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

by Baum, Spencer

  “How is your evening, My Love?” Dominic said.

  “Just taking care of a little business,” said Melissa. “Merv arrived with our little chatty pants from Mexico. He’s out in the swamp now. I’ll go take care of him later.”

  Laughing, Dominic put down his paint brush and turned towards her. They gazed in each other’s eyes for a moment, then he kissed her, softly.

  “I was just on the phone with Seth back in Washington,” Dominic said.

  “Seth and Martin, our two little eyes on the street,” Melissa said with a smile. “What did Seth have to report?”

  “Since we left, Nicky has visited Art Tremblay’s house, and been visited by Jill Wentworth and Annika Fleming. Jill and Annika are her closest associates. Nicky has visited with one or both of them every day this week.”

  “Interesting,” Melissa said. “I don’t know Annika Fleming or her family, but the Wentworths…”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Dominic. “It would be out of character for them to be involved with Falkon’s plot.”

  “Maybe it isn’t them,” said Melissa. “Maybe it’s just her.”

  “She is the only child of two parents who are exceptionally committed to the clan,” Dominic said.

  “Don’t we all go through a phase where we rebel against our parents?” said Melissa.

  Dominic nodded in agreement. “Don’t we all,” he said.

  “Now that Merv and Juan are taken care of, we have no further appointments for a few days,” Melissa said. “I’ll go to Washington for Brawl in the Fall. I will check on Annika and Jill and see what’s in their minds, and perhaps I’ll pay a personal visit to my little pet and ask her for an update myself.”

  “May I come with you?” Dominic asked.

  “Sorry, Love. One of us must tend to the Farm.”

  She saw the disappointment in his eyes. It was so much more fun to go snooping in Washington than to stay on the Farm and raise the slaves.

  “If you’d like, I’ll let you have the human who’s roaming around in the swamp as we speak,” said Melissa. “He isn’t terribly fast or clever, but he’ll be a fun one to hunt nonetheless. He’s accustomed to being the predator, not the prey.”

  Dominic smiled. “Sounds like a pleasant enough way to spend an evening.”

  “Have a good time. Bring me back his head when you’re done, will you? I’d like to send it in the mail to his family. I fear there may be a few of them who know too much about us, and need some incentive to keep quiet.”

  Chapter 16

  Vince Weir stepped through the glass doors of The Tumbler at a quarter past noon. He immediately felt out of place.

  The Tumbler was neither restaurant nor bar, but instead was a club, as in, “My rotary group is meeting tomorrow at the supper club,” or, “Let’s talk about it over lunch at the club.”

  Clubs like this were for the blue blazer crowd, not for Vince, and as he emerged from the lobby and into the club proper, he could sense the eyes of a hundred pencil-necks turning his way, judging him, dismissing him. Even though he was a senior at Thorndike from a family who had direct ties to the immortals, even though he had a net worth that was one zero larger than the posers who lunched at “the club,” they still sneered at him when he wasn’t looking. To these people, Vince was a bumpkin and a dumb jock, and all the money on earth couldn’t change that.

  A man with blonde hair and skin that looked puffy and soft greeted Vince at the front counter.

  “Table for one?” the man said. He wore a black vest that squeezed his torso like sausage meat and, combined with the bulging of his eyes, gave the impression that he was about to burst.

  “No, I’m meeting someone in the Yellow Room,” Vince said.

  “Ahh….very good. Come with me.”

  The Tumbler’s many private dining rooms made it a hot spot for DC paper pushers, or “Puffed-up Pastries” as Vince’s dad would call them. It seemed patently unfair that so many rich people were like these pastries, what with their fat asses and jowly cheeks, their girly haircuts, their whiney voices. Where Vince came from, you didn’t sit on your ass at some posh lunch spot and finagle your way to wealth. You stood up and took what was yours.

  A couple years at Thorndike had taught him that Washington didn’t work that way. Most of the families at this school had slid into the big money on a greasy layer of lawyers. Vince had always assumed his family’s methods were superior. He had walked around campus with a chip on his shoulder, convinced that when the time came for him to be an adult, when push came to shove, he would crush all these Washington fruitcakes with ease.

  As sausage-man opened the door to the Yellow Room, and Vince saw his hostess sitting there waiting for him, he wasn’t so sure anymore. This girl wasn’t about to let anyone crush her.

  “Hello Vince, glad you could make it.”

  He stepped inside. The door slid shut behind him and he approached the table, slowly.

  “Hello, Kim.”

  He took a seat and opened the menu.

  “I’ve already ordered for us,” Kim said. “We’ll be getting a sampler of the chef’s finest dishes this afternoon. I hope you’re hungry.”

  He wasn’t hungry at all, but he didn’t tell her that. He reached for a glass of water and took a long drink. When he put it down again, he realized he’d probably grabbed the wrong glass. Why did they put so many waters on a table when only two people would be eating?

  “You know where I’ve always wanted to go, Vince?”

  Vince shook his head.

  “Australia.”

  The word hung in the air for a bit and Vince wondered if he was supposed to say something, if this was some kind of test he was already failing.

  “Australia, eh?” He put his hand around his water glass and spun it gently with his fingers.

  “Yes. I’d start in Sydney, staying at a resort on the beach. I’d go snorkeling and parasailing, do some rock climbing.”

  “I didn’t know you were into all that outdoorsy stuff,” Vince said.

  “Oh, I’d go to the opera house too,” said Kim. “I’d put on my best evening attire—did you know my family owns a diamond necklace worth over a million dollars?”

  Vince imagined Kim wearing a million dollar necklace. In the vision, Kim was wearing the same see-through black dress she had worn to the Masquerade. She looked good in that dress. Not jaw-dropping turn-your-head good, but pretty damned good nonetheless. Certainly doable.

  But more than doable and good, she had looked powerful that night, and now, in the vision of Kim that Vince held in his mind, a diamond necklace hanging above her oh-so-perky boobs, Kim looked like someone ready to take on the world.

  She looked like an immortal.

  What a stupid ass he’d been. Vince had gone to Nicky’s after-party because Annika told him to. It was that simple. It was how things had always worked since freshman year. Vince was just one of a huge group who deferred to Annika on all questions about social graces, from what tie he should wear to which girl he should date. For someone like Vince, who grew up in a culture far different than the one at Thorndike, Annika was a godsend. If there was any doubt in your mind of how to act, of how high society would respond, you went to Annika for the correct answer. So when Annika’s text came out after the Masquerade it seemed only right to do what she said.

  Vince was half-way to Kim’s party at the White House when all that business started—if only he had ignored his phone! If only he hadn’t been so loopy from wine and women and song and the presence of the immortals. He had danced with two of them that night and they’d left him in a total stupor. He was barely lucid enough to get his ass to any after-party, much less the right one. When Annika started insisting that everyone needed to be at Nicky’s, he just took her word for it. Of all the stupid, bone-headed things he had done in his life…

  In the end, like most of Vince’s problems, this was his dad’s fault. Vince’s dad was so determined to have his only son grow up
in his own image, so insistent on “giving him the opportunities that I never had,” that he left Vince all jacked up in the head. What kind of place is the Las Vegas strip for a little kid? Gambling and hookers and porn and fighting—Vince’s father owned the Dionysus Hotel and Casino and insisted on bringing his son there all the time. Little Vince, roaming the casino, taking in all the bedlam, wondering when it would be his turn to play.

  That’s the thing about being a kid in Las Vegas. There’s fun stuff all around you, but you don’t ever get to do any of it. It’s all off-limits until you’re older.

  In its way, it was a brutal childhood, and to this day there was nothing that angered Vince more than the thought of somebody having fun without him. That was another reason he latched onto Annika. She was a girl who attracted fun like a magnet. When he got that text from her saying Nicky’s party was where the fun was, he listened. He obeyed.

  Now, three and a half days later, he was convinced he had chosen wrong. Annika, for all her intuition about these things, had backed the wrong horse.

  His doubts began the morning after the Masquerade, when his Aunt Gertrude woke him up and told him all of DC society was buzzing about Nicky Bloom.

  “I’ve been on the phone all morning,” she said. “All anyone wants to talk about is this new girl.”

  “That’s right…there’s a new girl at school,” Vince said. “We all went to her after-party.”

  “Who’s we? How many of you went?”

  “I don’t know…twenty?”

  Later that day, Vince would have to round that estimate down some. His aunt and her gossip circle had assembled a complete guest list of Nicky’s after-party.

  “Fourteen!” she shouted. “Do you know how many showed up at Kim’s? Do you? A lot more than fourteen, I can tell you that. I can’t fathom what you must have been thinking. Kim Renwick is going to be the immortal from your class. We’ve all known that much since you were very young. We talked about this, Vince. When you moved here you and I had a long talk about the way people behaved in this town and what happens to those who want to ruffle feathers. Your father trusted me to keep you in line. He is going to just flip when he hears this!”

  Just flip. Boy, did he ever just flip. Five minutes into the phone conversation with his dad, Vince was sorry he’d ever heard of Nicky Bloom.

  “The only function this new girl is going to serve in all of this is to show Kim her true friends. The Masquerade was a test, Vince, and you failed. Now the whole family is at risk. You don’t get on the wrong side of the immortals. You need to make this right”

  “Okay, Dad. I’ll fix this.”

  Vince intended to call Kim that night, but he couldn’t summon the nerve to do it. Fortunately for him (or unfortunately), he had an email from Kim in his Inbox the next morning.

  I want to have lunch with you, the email said. I’ve reserved us a room for Wednesday afternoon at The Tumbler. Let me know if you can make it.

  It was as if she knew he was ready to talk. He’d heard that about the Renwicks. People said they could be like mind-readers if they wanted something from you.

  Now he was here with Kim, talking about her desire to vacation in Australia and about her family’s million dollar necklace.

  Kim put on a big, plastic smile. “Let’s talk about why we’re here,” she said. “Shall we?”

  Vince nodded.

  “I was disappointed when you didn’t come to my party,” Kim said. “I thought I could count on you.”

  “Yeah, about that…I’m sorry,” Vince said. “I was pretty drunk and I made a poor choice.”

  “Lots of people were drunk, Vince.”

  He pulled his knees together, as if preparing himself for a kick to the groin.

  “I wish I could take it back,” he said. “I want to make it up to you.”

  “I’m listening,” Kim said.

  Vince noticed a slight quiver in his fingers. How embarrassing this all was. Vince was supposed to be one of the tough guys at school. In just a few days he’d be one of the boys from the senior class who would step into a ring for Brawl in the Fall. He had been trained from youth at the most expensive fighting gyms in Vegas. And he was the son of the most powerful casino magnate in the world, a man who stared down mob bosses and prize fighters and every manner of shark. It didn’t make sense for him to cower before a prissy rich girl from DC. But here he was, shivering like a lost puppy.

  “Well, as you know, I’ll be an entrant in Brawl in the Fall--”

  “I don’t want to talk about Brawl in the Fall,” said Kim, putting some ice in her voice. “Brawl in the Fall is a given. If you win, you will bid on me at the Date Auction with all of your prize money plus whatever else your family can afford, which is a lot, isn’t it, Vince?”

  His eyes were looking down at his drink. “Yes,” he said.

  “You and I both know why your family’s done so well these past few years,” Kim said. “In the middle of a recession that’s demolished property values in Vegas more than anywhere else in America, the Weir family has been doing fine. More than fine. Isn’t that right?”

  And there it was. She knew. Of course she knew. Her dad was Galen Renwick. They always knew. That was why she was a shoe-in to win Coronation—she knew everything. That was why Vince’s decision to go to Nicky’s party rather than Kim’s was the dumbest one he ever made.

  He cleared his throat, making a dry, ugly sound. “That’s right, my family’s doing well,” he said, following the words with a quick gulp from his water.

  The door behind him opened and the waiter came in with a rolling tray of food. Vince and Kim sat silently while the waiter laid a series of plates on the table between them, announcing each dish as he placed it down.

  “Pear and Walnut Salad with Blue Cheese Crumbles...Chilean Sea Bass…”

  Vince didn’t want to continue the conversation with Kim, but he didn’t like that he had to pause it either. With every plate the waiter put down, the tension increased. It was as if a watch was ticking somewhere and would stop when the last plate of food was down and the waiter was gone.

  “…and finally,” the waiter said, “spinach ravioli with white wine cream sauce. Enjoy.”

  The wheels on the waiter’s cart squealed quietly as he rolled it out of the room.

  “Dig in,” Kim said.

  “Oh no, ladies first, I insist.”

  “I’m not eating,” said Kim. “This is for you.

  Vince sat still, totally befuddled, and wondered if this was some kind of trick.

  “You’re not eating?”

  “I had a big breakfast,” Kim said. “Go ahead. Eat. This is some of the best food in town.”

  “Okay…I guess I don’t even know where…”

  “Here,” Kim said, reaching across the table and grabbing Vince’s empty plate. “Let me do it for you.”

  Kim assembled a plate of food for Vince with portions from each of the dishes in front of them, lecturing him as she did so.

  “You made a mistake, Vince, and you want a chance for redemption, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Vince said, his voice cracking like it did when he was in eighth grade.

  “Now is your chance,” Kim said. “I want to hear it from your own lips. I want to see how loyal you’ll be when I’m immortal. Tell me what I already know, and don’t leave out a single detail. Prove to me that I can trust you again.”

  She put the plate of food down in front of him. Vince stared at it, getting a queasy feeling in his stomach as he processed what Kim just said to him.

  “Tell you what you already know?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Kim. “I want you to confess the sins of the Weir family to me. Right now.”

  “I….can’t we agree that I’m going to bid on you at the auction and that my family will support you all the way to--”

  “No! We can do no such thing, and you’d better watch your tone with me starting right now or so help me I won’t simply kill you after I’m immo
rtal, I’ll make you into my fucking slave for a year first, and I’ll make sure everyone in our class comes to my mansion and sees you with the rest of the slaves. I’ll put you in a white shirt and black pants and make you serve them drinks and clean up after them and bow before them and scrub the mother fucking toilet, Vince. That’s the future that awaits you if you don’t watch yourself. So let’s start again, I want you to tell me all the Weir family’s dirtiest secrets and I want you to do it now.”

  Vince was frozen, competing voices in his mind giving contradictory advice. One voice told him that Kim was full of it, that even if she won she couldn’t just enslave him, that this was beyond uncool, that nobody talked to him this way, that he was Vince Weir and he didn’t stand for this and he should get up now and tell Kim to go fuck herself.

  But another voice told him that he was about to make the same mistake he made at the Masquerade. That voice spoke in his father’s deep, gravelly tones. It said, Time to cut your losses, Vince. Yes, Kim was making him furious, but she held all the cards. She was going to win the contest. It was a pipedream to think otherwise. She was going to win and the first thing she would do after she won was go after her enemies.

  And even if she didn’t win, she knew. She was Galen Renwick’s daughter and the Renwicks always knew.

  It was time to give her what she wanted. Time to confess.

  Vince took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  A long second of silence passed.

  “I think my dad is embezzling from Palace Immortalis,” he said.

  Kim reached across the table and put her hand on Vince’s arm. It was a soft, unnerving touch.

  “Go on,” she said quietly.

  “We don’t own Palace Immortalis,” Vince said.

  “Of course you don’t. That’s Daciana’s casino,” said Kim.

  “My dad manages that casino for her, and he sees that it’s more profitable than all of his,” Vince said. “It’s so profitable that my dad can skim some off the top and the immortals never notice.”