38
Kate sat in the back seat of Crispin’s Range Rover as they drove away from Enchanted Petals, feeling as if she was living in a nightmare tableau staged by a surrealist. Jean Cocteau couldn’t have done it better.
She was sitting between Suzanne and a girl she had never met before.
Crispin sat in the front passenger seat.
To cap the grotesque dream quality of her day, the young woman Kate had loved like another niece was driving.
Kate’s heart had been pounding with shock and heartbreak ever since Maeve had stepped out of the shadows in Fernando Harris’s studio.
They hadn’t been alone, so Kate had so far been unable to look her straight in the eye.
But she couldn’t hold the word, the question inside any longer, and she asked Maeve: “Why?”
She felt weak, as if the fight had taken everything out of her, and she wondered if she had actually said the word out loud.
But she must have, because everyone in the car—except Maeve, at the wheel—turned their heads to look at her: Crispin, Suzanne on her right, and the girl she had never met before on her left.
“Why?” she asked again.
“Is that a rhetorical question, Kate?” Crispin asked. “Because I have an answer, but you wouldn’t understand it.”
“I’m not asking you, Crispin. I’m asking Maeve.”
Maeve didn’t reply. Kate could see that she was gripping the steering wheel tightly. Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, but as soon as they met Kate’s, they quickly looked back at the road.
“You can’t even look at me,” Kate said.
“Shhh,” Suzanne said, patting Kate’s knee, making Kate flinch. “Don’t make it worse.”
Kate wasn’t sure how it could be worse—except if they had gotten Sam too.
But why had they taken Kate? Suzanne, Maeve, and the girl whose name Kate did not know were young—in their early twenties.
Kate was twenty years older, certainly not the age that Crispin and the others seemed to target.
And that question, like the word why, spilled from Kate’s lips without her planning it.
“If Maeve won’t answer me, why don’t you tell me, Crispin?” she asked.
“It’s a club,” Suzanne said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“That seems to be the party line,” Kate said, looking at her. “First Crispin, now you. What wouldn’t I understand?”
The girl on her left leaned close. “Don’t challenge them, just go along with it for now,” she whispered.
“What did you say, Caroline?” Maeve asked sharply.
“Caroline, you’re not permitted to speak to our guest,” Crispin said. “She’s not part of us. She’s not one of you.”
“What am I not part of?” Kate asked, focusing on Caroline’s words for now. Had she meant that she knew they would get through this, to some sort of other side?
“The club,” Suzanne said.
“1740?” Kate asked.
“You know about that?” Suzanne asked.
“It’s hard not to. The number was on your truck, on the note you wrote and left on Jonathan Tyler’s grave. You gave yourself away.”
“It’s important to me,” Suzanne said.
“Was it important to your mother too?” Kate asked.
“My mother?” Suzanne asked.
“Belinda,” Kate said.
Suzanne tried to hide a smile but didn’t reply.
“1740 has to do with Dr. Tyler, doesn’t it? Your mother’s dead husband. Something that started with girls when they were patients at Maynard-King.”
“You don’t know anything,” Suzanne said.
Kate let that go. “Whenever it started, it’s centered around Beauty and the Beast. La Belle et la Bête.”
“You know the French,” Suzanne said, almost admiringly.
“Did Belinda name you ‘Suzanne’ after the author?” Kate asked. “Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve?”
“Maybe I chose the name myself,” Suzanne said. “We come into the world with the names our parents gave us. But when we learn from the right teacher, we become someone brand new.”
“The right teacher?” Kate asked.
“How do you know so much about Beauty and the Beast?” Suzanne asked, sounding genuinely curious. Kate looked at her, realized how young she really was. How young and brainwashed. Was the club really a cult?
“Cocteau,” Kate said. “One of my favorite artists. The photograph is a still from his film. You know, the one with the Beast looming over the sleeping woman. The black-and-white photo above the bed in the mansion on the island.”
“Kindly shut up, Kate,” Crispin said.
Kate was squeezed so tightly between Suzanne and Caroline, she felt Caroline trembling at the mention of the Beast and the bed. Or was that Kate herself, shaking to think of what these young women had gone through?
“You need to be trained,” Suzanne said. “We have to introduce you to our lady.”
“That sounds religious,” Kate said.
“It’s spiritual,” Suzanne said. “It transforms us. She teaches us the correct behavior and how to please.”
“To please men who use you?” Kate asked.
“You don’t know anything yet,” Suzanne said.
“Where are we going?” Kate asked. “Where are you taking us, Maeve?”
“To the Finishing School,” Maeve said. “The secret garden, where the roses grow.”
And where, if you pick one, there is a forfeit to be paid, Kate thought.
Tuesday, July 6; 4:00 p.m.
Sam stumbled through the woods. Her mind was on fire, thinking of Kate.
The sound of her aunt yelling from the back of that car filled Sam with the worst helplessness she had ever felt.
She reeled with the shock of realizing that Maeve—and Lincoln—had fooled everyone.
They were all in on it, Crispin and Suzanne too. And they had Kate.
She crashed through thick brush, snagged by briars that tore at her clothes and scratched her legs.
Eventually she stumbled upon a very narrow trail that made the going easier.
She hoped that it wasn’t the same one that Lincoln had talked about—she didn’t think it was, because he had pointed up toward a hill, and this ground was flat.
Besides, the trail seemed too haphazard to have been cleared by humans; she thought perhaps it was a track used by deer or other wildlife. She hadn’t seen any houses, so she assumed that she was still on Lincoln’s family’s property.
Why had he even brought her to Enchanted Petals? Now that she knew how involved he and Crispin were with 1740, she wondered if Lincoln had been setting her up. Had he planned to do something to Sam, then changed his mind when they were in the barn and his father showed up?
Sam was furious at herself for leaving her phone in the car.
She wanted to call Conor that minute and tell him to hurry, find Kate, save her now.
Her only hope was the fact that Miranda had warned him that Kate was about to be taken.
Conor had snapped into action. I’ll help him, Sam thought. We’re going to save Kate.
That became her mantra, and she timed the words with the rhythm of her steps as she lengthened her stride and ran faster: We’re going to save Kate.
Knowing that she had a mission made her feel brave, made her think about Kate instead of being scared for herself.
Kate had been her champion, her cheerleader, not just her aunt, but a friend and, at times, a stand-in for her mother.
Every so often, she caught a glimpse through foliage of blue water off to her right.
Was that a lake, or could it be Narragansett Bay?
If it were the bay, and she kept it to her right, it meant she was traveling north.
At some point, the trail had to intersect with a road.
She would come upon a house, a neighborhood.
But deep down, she remembered what Lincoln had said: that the Enchanted Petals property abutted the Maynard-King grounds.
And Sam admitted to herself that that was where she was heading.
This evil had originated at Maynard-King, with Dr. Jonathan Tyler.
His grave was where she, Kate, and Maeve had found the note in Suzanne’s handwriting.
Maeve’s act had been so convincing. Neither Sam nor Kate had had any idea that they were being played.
But Sam knew that now, and that knowledge was her power.
The woods began to thin out, and up ahead she spotted an expanse of green grass. It was a clear line of demarcation between forest and lawn; she suspected it might be the spot where the Enchanted Petals property met that of Maynard-King.
A white rail fence ran the length of what appeared to be a well-tended lawn.
She stood still and stared at the top rail.
If the fence were electrified, there would be electrodes and wires running between the posts.
There were none. She figured that the hospital had a sophisticated security operation, so she scanned the area for cameras.
She couldn’t see any place where they would be mounted, but then she heard a faint beep.
She knew immediately what it was. Both Cloudlands and Kate’s gallery had advanced alarm systems that relied on cellular connections to transmit data to the monitoring company.
When the satellites passed over or the cell tower misfired, the systems lost signal, and the console began to emit an intermittent beep.
The sound seemed to be coming from one of the fence posts.
She walked closer and saw the camera—the rim of the lens was white and camouflaged the camera by blending it into the white fence.
She saw a red light, indicating that the camera was offline, so she jumped the fence and ran fast across the lawn until she reached a copse of birch trees.
The grounds of Maynard-King began to look familiar. She skirted the lawn until she came to the boxwood hedge that marked the back edge of the cemetery. The late-afternoon sun struck the granite headstones with golden light. Up ahead was the angel that marked the grave of Dr. Jonathan Tyler.