The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three)

by Baum, Spencer

  Then came news from Emmitt that Jill Wentworth was on the move in the middle of the night, news that her daddy sat on for two mother-fucking hours! Had Galen gotten his lazy ass out of bed at the moment when Emmitt called to report that Jill was at Meadowlark Memorial, they might have been able to do something about it! Instead, Galen Renwick, power broker feared by immortal and human alike, put his head back on his squishy pillow and went to sleep. By the time he was up again at dawn, it was already too late. Jill came and went from Meadowlark Memorial, and Emmitt, paragon of incompetence that he was, got his ass killed.

  A part of Kim admired Jill for that one. Who knew that Jill had all this spunk in her? First she turns the tables back on Kim with her own blackmail threats, then she kills the investigator the Renwicks had on her tail.

  Killed him, and left his body in the bushes for the Renwicks to find!

  That was hardcore. A bold, brilliant move that put the Renwicks on notice. Jill Wentworth played for keeps.

  “Oh my, would you look at that?” said Galen, huffing and puffing after a quick jog from the bushes, where Emmitt’s body still lay in the dirt.

  “That’s what I’m doing,” Kim said, really leaning into the sarcasm as she spoke.

  Galen crouched down in front of the tombstone and admired the rose.

  “It’s 18 karat,” he said, referencing the golden block on which the rose was mounted.

  “You’re blocking the sun,” Kim said. “It looks best when it’s getting some light.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Galen said, stepping back until his shadow wasn’t touching the rose.

  It was brilliant in the sunlight. Kim could only imagine how it looked when Jill saw it, the soft light of the moon dancing off the gemstones and metal.

  While every other grave in this cemetery had a wilted rose lying atop a patch of grass, this one plot in the northwest corner had a bejeweled rose fused onto a heavy block of solid gold. The gold lay flush with the ground, creating a shimmering yellow light underneath the rose.

  And the rose itself was the most spectacular piece of art Kim had ever seen. A stem made of platinum, cast with sharp thorns and curvy leaves, holding a head of perfectly shaped petals enameled to a brilliant red. Inside the flower, peeking between two enameled petals, was a round diamond that captured the sunlight and sent it out again with a rose-colored tint.

  Behind the rose was a small tombstone, where the second clue was written.

  “Tributes to kings, born and elected,” Galen began.

  “I can read Daddy,” said Kim. “Unless you’ve got some idea what it means, we don’t need to talk about it.”

  “Off the top of my head I don’t know,” said Galen. “And that’s a good thing. We don’t want it to be easy.”

  “We don’t want it to be found!” Kim said. “Now that Jill has found it, you can bet your ass she’ll tell everyone at school where it is! She doesn’t care who finds Nicky, so long as somebody does, and if a hundred kids get their eyes on this clue, one of them might solve it!”

  “Six-hundred-fifty-seven,” Galen said, totally oblivious to the ranting of his daughter. “It’s strange there’s a number in the last line. Six-hundred-fifty-seven claims to the eternal. That will be the key to answering it. The rest of the clue is vague, but a number that specific is something a computer can latch onto. We’ll figure it out.”

  “I don’t want to figure it out! I want it to be gone! I want to have last night back, so when Emmitt calls you, you can wake me up and the two of us can stop Jill before she ever gets here!”

  “And what would we have done, Kim? We can’t blackmail the girl. She’s already shown that. We can’t beat her up. We can’t kill her. You know the rules of the contest.”

  “We could have slowed her down. We could have wrecked into her car, slashed her tires, gotten her drunk, cut a deal with her, I don’t know, Daddy! But I’m pissed off that Jill got here first!”

  “There is just no telling with this girl,” Galen said. “She’s been the biggest surprise of the contest. And to think that a flimsy buffoon like Walter Wentworth is her father.”

  “Why can’t you get him in line? He was your best buddy in school.”

  “Walter and I were never buddies, just acquaintances. And you know full well why I can’t get him in line. It’s the same reason you can’t control Jill.” Galen bit down on his lower lip, a habit that once was endearing to Kim, but now made her sick. “Never in a million years would I have seen this coming,” he said. “The daughter of Walter Wentworth is getting the best of us.”

  “She killed Emmitt!” Kim screeched. “Can’t we use that somehow?”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “Jesus, Daddy. It seems like you’re just giving up without a fight. There’s a dead body in those bushes back there and we know who killed him.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Yes we do! Emmitt told you he followed Jill into this cemetery. And then he died. Unless he dropped dead of a heart attack--”

  “He was killed by an immortal,” Galen said. “There are bite marks on the back of his leg. An immortal sucked him dry at the femoral artery, then poked a finger into his gut to make it look like he’d been stabbed or shot.”

  “What? But that would mean--”

  “An immortal is working with Jill, or at least, is looking out for her.”

  “No, this can’t—are you sure?”

  “Come have a look at the body, Kim.”

  She followed Galen to the bushes, unaware that have a look at the body meant, look at an old naked dead man.

  “Ah geez, you took his pants off! What the hell, Daddy! You can’t unsee that shit!”

  Galen was unfazed by Kim’s complaints, and rolled the corpse over onto its side, exposing the back of Emmitt’s pale, flabby leg.

  “See these puncture wounds right here?” he said.

  “Yeah, I see them. Jiminy Christmas, I think I’m gonna hurl.”

  “They severed the femoral artery. With one good slurp, an immortal removed enough blood to stop Emmitt’s heart.”

  “No more talk of slurping, please.”

  “Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing,” Galen said. He rolled the body over onto its back, leaving Emmitt how they found him, when they assumed he was dead from a gunshot wound to the stomach.

  “They left the body here as a message for us,” Galen said. “Jill wants us to think that she killed Emmitt. Or if not her, then some rough and tumble bodyguard she had with her. The immortal chose to bite Emmitt on the leg rather than the neck in order to hide the true nature of Emmitt’s death.”

  “Jill doesn’t want us to know she’s working with an immortal,” said Kim. “It’s against the rules for someone in the clan to help her.”

  “But she wanted to send a message to us. She’s telling us to stop spying on her.”

  “It was a stupid thing to do,” said Kim. “We’ll show this body to Daciana.”

  “She still hasn’t called me back.”

  “Then we’ll show it to Renata! She’ll--”

  “She’ll what, Kim? Look in Jill’s mind?”

  Kim balled her hands into fists, squeezing so tight that her nails dug into her flesh.

  “This is so uncool, Daddy. Jill finds out one thing from your past, and now we’ve lost all our advantages?”

  “We’ll have to be clever about this,” Galen said. “Jill Wentworth is a worthy opponent. Come on, let’s get in the car. I’ll have someone come to take Emmitt’s body away.”

  Chapter 30

  Weeks of solitude and darkness. Maybe months. Nicky had no idea how long she had been in that prison cell. Time stretched into an abyss on all sides of her.

  She wondered if she was going crazy. Maybe her constant visions of past lives in this compound weren’t memories coming back to her. Maybe they were the hallucinations of someone who had lost it. Maybe they were her brain’s way of coping with her situation.

  Did it matter either way? Sa
ne or insane, she was headed for death regardless. So long as Ryan was comfortable, she didn’t care. She would sit quietly in her cell, eating the meals that got pushed through the door, causing no trouble for anyone.

  It wasn’t like she was even that lonely. Memories that had been long forgotten but now were coming back kept her company. Coming to this place, seeing the courtyard, the sphere, stepping into her childhood home—it had pushed open the door to years of remembrance she had locked away. With no distractions and nothing better to do, Nicky spent her days exploring those memories.

  Thinking about that cottage up on the hill reminded her of an oval table where they sat to eat dinner, and thinking about dinner reminded her that she and her father played games after dinner was done. Cards and charades and a board game with multi-colored pieces that moved on the roll of the dice. Laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company. They were happy times for her. They were memories she was meant to have, and once she remembered them, they filled her mind, as if they had always been there.

  Her mother appeared only in a few memories. She came in and kissed Nicky goodnight. She went for a walk in the woods with Nicky. She sat quietly at the dinner table, lost in her own thoughts.

  Her father was the much more present player. It seemed like he and Nicky did everything together. Fishing and swimming at the lake, sledding down the side of the mountain, reading books, talking.

  And tied to all of these, the most dominant memory of all, was that night in the courtyard. She was certain now that everything about the vision was real. Her mother yelling at her to run. The sick people descending upon her. Her father taking her into the forest…

  “Come on out, Nicky.”

  It was Falkon’s voice.

  “We’re going to walk you around a bit. Gotta make sure you don’t lose your marbles in there. We want you looking happy and healthy when your classmates see you.”

  Nicky stumbled forward, the light piercing her eyes.

  She wasn’t the only one in pain. All around her, the other prisoners screamed in anger at the light. They banged on the glass as Nicky walked past them. They snarled and roared at her in a perfect imitation of the sound they made in the vision that had been haunting her.

  She kept her head down and let Falkon lead her through the hallway and out of the prison. They were walking up a flight of stairs when Nicky’s mind finally registered the words Falkon had said.

  Her classmates?

  “When are my classmates going to see me?” she said.

  “At the end of the year,” said Falkon. “You know, that game you kids play at your school. The Ransom of the Rose or whatever it’s called.”

  It was disorienting to even think about school. Nicky had been lost in her own thoughts for so long, living in her own past, that it was hard to even place herself in the present.

  “You are confused,” Falkon said. “You’ve been down there alone for too long. You are losing track of reality, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Nicky said. “I guess I am.”

  “Perhaps we can take you out more frequently. Renata is adamant that you are to be the model of beauty when she kills you in front of your peers.”

  Nicky was trying to make sense of what Falkon was telling her, but it was hard.

  “In front of my peers?” she said.

  Falkon laughed. “Oh dear. We really have made a mess of you, haven’t we? Come with me. I know just the activity to bring order back to your mind.”

  A minute later, they were sitting at a table in Falkon’s house, looking down on a chess board.

  “You move a pawn, you move a knight, you move a bishop, and before you know it, your mind begins falling in line,” said Falkon. “There is no better brain exercise on earth than a good game of chess. I will go first.”

  Falkon grabbed a white pawn and pushed it out on the board. Nicky looked at him and shook her head.

  “Come on, Nicky. Be a sport,” Falkon said. “I know you’re tired and confused. Really, this will help.”

  Nicky grabbed one of the pawns and quickly moved it up a space.

  “No, no, no—there is no benefit to your mind if you simply humor me,” said Falkon. He pushed Nicky’s pawn back to its starting position. “Tell you what. We will make it interesting. If you win, I let you and your friend go.”

  Nicky looked at Falkon to gauge if he was joking or not.

  “I am entirely serious,” said Falkon. “And I am a man of my word. I love a good challenge, and, like most men who have lived a thousand years, find that there are few challenges left in the world. So please, sit up straight, get your head into the game, and play chess. If you win, you and Ryan are free to go.”

  “And if I lose?”

  “If you lose, nothing changes. You remain my prisoner, and in a few weeks, Renata takes you back to Washington and kills you in front of your classmates.”

  For the first time since their conversation began, Nicky understood what Falkon was saying to her. The Rose Ransom. She was the princess. Renata would kill her after no one found her.

  “I can sense the gears spinning up there,” Falkon said. “You believe me now? Your mind is already healing and you haven’t even made your first move.”

  “That’s how she’s explaining our absence at school,” Nicky said. “That’s why we took that photograph on the bed.”

  “Yes, yes, something like that,” said Falkon. “Your rituals at that school are absurd, but Renata, like me, is bored, and she is playing a game with your classmates. She has constructed some sort of treasure hunt with nearly impossible clues. When the year ends and nobody solves them, she must drag you out in front of the students and kill you.”

  “But what about Ryan?” Nicky said. “He’s still alive, isn’t he? He’s still safe.”

  “Your friend is asleep in my guest room having wonderfully pleasant dreams. You know, that could have been your fate as well if you hadn’t locked me out of your mind.”

  Nicky looked down at the chess board. She was playing the black pieces. Falkon had made a single move. A pawn in the center, up two spaces.

  “You will let us go if I win,” she said.

  “I will fly you back to Washington myself,” said Falkon. “Now take your turn.”

  Nicky gave it everything she had. Falkon was right. The game did organize her mind. By her second turn, she was fully alert and back in the moment. The flurry of visions she had seen in the prison cell were stowed away in her mind with the rest of her memories. Her total focus was on the chess board, planning many moves ahead.

  But Falkon was too good. No matter how far ahead she mapped out the game, he was always a step ahead of her, and after an initial dance where they both put their pieces in place, Falkon decimated her side of the board, taking two bishops and a knight on the next three turns. He trapped her queen, then he trapped her king.

  “Checkmate,” he said calmly. “A nice effort on your part, but sadly, you were nowhere close. Would you like to know where you went wrong?”

  “Not really,” said Nicky.

  “I will show you anyway,” said Falkon. And then he walked through the entire game, move for move, explaining exactly what Nicky was thinking at every step along the way. When he finished, he said, “Don’t feel bad. In the past four hundred years, I’ve only lost once. You know who beat me?”

  Nicky shook her head.

  “Your mother,” said Falkon.

  “Really?” said Nicky. “Was she playing for her freedom too?”

  “Heavens no,” said Falkon. “She and I were colleagues. We played every week. She seemed to be getting worse and worse as we went along. Little did I know she was hustling me. She was learning my techniques. My weaknesses. And then, one night, she came at me with all she had. I was completely unprepared. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Falkon began rearranging the pieces on the board.

  “This is how the board looked during the pivotal moment of our game,” he said. “Now, you might be loo
king at this board and thinking you should move your rook down the third file, like this.”

  Falkon grabbed the black rook and slid it across the board. “You would do this because, you are thinking five moves ahead and imagining check mate.

  He began moving quickly, announcing as he went. “Bishop captures pawn. Queen comes out. Knight captures bishop. There! And now you think the white king is trapped in two more moves. But you failed to see something, you know what it is?”

  Nicky shook her head.

  “This pawn, of course!”

  He moved a white pawn up a single space.

  “There is no stopping it now,” he said. “My rook can’t get there. My bishop can’t get there. Not even my queen. And on the next turn…” he slid the pawn to the top row of the board. “And there you have it. This pawn is at the top of the board and gets promoted.”

  He removed the pawn and replaced it with a queen.

  “White has two queens on the board now,” Falkon said. “Outrageous! But it is in the rules! All the official societies of chess allow for this nonsense. Move your pawn to the top of the board and it turns into a queen, even if there is already a queen on the board! It wasn’t always this way. I’ve been playing chess for a thousand years. For nine hundred of them, you could only promote your pawn to a piece that had already been captured.”

  Falkon shook his head in disgust.

  “I was such a fool! My mind was so trapped in the past I didn’t even see what she was doing! But there it is, Nicky Bloom. Two queens on the board! And three moves later…”

  Falkon slid the pieces in order, again announcing them as he went. “Queen takes knight. Other queen takes bishop. Rook moves to the first file. Checkmate! I lose! The first time I lost a game since I was a child in the remains of the Eastern Roman Empire!”

  “That’s all very interesting,” said Nicky. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say I deserved it! Say that your mother discovered a weakness in my mind and exploited it! Oh, Nicky. Your mother was an amazing woman. Unlike anyone else I’ve ever met. Do you ever miss her?”