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

by Baum, Spencer

  “I saw people plotting.”

  Her dad wrinkled his forehead. All the liquor was making this conversation hard for him.

  “But Chester Featherstone said twice as many people were at Kim’s party as at Nicky’s,” he said. Already the confidence in his voice was gone. Walter Wentworth was good in situations where he got to boss others around, but when he had to read people, had to try and understand their motivations, he was a like a lost puppy.

  “Who are you gonna believe, Dad? Chester Featherstone, whose only connection to all this was a ten minute talk with his son, or me?”

  “Well…I...”

  “I don’t think you’re hearing me,” Jill said. “I saw this coming.”

  She tilted her head to give the words weight.

  “Are you saying…on the computer….have you been spying on…”

  “Good night, Dad.”

  The final look in her father’s eyes told her all she needed to know. He was convinced. Whatever his golfing buddies had told him meant little when weighed against his daughter’s opinion. He had never forgotten that night that he came to Jill in a panic and asked her to finish the computer program that had stumped her mother. He had no clue about all the mischief Jill was causing, but he knew she could work magic at a computer terminal. And he knew that, in the end, Jill was the one who wrote the software that gave Daciana eyes and ears all around the world. He’d never asked Jill what she could do with that software.

  “We’ll talk more about this later,” he said.

  “I’m sure we will,” said Jill.

  Chapter 8

  The Bloom family home was a gaudy piece of new construction built on the eastern edge of Bethesda with all the other “McMansions” in town. The shamelessly large house not only projected an arrogance that was fitting with the personalities of the Blooms as the Network had written them, it also masked the unusual nature of the house. Like the magician who told a joke to distract from his sleight of hand, or the pickpocket who crashed into his victims so they didn’t feel the soft removal of their belongings, the Bloom family mansion used distraction to hide its true intentions. Visitors to the house were so taken with its sprawling splendor they didn’t notice the unusually thick windowpanes, the many locks on the doors, or the counterintuitive floor plan that wasn’t designed for pleasant family life, but rather to trap and kill a vampire.

  Nicky entered through the garage, locking the door behind her as she stepped inside. The clock above the oven read 1:41. Nicky sighed and shook her head. The Masquerade and all-night party, followed by a quick rest during the day, followed by a late-night adventure at the Tremblay mansion—all of it left her feeling out of sorts. Not only was her body mixed up about day and night, but her mind was mixed up about who she was and what she was supposed to be doing.

  There was a note for her on the kitchen counter.

  Saved some dinner for you in the fridge. Wake me if you need anything. Dad.

  Nicky felt a surge of affection for the man. It was cute that Phillip signed the note ‘Dad.’ He had been slow to commit to his role, and for most of the summer had treated Nicky as a fellow Network operative rather than a daughter. A few weeks ago he would have left the note unsigned rather than call himself Dad, but as the mission got into full swing he embraced his role more fully, and even though they still viewed each other as equals, he seemed more comfortable pretending to be her father.

  Nicky wondered if she was any more comfortable playing his daughter.

  She had a dad once. A mom too, although her mom died when Nicky was too young to remember her. She and her dad were close. They lived in an RV that traveled the country, and they shared the same spirit of adventure.

  She had given up on finding her dad a long time ago, and although it couldn’t be said she had found peace at his loss, she had at least moved on.

  Melissa Mayhew changed all that last night.

  I used your father and many others to really understand how mind control works, to try and learn how a little girl could look me in the eyes and just walk away…

  She heard Melissa Mayhew’s voice ringing in her ears, the words like bullets crashing into her chest and tearing at her innards. She saw Melissa’s face, the two of them cramped together in the back of a limousine after the Masquerade. Nicky Bloom and the vampire who murdered her father.

  I took them in and out of hypnosis. I placed powerful commands deep in their subconscious to lock off their minds, then asked my bond to try and get in and see what was there. I experimented with emotional and sensory extremes.

  Nicky looked at the little finger on her left hand and remembered the agony she felt when her bones snapped. Melissa broke her finger to make her fearful. She threated to break every finger on both hands, one at a time, and wanted Nicky to fear the pain. She thought if Nicky got frightened enough, her mind would open up and Melissa could get inside.

  It was a technique that apparently had worked before, a technique Melissa had used on Nicky’s dad.

  All participants, including your father, were disposed of when we were done….In a way it’s your fault.

  She tortured them. All those years that Nicky thought her father was trapped in one of the mansions, all those years spent roaming the country, looking for him, and he had been at the Farm the whole time, locked in some underground bunker where Melissa was torturing him, and ultimately killing him.

  Nicky was crying now, and without any thought to it, she had her phone in her hand and her fingers were bringing up the recent calls. A voice in her head told her to stop it, that this was a terrible idea, that she would regret it and she needed to put down the phone right now…

  But she couldn’t stop, and before she knew it, the phone was on her ear and she was waiting for Ryan to answer.

  She got his voicemail and immediately hung up.

  “Celeste Nicole Allen, what are you doing?” she whispered.

  She put the phone on the counter and went upstairs. Ten minutes later, she was asleep.

  That night she dreamed about her mother, or at least, she thought it was her mother. A part of her knew it was fantasy, that she was dreaming about her mother because she longed to know the woman, that her brain was playing a trick to bring her comfort.

  In the dream, Nicky and her mother were separated by a thick pane of glass. Her mother was excited that Nicky was there and started banging on the glass, desperate to break through. Nicky punched and kicked at the glass from the outside, trying to help.

  Come on, this is my dream. Get this glass out of here. Let me see my mother.

  Through force of her will, Nicky got a single crack to form right where her mother pounded with her fist. The crack spread down the glass, Nicky’s eyes following it as it went. Down the pane, through the center, now off to the right it went. For a second, Nicky thought the crack would reach the edge of the pane and the glass would break, but then it stopped.

  Gazing at the point where the crack ended, Nicky saw her own reflection in the glass, and in that reflection she wasn’t the seventeen-year-old who was having this dream. She was a little girl. A chubby-cheeked, freckle-faced troublemaker with frizzy, unwashed hair. She took a moment to stare at the reflection. It was quite amazing to get this retro view of herself. It was something she had craved for a long time. Unlike anyone else she knew, Nicky had no pictures of herself as a child. The only image she had of how she used to look was in her own memory, and those images were fleeting and sparse. Her memories were a flipbook of broken pictures—she remembered how she looked in the mirror of a gas station bathroom, how she looked in the surface glare of a pond, how she looked in the rearview mirror of the RV. Months, sometimes years, separated these memories, and without any pictures to reference them to, Nicky never knew how trustworthy those memories were.

  But here, in the dream, she knew it was correct, and she couldn’t help but stare at it. There she was, little Nicky Allen, maybe four years old, looking back at her from the glass. And behind little
Nicky was a metal sculpture mounted on a short pedestal.

  She turned to see that the sculpture was real. A silver sphere polished to a mirror shine with eight lines sticking out on the sides, like rays of the sun. The sculpture was a familiar vision to Nicky. She had seen it before….not too long ago….someplace important…

  She had seen it in her mind when she danced with Sergio at the Masquerade.

  As if summoned by the thought of him, Sergio appeared in the dream, his body fading in from nothing until he was fully there.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” he said.

  “The sculpture? No, it’s not fascinating at all,” said Nicky. “I don’t like it.”

  “It makes you feel sad,” Sergio said.

  “It makes me feel betrayed,” said Nicky, an excitement coming to her as she said the words. She was onto something with that sentence. This sculpture, this mysterious vision that had found its way into her mind when she danced with Sergio, was important somehow, and the feeling of betrayal was a clue that would help her figure it out.

  “I was right here,” Nicky said, now standing before the silver sphere, staring at her own warped reflection in the metal, seeing the four-year-old again, “and something important happened. Something I’ve forgotten.”

  “Were you really right here?” Sergio said.

  Nicky thought about it for a moment.

  “No, I guess I wasn’t,” she said. The dream shifted. She was further back now, looking on from a distance.

  “You haven’t forgotten what happened here,” Sergio said. “In the end, we never really forget anything.”

  Nicky ignored him. He was a creation of her mind, some emotion from the dance working its way into her dream. He wasn’t important.

  What was important was this place. The sculpture, her reflection, the feeling she had….

  Her mother.

  She turned back to the glass. Her mother was gone. Nicky had gotten distracted and her mother had left.

  “No, come back,” she said. “Please...”

  She turned to Sergio for help but he too was gone. Everyone was gone and she stood alone between the sculpture and the pane of glass. Just little Nicky Allen, standing…where? Where was this place?

  With a burst so loud it made her scream, the glass shattered and her mom came charging out. Her hands were reaching forward, her eyes were fury and rage, and her mouth was wide open, showing an array of yellow teeth eager to bite into Nicky’s flesh.

  Her mom was sick. She remembered now. Her mom was very sick and they had to stay away from her.

  But it was too late. In the dream’s final scene, her mom descended upon her and bit into her neck, spilling sickness into Nicky’s blood.

  Chapter 9

  For the second morning in a row, Art woke up in a state of total confusion. He’d been lost in a terrible nightmare for so long that a part of him believed he was destined never to wake up again, and when he found himself in a space that looked familiar he didn’t believe it was real.

  This looks like my bedroom, but that’s just the trick, isn’t it? The nightmare takes you from place to place and every time you think you’re done with it, but then it begins again.

  In Art’s nightmare, a monster with a dragon’s body and a moose’s head (the smiling moose from the foyer to be precise) was chasing him all over the world. The chase started in his house, continued down the street, through downtown DC, and now apparently back into his house again. It was a nightmare that went on and on and on. In the dream, he couldn’t stop running or else the moose-dragon would eat him, but he was so tired he could barely take another step. It was a wildly vivid dream, in which his exhaustion felt so real it was accompanied by sweating, heavy breathing, and a racing heart. When he woke up a part of him was certain the moose was going to come crashing through the wall and begin the chase anew.

  He sat up in bed for nearly a minute before he understood that the moose was gone, that he was done dreaming and had entered reality. But what a strange reality it was. There were three empty wine bottles on the nightstand next to him, and a half-empty bottle of his father’s happy pills.

  What happened last night?

  His phone buzzed. He picked it up and answered, “Hello, this is Art.”

  “Good morning Master Tremblay. I’m sorry to call so early, but I felt it my duty to ensure you were awake in time for school.”

  It was Etson. Why was he calling on the phone?

  “Yes, Etson. I’m awake. Where are you?”

  “The staff has all remained in our quarters per your instructions. You asked us not to return to the house until we received word from you.”

  Not to return to the house?

  “But…who’s going to cook my breakfast?” Art said.

  “If it is your wish, I would be glad to come back to the home and get a breakfast started for you right away. Shall I prepare an omelet for you, like last night?”

  “I had an omelet last night?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Why wasn’t he remembering any of this?

  “Okay, yeah…good. Come back now. And hurry up with breakfast. I’m gonna be late for school.”

  “Right away, Sir.”

  Art took a shower and got dressed, his body feeling sluggish but not particularly hung over. By the time he got downstairs, Etson and the rest of the staff were back in the house, and breakfast was ready. Etson served the omelet with a hot cup of coffee and a little white pill.

  “What’s this?” Art said.

  “Forgive me Sir. I thought you might like to have another of these this morning, as you did yesterday.”

  Art looked at the pill with suspicion.

  “I can take it away, Sir,” Etson said.

  Art put his hand over the pill as Etson reached for it.

  “How many of these did I have yesterday?” Art asked.

  “Just one….that I know of.”

  Art’s mind was in motion now, seeking out connections that it couldn’t seem to find. He had no memory of having one pill, much less half a bottle of them as the evidence on his nightstand suggested. He had no memory of emptying the two bottles of wine he found next to those pills either.

  “When did I ask you to leave the house?”

  “Why, that was when you were with the young lady, Master Tremblay. You wished for some privacy, yes?”

  “The young lady?”

  “Yes, Sir. I believe her name is Nicky Bloom.”

  Art said nothing more as he ate his omelet. Etson didn’t need to know how completely baffled Art was at the moment. The memories would come back to him, whatever they were. Apparently he’d gotten so wasted last night that he’d wiped out any recollection, but something would come back eventually. His mind was in a fog this morning, that’s all. He was still recovering from that horrible nightmare about the moose.

  After breakfast he went back to his room to take another look at the evidence. He smelled the wine bottles, looked at the labels. Oddly enough, he felt no revulsion when he got close to the wine, as was typically the case when he woke up after a night of partying. He looked at the pills. Straight from his father’s stash. How many did he take, or better, did he and Nicky take? Not so many that his father would notice, he hoped.

  Art put the cap on the medicine bottle and took it to the cabinet in his father’s bathroom. He had known about his father’s stash of drugs for years, but had never dared get into it. The fact that he had done so last night, that Etson knew about it, that Nicky had been with him…

  He went back to his bedroom and pulled last night’s clothes from the hamper. He put the shirt to his face and took a deep whiff. Sweet and sensual—somebody’s perfume was on this shirt and just a single whiff made him woozy with desire. It was like his body remembered this smell even if his mind didn’t. This smell got him going, it broke through the haze hanging over him and made him want to wake up and get busy.

  It made him want Nicky Bloom.

  He drove to school,
still without any recollection of the night before, but now convinced the memories would come to him eventually, and when they did, they would be amazing. He floored it down Gadsen Avenue, going sixty miles an hour and running a red light. He had to see Nicky. He had to find out what she knew. He had to be with her, see if being in her presence would shake loose some recollection. It was maddening to him that she was at his house last night and the two of them apparently had one hell of a time but not a second of it was stored in his brain. Of all the memories to lose—why couldn’t he forget about that blasted moose nightmare instead?

  He drove to the senior parking lot on the north end of the Thorndike campus and pulled into his spot. Like all student parking at Thorndike, the senior lot was fully covered, with a steel canopy stretching the length of the lot to protect the expensive automobiles from sun, rain, hail, and pesky birds. Unlike any other lot on campus, the senior lot was assigned parking. Seniors only, everyone with their own numbered space, the best spaces belonging to those students who were willing to pay the most for them. It was a place that had a rich tradition of loitering teens. Having waited patiently for their turn to be top dogs on campus, it was the birthright of the seniors to arrive at the lot twenty minutes before school began so they could lean on the hoods of their cars and hang out. On this morning, as Art crawled out of his Audi A4 and meandered to the back bumper, he thought about the many presidents, senators, dignitaries, and immortals who had spent their mornings shooting the breeze here. He wondered if some day people would hang out in the senior lot and think about him.

  Across the campus, the bell tower rang once, signaling that class would begin in seven minutes. As it was ringing, Nicky pulled into the lot, driving a shiny red roadster that was unlike any car Art had ever seen. Compact and curvy, the car had a distinctly European flair to it and was not at all of this era. Art sensed the entire lot turning to look at her—the buzz of conversations all around growing quiet as Nicky drove up to her spot and got out of the car. He rushed to meet her, hoping he could be first, maybe even open her door to let her out.