The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  Jill opened her mouth to answer Jenny, but before she could answer, Samantha was already speaking again.

  “Yes, Jill and seven other people took their one and only turn last night,” Samantha said.

  And everyone at the party heard what my number was when Daciana called me to the stage, Jill thought.

  She would tell them. Yes, everyone at school was bound to figure it out eventually. If Jill started with this group, she might be able to control how everything went down.

  “I know how the game works,” she said, bringing silence to the table.

  “What do you mean?” asked Samantha.

  “There were posters of the girls wearing black hanging in Daciana’s mansion last night,” Jill said. “Did you see them?”

  Nods of agreement across the table.

  “Samantha’s poster had a white border,” Jill said, “and the first dial on the safe had a diamond set into the tip. Did you see the way the diamond gleamed white in the spotlight?”

  “I did!” Mattie said. The rest of the table remained silent.

  “The second dial on the safe had a ruby in the tip,” Jill said, “and the poster of Nicky had a red border. The third dial had an emerald.”

  “And the poster of Kim was green!” Karmela said.

  “That’s why I asked you for your number last night,” Jill said to Samantha.

  “What the hell is your number, Samantha?” said Jenny.

  “No, no,” said Jill, raising her hand. “There’s a reason I didn’t turn the diamond dial to Samantha’s number, even though I knew what it was. Samantha’s number is the key to this whole game. She is the only one who has an incentive to keep it entirely secret.”

  “Because if nobody opens the safe, I win Coronation!” Samantha said. “Good grief, Jill Wentworth. Where do you put all those brains? So I’ve won, right? I just don’t tell anyone my number, and the game is mine!”

  “Not exactly,” said Jill. “When the game started last night, there were ninety-nine numbers to choose from on every dial. But now, there are only ninety-one.”

  Sensing they weren’t getting it, Jill added, “There were eight people called to the stage, by their number. The numbers that will open that safe belong to the girls wearing black. Every time Daciana called a number last night, we learned a number that didn’t belong to one of the Coronation candidates.”

  “What?” said Mattie. “I don’t think I get it.”

  “Don’t worry. You will,” said Samantha. “Keep going, Jill.”

  “Eight people got called to the stage last night,” Jill said. “Eight more are getting called up to guess every week until the safe gets opened.”

  “Every week,” said Samantha, nodding her head slowly. “How many weeks are in the semester?”

  “There are twelve weeks before prom,” said Jill.

  “But eight people a week for twelve weeks…what’s eight times twelve?” said Jenny.

  “It’s ninety-six,” said Jill. “The whole class, minus the four girls wearing black.”

  “Will someone please tell me what all these numbers mean?” said Mattie.

  “It means that, if we keep track of the numbers that Daciana calls each week, eventually we’ll only be left with the numbers belonging to the girls wearing black,” said Jill.

  A look of understanding came over Samantha’s face.

  “That’s right,” said Jill. “You’re getting it now, aren’t you? Even if Samantha keeps her number a secret, the others can still figure it out by process of elimination. All they have to do is keep track of the numbers Daciana calls out each week. By the end of the semester, there will only be four numbers left.”

  “We need to figure out Kim, Mary, and Nicky’s numbers,” said Samantha.

  “Right. But you can bet they’ll be keeping those numbers a secret,” said Jill.

  “So what do we do?” said Mattie.

  “We make a list of everybody’s number we can get and figure out the missing ones by process of elimination,” said Jill. “Fast as we can, before the others figure out the game, we get our friends in school to start talking.”

  “This is brilliant,” said Samantha. “Just brilliant!”

  “I’ll keep the master list,” said Jill. “Every time you figure out somebody’s number, text it to me.”

  The others nodded their heads in eager agreement, unaware that they were now enlisted to help Jill win the Coronation contest not for Samantha, but for Nicky Bloom.

  Chapter 24

  Daciana threw another log on the fire then took a seat on the sofa. She looked at the clock. Nearly four in the morning.

  Lena was late.

  “Chester come in here!” she called out.

  Her head of house, who had been waiting patiently at the entryway to the Great Room, approached.

  “What may I do for you, Master?” he said.

  “Grab my phone and see if I have any messages from Lena Trang.”

  “Right away,” Chester said. He gave a small bow and then hurried out of the room. When he returned a minute later, phone in-hand, he said, “No messages from Ms. Trang, Master.”

  “What about from her bond? Thomas.”

  “The only message on your phone is from an unknown number,” said Chester. “Shall I read it to you?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Message received on Saturday at 1:42 am,” Chester said, reading the message. “From unknown number. Your verification code is six, four, nine, six, five, seven.”

  Chester looked up from the phone. “Shall I read it again?” he said.

  “That was it?” said Daciana. “Who did you say that was from?”

  “Unknown number,” said Chester.

  “Weird. Everything about the world today is weird, Chester, don’t you think? I mean, people spend all their time looking at these little screens and what do they tell you? What did that screen just tell us?”

  “I’m not entirely certain of the meaning of this message, Master.”

  “There is no meaning. It’s gobbledy-gook! Absolute nonsense! Of course, there’s so much nonsense like that floating around these days—they have a name for it. What’s that name people use for all the nonsense messages?”

  “Spam, Master?”

  “Right, spam! For the life of me, Chester, I’ll never understand why the kids insist on carrying those horrid devices around with them everywhere. Delete the message. Then call Lena Trang and tell her she’s late!”

  “Right away, Master.”

  *****

  Nicky returned to school on Monday morning, taking her first steps onto the Thorndike campus since the day before the Date Auction.

  It was an easy, quiet day for her. Nobody cared about Nicky Bloom anymore.

  She drifted from class to class, speaking to no one. She eavesdropped on conversations in the hall, and read people’s lips from across the courtyard.

  Everyone at school was obsessed with numbers.

  What’s your lucky number? Wanna hear mine?

  How is it that we all have a lucky number now? When did that happen?

  How much money was in that safe again?

  A quiet first day of school for Nicky became a quiet first week. She grew accustomed to staying silent from the time she left the house in the morning to the time she returned in the afternoon. Her phone never rang. The only texts she received were from Ryan and Jill, and even those were rare. As far as the Network was concerned, Jill was running this operation now. Nicky was just a prop.

  Not wanting the other students to see her eating alone, Nicky began spending the lunch hour shopping the boutiques on Staley Street. She saw a necklace that caught her eye at a shop called Mandy’s Treasures. The necklace had a heavy topaz pendant that was bezel set in a silver casing. She didn’t understand why she was drawn to it until she brought it home, and saw that the topaz was a near perfect match in size and shape to the ruby Sergio gave her at the party.

  That ruby, which had been hidi
ng in the drawer of her vanity, came with her to school the next day. She took the ruby and pendant to a bench jeweler during the lunch hour and asked to have the stones switched out.

  The jeweler was more than a little impressed with the ruby.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Someone gave it to me,” Nicky said.

  “It’s gotta be at least fifty carats. And the quality is outstanding. You ever have it appraised?”

  “No.”

  The jeweler held the ruby under a magnifier lamp and turned it slowly in his fingertips.

  “It’s just spectacular. I’ll get it appraised for you. You definitely want a stone like this appraised and insured.”

  “Just mount it in the pendant please.”

  “We’re going to need to sign a liability agreement before I start working with a stone like this.”

  “Whatever you need. I just want to wear it.”

  When she went to school on Thursday morning, she was wearing the ruby Sergio gave her around her neck.

  Also on Thursday morning, word spread around the school that Daciana’s safe had been moved to the chapel, where it was surrounded by armed guards. The students got their first look at the safe’s new location during Friday morning service. As all the Thorndike students lined the pews and sang the school song, they looked at the safe, standing front and center on the altar, the four posters of the girls wearing black hanging directly above it.

  In Daciana’s mansion, the posters had been arranged in a circle, but in the chapel, they hung in a straight line, starting with Samantha and continuing in order through Mary. Nicky and Jill shared a glance when they saw the new arrangement of the posters, their borders more visible now.

  When Friday evening came, and the class gathered in the chapel again, many of them had figured out the connection between the posters and the gemstones on the safe. By the time Daciana took the stage, a teenage slave rolling her clear globe of Ping-Pong balls alongside her, everyone understood that the girls wearing black each had their own number, and together, those numbers made up the combination to this safe.

  Eight times Daciana went to that globe, pulled out a plastic ball, and called a number. Eight people guessed at the combination of the safe. Josh Manson, Terri Weingarten, Amy Thayer, Jake Castillo, Terry Reese, Parker Blake, Tatiana Klebb, and Esperanza Vigil—one by one they went up to the altar of the Albert and Melba Anderson Memorial Chapel, turned the four knobs on the safe, and failed to open it.

  “Thank you everyone,” Daciana said after the eighth and final attempt. “I will see you again next week. You are dismissed.”

  *****

  Daciana exited through the back door of the chapel and towards the car she had waiting on the street. As she walked down the sidewalk, another car, parked by itself, just a few lengths away from hers, caught her eye.

  A black 1966 Vicenza Roadster. Daciana hadn’t seen one of those in decades. She approached it.

  It was an exquisite piece of machinery. Well cared-for, the tires and paint gleaming in the moonlight, the car made Daciana wistful for a simpler time in her life. Back in the time of cars like these, the clan was small and tight. No one would have thought for a second to betray the clan in those days.

  No one would dare.

  In many ways, Daciana felt like the world was getting away from her. The cars, the kids, the other vampires, the technology…

  It hadn’t been a great week. Lena and Thomas were officially missing. Her new choices to run the Farm, already gone. The last time anyone had seen either of them was at her party. There was no sign of either of them now.

  Had her enemies already struck again? Were Lena and Thomas part of the same conspiracy that ensnared Renata, or were they victims, killed precisely because Daciana had chosen them to take on a more important role in the clan? She didn’t know, and she didn’t know how to find out.

  That part was particularly frustrating. Renata had been enormously clever in her getaway. Before burning down her mansion, she had emptied it of everything important to the clan. Everything that Daciana would have wanted to look at for clues to Renata’s whereabouts. Computers, file cabinets, important documents—there were fire safes in the house but they had been emptied before it was set ablaze. There was a sprinkler system and other defenses against such destruction, but someone had disabled all of them before lighting the match!

  No, it hadn’t been a great week so far, and to top it off, Daciana’s phone kept getting hit with spam. These little ‘verification code’ text messages. Seemed like she got at least one a day. Your verification code is and then it gave her a 6-digit number, a new one every time! What the hell was that? Why was spam such nonsense? What purpose did it serve to fill people’s email and text messages with this crap?

  Standing on the curb, Daciana ran her fingers along the curves of the car, and wished for a time when machines were simple, like this one. No microchips. No encryption codes. No smart phones and computer networks and Ethernet cables and Wi-Fi and everything else that had invaded the world all of a sudden. Back when Vicenzas ruled the road, people did important transactions on paper. They sat down at desks and wrote each other letters. They talked, in person, in actual sentences rather than 140-character ‘Tweets.’

  And back then, the world you lived in today was the same one you would live in tomorrow. There wasn’t new disruptive technology showing up at California conventions every six months. You learned a few basic things, like how to drive a car, and then you functioned in the world day in and day out.

  It was funny. People thought the clan was this infinitely powerful boogeyman, but sometimes Daciana felt just as helpless as anyone else. If she truly was as powerful as everyone thought, she’d get rid of computers altogether and go back to a time when the most sophisticated machines in the world were black roadsters like the Vicenza.

  When people didn’t carry around miniature thinking machines that got clogged with Spam about ‘verification codes.’

  “You like it?” came a voice from behind her.

  Daciana looked up to see Nicky Bloom standing a few feet away, a smile on her face.

  “Is this yours?” Daciana said.

  Nicky nodded. There was a confidence to this girl, a lack of fear in her eyes and in her movements—it was refreshing.

  “I’m glad to be speaking with you, Nicky Bloom,” she said. “You and I have some things we need to talk about.”

  “Okay. Would you care to go back into the chapel?” Nicky said. “It’s a little cold out here for me.”

  “Nah. Why would we go back into that stuffy old place when we could speak in your car?”

  “You want to go for a ride?”

  “Only if you let me drive,” Daciana said. “I used to own one of these, you know. I always regretted letting it go when I did. Who knew they would become such collector’s items?”

  Nicky had a clutch hanging from her shoulder. She reached inside and pulled out a set of car keys, which she threw over the roof to Daciana.

  As soon as she caught the keys in her hands she was back in a memory of a different time. A clan just being built, a school that was still new, and the promise of good times ahead stretching into infinity—that’s what Daciana felt when she held the undersized rectangular key for the Vicenza in her hand.

  “Now we’re talking,” she said.

  A minute later, with Nicky in the passenger seat, Daciana hit the parkway going 88 miles per hour. By the time she’d worked her way over to the far left lane, she was going over a hundred.

  “Oh isn’t that a marvelous sound!” Daciana said as the engine roared. “They don’t make cars like this anymore! Come on, Baby, let’s see what you can do!”

  Slamming on the gas pedal, Daciana took the car to 110…115…120. They picked up a cop as they crossed the river doing a hundred-and-thirty-three miles an hour.

  “Now things really get fun!” Daciana said. “Let’s see if our new friend can keep up!”

&n
bsp; With lights flashing and sirens blaring, one cop car became two, driving in a straight line along the breakdown lane. As they crossed highway 122, a helicopter started flying above them.

  “Are you having fun, Nicky?”

  “Not as much fun as you are,” Nicky said.

  “This is so awesome! Let’s see if we can lose them in the city!”

  Daciana carried their pursuers off the highway and across the surface streets of DC, running red lights, allowing the tires to skid out as she took hard turns, and screaming in elation as they moved.

  Sadly, on a Friday night, the streets of DC were too congested for them to get far. A few blocks into town they were surrounded.

  “Come out with your hands up!” came a man’s voice from a bullhorn.

  There were flashing lights on all sides of them.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Daciana said. “When I first came to America, I couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually, the police learned to leave me be. They decided I wasn’t worth their time since all I ever wanted to do was play.”

  “We have you surrounded! Come out!” the bullhorn repeated.

  “This will just take a second,” Daciana said.

  She got out of the car and had a chat with the police officers, who were happy to let her go. As they drove away, she invited Nicky to step out, and the two of them leaned against the side of the car, looking up at the moon.

  “You and I need to have a talk, Nicky Bloom,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “Lots of things. Don’t worry. Sergio has already cleared you and your family of wrong-doing. I just want to know who you are, and where you came from.”

  “I’m from Chicago,” Nicky said.

  “Oh yeah, what part?”

  And then they were off, spending the next hour talking about Nicky’s past. Daciana learned that Nicky’s father was a commodities speculator, and that Nicky applied to Thorndike as a long shot, but felt good about her chances after the student interview. She learned all about the first semester from Nicky’s point of view, the contest, starting with the Masquerade, and going through the Date Auction.