The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  Jill picked it up and shook it. Music to her ears—there was still a little bit left inside!

  With her two implements in-hand, she knelt down in front of the server rack and slid the bottom tower out, carefully placing it on the marble floor. She put the flashlight charm between her teeth, aimed the light at the screw on the top corner of the computer tower, and got to work.

  If only her father could see her now. Would he ever have guessed one of his beloved Black Dart screwdrivers would be used to do this?

  Jill had removed hundreds of computer casings, and this one took her only a few seconds to disassemble. She shook the can of compressed air and aimed the straw at the memory modules inside the now-open computer. She pulled the trigger and listened as the air squirted out.

  She felt the can grow colder in her hand. This just might work, she told herself. Come on Nicky, get that charm out of the outlet so I can have some power.

  The hack she came here to do tonight was her favorite kind: the cold boot attack. Because the hack relied on a weakness in the hardware rather than the software, it was very reliable, so long as you moved quickly enough.

  Whenever a computer is shut down, traces of information get left behind in the random access memory. Jill loved to find those traces and use them to her advantage. It was a hack she had practiced at home many times, and performed more than once when she was modifying Thorndike’s admissions database to get Nicky Bloom into the school. Cut the power to the computer, turn it on again quickly, load an operating system using a boot sector on a thumb drive, and then steal the remnants of the memory still floating around in there from when the computer was on before. All the encryption keys she needed to take control of the computer were in those remnants, and all the security that was meant to shut out someone like her was useless once she had those keys.

  But the hack only worked if you loaded the boot sector within seconds after cutting the power. The data remnants faded quickly after the power was cut. So much amazing, powerful information, so rapidly decaying into a random assortment of electrons—Jill imagined all that beautiful data disappearing like steam off a coffeepot.

  Fortunately, you could slow down the data decay by cooling the memory sticks.

  The compressed air can was cold in Jill’s hand now. The air coming out was near freezing. The memory sticks had to be like little ice cubes.

  But the flow of air was slowing. The can was running out.

  Slower…slower…slower…

  Gone. The can was empty. The sticks were as cold as they were going to get. Jill leaned back, afraid that even her body temperature might be the difference between finding something in this computer and coming up empty.

  And then the lights inside the stack came on. The fan started whirring. The hard drive started clicking.

  “Give me an update,” Alvin’s voice whispered in her ear.

  “I have power,” she said. She looked up at the screen, which was black with a single phrase in white letters.

  Booting from disk.

  “I think we’ve got it, Alvin,” she said. “Hot damn tell Nicky I think we’ve got it!”

  *****

  “Did Daciana tell you why she wanted to see me?” Lena asked.

  “No,” Sergio said quietly.

  “But she said it was important.”

  “Every time Daciana asks to see you it is important.”

  “It’s just…that girl I was talking to, do you know her? The new girl?”

  “I have danced with all the girls wearing black.”

  “Yes, of course you have,” Lena said.

  Sergio led her through the dining hall and towards the back half of the house. As he entered the south corridor, the scent caught his nose. The same scent of strawberry perfume that had flummoxed him in the moon room.

  “Daciana didn’t seem angry to you,” Lena said, “you know, when she asked to see me?”

  “There is no point in asking me these questions,” Sergio said. “I have no information to offer to you. Daciana wanted to speak with you right away.”

  “Where is she?” Lena asked. “Are we going back outside? What’s going on?”

  The truth was, Sergio did intend to take Lena outside. He was leading her to Daciana’s cremation furnace where, at this very moment, the bodies of all the slaves who died in the hunt were being cooked.

  He wanted to find out why she was so interested in Nicky, then kill her and dispose of her body.

  But that scent—why did that scent seem so significant to him?

  “This way, Lena,” he said, moving towards the stairs. The cremation furnace could wait. He felt compelled to follow the strawberry scent before the trail went cold.

  *****

  Bootup from the software on Jill’s USB took three minutes. The cold memory sticks in Daciana’s computer held their data remnants. When it was time for the system to reveal its secrets, the encryption keys floated neatly to the surface.

  With full control over the computer, Jill created a data stream that flowed out of Daciana’s house, bounced around a series of Network servers, and landed in the basement of Alvin’s home in Colorado.

  A clean hack. The Network had control of Daciana’s computer.

  Now, onto the banking software.

  She clicked on the icon labeled “Account Aggregator.” The software opened up and, with help from Jill’s boot disk, bypassed the user name and password. Jill sat quietly, watching it load, knowing that in seconds she would be in a position to empty every financial account belonging to the clan. All the vampires in America, the entire endowment of Thorndike Academy, the Coronation pot, all of them, bankrupt. In one swoop, the clan would be crippled and the Network would have nearly unlimited financial resources.

  It was taking a long time to load. That’s okay, Jill thought. I’ve got nowhere else to be. My whole life has been leading me to this moment.

  A pop-up window and a system chime happened simultaneously, startling Jill. The words running across the top of the pop-up window made her heart sink. She tried to be cool about it, but when she read the words a second time, she panicked.

  Verification Code Required was written on the pop-up. Underneath the words was a text box with a blinking cursor inside.

  “What verification code?” she whispered.

  “Is everything okay down there Jill?” came Alvin’s voice.

  “Yeah, it’s just asking me for a verification code that I don’t have.”

  “Doesn’t your software bypass that for you?”

  “I think this code must not be on the local machine,” said Jill. “Dammit.”

  “I don’t understand. Can you access the bank accounts or not?”

  Jill shook her head. She should have known this would happen. After all, her mother wrote this software. Bulletproof. In the requirements document, that was the word Daciana had used to describe how she wanted the security for this system. And a lesser programmer would have designed a system that could be beaten with a cold boot. But if you told Carolyn Wentworth to make it bulletproof, she made it bulletproof.

  “Yeah, this is a second layer of security after the local login,” Jill said. “It’s written into the software on the server side. I’m not going to be able to bypass it.”

  “Then get out of there,” said Eve. “Two vampires have left the party and are headed in your direction.”

  “I hate to leave now,” Jill said. “I just need a minute to think.”

  “You’ve given us complete access to Daciana’s computer from my servers in Colorado, right?” said Alvin.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you can have all the time you need to figure this one out later. Right now, you’ve got to get out of there.”

  Jill sighed. Alvin was right. This was a puzzle she’d have to solve at another time.

  But she was so looking forward to completing the whole hack tonight and declaring victory.

  “Okay, I’ll get moving,” she said.

  A few minut
es later, her right hand holding her shoes by their straps, her left pressed against her side to prevent the charm bracelet from jingling, Jill was running back the way she came. She was nearly to the moon room when Eve made her stop.

  “It’s Sergio and Lena,” Eve said. “They’re coming straight for you. Turn around and go back the other way.”

  Jill tapped twice on her earring to acknowledge Eve, and then backtracked as quietly as she could. She was nearing the crypt when Eve chimed in again.

  “And now we’ve got a servant coming at you from the other side,” she said.

  “So which way do I go?” Jill whispered.

  “End of the hall, door on your left. Hurry.”

  *****

  Letting his nose guide him, Sergio took Lena under the waterfall and down the corridor to the rear wing of the house.

  “I’ve never been back here,” Lena whispered. “Are you sure this is where we’re supposed to go?”

  “Actually, no,” Sergio said. “I’m just following a hunch.”

  “A hunch? Isn’t this the way to her crypt? I’m not comfortable with this, Sergio. I want to go back.”

  Sergio grabbed onto her wrist.

  “Just a little bit farther,” he said.

  *****

  Eve and Alvin led Jill into the library at the back of the house. A maze of wooden bookshelves, the library was a great place to hide. The stacks climbed so high there was a balcony level required to access the books near the top. Quietly as she could, Jill ran down a path of leather-bound volumes, stopping to hide underneath a winding staircase in the center of the room.

  *****

  The smell of strawberry perfume led Sergio into the space beneath Daciana’s house.

  “Would you please tell me what we’re doing?” Lena said. “If Daciana asks me, I’m telling her you forced me to come down here.”

  “Someone’s been here,” he said. “One of the students.”

  Lena’s eyes opened wide. “A student? How could a student possibly have been her?”

  “Come on,” Sergio said, yanking Lena’s wrist. “She’s not here anymore.”

  *****

  “Jill, I need you to stay right where you are,” Eve whispered. “Make your breathing as quiet as you can, and don’t move a muscle. Sergio and Lena are headed to the library now. I’ll let you know when they leave. For now, total silence, okay?”

  Jill tapped on her earring, then huddled tight in the shadow beneath the stairs.

  *****

  Sergio figured out who he was chasing. He remembered the scent.

  The night he stood in the forest, just beyond the remains of Renata’s mansion—that was when he smelled this one before.

  The Wentworth girl. Nicky’s friend.

  He had been so consumed with thoughts of Nicky this week that he hadn’t given much consideration to Jill Wentworth. He had intended to program her, but circumstance kept him away.

  No, not circumstance. Fate. Nicky found him before he could get to the Wentworth girl, and now, free of Sergio’s programming, this strawberry-scented member of the senior class was roaming around in the back half of Daciana’s mansion.

  It was meant to be. Jill Wentworth had a role to play in Nicky and Sergio’s bonding ritual.

  But what?

  Smiling, Sergio reached into his pocket, and placed his fingers on the Ping-Pong ball he had been carrying around with him. Fate was a funny thing.

  The strawberry scent led Sergio to the library, and now it was mixed with sweat. The girl had been running. She was scared. Perhaps she knew Sergio was close.

  He came to the door just outside Daciana’s library, but decided not to go through.

  “The girl we’re looking for is in there,” Sergio said. “She’ll be hiding somewhere in the stacks. Let’s enter on the top level so we can see her better.”

  Lena didn’t argue. She was much more amenable to Sergio’s tour of the rear wing of the house now that they were chasing a rogue student.

  They took the stairway at the end of the hall and stepped into the library via the mezzanine. Sergio stopped to listen.

  There was another heartbeat in the room with them.

  Sergio looked at Lena, whose entire face was lost in a giant grin. She heard the girl too. Shallow breathing, a racing heart—the library was too quiet a place for a frightened human to hide from a vampire.

  What did he do now? What did fate want from him?

  Lena pressed close and whispered in his ear.

  “May I go get her?” she whispered. “I promise I’ll be gentle. I know Daciana will want to be the first to look in her mind.”

  Sergio shook his head. He wasn’t certain what he was meant to do with Jill Wentworth tonight, but he knew that Lena couldn’t be a part of it. After all, this little game of hide and seek was merely a diversion before Sergio took Lena out back to kill her.

  He looked across the library. Jill was hiding at the bottom of the stairs. The nearest exit to her led to the storage room.

  Where Jill would have a clear line of sight all the way to the cremation furnace.

  Yes, that’s why fate had brought him and Jill together tonight. Her role was to tell Nicky what lengths Sergio would go to in order to protect her.

  “We will leave the girl be and tell Daciana what we saw,” he whispered, pointing at the security camera in the nearest corner. “Daciana may wish to watch and see where this girl decides to go.”

  Lena’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. Sergio led her out the way they came in, but when he closed the door behind him, he did it just loud enough for Jill to hear.

  *****

  “They’re gone,” Eve said. “You did great, Jill. But there’s more activity near the moon room. Do you remember that storage and utility area from the blueprint?”

  Jill imagined the sketch of the entire mansion filling a movie screen. In her mind, she saw the library in the rear corner, and next to it, an open room marked “Storage and Furnace.”

  She tapped twice on her earring.

  “Good,” said Eve. “The servants have no reason to go into that room tonight. Get in there and hang tight until all this activity clears out of your area. I don’t want you moving again until Sergio and Lena are back at the party with everyone else.”

  *****

  Sergio took Lena outside, as if they might find Daciana in the forest behind her mansion.

  “Who was that girl?” Lena asked. “One of the students, right? I can’t believe it! A student at Thorndike Academy. Our enemies have a spy right under our noses!”

  Sergio led her around the southeast corner of the house, away from the forest.

  “What’s back here?” she said. “We sure are going on quite the--”

  He had his hand on her throat before she could finish the sentence. Leaning in with the full weight of his body, Sergio threw Lena to the ground and landed on top of her, using his legs to restrain both her arms.

  “I’m going to let go of your throat and we’re going to have a talk,” he said. “A quiet talk. Do you understand?”

  As much as she could, Lena tried to nod her head. Sergio took his hand off her throat.

  “You were speaking to Nicky Bloom when I found you,” he said. “You were looking deep in her mind, or trying to at least.”

  “You know, don’t you, Sergio?” she said. “You know Nicky Bloom is wrapped up in some kind of deceit. I swear I’m not a part of it. I was trying to learn the truth about her.”

  “Tell me what you know about Nicky Bloom and how you know it.”

  “The night of the Date Auction I got a phone call,” Lena said. “From Melissa. She said she had uncovered betrayal of the highest order, and the Bloom family was guilty.”

  “Who did you tell about this phone call?”

  “Renata, and she told me to stay put so she could go deal with it herself. I promise you, Sergio, I didn’t know Renata was up to anything. I didn’t know anything! I still don’t!”

&nbs
p; “Renata and who else?” Sergio said.

  “Just Thomas,” Lena said. “I tell Thomas everything.”

  Everything. The thought made Sergio smile. When you have a bond you tell everything to that person. You are no longer one mind, but two.

  “It was good of you to tell Thomas,” Sergio said. “Your bond comes before everything.”

  *****

  The room that was marked “Storage and Furnace” on the blueprint of Daciana’s mansion might better have been named “Warehouse” for how big it was. A vast space with a high ceiling and a freezing cold concrete floor, the walls of the area were lined with huge wooden crates. On one end of the room was an industrial-sized air conditioner unit. A few feet down from it was a furnace.

  Jill approached one of the crates and aimed the flashlight from her wand charm at the address label taped to the front. The crate had been shipped from some company named Safari Freight & Storage. The address label had a date on the bottom right corner.

  “This just got here,” she whispered.

  “What’s that, Jill?” said Eve. “Everything alright in there?”

  Jill went to another crate. It too had been shipped from Safari Freight & Storage just a few days ago.

  “Are you guys able to see these address labels?” she whispered.

  “It’s pretty dark in there,” said Alvin. “If you want us to see something, get close with your necklace.”

  Jill leaned in so her necklace was right in front of the address label, and then she shone her light on it.

  “Okay, I can see it now,” said Alvin. “You think it’s important?”

  “Whatever this stuff is, it just got here,” Jill said.

  “Probably the casino equipment,” said Eve. “Don’t worry about it now. Just find a place to hide and turn off that flashlight.”