The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (27 page)

As she sat in the chair, once
again pretending to be a student, she realized she still had a set of keys that
opened the door to Renata’s crypt in her hand.

Renata took the stage and looked
out over the audience. A hundred eager faces, students who had no clue of the
significance of this moment. For decades she had been performing the Rose Ransom.
Thousands upon thousands of students sat in the audience over the years and
participated in the spectacle, the show changing them without their even
knowing it.

Her dress on this night was a
dusty rose color, made of silk and bejeweled with hundreds of small diamonds.
Her hair was pulled back into a Roman ponytail that draped over her shoulders
with tassels of golden silk. Her makeup was stark and theatrical. Sharp eye
shadow, dark highlights on her cheeks, bright red lipstick.

She finished the look with a
tiara that was so loaded with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires it was heavy on
her head.

She could already imagine how
the dress would look in her museum. For tonight’s performance, the knife was
huge. This dress wouldn’t just be stained with blood, it would be soaked. It
would be the most extravagant piece in her gallery. A perfect memento from the
greatest of all Rose Ransom performances.

She marched to the center of the
stage and began the show.

“There once was a king who was
old, lazy, and fat,” she said. She scanned the audience as she spoke the words,
catching many of them in the eye, locking into their minds and willing them to
participate in the show.

“When his daughter, the princess,
came of age,” she continued, “the king arranged for her to marry a prince from
another kingdom, thus strengthening the power of both houses. But the princess
had no love for this man, for he was foul and slothful.”

She had them now. Three
sentences were all she needed to catch most of them. Now she and audience were
one, and could get lost in the tale together.

 “The princess begged the king
to free her from the arranged marriage, but he refused,” Renata said, allowing
her hands to move freely, accentuating her words. It was like a dance. She led;
the audience followed. Art at its most exquisite.

“Distraught, the princess shut
herself in her bedroom, vowing to never come out. And there she stayed, until
the night before her wedding, when the king knocked at her door and told her to
open it or he would break it down.”

*****

At the end of the party,
Renata steps onstage and tells the students the story of the Rose Ransom.

Jill had written those words in
Nicky’s briefing book without any idea of their significance. To Jill, the Rose
Ransom performance was just another ritual in the Coronation contest, no
different than Brawl in the Fall or the Date Auction. A bit of theatricality
from creatures with a natural flair for the dramatic.

Now, sitting at the table
between Annika and Mattie, watching Renata tell her story, Jill understood that
this was much more than a fun bit of theater. Renata had captured the whole
room in a hypnotic spell. She wasn’t just telling a tale, she was making them
believe it as truth.

It was only because Jill had a
stronger bit of truth inside of her, a law she had written there herself, that
she was able to step back from the moment and see what was going on.

I choose to do what’s right.

Those words had inoculated her
against the charms of Bernadette. Now they were keeping her safe from Renata’s
seductive performance.

Jill saw a hundred students who
were absolutely enraptured. Their eyes were locked on Renata’s movements, their
ears attuned to her every word.

Of course it was like this. Jill
couldn’t believe she’d never realized it before. Three years of research for
the Network, starting her freshman year, when she cozied up to people from the
senior class and asked them for details about the Coronation rituals…during
that research, she found that every senior described the Rose Ransom as the
most amazing play they’d ever seen.

Renata goes onstage and tells
this incredible story.

It’s such a beautiful play.

I cried at the end.

Jill had listened to the upper
classmen come back from the Rose Ransom and assumed it was indeed a marvelous
performance. She’d never considered the possibility that it was something more,
that Renata was hypnotizing the audience.

For decades, the Network tried
to get a mole into Washington’s circles of power but never succeeded. Now Jill
knew why.

The sheer volume of the hypnosis
was astounding. A hundred students watched this play every year. A hundred high
school seniors from the wealthiest families in the world, all of them destined
for lives of privilege and power. Graduates of Thorndike Academy populated the
hubs of power all over the earth, and all of them had been hypnotized with the
story Renata was telling tonight.

At her own table, Jill saw four
bodies sitting perfectly still. Jake and Jenny, who earlier in the night
couldn’t keep their hands off each other, now sat at attention in their own
chairs. Mattie, who had a reputation for being so restless she could barely
make it through the school day, was frozen like a statue, her mouth agape at
the stage in front of her. Annika, who had downed so many glasses of wine
tonight she could barely keep her eyes open before the play started, now seemed
fully alert and attentive. Her back and neck were straight. Her hands were
folded in her lap. Her eyes were wide open.

And words from Renata’s phone
conversation, words Jill had overheard while hiding in the closet, suddenly made
a lot more sense.

I have ways of getting all
the seniors to play nice for me.

“Annika,” Jill whispered.

Nothing. No movement from Annika
or anyone else.

“Annika, I need to tell you
something.”

It was like Jill was the only
one in the room.

“It’s about Shannon.”

Annika’s shoulders twitched.

“You and Shannon Evans,” Jill
said, aware she was being reckless but charging ahead anyway. “Unless you turn
your head and look at me, you might never see Shannon again.”

Annika’s body began to shake.

“Look at me, Annika. Forget
what’s happening onstage and look at me so I can tell you about Shannon Evans,
whom you love more than anything in the world.”

Exhaling sharply, and blowing a
wine-flavored wind at Jill’s face in the process, Annika turned away from the
stage. She had a crazed look in her eyes.

“What did you say to me?” she
whispered.

Jill leaned in close, putting
her face right up next to Annika’s.

“Renata is putting this room
under a spell,” Jill said. “If you want to see Shannon again, you’ve got to
resist.”

Onstage, Renata had grabbed a
knife and was yelling out in anguish. It was as if Renata was as lost in the
moment as the students. Jill felt like she could jump up and do a jig and no
one in the room would care, including Renata.

“A spell?” Annika said.

“Yes, and you were under it. You
have to resist. You have secrets you don’t want to tell them.”

Annika’s eyes popped with
newfound alertness.

“Shannon,” she whispered. “I
can’t give her away. What do we do?”

“Close your eyes, and don’t pay
attention to what Renata is saying. Think about Shannon instead.”

*****

Renata was fully in the moment
now, feeling the many minds of the audience connected to hers. She held the
knife in her hands, and what a monstrous knife it was. Never before had she
attempted this scene with a blade this large.

She raised the knife out in
front of her and screamed the most dramatic line of the play.

“If I cannot marry for love, I
will not marry at all!”

Renata stabbed herself hard in
the stomach with the knife, spilling real blood all over her dress and the
floor. Then she fell to the ground and acted out the princess’s death.

All was silent at first, then
cries of anguish exploded from every corner of the room.

No!

No, she can’t die!

She wanted to marry for love!

I will kill this king! He was
a horrible man!

Come back to us, princess!

Renata began to cry, and all the
students whose minds were connected to hers cried with her. A banquet hall full
of sadness, the entire senior class of Thorndike Academy wailing to express
their pain at a young girl’s loss.

Lying on the floor, Renata led
the room in a feeling of the most intense despair imaginable. She allowed the
sadness to continue uninterrupted for a time. It was only a minute or two on
the clock, but to these students, it would feel like a lifetime. When it was
over, these students would believe it was within the power of the immortals to
extinguish a lifetime of sadness.

Renata stood up. The wound in
her gut had healed, but her dress was still covered in blood. The students,
still sobbing, quieted down to hear what she had to say next.

“The king broke through the door
to find his only daughter lying dead. In a panic, he called for the wizard of
the forest. The wizard arrived and the king begged him to bring the princess
back to life. ‘She is held by the great beyond,’ the wizard said. ‘And the
great beyond requires a ransom for her return.’”

“Pay it!” someone shouted from
the crowd.

“Yes, pay any price for the
princess to come back!”

The students broke into a
frenzy.
Bring her back! Bring her back! Bring her back!

Renata turned her head to one
side, inviting the crowd to indulge their own passions. When she turned back to
face them, it was in a sudden movement, with fire in her eyes.

“But the price for her return
was steep,” Renata said.

“Anything!” somebody shouted.
“We will pay anything to have her back!”

“Anything in the world?” Renata
said.

“Anything in the world!” the
crowd yelled back in unison.

“The great beyond asks for the
three reddest roses in the kingdom!” Renata screamed. “Will you find them? Will
you sacrifice them for the safe return of the princess?”

“Yes! Anything!”

“And so the king demanded that
every rose in the kingdom be brought to him,” Renata said. She held her hands
up to the ceiling. Offstage, one of her servants pushed a button, and a
thousand roses fell from the rafters. The audience cheered.

She picked up a rose from the
floor and threw it to the crowd. A pile of students dove on top of each other
trying to get it. She picked up another and threw it. And another. The audience
was practically in a riot now, everyone wanting a rose.

“The king looked at every
flower!” Renata shouted, moving faster now, throwing handfuls of roses into the
audience. The students were fanatic, their hands covered in blood from grasping
at the thorns. “He compared the colors, choosing only the reddest he could find
and discarding the rest.” Renata ran back and forth across the stage, kicking
the flowers out into the crowd. “And then, he stopped.”

The students went silent. There
were three roses left on the stage. Renata picked them up. “The three reddest
roses in the kingdom,” she whispered. “The king gave them to the wizard. The
wizard placed the roses on the princess’s body.”

Renata lay on the floor, putting
the roses on her stomach.

“Great beyond, today I pay your
ransom’” Renata called. “I sacrifice the reddest roses in the kingdom, paying
them to you for the safe return of our princess.”

Renata allowed herself a quick
smile and then took a deep breath. Using the sharpest thorn from one of the
roses, she carved into her abdomen, slowly dragging the thorn as it cut through
her skin.

The pain was exquisite, and the
students felt it with her, shrieking in agony as the thorn sliced through
Renata’s flesh.

When she was done, she threw the
rose away from her. Her skin started to heal immediately.

She waited for the room to grow
silent, then she stood.

“The princess awoke,” she said.
“The reddest roses from the kingdom had brought her back from death. She was
the first immortal.”

People cheered in the audience.
Others screamed. Girls in the front row were sobbing. Boys too. They were
worshipping on the altar of eternal life.

“The king declared it a miracle,
and rewarded the wizard with a sack of gold,” Renata said. “Then, as if his
daughter’s death and new life had no meaning, the king announced that her
wedding to the foul, loathsome prince was on again.”

“No,” the crowd buzzed. “It’s
not right.”

One of Renata’s servants, a ripe
young man named Terence, walked onto the stage. He wore a purple cloak and mint
green tights. As he had been taught to do, Terence took Renata by the hand, and
the two of them walked together to the front of the stage.

“The princess went to the altar
with her husband-to-be,” Renata said. “She allowed the priest to marry them.
But when they were declared man and wife, she did not kiss him. For you see, my
friends, the Rose Ransom is not a one-time payment. Eternal life requires
constant tribute. And since there were no roses left in the kingdom, the
princess took something else.”

Renata bared her fangs and bit
into Terence’s neck, drinking him in until the life force left him. Terence’s
body dropped to the floor in a heap, and the students jumped to their feet and
cheered for his death.

The play was done. Forever more,
these students would respect the immortals who walked among them. They would
remember how badly they wanted the princess to come back to life, and would
forgive her need to refresh her immortality with the blood of others.