The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) (49 page)

“Then why are we here?” Art said. “You want us to believe we’re losers who chose the wrong side, but you can’t win without us.”

“We most certainly can win without you,” Jill said. “But I’m getting tired of waiting. I’m ready for this to be over. As soon as we have your numbers, we can wrap this up and be done with all the maneuvering and blackmail and everything else that comes with Coronation. But if you’re not willing to help, suit yourself. Just don’t expect Samantha to be in a forgiving mood when she’s made into the new immortal.”

Rosalyn and Andrea seemed to shrink in their chairs.

“That’s right,” said Jill. “You try and act all coy about it, but in the end, you’re terrified of what’s coming, aren’t you? You’re in a no-win situation. If you don’t do what Kim tells you to do, she’ll spill some horrible family secret or whatever it is she’s threatened you with. But if you don’t help Samantha, you’ll be the only three in the class who have made an enemy of the new immortal.”

Jill turned to Samantha. “What do you think you’ll do to your enemies after you’ve won?”

“Ruin them,” Samantha said in a casual voice.

Rosalyn was shivering now. Pretty soon, she’d start to cry.

“Tell us more,” Jill said. “Let these three know what’s in store for them if they make the wrong choice.”

“I’d go to their house at night,” Samantha said. “I’d visit them while they slept. And look them in the eye, and put a spell in their mind.”

She turned and looked at Rosalyn directly. “Whatever it is I think you would hate the most, that’s what I’d make you do.”

Tears began streaming down Rosalyn’s face. Andrea closed her eyes and began rocking back and forth in her chair. Art, to his credit, seemed unaffected by Samantha’s threat.

“Maybe I’d make you lose your mind so you land in an insane asylum for the rest of your life,” Samantha said.

“Please, don’t do this,” Rosalyn whispered.

“Or maybe I’d do something more subtle, like program you to live a normal life until you’re married with children, at which point you’d go out and do something terrible that lands you in jail.”

“I’ll talk,” Rosalyn whispered.

“It doesn’t do us any good unless all three of you talk,” said Jill. “And I don’t know that Art and Andrea are ready yet.”

“I could make you walk out your own front door and go wandering in the streets,” Samantha said. “I could turn Andrea into a prostitute, and Art into a crack addict. I could make you guys disappear, and wait until the world has forgotten about you, then have you arrive at my mansion so I could look you in the eyes, tell you everything I’ve done to you, and then bite into your neck.”

“I’ll talk too,” said Andrea.

“That leaves you, Art,” said Jill. “Where do you stand?”

Art said nothing.

“Please, Art. Let’s just do this and go home,” said Rosalyn. “Kim doesn’t know we’re here.”

“And she never will,” Jill said. “Even though it will be your help that seals Coronation for Samantha, Kim will never even know you talked to us. That’s the beauty of what we’re doing here tonight. You guys get to play both sides. That is, if Art decides he wants to.”

“Maybe you could leave us alone for a bit,” said Andrea. “The three of us could talk about it with each other, you know, before we talk to you.”

“Fair enough,” said Jill. “You have five minutes.”

Jill and Samantha left the dining room and went to the kitchen.

“I think they’re going to tell us their numbers,” Samantha said.

“I do too,” said Jill. “Your little brainstorm about all the things you might do to them when you’re immortal had them shaking in their boots.”

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Samantha said with a giggle. “I love that we’re using Kim’s own methods to make her supporters double-cross her! And they’re the last ones who weren’t supporting me. Can you believe it? The whole class—has anyone ever won Coronation with the support of the entire class?”

Jill smiled at her. Poor, naive Samantha was out of her element. Having been thrust into the lead without any effort on her part, she was entirely too trusting of the people around her. The notion that Jill might be using her, that there was still one double-cross left, wasn’t even on Samantha’s mind.

“Your victory will be historic, that’s for sure,” said Jill. “You’re already way ahead of everyone, and when we open the safe for you, it will be the biggest blowout in the history of the contest.”

“I like the sound of that,” Samantha said. She nodded her head as she grinned, lost in the joy of whatever glorious future she was imagining.

Jill let Samantha relish her pending victory for a moment, then she led her back to the dining room, where Art, Rosalyn, and Andrea were still seated at the table. They each had a small scrap of torn paper in front of them.

“I had a napkin in my pocket,” Art said. “We used it to write down our numbers. Go ahead and take them. They’re yours. But please remember we’re doing this in good faith. If Kim ever hears about what’s happened tonight, we’ll deny it.”

“We hope you’ll remember this gesture when you become immortal,” Rosalyn said to Samantha.

“We also hope you can recognize the difficult spot we’ve been in all year,” said Andrea. “I can’t speak for the others, but in my case, Kim has used a mistake of my parents to blackmail me into supporting her. I never had a chance. It wasn’t my fault.”

“I will keep it in mind,” Samantha said.

“She’ll keep it in mind provided you all were truthful with these numbers,” said Jill. “Now that we have these, I will be able to figure out the final number we need to open the safe. But if any one of you is lying, the safe won’t open for us.”

“And you all will be punished,” Samantha said.

“Do you need more time to make sure that all of you are telling the truth?” said Jill.

“I don’t,” said Art. “I put my number on that scrap of napkin, and I trust Rosalyn and Andrea did the same. You two have made our options crystal clear tonight. It’s not in anybody’s interest to lie.”

“I didn’t lie either,” said Rosalyn.

Jill looked to Andrea. “And you?”

Andrea nodded her head. “I know I’ve told the truth,” she said.

Jill reached across the table and grabbed Andrea’s scrap of napkin first. Two digits were on the underside, written in smudgy black ink.

49.

Jill put the scrap in her pocket. Next she grabbed the scrap in front of Rosalyn and looked where she had written.

20
.

Jill put that napkin in her pocket as well, and reached for Art’s.

4.

“I have good news,” said Jill. “All three of these numbers were unassigned on my spreadsheet.”

“Does that mean they’re telling the truth?” said Samantha.

Jill thought of the final numbers that were floating loose on her list, unattached to any names.
4, 20, 49, 71.

“Yes, I think they told the truth,” said Jill.

She closed her eyes. Was it done? She couldn’t believe it was done. Everything she had worked towards for the past four years had led her to this. With these three numbers, she could fill in the final question marks on her spreadsheet.

Andrea – 49.

Rosalyn – 20.

Art – 4.

That left only a single number between 1 and 99 that wasn’t already attached to a name. A single number that would tell her the last piece of the combination.

Mary Torrance – 71.

The next night at chapel, Daciana pulled a Ping-Pong ball from the plastic globe, and called out a number.

“Forty-nine!” she announced, in a big, booming voice. The number resonated in Jill’s ears. As one of the four numbers that had been missing from her list for so long, her mind latched onto it, the way it might latch onto her own name.

Andrea stepped into the aisle and walked up to the altar. Jill looked across the pew, to where Samantha was sitting, and gave a single nod of her head.

Andrea had told the truth. If there were any doubts left about the accuracy of Jill’s spreadsheet, they disappeared when Andrea walked up to the altar.

Jill hoped Daciana would call Art and Rosalyn’s numbers too, but she didn’t. After Andrea, Daciana called forward seven people whose numbers Jill had known for months.

None of them opened the safe. None of them even got a single number of the combination correct.

Daciana dismissed the students and Jill left the chapel holding Ryan’s hand. She crawled into the Lamborghini, pulled down the door to close it, and said, “It’s time. I’m going to have Eve break into the chapel this week and return the missing Ping-Pong balls to the bin. You might get called up to the altar next week.”

“Tell me the combination again,” said Ryan.

“Ninety-eight on the first dial,” Jill said. “Seventy-seven on the second. Nineteen on the third, and seventy-one on the fourth.”

“Got it,” Ryan said. “I’ll practice it all week. Ninety-eight, seventy-seven, nineteen, seventy-one.”

“It’s four numbers, Ryan. I’m sure you don’t need to practice all week.

“Oh no, I’m going to burn those numbers into my brain,” he said,
then he repeated the combination.

And repeated it again.

All the way home from the chapel, over and over again, long after it made sense for him to obsess over the numbers, Ryan practiced saying the combination.

“I think you’ve got it,” Jill said.

“I do,” said Ryan. “But winning Coronation for Nicky is so much more important than anything else, I’ve got to make sure those numbers stay in my mind. Ninety-eight, seventy-seven…”

By the time they got to Jill’s house, he wasn’t saying the numbers out loud, but Jill could tell he was still repeating them in his mind.

“Good night, Ryan.”

Ryan could barely be bothered to nod his head and wave goodbye.

It was curious to Jill that the discovery of the final missing number made Ryan so obsessive. For her, it did just the opposite. The entire combination now in-hand, there wasn’t any more snooping or manipulating or gaming to do, and after years of effort to get Nicky into Thorndike and win the Coronation contest for her, Jill could finally relax.

Before going to sleep that night, Jill sent a text to Eve, telling her it was time to break into the chapel and put the stolen Ping-Pong balls back into the globe. Then she put the mission entirely out of her mind, and spent the remainder of the weekend with Zack.

It was a peaceful, lazy weekend of sleeping late, eating at odd hours, snuggling on the sofa, and enjoying life. When she returned to her house on Sunday night, she felt a little like she was waking from a dream, like her time with Zack was an entirely separate reality from her life in Potomac.

No, not a separate reality
, she thought.
The only reality.

As fanciful as a lazy weekend with Zack might seem, in truth, it was more real than the life she had constructed for herself in Potomac. Everything about that life was a lie, from the person she pretended to be at school to the relationship she pretended to have with her family. It was a fantasy that was about to come to an end.

Late on Sunday night, Jill opened an encrypted folder hidden away in the depths of her computer. Inside that folder was a document, a letter she had written to her mother.

The letter was Jill’s plea to her mother to get out of town. It opened with a reminder to Carolyn that she had helped Jill hack into Renata’s phone, and was therefore just as guilty of treason as Jill.

They’ll want to look in your mind,
the letter said.
They’ll discover the truth about you.

The letter went on to invite Carolyn to meet up with Jill at a Network safe house, and to begin a new life where there would still be plenty of programming work to do.

When Jill wrote that letter, her intention was only to rescue her mother. Her father could rot as far as she was concerned.

At least, that’s the way she used to feel. Things were different now. As horrible as Walter had been, he didn’t deserve to be left behind. He deserved his own letter, one that would arrive in his Inbox at the same time Carolyn got hers.

She began to type.

Dear Dad,

As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I’ve been up to no good. For a long time now, since freshman year actually, I’ve been engaged in treason.

I am an agent of the Network. We are at war with the Samarin clan, and I have been active in that fight for years. You don’t need to know all the details, but suffice it to say, I am an enemy of the state who would quickly be put to death if the clan had any idea what I’ve done.

If you’re reading this letter, it means I’m on the run, and you should be too. You might be tempted to stick it out, thinking you’ll be spared because you didn’t know about me, and if that’s your choice, I wish you luck. But I strongly recommend you leave. I can help you get out of town and start a new life somewhere else. If you want that, you have to call me right away.