Virtue (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 2)

by Ketley Allison

  I give a reassuring shake of my head. “I won’t say anything to anyone or make Eden’s life harder. You have my word.”

  “You’re a good kid, you know that?”

  I laugh self-consciously as I open the door.

  “Knew it the second you stepped off that train, all gangly and sweet.”

  This time, my smile is true, and I wave as he drives off.

  Yael’s compliment lightens my steps as I climb up the library stairs. No one has seen me in a good light since my mom, and I hadn’t known how much of a hole that perception left until Yael reminded me that, yes, I can be destined for good things.

  The library’s AC is still at full power when I head inside, and I fold my arms around myself as I nod to Darla. She perks right up, her scarlet-red nails glinting under the light and matching her cat-eye glasses. A paperback sits open at her desk, and I have no doubt the Duchess has been at it again.

  I don’t slow enough to chat, intent on hurrying to the back and meeting my mystery texter.

  Sadly, no one’s waiting for me when I get there, but I force myself to gather some patience. Maybe they were held up somewhere. Or, they had to get in line for Yael’s services. Who knows?

  To pass the time, I linger over the glass cases, installed at waist-level and featuring Thorne Briar’s personal items, reading the small placards detailing what they are.

  There’s his watch, the face cracked and fogged, but the gold touches everlasting. I skim over his ledgers, tap the glass over some leather riding gloves, and cock my head at one of the original bricks from the school’s building before coming across the original blueprint of the academy, and—

  I halt at the proposed design, somewhat shocked that the Wolf’s Den was sketched out from the beginning. Even back then, Thorne had it in his mind to call it a senior lounge, the blue cursive faded with age, but legible.

  Wolf’s Den. Upperclassmen Privilege Only.

  My eyes drift up, to the intricate detail of the map of Briarcliff, the roads painted in a bronze type of acrylic. In one corner, just above the glass displays, is a photo of the Briar family, Rose settled in the middle, between Thorne and Theodore Briar, with Richard and the other wives flanking them. With the help of the placard below the picture, I’m able to put names to faces. They’re standing outside Briarcliff Academy, and the brief inscription tells me this was opening day. September 10, 1920.

  I hold my breath. This photo was taken exactly one year before Rose plunged to her death.

  Rose is dark-haired, her curls a stark ebony in the black-and-white filter. She wears a pale dress with a hint of a smile on her lips while the men and women surrounding her are straight-backed and grim.

  She grins just like Emma did in her family photo, I muse. Except Emma lost her smile, not her life. Barely.

  “Are you finding these items as interesting as my class lectures, or was I the better story-teller?”

  I freeze at the voice, then ever so slowly, turn toward the familiar figure.

  Releasing my breath, I whisper, “Dr. Luke.”

  24

  Dr. Luke is more haggard than I remember, his natural tan highlighting the aging crevices on his face rather than giving him the healthy California glow I’d admired when I first met him.

  His chestnut hair is unwashed and flattened against his scalp, his linen button-up wrinkled as much as his slacks, and his eyes are so bloodshot and purple-lined, I doubt he’s slept in days. He offers a reassuring smile, but it’s stuttered and incomplete—the opposite of the disarming grin he’s used on his students.

  I back away in response, almost into the glass case. “Should you be talking to me?”

  Dr. Luke releases a forced laugh. “Probably not, no. But you’re not in any danger—from me. I like my women young, it’s true, but I also like them willing.”

  My stomach curdles at his perverted candidness. This isn’t the teacher I remember—the jovial, good-looking professor who gave boys and girls alike heart emojis for eyes.

  Then again, he was never the lovable teacher he purported to be.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, my gaze bouncing around the stacks behind him. I calculate the distance to the front desk.

  “Still haven’t connected the dots, have you?” Dr. Luke shoves his hands in his pockets. “C’mon, Cal, you’re smarter than this.”

  My gut clenches at my stepdad’s term for me, but luckily, my breakfast stays down. “You’re the one who texted me.”

  “That’s right.”

  I cock my head, pretending like I’m not frazzled by his appearance. “Why?”

  He sighs and steps closer, but when he sees me skitter back, he halts his steps and moves his hands in a calming gesture, like he’s approaching a shy horse.

  “I noticed your impressive power of deduction this semester,” he says. “You chose Rose Briar for your history paper. Notably, you had a theory that almost two hundred years ago, Briarcliff Academy fathered a secret society who knighted themselves the Nobles.”

  “Which you gave me a C for,” I mumble, then internally shake my head. My falling grades shouldn’t matter.

  Dr. Luke raises his brows. “For reasons I’m sure you can understand.”

  “You made it seem like I failed,” I say. “Because I was using my imagination instead of investigative research.”

  “You didn’t cite any materials after your statements that a society was borne under the Briars.”

  “Because I couldn’t,” I snap.

  “Because you were afraid of revealing your source?”

  I shake my head, remembering how Chase had managed to fool me with his father’s decoy. “It could’ve been just another way to screw with me. I was afraid to reference something that could’ve been faked.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Dr. Luke takes another step forward, but I don’t shrink back this time. I’m in public, of a sort. I’m safe.

  “You stumbled on a hidden relic. You found writings that were previously thought lost in a fire,” Dr. Luke says, his eyes alighting on mine. “Letters written in Rose Briar’s own hand.”

  I give a sharp inhale. “How do you know that?”

  Dr. Luke chuckles, but there’s no mirth. “I thought you an astute, if misguided, student. Don’t fail me now.”

  I take a moment to think, and a revelation takes hold. I whisper, “Piper.”

  “Indeed.”

  I say, “She’s the only other person who could’ve known the letter still existed. Because she found it first, then hid it.”

  “On my advice.” Dr. Luke lowers his voice, before continuing, “She confided in me. I was the only person she trusted. Not even her sister was a reliable confidant.”

  I refuse to believe him on sight, but I can’t fight the curiosity that slithers into the base of my throat. “Did she tell you what was in them?”

  Dr. Luke smiles. “Now, there’s the Callie Ryan I was expecting. In my time away, you’ve found out about the other half of the Nobles, didn’t you?”

  I raise my chin, refusing to give him the name. Just in case he’s baiting me.

  The crepe-like skin under his eye twitches, amused at my tactics. “The Virtues,” he supplies dryly. “Piper was disenchanted with her role among them. She thought there was some disguised malfeasance going on. Isn’t that cute? She searched for a forbidden secret within the secret society.”

  I shake my head, though his statement nudges for attention. “She wouldn’t dare tell you something like that. Societies have strict rules. You were an outsider. She’d get in huge trouble if it were ever found out she confided in you.”

  Dr. Luke angles his head. “She’s dead. So, there’s that.”

  I force my voice to keep working, despite my heart pounding in my ears. “The Virtues killed her?” I knew it.

  “Not quite.” Dr. Luke moves closer, until his body towers over mine. I recoil, but it’s like I’m caught under a scope of sunlight, unable to escape.

 
; “This is why I asked to see you,” he says. “I know who stole those pages in Piper’s diary.”

  I hiss in air, then respond coolly, “Those pages mean nothing now. Jack’s in custody.”

  “That idiot?” Dr. Luke scoffs. “He couldn’t kill a kitten if it bit him in the nuts. He’s a fall boy, just like I was, and just like you’ll become if you don’t start listening to me.”

  He grabs my arm, and I choke on a squeal, fighting against his hold, but he’s relentless. He growls, “I know about the chem lab destruction they’re blaming on you. The school arrest they’ve put you under. They’re forming the foundation for your instability, Callie. They know about your history. The psychiatric care you required after your mother’s death. They have people in play who will break your heart and your mind if you let them. They’re planning your downfall, and if you’ll just hold still instead of inching away from me, you will have the chance to heed my warning.”

  Abruptly, he lets go. I stumble at the shift in balance.

  “Or not,” he snaps. “Your choice.”

  I rub the spot he gripped, but don’t kick into a run and sprint the hell out of here.

  Everything he’s saying clangs in my head, along with a tolling of names, over and over.

  Piper. Emma. Eden.

  They all sparred with the Virtues and lost.

  Dr. Luke takes my slumped posture as permission to continue. “They’ve been using you as their pawn to cover up Piper’s murder. A Plan C, if you will—if you’ll forgive the coincidence of your name starting with the same letter. Or applaud them for their creativity.”

  Dr. Luke smiles, and for that brief span of time, he resembles the man I trusted to sit beside me when I was interrogated, because my stepdad and Lynda couldn’t be there. I wanted him as my guardian when Ahmar was so far away. This bashful, handsome man, whose grin always communicated it was going to be all right.

  Dr. Luke speaks, and what he says saves me from the bittersweet spell.

  “They led you to me,” he says. “They orchestrated your finding of Piper’s diary and the name Mr. S., then largely left it up to your clinical obsession to find out who the nickname belonged to. Your convictions may be wrong, but hell if you don’t pursue the destruction of your fellow man with all of your unstable heart.”

  Dr. Luke chortles, and it slithers down my spine.

  “And those missing pages in Piper’s diary?” he says. “That was their deliberate concealment of another potential suspect—Jack. She wrote all about her affair with him, how she was going behind her sister’s back, how much she enjoyed fucking the forbidden fruits of her professor and her sister’s boyfriend. And yes, Callie, she wrote about the unexpected pregnancy.”

  I lean against the glass display, hunching over and placing my hands on my thighs. Most of his speech could be construed as crazy conspiracies or a personal vendetta. But Piper’s missing entries? What he says they contain could very well be the truth. Why else tear them out?

  “How?” I ask through the curtain of my hair. “How could you know what she wrote?”

  “Before you moved in, I was in Piper’s room all the time,” Dr. Luke says above my head. “I snuck in through the stairs after hours and left before dawn. But when she slept, I’d read her diary. Why not? She was an enigma to me, this girl who reigned terror on her classmates but was a mouse in bed. I felt it was my duty to gain insight into her insecure and wretched mind, in case she ever wanted to use our affair against me.”

  “That only gives you more motive,” I grind out, turning my head enough to look at him. “She was cheating on you, and when she got knocked up, that must’ve pissed you off.”

  “Oh. I was pissed,” Dr Luke responds hoarsely. “But don’t take me for a fool. We always used protection.”

  I straighten, taking deep breaths. I was not going to be sick.

  “I was going to end things, anyway,” Dr. Luke continues. “This only made it easier. She called me from that party, upset and drunk, begging me to help her, and I went there to break it up and break up with her. She’d gone too far, calling me when her friends were around. Getting pregnant. She’d become a liability. With the way she was carrying on, there was no way she was keeping that baby, but that didn’t matter to me anymore. In that moment, she was stupid and pregnant. And when I left her, she was still stupid and pregnant. Because she was alive.”

  He flings callousness the way Falyn flings insults, but I can’t duck in time. I’m so appalled. I can’t look away from him.

  When Chase found out about the baby and that it was potentially his, he was beside himself. He wanted to be there for Piper and was so furious with himself for not seeing it sooner and saving her.

  Oh, Piper, I think. You chose the wrong guy.

  “The baby’s Jack’s,” I say, eyeing Dr. Luke. I have no idea if he’s heard the news or how he’ll react to it.

  He doesn’t flinch. “Yes. And who do you think that pissed off the most?”

  Dr. Luke crosses his arms, his heavy silence awaiting my answer. He’s studying me as if I should know outright, but it takes me a few seconds. Chase is exactly the type to sneak behind the curtains and orchestrate a scene the way he wants it, but I witnessed the raw devastation in his face when I told him Piper was pregnant, and either he is the best undiscovered actor America will never see, or he didn’t know.

  Then, there’s Piper’s friends, who would relish the hypocrisy, not end it by hurting Piper and stealing her secrets. They lived off Piper’s rules. Her enemies were their enemies. Her secrets were theirs. It was considered an honor to be part of her group and have her confide in you. Isn’t that what Eden said?

  The last name I think of, I stumble on. Mostly because it makes too much sense.

  I meet Dr. Luke’s eyes. “Addisyn.”

  He nods.

  “You’re saying Addisyn knew about her boyfriend cheating before Piper died. That she ripped out the pages in Piper’s diary.”

  Dr. Luke straightens, folds his hands behind his back, and levels his shoulders. “No, dear. I’m saying Addisyn killed her sister.”

  25

  Addisyn killed her sister.

  The sentence forms a circle in my brain, one end chomping at the other, like a snake eating its own tail, until nothing remains but the husk of Dr. Luke’s allegation.

  “Think about it, Callie,” he says.

  The library is suddenly cloying—too hushed, too stale, too warm. My arms itch, and I scrape at them through the denim of my jacket.

  “If I didn’t work out as a suspect,” he continues, “then they had Jack in place as the next one. These people, they plan, and human pawns are nothing if not variable. I could’ve come up with an alibi—which I did. Now, they’re directing their efforts at Jack, another innocent man. What if he’s next to admit an alibi? Yes, that baby was his, but he didn’t kill Piper. I know that, and the society knows that, because I’m positive Addisyn did.”

  I hold a hand to my head, my fingers digging into my scalp. “How are you so sure?”

  “Piper spoke about her sister often, and not on affectionate terms. They hated each other, were always in competition with one another. That need to excel was stoked by their mother, who encouraged their fights and lavished love upon the winner. The loser received the scraps. The chores, the humiliation and disdain, and the worst punishment: complete invisibility. This went on with everything from their academics, to dance, to rowing, to boys.”

  I level a look at him. “You are not a boy.”

  Dr. Luke concedes my point with what I now know is feigned bashfulness. “All too right. But my point is, Addisyn was always the loser.”

  “So, what? She killed Piper out of jealousy? Because Piper slept with her boyfriend?”

  A shimmer of disappointment runs through me, but I grip it with a firm inner hand. Piper’s dead. And if it was her sister, it probably was jealousy. Isn’t that the number one reason why people kill? Why should I ever be disappointed it’s not mo
re complicated than that?

  Because you want it to be the society. You want your instincts to be on point. For once.

  Dr. Luke clicks his tongue, regaining my attention. “No, Callie. It was jealousy over Piper being a member of the Virtues. Jack’s taking her sister as a side-piece merely provided her with an excuse.”

  I screw my eyes shut, despite my inner devil clawing for attention. We were right. “You’re wrong. Addisyn’s a Virtue. I’m sure of it. She was with the Cloaks who attacked me in the chem lab.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I open my eyes, where Dr. Luke remains straight-backed and focused. On me.

  “Continue with that line of thought,” he prompts.

  “I don’t…” I massage the back of my neck, picking up Dr. Luke’s facts like breadcrumbs leading me into an oven fire. “Something Falyn said that night. About Addisyn proving herself … oh, God. Addisyn was made a Virtue because she murdered her sister?”

  “Ding ding ding! They had to shut her up somehow. Addy was never the brightest, though she tried. Piper won their family competitions more often than not. And when Piper became a Virtue and Addisyn didn’t, well … to say that caused discord would be an understatement.”

  “And you know all this because Piper told you. Who would’ve been sworn to secrecy. ”

  Dr. Luke nods. “If Addisyn read what I did in Piper’s diary, oof.” Dr. Luke palms his chest. “What a way to find out the one thing you had over your perfect sister—happiness and a steady boyfriend—was nothing but a cruel joke. And Piper received a coveted, rare position in the Virtues, which you bet your ass she lorded over her sister, societal oath or not. I’d be fucking furious.”

  “Weren’t you? When you read it for yourself?”

  Dr. Luke makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Piper and I fucked. We screwed with each other. We trusted each other with forbidden secrets because we were forbidden. But don’t mistake what I did with her for love. I’ve made myself clear in that respect: I met with her that night to end things. I’d moved on.”