Tap & Gown (10 page)

Maybe that would do it.

Arielle raised her eyebrows.

Yep, that did it.

“So,” she said again, “do you think I should join Quill & Ink?”

I sighed. Arielle would be a decent choice. She was smart, and fun, and more witty than I’d given her credit for during the week she’d been following me around like a puppy. But if I was really doing right by Rose & Grave, the best choice was Kalani. Kalani was true Digger material. She was the superstar; the student with the best potential for future success and stardom. She would be a feather in the Rose & Grave cap. And it wouldn’t be fair to lead Arielle on. Not when she had other opportunities. “Yes,” I said. “I think you should.”

1*No, no, it really couldn’t happen. The confessor realizes this now.

I was taking notes on the couch in our common room that evening when the phone rang. Lydia was over at Josh’s for the night, Jamie wouldn’t be out of his study session for at least an hour. Perhaps it was my mother trying to finalize commencement plans.

I clicked the
Talk
button. “Hello?”

“Amy?” said a voice I knew too well. “It’s Darren.”

My throat went dry and my hand grew so clammy the phone almost slipped from its grip.

“Darren?” I whispered. “How did you get this number?”

“My dad got it from the caretaker at the tomb,” he said. I breathed a bit easier. Of course. “He said I have to call you and … apologize.”

Page 45

Oh. Apologize for drugging me, kidnapping me, almost drowning me. How does a fourteen-year-old kid even begin to prepare a speech for something like that? “Where are you?”

“Uh …” He hesitated. “I’m not supposed to tell you the name. It’s against the rules.”

A rehab facility, probably. Troubled teens, delinquents. A place parents could send their children before the law took over. At least Gehry was adhering to that part of the promise.

“My stitches are supposed to be coming out tomorrow,” he said. “They had to shave off a lot of my hair.”

I glanced down at my wrist, to where the scabs had mostly peeled away, leaving shiny new pink skin. I wondered if it would scar. Darren’s injuries definitely would. He’d cut his head open on the boat when it had tipped over. He’d passed out in the water and, like me, had almost drowned.

Well, either those were the stitches he was talking about or the first thing they had done to him was a good old-fashioned prefrontal lobotomy.

I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. Did Kurt Gehry really think that his son wanted to chat with his victim? That I wanted to chat with my kidnapper?

“And Dad said—I wanted to … thank you,” he said, the words sounding oddly unnatural from his mouth. “For letting me come here instead of jail.”

“Okay,” I answered, because nothing else seemed to fit. Yes, I’d refused to press charges. I wouldn’t call it largesse. I lay down on the couch and curled my knees up to my chest. Where was Lydia when I needed her? Where was Jamie?

“But it kind of sucks,” he went on. “It’s all these girls with, like, anorexia and stuff.”

I doubted they had rehab centers reserved solely for budding sociopaths. I “hmmmmed” into the receiver to keep myself from speaking those words out loud. Though the way I remembered it, Darren Gehry had a good sense of humor. When he wasn’t trying to kill me, that was.

“I told him you wouldn’t want to talk to me,” Darren said. “That you’d be too afraid.”

There was a soupçon of pride in his tone. Yes, he’d terrified me. He’d set out to do so, and he’d succeeded. He was doing it now, even from a distance, even imprisoned. I sat up.

“I’m not scared,” I said. “I’m angry. I don’t like you. I have nothing to say to you. And your repeated declarations that the only reason you’re on the phone with me right now is because your father is forcing you isn’t really helping the conversation.” Darren couldn’t hurt me.

On the other end of the line, the teenager was silent. Was he sad? Furious? It would probably be too much to hope that my admonishment had actually made him rethink his attitude. Heck, it had probably shocked the hell out of him that I could stand up for myself. After all, I’d been plenty pliant when I’d been …

Begging for my life
.

“Darren?” I said into the phone.

Page 46

But I heard only a click, then a dial tone.

“I can’t believe he actually called you,” said Angel. We were in the tomb, researching initiations of old to get ideas for the upcoming festivities.

“According to him, his father was making him do it,” I replied. It was amazing how styles had changed to suit the times. Rites of the seventies included mind-altering substances to really get the initiates in the magical mood. Notes from the eighties were awash in references to cocaine,1*and the nineties-era clubs had printed all their invitations on recycled paper.

My own initiation into the Order of Rose & Grave had a theme of women and power, to fit with the momentous occasion of tapping women for the very first time. The skits had all been about Cleopatra or the Salem Witch Trials. I’d have to ask Poe about some of the messages behind those skits, as things had not ended well for either Cleopatra or the goodwives of Salem.

He probably had picked those out himself.

“You should have hung up on him immediately,” argued Lucky, pulling down another stack of Black Books.

“I don’t know,” said Lil’ Demon, flipping through a scrapbook of early 21st century initiation photos.

“Maybe it’s part of his therapy. You know, apologize to those whom you have wronged.”

“This isn’t AA,” said Angel. “And it’s clearly too soon. A short stint at Delinquents-R-Us and he’s suddenly no longer a psycho?”

Lil’ Demon shrugged. “It depends on the rehab place. In some, you walk the walk and talk the talk and they pronounce you cured and give you massages and pedicures for a week. In others, it’s major lockdown.”

“If I know Gehry,” said Angel, “it’s a matter of getting Darren ‘cured’ as quickly as possible. That’s probably why he called you.”

“Yeah, well, Darren’s not cured,” I said. “I was completely unprepared for his call, and he could tell.

Relished it, in fact.” I shuddered. If what you liked was scaring people, controlling people—did that ever go away? Even if you got into the major-lockdown-style rehab facility?

And if so, did it matter whether I pressed charges or not? Even if he did get into legal trouble for kidnapping me, his juvenile records would be sealed when he turned eighteen. Like that girl who’d murdered her mother, then ended up at Harvard. Of course, that was assuming the Gehrys could prevent the story from leaking to the press. The media had been focusing a lot of attention on the ex-Chief of Staff after it had been revealed that the hard-line conservative had employed a household staff composed of mostly illegal immigrants and the whole family had fled Washington, D.C., in disgrace. The likelihood that our case would provoke a media circus had been one of the factors that convinced me to keep the whole matter under wraps. Darren deserved punishment. He didn’t deserve tabloid covers.

“What did Poe say?” Lil’ Demon asked.

I focused my attention on the book in my hands. “I didn’t tell him.”

Page 47

I caught Angel and Lil’ Demon exchanging a look.

“What? I didn’t tell him! Sue me. What would he do about it?”

“Fix it,” said Lucky. “That’s what he does. I mean, I’m not crazy about your boyfriend, Bugaboo, but I can admit that he knows how to get stuff done.”

“Like what?” I said. “He calls Darren at his undisclosed location?”

“Or he calls Gehry and tells him to get his son to leave you the hell alone,” said Angel.

“That’s exactly what I need,” I said. “Poe’s protection from the big, bad fourteen-year-old.” Poe’s pity.

Poe’s opinion that I was pathetic. Forget it. If I’d managed fine when I was drugged and tied up on a deserted island, I could manage a stupid phone call. This wasn’t
Scream
.

“On the subject of wormy patriarch’s spawn we’d rather not spend time with,” said Lucky, “I’ve got some bad news about Topher Cox.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. Lucky had been in charge of background checks on all our potential taps.

“Turns out, he’s the grandson of the illustrious Achilles of D125,” Lucky went on. “Lionel Drake, importer/exporter. Homes in Singapore, Paris, and Martha’s Vineyard.”

“Crap,” I said.

“Are we obligated to tap legacies, though?” asked Lil’ Demon.

“If we think it could help our standing with the patriarchs,” said Angel. “I’m not an idiot. I know one of the reasons I was picked last year is because D176 thought it would smooth things over with my dad if one of those horrible girl taps was, in fact, his own daughter.” She pursed her lips. “How little they understood my father.”

True. If anything, their choice of Angel, who had always been a disappointment to her father, had only ignited Mr. Cuthbert’s belief that women did not belong in the society.

“But I’ve never heard of this guy,” I said. “He’s not on the board, the way Angel’s dad is. Maybe he couldn’t care less if his grandson gets tapped.”

“Good point,” said Angel. “Usually the concerned patriarchs are pretty vocal about which direction they would like the nepotism to swing. They all know I’m a ‘legacy’ tap, and I’ve received no less than four e-mails from patriarchs wondering if their rugrats are on my short list. Most include resumes. One included a video.”

Lucky just sat there, arms crossed, waiting for us to finish.

I groaned and looked at her. “Don’t tell me.”

“One month ago, Lionel Drake donated ten thousand dollars to the TTA.”

Page 48

Later, Lucky found me up to my elbows in Black Books near the back of the Grand Library.

“Everything okay, Bugaboo?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling down another stack. “Fine.”

“You don’t
have
to tap him,” she said. “There’s no law.”

“Right, because we can afford to lose any more support from patriarchs.” I sat back on my heels and sneezed. “Doesn’t Hale ever dust back here?”

I’d really been getting excited about the idea of Kalani. She was everything Rose & Grave could possibly want—smart, accomplished, ambitious, focused, driven. She’d more than correct the temporary sidestep on the path toward world domination they’d experienced when Malcolm had tapped me. I understood that Kalani outclassed me completely on paper, but she worked hard, deserved it, and was really sweet, to boot. I wanted her to be in our society, on our team. I wanted to be her big sib. Maybe the support of the Rose & Grave network would help her along her path to superstardom. Maybe, if she was a Digger, she wouldn’t forget the little guys like me when she actually became a huge success.