I hereby confess:
I’m not proud of myself.
“Where the hell have you been!” I cried.
“Amy—”
“What the hell happened to you!”
“Please, just calm—”
“I thought they fucking kidnapped you, do you know that?”
“I know,” she said, and her eyes went from me to the attendant, to the door.
“How do you know? What the hell, Jenny? What were you thinking? Your hair was left on our stoop!”
“I wasn’t…just—I wasn’t, okay?” She lifted her hands. “Who is that with you?” she asked. “Poe?”
“You know what?” I said, walking toward her and stabbing my finger at her raincoat. “I’m not even going to say you’re fined for that. You’re a traitor!” Now that I saw she was safe (though shorn), all of my inner rage decided to have a coming-out party. “How could you? You manipulative, lying, oath-breaking bitch! How could you!”
“Whoa,” said the guy behind the counter. “You’re a chick! Weird. Wait, is this some kind of butch lesbian thing?”
“Amy, wait a second!” Jenny grabbed my hands in both of hers. “I’m—” She took a deep breath. “I’m really scared. And I want to talk to you, but…” She looked out the window. “Not with him there, okay? I can’t stand that guy.”
“Well, he can’t stand you, either,” I snapped. “And though I may have been on your side about that a few days ago, now I think I’m on his.”
“Amy.” She squeezed my hands. “Please. Help. Me.”
Jenny may not pay attention to her oaths, but I still did. Okay, so I sucked at secrecy. So I didn’t always completely trust or love my brethren. I was still there to help them out when they needed me.
And this chick needed me.
“Jenny, what am I supposed to say? That you’ll talk, but only to me? That’s a little NYPD Blue, don’t you think?”
“No, you can’t tell him I’m here at all. Please? I don’t trust him.”
This, coming from the traitor with the secret apartment and the false name. “I don’t have a particularly high opinion of the people you do trust.”
Jenny maneuvered herself behind the Cheetos display. “Right now, there’s only one person who fits that description and she’s standing in front of me.”
“Then strike what I just said.” I looked out at the street. Poe was probably already searching for me.
“Get rid of him, okay?” She thrust a restaurant postcard at me. “Then meet me here.”
“Absolutely not!” I said. “You’ve been missing for two days and you think I’m letting you out of my sight? Forget it.”
“Amy, I swear—”
“Bullshit. I don’t believe anything you swear. Not after what you did.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I swear. I swear on the Bible.” She reached behind her neck and unclasped her crucifix and chain. “Here. This was my grandmother’s. Take it as assurance that I’ll meet you. But don’t tell Poe about me. Please. There’s a lot going on you don’t know.”
I was getting a little sick of hearing that, and also, I wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t just palmed some cheap trinket. But I’d seen Jenny wear this crucifix before. “Fine,” I said, regretting it already.
Jenny walked up to the counter, whispered a word to the still-stunned clerk, then ran out the back door.
“So, girly,” he said, pocketing a fifty, “you still want your coffees?”
Outside, I scanned the dismal streets for Poe while balancing two paper cups and an umbrella handle and brainstorming ways to, as Jenny said, “get rid of him.” We’d been working together so well, too. I was still trying to figure it out when Poe rounded the corner, saw me, and came splashing up.
“Where have you been!” he said with a scowl. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Everywhere but in the store you left me in front of?”
He put his hands on my shoulders. “You have no idea what I thought.”
“I have a pretty good idea, actually,” I replied, shaking him off. I handed him his cup. “I’m the big conspiracy theorist in the group, remember?”
“Can you just lay off the backtalk for two minutes? I wanted to show you something. I think we can get in through—”
But I’d stopped listening. “Backtalk?” I repeated, imbuing the word with as much venom as possible. “Backtalk? Who do you think you are, my great-aunt Amelia, wielding her wooden spoon?”
He rolled his eyes. “Sorry. It was just an expression. I was joking.”
“Joking.” I searched the memory banks. “Since when do you have a sense of humor? I seem to recall a certain individual who tried to drown me the last time I made a joke.” Poe had been cruel to me during my initiation. Focus on that.
“Okay, now I know you’re mocking me. I said I’m sorry. Can we get on with it?”
He wasn’t going to make this easy, was he? “Not if you plan to keep patronizing me like this. I don’t even get why you’re still here, James. What’s your plan? Trying to get in good with Gehry?”
“No, not anymore. I thought we went over this. It’s Jamie, and I’m a gardener now, remember?”
“And unless you want to stay a gardener, don’t you think you’d better get out of here? Keep it up, and you won’t have any friends in politics left.”
He placed his cup on a window ledge and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Wherefore the sudden concern?”
“It’s not concern,” I replied smoothly. “It’s that pesky paranoia of mine. So here’s my theory: You say you want to help. You feed me nice little bits of information, and then you make sure you tag along every step of the way. You’re not here to help me. You’re helping them. What better way to get back in their good graces?”
“Are you insane?”
Yes. “You knew I would track her down eventually, and you made sure you’d be right beside me.”
“You are insane. Amy, you couldn’t track a train by yourself.” That’s right, Poe. Make it easy. My eyes began to burn. “And in case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t exactly found her, either.” Ah, Poe, how little you understand. “Is this how you get when you haven’t had your nap?”
“Right. My nap. Always good to have the condescension as well as the misogyny in your arsenal, isn’t it?”
Oops, maybe a tad too far. Poe reeled back as if struck. He stood there for a moment, in the rain, blinking at me. Then he raised his hands in surrender. “I fucking don’t get you women.”
Enter Misogyny. Or, at the very least, chauvinism.
He looked at Jenny’s building, then shook his head. “This was a dead end anyway. I’m out of here. See you around, Amy.” He turned and walked off.
I stood there until my coffee got cold.
Jenny was seated in a tall-backed booth when I arrived at the near-empty restaurant. I stashed my dripping umbrella, wondered briefly what had happened to Poe’s, and slid into the seat across from her.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“I pissed him off and he ditched me.” I dropped her necklace on the table and waved to the waitress. “Double cappuccino?”
Jenny slid the menu at me. “Are you hungry?”
“Mostly for information. Now, tell me what happened before I’m tempted to commit assault with the pepper shaker.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Where do I start?”
“Anywhere. Your involvement with the website. Your disappearance. Your alias. Your fake apartment. How about explaining why the hell thirteen inches of your hair are sitting in the Grand Library right now?”
“I screwed up.”
“I know that part. Tell me how. And start with whether or not anyone has been hurting you.”
She worried her bottom lip, and her eyes grew glassy. “Not as much as I’ve been hurting myself. The Diggers are all bark and no bite, you know.”
“Tell that to the man who broke into my room yesterday,” I snapped.
“Someone broke into your room?” she asked.
“Yes. And yours.” I was losing my patience. Where was that cappuccino? “Now, what happened? Begin with the part where you betrayed us, and then I’ll see if I’m interested in sticking around for the rest.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay. When I joined, I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, I was told Rose & Grave worshipped the devil.”
“Then why did you join?”
“I was a sleeper agent,” she said matter-of-factly as the waitress arrived. The woman gave Jenny a skeptical glance, set down a cup of cappuccino, a milkshake, and an omelette with French fries and departed. “It was Micah’s idea. When the Diggers started grooming me, we thought it was the perfect chance.” She waved in the air with her fork. “To…get them.”
“What went wrong?”
She dug into her food. “To start with, you did. And the other girls. You were really nice to me and I was kind of into the whole battle—you know, down with the entrenched patriarchy and all that stuff Demetria says. It made the society seem really human to me. Before I was in there, I pretty much thought it was all blood rituals.”
“Like the initiation?” Mmmm…cappuccino.
Jenny snorted. “I thought the initiation was going to be much worse than it was.”
Clearly, no one had threatened to force her into sexual slavery.
“I thought it would be real blood, for starters. And Persephone? Please.”
I put my cup down. “You were prepared to drink real blood?”
“Gross, right?” Jenny slurped from her milkshake. “But it was for the cause.”
“I’m trying to think of a cause that would tempt me to drink blood.”
“Jesus died for my sins. I think the least I could do in return is drink something nasty. But I felt like I was being mocked with that initiation. So close, and yet so far from any real heresy. And definitely from any real evil. It was like walking through a haunted house at a carnival. I don’t think anyone was taking the Persephone stuff seriously.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in haunted-house rides.”
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been on them. I don’t want them banned or anything. It’s just silliness.” She thought about it for a moment. “It’s very complicated, what I believe. I mean, when I was younger, my parents loved Halloween and stuff. My mom, she’s Filipino, and my dad is Puerto Rican. They both have a lot of traditions that go back to superstitions, and I remember them being really fun. I even carved pumpkins and stuff at the church I went to growing up.”
“When did it change?”
“I’ve been kind of moving away from my parents’ beliefs—and from Catholicism in general—ever since I came to school. Micah says—” She broke off. “The point is, Rose & Grave wasn’t what I thought it would be, so as it turned out, there weren’t really any covens to destroy, you know?” She caught me eyeing her plate. “Want some?”
It did smell divine. I picked up a fork. “So you went Stockholm. Bet your boyfriend wasn’t happy about that, huh?”
Jenny’s expression turned grim. “Not exactly. I still thought you guys were evil. I decided I hadn’t looked far enough. Like maybe they were saving the real stuff for later, after they thought they could trust us. I kept searching.”
I clenched my jaw. “And then? When did you decide you hated us?”
“I didn’t!”
“You acted like it.” I glared at her. “You told your boyfriend about stuff we said at the meetings. You told him about my C.B. Don’t deny it!”
“I won’t,” Jenny said softly. “I’m sorry.”
I wiped at my suddenly misty eyes. “Why? What could my sexual history possibly have had to do with devil worship!”
“Micah was…impatient.” Jenny scratched at the back of her neck, as if looking for her braid, for something to do with her hands. “He wanted to know more. He wanted to understand what I saw in you guys.”
“And did he?” I fought to keep from shouting. “Did he understand?”
“No. And the more we talked about it, the less I understood, too. I think that’s the real reason we’re supposed to keep it all a secret. It doesn’t translate well to barbarians.” She laughed mirthlessly. “If Micah ever heard me refer to him as a barbarian…”
I could just imagine how he’d react. I rubbed my cheek. “And then?”
“I’m not like the rest of you, that’s for sure. I could see that once the C.B.s started. I was so afraid of doing mine—or not doing it, as the case would have been.”
“None of us are like the rest of us,” I said. “That’s pretty much the point.” Still, I’d been nervous as well, so it wasn’t as if I could blame her.
“I started thinking maybe Micah was right.” She dropped her chin. “I hated being there. Not you, but being there, because I wanted to like you guys, and I wanted to be like you guys, but I knew it was wrong.”
“To like us or to be like us?” I shook my head. “No one’s asking you to change who you are, Jenny.”
“Well, the person I am dislikes people like you. She isn’t supposed to go drinking with Demetria or think George is kind of cute and charming or want to confide in his most recent victim.” She shot me a glance.
“Okay, one, I’m not a victim. Two, you’re not supposed to know about that. And three, so we’re nice people. Whatever happened to love the sinner if not the sin?”
Now she raised her head fully. “Oh, please, Amy. Everyone knows about you and George. We’re not morons. Remember how I caught you two making out?”
Eep.
“And I’d kind of forgotten that last part. With Micah, everything was You’re either with me or against me. I know that now.” She picked up a fry, then put it back down.
I took it as a sign that she’d finished, and began scarfing her meal in earnest.
“And the longer I waited, the more he started dropping hints that I was against him.” There was a catch in her voice as she said this. “I couldn’t bear that. He’s so—I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s so amazing. So sure in his faith. So pure.”
“The man spit on me and called us both whores of Satan,” I said. “Purity ain’t exactly one of his virtues.”
Jenny burst into tears. Oops.
“I just…I just…What could I do? I couldn’t lose him. And I thought he was right. You guys were pretty bad—I mean, not bad bad, but not what I—Never mind. It wasn’t such a leap to go from there to evil. And Micah—”
“What? He said he loved you?” I asked in a mocking voice.
She nodded miserably, and grabbed a napkin to blow her nose. “He said people needed to know what kind of things the Diggers did. He said it would be such an act of…” She broke into sobs. “…loyalty.”
Poe hadn’t punched him hard enough.
The waitress arrived. “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” I said. “Can I have another cappuccino? And do you think you could add a splash of Grand Marnier?” I needed a drink to get me through this.
“You got it.”
“You see?” Jenny had seen to her Kleenex needs by now. “Micah would have had a fit if he saw me drinking this early.”
“You’re not drinking, though, Jenny. I am. And I’m not asking you to join me.”
“Fine. Being with someone who would drink this early.”
“Who cares what Micah thinks?”
“I do. I did. He makes me so happy. Every time I’m near him.” She sniffled. “But I couldn’t do what we’d planned,” she said. “Deep down, I didn’t want to. Maybe I knew how stupid I’d been. That’s why I was so angry at you. It’s as if you people, and liking you at all, was keeping me from what I really wanted.”
“Micah.”
She nodded. “I figured I had a choice: I could either be this good person, or I could be like you.”
“Thanks.”
“You know what I mean. I had spent my whole life working hard, being good, making the right decisions, trying to live the kind of life Christ wants me to, but I couldn’t do it.”
“I think I’m missing where you’re falling short.”
“It’s tough to explain.”
“It’s tough to explain to a non-Christian, or it’s tough to explain because the explanation doesn’t sound very Christian at all?”
She hesitated. “The latter.”
“The part where you destroy us for the glory of God.”
“Yes.”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Hebrews 10:30?”
“Romans 12. I think. But it could be both. When He really means something, I think God says it a couple of times.”
“Right.” Jenny swallowed. “You read the Bible?”
“I took a class.”
She let that sink in for a bit, then continued. “So you understand that I couldn’t really wrap my head around it. I spent a lot of time praying for guidance, but the only answer I got was that betraying the society would be wrong. And Micah said it was because I’d been…corrupted.”
“That asshole.”
Her lower lip began to quiver again. “So I had a choice. And being good wasn’t working. Hadn’t worked. But you—you were perfectly happy.”
“I was?”
“You looked it. And you had George and that other boy from the coffee shop. The way they look at you—”
Brandon?!? “You’re mistaken, Jenny. I’m not involved—”
“If Micah ever looked at me that way, I’d be happy forever.” She met my eyes. “I’d do anything. You know what I mean.”
“This is sounding like the beginning of Faust, but yes.”
“So we fought—you and me—and then…I don’t know. I wanted to prove you weren’t right about everything, and that you didn’t have it all.”
Me? “How did you go about proving this?”
“I decided to seduce Micah.”
I needed more than a splash of Grand Marnier. “Because of me.”
She sucked in air through her teeth. “I know. It sounds dumb, right?”
“It sounds like an excuse.”
“Which it was. I see that now. Anyway, it didn’t work. He…didn’t…want me.”
She burst into tears again and I slid out of my seat and over to her side of the booth. I put my arms around her and she leaned into my shoulder, sobbing. “Hey, it’s okay.” Heck, it was more than okay, considering Micah Price was a bastard of the highest caliber. But that kind of logic doesn’t go well with a broken heart.
“I was going to give him exactly what he wanted. Everything he wanted. Well, almost. I couldn’t bear to give him the Black Books—not even then—but I compromised.”
“Had the same effect.”
She peered up from between damp eyelashes. “I know it doesn’t make a difference. Betrayal is betrayal. But it felt like it gave me a little control. I could pick and choose the least damaging things. I didn’t expect the media to latch on like that. It was all so innocuous, hardly secrets at all.”
“Where did you find that website?”
“It belongs to one of Micah’s friends. Very private guy. Very off-the-grid. He’s never even told me his real name. I offered to help him redesign the site once—make it look a little more user-friendly, a little more…professional, and he freaked.”
“And we’re the weird ones?” I asked ruefully.
She gave me a halfhearted smile. “So we sent him a breakdown of the rituals and the club lists and stuff, and then Micah and I celebrated. It was going to be phase one. Everything was perfect.”
“Until?”
“Until I kissed him. Even that was perfect, at first. And then I did something wrong, or got aggressive, or I don’t know what.” She pulled away from me, but kept her face cast downward. “He pushed me away. I fell on the floor. He started shouting at me. Terrible things. Awful things. He said I’d been ruined…that the…Diggers had…ruined me.” She looked at me. “Amy, I was kissing him. That’s all. He didn’t even want to kiss me. What’s wrong with me?”
Where did she want me to start? “Nothing is ‘wrong’ with you. Not like that anyway.” It wasn’t necessary for me to be explicit about how many issues her boyfriend had, was it? “Do what you want: Drink or don’t. Have sex, or don’t. It’s up to you. Nobody I respect judges you for it.”
“After he left, I didn’t know what to do. I was crying like…like I’ve never cried. I couldn’t take it. And I didn’t have anywhere to turn. I don’t have friends who aren’t Micah’s—not anymore. I couldn’t go to you guys, not after what I’d done. And to listen to Micah, God hated me, too. I was all alone. So I ran.”
“Here.” I looked at her. “Why not home?”
“Right,” she said, lifting her head. “My parents would be so thrilled to learn I was upset because my attempt to seduce the boy they hated and thought was turning me away from the Church after the two of us conspired to ruin the possibly Satanic secret society I’d joined had backfired. That would go over beautifully.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know if you noticed, Amy, but my folks are a little controlling.”
I stared at her. “How do you know I talked to your folks?”
She smirked. “Please. I’ve had my home phone tapped for years. That’s how I knew you were looking for me.”
Would wonders never cease? “Of course I was looking for you! I thought something terrible had happened to you. That note on your computer screen…”
“Yeah.” Her expression turned sheepish. “That was the idea.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to see if he really loved me. And the answer is—he doesn’t.”
“What if the police had gotten involved? Jenny, you could be in big trouble.”
“I know. And I know now that I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I’ve had the last few days to calm down.”
“And I’ve had the last few days to freak out.”
She dipped her head again, but there was no hair to fall in her face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to make it up to you. I don’t expect any of you to ever forgive me.”
“That’s good. Keep your expectations nice and low,” I said.
She blew her nose again. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Everything is so screwed up. I’ve been praying a lot. I even went to church. Catholic church. Took communion. Haven’t done that in a while.”
“Why not? Oh, wait, let me guess, Micah doesn’t like it.”
Jenny banged her head a few times against the back of the booth. “I’m such an idiot. I’m such an idiot. Why?”
“I’m going to assume that’s rhetorical. We all turn into idiots in matters of the heart.”
“How about matters of the soul? All this time, I thought everything Micah was teaching me was bringing me closer to Christ. I really believed that. But now I think I’ve let Him down.” (I’m assuming the capital here.)
I put my arm around her again. “I think He can handle it.”
“Yeah. But can I? I’ve been going crazy these last few days.”
“These last few days?” I slid my eyes toward her. “You have an apartment under a false name. I think you went crazy a while ago.”
“That’s fair.”
“And your hair? Why did you do that?”
“Leviticus. Absolution.”
Um, whatever. “I don’t know if anyone in the club will accept it as a peace offering.”
She knit her brows. “I didn’t mean it for the Diggers. I sent it to Micah.”
“It was on the front step of the tomb this morning, in an envelope—” I broke off. “God dammit.” I cringed and looked at Jenny. “Sorry. But I bet I know who left that thing on our porch this morning.” I pulled out my cell phone. “I’m calling Josh to ask if he can peel that address label off the envelope and see if Micah’s address is underneath.”
“Trust me, it is. Sneak move of his, though.” She put her hand over mine. “Don’t contact Josh yet. I’m not done with the story.”
“I just want to tell him to call off the dogs of war. You’re safe and…well, if not sound, then at least on your way there.”
“Eh, I’d let that go for a minute. We’re going to need those dogs.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The unwilling patriarchs, chasing us down? Going through your dorm room and mine? Coming into the city?”
“Right. They’re looking for you, to make you pay for releasing that information.”
“Not exactly. I mean, I’ve no doubt they’d like to pay me back. But I don’t think that’s what they’ve been looking for. They want to know if I know what I know, and if I’ve told you.”
“What do you know?”
Jenny sneaked a peek at the rest of the room. “Not here.” She signaled for the check and threw some money onto the table. “Amy, it really means a lot to me that you tracked me down.”
“Why? I’m pretty pissed at you, remember? I mean, all of this huggy stuff aside, I’m still furious at you for everything you did.”
“But you also cared whether I was alive or dead. Which is more than I can say for anyone else. If I’d called you earlier this week, I bet you would have been there for me, no matter how mad you were. You really believe in your oaths, don’t you? You believe we should love each other.”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But I wouldn’t start preparing the application to beatify me just yet. Mostly, I think we should try to keep each other safe from danger.”
“Well, you found me. So right now, you’re my best friend.”
“Poe found you, too,” I reminded her. Fines, at the moment, were a bit moot. “Believe me, he’s been working his ass off. Why can’t you trust him?”
She pulled on her coat. “After what I’m about to tell you,” she said, standing, “you won’t trust him, either.”