The Festival of the Moon (Girls Wearing Black: Book Two) (3 page)

But he was wrong. His father didn’t start yelling. He did just the opposite. He spoke in a low, sincere tone, like he was giving advice, like he was being a parent for once in his life.

“Listen, Art,” he began, “I know last night was tough for you. We all thought it was going to be an easy decision this year. It seemed so obvious that Kim Renwick was going to win. But then this new girl showed up.”

“Nicky,” said Art. “Her name is Nicky Bloom.”

“I know. I’ve heard all about her. My phone has been going crazy for hours now. You know, I think I’ve spoken with more than twenty people today.” He started laughing again. “Oh goodness what a stir you caused last night. Crashing into that girl…what’s her name?”

“Rosalyn. Kim wanted me to throw Nicky into Rosalyn so she’d spill her wine and ruin Nicky’s dress, but I crashed into Rosalyn instead.”

“Yes, yes—that’s what I’ve heard. And then the new girl got you a different jacket and kissed you in front of everyone. Seriously Art, people were calling me to tell me the details even before the dance was over. The whole world wants to know what we’re doing, because if the Tremblays are supporting the new girl, it changes everything.”

“What are you telling them?”

“The truth, of course. I haven’t spoken with my son yet so I have nothing to say. I think I’ve repeated those words a hundred times since I got to the airport.”

“Seriously? That’s what you’re telling them?”

Waiting for all the facts before condemning his son—this didn’t sound like the Merv Tremblay that Art knew.

“Of course that’s what I’m telling them. And if they push me for more, I tell them it’s none of their goddamn business, and none of mine either. I tell them you’re the senior at Thorndike and that’s the way the contest works. The seniors are the ones who decide which after-party to attend. The seniors are the ones who get to bid at the Date Auction. We parents provide the funds, but it’s the kids who spend them, now, isn’t it?”

Art was dreaming…he had to be dreaming. There was no way his dad was saying this to him, not unless he’d undergone a complete personality makeover in the past week.

“Thank you, Dad. I’m…surprised.”

“No need to thank me, Art. From what I hear, it sounds like you did good last night. With Kim, we were just one family of many who had to kiss Galen’s ass. With this new girl, it sounds to me like you’re in tight.”

“Yeah, really tight,” Art said, thinking fondly about a slow dance he and Nicky shared at the start of the after-party. Was that it? Had Merv finally come around to respecting Art because he got in good with a future immortal? It had to be. Yes, the more Art thought about it, the more it made sense. While Art had slept, his father had spoken with all the Washington power players. His father’s reaction, the way he was treating Art, was evidence that everything was going just as Nicky said it would.

People were leaving Kim in droves. There was no other explanation. Only a tectonic power shift away from the Renwicks and towards the new girl could explain the way his father was treating him right now.

In the background Art heard a muffled voice speaking in Chinese.

“That’s my boarding call,” said Merv. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been so excited about an eighteen-hour flight before. I’m going to sleep as soon as we take off, and my infernal phone is finally going to stop ringing.”

Art caught himself smiling. He was smiling as he spoke with his dad, as if they were friends.

“Okay. Have a good flight,” Art said.

“There are no good flights,” said Merv, speaking in the same ugly, bitter tone that Art knew so well, but somehow sounding different all the same.

“I’ll see you when you get home, Dad,” said Art.

There was no response. His father had already hung up.

Art put the phone down and stared at it for a second, wondering if he had heard his father correctly.

From what I hear, it sounds like you did good last night.

Yes, those were the words. His father sounded grouchy and mean when he said them, but there was no denying their meaning. Art’s father had given him a compliment over the phone. Never before in all his life, or at least not since he was very little and his dad didn’t realize yet that he was going to be a giant disappointment…a compliment. An honest-to-God compliment!

Art felt like he had left his real life somewhere in the past and stepped into an alternate dimension, a place where gorgeous, exotic new girls showed up at the Homecoming Masquerade and took an interest in him, where he went to a happening party with his classmates and they acted like he was the coolest kid there, where his dad treated him with respect.

And it all started when he danced with Nicky Bloom. What an amazing girl. In less than 24 hours, she had all of Washington turning on its head. Art imagined the Washington Monument as the needle-point on a city-sized spinner, with Nicky Bloom flinging the whole city round and round with a twist of her fingers.

Art threw himself on the bed, feeling like he could relax for the first time in his life, like he had finally done what he was supposed to do and deserved a long, restful sleep.

He woke up some four hours later, the afternoon sun glowing behind the curtain in his hotel room. He lay in bed for a few minutes, wondering if the phone call from his dad had really happened or if it was another dream. He had gotten so messed up the night before he could hardly tell the difference.

Still, after he zipped up his pants, he rushed back to the nightstand to grab his phone and scroll through the recent calls.

It was right there in front of him.
Dad
. Inbound call at 11:18. Lasted for twelve minutes.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

The magnitude of that phone call from his dad began to set in. Art had made a crazy decision the night before, a decision he never would have made if he had been sober, and it changed everything. He had been a doormat for Kim Renwick, but now he was a cunning enemy who had gotten the best of her. He had been the spoiled softie among his peers, marginally popular, but only because of his money. Now he was a leader who had been the first big player to ditch Kim for the new girl.

Now he was a son who made his father proud, rather than a wuss who wasn’t worthy of the family name.

Art took off his clothes and started a shower, then decided what he really wanted to do was take a bath. A long, hot bath to ease his aching head and give him a chance to play out a proper fantasy about Nicky Bloom in his mind. He splashed around in the tub for twenty minutes, imagining Nicky’s naked body on top of his, and when he was done he said, “You can make this happen, Art.”

He pulled the drain plug, stood up and said it again. “Art Tremblay, you are gonna make this happen. You are gonna get with this girl, and when she becomes immortal, you will too. Hot damn, Art Tremblay, make this fucking happen!”

Ten minutes later he was dressed and downstairs, asking at the front desk about checking out.

“It’s all been taken care of, Mr. Tremblay,” said the woman at the counter. “Ms. Bloom paid for your room and left you this.”

The woman put a small note card on the desk. Art picked it up, and the scent of Nicky’s perfume immediately hit his nose and reminded him how incredibly awesome it was to be alive. Inside the card were two words followed by seven numbers. The words were, “Call me.”

As he drove back to Potomac, Art cataloged all the many reasons that he was, all of a sudden, a hugely important player on the Washington scene.

In two weeks I turn eighteen and inherit a quarter share in one of the most important businesses in this town.

Last night I led my classmates in a rebellion, a god-damned insurrection, and now everyone is talking about it.

The things people are saying about me must be good—look at the way Dad reacted.

Dad is an important businessman, and he respects me. I am about to be an important businessman too.

I am an adult now. A young adult, and maybe, just maybe if I play my cards right, I might stay a young adult forever.

Etson, the butler, opened the front door to the manor and bowed his head as Art stepped inside. It was a gesture so common in Art’s life he never even noticed it, but tonight he understood. Only a privileged few had servants who bowed before them when they entered a room. “Top of the food chain” is what Art’s father called them.

I’m top of the food chain. A predator.

A predator, just like his dad, who adorned the family home with proof of his predatory prowess. The front foyer of the Tremblay mansion was like a natural history museum of large game, a walk-in trophy case meant to show off the most impressive kills Merv Tremblay had made over the years. On one wall was a herd of forest grazers whose heads had been stuffed and mounted. Deer, elk, antelope, a ram, three ugly wild pigs with big curvy tusks, and an enormous moose with a little grin on his face.

When Art was twelve, his dad took him to Africa to attend a big game safari. During the first night on the savanna, a tick latched onto Art’s leg, and gave him some mystery illness. Fever, chills, diarrhea—a father who cared would have canceled the hunting trip to tend to his sick child. But Merv did no such thing. Instead, he had one of the guides take Art into town in the back seat of a jeep. While Art was laid up in an African hospital, his father continued the safari, making what he would later call his “favorite ever kill” on the fourth day of the trip.

That kill, a 12-foot crocodile that Merv named Rosie, now stood against the far wall of the entryway, the taxidermist having set the creature in permanent repose with its jaws open wide. Over the years, Merv had shown hundreds of houseguests the insides of that crocodile’s mouth, explaining in detail how the African crocodile is “without question the most fearsome predator of the savanna.” Never once did he mention that while he was out killing that croc, his son was in a hospital bed watching French soap operas on a black and white TV.

Standing opposite Rosie the Crocodile was a black bear that Merv killed in New Mexico. Next to the bear was a wall with the heads of a bison, a boar, a zebra, and a yak. Stuffed birds hung from the high ceiling above them on invisible wires. A pheasant, a duck, a turkey, a flock of geese in a flying V... and standing front and center in the room, the dual staircase bookending it on either side, was a towering African elephant that Merv had killed the summer after Art’s freshman year at Thorndike. The elephant had four feet on the ground and its head was turned to greet people as they entered the house.

Art had grown to hate them all. After his bout with African tick bite fever, Art was never invited on another hunting trip, and every stuffed creature in the house was just another reminder of his own failure. But on this day, as Etson stepped aside and Art entered the front room, he forced himself to take it all in. He looked at the elephant. He imagined it charging him on the open plain. Merv had taken this elephant down with a 458 magnum rifle. Maybe one day Art wouldn’t need such a silly contraption. Maybe one day he would be a ruthless predator in his own right, one who had no fear of charging elephants, snarling crocodiles, or infectious ticks. A predator who feared nothing at all, because it had already conquered death. A hunter who stood atop all food chains, feasting on human flesh and blood.

He went into the kitchen and ordered the chef to, “Make me something that will get rid of a hangover, as fast as you can.” The chef responded with an omelet and some juice.

“Eggs?” Art said. “This is good for a hangover?”

“The eggs are okay, Sir,” said Anton, the live-in chef. “They will fill your stomach so you can have this.”

Anton laid a single white pill on the table next to the juice glass.

“It’s what your father always has after a long night,” Anton said.

“Will it make me sleepy?” Art said.

“It makes your father…relaxed,” said Anton. “He likes to take them before important days at work.”

That was good enough for Art. He popped the pill in his mouth and washed it down with three gulps of orange juice. Then he tore into the omelet. On a normal morning in the Tremblay house, Anton would make an omelet for Merv, a bowl of fruit for whatever young woman Merv had slept with the night before, and a protein shake for Art.

Art had never liked omelets before. They were his dad’s food, and it didn’t seem appropriate for him to imitate his dad. But if everything else was changing today, then why not his taste in food as well? Why not have omelets and little white pills every morning? Why not bring stunning young ladies to the house?

Stunning young ladies dressed in black.

Call me
. Two words on a note from Nicky. Two words that could change everything. Two words that would begin the rest of his life.

He went upstairs, swished some Listerine in his mouth, and splashed on some aftershave. Then he pulled out his phone and dialed Nicky’s number.

“Hello, Art.”

“Hey.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel good. Really good.”

“Good enough for company?”

“Yeah, I would love some company.”

Art silently pumped his fist in celebration.