Later that evening Patch lay next to Lia on the king-size bed in their guest suite. Aside from their coffee at the Pink Pony, they had barely even had a real date, and now he was in this incredibly romantic situation. They kissed for a few minutes before she broke the mood by asking the question he had been dreading.
“Patch, you’ve got to tell me, what’s going on here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s see: The five of you all seem to speak in your own language, or at least you have your own vocabulary. You all have ankh tattoos on the back of your necks-at least, I’m pretty sure you all do, though I couldn’t see Nick’s too clearly in the pool. You’re obsessed with keys and strange board games. Nick is leading you on some kind of quest, but he doesn’t seem to know what the final goal is. What’s it all about?”
“It’s nothing. It’s…”
“Patch, don’t mess with me.” Her eyes shone fiercely, and he realized he would have to tell her if he wanted the relationship to have any chance of working.
“We’re not supposed to tell anyone. That’s what they told us.”
“Who’s they? The boogeymen under the bed?”
Patch sighed and started speaking slowly. “The leadership of the group that we’re in… it’s sort of like a club. We’re really not allowed to talk about it. I don’t know. I guess we’re sort of far away. Maybe the rules don’t apply once we leave the city.”
He knew that wasn’t true. He knew that by telling Lia, he would be breaking the second rule on the scroll that had been handed to him on Isis Island: “You will not speak to Outsiders about the Society, not to family nor to friends.”
Screw that. Until recently, Patch was an Outsider himself. And he still felt like he wasn’t truly a member, not a full-fledged one like the others in his class.
He started explaining to Lia how he had gotten involved in it all, about the Night of Rebirth, about the footage he had taken, about how he had been threatened and kidnapped after infiltrating the island. About how he had joined the very group that his grandmother had warned him about, which had left her none too pleased.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is all so heavy. You don’t need to hear this-the weekend was supposed to be fun, right?”
“I just don’t believe-I mean, this stuff is really incredible. Secret initiations? Threats? Sneaking your way onto an island?”
Patch grinned shyly. “I know, crazy, right?”
“I’m actually sort of… well, I’m sort of impressed. I didn’t think you had this kind of thing in you.”
“Hey, it’s not all fancy private school stuff,” Patch said. “So does all this seem incredibly strange to you? You seem worried about something.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“Let me guess: You want nothing to do with any of it, including me.” He knew he was being melodramatic, but he figured he should put his worst fears out there in the open.
“No, not at all,” she said. “If you’re in this, I want to be right there with you.”