Alejandro’s and Jared’s lives had already been sacrificed. Should the five of them remain steadfast in not allowing the Society to control them? Should they skip more meetings?
Nick didn’t know the right answer.
Soon he arrived home at his family’s apartment building, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum. He considered stopping at Patch’s floor to talk it over with him and Genie, but he decided against it.
Nick’s fingers and toes felt frostbitten, so he took a long, hot shower, which eased the pain.
The soapy water swirled down the drain, and he gradually regained sensation in his extremities. He thought of the comforts that the Society provided for all of them. Like a long, hot shower on a chilly winter night, the Society wanted to placate them all into submission with perks and luxuries, to make life so comfortable that it would be easy to ignore the darker side of any situation.
Nick dressed carefully in jeans and a nice shirt. Running into his parents these days was an awkward affair, and he almost pretended that he didn’t know them, as if he were in a hotel and was passing another guest in the hallway.
But tonight he couldn’t avoid them. Not when his girlfriend had been sabotaged.
Downstairs he heard his father in the library. Nick walked in.
“Nick, it’s nice to see you,” his father said. “You look a bit flushed. Did you go running today?”
Nick tried to keep his bitterness in check. He sat down on one of the leather couches and took a deep breath before answering.
“No, I didn’t. I had to help Phoebe. Her art studio was filled with rats.”
His father raised an eyebrow. “Rats? How odd.” He took a sip of his scotch.
“Thad was suspended when a bottle of gin fell out of his locker, and Lauren was accused of theft. Dad, we know that the Society is responsible for all of this.”
His father looked at him. “Maybe you’ll think about these occurrences the next time that you decide to miss a Society meeting. After everything that happened in the fall, I’d think you would take your responsibilities more seriously.”
“Dad, what happened in the fall was that you killed two people. Maybe not you personally, but the Society. And as far as I’m concerned, and from what everyone has told me, you pretty much are the Society. Or at least you’re the only part of it that I have any access to.”
“Calm down, Nick. At this time, your family needs you. You haven’t even asked about how your grandfather is doing. What kind of a selfish person are you?”
Nick’s mother appeared at the entryway to the library. He glared at his father. “Oh, forgive me if I put self-preservation and caring for my friends above my grandfather. It’s not like he’s exactly helped with this situation.”
“Your grandfather has made more possible in your life for you and your friends than you will ever understand,” Parker said as he stood up and moved toward the door. “So I strongly suggest that you get yourself in line.”
Chapter Sixteen
On Thursday nights, Genie went out, a rare weekly event when she attended a ballroom dancing class and then went to a diner afterward for coffee and pie with her friends. Because of this, Patch decided to offer up their apartment for the emergency meeting. For a few hours, they would have the place to themselves. He had wanted to make it nice for everyone, and though there was no way it would ever compare to the opulence of Lauren’s apartment, he had straightened up the living room and even bought sodas and baked a roll of chocolate chip cookies.
Thad, Phoebe, and Lauren recounted all the sabotage that had happened in the last forty-eight hours. Thad was still lobbying his school’s administration to keep the incident with the gin bottle off his permanent record. Phoebe was recovering from the vermin infestation and would need a follow-up meeting with her doctor to make sure she hadn’t been infected by the bite. Lauren was waiting for the verdict from Sebastian Giroux about the jewelry found in her bag.
“There’s something else,” Lauren said. She pulled out her phone from her handbag and showed everyone a text message she had received that day.
It read:
AQ EKEPRLE FMPYD QZP OQL RMYD QPDRL?
“Looks like gibberish,” Phoebe said.
“It’s not gibberish,” Thad said. “It’s a cryptogram.”
“A crypto-what?” Nick asked.
“It’s a code where each letter stands for a different one. Lauren, give me your phone.”
She handed her phone to Thad, and he punched the series of letters into his own iPhone, copying over the cryptogram.
His face grew dark. “I think I know what it means. I used a cryptogram solver. It’s a little bit… well, it’s a little bit scary.”
“Come on, what is it?” Phoebe asked.
He looked at Lauren. “Go ahead,” she said.
“It reads-and I think this is correct: ‘Do sisters watch out for each other?’”
“That’s weird,” Phoebe said. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“It makes sense to me,” Lauren said.
“Why’s that?” Nick asked.
“The text wasn’t originally sent to me. It was sent to my little sister, Allison.”
The group was silent for a moment.
“She’s not even in the Society,” Phoebe said after a moment.
“Maybe that’s the point,” Patch said. “They want us to know that they’re not afraid to get to our families.”
“Why Lauren, though?” Phoebe asked. “Why not any of the rest of us?”
“They think Lauren’s vulnerable right now,” Thad said. “And she’s the only one who has a younger sibling who’s not in the Society.”
“That’s true,” Patch said. “I’m just trying to figure out a pattern here. The rats were destroying Phoebe’s canvases. Phoebe’s an artist; that hits her where it hurts. Lauren, they put your job designing jewelry at risk. And the message to your sister is a further warning. But what about the bottle of gin? They could have done that to mess with any of us. Why Thad?”
“You’re right; it doesn’t match up,” Nick said.
Thad spoke slowly. “They must know more about my family than I usually tell people. My mom has been sober for ten years, but she used to have a drinking problem. They must have known that this would really bother me.”
Lauren gave his arm a supportive squeeze. “Hey-it would have bothered anyone.”
“What kind of sick stuff is this?” Phoebe said. “I can’t believe this-they’re not only messing with us physically, it’s like they’re trying to get to us psychologically. How do we know what’s next? If they could manage to screw up our lives this much in the last forty-eight hours, who knows what they could do?”
“We need to lay off,” Lauren said. “I mean, this is my sister we’re talking about. She’s a freshman at boarding school. It would be so easy for them to get to her. We need to go to the meetings. We need to do what they say.”
“I have a plan,” Nick said. “And it won’t put us in danger. I just need to work it out a little more before we get going on it.”
“What kind of plan?” Patch asked warily.
“I need you guys to hang tight for a couple of days. Can I fill you in on the weekend?”
Everyone nodded.
“In the meantime, maybe we all need to pretend to be model citizens, at least for a little while,” Thad said. “We need to get to know the other members.”
“I just don’t know if I can bear it,” Phoebe said. “They’re all like zombies. Claire Chilton going on about how the Upper East Side isn’t like it used to be. Who the hell cares?”
Lauren jumped in. “Speaking of Claire-I had an odd confrontation with her on Tuesday. Phoebe, I told you about this, right?”
Phoebe nodded.
“I ran into her at the Ralph Lauren store. She said that everyone had noticed that three of us were missing from the meeting, and then she started going on about how the Society was all about cultural advancement and how there was going to be a benefit for the museum. About how the Society was all about making the world a better place.”