The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (49 page)

“She is naming the game in the
first line of this clue. The Rose Ransom itself is an expression of mortal
frailty.”

Gordon let a moment pass before
he spoke again. It was an easy silence, and it allowed Jill to step back and
once again look over the entirety of her mind.

“The second line says, ‘Death
and new life made manifest,’” Gordon said.

“It is like a logic puzzle,”
said Jill. “The poem is an exercise in reduction. The first line names the game
we’re playing. The second line names the performance that kicks off the game.”

“Death and new life made
manifest,” Gordon repeated.

“Renata’s Rose Ransom play is a
performance of death and new life,” said Jill. “The princess dies and is reborn
as an immortal. It is death and new life made manifest.”

Another moment of silence, then
Gordon said, “In the throes of agony eternal.”

“Within and without the square,”
Jill finished.

She saw it in her mind, a memory
from these past months that wasn’t any part of Bernadette’s fiction.

“I’ve been there,” Jill
whispered. “I’ve been there!”

She opened her eyes. “Bring
everyone upstairs.”

“You’ve come out,” Gordon said.
“Is our session over?”

“Yes,” said Jill. “I know the
answer to the final clue. If we hustle, we still might be able to save Ryan and
Nicky.”

Looking through her mother’s
eyes, Nicky saw death approaching.

Celeste lay on the ground in the
courtyard, confident that her daughter had gotten away. Her son and the other
ferals had driven Falkon into the woods long enough to give her daughter and
her husband cover.

She had ruined years of research
on Falkon’s computers.

She had shared her thoughts with
her son, and they were both of one mind that tonight, he would keep Falkon
occupied as long as possible, knowing full well that before the night was out,
Falkon would kill him.

Her body beaten and gashed after
getting caught in a melee of feral vampires, Celeste would die soon. She would
die here on the mountainside, knowing there was nothing left for her to do.

Death came slowly. There was no
instant where the lights went out, but rather, a long, slow, fade into
darkness. She was well on her way when Falkon came back and picked her up. A
few more minutes and she would have made it.

“Oh Celeste. This was not how I
wanted it to be,” Falkon told her. “I will bring you back. I will finish the
work you began so we can be together again.”

Unlike the other times when
Falkon knocked her out, this nightmare wasn’t on endless loop. This nightmare
played out slowly, with Nicky spending ages in some limbo between life and
death.

The dream ended with her glass
door sliding open. Falkon was standing on the other side.

“Good morning, Nicky,” he said.
“It’s time to go. I’m sending you and Ryan to Washington.”

“You loved her, didn’t you?”
Nicky said. “That’s why you were keeping her alive. When you finished your
project, you intended to make my mother into an immortal.”

Falkon sighed. “Come along,
Nicky,” he said. “I’m not here to answer questions. I’m here to put you on a
plane.”

Nicky followed Falkon out of the
prison. They walked out the front door and through the courtyard a final time.
As they passed the sculpture, he said, “You are partly right. I did wish to
bring your mother back. But not because I loved her. At least, I didn’t love
her in the way you are thinking. I never wanted to bond with Celeste. I haven’t
felt the urge to bond in two hundred years and your mother was no different.
But I did enjoy her company. And I thought she would come to appreciate what I
did for her eventually. Eternity is such a long time—a few miserable years here
and there are easily forgotten.”

He led her to a dirt lot at the
low end of the yard. A black van was parked there. The back door was open. Ryan
was sitting in the back, bound and gagged.

“Oh come on!” Nicky said. “You
can’t send us off like this! Let us die with dignity, Falkon.”

Falkon stood still for a moment
with a smirk on his face.

“Put your hands out,” he said.

“Please, Ryan is innocent, and
he’s been through so much already. Can’t you at least take the gag off?”

“I asked you to put out your
hands,” said Falkon. “I am already angry at you Nicky Bloom. Don’t make me take
out that anger on your friend.”

Nicky grunted in frustration,
and put out her hands. Falkon thew a pair of handcuffs on them. He pushed her
into the van and cuffed her ankles together as well.

“I cannot accompany you on the
trip to Washington,” Falkon said. “Your would-be hero is still roaming about
the countryside somewhere.”

“Sergio?” Nicky said.

“I can sense his presence,” said
Falkon. “Should you two happen to have some sort of long distance mind meld,
tell him I’m coming for him.”

Falkon used a chain to attach
Nicky’s handcuffs to the side of the van. Now she was just as restrained as
Ryan, minus the gag.

“Falkon, if my mother ever meant
anything to you,” Nicky said, “please, take off his gag. Let us talk to each
other before you kill us.”

Falkon stood still for a moment,
then he ripped the gag off Ryan’s face.

“Nicky!” Ryan said. “What’s
happening?”

“This boy’s been asleep for a
long time,” Falkon said. “Perhaps you should catch him up on all that’s
transpired.”

Falkon closed the doors of the
van and locked them.

“Ryan, there’s nothing I can say
or do to make this better,” said Nicky. “You don’t deserve this. I’m so sorry.”

Ryan was staring at her with a
puzzled look on his face.

“What?” said Nicky. “Why are you
looking at me like that?”

“I’ve been asleep for so long,”
Ryan said. “And I had the most vivid dreams you can imagine.”

“Good dreams, I hope,” Nicky
said.

“They were amazing dreams,” said
Ryan. “I didn’t ever want to wake up.”

“Tell me about one,” said Nicky.

“I can tell you about all of
them,” said Ryan. “They were all about the same thing.”

“What thing was that?”

“You. I dreamed about you and me
the whole time I was asleep. We spent entire lifetimes together. It was
incredible.”

Two things surprised Renata
about the opening hour of her year-end party.

The first surprise was that she
was the only immortal in attendance. An event such as this typically brought
out at least a few schmoozers from the clan, but tonight, not a one of them
came. She was particularly surprised that Bernadette was absent, as she had
spoken with her about the party just a few days ago and it seemed like she was
going to come.

The second surprise was how
cheery and sociable she felt. Over the years, these gatherings had come to bore
her, and she approached them with a just-get-through-it mentality. But not
tonight. Tonight she knew she was going to enjoy herself.

Perhaps it was her attire,
chosen to signify new beginnings in her mind, that put her in such a good mood.
Renata wore a black dress tonight. It was an unusual color for her—typically
she allowed the Coronation girls to have black all to themselves—but tonight,
in the spirit of new beginnings, she intended to buck tradition, and the dress
was a good start.

The silver pendant also helped.
Nicky Bloom had set the research project back a few years with her computing
stunt, but against all odds, Renata had found the pendant, and with the data
stored on that pendant, she and Falkon would jumpstart a new project. Already
she was excited about starting anew and getting everything right this time.

New beginnings
– that’s
what the pendant meant. As such, it belonged on her person tonight, and she
wore it as the only accessory to her black dress.

Knowing full well that she
looked amazing, Renata pushed her way into the party, mingling with the
students, laughing at their jokes, allowing them to see her and gawk at her
beauty. She joined a group of students in laughter as Sam Featherstone told an
amusing story about a mattress flying out the back of a moving car. She engaged
in small talk with Samantha Kwan and Karmela Sweet, who seemed in particularly
fine spirits tonight. She listened to the waves of gossip flowing about the
party, and smiled at how quaint it all seemed.

Most of the chatter on this
night was about the Ransom, of course. No one had solved the third clue, or was
even close. As the night wore on, it didn’t go without notice that Jill
Wentworth, who had solved the first two clues all on her own, wasn’t in
attendance. Everyone took this as a bad omen for Nicky and Ryan.

And bad omens for Nicky and Ryan
led to plenty more gossip. These cute little teenagers were so convinced they
had it all figured out.
Nicky is finished
, they said.
This is Kim’s
contest to lose
, they said.
It always has been
, they proclaimed,
and
I’ve always supported her
.

Listening to the prattle, Renata
found herself rolling the silver pendant around in her fingertips.
You
sweet, innocent children
, she thought.
You have no idea what the future
holds for you. You’re so comfortable, so certain that money and power are yours
to have because your families are in tight with the Samarin clan.

You don’t know that the
Samarin clan’s days are numbered
.

Renata looked around for one of
her servants. Naturally, Frankie, who towered over this party, was the first
one she saw. She called him close.

“Yes, Master,” he said.

“This party is too tranquil,”
she said. “We are having a celebration tonight.”

“What shall I do to make things
better?” Frankie said.

“Have the bartenders put away
their wine and switch to champagne,” said Renata. “And get us some different
music.”

“What kind of music would you
like?”

“I don’t know—the sort of
monstrous noise the kids listen to these days. Ask one of the students to help
you. They all have music on their phones.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Renata smiled as she watched
Frankie rush away. These kids weren’t going to know what to do with themselves
when they realized that, just this once, Renata was going to let them party in
her house.

*****

A mile away from Renata’s
mansion, Jill and Alvin sat on the open tailgate of a pickup truck. Jill was
gazing down the hill through night vision binoculars, watching her classmates
arrive at the house.

“Here comes Lonnie,” she said.
“When he goes inside, that will be ninety-six. The whole class is there, minus
Nicky, Ryan, Annika, and me.”

“Do you think they miss you?”
Alvin asked.

“I don’t know that they miss me,
but I’m sure they’re talking about me.”

“I missed you, Jill. I thought
you were gone.”

She pulled the binoculars down
and looked at Alvin. An overweight twenty-something with big glasses and bad
acne, Alvin was the sort who got into computers because it was hard for him to
function in the real world. At times, his relationship with Jill had been
contentious, as it became more and more clear that she had usurped his title of
Best Hacker in the Network.

But somewhere along the way they
became friends.

“You know,” she said. “That
tracking app you wrote was phenomenal. I used it to follow Renata and Annika at
the same time.”

“You did?”

“It saved Annika’s life.
Shannon’s too.”

“Wow. I’m glad you found such a
good use for it. I figured it became worthless as soon as we learned it was
Nicky, rather than Karmela, we were looking for.”

“Nicky and Ryan,” Jill
corrected.

“Yes, of course.”

Jill raised the binoculars
again, this time aiming them at the back gate to Renata’s mansion. She found
what she was looking for—a figure in a black trench coat moving around the back
of the property towards the eastern gate.

“Patrick is in position,” Jill
said. She scanned the forest leading up to the gate. It was empty. “Tell him
he’s clear to go in.”

Alvin gave the okay over the
radio, and Patrick moved to the gate. Using the keys that had been sitting in
Jill’s desk drawer since the kickoff party, keys she had once used to lock the
door of Renata’s crypt behind her, Patrick opened the gate and went inside.
Once onto the property, he ditched his trench coat. Underneath, he was wearing
the white coat and black pants that marked him as one of Renata’s slaves.

“He’s in,” said Jill.

*****

The champagne was flowing, the
music was rocking, the students were dancing—it was a perfect end to the
perfect Rose Ransom. For more than sixty years, since the very advent of rock
and roll, Renata had never allowed contemporary music or dance in her presence.
But tonight, with no other immortals here to share in her joyous mood, she was
pleased to let the kids have their fun.

And boy, did they ever have fun.
Dancing and hooting and hollering—there were drinking contests, and a strange
ritual Renata had never seen before called ‘body shots.’ There was singing and
boisterousness and explosive sexual energy all around her. These students were
having the time of their lives.

The mood in the house was
completely out of character with the meaning of tonight’s gathering. At
midnight, Renata would bring the class to Nicky and Ryan’s hiding space,
perform a little ceremony about sending them to the Great Beyond, and then
allow the students to watch as she killed them both.

They all knew this was coming,
yet none of them seemed bothered by it. Such was the power of the spell they
were under. These students had witnessed her Rose Ransom performance. They
belonged to Renata now. It didn’t matter that half of them had tied their fates
to Nicky Bloom or that some might be friends with Ryan Jenson. Renata had asked
these students to have fun. So they did.