“Phoebe, you’ve been quiet,” Nick said. He nudged her carefully.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“What’s that?” Thad asked.
“I think Patch is right that we should be careful. All of us. I don’t believe the worst is over.”
Fireworks went off in the sky above Isis Island, and they could hear the ten remaining Conscripts in their class and the fourteen in the class above them whooping and shouting, toasting the new year from the lodge’s balcony. Before yesterday, the Society had succeeded in its goal to create two classes of fourteen each. They had started with fifteen in the fall; then there was the death of Jared Willson, from the class above them, and the death of Alejandro Calleja. In each class, someone had died, thereby binding together all the other members with the horrible truth about their classmate’s death. It had forced them all to trust each other while as recently as four months ago, many had been strangers.
Classes of fourteen were supposed to be stable, immune to corruption. Classes of fifteen were unbalanced and open to insurrection. The Society had historically taken classes like theirs, classes in danger of anarchy, and had instituted this practice of reducing the group to fourteen members.
They called it the Power of Fourteen.
In short, Patch thought, it was an extremely genteel explanation for ritual murder, all under the justification of protecting a way of life.
“What do you mean? What do you mean by ‘the worst isn’t over’?” Nick asked Phoebe.
Before Phoebe even spoke, Patch guessed what she was about to say: The Power of Fourteen was no longer. With Patch having joined the class the previous night, they would be fifteen again.
Chapter Two
It was no surprise to Lauren that St. Patrick’s Cathedral was packed for Alejandro’s memorial service. The Calleja family had even known to arrange extra seating for latecomers. Family members and friends had traveled from South America and Europe, all dressed in their best designer black-hats, veils, furs, enormous brooches-as if, grotesquely, they had been waiting for just the right moment to show off their finery. The church was decked out in white peonies, thousands of which had been imported from Brazil.
Lauren’s mind flashed to her seventeenth birthday party, the black-and-white theme, the kiss she had shared with Alejandro on the dance floor. Now the sea of black dresses and white peonies seemed like a monstrous perversion of the beauty of that night, a night where anything had seemed possible.
She felt bile rise up in her throat, and she swallowed it down.
Lauren looked down at what she was wearing, and she didn’t even recognize the dress. Something black, something she had pulled from her closet in a daze. Was it even formal? Appropriate?
It had only been a few days after their return from the island, a few days after she had learned the news. Not that a few days would be enough to process the shock of Alejandro’s death, but Lauren had pictured herself as stronger than this. Had she even remembered to put on makeup this morning? Look in a mirror? Brush her hair? She couldn’t remember. She touched the right side of her forehead to feel the awful, stinging sensation of a pimple forming, a result of too much stress, too many sleepless nights, and too much caffeine.
She wondered if she had covered up the blemish adequately. Then she realized she didn’t care.
Nick and Phoebe were sitting next to her, and Thad was on the other side. Phoebe held her hand throughout the entire service, but Lauren could barely feel the sensation of her friend’s touch, and the sentiment behind it. It wasn’t Phoebe’s fault. It was that parts of Lauren had gone numb.
After the service, Alejandro’s body would be flown back to Argentina.
There would be no burial to attend.
In that church, amid throngs of people she had never met, was Lauren’s last chance to say good-bye.
It was a Catholic mass, complete with a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Lauren thought the whole thing was overdone, not to mention completely impersonal, given that Alejandro had never shown the least bit of interest in religion or classical music.
But it was for the family. Lauren knew that.
The family that didn’t want to accept that their son had been a drug addict.
Perhaps it wasn’t fair of her to think like this. Yes, Alejandro had a drug problem, but he had been able to manage it-not that this made it okay. He had gotten himself into trouble over the years, but he had never overdosed. Not until the Society caused him to do so. Lauren didn’t know the exact details about it, and she didn’t want to. It was too horrible, the thought of what they might have done to him, feeding him the poisons that his body craved.
Alejandro might have screwed up his life, but he didn’t deserve to die. Not at seventeen years old. Not with people in his life who cared about him.
Not with her in his life. Whatever their problems-his drinking, his inability to take responsibility for his life-she still cared for him. For his sweet smile, his playful sense of adventure. No matter his faults: she missed him.
Their relationship had ended so abruptly when he was dragged out of a nightclub two weeks ago on the Lower East Side by the Guardians, never to be seen again. How could she have let that happen? And now, how was she supposed to deal with all the mixed emotions: guilt and regret about not taking better care of Alejandro; fear and anger at the Society for what they had done to him.
What therapist would ever understand what she was going through?
Lauren raised a fist to her face, rubbing her eyes, and found that she was crying. It was for Alejandro, of course, but it was also for herself.
How could she have gotten herself into such a mess? Part of her wanted to find out the truth about Alejandro and what had really happened, and another part of her wanted to let it drift into the past, to be a coldhearted girl who didn’t even care that her boyfriend had died.
She would never be like that. But if dwelling on it made the raw, biting pain stay with her, then she wanted to leave it behind.
Today, arriving at the service, sitting in the pew, she felt as if she were being followed by his ghost: she could see it in people’s eyes, the pity.
Elders from the Society and members of the Council of Regents sat in the first several rows behind Rocio and Federico Calleja, Alejandro’s mother and father; his older sisters, who had flown in from Argentina with their husbands; and other members of the Calleja family.
Most of the attendees were weeping through the service, and Lauren spied Gigi and Parker Bell, Nick’s parents, both of whom were making a big show of dabbing at their eyes with linen handkerchiefs, along with Palmer Bell, Nick’s grandfather. She wanted to scream, to bound over the pews and strangle them alclass="underline" Parker and Palmer for arranging Alejandro’s murder, and Gigi for her hypocrisy, for pretending that she was nothing more than an innocent bystander. It didn’t matter that Nick was Lauren’s friend. Even Nick knew how evil his parents and grandfather were-they were the leaders of the Society and its financial and charitable arm, the Bradford Trust. She wanted to shout at them, to wail, to scream: You killed him, you evil bastards! None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you!
She wanted to tell everyone everything she knew. To go to the papers. To tell her mom and dad. To tell the police.
But how could she?
Parker Bell had made it quite clear how their futures would be jeopardized if they revealed anything about Alejandro’s death. Was that enough of a reason to stay silent? Lauren didn’t know. If she came forward, would anyone believe her? She had seen what had happened to Phoebe when she had gone to her mother with doubts about the Society last fall. The minute Phoebe had said anything, she was sent to a doctor who treated her as if she were crazy, giving her tranquilizers and hinting that she should be placed under observation.