The Homecoming Masquerade

by Baum, Spencer

  It occurred to Nicky that Rosalyn was walking in a straight line without the slightest lilt in her gait, which was odd, since Rosalyn had a reputation of being the class drunk. Rosalyn was one of Kim’s most devoted lackeys. If she was choosing to drink responsibly, surely it was at Kim’s behest.

  She’d have to file that little oddity away for later. There were more important things than Rosalyn’s blood alcohol, and right now, the top of the list was getting a dance in with Marshall Beaumont.

  Hearing the waltz move into its Trio section, Nicky pushed Sam in Marshall’s direction, determined not to let him get away this time. When the musicians hit the final bars, she was in perfect position for Marshall to turn her way and ask for the next dance.

  But right as the piece ended, another couple crashed into them from behind, knocking Sam sideways, and pushing Nicky away from Marshall.

  “Sorry Bud,” said the boy who had collided with Sam.

  “No problem,” Sam mumbled. He bowed to Nicky and turned to the girl who had just run into him. Nicky now had no choice but to dance with the boy from this clumsy couple. The boy was short, with sandy brown hair combed into a severe part over his left ear. He was beefy under his tux, clearly someone who worked out a lot. And he was smiling big, his eyes glassy, his cheeks flush. He was drunk as a skunk.

  “What’s up, Nicky?” he said, holding his hand out for a dance.

  “Hello Art.”

  13

  Art Tremblay was having a hell of a night.

  It began at home while he was getting ready and his mother told him she had agreed to a settlement in the divorce.

  The divorce, a long, contentious battle between Art’s parents that had gone on for nearly a decade, had Art splitting time between mansions in Bethesda and Potomac. More importantly, it prevented the family business from bringing on anyone else as a full partner.

  Now that Art’s mom had agreed to a buyout, her share of the business would be held in trust for the children. Upon his eighteenth birthday, which was only a week away, Art would inherit a one quarter share of Tremblay Property Management LLC.

  That share was worth four billion dollars.

  Yes sir, four billion. B-b-b-billion, the youngest billionaire in the world. And that wasn’t all that was going Art’s way this night. Shortly before the dancing started, Kim approached Art with a “special assignment.” She could have chosen anyone in the ballroom to do it, but she chose him.

  This new girl needs to be snuffed out tonight, Kim had said. You and Rosalyn are going to work together. On the last dance before intermission, you will be Nicky’s partner. As you come around the far side of the ballroom, Rosalyn will step into the aisle with a glass of wine in her hand. You are going to push Nicky into Rosalyn. Make it look like she tripped. Rosalyn will make sure the wine spills all over Nicky’s dress. Wait until the music is almost done before you act. The immortals come out after intermission. We want to give Nicky as little time as possible to clean up before they arrive.

  It was a bold, frightening idea, pushing the new girl right into a wine spill, but Art was ready. What good were all those hours in the gym if he wasn’t? This was it. This was the moment when fortunes were made.

  This was his own Bullhead Creek.

  Bullhead Creek was a small village in the Adirondacks where, in 1935, a stroke of luck and a bold decision forever changed the fate of the entire Tremblay family. Art’s grandfather, Reginald Tremblay, was hunting deer in the forests on the northern edge of town. He’d been tracking a buck all day when he heard a moaning sound off to the east. Expecting to find a fox or other small prey caught in someone’s trap (and planning to steal whatever he found – the Depression hadn’t been kind to the Tremblay family), Reginald abandoned the buck he was tracking and followed the moaning sound.

  He was half-way down the mountain when he realized the sound wasn’t coming from anyone’s trap, but instead from inside a rickety waterwheel shack on the far side of the river. Letting his curiosity get the best of him, Reginald crossed the river and pushed open the back door of the shack.

  What he found inside was a little girl, no more than five, with bright orange hair, tied to a support beam. A dirty rag was stuffed in her mouth. Her forehead was covered in blood. It took Reginald a long time to untie all the knots that attached the girl to the beam, and before he was finished, the door swung open again, and a man stepped inside. He was naked, save a thick layer of mud that covered his entire body, almost like he had gone out into the forest and rolled in the muck.

  The man, who, according to the way the story was told in the Tremblay family, “had a look of plumb crazy in his eyes,” turned to run. Reginald shot him in the back, and then again in the head after the man fell to his knees. Then Reginald took the girl to his truck, drove her down the mountain, and went to the police.

  The girl was a young Renata Sullivan, daughter of one of the wealthiest families in New York, gone missing the night before from the Mohawk Summer Camp twelve miles down the river. Thirteen years later, Renata became the first girl from Thorndike Academy to get a visit in the night from Sergio Alonzo. Becoming an immortal member of the Samarin Clan, Renata was instantly made into a millionaire many times over, and one of the first things she did with her money was find Reginald Tremblay and set him up for life.

  “When I look at Reginald, I see safety,” Renata said in a newspaper interview many years later. “I see the man who killed the bad guy and made everything right. I don’t just want to reward Reginald, I want to keep him close so I can always feel safe.”

  Renata invited Reginald and his young family to move to the suburbs outside DC and oversee the security detail on the mansion she was having built. It was Reginald’s job to do background checks on every contractor who had access to the blueprints, every plumber, mason, and electrician who stepped into the home, every artist and craftsman who made the gorgeous house come together. When the mansion was finished, Reginald’s approved list of contractors became the full time staff of Tremblay Property Management (TPM), and he became the go-to guy not just for Renata, but for all the immortals living in and around Washington. Fabulous mansions like Renata’s required upkeep, maintenance, and security, some of which could be provided by the slaves, but some of which had to be outsourced. As devoted as the slaves were to their masters, their young, brainwashed minds weren’t capable of high level problem solving. Slaves were good for making dinner, keeping house, and tending to the landscape. Anything beyond that required someone with at least a modicum of free thought. Someone who could be trusted near the million-dollar paintings, the ancient relics, the centuries of secrets that might be hidden in an immortal’s mansion. Over time, TPM developed a background check that was more rigorous than those given by the military or the CIA. TPM contractors were expected to submit to regular “debriefings” in which an immortal would interrogate them to ensure all was on the up and up. TPM headquarters in Washington became an impenetrable fortress.

  When Art’s dad took over the business in the late sixties, it was a multi-million dollar enterprise. Art’s father expanded the business even further, turning it into a full-service contracting firm that did anything and everything the immortals wanted. From private security to financial matters to accounting to home maintenance and upkeep – TPM’s trusted staff provided it all and was handsomely rewarded for the effort. By the time Art was born, the Tremblays were one of the wealthiest and most respected families in all of Washington.

  And while Art now stood to inherit a good chunk of the wealth thanks to his parents’ divorce settlement, the respect still eluded him. The respect stopped with Art’s father and brother, who hoarded it all, leaving none for Art. It didn’t help that Art was a shrimp, and the first Tremblay in memory who wasn’t a natural outdoorsman. Art’s father made no attempts to hide his disappointment in his youngest son. Art got used to being bullied, not only by his classmates, but by his father. He internalized his father’s commands to “toughen up,” and �
��quit being such a girl.” No longer invited on the family hunting and fishing trips, Art took to the gym, where he thrust his anger into every bench press, and imagined his father’s face on the punching bag. The gym never made him any taller, or any tougher really, but by his senior year, it had made him buff.

  Buff enough that Kim knew he was up to the task. Having pushed his way past Marshall Beaumont (and oh, wasn’t it nice to body check that asshole), Art now stood before Nicky Bloom, ready to be her dance partner.

  He bowed, they greeted one another, their hands joined, and they were off. Their dance was Chopin’s Waltz in C-Sharp Minor. A few bars in, Art caught sight of Rosalyn, making her way into position, a goblet of wine in her hand.

  Yes, indeed, things were looking up for Art Tremblay. It was a hell of a night.

  14

  Nicky didn’t even try to strike up a conversation with Art. He was one of Kim’s little lapdogs, eager to follow her wherever she went, do her bidding, and kiss her ass. Anything Nicky said to him would be reported to Kim, so it was best not to say anything at all.

  Art didn’t seem to mind.

  As they made the first turn, Nicky thought about Jill’s description of Art in the briefing book.

  A chip on his shoulder…a disappointment to his father…a gym rat…big muscles, but about as macho as a goldfish…

  Nicky had never met Art’s father, but she had heard all about him. A notorious trophy hunter, Merv Tremblay used his extraordinary wealth to fund safaris all over the world, and brought home lots of exotic work for the taxidermist. The Tremblay mansion in Potomac was known for being a zoo of dead animals. Buffalo, elk, antelope, wild boar, rhinoceros – even an African elephant stood in the Tremblay estate, a stuffed relic of a once majestic creature, killed not because nature demanded it, but because a man thought it would be fun.

  Vampire Envy. It was something the Network saw all the time with these insider types. Regular interaction with vampires made them into pathetic imitations. They couldn’t hunt humans, so they hunted rhinos. They couldn’t own slaves so they hired full-time servants and treated them like dogs. They couldn’t stay young forever but used plastic surgery to try. Some sufferers of vampire envy ran afoul of the law, thinking they should be allowed to do whatever they pleased, just like the immortals.

  Some did far worse. The Network had its suspicions about Merv Tremblay and the sorts of things he did on his round-the-world hunting trips. There were places in the developing world where rich people could pay large sums of money to gain some of the privileges of an immortal, even if only for one night. A quick glance at the stamps on Merv’s passport suggested he might be frequenting such places. If he was, then Art had a truly heinous man for a father.

  Nicky felt bad for Art, growing up in the Tremblay house. It was bad enough that they all were the immortals’ playthings. To have some sick immortal wannabe as your father – the poor guy was born to be rotten.

  They had been dancing for two minutes now, and Art was really starting to lose his way. His feet were so far from the rhythm that Nicky tried to take the lead, eliciting the first words from Art’s mouth since the dance began.

  “Stop it” he said. “The guy leads.”

  He was so drunk she could have lit his breath on fire. Apparently, he wasn’t done hitting the booze either. With every turn around the ballroom floor, he was glancing over to the bar, as if he couldn’t wait to get back there at intermission and have another. Nicky tried to follow his eyes, but saw nothing of interest back there. All the girls wearing black were on the dance floor, as were most of the Renwick groupies Art liked to hang out with. The only person from Art’s group of friends who wasn’t dancing was Rosalyn. She was standing alone in limbo-land, half-way between the bar and the ballroom, cradling her unusually full goblet of wine with both hands.

  “I’ll let you lead when you start leading,” Nicky said.

  Art grunted and shook his head. Stupid drunk, Nicky thought.

  She had fallen into the habit of looking for Marshall on the dance floor, but realized it wasn’t necessary this time. Intermission would follow this dance, so it didn’t matter how close she was to Marshall when the music stopped. She couldn’t spot him on the crowded floor anyway.

  She did, however, find Ryan. He was dancing with Pauline Wabash. As they swayed in front of the band, Ryan and Nicky’s eyes met for a second. He made no effort to look away.

  God, he was beautiful. It was a testament to how messed up this school was that a guy who looked like Ryan Jenson could somehow become an outcast. Now a few minutes removed from the revelation that Kim was blackmailing him, Nicky was more puzzled about Ryan than ever.

  Before tonight, Nicky had convinced herself that she had Ryan all figured out. She thought the reason he had no friends was because he refused to make any. She thought he was different than the other students because he didn’t care about the popularity games, about the things that drove every interaction at school and informed the behavior of every student. Ryan didn’t care who was going to win Corornation, or how he could get an in with that person. He didn’t care about increasing his social standing, or counting the number of people above him on the popularity ladder.

  Or so Nicky thought. The fact that Kim was blackmailing him made her wonder. Blackmail only works if the victim doesn’t want the information released. If Ryan didn’t care about his social status, then he wouldn’t care if some embarrassing bit of info leaked into the gossip current.

  Which meant that Nicky had misjudged him, or whatever secret Kim was holding over him was bigger than school gossip. It meant Ryan did in fact care about his social standing, or, if he didn’t, Kim had found a way to make him care. She had something on him so good he wouldn’t even consider Nicky’s offer.

  Whatever it was, it was a problem Nicky had to solve right away. Either she had to figure out how to free Ryan from Kim’s blackmail, or find another mega-billionaire to court. And the only kid in school whose wealth was anything close to Ryan’s was the doofus she was dancing with now.

  Nicky and Art started their third lap of the ballroom. As they made the turn, Nicky’s eyes, which had been on Ryan this whole time, caught sight of Rosalyn. Her face, hidden behind a gaudy golden mask in the shape of a butterfly, became visible over Ryan’s shoulder, and gave Nicky pause.

  Rosalyn had been looking right at her.

  What in the world was up with that girl? Rosalyn had been standing there the entire dance, just holding onto her wine.

  Her totally full glass of wine, from which she, the class lush, hadn’t taken a single sip.

  As they rounded the bend on the other side of the ballroom, coming towards Rosalyn, Art’s steps fell out of rhythm again. And he wasn’t letting Nicky turn. It was a waltz. They were supposed to turn. But Art, who had been dancing correctly just a few steps ago, was now moving in a very non-dancelike motion. He was pushing Nicky in a straight line going backwards.

  Even as her back was turned, Nicky saw the whole thing come together in her mind. Art Tremblay had come out of nowhere at the end of the last dance and pushed Marshall out of the way, forcing Nicky to be his partner. Rosalyn had ordered a full goblet of wine at the beginning of this dance, and then held it in place as she hovered near the dance floor. It was the final dance before intermission, meaning there would be no time to arrange an outfit change before the immortals hit the floor.

  The grandfather clock, the orchestra, Ryan and Pauline, the bar – Nicky used all of these to orient herself and get ready for what was coming. Art intended to push her into Rosalyn. Sure enough, as they got closer, he leaned in and tried to put his hands on her shoulders. Nicky grabbed tightly onto his wrists. She found it all to be surprisingly easy.

  Big muscles, but about as macho as a goldfish.

  Allowing Art’s own momentum to do the work, Nicky leaned hard to the inside, and Art swung around behind her, crashing into Rosalyn. The wine spilled all over them both. Nicky didn’t get hit by a single drop.<
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  “What the fuck?” Rosalyn yelled.

  The music and dancing stuttered to a stop. The ballroom went silent. All eyes were on Nicky. It suddenly felt very familiar, like the opening moments of the night happening all over again.

  Nicky looked around the room. When she found Kim, she smiled at her, and said two words. She directed the words right at Kim, but spoke them loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “You missed.”

  Part 2

  Her Name Was Celeste, But Her Dad Called Her Nicky

  15

  Before the Homecoming masquerade, before her first day at Thorndike, before the Network, before there even was a Nicky Bloom, there was a girl named Celeste. Celeste Nicole Allen, but her dad called her Nicky.

  Celeste is just too beautiful a name to throw around willy nilly, her dad had said to her once.

  Celeste was her mother’s name. And her grandmother’s. Nicky never knew either of them.

  When Nicky and her dad hit the road, she had to leave the name Celeste behind.

  “It will always be our secret,” said her dad, “but never more than a secret. We’ll never tell anyone else, okay? Starting now, Nicky isn’t just your nickname, it’s your real name.”

  Nicky’s first memory was when she and her dad went to visit the man with the scar and the eye patch. She was five. In later years, she would discover that most children had at least some memories from before they were five. Frankie could remember a day all the way back to when he was three.