“There are some who received tonight’s invitation but were too afraid, or blind, to accept it. You who have come felt drawn—perhaps without knowing why, or how—to join us. The Greeks called this instinct nous. Intuition. Few have it. Your presence here suggests that you do.” I squirmed in my seat. It wasn’t intuition that brought me here; it was the Doubt. My eyes, now fully adjusted to the flickering dim light, quickly scanned the circle, counting the figures seated on the steps. There were fourteen. Envy flickered inside my chest. They were drawn here by instinct while I’d been chided by a figment in my head.
“Now there is another choice to be made,” the serpent said out of the silence. “You have accepted the invitation to know more, and while the full truth must remain obscured for a while longer, we can tell you this: You are being evaluated for membership into a sacred alliance of gifted minds. The next few weeks are a test.”
My heart was beating wildly again, out of excitement now instead of fear. The masks, the torches, the archaic speech. This wasn’t freaking Junior Beta. This was a legit secret society.
The serpent paused again as the figures on the stage rose to their feet. The two humans flanked the reptile while the other animals began to climb the arena’s steps. The figure in the lion mask was directly below me, his painted mesh eyes tilted up toward mine.
“The time has come to choose,” the deep voice went on. The lion stopped on the step just beneath me, its eyes at mine, and held out its gloved hands. There was an oversize playing card in each palm. “If you’d like to continue your candidacy, take the card on the right,” the voice boomed. “And speak of this to no one. You will hear from us again at the appropriate time.” I leaned forward to get a better look. The image was faded but exquisitely rendered, the card a mini painted canvas. The naked woman in the center held a staff in each of her outstretched hands and was hovering above the Earth, encircled by a textured green wreath. Below her were various animal creatures, their upturned faces strikingly similar to the masks I saw onstage. The voice continued. “If, on the other hand, you would prefer not to proceed with the evaluation process, choose the card on the left. No questions will be asked.” I slid my eyes over to the lion’s other hand. There was less to see on this card, just a single figure, a teenaged boy in a feathered plume hat. He looked like some sort of medieval peddler, a knapsack over his shoulder and a thorny white rose in his fist.
Choose today whom you will serve.
For the first time, my stomach didn’t sink when I heard the voice. Instead it lifted a little. Maybe the voice wasn’t the Doubt after all, but intuition, like the serpent said. His words had kindled something within me. I wanted to be whoever these people thought I was.
The arena was completely quiet as the candidates considered their choices. I felt the lion watching me even though I couldn’t see his eyes. “Take your time,” the serpent instructed. But I didn’t need any. I reached for the card on the right.
The lion nodded slightly then quickly withdrew his left hand, the card disappearing into the folds of his robe. With his right hand he took my elbow and turned me around so I was facing away from him, and then he tapped my lips with his fingertips. I opened my mouth and felt the thin strip on my tongue again. “I knew you’d get in,” the lion whispered then. He wasn’t using the distortion app this time, and I recognized his voice immediately. It was Liam.
My awareness returned suddenly, all at once. Liam! The lion was Liam. It felt like a major discovery, but of course he’d given his identity away on purpose. He’d wanted me to know.
I was back in my room, sitting upright in my bed, my boots still on my feet. The hooded robe was gone, and there was a stiff paper card in my right hand. My eyes darted to Hershey’s bed. It was empty. Had she snuck out again or had she been in that arena too?
I looked down at the card in my hands. I could barely make it out in the dark. Soundlessly, I unlaced my boots and crawled back under the covers, pulling my mom’s blanket over me like a tent. If I heard the door unlock, I’d pretend I was asleep.
I held my Gemini up to the card. Unlike the two Liam had offered me earlier, this one wasn’t painted in color. It was a single Z printed in shiny black ink with the number thirty-two beneath it. My graduation year. My heart was pounding as I ran my fingers over the ink. The symbol and number were different, but the design was identical to the one on my mom’s silver pendant.
She was in the society too.
My GoSearch for “secret society at Theden” didn’t produce any results. It seemed impossible, but there wasn’t a single hit with the words anywhere near one another. I tried “ancient alliance Theden” also to no avail. When I removed the reference to Theden, I got millions of hits. Pages dedicated to conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and the Freemasons and Skull and Bones at Yale, unofficial rosters of past members, even fan pages on Forum. But as soon as I narrowed my search, I came up cold. Whatever this “sacred alliance” was, it was completely off the grid. I felt myself smiling at my screen. A real secret society. How cool was that?
I started a text to Beck then quickly erased it. Yes, it was unlikely they could see my texts, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
“Please let me get in,” I whispered in the dark, palming the pendant like a good luck charm. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to will myself to sleep. Too wired to relax, I started running through the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence in my head. My favorite sleep trick. The math nerd version of counting sheep. I’d been doing it for years, anytime I was tired but couldn’t turn my mind off: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1,597 . . . At some point my brain gave up and I fell asleep.
9
I DIDN’T HEAR HERSHEY COME IN, but she was back in her bed when I woke up the next morning. She was still asleep when I got out of the shower, so I went to breakfast alone. Liam was at the waffle station when I walked in. He pretended not to see me, but it was so obvious he did.
“Mornin’,” he said casually as I stepped up beside him and ladled batter into the grooved ceramic plates.
“So many questions.”
“They’ll all be answered,” he replied in a low voice, spreading butter onto his steaming waffle. “If you get in.”
“Last night you said you knew I would. Now you’re saying I might not?”
“I’m saying you have to be evaluated,” he replied. “All the candidates do. And until the council vets you—”
“The council?”
Liam winced. “Forget you heard that. Listen, Rory, I know it’s exciting and confusing and a lot to take in. I was in your shoes a year ago. I know exactly how it feels. But you have to respect the process. And I can’t break my vows.”
“Can you at least tell me how I got chosen? Is it because I’m a Hepta?”