Yael chuckles. “You and me both, Miss.”
“By all means, Yael, don’t ever refer to me as miss.” I smile at him in the rearview mirror. “Callie’s fine.”
Yael shows a line of bright white teeth in response. “Sure thing, Callie.”
The rest of the drive is quiet, the sun-soaked trees and moss-covered rocks blurring past as I take out my phone but hold it up with an unfocused stare.
The pages of Piper’s diary aren’t there anymore, but I’d come close to memorizing each and every sheet of paper she scrawled across, full of her thoughts but barren of clues, before the pictures were stolen, then deleted. She never mentioned a surprise pregnancy. But her sexual encounters with Mr. S took up most of the pages, a man I’d convinced myself was Dr. Luke.
It’s still him. I know it deep in my soul.
Is he a murderer? Or did Dr. Luke actually dump her, like he insisted he did, which made her so devastated, she didn’t think before she plunged into the black sea below Lover’s Leap?
Yet, the day she died is the same day Rose Briar is assumed to have jumped off the same cliff, the tortured wife of Briarcliff Academy’s founder.
And Cloaks haunt the school at night, a society of students, or faculty, or both, whose motives are more sinister than sacrificial.
“Argh.” I massage my temples with both hands, the phone dropping to my lap.
I can’t do this again. I can’t fall down the rabbit hole with the full confidence I’ll climb out.
“Are you all right, Mi—Callie?”
I open my eyes and force a smile. “Project jitters. I’m still getting used to the demands of this school.”
Yael murmurs in agreement, pulling on to Main Street and parallel parking by the town’s library/post office. “Don’t put too much stress on yourself. You have the right idea, coming here instead of using the school library. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Me too,” I say, with a lot more meaning than Yael could understand, and climb from the car.
I fix my backpack on my shoulders, wishing I’d thought to pack my jacket, now that I’m closer to the ocean shore and there’s a bitter, salty chill to the air that the academy seems to have walled off. As I’m adjusting the heavy load, I naturally glance down the street, noting how deserted the seaside town is, despite the tourist attractions of a lobster shack, bakery, and candy shop.
It’s said the town’s income comes mostly from the academy, without much effort going into keeping the small economy going. Almost like the pastel, clapboard shops and fluttering, colorful flags touting the incoming Halloween Festival are window dressing, rather than failing decorations that folks passing through don’t bother to look at as they aim for more desirable locations, like Newport or Providence.
My attention lands on the lobster shack, saddened it’s not more populated, because they make a mean lobster omelet for brunch, and I pause on the two people out front.
They’re about two blocks away on the other side of the street, but it’s easy to make out the smooth brown hair and the headband that keeps it out of Addisyn’s face. The boy she’s gesturing to, Jack, is her boyfriend and works at the restaurant—the gasp-worthy relationship of a prep school darling and a local townie out in the open for anyone to see. And by anyone, I mean … only me.
I don’t judge, or care. What keeps my stare on the couple is the way Addisyn moves, her motions stuttered and sharp. Jack responds with wild gesticulations of his own, both their expressions dark and storm-fueled.
In the middle of a sharp explanation, Jack’s head tilts, and he catches my eye. The conversation halts.
Addisyn follows Jack’s focus, and when she lands on me, she’s not nearly as ominous and glowering.
“The hell are you looking at, possum?” she calls across the street. “Are you so tired of creeping around campus that you’ve come into town to jerk off instead?”
Aaaaand she’s picked up right where her sister left off. How magical.
I shouldn’t, but… “If I open a door to a room where you’re expecting privacy, then you can be mad.”
Addisyn hisses, and Jack throws me the finger.
I’m not in the mood to joust, so I turn my back on them and trudge up the library’s steps, inwardly eager to get away before Addisyn launches into full attack mode.
Which, she may have a right to, now that Dr. Luke’s been released.
Crap. Now I feel bad. Maybe her anger at the world is warranted. Funneling it into me is a sad byproduct, but unavoidable when such a vast amount of torrential hate exists inside you, there’s nowhere to unleash it except for on the ones stupid enough to prod and goad at the edges.
I did it, too, and my stepdad was the sorry victim.
“Why, hello! You’re back!”
I blink, realizing I’ve stepped through Briarcliff Library’s doors and hover at the reception desk, where Darla sits, her fifties-style glasses perched on her nose while her eyes, enlarged by thick prescription lenses, regard me.
“It’s quieter here,” I say as a lame explanation. Aren’t all libraries naturally quiet?
“I can imagine,” Darla agrees, then motions to the middle of the rectangular room, bordered on all sides with stacks of books and topped off with a low, corkboard ceiling. “The place is yours. Well—yours and another young go-getter. Seems your secret’s out.”
I stiffen at her last sentence, but instinctually search the designated study tables. When I find the person Darla’s referring to, my shoulders slump and I mutter, “No wonder Yael was so busy this morning.”
First Addisyn, and now Emma.
“What’s that, dear?”
“Nothing,” I say to Darla.
She smiles, then flicks her fingers. “Go on, now. Studying ain’t built in a day.”
I shuffle forward, but no matter where I place my butt to do my work, I’ll be in Emma’s scope. The public library is so small. There are three study tables in total, and all in the center of the room.
As silently as I can, I pad over to the farthest table away from Emma. She’s chosen to be nearer to the stacks of books, and mine is closer to Darla.
Emma had the better idea. There’s a great risk that Darla will get so bored with her Harlequin paperback, she’ll try for idle chit-chat.
My bag thumps on the bleached wooden table. Emma glances up at the sound. When her eyes connect with mine, she sags.
I scrunch up half my face in response. Sorry. I was hoping to get some space from Briarcliff, too.
She glares but says nothing as she gets back to her laptop. I exhale in relief, and work on setting up my station.
I toss my phone on top of my spiral notebooks. All signs point to me needing to work on my English Lit paper due in a week. My phone’s black screen shouldn’t be so distracting, but it is.
Dr. Luke’s out.
Someone ripped important pages from Piper’s diary that I never saw.
That person could be her killer.
I splay my hands on my closed laptop, mentally prepping for actual schoolwork once I sit, but my eye is continuously drawn to my phone.
Lips curled in frustration, I grab it and open the photos, swiping until the beginnings of Rose Briar’s nineteenth century letter scroll across the screen. The original is hidden away in one of my textbooks, but it’s so delicate, it’s better to reference the copy.
“Damn it,” I mutter, and place the screen face down on the table, but it’s too late.
I’m not going to get anything done until I explore more of this library and see if it has more gifts to impart.
I ask Darla in a low whisper, “Where is that section on the founders of Briarcliff Academy again?”
“Don’t you remember, dear?” Darla responds in a regular voice. Emma’s head lifts. “Stack eight is where you’ll find information on the Briars.”
I briefly glance at Emma in apology for the noise, but instead of facing annoyance, I read a cautious alertness in her expression
.
“Thanks,” I say to Darla, then slide out from my seat and search for the stack, which, if I recall, is closer to the back of the building.
“That reminds me!” Darla says, still in an outside voice. “Briarcliff’s mayor has just donated Thorne Briar’s original office supplies for our educational pleasure for one whole month. It’s on the back wall, honey, in a glass display, along with a few other artifacts from the Briar’s time that we like to showcase during holidays. For the tourists, you know.”
“Yes. The tourists,” I say, my sarcasm at its lowest setting. I doubt the meager out-of-towners who come by want to know the historical progression of a ridiculously pompous preparatory school for the spawn of the nation’s 1%, but what do I know?
It doesn’t escape me that I’m an out-of-towner who is extremely curious about Briarcliff’s origins.
“That is,” Darla continues, “what remains after the f—”
She stops herself by clamping a hand to her mouth. Her gaze skitters over to Emma with such dismay, my cheeks flush for her.
To Emma’s credit, she raises her eyes skyward and shakes her head in disdain.
“Thank you,” I say quickly, then beeline through the stacks and to the back, where a map of the Briarcliff township, including the academy’s grounds, is drawn to scale and takes up the entire wall.
“Whoa,” I murmur, my eyes tracing the detailed forest terrain and hand-drawn buildings interspersed throughout. Gray roads cut through the greenery, dividing into smaller roadways like tentacles brushing against buildings, cliffs and oceanic shores.
An invisible string pulls taut against my vision, halting my scan with anchoring precision. The jagged end of Lover’s Leap emerges from the northeast corner, as ominous in acrylic as it is in real life.
“Why are you here?”
The voice smacks between my shoulders and jolts down my spine. I spin, my heart pattering harder than expected.
Emma stands in between two stacks, her hulking form casting her in the light of a fabled hunchback escaping from one of the books lining either side of her.
“Research,” I manage to say.
Emma’s frown lines grow deeper. “On what?”
“The—the founders.” I gesture behind me, where a bench-length glass display showcases the Briar artifacts I haven’t gotten a chance to study yet.
“Nobody comes to the public library.”
“Exactly.” I arch a brow. “I assume that’s why you’re here, too.”
“I have reason to be.” Emma takes a step forward, her focus wavering on mine. She ends up losing whatever inner battle she’s waging, and stares at the line of Briar-owned items.
“Such crap,” she mumbles.
I follow her movements by turning until we’re both facing the display. “Why do you say that?”
“They make it seem like he was such a good man. That he did this world a favor by creating this town and building a school for boys.”
Emma studies the glass case with dangerous wonder, her upper lip frozen mid-sneer. Standing this close to her, I notice the faint, puckered scar tissue running along the side of her face and cauliflowering around her ear.
Emma’s body stills, but her eyes snap to mine with the speed and haunting eeriness of a ventriloquist’s doll. “Problem?”
The after-effects of Emma’s attack are well-known, but the details kept strictly mute. I never read up on what happened to her, because it was none of my business and—if I’m to be honest—irrelevant to my investigation into Piper’s death.
Or so I thought.
I’m disappointed in my reaction, though. This is the type of violence my mother faced as a full-time job when she was alive, and sometimes, she couldn’t help but bring it home. I’ve been exposed to this kind of brutality, in vicious, high definition.
“No,” I say, covering my faux pas by focusing on the display. “It takes a lot of hatred to despise not only a school, but the entire town that comes with it.”
“It sure does.” I feel Emma’s stare against my profile burning holes into my pores. “But I’ve had a lot of time to nurture it.”
“Is that why you’re back? To get some answers?”
Emma cocks her head in my periphery. “Answers have many different interpretations.” She pauses. “Perhaps I’m here to let them know they haven’t won.”
I turn to her. “Who’s ‘they’?”
Emma notches up her chin. Something tells me she rarely makes a mistake with what she says … not anymore.
“You tell me,” she says. “Have you discovered anything while doing your research?”
“Not much. Just a hidden society within the academy,” I deadpan.
Emma sucks in a breath, but her stare remains level, and dare I say, a flicker of respect shines within. “You shouldn’t be spouting off about that.”
I motion to where we are. “I’m not exactly screaming it from the rooftops.”
“But you’re certain they exist.”
I cling to this brief spurt of bravery. Emma’s testing me, and I have the sense that out of everyone, she may be the one to actually speak the truth. “I even have names for them. The Nobles. The V—”
“Don’t say it,” Emma says in a wet whisper. My side presses harder into the display when her face transforms from assessing to deadly. “Don’t you dare repeat that name, not if you don’t want them to come for you.”
My breath becomes smaller in my chest. Tighter. “Did they attack you? Is that why you set the fire?”
Now, oh, now, I wish I’d grown Emma’s ability to carefully craft a sentence before giving it the mistake of a voice.
Emma bares her teeth, her eyes like fossilized amber, except hers melts to reveal the creature encased within. “Who told you that?”
“N-no one. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.” Fuck, I’m a terrible liar. “I meant did they set the fire and trap you?”
Emma steps into my space, so close, her nose nearly brushes mine. Her breath heats my lips to a terrible level, but I can’t retreat. Not if I want her to believe me.
“You knew Piper,” I say, despite her flaring nostrils. “Do you think she killed herself, or was she attacked by the same person who hurt you?”
“How dare you?”
Exactly. How dare I. I’m putting my theories into dangerous existence, threading a needle so deadly, two women have been brutalized from it—one killed.
“If I don’t ask the questions,” I say, clenching my trembling fingers into fists, “no one else will. Piper deserves justice. You deserve justice.”
“Piper was a twat, and you don’t know me from shit,” Emma says, but she backs off, the stale air of the library reclaiming its place between us. “This is because of my brother, isn’t it? Don’t tell me, the new girl falls for the perfect, popular guy, but he doesn’t return the favor. So, in order to gain his everlasting gratitude, she tries to solve his twin sister’s assault and his ex-girlfriend’s death. Do I have that right? God.” Emma lets out a cruel laugh. “So pathetic.”
My lips part on a snarl. “You have it completely twisted. It’s this place.” I spread my arms. “This school. There’s a poison here, and terrible truths are covered up.” I point to Thorne Briar’s business log, open to some random page of handwritten profits and losses. “I’ve discovered enough to know that it doesn’t start with Chase. It doesn’t begin with Piper. Nor did it first strike with you. It begins with Rose Briar.”
I let out a whoosh of breath, unused to such emotion crossing over my tongue, not since it was capped and bottled in an involuntary psychiatric hold. I vowed never to put myself in a position where dry pills were forced down my throat again.
Yet … here I’ve landed.
Double fuck.
Emma stumbles back, her face, stiffened with old scars, spasming with long forgotten muscles. Fear. Apprehension. Denial.
Her skin takes on a ghostly cast, and her hand screeches against the glas
s display where she drags it, her palms soaked in sweat. “Do you like the way my face looks? Because I’m pretty sure yours will end up this way, too.”
“So far,” I say quietly, ignoring the spasm of panic in my chest, “not one person has truly acknowledged the possibility that these societies exist. Until you.”
Emma regains enough composure to snap, “Both Piper’s and my tragedies, as you idiots call them, circle around Chase. Why don’t you be as unoriginal as everyone else and consider him to be the problem?”
“Is he?”
Emma flinches.
“Because in the rare times he’s talked about you, it’s been with nothing but love and defense,” I say. “And he punishes himself. I hear it whenever he utters your name—he thinks he’s responsible for what happened, not because he wielded the weapon, but because he wasn’t there to protect you.”
I’m stunned by my statement, and I press my fingers to my lips at the continued passion, draining my spirit faster than I can contain it.
Emma eyes grow small with suspicion. “Chase doesn’t talk about me. With anyone.”
I swallow, take one last look at the glass case, then come back to Emma. “My mistake, then.”
I’m brushing past her before Emma can think up a proper, scathing response, and hurry to collect my things.
But I can never escape. The Briars will follow me, and so will the Harringtons and Stones.
I’ve introduced myself to their demons, and they will continue their dark suffocation until I unearth the hidden details that can one day set them free.
That is … if I can do it before they bury me, too.
8
There’s no wait to take the Briarcliff chauffeur service back home. And thankfully, no forced Briarcliff carpool either.
Addisyn must still be off with her boyfriend, and I left Emma within the shadowed recesses of the library, so I’m safe from them, for now.
My feet hit the asphalt of the school driveway along with a deep urge to see a friendly face and immerse myself in banal activities, like painting my nails or watching garbage TV. Anything to get my mind off the spindly critters circling the back of my brain, spinning their web of names.
Virtue (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 2) Page 5