“Oh, if only that were true,” Nick said sarcastically. “She’s totally bought into the whole thing. Her parents are both members. You know how seriously they take it.”
“There’s something else: they’ve given us a name. The five us are ‘the Infidels.’ That’s what the older members are calling us. I looked it up; it’s like when you don’t believe in a religion that everyone else believes in.”
“Well, that would be us,” Phoebe said.
Nick gave a half smile. “Maybe we should print T-shirts.”
“Yeah, right,” Patch said. “Talk about wearing a bull’s-eye on your back.”
“So let them call us that,” Thad said. “Let them think the group is about cultural advancement. We still need to fly under the radar. Don’t let them think we have anything planned.”
“Because the truth is, we don’t,” Patch said.
“That’s not entirely true,” Nick said. “I think I can figure something out. I just need some more time.”
“What should I tell my sister?” Lauren asked.
“Tell her that she’ll be fine. Tell her it doesn’t mean anything,” Nick said.
“How can you be so sure?” Phoebe asked. “I mean, we all thought that skipping a meeting wasn’t a big deal, and look what happened.”
“They’ve made their point,” Nick said. “From now on, we don’t miss any more meetings. Give me a few days-in fact, clear your Saturday, if you can. I’ll keep you posted.”
“You’re sure you can come up with something?” Patch asked.
Nick nodded. Nothing more had to be said. Patch trusted his friend, and the rest of them did as well.
After everyone left, though, Patch kept wondering about the Society, about its methods, and how they had gotten to Lauren by threatening her sister.
All he had in his family were Genie and his mother. And he wondered which one of them could be next.
Chapter Seventeen
On Friday morning at school, the junior class had a meeting with Chadwick’s director of college advising, Mr. Gregory. He went on and on about the importance of their grades and extracurricular activities, particularly in the second semester of their junior year. This would be the second-to-last official set of grades that admissions committees could use to evaluate the candidates from Chadwick, and for those who were applying for early admission to places like Yale, it would be the last full set of grades available before an admissions committee would make its decision. Phoebe noticed some of the students sitting in the back, their feet perched rudely on the desks in front of them, as if none of this applied to them. Phoebe wasn’t going to make any assumptions; she knew she still had to keep her grades up. She had met with a few alumni who were on different admissions committees last semester at a meet and greet sponsored by the Society. It had all been done under the auspices of a “private gathering sponsored by a group of helpful alumni.” But she didn’t feel like she could just coast on through.
Phoebe tried to focus on Mr. Gregory’s talk, but something had happened last night that she couldn’t get out of her mind. When she asked to use the bathroom at Patch’s apartment, he had directed her to Genie’s, as he said that his own was a mess. Phoebe had developed a terrible habit of snooping when she was in other people’s houses, and she couldn’t help taking a peek into Genie’s medicine cabinet. Besides, she was curious about the woman. There was something Genie wasn’t telling all of them about her past, and Phoebe was anxious to know what it was.
Just a few weeks ago, Genie had told Phoebe and Nick about her broken engagement with Palmer Bell in the 1940s. But Phoebe sensed that there was more to the story. Why had Genie ended up in the same apartment building as Palmer’s son and his family? Was it simply coincidence that Nick and Patch had become such good friends?
Phoebe imagined that Genie’s secrets might help them unravel the mysteries about the Society that they had been trying to uncover. She hadn’t wanted to pry Patch when he was so new to the group, but there were things she had noticed: the wistful, far-off look in Genie’s eyes when she had talked about Palmer that afternoon a few weeks ago, the way she fiddled with the locket around her neck, how Patch seemed to have such a strange relationship with the Bell family, as if he were both an outsider and a close family friend.
“Phoebe!” Nick tapped her on the shoulder. “We have to go. The presentation’s over.”
She nodded distractedly, only able to think of one thing: as she had stood in Genie’s bathroom the night before, amidst cold cream, perfume, and prescriptions, she noticed a blue glass bottle of tuberose perfume. It was vintage, not something Genie would have bought recently. From the gold script on the bottle, it might have been forty or fifty years old. Phoebe gently opened the bottle and held it to her nose, and the smell brought her right back to the same scent in that velvet-lined sarcophagus in the warehouse on Gansevoort Street at the Night of Rebirth.
Chapter Eighteen
Adding to all the confusion over the past week, Patch had been unable to reach Simone Matthews, his producer on Chadwick Prep, the television show that they had been hoping to pitch to a number of network and cable TV outlets. In the fall there had been some real traction on the project, and they were getting interest from foreign as well as domestic networks. It had been everything Patch ever wanted, from the first time he had picked up a video camera: to have his own show. And now it had been so close, so within his grasp, it was almost as if he had already reached his goal.
Almost.
Ever since Simone had started putting together the footage that Patch already had, she had said she needed something more. Something more exciting, something with what she called “a throughline.” She wanted real drama, and the only way Patch could deliver that was by giving her access to the inner workings of the Society. She had been the initial impetus that had sent him to Isis Island, in the hopes of getting some footage of the Society’s retreat. Unfortunately, he had never had the chance to capture a single frame. While he had gotten an insider’s view, all he had were his own memories. And now, after having been kidnapped and becoming a member, the Society had the original memory cards of his footage. In addition to messengering them to the Society’s town house the day after the retreat, he had signed an affidavit that he no longer had any duplicate copies in his possession.
What he didn’t tell them was that a week ago, he had contacted Eliot Walker, the older of the two Walker cousins who were on the lobster boat he had taken out to Isis Island. As a favor to Patch, Eliot had set up a safe-deposit box for him at the Coastal Bank of Maine. The key had arrived in the mail today. In the safe-deposit box were several memory sticks containing all the raw footage, plus the rough cuts that Patch had put together.
Patch knew he wouldn’t be able to use any of it now, but at least he had it as leverage if he ever needed it. He figured he hadn’t technically broken the affidavit, as the material wasn’t in his possession.
Now, this afternoon, as he headed to the loft that housed Simone’s production company, he hoped he might be able to revive the project, even without the Society footage-to make the show more about Chadwick and less about the Society. He had tried to get back in touch with Simone, but she wasn’t returning his calls.
When he showed up at the building in the West Thirties, though, his key card no longer worked. He waited for a few minutes and then was able to gain entry as some members of a production crew left for the day.
Patch went up to the third floor and looked for Eyes Wide Open Productions. There was no sign on the door anymore, and the office was unlocked. Patch walked in to discover that it was as if the company had disappeared. All the editing decks had been removed; the same went for the file cabinets, the bulletin boards, the posters on the walls. All that was left was what the space had come with: empty cubicles, phones with dead lines, and the detritus of moving.