Curse of the Wickeds (The Cinderella Society, Episode 2) (15 page)

But instead of those facts having a soothing effect, I was still swigging raspberry iced tea to cool the fire in my stomach. How could we beat the growing ranks of Wickeds with a strategy of one-hit wonders? The Wickeds were miles ahead and here we were, constantly gathering more intel and offering random bits of help instead of real protection.

An idea started to gel in my mind. It was time to stop playing catch-up and go on offense.

Chapter Twenty-Six

A few hours later, Paige swiveled around in her chair. “I need to run a quick errand.” She logged off the computer and locked the lap drawer. “I’ll be back for our meeting at three. Don’t work too hard, okay?”

I sat back to rub my eyes after she left. I felt betrayed. By the Cindys, who wanted me to lead but only if I did it their way, and by Ryan, who acted like I was his world but barely acknowledged me in the real one. I was trying so hard to be what everyone wanted me to be, and yet every time I looked around, I was failing.
 

If I followed my heart where Heather was concerned, I ran the risk of losing the Cindys’ acceptance. If I gave in to Cindy pressure, I hung Heather out to dry. Life had been easier when I’d been an outsider. At least then the only person I let down was myself.

I wasn’t an expert on leadership, but here’s the thing I did know: no good leader ever bowed to peer pressure instead of doing the right thing. I might not have been making a splash with my makeover (if I had, wouldn’t Ryan be proud to have me at his side?) or keeping up with my
CMM
assignments or figuring out how to defeat the Wickeds’ recruitment surge.

I’d been noodling with my Cindy brand for days and still couldn’t figure it out. Who was I at the core? Not who the Cindys wanted me to be or who Ryan needed me to be. But who
I
wanted to be.

I was a champion of worthy causes and people who needed help. That much was obvious from my volunteering. But I was also a fighter and willing to go to the mat for the people I cared about, even if Paige and Sarah Jane didn’t approve.

Do-Gooder Volunteer Girl had morphed into Protector Girl. And Protector Girl was fed up with trying so hard and still failing. If I was going to fail anyway, at least I could save Heather from Lexy in the process.

I poked my head out to make sure everyone was otherwise occupied in study hall, then closed the office door.

The leader office wasn’t glamorous, but it was well equipped. The computer desk, a round table and chairs for spreading out, bookshelves filled with reference materials, and a locked file cabinet.

If we wanted to beat the Wickeds, we needed to stop reacting and take control. Let’s see how the Wickeds liked being in scramble mode.

How do you create a plan of attack when your enemy is everywhere?
 

Rule #1: Start at the top.
 

The question was, how did we handle Lexy? If it was up to me, I’d go at her with everything we had and take her out the way she deserved: with as much humiliation as possible. If we could take away Lexy’s power, the Wickeds would battle each other for her place. That would create chaos in their ranks and give us a chance to strike again when they weren’t so well protected.
 

But even I knew that wasn’t the Cindy way. The Cindy way would be to try to get through to her. If Sarah Jane was right about her having been groomed for Sisterhood, some of that had to exist in her somewhere, right? At least in theory. Like Gaby had said, no Wicked was one hundred percent bad. Although I personally thought Lexy was about as close as you could get.

Getting to Lexy meant I needed to understand Lexy the way she understood the Reggies. The only thing I really knew about her personally, other than that she was a Cindy legacy, was that she adored Ryan. Family definitely played into her psyche. Maybe it was the key to getting through to her.

I only had access to personnel files for our group of Cindys and profiles for the Wickeds and targeted Reggies. What I needed was detailed background intel on the other Cindys in Lexy’s family, and on her as a legacy. What had they seen in her back then, before the accident? Paige and Sarah Jane were both playing mum, so if I wanted answers, I was going to have to find them myself.

I poked around in the desk drawers, looking for anything that caught my attention. The drawer Paige had locked wouldn’t budge, and the others held nothing useful. I trailed a finger over the locked file cabinet.
 

The legacy files for recent Cindys were in the leader cabinet. The new system upgrade would make those files obsolete, but we still had a few weeks before Sarah Jane got us up and running with the digital archives.

The Steele women had been Cindys for generations, and now one of their own was a leader of the Wickeds. That had to be significant.

I went back to the desk and scrounged around in the drawers for a key. Lip balm, loose change, a couple of barrettes, a box of paper clips . . .

Paper clips?

I picked up one and examined it. I knew you could use paper clips to pick locks—I’d seen it on an episode of
Crime Watch, Vegas
—but how did it work? I put it in the file cabinet lock and turned. The paper clip twisted, but nothing happened. I pulled it out and tried to think about the episode. A bend here, straighten that part out, slide it in, and give it a little jiggle. Stop, bend again, more jiggling.

Nothing. I clearly wasn’t a lock picker, and I was running out of time.

Except . . . wasn’t the little lock part supposed to be pushed in when it was locked? That’s how the file cabinets worked in Mom’s old office. So if it wasn’t pushed in . . .

I pulled the handle of the top drawer, and it opened like a breeze.
Bingo.
I made a mental note to always push in the lock once the office was mine.

I quickly scanned the contents of the file drawers to get my bearings. Meeting minutes, curriculums for Alpha, Beta, and Gamma levels, files on the current Cindys . . .

The legacy files.

There weren’t many, so I quickly jumped to the
S
s, hoping to hit the jackpot.
Steele.

I pulled out the Steele family file. A different color file lay on top, with the title
Elizabeth (Harrington) Steele
on it. It wasn’t a full file like ours were, but a smaller folder, with only a couple of documents in it. Her full file was probably housed wherever they archived high-level records.

I hesitated, but only for a second. If Mrs. Steele had been half the Cindy I’d heard she was, she would’ve understood that desperate times called for desperate measures.

I opened the cover. Her photo smiled up at me. She was an older version of Cassie, every bit as beautiful with the same warmth in her eyes. I could see Ryan in her too, and even Lexy, though she lacked Lexy’s harder edges.

I gently set the picture aside and looked beneath. There was a brief list of family connections in the Society: Mrs. Steele, her mom and grandmother, Cassie, and a note about Lexy with a reference to chart 4.7. I flipped through the pages. What was chart 4.7? Was it about Lexy being a legacy? Something that had to do with the Wickeds?

A knock sounded from my private door to the War Room a second before it opened. I closed the cover and plastered both hands over the top of the file.

Sarah Jane noticed the leader office door was closed and stopped. “Sorry. I thought you were studying.” She took in the open cabinet drawer, the folder on the table. Her eyes flicked to Mrs. Steele’s picture, a few inches from my hands. “I didn’t know Paige had given you the keys already. You must be making great progress.”

I stared back, understanding in that moment what the term
a deer in headlights
meant. I’d never been caught doing something bad before. How did people react when they got busted?

Suspicion crept into Sarah Jane’s eyes. She looked more closely at the cabinet this time, and I heard her sharp intake of breath. The paper clip stuck out of the lock like a beacon of shame. “You
broke into
the files?”

“No! Paige left it open.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“I didn’t know that until after I stuck the paper clip in,” I admitted.

Sarah Jane looked appalled. Rightfully so, even I had to admit, but it still put me on the defensive. “I wouldn’t
have
to break in if someone would tell me what I need to know for once.”

“Oh my gosh, J.” Sarah Jane looked as flustered as I’d ever seen her. “You can’t . . . if Paige finds out . . . Cassie’s going to flip—”

“Nobody is flipping out, because nobody is going to tell anybody.” I spoke with a defiance I didn’t expect, but enough was enough. “Am I the new leader? Did you specifically choose me as the new leader in a break with tradition?”

“That doesn’t give you the right to
break into the files
.”

“If you wanted a figurehead, you should’ve picked someone else. What you got was me, someone who’s willing to do the
right
thing. If that means digging into Lexy’s past to save Heather, so be it.”

“Things are the way they are for a reason. You can’t just do whatever you want without getting approval. That’s not how the Sisterhood works.”

“It’s easy to take the high road when you don’t have anything at stake, isn’t it, Sarah Jane? I don’t see you taking on any missions against Lexy. I don’t see you being told to let somebody get squashed by the Wickeds because ‘we have people working on it.’ All I see is you being silent the only time I’ve ever asked you for backup and then lecturing me about being too impulsive. At least I’m doing
something
.”

Sarah Jane blanched. “Just because you don’t see doesn’t mean no one’s doing anything. There’s a lot more at stake than you know.”

“Exactly. My. Point.”

Kyra and Gwen entered the Gamma office at the far end, and I pushed the door between us closed, locking Sarah Jane in with me. I was teetering between freaking out and blowing up, so I pointed to the chair opposite my desk.

Sarah Jane sat down, I stayed standing. Power was all about positioning. I knew that from the Wickeds.

“Here’s how this is going to play out,” I said calmly. “You’re not going to say a word about this to anyone. I’ll explain it to Paige after I’m done, leader to leader. In the meantime, I need to figure out how to get Heather away from Lexy. You’re always telling me to trust you? Well, it’s your turn to trust me now. I know what I’m doing.”

She looked skeptical, so I aimed for the bull’s-eye. “If you stop me and Heather gets hurt, you’ll never forgive yourself. Don’t add that to your conscience, Sarah Jane.”

SJ’s face paled as the arrow hit home. But the hands on the wall clock above her made me uneasy. Paige would be back any minute for our meeting, and I needed to get this cleaned up in a hurry. I nodded toward the private door to the Gamma office. “If you don’t want to get yourself in any deeper, walk back through that door and forget this ever happened.”

Sarah Jane’s face started to heat. Her usual Zen-like nature was waging war with her emotions. Fear, anger, sadness, desperation. So much passed across her face. Silently, she turned away from me.

The door closed behind her with a barely audible click.

I slipped Mrs. Steele’s picture back into the folder, rubber-banded everything together, and filed it back in the cabinet before grabbing the incriminating paper clip and stuffing it in my pocket. Thanks to Sarah Jane’s interruption, I hadn’t found anything I could use with Lexy. I’d either need to find another time to scout out the office when no one was around or come up with a plan B. Either way, I was on my own. Flying solo on a cloud of righteousness.

A new sheriff had come to town, and she wasn’t taking any prisoners.

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THANK YOU!

Thank you so much for reading
Curse of the Wickeds.
Things are about to get very sketchy for Jess, Sarah Jane, Lexy, and Ryan!

If you would like to read the entire Cinderella Society series in order, here are the titles in sequence:

Secrets of the Sisterhood

Curse of the Wickeds

Charming in Disguise