The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  A shadow danced along the back wall, startling her, and Jill immediately turned off her light. She stood in place, listening. She could hear voices outside.

  There was a window on the back wall, facing outside, giving a clear view of Daciana’s cremation furnace. Staying against the wall, Jill approached the window. As she got closer, she could make out what the voices outside were saying.

  “No one else knows about the phone call. Just you, Renata, and Thomas.”

  It was a man’s voice. Calm, even a bit chilling to listen to.

  “That’s right,” said a woman. She sounded scared.

  “And you’re certain Thomas didn’t tell anyone,” said the man.

  The woman’s response was a bit panicked.

  “We kept it to ourselves because Renata told us to. We didn’t know Renata was up to no good. I swear. The only reason I-”

  And then there was a horrible sound, like drumsticks being yanked off a chicken. Jill covered her mouth with her hand and ducked low behind a crate.

  She didn’t have to hear any more to know what was happening out there. The man was a vampire, and he just killed the woman he had been speaking to.

  Jill wished she had looked away at this point, but she was scared so much she couldn’t move. Crouched against the wall, her eyes gazing at the window, she saw Sergio Alonzo stand up, his mouth covered in blood. He took a few steps away from the window. Jill heard him open the iron door to the cremation furnace.

  He came back into view, leaned down, and picked up a severed head from the ground. Bloody entrails hanging from the neck, the eyes still open, Jill swore there was still life in that head.

  The head looked at her through the window. Sergio was holding a woman’s head in his hands and the woman saw Jill through the window, and even made a slight expression of surprise.

  Then Sergio threw the head into the furnace, like it was a bowling ball he was tossing down the lane.

  She didn’t wait for word from Eve or Alvin. She had to get out of here. She had to go right now. Hardly even aware of what she was doing, Jill started to run. Out of the storage area, back through the library, into the south corridor, up the stairs, under the waterfall and into the moon room. She ran without thought of where she was or who might see her, her body entirely on autopilot now.

  She was still in bare feet when she charged through the kitchen, pushing open the swinging door from the dining hall and running all the way through. Nobody saw her, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they did. She couldn’t have stopped running if she tried.

  It wasn’t until she was in the hallway outside the foyer, looking at the door to the bathroom where her adventure had started, that her mind began to clear. It was as if, having made it back to the party, her body could finally relax and let her mind take control.

  She stood still, waiting for her heart to quit racing. Thankfully, no one else was in the hallway, and she had some time alone to process what she had just seen.

  Vampires are killers, she told herself. You know that. It’s who they are. You joined the Network to stop them. Why are you so shocked that you saw it happen?

  Because it was another vampire whose head was in Sergio’s hands.

  Yes, her mind clearer now, she was sure of it. The severed head that gazed through the window and looked right at Jill didn’t belong to some servant that Sergio was having for a snack. No, those eyes were familiar. Jill had seen them in the first briefing book the Network ever gave to her.

  “Jill, what the hell is going on?” came Alvin’s voice in her ear.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get seen,” said Eve. “Sprinting through the mansion like that wasn’t part of the plan. What happened?”

  Ahead of her, Marshall and Brian stepped into the hallway and towards the bathroom.

  “I’ll tell you later, when it’s safe to talk,” Jill whispered.

  “Ah, there you are,” came a voice from behind her. “I’ve been looking for you, Miss Wentworth.”

  She turned around to see Sergio Alonzo approaching her from behind. It took a few seconds before she realized he was waiting for her to speak.

  “I’m sorry. You’ve been looking for me?”

  “Yes, we’re…is there something the matter with your shoes?”

  She had been holding her shoes by their straps for so long she’d forgotten they were in her hand.

  “Oh, um, it’s…”

  Sergio raised his hands. “No need to explain to me. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to wear heels all night long.”

  Jill looked at her shoes, feeling immensely grateful that they were both still with her. All she had been through in the back half of the mansion, and her shoes had dangled along for the entire ride.

  “We’re playing a little game tonight with the students,” Sergio said. “Actually, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, but it’s taken me so long to find you—oh, I don’t really think it matters.”

  He was so relaxed when he spoke. He has no idea, she thought. I’m going to be okay.

  “I selected your name for this game we’re playing, therefore, it is my job to tell you something,” he said. “A number. That’s the game. Everyone gets a number, and you don’t have yours yet.”

  “Oh, okay. What’s my number?” Jill said.

  Sergio opened his mouth to say it, then stopped. He lifted his finger to his chin and seemed to examine Jill more closely.

  “You know, I wasn’t supposed to let you see me,” he said.

  Jill felt like the room was growing smaller.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was supposed to whisper the number in your ear in such a way you’d have no idea I was doing it. The other students all had a number placed in their mind by an immortal, but they didn’t even realize it happened. I hope I’m not ruining the game doing it this way.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” Jill said.

  Sergio smiled at her. “That’s the spirit. Your number is fifty-two.”

  “Fifty-two,” Jill repeated. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all, Miss Wentworth. Enjoy the rest of the party.”

  Chapter 20

  “There you are!”

  It was Karmela, who looked significantly more drunk than the last time Jill saw her. Karmela rushed over to Jill, inasmuch as a totally wasted person can rush, and threw her arm over Jill’s shoulder. “Nobody knew where to find you,” she said. “I kept asking people, ‘Where’s Jill? Where’s Jill?’ And they were all, ‘I dunno.’”

  She giggled, filling the air near Jill’s face with the pungent odor of Pinot Noir.

  They would all be like this. Drunk and happy. Jill would have no difficulty explaining her absence.

  “I’ve been around,” Jill said. She saw Ryan standing at a roulette table. He lifted his arm, inviting her to come stand next to him, the way any good boyfriend would.

  “I’m gonna go play roulette with Ryan. Wanna come?”

  “Sure!” said Karmela.

  When she got to the roulette table, Jill went to Ryan and pulled her sleeve of poker chips from his jacket pocket. She set them down on the roulette table, ready to place a bet like everyone else.

  “Everything okay?” Ryan whispered.

  “Fine,” said Jill.

  And it was fine, really. As horrifying as it was to witness Sergio make a kill, and as frustrating as it was that Jill couldn’t access the bank accounts and finish the hack tonight, everything was fine. They had successfully broken into Daciana’s crypt. Jill had taken control of her computer and set up a permanent link so she could control it remotely. She’d had a terrifying encounter with Sergio Alonzo, but she’d come out of it unscathed.

  “Just fine,” she repeated.

  Mattie, Jenny, and Jake pushed out big piles of chips, every one of them betting heavy on a single number.

  “What’s your lucky number?” Ryan said.

  “I think I’ll bet on a color instead,” said Jill. “Better odds.�
��

  She removed a poker chip from the sleeve and slid it onto a patch of red in the center of the table.

  “Suit yourself,” said Ryan. “Everyone else is feeling lucky with numbers tonight. Isn’t that right people?”

  Ryan sounded a little tipsy, but Jill suspected he was acting drunker than he actually was.

  “You bet it is,” said Jake. “Twenty-eight’s gonna pay out big tonight if I stick with it. I just know it!”

  “Maybe for you,” said Jenny, “but for me, it’s all about number nine.”

  Even though she had placed two good-sized stacks of chips on nine, Jenny had an enormous pile in front of her.

  “Someone’s doing well,” Jill said.

  “Love potion number nine, baby!” said Jenny. “She’s already paid out big for me once, and she’s counting on me to trust her. If I believe, Lady Nine will pay out again.”

  “No, no, the place to be is lucky number thirteen!” said Mattie.

  “Since when is thirteen a lucky number?” said Jill.

  “Since I said it was. I feel it in my bones, Jill. My bones! Thirteen is going to be good to me tonight!”

  “Everyone at the table is feeling good about a number,” said Jake. “Except for Jill. You’re the odd man out.”

  “I’ll stick with my color, thanks.”

  The dealer spun the wheel. The ball came to a stop at twelve, a red number. The dealer added to Jill’s pile of chips. Everyone else’s he swept away.

  Almost immediately, the others pushed more chips onto the same numbers they bet the last time.

  Everyone gets a number. That’s the game.

  Sergio’s words still fresh in her ears, she knew she was watching the others play along in some game the immortals had initiated. Unaware of why they felt so strongly about it, they were all betting on the number that suddenly seemed lucky to them.

  Perhaps it was a way to coax more money out of them. It seemed to be working on the people at this table, who were all too glad to push piles of expensive chips on the table.

  But the number Sergio gave to Jill was fifty-two, which wasn’t even on the roulette wheel. Why did he give her a number she couldn’t play? Was she meant to be at a different table?

  “What’s your lucky number, Ryan?”

  “Sixty,” he said, without the slightest hesitation. “Too big for the roulette wheel, I’m afraid. You wanna play something else?”

  Jill looked across the room, and spotted Nicky sitting at a card table. She wondered if there was a way to go talk to her without getting seen.

  Karmela stepped into her line of sight, holding two glasses of wine.

  “One for you, my friend,” she said, pushing a glass at Jill. “What are you playing here?”

  “We were actually thinking of moving to another table,” said Ryan.

  “Oh, you all want to play craps? Come this way. Samantha’s playing at a table over there. I’m sure she’ll make room.”

  As Karmela stepped aside, Jill saw that Nicky was no longer alone.

  “Are you coming?” Karmela said.

  Jill took a sip from her wine glass.

  “Yeah, sounds fun,” she said.

  *****

  When Nicky found the mushroom charm in the bathroom socket, it was white hot. She yanked it out anyway, burning her fingertips as she did so.

  On Alvin’s instruction, she took the mushroom charm back into the foyer and tossed it in a trashcan near the bar, where it would find its way to a dumpster out back and then disappear forever in a mess of empty bottles and used cocktail napkins.

  After disposing of the charm, she went to a blackjack table and sat down. She stayed there the rest of the time that Jill was in the back of the mansion. She received updates from Alvin every few minutes. When they told her Jill was hiding because Sergio and Lena were roaming nearby, she wanted to tell them to let her go.

  That Sergio wasn’t a threat to them tonight.

  “Ballsy move, going all in like that,” came a voice from behind her. It was a voice she hadn’t heard in months, someone who loomed large in her world at the beginning of the semester, but was out of place in it now.

  She turned around to face him. “Hi Art,” she said.

  “I don’t know if I was happy or sad that Kim called your bluff,” Art said. “You ask me, you both deserve to lose.”

  Nicky sighed. She supposed she had this coming. She hadn’t exactly been nice to Art Tremblay last semester.

  “Whatever,” she said. “The game’s over and I don’t really care.”

  Art was silent for a second, then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a red poker chip, and tossed it to Nicky.

  “On me,” he said. “Start a game. See what you can make of it.”

  Nicky looked at the chip. Art was trying to embarrass her. She had gotten the best of him in the fall and now he was reminding her how far she’d fallen.

  She thought about refusing the chip, but decided it didn’t really matter at this point. She was bored. Now she had a chip she could use to play a game.

  “Thanks,” she said to Art, then she pushed the chip to the dealer and said, “I’m in.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she had won five hands and was up four thousand dollars. She was still alone at the table, but could sense a crowd of onlookers gathering behind her.

  She was prepping her ante for hand number six when the dealer gathered all the cards and walked away. Nicky was about to call after him and ask where he was going, but at that moment, the entire room went dark, save a single spotlight pointed at the stairs.

  An orchestra began playing majestic music. A door opened in the darkness at the top of the stairs.

  Daciana Samarin came through the door and into the light. She smiled at the gathering below, her perfect teeth gleaming with inhuman elegance.

  “Good evening, my friends,” she said. “Welcome to my home.”

  *****

  Jill found herself entranced by Daciana’s beauty. Watching the vampire queen descend into the spotlight, Jill felt like she was gaining an entirely new understanding of the clan and its power.

  She was perfect. The glimmer of her dark brown hair, the symmetry of her face, the strength of her movement—everything that everyone in this room wanted to be, the aspirations of every power player in this town, from the most popular people at school to the wealthiest lobbyists on the Hill—Daciana was the embodiment of all of it. She was their highest value. A walking work of art.

  And I just hacked her computer.

  How brazen she had been. How wildly bold!

  But I’m still here, she thought. And even though I didn’t get all of it tonight, your computer is mine, Daciana Samarin, and before this is over, I will deliver a strike from which your clan will never recover.

  From behind her, Ryan wrapped his arms around her waist. It was the sort of gesture that had been infuriating to her earlier in the week, but at this moment she welcomed it, and leaned back into his grasp.

  Her wine glass half empty, her mind dancing with excitement that she had actually done it—she had actually snuck into the back of the mansion, beaten an array of security measures, and broken into the crypt—that she was hardly even present when it happened.

  When she did it.

  Craning her head back to face him, she and Ryan made eye contact, and she kissed him. It wasn’t the kiss of two actors engaged in a game of pretend. It was a visit to their mutual past, to a time when they were so crazy about each other nothing else mattered. Her hand grabbed a fistful of hair on the back of his head. His grip on her body tightened. Tongues were touching. The rest of the party disappeared and she felt an incredible release, three years of denying themselves what they wanted, three years of—

  “Good evening, my friends. Welcome to my home.”

  Daciana spoke, and her voice was so strong it pierced Jill and Ryan’s bubble. Ryan pulled away and stared at her with a stunned look in his eyes, a look that simultaneously asked what are we d
oing? and why did we wait so long to do it?

  Daciana’s words dragged them both back to reality.

  “I’m so pleased to see you tonight,” Daciana said. “Truly. It’s been far too long since I’ve hosted a Thorndike event at my house.”

  *****

  From the back of the crowd, Nicky listened as Daciana continued her greeting.

  “Years ago, we had many school functions at my house,” she said. “Regretfully, I turned over those duties to someone else. Only a few weeks have passed since this class got together for the winter party at Renata’s house. As many of you already know, that gathering was the final event in the seventy-year history of Renata’s mansion. Some time after the party ended, the house caught fire and burned to the ground. I know there is quite a bit of speculation in our community regarding the burning of Renata’s mansion…”

  Nicky saw the other vampires flowing into the crowd from the edges of the foyer. After whispering numbers in everybody’s ears, the vampires had largely disappeared from the party, but now it seemed they had all come back.

  They were still hiding, still using their abilities of deception to mask their presence from the other students. Whatever game they had been playing with those numbers wasn’t over.

  Up on the stairs, Daciana was becoming more animated as she spoke.

  “Allow me to set the record straight tonight regarding Renata Sullivan. She is no longer a member of our clan. She is no longer someone we will speak of. She was a traitor who attempted to steal the Coronation pot and have me killed.”

  A gasp from the crowd, students and vampires both shocked at this revelation. Aware that her own expression didn’t match everyone else’s, Nicky looked down at the floor.

  “There are two things I want everyone to know before we close the book on Renata Sullivan forever,” Daciana said. “The first is that she was an enemy to all of us, and we all defeated her together.”

  Whispers of confusion passed through the crowd. We defeated Renata? We didn’t even know about Renata.