The Lies That Bind (14 page)

“WTF?” Ben yanked back Liam’s hood, then Seth’s, and finally Taylor’s.

We all dove for the closest picture at the same time, but I got there first. I picked up the snapshot of Bethany, blurry headstones set behind her in the background, and flipped it over. It was embossed with a miniature wax version of the Brotherhood’s crest. The lion. The key.
Fortes
et
liber
, “strong and free.” It was all there.

Ben ripped the picture out of my hands. “I’m so frickin’ screwed. Give me that folder. Now.” His tone surprised me. I’d never heard him sound so authoritative.

“Where is she?” Taylor stepped in front of me, blocking Ben from making a grab for the folder.

He just shook his head. “Kate, you have to give that back.” He lunged past Taylor and made a grab for me, but Liam was too fast for him. He grabbed Ben by his jacket and shoved him back against the wall.

“How’d you even get in, Ben?” I asked as he rubbed the shoulder that had slammed into the brick wall. There was a story here; I could smell it. Or maybe that was just some type of toxic black mold growing in the tunnels. Regardless, the Brotherhood was extremely exclusive. Only the most distinguished and the most popular students were tapped to join. And Ben was neither.

“Legacy,” he whispered in a monotone voice, like he’d heard the question a million times before. “My dad was Class of ’87.”

“Where. Is. She?” Taylor’s words were laced with acid. She inched forward in a way that barely counted as moving, and by the time the last word left her lips, she was practically on top of him.

“Who? Oh, you mean Bethany? I have no idea. She totally disappeared.”

“Liar!” Taylor lost control and screamed the word like a curse.

If Ben’s skin hadn’t been tanned Oompa Loompa orange by however many minutes a week in his personal tanning bed or whatever man tanner he slathered on every morning, he would have gone completely white. Instead he turned the color of a melted Creamsicle.

“I’m not lying, I swear.” His voice squeaked a little, and my gut told me he was telling the truth.

Guess Liam’s gut must have told him the same thing, because he said, “But then what’s with all the pictures?”

“It’s some stupid initiation thing.
Viglio
. I think it means ‘watching’ in Latin or something.” Ben ran his hand through his hair, which was actually kind of an impressive feat, given the amount of product on his head. “I had to follow her 24/7 for weeks. It’s supposed to be their way of keeping track of the Sisterhood. They make the new guys do it because it’s boring and if you get caught you look like a sex offender.”

Something popped, the sound reverberating off the brick walls surrounding us, and we all spun around to find the source. The last thing we needed was company. Seth’s cheeks were flaming, his jaw working slowly, an empty peanut shell near his feet.

“Low blood sugar,” he said, holding out a fistful of nuts. “I keep ’em in my pocket, you know…just in case.” Of course he did. But I was thankful for the distraction.

I had to get out of there with the file. I could see the stairs out of the corner of my eye, and even if Ben knew nothing about Bethany’s whereabouts, there was bound to be something useful in here somewhere. There was no way I was going to risk Ben making a grab for it. Plus, I got the feeling that we were running out of time.

“How long did you watch her?” Taylor asked. Her carefully modulated voice was so dramatically changed that it verged on creepy.

“Months. Until all of a sudden she just disappeared. That’s when they made me start watching Kate.” He gestured vaguely at me.

“When was the last time you saw Bethany?” Taylor completely ignored the fact that I was being targeted by the Brotherhood. I inched farther up the stairs. A little closer to freedom.

“It was the night of Obsideo. Wait, I think…” Ben shoved past Taylor and Liam and came straight for me and his damn folder. I stood up and made a run for it, out the top of the hatch and into the night. I picked up speed, the cold fingers of the wind combing through my hair, and then slipped on a patch of ice. As I slammed to the ground, the folder bounced out of my hands, flinging hundreds of pictures of Bethany all over the wet snow. I made a pathetic attempt to start gathering the evidence, but everything in my body hurt at the same time.

Ben’s patent leather loafers crunched past my head, and I watched as he grabbed a picture that lay a few feet away from me. Instead of taking off, he bent down next to me.

“They’d kill me if they knew I had this.”

Bethany’s dark hair was loose around her shoulders. Her scarf was wrapped in one of those twisty knot things that all the popular girls seemed to know how to do by default. The tiny hairs on my arms stood on end as I pulled the picture closer to my face to get a better look at her. An odd little smile lit her face. Like she had a secret.

“That’s the last picture I got of her.” He stared at it a little too long and finally looked at me, urging me to examine it closer without using any words at all. As much as Ben always seemed to trigger my d-bag radar, at this moment he couldn’t have seemed further from it.

“Do you have any idea where she went?”

He shrugged. “I asked around at school, and everyone said she was on some retreat.”

I plucked the picture from his hands to get a closer look. There was a shadow behind Bethany that I’d missed the first time I looked at the picture. I had been so focused on her that I never noticed there was someone standing behind her.

I lifted the picture up to the streetlight to get a closer look. Not just one figure, two. The second person was a few steps behind the first and dressed entirely in black, a ski mask obscuring his face. But the other figure hadn’t put his mask on yet. In fact, if I looked closely enough I could see it dangling from his long fingertips just underneath his chin. If the camera had flashed just an instant later, I was sure his face would have been obscured.

I turned to Ben, who raised his eyebrows knowingly and then looked away. Apparently we both saw what was there. In the dim shadow behind Bethany’s right shoulder I could just make out Bradley Farrow’s face.

“Bradley Farrow.” Taylor had barely uttered the name before she headed back down into the tunnels. We had no choice but to file down after her. “Bethany! Bethany!” She screamed the name as she ran, and Ben kept muttering things about getting his ass kicked as we chased after her. I knew exactly where she was going, and I was terrified at what we might find there.

The heavy wood door to the Sisterhood’s old headquarters was wide open. No key, no secret pass code to protect the nerve center of the society. Taylor stood in the opening looking like she was going to cry. All of their work protecting the secrets buried beneath Pemberly Brown, and the boys were too lazy to even install new locks.

I was shocked no one had made the breach up until this point. But then I remembered Maddie expertly punching numbers into a new keypad the night of her humiliation. Sure, the Brotherhood had altered the access points when they took control, but apparently they didn’t monitor much else. I couldn’t imagine how angry Taylor must feel. After months of being locked out of the tunnels, access to the headquarters was right beneath her perfectly manicured fingertips.

Taylor reached to the wall and flipped the light, illuminating the source of my posttraumatic stress disorder.

“What the…” The words escaped in one breath as she took a huge step back, knocking into me. The headquarters had looked like a professionally designed family room, but now it was completely empty. No flat-screen TV. No antique leather sofas. No shelves lined with books, and no information dating back hundreds of years. Most importantly, no files holding Pemberly Brown’s most sought-after secrets. The Sisterhood knew everything from what questions would appear on this year’s SAT to which teacher had had an affair with our vile headmaster.

“Is this a joke?” Taylor grabbed Ben’s shoulders roughly, her face so close she could kiss him. The room was entirely empty. Every file drawer hung open. Empty.

“Um…no?” Ben stuttered, which wasn’t going to end well. “We moved.”

“Worthless!” Taylor screamed, slamming an empty file drawer closed. Seth gave Liam a knowing look and approached her as she hung over the drawer. But before he even laid a finger on her, she whipped around, ignoring him completely and zeroing in on Ben again. “Where is it? Where is all of our stuff?”

Ben’s glassy eyes trailed upward toward the ceiling. One by one, we all did the same.

The Sisterhood buried their secrets underground. But unsurprisingly the Brotherhood had loftier ambitions. Apparently they’d decided to take everything to the top.

“Why is everyone looking up? There is absolutely no way you guys could have moved everything. That is absolutely ridiculous.” Taylor pronounced each word with careful, cutting restraint.

“Actually, they built a new headquarters. On top of the school. And now that they have these new secret passageways built behind the walls, they don’t really use the tunnels anymore.” Ben was rambling. “Headmaster Sinclair has had crews working late at night, weekends, holidays, whenever he can get them here without anyone noticing. All those new rules to keep students off campus are really just a way to cover all this up. Cool, right?” Clearly he was one of those people who felt it necessary to fill dead silences. His orange face lit up when he talked about the Brotherhood’s latest endeavor.

Taylor just stood there watching him, letting him hang himself with his words. She would make a great investigative reporter someday.

When he finally stopped detailing the state-of-the-art security and the way they’d nested the new headquarters in between the four gables of the main building’s roof, he looked at all of us. “I’m sorry, really.”

Taylor turned and started walking toward the nearest exit. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Where is the best place for us to access the new headquarters?”

Ben looked like he was going to choke. He gasped a little and started coughing. His face turned red and his hands clutched at his throat. Actually, scratch that. Ben didn’t look like he was going to choke. Ben was actually choking. The first thing I thought of was Seth’s stupid peanuts.

Taylor just stood there watching him, her gaze never wavering. Clearly, she had no intention of helping.

Seth came barreling out from the empty room and embraced Ben from behind.

“Hang in there, buddy. I know the Heimlich. I am CPR certified after that babysitting…er…lifeguarding class my mom made me take.” Seth folded his hands together under Ben’s six-pack abs, which we’d all seen much more of than we cared to, and jerked him upward.

Something flew out of Ben’s mouth and landed on the floor near Liam’s feet. He leaned down to examine the object that had almost taken Ben’s life. “Invisalign retainer. A cautionary tale for us all,” he said, moving it lightly with his foot.

Ben coughed and sputtered, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Taylor was already halfway down the hall. “Once I get in, I will find Bethany or at least figure out where they have her. If we can get her out tonight…”

“I can’t.” Ben’s words still sounded like a cough. “I’m not a real member yet. You don’t get to go into the headquarters until you’re initiated.” Ben’s voice cracked, and I would have bet Grace’s pearls that he was dangerously close to wetting himself. Not that I blamed him. Taylor was ten kinds of scary when she was pissed off, and I’d never in my life seen her this angry.

She took a step forward as Ben took a giant step back. “You are wasting my time.” Taylor had literally backed him into a corner and he was shaking. It was kind of like watching a snake get ready to eat a baby rabbit. I had to step in.

“Look, he was just trying to help, Taylor. We ambushed him. He’s not even thinking straight.”

But Ben was shaking his head. “There is something…something you should see.” His voice was raspy from choking, and watching him cower in the corner like some kind of kicked animal brought the words “man up” to mind.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I inserted myself between Taylor and Ben and yanked him back toward the exit near Farrow’s Arches where we’d entered.

“Wrong way,” he rasped and started off in a different direction.

The tunnels down this way were damper and felt older than the rest of the system. I felt something brush past my boot and let out a little squeal.

“Do not tell me you are afraid of rats.” Taylor laughed behind me.

My throat started to close up. “That was a rat?”

“Of course it was a rat. They love the tunnels. Some of the girls used to feed them. Like cats.”

My stomach heaved, but I forced myself to keep walking. Liam pulled me a little bit closer. “You can’t be afraid of rats, Kate. You’re way bigger than they are.”

“You know what else is smaller than me? Bombs.”

Liam snorted and Taylor sighed disdainfully at what I’m assuming was yet another demonstration of our complete lack of maturity.

The tunnels grew darker and colder the farther we walked. I pulled my jacket up under my chin.

“We’re under the cemetery now.” Seth gestured up. “Bet that’s why you’re cold.”

My heart began beating faster in my chest. I thought about the catacombs lined with bones we’d learned about in French class. Coffins were buried beneath our feet; people were rotting away around us. Or maybe we were so far underground that they were actually above us. Just as I began imagining bones raining down on top of us, Ben gestured toward a stone staircase to our right and motioned that we should follow him up.

I heard the low moaning of chanting coming from the top of the staircase.

“It’s the heart of Brown.” He gestured at the door. The heart of Brown was one of the oldest buildings on campus. It had been part of Brown’s original campus before the boys joined with the girls, but it was too far away and too old to be used anymore. So the Brotherhood had claimed it for their own.

“Please be quiet.” Ben’s watery eyes looked desperate. “I know you guys don’t care if I get my ass kicked or not, but I’m trying to help you, and I can’t help you with Alistair Reynolds’s fist in my throat.” I let out a little snort and Ben smiled at me gratefully. “Besides, you’re not going to want to miss this. It’s important.”

We all huddled behind Ben as he cracked open one of the doors. I was worried they would hear us or see us, but the chanting was so loud and the room was so dark that we might as well have been invisible. The names of all the members of the Brotherhood shone on the wall like stars, and about twenty feet from where five heads peered out of a trapdoor built into the floor stood the Brotherhood.

Their togas were so bright in the black light that they appeared more purple than anything else. They moved in a circle, chanting.

“
Imperator. Conventus. Imperator. Conventus. Imperator
.”

Emperor. Unity. The Brotherhood had a new leader. The circle widened and a spotlight lit the face of the person sitting in the center on an elaborate throne. His teeth gleamed white and sharp in the strange light, and I felt a quick stab in my stomach. A stab that felt dangerously close to lust. Or maybe hate. I couldn’t be sure which.

Bradley Farrow.