The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) (56 page)

“That’s a comforting thought. Thank you for taking the time to share it with me.”

“It’s my pleasure, Nicky. Now, we have some business to attend to. After you enter the cage, but before you die, I will make a presentation to the other students about the items on your outfit that honor the clan, the school, and the contest. Tell me about them, please.”

Nicky extended her left arm, showing off her bracelet.

“I wore this silver cuff to the Homecoming Masquerade,” she said. “I’m wearing it again tonight to honor the Coronation contest. The bracelet was on my arm when I entered the contest, and will be on my arm again when I exit.”

“Very nice. What else?”

Nicky grabbed the pendant that hung from her neck. “I’m wearing this ruby necklace to honor the clan,” she said. “The ruby dial on the safe was turned to my number when it opened. You chose to associate me with a ruby, so to honor you, and all the immortals in your clan, I wore a ruby pendant.”

“It’s a beautiful pendant,” Daciana said, leaning in close to look at it. “It’s been many years since I’ve seen a ruby that large. May I ask where you got it?”

“Someone gave it to me,” Nicky said. “Someone I care about.”

“It’s exquisite, and will look marvelous on you after you die. Now, tell me what you’re wearing to honor the school.”

Nicky turned her back to Daciana, and lightly touched the back of her hair with her hand.

“I’m holding up my hair tonight with two metal rods formed into a cross. I received only one lantern at the festival, but it was very special to me. These rods were the crossbars of that lantern. Finding that lantern is one of my favorite memories of my time at Thorndike, so to honor the school, I wore the crossbars in my hair.”

“Oh Nicky, you have a flair about you that I rarely get to see. If I got to choose the new immortal from this year’s class, things might have turned out differently for you. Sadly, even I must respect the traditions that guide us here at Thorndike.”

“It’s about the ritual,” Nicky said. “The ritual is everything.”

“Indeed it is.”

Daciana let the words hang for a minute. Her eyes drifted away from Nicky. She was thinking about something, perhaps one of her own rituals, maybe even the ritual that failed.

The ritual that created Sergio.

“Well, it’s been a lovely visit with you,” Daciana said. “Is there anything you want to ask me before I go?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I will leave you alone with your thoughts. Prom is about to begin. When it’s time for you to leave the house and join us at prom, you’ll know. For most girls, it’s a beautiful experience. You will feel complete acceptance of your own death. There will be no fear, no anger, and no sorrow. You’ll take your time walking under the moonlight, and when you enter the cage, you’ll find there’s no place you’d rather be. Goodbye, Nicky Bloom. It’s been a pleasure to know you.”

The delivery truck arrived at Daciana’s mansion late on Saturday afternoon. The driver, a man whose face wasn’t familiar to the servant manning the gate, presented his badge from Safari Freight & Storage and explained he was new at the company.

The bar code on his badge checked out. The delivery was accepted. The servant opened the gate and instructed the driver to take his cargo to the loading dock on the back side of the house.

Two more servants met the truck out back. The driver told them to be careful with the single crate he had for delivery. “See that fragile sticker on the side?” the driver said. “We’re going to put this one down carefully.”

The crate came off the truck and the servants rolled it into the storage room of Daciana’s house. The driver took his truck off the property, waiting until he was out of view to grab his phone and send a text message.

The message was only two words long. Two words that were transformed into a stream of encrypted data that flew through the airwaves, traveling thirty miles to a cell tower in Arlington, then again to Potomac, arriving on Jill Wentworth’s phone where the matching encryption key transformed the digital bits back into letters and words.

Jill’s phone buzzed with the incoming text message as she parked her car on the south side of the Thorndike campus. She pulled to a stop directly behind Ryan’s Lamborghini, then grabbed her phone to read the text.

It was from Alvin.

We’re in.

She typed a response.

I will let you know when I’ve got the phone and you can proceed.

As Jill stepped out of her car, Ryan stepped out of his. The plan required them to arrive in separate vehicles, but to walk into prom together.

“How is she?” Jill asked.

“She seems calm about the whole thing,” Ryan said. “And confident.”

Jill looked down the street, towards the Purgatory House.

“Good,” she said. “Shall we?”

She held out her arm for Ryan, who escorted her to the front door of the gym. They entered together.

A servant greeted them in the lobby and asked them to please check their cell phones, hand bags, and coats.

They each gave the servant a cell phone. An old cell phone. Earlier in the afternoon, they had pondered telling the servant they had no phones to check, but realized that would be suspicious. Quite literally no one in their class went anywhere without a phone.

Fortunately, Jill had a collection of old phones in the parts drawer of her computer desk at home. The phones she and Ryan now presented were from that collection. Their actual, current phones were hidden away in their outfits to be used later.

Purple and gold prom decorations covered the lobby.
Arabian Nights
was the theme this year, and the decorations were meant to evoke a trip to Persia, with carpets hanging on the walls and tapestries from the ceiling.

They mingled in the lobby for a few moments, speaking with their classmates about the decorations, the dinners they had before they came, and the parties they would attend when they left. They migrated from the lobby into the gym, still making small talk with their friends. Jill pretended to listen to the blather that came out of Jenny, Mattie, and Karmela’s mouths, but her focus was on the party all around them. She couldn’t make her move until all her classmates had arrived.

Until every coat, purse, and phone was checked.

She kept a rolling headcount as the night went on, and found it surprisingly easy to keep track of her classmates. After spending an entire semester immersed in a spreadsheet with the names of everyone in her class, she had no trouble discerning who was already here, and who was yet to arrive.

Pauline Wabash and Jacob Haltham were the last students to arrive, entering through the lobby at nine-fifteen. Jill used a lull in her conversation with Karmela to excuse herself. Then she went back to the lobby and out the front door, as if she had forgotten something in her car.

She walked around the north side of the gym, back to where she had parked the black Corolla earlier in the day. As she walked, she retrieved her phone from a pouch sewn into the side of her dress. She typed a text message to her helper who was down the street, about to come around the corner.

Approaching the back door now. Count to twenty, then run interference.

Jill began counting as she walked.
1…2…3…

She was nonchalant as she moved.
Hello guards at Purgatory House
, she thought.
I’m just a girl who stepped outside to use her phone.

9…10…11…

She stayed on the sidewalk, slowing her pace just a little to properly time her arrival.

12
…13…14…

A block down, Zack rounded the corner and entered her line of sight. He wore a black T-shirt that hugged his chest and showed off the beautiful V-shape of his back. Jill couldn’t see the red Corvair, but she could hear the engine. He had left it running where he parked it, just as Jill suggested.

He moved in a deliberate motion towards the Purgatory House, carrying a tire iron in his right hand, and allowing it to drag on the sidewalk. It made a horrible, nails-on-a-chalkboard kind of sound. If any of the guards at the house had been looking at Jill, they weren’t looking at her anymore.

15…16…17…

Of the many cars parked on the street, the one closest to Zack was a shiny black Audi. Art’s car.

What perfect luck,
Jill thought.
If anyone deserves this, it’s Art.

18…19…20
.

Zack lifted the tire iron over his head with both hands like it was a sledgehammer, and with impressive force, he slammed it down into the windshield of Art’s car.

Here we go
, Jill thought.

While Zack screamed like a crazy person, demolishing Art’s car with blow after blow from the tire iron, Jill pulled open the back door of the gym and snuck inside, confident that not a single guard was looking at her as she entered.

A stairwell in front of her, and a door to her right, just like she told Nicky to expect. Jill jiggled the handle on the door. It was locked. No surprise there. She lifted her skirt and removed a small leather pouch that was tied around her thigh. Inside the pouch was a professional locksmith’s set of picks. The locksmith, a sweet little man named Ebin, had given Jill a lesson on their use earlier in the day. One at a time, just as Ebin showed her, Jill pressed the picks into the lock until one of them found its way all the way to the back and the door clicked open.

Jill was in the corridor now, the same one she had seen on the blueprint. She walked
halfway down the corridor, stopping at the first door on her right. She picked the lock and pushed open the door just enough to peek outside.

She saw the black Corolla, waiting there for Nicky to take it away later in the night.

She pulled the door closed and tested it, making sure it was still unlocked. Then she continued down the corridor, finding another door at the end. When she picked the lock on this door, she was careful to be quiet about it. She didn’t know who might be listening on the other side.

She opened the door slowly, peering through the crack to make sure the room was clear. She saw a rack of coats, a shelf of purses, a table covered with phones and car keys, but no people.

The slave working the coat check room was standing guard outside the front door, leaving Jill easy access from the back.

Everything in the room was tagged with a number. The phones were inside individually numbered plastic bags.

Before stepping all the way inside, Jill dialed a number on her phone, a number she had stolen from her father’s records.

One of the phones on the table began to buzz. Jill snatched it, plastic bag and all,
then disappeared back into the corridor. As she moved, she removed the phone from the plastic bag and slipped it into the pouch on her dress. She tossed the plastic bag aside and left it on the floor.

She emerged through the north exit, right in front of the black Corolla. Then she typed a new text on her phone, and sent it to Alvin.

He was sitting in a delivery van that was parked on the edge of Daciana’s neighborhood when he read the message.

Got the phone. Get started.

Alvin, in turn, sent a text to Phillip Fischer, who was hiding inside a wooden shipping crate in the storage room of Daciana’s house.

We’re all set. Come out when you’re ready.

Phillip pulled on a latch built inside the crate, and a panel swung open for him. He emerged in the storage room of Daciana’s mansion. Reaching back into the crate, he grabbed a gas mask and a steel canister. He slipped the gas mask over his head, then took the canister to the center of the room.

Daciana’s air conditioning unit was right where the blueprint said it would be. Phillip removed a side panel from the unit, exposing the motor, the fan, and the vent. He popped the latch on the steel canister and white gas began hissing out. He dropped the canister into the vent and listened to it roll underneath the house. Then he flipped a switch on the motor, manually turning the air conditioner on full blast.

Addonox began pouring out of the air conditioner vents in every room of Daciana’s house.

Nicky watched from behind the window of the Purgatory House as the tall guy with tattoos demolished Art’s car, providing cover for Jill to sneak into the gym. The guards made no effort to stop the guy, but they couldn’t help but look on at the spectacle as he screamed like a banshee while he took swing after swing at the black Audi.

Once Jill was inside the gym, the assault on Art’s Audi ended. The guy ran down the street and drove away in a red Corvair.

A minute later, Jill emerged from the gym through the door on the north side. She had a harried look in her eyes, like she’d just done something dangerous. Whatever it was, Nicky was glad to see Jill get into her silver Mercedes and drive away. Hopefully Ryan wasn’t far behind her.