CHAPTER 11 #2
During a tap dancing class, Charlotte and I knew a girl named Lucy Willoughby, whose mother had been executed for being a Heretic.
When the news spread, no one wanted to be her friend.
For months, I walked past her during breaks, always feeling I should sit with her, but I never did.
I followed my peers’ example and shunned Lucy until the course ended.
Then she quit tap, and I never saw her again.
In some ways, this feels like my punishment for that. The dining hall bustles with life, a tide of motion and noise, yet I sit apart, sealed off behind my wall of Pinkies. Usually, I don’t mind being alone, but being forced into it makes me hate it.
The first-year dining hall curves in a wide circle beneath a high-domed ceiling with stained-glass cupola windows.
Holographic menus float above each table, glowing with options that vanish the instant a student places an order.
At the center, a black-and-white kitchen runs like clockwork, with Pinkies in pleated hats preparing food while others glide between tables, carrying trays of artistically arranged drinks.
I slump back in my chair, wondering where Charlotte is and whether she feels as boxed out as I do.
My Bond drones softly as I log in to the Grandmaster University map, and a 3D, real-time rendering of the campus appears.
Between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. on weekdays, all professors and students must log their locations.
Despite the campus’s vast size, the system ensures we can always find each other.
Names and avatars shift across the map, color-coded by blood type, and I scan for Charlotte.
Her avatar flickers on the far side of the dining hall.
I glance over and spot her in person, sitting across from a handsome Green.
He leans in, smiling charmingly as he lights her cigarette, but she barely reacts.
She sits angled away from him, nodding absently as she smokes, her plate of white truffle pasta untouched.
I push halfway out of my seat, ready to approach her, when a text from Dickie lights up my Bond.
“It’s a bust, broad,” he writes.
I know he’s talking about Irene. “She turned down the meeting?”
“Worse. She left me on read.”
“How’s that worse?”
“She knows Ed threw you a bone on the train. Now, because I asked her to meet with you, she thinks Ed, Jack, and I are siding against her.”
I recall the photo from the Jazz & Juleps party, where Edmund and Irene looked ready to throw hands. Were they fighting about me?
“Why did Edmund cut us a deal in the first place?” I ask. “Why didn’t he just kick us out?”
“Can’t say,” Dickie replies. “Ed’s been tight-lipped lately. But forget about meeting with Irene. And while you’re at it, lose my number. If she wasn’t out for blood before, she is now, and I’m done sticking my neck out.”
A Pinkie waiter arrives with my lunch and hands the tray to my Pinkie bodyguards.
As I watch the robots test the food for poison, heat flashes across my face.
This can’t go on. I can’t sit here day after day, counting down the seconds of my life, waiting for someone to slip past my defenses.
I have to fight back. Maybe I can petition Judge Bradford to temporarily lift my weapons restriction.
Officially, he has to consider a “clear and immediate danger” exception.
He lost his daughter over the Bliss ban, so he can’t possibly be on the high-citizens’ side.
A swell of voices draws my attention to the dining hall entrance, where Edmund, Jack, and Dickie stroll in.
Edmund pauses to greet a few Blues in his path, then veers toward a young woman near the kitchen, who is balancing a bottle of champagne on her hip.
Edmund whistles at her as he approaches, but she doesn’t turn.
A small brown monkey is perched on her shoulder, its tail looping around her neck like a furry scarf.
A tiny straw boater sits on the monkey’s head, and a lit cigarette dangles from its mouth.
“Rosie,” Edmund calls.
The young woman turns at last, revealing sharp, arched eyebrows and wavy, dark brown hair that falls to her waist. Statuesque and sultry, with velvet-petal lips, she wears a blue bias-cut satin gown that hugs her curves and dips just enough to hint at her breasts.
Her sun-tanned skin and diamond-cut features are similar enough to Edmund’s that I realize she’s his twin sister.
Rosamund tilts her head at Edmund, smiling slyly as she lifts the champagne bottle and smacks the base with her palm. The cork pops free and flies toward him. He fumbles, then catches the cork with his other hand.
“That counts as a drop,” Rosamund says, her laugh as lively as the stream of champagne spilling onto the floor. Passing the bottle to a Pinkie, she sweeps toward her twin brother and throws her arms around his waist. Edmund lifts her, kisses her cheek, and sets her down.
Dickie bows, but Rosamund barely spares him a glance.
Instead, she turns to Jack and plants a kiss on each cheek, her red lipstick smudging his skin like a mark of ownership.
Jack rubs the lipstick away, stiffening as she threads herself between him and Edmund.
She grips their hands as they cross the dining hall, her eyes on Edmund as if he’s the moon and on Jack as if he’s the stars.
Halfway across the hall, Edmund breaks away to take the cigarette from the monkey’s mouth and flick it to the floor.
The monkey shrieks, clawing at Rosamund until she slips it another cigarette and lights the tip.
Then she seizes Edmund’s hand again, lacing her fingers through his with a broad, satisfied smile.
Rosamund guides the boys toward the Blue dining area, a private enclave sealed by gold-leaf butterfly doors. Her grip on them is firm and unyielding, making it clear they’re hers and that she doesn’t want to share.
But Irene Hussey doesn’t strike me as the type to share, either. Irene waits at the entrance with six other high-citizen women, all dressed for a hunt. A cloche cap slants stylishly over her black bob, and a rifle case rests casually across her back.
The moment Rosamund sees Irene, she drops Edmund’s hand as if it burned her. Rosamund’s curtsy is deep enough to pass for polite, but the slight arch of one eyebrow says otherwise.
Edmund’s greeting isn’t much warmer. He bows with the eagerness of a man checking a box, brushes his lips against Irene’s gloved hand in the briefest kiss imaginable, then straightens and strides through the doors without another glance.
The rest of the group follows… everyone except Irene. She remains motionless in the doorway until, suddenly, like a hunter in a forest hearing a twig snap behind her, she turns her head toward me.
There’s no smile this time. Slowly, she raises three fingers, holding them steady so I can see. Then she walks away, her rifle case swaying as she disappears through the doors.
First, five fingers. Now, two days later, three fingers.
I get it now.
It’s a countdown.
When class ends for the day, I head straight to my hovercar and activate the self-driving mode.
The control stick engages as my Pinkies and I lift off and speed toward the Green Dormitory.
I barely notice the campus streaking by as I activate my Bond and skim my social calendar—a neglected list of parties I hadn’t even glanced at, thanks to Dad’s strict orders to leave my suite only for class.
Most of the events are optional, organized by recreation coordinators to distract students struggling with Bliss withdrawal.
But one event catches my eye: the Stag Leap Gala, only three days away.
It’s a mandatory event welcoming first-years to Grandmaster University, held at the campus’s extravagant lodge, the Speakeasy.
I remember the Speakeasy from Harrison’s tip list. He warned me to avoid it, if possible, because it’s the only public place on campus where the formal behavior laws don’t apply.
There are no rules for posture, speech, or introductions.
The Speakeasy hosts a collection of wild, roaring parties he described as pure chaos.
The temperature suddenly feels too warm in the hovercar, so I lower my window and breathe in the cool, pine-scented air.
Is the Speakeasy where Irene plans to make good on her threat?
But why there, of all places? Sure, the Speakeasy might be rowdy, but it’s not a surveillance-free zone.
There are cameras, security drones, Coppers, and Pinkies.
How could she bypass all that? And why give me a warning beforehand?
On the Office of Student Affairs website, I draft an email requesting permission to skip the gala. With five other students targeted over the Bliss ban, I bet mine won’t be the first they receive. By the time I hit “send,” the hovercar glides into the Green Dormitory parking garage.
I jump out and take the elevator, my thoughts racing too fast to notice the world around me. But when I round the corner to my suite and see Charlotte standing outside my door, every worry in my head goes still.
She’s leaning against the frame, taking quick, shallow drags on a cigarette as she surveys the hallway like she’s on watch.
When her eyes meet mine, her forehead lifts wistfully, as if she’s as relieved to see me as I am to see her.
She pulls the cigarette from her lips, exhales with determination, and says, “I’m ready to talk. ”