Dead Silent

by Sharon Jones

  Michael nodded.

  ‘So they’re in some kind of club? Conal…Ria…Lucy…and Danny?

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And that would make the party we’ve just been to—’

  ‘—A recruitment drive.’

  ‘But I didn’t hear anyone mention being in a club. And why would Professor Madigan be there? Why would Dad have been invited?’

  Michael glanced down at her. ‘Maybe they’re members too.’

  ‘But if Dad’s a member, why hasn’t he said something?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘There are all kinds of student societies. Some are the usual type, like the societies we have at school, but some are more exclusive. The Pitt Club’s the most famous. It’s men only and I think you have to have been to the right school to be asked to join.’

  ‘I’m guessing Windermere Grammar doesn’t count.’

  Michael laughed. ‘Nope. Some of these societies have been going for hundreds of years and the membership is a closely guarded secret.’

  ‘Sounds like a coven. Makes you wonder what they’re up to.’

  They fell silent as they continued through the freezing fog, up the icy cobbled street towards Trinity. Michael’s arm kept her pressed up against his side, but no warmth radiated from him. By the time they reached the gate of the college she was glad to have an excuse to draw away from him and talk to the porters.

  ‘Should we find your dad?’ Michael asked as they dawdled from the lodge towards their rooms.

  ‘He’d have called if he was free.’

  The fog seemed to play with the perspective of the place. Although she could see shadows of the roofs and towers, they seemed further away, as if the fog had forced the walls apart. It came as a surprise when they reached the corner of the court as soon as they did.

  Poppy sucked in a ragged breath of damp air. This was turning out to be the weekend from hell. After losing her nerve, Dad catching her not at it and then finding a guy dead, pissing off Michael was just the icing on the cake. Wasn’t it enough that there’d been a fatality?

  They turned into M staircase and Poppy wearily climbed the stairs behind Michael. He opened the door to the corridor and let her go first. One of the lights embedded in the ceiling was on the blink. It flashed on and off like a strobe, giving the corridor a strange vibe. There was no sign of life, but on the floor outside the door to what must be Ria’s room, someone had left a note. Michael bent over and pushed it closer to the door and then took his time opening the door to their rooms. Even when he nodded for her to go ahead of him, he didn’t look at her.

  She threw the plastic bag she was carrying to the floor, turned to him and kissed him. She was afraid he would push her away, but he didn’t. His lips were hot against hers and as he relaxed into the kiss she reached under his jacket, tugged at his shirt, freeing it from his trousers, and slid her freezing cold hands around his back. He jumped, broke from her lips and grinned.

  ‘You’re going to pay for that,’ he said running his hands over her hair.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Uh huh.’ An arm hooked around her back, pressed her to him and with his other hand he tickled her side. She squirmed against the assault. Was this his idea of getting his own back?

  ‘Agh! No, no! Stop it! Not fair!’

  ‘Shhh! You’re making too much noise,’ he whispered, kissing her, drowning out her squeals. There was only one way she could think of to get him to stop. She slid her hand to the front of his trousers.

  He gasped and threw back his head. ‘Shit!’

  Poppy couldn’t help grinning. ‘Going to stop that now?’ she asked.

  ‘Depends. Are you going to stop that?’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  For a minute he stared at her as if struggling with the answer. His chest rose and fell against hers in short quick breaths.

  Her throat tightened and her head filled with a strange whooshing noise.

  Michael shook his head and pushed her away. ‘This is so screwed up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not going to sleep with you.’

  Now she really did feel sick. ‘You don’t want to?’

  Michael ran a hand through his hair. ‘No. You don’t want to. You’re only doing this because we argued and you think it’ll be a shortcut to making everything OK. That’s not a good reason for us to sleep together.’

  Was he serious? Anger hummed through her veins. ‘Don’t talk to me like…like I don’t know what I want…like you know me better than I know myself. I want this. I want to have sex with you. There, I’ve used the word and everything!’

  Michael laughed but he wasn’t smiling. ‘Then I’m really sorry that you’re not going to get what you want. Go it solo if you want, but for now my trousers are closed for business.’

  What? Her mouth dropped open. Then her cheeks flared hot.

  ‘Oh my God!’ She took a step back.

  Now he was smiling, damn him. She turned away from him and headed for her room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he called.

  ‘I’m going it solo! You are not invited.’

  Michael grabbed her elbow just as a terrifying scream echoed through the building.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It sounded like an animal being slaughtered. Poppy’s heart raced, all her muscles locked tight and she could do nothing but stare at Michael. Then, like someone had opened a release valve, both of them ran at the door.

  He got there first and yanked it open.

  Several feet away a girl was kneeling. Her long blonde hair spilled over her back and shoulders and onto the floor. In the flashing light she seemed to rear up in slow motion. She threw her head back, her shoulders shook and the noise that came from her was like nothing Poppy had ever heard before. She flopped forward again, clasping her chest like it hurt too much to breathe.

  Poppy pushed past Michael and kneeled in front of the weeping girl. She squeezed her shoulder, not wanting to frighten her.

  The girl looked up. Poppy almost didn’t recognise her as the beauty who’d worn that red dress and had two guys hanging off her every word. Her face was too twisted by pain and grief.

  She set an arm around Ria and pulled her close. Ria’s head settled heavily on her shoulder at the same time as a sheet of notepaper fluttered to the floor, slipping in and out of view as the corridor light flashed on and off.

  ‘Call Dad,’ she whispered to Michael.

  He nodded and headed back to their set.

  Ria sniffed loudly and pulled out of Poppy’s arms.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  The girl’s eyelids were so red with crying that her irises shone unnaturally blue in the flashes of light. ‘You look like him,’ she whispered, hoarsely.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jim.’

  Poppy shrugged a shoulder. ‘Less stubble.’

  The girl’s lip curved in the beginning of a smile that was stopped in its tracks when her gaze fell on the piece of paper. Poppy reached out a hand to pick it up but the note was wrenched from her fingers so swiftly that it almost tore.

  ‘It’s private,’ Ria snapped, pressing it to her chest. Her fist tightened and the paper scrunched like a fan. She was shaking. Properly shaking.

  ‘Can I make you a drink? Tea or something?’ Poppy asked.

  Ria laughed. ‘Yes, tea will make it all better, won’t it?’ The girl wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and shakily pushed herself to her feet. She was wearing a long black dress that billowed at the sleeves and looked like something you’d wear at Halloween…if you were dressing up as a witch.

  Relieved to get away from the flashing hall light that was starting to give her a headache, Poppy followed Ria into a room that stank of cheap incense and candles.

  ‘I heard it was your boyfriend who died,’ Poppy said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t feel like you have to try to make me feel better. You didn’t know him and I
can’t stand fake sympathy,’ the girl barked back without even looking at her.

  ‘It wasn’t fake. If something happened to my boyfriend I – well, I don’t know how I’d feel, but I’m guessing it would feel like shit.’

  The girl ran her hand over her long white-blonde hair and sniffed. ‘Shouldn’t have been him. Of all of us… It shouldn’t have been him.’

  All of who? The society they belonged to?

  Poppy’s gaze drifted over the Afghan rugs, messy bookcases and empty wine bottles to the corner by the window where a low table had been draped in a black velvet cloth that bore an embroidered silver star within a circle. It wasn’t the usual pentagram – the symbol beloved of all brands of Pagan belief – this one was upside down. A chill ran up Poppy’s spine. On top of the table the burnt-out stub of an incense stick poked out of the mouth of a snarling dragon. Next to that was a small bowl containing what looked like burnt bits of paper and beside that a deep red unlit pillar candle. It was an altar. And if she had to guess, she’d say someone had been practising ritual magic…of a sort.

  Ria caught her looking at the altar just as Michael came through the door.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re in the same God squad as your father?’ she said.

  ‘Who, Poppy?’ Michael replied. ‘You’ve got to be joking. She lives in a house filled with that kind of thing.’ He nodded to the altar. Michael had hung around her house enough to spot a bit of magic when he saw it. Unfortunately, he had no clue about the differences.

  She turned back to see the girl eyeing her with much more interest. Ice slithered down her spine. There was something about this girl that set her nerves on edge, and it wasn’t just that she looked a bit like Michael’s ex. ‘Should I make some tea?’

  ‘No. I’ll do it.’ Ria grabbed a kettle from the floor and disappeared next door.

  ‘Your dad’s just getting out of something. He said he’d be over soon as he could,’ Michael said, quietly.

  Poppy wandered over to the altar. She wondered if her dad had ever been in here and seen this. She could make out fragments of writing on the burnt pieces of paper. She’d never really been into ritual magic – but her Goddess-loving mum had dragged her to all kinds of workshops, one of which had been on spellcraft. She knew some people wrote their spells and then burnt them with incense. One of the scorched fragments had the letters CON printed on it in black ink. CON? What could that be? Unless it was the beginning of a name…like Conal.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Michael asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she murmured.

  Next to the dragon incense burner there was a screwed-up piece of paper, the only one untouched by flames. It was the note. Poppy glanced at the bedroom door. She had no right to look at it – like Ria said, it was private. But with everything that was going on… She unfurled the paper and read:

  Danny was the first to be fitted for his wings.

  Who will be next?

  A knock at the door made her nearly jump out of her skin. She dropped the note back onto the altar, just as both Dad and Ria walked in through different doors.

  Dad nodded to Poppy and then turned to Ria.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asked.

  Ria sighed and looked away. ‘You don’t need to be here. Danny’s dead, end of story.’

  ‘I’m not sure it is the end of the story, though, are you?’

  The question sounded weighed down with meaning. Almost like Dad knew about the contents of the note she’d just read. What the heck was going on here?

  Dad turned back to Poppy. His hair was sticking out all over the pace and his cheeks were grey and gaunt. ‘Poppy, would you mind giving us a moment?’

  She shook her head, but actually, yes, she did mind. There was something going on, and she got the feeling he was getting rid of her so they could talk openly about it, not so Dad could be all pastoral and there, there!

  ‘Come on, let’s go back,’ Michael said, heading to the door.

  Dad scowled after him and Poppy couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Oh, that’s right! You don’t want me here, but you don’t want me behind a closed door with the guy you’ve known since he was in flaming nappies either.

  She sighed and, in silence, followed Michael out.

  Once back in the study, Michael flopped into one of the brown easy chairs and propped his feet on the ringed and scuffed coffee table. Poppy took the other chair and mirrored his pose. She leaned her head against the backrest and closed her eyes. Her head hurt, she was cold and she couldn’t erase the memory of the words on the note.

  Who will be next?

  She hugged her arms over her chest, tried to beat back a shudder and failed. She heard movement and opened her eyes to see Michael disappearing into his room. He came back a few seconds later with the quilt off his bed, laid it over her and tucked it in until she was cocooned up to the neck.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He smiled, rubbed his eyes and then squinted like he couldn’t see properly.

  ‘You should take out your contacts.’

  ‘Yeah. Won’t be a second.’ He retreated to the bedroom and then reappeared a few minutes later wearing the square-framed tortoiseshell glasses she’d persuaded him to get. They really suited him, even if he did hate them.

  He retook his seat and put his feet on the table next to hers. He still had on his interview outfit; navy blazer over the same coloured sweater and white shirt. He hadn’t worn the tie his mother had made him pack, as she knew he wouldn’t. He even still had on his blue and red striped scarf. And with the glasses… Jesus! Could he get any more preppy? He should have got through his interview on fashion alone.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  She realised she was smiling. ‘I was thinking how well you fit in here.’

  ‘There was more to it than that.’

  She shook her head. ‘Nope, that was pretty much it.’

  He smiled, but two seconds later he was looking serious again. He was going to want to talk and she just couldn’t. It already felt like there was a pneumatic drill pounding away at her skull. She closed her eyes again.

  ‘Pops?’

  She pretended not to hear. Something nudged her feet.

  ‘Hmm?’ She reluctantly opened her eyes.

  ‘What were you looking at in Ria’s room?’

  She sighed, sat up and pushed down the quilt. ‘That note that was left outside her room, I think it was from the murderer.’

  ‘What?’ Michael’s feet slipped from the coffee table, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It said something like, Danny was the first to get his wings, I wonder who’ll be next.’

  ‘Get his wings?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s all the angel stuff about? I just don’t get it.’

  ‘Maybe it’s something to do with the society.’

  Poppy shrugged. She reached under the duvet, grabbed her phone from her pocket, opened the search engine and typed in Cambridge and angels.

  The 3G signal wasn’t great, probably because the walls of the college were three foot thick, but eventually her search brought up a list of 10,500,000 results. That wasn’t going to work. It would take forever to go through them. She looked through the first few pages.

  ‘Anything?’ Michael asked.

  ‘There’s a tech company. Could that be it?’

  ‘Not unless it’s a student company.’

  ‘Don’t think so. I’ll try finding information on societies.’ She typed into the search engine Cambridge societies. That brought up a very helpful directory of university clubs, but how was she supposed to know which one she was looking for?

  ‘There’s hundreds of the damn things; African Prisons Project, War Gaming Society…nothing with angels.’

  ‘Try searching Cambridge, society plus angels,’ Michael said, reaching for his own phone.

  She entered the search terms and waited.

  And waited.

  ‘Damn stupid
phone!’

  Suddenly, the page loaded. The first hit was a Wikipedia entry on something called the Cambridge Apostles. She opened the page only to be faced with a picture of a familiar domed fountain beyond which was Trinity College Chapel.

  ‘Bingo,’ Poppy whispered. Her heart picked up speed and her fingers suddenly felt too big to be able to navigate the small touch screen.

  ‘You on the Wikipedia page for the Cambridge Apostles?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She scrolled down and read the text. The Cambridge Apostles were a secret society, sometimes referred to as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, founded in 1820 by someone called George Tomlinson.

  The Apostles sounded innocent enough – it was basically an exclusive debating society whose members fancied themselves to be a cut above the rest of the students. When they met someone would give a talk and then the members would vote on a question. The society was nicknamed the Apostles because originally there had been twelve of them.

  It all sounded a bit dull, until she got to the bit that said that although the active undergraduate members were called Apostles, those who had graduated were referred to as Angels.

  Poppy sat up. ‘Michael, old members are called Angels.’ The note had said Danny had been fitted for his wings. Was that the biggest graduation of all – death? ‘This has to be it.’ She continued reading. ‘Members swear an oath of secrecy and when they join have to hear a curse read that says they’ll die if they ever reveal the identity of the other members.’ That couldn’t have been taken too seriously over the years, because the Wikipedia entry also contained a list of former members.

  ‘I’ve heard of these guys,’ Michael said. ‘That’s it. Burgess was a member.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Guy Burgess was a student here – he went on to work for MI6 during the Cold War, but it turned out he was a double agent, spying for the Russians along with some of his friends from Cambridge. They called them the Cambridge Spy Ring.’ Michael flopped back in his chair like he’d been hit by a sledgehammer.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It could be coincidence, but at my interview I somehow got sidetracked into talking about the Cold War and I made a crack about the Cambridge Spy Ring. Professor Madigan said I shouldn’t believe everything that had been said about the subject. It was like she knew something.’ He sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘Y’know, Conal was being really nice to that Yaser guy. They were planning a trip to a strip club.’