“Later!” I cried. “There’s a 24-hour news cycle covering Gehry. I promise you, you’re not going to miss a thing. The parley is happening now.”
“But the Gehry situation is unfolding tonight,” he said. Almost whined it, in fact.
Hale cleared his throat. “Should I serve dinner now? We’re running late.”
I appealed to the small contingent of knights. “Should I go? Should someone come with me?”
“I vote yes to the former and no to the latter,” Angel said. “There is a code. Just because they haven’t been following it so far…”
“Doesn’t mean they’ll start following it now,” Lucky pointed out. “Stay far away.”
We looked at Soze, who was clearly straining to hear the newscast from the next room.
“Well?” I asked.
“Go,” he said in a distracted tone. “I’m sure it will be fine.”
All three of us glared at him in frustration, and when he noticed our expressions, he threw up his hands. “Fine! I don’t care, okay? These stupid pranks…they don’t matter. There is serious stuff happening in the world and I’m sorry if I can’t get all worked up over every little drama this society goes through. Sheesh!”
“Fine!” Lucky exclaimed. “Let her go, and if she winds up dead, it will be on your head.”
“They aren’t going to kill her,” Angel said. “They have expulsion to think of, too, you know.”
Some comfort. Over dinner, we discussed the parley offer with the rest of the club, and it was agreed upon (rather quickly, in my opinion, so conversation could turn back to Gehry’s political and legal troubles) that Angel was right. I should follow the instructions on the note, despite the risk.
“Think of it this way,” Angel argued, “if they wanted to ‘get’ you, they’ve been doing a bang-up job of it without arranging it with you in advance. If they’re bothering to send a letter saying they want to parley, maybe they really mean it.”
“Or maybe that’s what they want you to think,” Thorndike pointed out.
Finally, we decided I’d go, with a small contingent of Diggers waiting for me outside the library, and my finger poised over the Send button on Jenny’s Push-to-Talk cell in case things got hairy.
At fifteen minutes to midnight, I left the tomb and began walking to the library. It was raining, the type of wintry, New Haven downpour that seems to come at you from all sides, thwapping at you with clammy bursts of wind and making every step away from shelter seem like a futile, if not downright insane, gesture. But I soldiered on and eventually made it across the campus to the steps of the library. The timing of this part of the journey was very important, since the library closed at midnight and they stopped letting patrons enter at quarter-till.
I made my way through the front door and into the splendid, Gothic-cathedral entrance hall. With the security guard and the research-desk employees looking on, I tried to casually gravitate toward the West Reading Room, which had, among its many desks, wingback chairs, and private nooks, a fire entrance to the central courtyard that was often propped open when the building’s ancient heating system threatened to turn the Stacks into a sauna.
Tonight I was lucky. I sat and waited, wondering in turn how many of the library’s remaining visitors were Dragon’s Head spies and if a security guard would be along presently to kick me out.
At 11:58, I stepped outside into the cold rain, which felt that much worse after the dry heat of the Reading Room. As the golden light faded into blue-gray darkness, I strained my eyes to determine if there were any people waiting in the courtyard, but the only things I could see were stone carvings of grimacing gargoyles, winter-dead trees, and piles of grayish ice. I kept my gloved hand in my coat pocket, ready to press the button on the phone.
And I waited. And waited. It seemed much longer than 120 seconds before I heard the distant chimes from the clock tower. Midnight.
On my left, I saw a shadow move. It drew closer to me, but all I could make out was a vaguely human shape. Still ten yards away, the figure stopped and sat on one of the stone benches. It raised a hand and beckoned to me. I stepped forward, and as I did, the figure’s features came into focus.
Felicity.
6. Sweet Defeat
“Oh, come closer,” Felicity said, as I struggled to breathe. “It doesn’t count unless we talk.”
“What…are…” Get ahold of yourself, Amy. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to parley, of course.” Her tone was perfectly calm, perfectly kind. Perfectly perfect. I knew this unflappable socialite charm, had seen it at work in Clarissa—had hated it in Clarissa, long before I ever grew to hate it in Brandon’s girlfriend. “As I assume you are.”
“I’m here to parley with Dragon’s Head,” I replied.
She smiled and flashed me her pin. “Well, I’m in Dragon’s Head, but I’m here to parley with you, Amy Haskel.”
My name on her lips was a curse, the opposite of everything Brandon made it sound like. I swallowed my disbelief. “This never had anything to do with that raid.”
“Of course it did,” she said. She patted the seat beside her. “Come sit next to me. We’re protected from the rain by the eaves.”
“I’ll stand, thanks,” I said, though my teeth were starting to chatter as the water seeped under my collar.
“Suit yourself.” She took a deep breath. “Here’s the deal, and don’t think it was an easy one for me to concoct. The members of my society will henceforth cease and desist from their personal campaign against you. And in return…” she paused. “…you will never see my boyfriend again.”
“I’ll what?” I cried. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t agree to that!”
Felicity’s beautiful brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, perhaps my letter was a tad unclear. You don’t have to agree to anything. I made this deal with Brandon.”
I stood there, dumbstruck, wishing I had a bench to fall onto.
“You see, Amy, my boyfriend, for reasons passing understanding, took umbrage at the fact that we were, shall we say, persuading you to return our property.” She paused. “You wouldn’t be interested in doing that now, would you?”
“Over my dead body,” I hissed.
She sighed. “At any rate, my boyfriend had this crazy theory that I, as the director of our little campaign of persuasion, had some sort of personal stake in the matter, above and beyond the usual society feud. Barbarians and their strange ideas! Of course, you and I know that’s silly.”
I personally didn’t know anything of the sort. “Your campaign, as you call it, was a bit out of the mainstream.”
“As is everything about your club,” Felicity replied. “My boyfriend was under the impression that I had used his inexplicable lingering fascination with you to discover your schedule, habits, and even brand of shampoo.”
“Which you did.”
“Don’t you find it odd that anyone would remember someone’s favorite brand of cheap, drugstore shampoo?” Felicity’s smile remained sanguine, and my hands fisted inside the pockets of my coat. “And I don’t even know my own roommate’s class schedules.”
“Brandon must really care about me,” I shot back.
Here, her smile grew wide. “My boyfriend is a kind person.” She kept saying that phrase, my boyfriend. She must have known how much it needled me. “And I really care about him. I love him. I love him ever so much more than I love some silly feud between two college clubs. I care about him so much more than I care about some silly college secret society.” She paused. “I don’t know if anyone else could say that.”
The little bitch. Brandon had apparently told her everything about our breakup last year. She’d never needed the shoes to identify me. She’d always known I was in Rose & Grave. And she also knew I’d chosen it over Brandon.