re welcome to come if you want to give so
me input.”

  “I’d like that,” Jill said. “Maybe I’ll be there.”

  They arrived at Jill’s neighborhood a few minutes after eleven. Nicky took a roundabout way through the side streets. When she was confident no one was following them, she pulled up to Jill’s driveway and they said goodnight. Jill found her father waiting for her when she stepped inside.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he said. His speech was slurred. On Sundays he started drinking during his golf game and never stopped.

  “None of your business,” Jill said, brushing past him and heading to the stairs.

  “You can stop right there young lady! I heard about what you did last night. You went to the new girl’s party instead of Kim’s. Do you know what you’ve done? You’re gonna come down here and talk to me about it.”

  Jill stopped at the first landing on the stairs.

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Dad. I made a judgment call last night. Nicky will win Coronation. She completely owned Kim from the start of the dance. The only reason she didn’t get the whole class to her after-party is because people are scared to make the leap. But that will change.”

  “Who is this new girl? I’ve never even heard of her or her family!”

  At that, Jill turned around and went back down the stairs, stopping when she was right in front of her father’s face.

  “She’s the next immortal, Dad, so you’d better get in good with her now. The reason you’ve never heard of her is that the people who brought her here were keeping it that way.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “It’s no accident that the perfect competitor to unseat Kim just showed up out of the blue. I knew something like this was going to happen at Homecoming.”

  “How? How could you possibly know about this?”