Poor Little Dead Girls (26 page)

Sadie looked up again, and she was surprised to see that his face had stiffened. There was a tightness about his jaw, and his eyes mechanically followed the bartender’s movements. For the first time, she realized how blue they were, like the ocean.

“It was a real shame what happened to her,” he said, his voice flat. “She was a beautiful young woman who could have had a bright future ahead of her.”

Sadie swallowed hard. “Did you know her well?”

His face was still. “I did.”

He smiled widely then, and it was so sudden it was like his expression had cracked into a million pieces. “We dated, actually.”

Her mouth dropped open. She searched her brain for an appropriate response, but found nothing.

He touched her arm. “That was a long time ago, though. Enjoy your evening, Sadie.” And then he was gone. She stood, motionless, at the bar until the bartender plunked down Teddy’s bourbon and looked at her with eyebrows raised.

“He left,” she said.

The bartender shrugged and turned away. She grabbed the bourbon, leaving her untouched Coke on the bar in a puddle of its own sweat.

It was raining again by the time they rolled quietly through the gates of DeGraffenreid’s main entrance. After a few terse words from Finn, the driver flipped off his lights and drove stealthily through campus toward the tower.

Inside the salon, Brent and Connor flipped on the enormous gas fireplace and the room slowly started to heat up. They lounged on couches and on the thick carpet, drinking and smoking.

Sadie was lying on a leather couch with Jeremy beside her, his fingers tracing a long, slow path down her bare arm. She could feel the heat from the fire licking at her skin, and she felt heavy, happy, and warm.

“Hey, you’re empty,” Jeremy said, gesturing to her glass.

She looked at it lazily and laughed, tipping it upside down. “Don’t we have butlers or something for this? Butler!” She tried to snap, but her fingers felt like rubber.

He grinned and sat up. “You know, I think they’re starting to get to you.”

She jabbed him softly in the ribs and feigned shock. “Yeah, says the guy who spent all night following Finn around and shaking hands with senators.”

He stood up and held out his hands, palms up. “Guilty. I figure if I’m at the White House I might as well make a few friends, right?” He took her glass. “Be right back.”

Sadie propped herself up on an elbow and watched him walk away. He had ditched his tie and jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt. She grinned widely, then caught herself and quickly bit her lip.

She struggled to her feet, and for the second time that night, she realized she had no idea how to get to the bathroom. The room spun around her, and she reached out a hand to steady herself on the couch’s armrest.

The hallway was cold and damp, and she shivered as a slow breeze blew past her. She made her way along slowly, running one hand along the inner wall to keep her steady. The first three doors she found were locked and rusted shut, and behind the fourth was the white dressing room. She found herself back at the salon door and turned this time toward the narrow winding stairs. The only time she had ever been off this floor was the night she was initiated, and her skin tingled with residual energy as she climbed upward.

On the next floor the hallway stretched dark and shadowed in two directions. She chose left and walked on, tiptoeing from one circle of light to the next. She knew she didn’t really need to be quiet, but something about the chilly darkness just made her feel like the stillness shouldn’t be disturbed.

After a few yards she breathed a sigh of relief. She could hear a low murmur of voices, and she knew she must be close. Light glowed softly under the next door, and she pushed it open.

As her eyes swept the room, she froze. At first, she just saw skin and limbs and leather, but when her mind made sense of the images she wished she could break it up again and put it back in pieces.

It was a small room, lit by dim lanterns, and in the center was a low wooden table. On the table was a round mirror covered with a dusting of white powder, and there was a black leather couch along one wall. Olivia lay sprawled across it, one leg splayed open with her foot hanging slack in the air. Her eyes were closed and her head hung limply to one side, damp hair hanging across her face. Her dress was bunched up around her thighs.

“Get the hell out of here,” someone yelled, and everything snapped back to focus. Finn was hunched over the table and Brent and Josh sat on the floor nearby. They were all staring at her, and they all looked angry.

“Oh god, sorry,” she mumbled, stumbling backward out of the room. She ran down the hallway and ducked into the first door she saw, slamming it behind her and leaning her back against the cool surface. She breathed hot, fast gasps into the darkened room and tried to push the image out of her mind. When she started feeling dizzy, she slid down the wall and put her head on her knees.

After a few minutes she struggled to her feet and blinked at the darkness. She could tell she was in a large room, but she couldn’t make out anything else. She felt along the wall until she found a light switch and flipped it on.

She knew immediately where she was, and she looked around, suddenly intrigued. The altar was on a raised platform in the center of the room, and tonight it was covered in heavy black cloth. On top of it sat a huge leather-bound book, open on a polished marble stand.

As she got closer, she realized the pages were covered with columns of small, inky script — lists of names, each with a corresponding year. She stood over the book and traced her finger down the last column. Her body tensed as she saw her own, Sadie May Marlowe, right below Jeremy’s at the bottom of the page. She was the last one.

Instinctively she looked around her, but the room was empty. She turned back page after page and watched as the classes of the last ten, then twenty years flew by. When she got to the members from 1987, she skimmed down the page.

There it was. And wasn’t.

The name listed read Maylynne Hester Ralleigh. She realized she had been holding her breath, and she let it out in a long, slow whistle. She stared at the page for a long time.

Thayer had been right — Sadie was the one who didn’t know her own mother’s real name. She blinked back the tears that sprang up behind her eyelids. What the hell was going on?

She forced herself to look away and turned the pages back. She felt her mom pulling farther and farther away from her as the pages turned, and she felt the pain of her loss all over again. When she got to the most recent page, she turned it carefully to make sure she didn’t rip the heavy paper. Her eyes were blurred with tears, but as she laid it flat, a name just four lines above hers swam into focus. She leaned closer to make sure, but it was there, in ink just as permanent as her own.

Anna Francis Ralleigh.

She frowned. Sadie blinked again as something tugged at the back of her mind. If this was the same Anna — the girl who had disappeared last year — then two former members of the Optimates were dead. She turned the pages back again, just to be sure, holding her breath until she saw the proof. But it was right there, in black and white: Ralleigh.

Two members were dead, and they were related.

Sadie stepped back from the book. Suddenly she didn’t want to touch it.

She was still standing in front of it, staring like it might suddenly burst into flame, when she heard the door open.

“Fuck, Sadie,” said a raspy voice. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

It was Josh. His hair was rumpled and his eyes were wide and rimmed with red. He was fidgeting, and his whole body seemed to buzz with nervous energy.

Before she could speak he held up his hands. “Don’t say anything. I know how that looked.” He came toward her at a jog, and instinctively she stepped back. Her hip smacked into the table with a loud thud, and she winced in pain.

“I didn’t even really see anything, Josh,” she said. “The light, you know, my eyes hadn’t adjusted.”

He bounded up the steps until he was standing just inches away. “You’re lying.” He looked her square in the eye. “We didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do. You know what she’s like — she’ll give it to whoever wants it.”

Sadie stared back. “She didn’t look like she was giving anything.”

He laughed without warmth. “Please. You don’t get that hammered without knowing what it means.”

Anger welled up in Sadie’s stomach, and her throat suddenly felt tight. “So that gives you the right to — ”

Fire flashed in his eyes, and suddenly she was scared to say it. She looked away. “You know what, it’s none of my business.” Even saying the words made her so angry she wanted to scream.

“You’re Brett’s friend.” He paused and ran a hand anxiously through his disheveled hair. “It was stupid, I know. But she won’t find out, and you’re not going to tell her. I’ll make it up to her, I promise.”

He grabbed Sadie’s wrist and squeezed, hard. “You won’t tell her, right?” His hand was cold and slick with sweat. The scene flashed back through her mind, and her stomach rolled. She couldn’t talk about this anymore.

“I won’t.”

He let her go, but he didn’t step back. He was still staring at her, red faced and glassy-eyed, his sour breath in her nostrils. Her eyes slid down and fell on the book.

“So, this has all the members in it, right?”

Josh looked over his shoulder and seemed to relax. “Oh, yeah. Cool, right? That book’s like a hundred years old or some shit.” He flipped to the beginning. “You have to see this.” The first few pages were filled with text, and he pointed out the group’s mission statement and the script they read at the induction ceremony. “You know, all that stuff they say about brotherhood and Zeus and whatever,” he said. She nodded. He turned one more page and pointed. “There — look at the first member.”

She squinted at the book, then scoffed loudly.

Josh looked at her incredulously. “What’s so funny?”

“That’s some kind of joke, right? I mean, come on.”

He shook his head. “No way. He was the original founder. It’s changed a lot since then obviously — Keating and Graff didn’t even exist yet — but he started it.”

She still didn’t believe it. “Thomas Jefferson? As in,
the
Thomas Jefferson? The Declaration of Independence and Monticello — that guy?”

He grinned. “Yeah, Sadie. Look.”

She looked at the page again and saw the name scrawled in large, familiar letters. She shook her head. “How?

“Well, it’s a long story. It’s all in the book, though.” He tapped the yellowed pages with one finger.

“Give me the shortened version.”

He scratched his head and took a deep breath. “Okay, um, so you know about frats and sororities, right?”

She nodded.

“They’re kind of like secret societies — they have handshakes and clubhouses and secret initiation ceremonies — but they’re like, the most watered-down, pseudo-secretive, uber-powerless piece-of-crap versions of what they could be. They don’t have power for shit. They’re just a bunch of middle-class douchebags in Abercrombie ties blowing each other while wearing black robes and calling it tradition.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“But when fraternities started, they actually meant something. TJ was in the first frat in the country — this club at William and Mary called the Flat Hat Club. Sounds lame, I know, no idea why they didn’t call it something more badass. Anyway, it was modeled after European secret societies — you know, the Freemasons, and the Knights Templar, all that conspiracy shit — but they didn’t really do anything. It was just an underground group of elite dudes, and they did, like, charity work and hung around talking about history and whatever.”

He was talking so fast, Sadie could barely understand him, but at least his eyes were on the book. She took a tentative step farther away from him, and he kept talking.

“So when he graduated, he complained about how it was cool and all, but they didn’t actually have any real purpose, so he decided to found one at his high school that actually meant something. Then a couple of his sisters got married or died or whatever, and he got like, really fucking lonely. And depressed. So he got really into it. He liked going there for debates and intense discussions — he was into all that shit, you know? — and they really only kept it secret because they thought it was fun. Eventually, that school closed and the members moved it to their new school, Montgomery Academy, and it continued from there. It was there for a long time, until the fucking Yankees took over the school buildings to use them for barracks during the Civil War.

“After that was over, Graff was built on the same land as Montgomery and all the richest families started sending their kids there, so it was natural for the club to be revived with Graff as its new home base. This building is the only part of the old army fort left, so the Sullas took that shit back and claimed it for their own. This is where it gets really good, though.”

He turned and looked at her just as she edged away another few inches. He frowned.

“Where are you going? This is the coolest part.” He pulled her back toward him, gripping her arm so tightly it hurt.