The Sententia: Second Thoughts Part 5

If it hadn't been such a serious topic, the possibility of my joining the Perceptum as a.s.sa.s.sin-in-residence, I'd have laughed at the similarity between the senator's words and Carter's. He was talking about something entirely different, of course, but once done, I couldn't go back from that either. I'd given myself a year until I was ready to take that big step in our relations.h.i.+p. Somehow I knew that was about how long I had until the Perceptum would expect a definitive answer.

A WEEK LATER, I was no closer to an answer, but Amy had other concerns.

"Isn't that Maddi Worthington one of your campers?" That's what she'd taken to calling my dorm girls. The one in question had just come into the bookstore lounge where we were seated on our favorite couch by the fireplace, working on homework.

"Mandi Worthington, and yes. Why?"

"Mandi. Whatever," Amy said. "I saw her talking to Caleb at the reception and another time or two since then. I can't figure out why. Isn't she a seventh grader? And Alexb.i.t.c.h's cousin, right?" That's what she'd taken to calling Alexis.

"Eighth actually, and yes again, Alexis's cousin. I don't know why she was talking to Caleb though, and come to think of it, I don't know why she didn't come here last year either."

Amy watched Mandi's progress toward some of her friends in the sitting area. "Well, she's not a Legacy. I put together mailings for all of them-you-the other day." Amy's work hours were spent at the Admissions office, which also coordinated fund-raising for the Academy. Considering the size of the Academy's endowment, she must have mailed a lot of things. "She's not on the swim team, is she?" she pressed.

I glanced at my roommate over my economics book. She was back to rapidly scribbling numbers on her paper, but she was wearing an uncharacteristic frown while doing it. When it came to math, usually that was my expression. "You know she's not on the swim team; you come to our meets."

The frown deepened and the scribbling slowed but didn't stop. "Oh, right. Sorry."

I put my hand on her notebook. "What's going on here?" I asked. She seemed...suspicious. That was also not like her.

"I just can't figure out why Caleb would be talking to an eighth grade girl, is all."

I sighed. "Did you ask him why he was talking to her?"

"Talking to who?" Carter said as he wandered into the lounge, a few pieces of wood under one arm, a book under the other. He settled the logs in the fireplace and himself onto the couch next to me, throwing his now empty arm around my shoulders. I loved break time.

"Mandi Worthington," Amy said, voice tinged with distaste. "She was talking to Caleb."

Carter glanced in Mandi's direction and frowned, his eyebrows drawing together in a look of obvious concern. I barely had time to think Oh, no, before Amy pounced on it. "What do you know?" she hissed.

"What? Nothing!" Carter replied. "It's just that she's right over there..." Which was a bulls.h.i.+t line, but Amy seemed to accept it. I made a mental note to get the real scoop on young Mandi as soon as I could.

"Sorry," Amy whispered. "But...anyway. I don't like it." She frowned some more and I laughed at her.

"No, really?" I mocked. "Why are you so bothered by this anyway?" I was trying to get her to relax, but in the back of my mind, Carter's reaction kind of had me wondering if she should be worried.

"Bothered by what?" Caleb himself asked as he squeezed onto the end of the couch next to Amy. "What's the matter, babe?"

We both squealed in surprise and Caleb grinned. Carter looked amused, like he'd known he was here. Instead of answering, Amy asked, "Where the h.e.l.l did you come from?!"

Caleb grinned a little wider, just like Carter often did. They were definitely spending too much time together. "Upstairs. Picking up a book for Bio extra credit."

The second floor housed, in addition to my favorite section of the store-First Editions-all the health-related books. Amy might have been unsure about her future career, but her boyfriend was decidedly on his way to becoming Caleb Sullivan, MD. It was also impossible to see the staircase from our seat by the fire, which explained how he snuck up on us.

"N...nothing, really," Amy finally stammered. "Just having trouble with this problem set." She hastily scrawled a few more numbers on her paper in pretend confusion.

It was Caleb's turn to frown, and I couldn't blame him. "You're having trouble with math?" he asked, as he glanced over at her now-messy notebook.

"That's why it's so bothersome," she replied. It might have been a poor excuse to start with, but she sold it well. "I just need quiet to concentrate. Come with me?" she said to Caleb, who nodded but was obviously perplexed. Amy gathered up her books to head back to campus, Caleb trailing after her, and I looked at Carter expectantly.

"What?"

I rolled my eyes. He never was very good at feigning ignorance. "You know what."

He sighed, and then ran his fingers through his hair, instantly confirming my suspicions. "She's a Siren," he said in a low voice.

"Like a warning or, uh, like Odysseus...?"

"The latter. Sirens are...hard to resist. She's a kind of Herald, like Alex. Except worse."

"That's a tall order," I said drily. In the Sententia hierarchy, Heralds were one step below Thought Movers. Their gifts projected onto others, though they had no impetus. They influenced-sometimes strongly-but couldn't compel. Alexis was persuasive; whatever she said, people were likely to believe.

"Honestly, Lane, from what I've heard of her, Mandi makes her cousin look like a saint. Alexis does things for a reason, even if it's a selfish one. Mandi...she just seems to do s.h.i.+t for fun," he said, and that made me nervous. If I remembered correctly, Odysseus had to be shackled to a mast in order to resist the feminine allures of the sirens.

"So then I should be worried about a Siren, even an eighth-grade one, talking to Amy's boyfriend, right?"

He gave a small nod. "Probably. She's fourteen," he reminded me. Carter hadn't been a saint at fourteen. Neither had Amy, for that matter.

"Great," I said. Now I'd need to investigate just why she was talking to Caleb. "Should I be worried about her talking to you?"

One of the s.e.xy smiles I lived for spread over his face and he leaned in close, his lips practically touching mine as he said, "Even a Siren can't make me think of anyone but you." He kissed me after that, and I forgot completely that we were in the middle of the crowded bookstore.

Kisses like that made me forget a lot of things, including that he was destined to kill me.

FINDING MYSELF ALONE in the lounge, with Amy gone and Carter back to work, I decided to go hang out with Melinda. It was late Sunday afternoon, so I knew she'd be upstairs making dinner. I'd dined with them almost every Sunday night for the last year, but over the summer, I'd started helping her. Slowly, but surely, under Melinda's patient tutelage, I was becoming a halfway decent cook.

When I got up to the apartment, I was greeted by the delicious aroma of oregano and comfort. A lasagna was already bubbling in the oven.

"Jeff?" Melinda called from the living room.

"No, it's me."

"Lainey!" She popped into the kitchen and dropped her latest Sudoku book on the table. "It's not closing time already, is it?"

"No, not yet, but I guess I'm too late to help with dinner."

She glanced at the clock over the sink and then at a bowl of apples on the counter and said, "But it's never too late for dessert, right? Let's make a crisp. The boys will appreciate it."

So we did, Melinda chopping apples while I measured and mixed. It was comfortable and familiar. We worked well together, and I'd missed my cooking lessons since school restarted. I tried not to think about the homework I should be doing.

I tried, too, not to think about the things Dan had revealed to me, but it was hard not to. Initially, I'd intended to confront Carter about his conspicuous omissions right away. I couldn't believe how in all our time together he'd never told me about Mr. Astor, or about Dan vowing not to use his gift. But eventually I realized that wasn't true-I could believe it. I could even give several reasons why he'd done it. I just wasn't happy about it. I was also, I reminded myself, still omitting some big things of my own.

As I stirred my flour and sugar and chatted about this and that with Melinda, I realized Carter wasn't the only one I could talk to. "Mel?" I started.

She looked up from the apples and smiled. "Are you ready for these?"

"Um, sure," I said, handing over the baking dish. "But that's not what I wanted to ask you."

There must have been something in my tone that tipped her off, because she stopped scooping apples and frowned. "What's he done now?"

I almost laughed. "It's more about what he hasn't done. Why didn't anyone tell me about Mr. Astor?"

She shook her head, caramel curls bouncing lightly, and her frown deepened. "I knew this would happen," she muttered and then sighed. "I'm sorry, Lainey. I...well, there's no good excuse. We should have. I suppose Dan did though?" She said it like a question, but it really wasn't. She couldn't hide the traces of anger in her voice either.

"He did. It was...pretty shocking." Obviously. I had a gift for understatement.

Melinda brushed a hand across her forehead, a motion reminiscent of her nephew's nervous tic. "I suppose that's one of the reasons we never told you. It's not something any of us likes to think about. In fact, it's probably the worst moment in our history." By "our," I knew she meant Sententia.

"Was Mr. Astor really that terrible?"

She thought about it. Something in my expression must have told her I hoped the answer was no. "I...didn't know him, not really. Evelyn"-Dan and Jeff's mother-"would probably tell you he was worse. The Council believed he was."

"But elimination?" That was what I really wondered about. It seemed extreme, for an already extreme measure. I hadn't wanted to ask Dan about it.

Melinda leaned on the counter. She said, "It shouldn't have come to that," the words thoughtful and measured. "I-I'm sure Dan explained what he was up to. He manipulated everyone, including other Sententia, other Council members, his people. The people he was meant to lead. He took our gifts and used them against us. I think, in some members' eyes, that was a worse offense than indiscretion."

I nodded, pus.h.i.+ng the baking dish in a slow circle in front of me. "So it was a little bit revenge."

"No." She gazed at me with her pretty pool blue eyes, so much like Carter's. "He threatened to expose us. That's what did it. His ego. But...like I said. It shouldn't have come to that. It didn't have to." She cleared her throat. "It did change his son, though. Even tragedies can have silver linings, I suppose." She reached over her hand to pat mine, still covered in apple and sugar. We both gave a little laugh when we realized, breaking the tension of the story. "Have a cup of tea with me? We can talk about it more while we wait for Carter and Jeff."

As I set the table in the dining room, Melinda made tea. She brought in mugs for each of us before returning to the kitchen to check on dinner. I'd never seen the mug she gave me, an old one with a fading picture of a bear, clearly well-loved and probably from the back of the cabinet. It was the perfect vessel for something hot and soothing, which seemed perfect right about then. With no thought for the steam clearly rising from it, I took an eager sip.

And unceremoniously spit it all over the table in front of me. Simultaneously, I dropped the mug, which hit the edge and split in two, spilling hot tea all down my front. I yelped, and Melinda came rus.h.i.+ng back into the room just as I jumped up from my chair and tried to mop up the damage with my tiny napkin. "S...sorry!" I stammered. "It was hot, and I burned myself, and then I dropped my cup which just made it worse..."

"Oh, you poor thing!" She grabbed another napkin to help, but since most of the tea had been absorbed by my s.h.i.+rt, she told me, "You go clean up. I'll bring you something to put on and then we'll take care of this."

I made it to the bathroom before I started to hyperventilate, but just barely. I sat down hard on the toilet lid and put my head in my hands, willing myself to take deep breaths. The tea had been hot, true, but that wasn't what caused me to spit it out and drop my cup. No, it was the vision of another cup of tea that had been served in that mug.

The one that killed Mark Penrose.

It lasted only a second, the vision, but long enough that I saw Carter's father sipping from that same mug while reading a newspaper. I knew instantly that there was poison in the tea and that Mark Penrose would not live out the day. But that was all I saw before I dropped it.

I didn't know how the poison had gotten there or by whose hand. It could have been Mark's own, for all I could be sure. Carter had said he died of a broken heart. Maybe he decided he couldn't live with it anymore. Maybe it was a terrible accident at the tea manufacturer. I wanted to believe that one, but I knew that wanting to believe something and it being true were two very different things.

I also knew that maybe neither of those scenarios was true. Maybe the poison had been added by someone else, even someone who lived here still. I didn't want to believe that but I knew better than to rule it out. I couldn't rule anything out until I got my hands back on that mug.

A soft knock on the door jolted me out of my thoughts.

"Lainey? You okay, honey? Do you need to go over to the infirmary? I brought you a s.h.i.+rt to change into," Melinda's slightly m.u.f.fled voice said warmly. I roused myself and opened the door a crack.

"Thanks." I reached out to take the s.h.i.+rt from her. "Most of the damage was to my T-s.h.i.+rt, but I...I think I burned my stomach. Let me help you clean up, and then yeah, maybe I should go over to the infirmary to have them check it." In actuality, I was fine-the damage was entirely within my mind-but I really needed to get out of there for a while.

"Oh, don't worry about cleaning up," she said. "It's already done. You just go ahead back to campus. I'll tell Carter what happened."

"Thanks," I repeated. s.h.i.+t! I said in my head. I changed as quickly as possible and raced back to the dining room, but I was too late. Melinda had indeed finished wiping up my mess and the broken mug was already gone, along with my chance to read more from it. Melinda was in the kitchen, so it wasn't like I could pick through the trash on my way out. Unable to do anything else, I apologized and thanked her again before escaping downstairs and across the street to my room.

Later I called Carter to give excuses for not coming back for dinner, half of which were true, because I did have a lot of homework and I wasn't hungry. As much as I wanted to see him, to take comfort in him, I just couldn't, not tonight. And not about this.

I couldn't sleep either. After tossing and turning for too long, I quietly slipped out of our room and down to the porch. Technically, I was breaking curfew, but I needed the fresh air. I settled into one of the pair of antique reed-back rockers and pushed the checkers around the board that rested on the low table between them.

I sat there for I didn't know how long, listening to a chorus of owls charm the night around me. Owls were supposed to be wise birds, and I hoped maybe I could learn from their refrain. In a matter of days, my head had become crowded with things I'd rather not know and their burden was heavy. Sharing them would lighten their load, and Carter and I had even promised each other that we would, but when I thought about telling him, my stomach formed a cold, tight ball.

If my fleeting vision last spring had been correct, I only had a limited amount of time left before he killed me, and I still hadn't been able to see why. Could this be it? How did one tell the boy she loved-loved so madly that she risked her death daily to be near him-things like his father didn't die of natural causes and his uncle, whom he idolized, was really her flesh and blood? For all I knew, I'd just discovered the keys to my own demise.

What I needed was more information. To find it, tomorrow I'd visit a place I hadn't been since I'd killed a girl there.

Chapter Eight.

What are you doing here?!" Amy and I said at almost the same time. It was Monday afternoon, right after cla.s.ses ended, and I'd just opened the door to our room to find my roommate frantically rummaging through a dresser drawer. Usually she was at her work hours during this time. We were both surprised, and not entirely pleased, it seemed, to see each other. I decided to answer first.

"My study group got changed to later tonight." I didn't mention that I'd asked to change it. "What are you looking for? And why aren't you at work?"

"I, uh, spilled something on my pants," she said sheepishly, "but I can't find the ones I wanted to change into." And it was true, I suddenly realized, that she was not wearing pants. Thankfully, her long sweater covered everything I didn't want to see, but the problem was, she was searching through her underwear drawer. And, on further inspection, it wasn't her sweater she was wearing. I eyed her messy hair and slightly flushed cheeks.

"Is he in the bathroom?" I asked. For possibly the first time ever, Amy blushed as deeply as I usually did, which answered my question for me. I didn't even wait for a response. "Caleb," I called, "if you're not wearing pants either, please stay where you are." I heard him chuckle from the other side of the bathroom door.

"Sorry," Amy said, pulling out her underthings and holding them behind her back. She eagerly shared all of the details with me after the fact, but apparently being almost-caught in the act wasn't as fun.

I looked at the clock and did some mental math. Cla.s.ses had ended not even ten minutes ago. "Did you guys skip final hour?" I asked, even more surprised about that than finding the two of them in our room. Amy was on her way to being Valedictorian. It wasn't at all like her to skip cla.s.ses, not because she was totally against the idea once in a while, but because she actually enjoyed going to them.

"It was just test review," she muttered.

I finally let out the laugh I'd been holding in and turned around so she could get dressed. "Right. Now could you please put some pants on? And we seriously need to get a ribbon-on-the-door system or something, so this doesn't happen again."

"If you'd gone to your study group like you're supposed to, we wouldn't need a ribbon!" Caleb shouted from the bathroom and Amy giggled. "And Lane, are you staying? 'Cause I really need to get out of here..."

I laughed again. "Only long enough to change my shoes. Keep your pants on..."-I spied his jeans half-hidden under Amy's bed-"or not for a minute."

"Where are you going?" a now fully clothed Amy asked as I sat on my desk chair to put on my sneakers.

s.h.i.+t. I had no excuse, because I hadn't thought I'd need one. "A walk," I finally said. It was the truth and, also, the only thing I could come up with.

She eyed me speculatively, but all she said was, "Okay, then. And I am sorry, Lainey." For some reason, she was more embarra.s.sed about this than she should have been. I'd ponder that later.

"It's okay," I a.s.sured her. I grabbed my keys, phone, and earphones. "See you at dinner. You too, Caleb."

"Bye," I heard her say, with a m.u.f.fled, "Later!" coming from the boy hiding in the bathroom, as the door closed behind me.

SINCE IT WAS the middle of the afternoon on a regular school day, I had to be extra careful sneaking off campus. I'd already been wearing leggings and an Academy sweats.h.i.+rt-not my best fas.h.i.+on day-so I took off at a light jog, as if I were just going for a run. Being on the track team in the spring, and dating Carter, it was something I did with enough regularity that it wouldn't seem strange to see me trotting past the ponds and through the gates.

I turned left on Main Street and continued running past the bookstore on the other side of the street, hoping no one would notice me. "No one" mostly meaning my boyfriend. The bookstore was usually empty this time of day, and it would be just my luck that he'd look out the front windows as I ran past. When I reached a particular spot in the trees that lined the street, I stopped as if to stretch but really just to make sure I was alone. Seeing no one, I darted into the woods.