The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) (62 page)

The Lamborghini and the Vicenza, both of them trashed, like they had tumbled and barrel-rolled together at tremendous speed. Looking at the carnage, Jill remembered how torn up Daciana was when she arrived, with dried blood and dirt all over her, reeking of gasoline.

And suddenly the timeline made sense.

Daciana would have arrived at the mansion long before Frankie and the others, but she got held up. She got in an accident.

“Ma’am, I need to ask you to step behind the yellow line.”

“Where is he?”

“Ma’am? Do you know the owner of one of these vehicles?”

Jill turned to look at the police officer.

“Ryan Jenson! Where is he?”

A sullen look came over the officer’s face.

“Are you related to Mr. Jenson?”

“Yes! I’m family! I’m more than
family! Where is he? Let me see him!”

The officer put his hand on Jill’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Come with me.”

At that moment, an ambulance pulled forward, and Jill saw a team of paramedics zipping up a body bag on the ground.

“No,” she said. “No! Who’s in that body bag? Who is that?”

“Ma’am, I really need you to come with me. You can identify the victim for us after you’ve made a statement.”

Jill collapsed to the ground, sobbing. “Please God, no. This can’t be happening! Ryan! Oh God, Ryan!”

Mary Torrance had no idea how she came to fall asleep that night.

She nearly had it all. Having won Coronation, she was waiting in her bedroom for Sergio to arrive.

And then it all went to hell.

First she fell asleep, and had the most hideous nightmare imaginable. In the nightmare she looked in the mirror and saw an ancient woman with ragged skin that hung loosely from her bones, white hair that barely covered her balding scalp, and a mouth full of rotten teeth. When she woke up, she rushed to the bathroom to make sure she was indeed still youthful and pretty. It took her a second to realize she wasn’t supposed to be in her room anymore.

She wasn’t supposed to be human anymore.

Her first thought was that Sergio had come to her window and changed his mind because she was asleep. It was the most terrifying moment of her life. Had she fouled it up somehow? After all that work, all that angst, had she made a mistake that ruined everything?

Slowly, the bigger picture began to come together, and by the end of that day, Mary realized she had been a victim of a conspiracy against the clan. Enemies of the clan had broken into her house and put her to sleep. That was step one in their attack. Step two happened at the Purgatory House, where, somehow, Sergio ended up dead on the floor.

The early rumors that Nicky Bloom had killed Sergio were quickly dismissed.
She’s just an accomplice,
people said.
She’s working with Renata. Renata is the true enemy.

Or is she?

As the week went on, and even more strange news began to surface, people began to debate Renata’s role in all this. Was she really an enemy? Or was she the new queen? Perhaps all the chaos was some sort of uprising, a revolt from within the clan with Renata and her allies working to overthrow Daciana.

The new thinking was that humans needed to sit tight, wait for things to calm down, and respect whoever was queen of the clan when it was over. So that’s what Mary and her family did. They stayed in their house, they spoke with others in town via phone and email, and they took in day after day of increasingly sensational news.

Like the news that Daciana was dead.

Or that every vampire in the clan had gone broke.

Midway through the week, word started to spread that someone had broken into the breeding grounds in Florida where the immortals grew their slaves, and freed all of them.

Then people started whispering about infighting in the clan, saying the immortals in America were splitting off into warring factions that were rapidly killing each other off. Those rumors led to speculation about who was going to come out on top when all was said and done, and the consensus in town was that it was only a matter of time before Renata finally showed her face and assumed her mantle as queen.

With that rumor taking hold, people’s attitudes towards the whole conspiracy began to change. Suddenly, the human accomplices who had been persona non grata might not actually be so bad after all. Someone like Annika Fleming was a wanted criminal when Daciana was in charge, but what about when this revolution was over? Was Annika going to be welcomed back as a hero by the new regime?

And what about the three mystery students, whose role in all of this wasn’t clear? Like Nicky Bloom, who disappeared on prom night, but almost certainly played some part in Sergio’s death. Or Jill Wentworth—people remembered that Daciana was looking for Jill on prom night and couldn’t find her. Now it seemed like Jill’s whole family was missing.

Or Ryan Jenson, who died in a fiery car crash, a crash that, depending on who you believed, might have involved Daciana as well.

Ryan’s case was the most peculiar. On prom night, students watched Daciana drive away from the school in a rush, and Ryan drive away seconds later. What was he doing? Was he going after her? Why?

How were they supposed to handle his death?

In the past, whenever someone died running afoul of the immortals, the protocol was clear: small family ceremony or no funeral at all, unmarked grave, forget that person ever existed.

Was that what they were supposed to do for Ryan? Nobody seemed to know.

Until the funeral announcement appeared.

Ceremony to Honor the Heroic Life of Ryan Jenson
. That was the opening line of a full page announcement in the paper. The ceremony would be held at St. Luke’s Cathedral downtown, and anyone who wished to attend was welcome.

To Mary, and to many others in DC, Ryan’s funeral announcement was a clear message from Renata, or whoever was in charge, that the fighting was over and it was time for a gathering. When people learned that Ryan’s parents had nothing to do with the announcement, or the funeral planning, that sealed it. The clan, the new clan, was calling the power players in DC to come together and mourn one of their fallen heroes. It had to be! Why else would they put the word ‘heroic’ in the announcement?

It was strange that they had chosen to do it during daylight hours, though.

On the day of the funeral, Mary put on a black outfit suitable for mourning and made her way to St. Luke’s. Her parents came with her, as did her grandmother. They stepped inside to find the cathedral packed wall to wall.
Thorndike students and alumni. Power players from Capitol Hill. Extended families of DC’s ruling class. Mary was so relieved to see everyone coming together. She was hopeful that this funeral meant the chaos was over and life was about to return to normal.

And maybe, just maybe, the new leader of the clan would choose to finish the Coronation ceremony that had been so rudely interrupted.

They received programs at the door.
Ceremony to Honor the Life of Ryan Jenson
they said at the top. Underneath the header was a poem.

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

“Emily Dickinson,” said Mary’s grandmother. “Definitely a new regime atop the clan.”

“Why do you say that?” Mary asked.

“Renata was my classmate at Thorndike. She loved Emily Dickinson.”

The organist began to play
Amazing Grace
, the back doors to the cathedral opened, and six pallbearers carried the coffin inside. The first three pallbearers were women who had black veils over their faces. The final three were men. One of the men was enormous and looked like he could carry the coffin by himself if he wanted to. Mary felt like she had seen him before. Such a big guy—where had she seen him before?

And then it hit her.
Renata’s house. That guy was one of Renata’s slaves. Any doubts she had left about the meaning of this ceremony faded. Renata had to be behind all this. Her slave was one of the pallbearers!

The pallbearers led the coffin to the front of the cathedral. Watching them move, Mary realized there was no one on the altar, and no one in the procession other than the pallbearers.

Wasn’t there supposed to be a priest or something?

When the coffin reached the altar, five of the pallbearers took a seat in the front row. The sixth, one of the men, walked up to the lectern.

“We are here today to honor a young man whose life was taken too soon, but was nonetheless well lived,” the man said.

Mary looked up to the front row, where Ryan’s parents sat. Ryan’s father had his arm around his wife, who was sobbing. Looking at them, Mary thought about parents who outlive their children. Then she thought about prom, and the
near miss for Nicky’s parents, whose daughter was supposed to become Mary’s first victim.

She didn’t like thinking about that, so she stopped.

The man at the lectern spoke about Ryan’s strength, his character, and his courage. Then he said, “At this time, we’d like to invite anyone who has something they wish to say about Ryan to come up here and say it. You can have as much time as you need. Ryan died a hero. Today we will give him a hero’s sendoff.”

As the man spoke, Mary felt like she had seen him somewhere before. It was that feeling of distant familiarity—just like she felt when she saw Renata’s slave. Who was that guy?

From the front row, a young woman stood up and approached the lectern.

“My name is Cassandra Jenson,” she said. “I’m Ryan’s cousin.”

Cassandra spoke lovingly about a great kid who had been considerate of others from a very young age. Her voice was shaky as she spoke, and when she tried to tell a story about some family gathering from her past, she lost control of her emotions.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t go on.”

She left the altar and another of Ryan’s family members, his aunt, came up. She spoke about Ryan’s ability to light up a room, and the joy he brought to his family from the day he was born. Then another aunt, who told about a time that little Ryan and his cousins broke a neighbor’s window with a pellet gun, and Ryan insisted that they fess up.

It was moving to watch and listen, and soon Mary, and many others in the cathedral, were crying. By the time Ryan’s dad went up to the lectern and spoke about how proud he was of his son, Mary was sobbing.

After Ryan’s father was done speaking, the man who had been hosting the ceremony returned to the lectern.

“We’ve heard from many in Ryan’s family. Would any of his friends care to speak?”

As his voice echoed in the cathedral, Mary realized where she had seen the man before. It was at a cocktail party in September, right before the Homecoming Masquerade. Mary’s father had cornered the man and was quizzing him because he was the new guy in town.

He was Nicky Bloom’s father.

Why was Nicky’s father at the lectern for Ryan’s funeral? Why wasn’t there a priest? Who organized this ceremony?

“Any of his classmates? Would you care to speak about Ryan Jenson?” the man repeated.

There was silence in the cathedral, then one of the pallbearers raised her veil and said, “I would like to speak.”

Whispers passed through the crowd as the girl approached the podium. The audience recognized her.

“For those of you who don’t know me,” the girl said into the microphone, “my name is Jill Wentworth. Ryan and I were very close for a long time.”

Jill paused for a second, clearly striving to maintain her composure. Mary couldn’t imagine what it was like for her. How long had Jill and Ryan been dating? Since freshman year, wasn’t it?

“I’m so pleased that Ryan’s family had a chance to speak the truth about him, and what he meant to them,” Jill said. “Too often in this town, people die and their loved ones never get a proper chance to say goodbye. I’m here today to say goodbye to Ryan too, and to speak the truth about him.

“Many of you came today because you thought the clan, whatever is left of it, wants you to be here. You looked at the advertisement in the paper, listened to the rumors going all over town, and did what you thought the vampires wanted you to do.”

There was a murmur of disapproval in the audience at Jill’s use of the word ‘vampire’ instead of ‘immortal.’

“It’s time for all of you to quit seeking their approval,” Jill said. “
I bought the ad in the newspaper. My friends and I organized this ceremony. We started the rumors that made you think it was acceptable to come here and honor Ryan, even though he died under mysterious circumstances.”

More shuffling and murmuring passed through the audience.

“The night Ryan died,” Jill began, then paused for just a second, breathing through the emotions that were clearly welling up inside her, “he crashed into Daciana’s car. He did it because she was coming to kill me, and he knew if he could slow her down, I’d have a chance to live.”