Fiend (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 3)

by Ketley Allison

  I suppose all kids just think of their parents as starting their lives once their kids are born. Anything previous to that is an unnecessary blur, because they now exist to care about and protect you, their own goals and dreams dull in comparison.

  But this goes beyond thinking your mother is just your mother. She lived a completely different life than what she set up in my brain.

  I close my eyes, lingering in the dark for a moment. After a breath, I open them. “And my stepdad? He was a year below her.”

  Chase flips the 2002 file shut, but I grab it from him and press it close to my chest. “I just want to hold onto it for a minute. Before you put it away.”

  Chase’s lips twitch in what might be understanding. He nods. “2003 should be…”

  “Wait.” I put a hand to his wrist to stop him before he keeps shuffling the files. “What’s that?”

  He surveys the cabinet. “What? I don’t see anything.”

  “That. Right there.” I push his hand away and pull out what caught my eye. “Is this a birth certificate? And … holy shit, it’s old. Emma said Piper wanted to talk to her about a Briar birth certificate…”

  The single piece of paper is laminated. I’m not worried I’ll crumble it with the oils of my fingers, but it’s yellowed with age, and covered in ash.

  “It probably has to do with the origins of the societies.” Chase moves to pluck it from my fingers. “Which we already know.”

  “No, it’s…” I squint at the same time I spin to keep it away from Chase’s sticky fingers. “Rose Briar is listed as the mother. Oh my God—I remember. The librarian in town said there was some kind of illegitimate child born between Rose and Theodore Briar.”

  “Callie, this has nothing to do with your mom.”

  “Yeah, but it’s near her file and … I thought this child was adopted out and made to not exist. Thorne Briar exiled it, right? I shouldn’t say ‘it.’” I correct myself. “Says here it’s a girl. A Daphne Wilmington. Maybe that’s Rose’s maiden name, since a father isn’t listed … wait. Why does your dad have this? Isn’t this Virtue property, since it’s related to Rose Briar?”

  “Callie, we need to go.”

  “Does Sabine have any idea this exists? I mean, yeah, she has the password to the location of these files, but was this listed as an item on your dad’s spreadsheet?”

  Chase sighs. “Not that I saw.”

  “Let me just get a picture of this.”

  “Do you really think that’s necessary?”

  I nail him with a look. “If you know what I know about the Virtues, everything is necessary.”

  That stops him. “Fine. But be quick about it.”

  I pull out my phone and take a photo. I also take a snapshot of my mom’s listing. Chase doesn’t find anything with regard to my stepdad, but he does find Lynda’s name, and I take a snapshot of that, too.

  “Let’s go,” he says, stuffing the file back in. “I had the motion detectors turned off in the room, but Tempest can only keep them black for so long.”

  “Way to tell me that now.”

  “You’d’ve been skittish and set them off with all your twitching had I told you earlier.”

  Frowning, I turn with him to the door, but the faded edges of the birth certificate linger in my mind.

  Where did the baby girl go after leaving Briarcliff?

  And … why is it considered so important that Daniel Stone has it safely stored away from Sabine?

  31

  Chase drops me off in the woods near campus. He offers to walk me through the forested pathway to the back of Thorne House, but I decline, my head too filled with my mother’s cloaked past and my body too attuned to him to withstand more of his presence with no pay-off.

  Yet, his headlights carve my way back to the dorms and don’t wink out until I’m safely in Thorne House’s backyard.

  Once I’m sure no security guards are idling outside, I sneak in through the side-door I propped open with a rock, then creep up the stairs into my dorm room.

  It’s close to 4 AM, a time when Emma begins to stir. I tip-toe into my bedroom and shut my door with a soft click.

  Then turn on my laptop.

  Sleep is not a priority. I pull out my phone and flip to the photo proving my mother’s involvement in the Virtues.

  It doesn’t stop there. Lynda is a Virtue. And my stepdad may not be a Noble, but he went to school here, too. A year below them.

  Why didn’t my mom tell me she met my stepdad in high school? And why did Lynda and Dad send me here without cluing me in that Dad was an alumnus, too? And is my dad’s second marriage to another Briarcliff alum a coincidence, or a secret society set-up?

  I’m staring at a blank search screen, but so many questions flit through my mind’s eye. I don’t know where to begin, other than to call the responsible parties, but it’s too early for that.

  I straighten from my computer. Or is it?

  Swiping through my contacts, I find the number I’m looking for and call.

  “Calla? Everything okay?”

  Unanswered questions may be swirling through my mind. Suspicions are cast over my every move. Suspects are more involved in my life than friends. But Ahmar? He will always be my heartening escape.

  “Everything’s fine—well, sort of. I can’t sleep.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Ahmar’s voice sounds tight. Clipped. “Are you busy right now? At a crime scene? I can call back.”

  “No, no, you’re good, kid. I just got home after a rough one, is all. But I have the morning off, so I’ll sleep in a bit. Which means I have the time to hear you out on why you’re calling me before dawn.”

  I cut to the thick of it. “It’s about Mom.”

  Ahmar goes quiet. “Shoulda figured. How can I help?”

  “I’ve just found out she was a student here at Briarcliff.” I decide to leave out the Virtue part, since Ahmar has no idea about the societies. I’m starting to wonder how much longer I should keep it from him. “And so were Dad and Lynda.”

  “Really.”

  I shuffle into a cross-legged position on my bed. “That wasn’t the exclamation of surprise I was expecting.”

  “No, kid, it’s not.” Ahmar sighs.

  My thigh muscles clench. “You knew?”

  “About your mom? Yeah, honey. Don’t freak out on me. I plan on explaining that. As for your dad and Lynda, fuck no. I thought they met for the first time at a banquet or whatever.”

  I rub my forehead, the friction causing a small, needed amount of pain. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Mom open up to me? What the hell is going on behind the scenes of my life?”

  “Calla, honey, calm down. I’ll tell you what I know. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, you’re hearing this from me and not from your momma.”

  “I feel like she’s a stranger.” My throat constricts. “Like I never knew her. Like she’s this girl who became this woman who had a child, then decided to erase her past life. Is the person I grew up with the woman she always was? Or was it all an act for my benefit? Who is she, Ahmar?”

  “She was happy with you. Don’t you ever think she lost herself when she had you. There were times when I was over, and you were playing at our feet, that I’d catch your mom—in the middle of one of our deep conversations—staring at you, and she’d smile with this special curve to her lips only reserved for you. It lit up her whole face, that grin. The pride she took in you, baby girl, was unlike any kind of love I’d seen before.

  “Looking back, it’s the reason why I let her get away with her secrets, because she worked so hard to be good at the mother thing and the single parent rap she got served with. Part of me also knew there’d come a day when you’d find out, especially once I heard you were being sent to Briarcliff Academy.”

  “Did you ask Dad about why he chose Briarcliff?”

  “It never occurred to me to ask them about it. Briarcliff is a top tier school, and parents across the city try the
ir damnedest to get their kids in. I figured it was coincidence, nothing more.”

  “But you’re a detective. You don’t believe in coincidences.” My hand squeezes the phone against my ear. “What about my mom? What did she tell you about this school?”

  “It was one night. You were, I dunno, two? She’d just put you to bed, and we’d had a rough day on a scene. It was a teenaged girl … she was brutally murdered, and the entire time your mom took photos, there was this glazed look in her eye. Like she’d checked out. So, when we got home and she relieved the babysitter, I poured us a stiff drink and asked her, point blank, what the fuck was going on with her that day. We’d had bad scenes before, with younger victims.

  “She told me it had to do with her past, and while she wanted to get it off her chest, she swore me to secrecy. I swear, kid, it’s like she knew her future, ‘cause she glanced at your bedroom door and said that you were never to find out.”

  I fold my hand over my eyes, bowing forward. “She wouldn’t have wanted me to attend Briarcliff Academy. But you encouraged me to go.”

  “No.” Ahmar’s hard exhale causes static against my ear. “But how was I supposed to convince your Pops of that? That kind of diploma is prestigious, an honor, all that bullshit. And frankly, I thought your mom was taking it a bit too far, closeting her high school like this. It’s a building, for chrissake. Not a haunted house.”

  If only you knew…

  “On that same night, your mom told me she had some bad blood with kids she went to school with. She was involved in some kind of extracurricular, she called it, that didn’t go well for her. Somehow, she got on the wrong side of some popular chick. Meredith was ostracized, bullied, her senior year made into a living hell. Your basic high school bullshit.”

  “It’s not basic at all.”

  “Ah, kid, I didn’t mean to simplify it like that, especially while you’re going through something similar—but that’s what I mean. It’s like a rite of passage at that snob school, am I right? Girls who don’t come from much are the first to be kicked down. And shoved, and belittled, until they start fighting back.

  “That’s what your momma did. She told me she had grown fed up and enlisted the help of some guy. It only pissed this popular chick off more. Your mom’s grades dropped, she barely graduated, and the way she told it, this girl made her suffer long after she left Briarcliff, until she was forced to become incognito and live—in her words—an unaccomplished, boring life where she no longer made any waves. When that happened, this chick got bored and moved on. In my mind, at least. Mer made it clear to me that this chick didn’t know you existed and wanted to keep it that way.”

  “Why didn’t she want anyone in her high school to know about me?”

  “Unfortunately, the answer to that lived in your mom. She made me promise, if anyone from her past ever reached out to me, never to mention your name. But you see, no one did, Calla. Your mom and you, you guys had a great life, but that night, she acted like you were under threat. It was…”

  “Paranoia,” I finish. “Just like when I went after Dad for her murder and was dead wrong.”

  “Baby girl, I ain’t saying what you think I am. You are all the best parts of your momma, don’t you ever forget that. And I loved her. She was my sister, my best friend. And you’re like a daughter to me. I promised to protect you, but I couldn’t keep you away from a school that showed no evidence of being a danger to you.”

  I cast my eyes to the ceiling, the popcorn pattern becoming a watery blur. “Tell me you looked into it before sending me.”

  “What do you take me for? Of course I did. That request she made, that I never tell any of her past classmates about you? Strange as fuck. I was on this school like spunk—I mean, like glue—the minute your momma was murdered. I made the calls, even visited the campus. I conducted interviews with her former classmates, though she wasn’t friends with many. At that time, Lynda Meyer never came up in the investigation, I’m assuming because they didn’t run in the same circles. The people I did interview couldn’t say much about Meredith. She wasn’t outspoken or extroverted. Nice and polite but didn’t seek attention. I will say, though, she was Winter Court Queen in her junior year.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “Because I wanted you to be a kid, kid. You went to Briarcliff to start a new life and heal. If I told you your momma walked the same halls, went through some shit, and graduated by the skin of her teeth, what would you have done?”

  “That should’ve been my choice to make. I should’ve been able to make the decision to go here based on my mom’s experience.”

  “I did what was best for you, Calla. You were in a rough place. I wasn’t about to add to your pain. I ain’t standing down from that.”

  My phone grows hot in my hands. I don’t want to argue with him. “What about Sabine Harrington?”

  “Funny you should mention her. She was the chick who went after your mom in school.”

  “And the mother of my dead roommate.” I go quiet, allowing the dominos to settle in place in Ahmar’s mind. And now the leader of the Virtues.

  “Remember, kid, Rhode Island isn’t my jurisdiction. Your roommate’s death wasn’t something I could investigate officially. I did compare it to my notes on your mom, back in the beginning stages when I’d interviewed Sabine—who, while a bitch in high school and a real doozy now, had no contact with your mother since and has an airtight alibi on the night Meredith was killed.”

  I rub my eyes with my free hand. “Did my real father go here, too?”

  Dead silence. Then: “Oh, baby girl.”

  “She was nineteen when she had me. Eighteen when she got pregnant. Ahmar, my dad...”

  Ahmar’s response is gentle, yet firm. “None of my interviews raised red flags. Your momma was a loner, honey. There were no guys she was noticeably close with that I could find.”

  “What about the Winter Court King?”

  “Some senior. I’ll look him up, but that shit is based on votes, and she wasn’t in a relationship with the dude.”

  “I should’ve been told this. All of it, while you were investigating.”

  “It wasn’t my call to make.” Ahmar no longer sounds like he’s satisfied with his answer, and the aching hole in my heart is glad for it. Then he ruins it all by saying, “I hear your relationship with Pete is better now since enrolling at Briarcliff. Am I wrong?”

  I don’t enjoy proving Ahmar right, so I follow up with, “It could’ve happened faster if I were kept in school in the city.”

  “Calla.”

  My shoulders fall. “Fine. Dad and I are back on track. But there’s more to this story … more than what anyone involved is telling you.”

  “Kid, me and my team squeezed that school dry. I hate to tell you, it’s a dead end.”

  I take a deep breath. “What I’ve found out won’t be on any records. It’s not spoken about publicly. And anyone involved will deny it well after their death.”

  “I think you need to get some sleep. You’re making me a little worried, kid.”

  My stomach flips, my throat so thick with fear, but I forge on. “That extracurricular my mom was talking about? It’s more of a cult. And I think she tried to back out of it, which is why Sabine took her as such a threat.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re talking high school shenanigans. After time passed, your momma lived a good life—”

  “Until someone took it away. Someone took her from me. I’m going to send you some documents, Ahmar. And before I’m labeled as a psychiatric threat again, I want you to not just read them, but research them. This is so much more than a prank. It’s a rigged college acceptance scheme, interference with the economy and political agendas, and a sex ring. That’s what my mom was running from.”

  My breath whooshes out. My heart slams, pounds, ricochets off my chest and races all the way down to my fingers and toes. But I said it. I put it out there.

  And
I pray I haven’t just handed Ahmar a bomb that could put him in serious trouble.

  At first, I think the line’s gone dead. I hear nothing from Ahmar’s side.

  Then: “Those are some heavy accusations, kid.”

  “Please believe me. Or, if you don’t, look into it and prove me wrong. Please, Ahmar. I’m in over my head. I need help.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering the last time I begged for his help, and he cuffed my dad and arrested the wrong man.

  “This is different,” I add. “I have proof. Evidence.”

  He doesn’t answer. Too much silence has passed since I last spoke. “Ahmar?”

  Ahmar breathes audibly. Soon, careful words follow. “Kid, I didn’t need to promise your momma I’d be there for you forever. I’d do it anyway. Yes, I will look into it. Send me what you have, but I can’t promise you there will be a change.”

  This time, when I close my eyes, it’s with a sigh of relief. “I appreciate it.”

  “Do something for me. Get some sleep before school.”

  “I will,” I lie. But my next words hold nothing but the truth. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, kiddo. Too much, sometimes. Talk soon.”

  When we hang up, the first thing I do is send him the Virtue Member List containing Mom and Lynda’s names. Then Dad’s class photo. And, as a mysterious cherry on top that I’d love to know the flavor of, the birth certificate of Rose Briar’s illegitimate baby girl. Maybe Ahmar could trace the lineage. His knowledge of Rose Briar’s family could perhaps lead him to physical proof of the existence of the Nobles and Virtues.

  Balling my hands into fists, I curse losing my copies of Piper’s diary. I mourn the brief existence of Howard Mason’s writings hidden in my calc textbook before it was stolen and given back to the societies.

  I’m relying on my gut to lead me in the right direction, at the same time it churns with uncertainty.

  And for the second time, I’ve used that instinct to involve the police.