Free to Fall

8

“CAN I ASK YOU SOMETHING?”

“Sure,” I said, without looking up. Hershey and I were back in our room, doing homework on our beds. In theory, anyway. Hershey had the TV on, and I was staring blankly at my history textbook, thinking about how a certain someone’s face looked in the flickering light of the lantern that afternoon.

“At lunch, when the dean came to our table, he said you hadn’t let history deter you. What did he mean?”

I kept my eyes on my screen. “Beats me,” I said, and rolled over onto my stomach, away from her.

On the bed next to me, my handheld buzzed. I reached for it, grateful for the distraction. It was a text from an unknown number, and there was no message, just a little paper clip symbol signaling an attachment. I tapped it, and my screen went white. A few seconds later something red flashed on screen.

A pi sign came into focus, and I watched as it circled my screen before stopping at the bottom left corner. A dozen other Greek letters followed it, popping on-screen in little red bursts then circling one another before falling into three horizontal lines.

My name appeared, and the Greek text beneath it morphed into English.

Aurora Aviana Vaughn,

Your presence is requested beneath the left wing

of the Archangel Michael at eleven o’clock tonight.

The choice is yours. Come alone. Tell no one.

Within seconds, the words disappeared and my screen went dark. When I tapped my screen, I was back to my in-box. The message from the unknown sender was gone, along with the attachment accompanying it. The hairs on my arms stood on end.

Go.

Well, that confirmed it. The Doubt was indeed bat-shit crazy, just like science said. The left wing of the Archangel had to mean the sculpture in the cemetery. Like hell I was going to a graveyard by myself at eleven o’clock at night. An hour after curfew. Especially without knowing who had invited me.

Go.

I shoved in my earbuds. If the voice wouldn’t shut up, I’d drown it out.

But as it got later, I started to waver. Whoever sent the message knew my whole name. That eliminated Forum stalkers and total strangers, since my Forum page only said Rory, and nobody—not even my dad—called me Aurora. The Greek letters, the formalness of the language. It had to be something school related. I’d read about Theden’s invite-only campus clubs in the campus brochure but just assumed you had to be a legacy to get in. Then again, I was a legacy. And my class’s only Hepta. Plus, it wasn’t like the message was threatening. There was no demand. Just a request. The choice is yours.

I grabbed my handheld to query Lux, but I stopped when I remembered the text’s instructions. Tell no one. Did an app on my phone count? It’s not like whoever sent that text would know if I consulted Lux about it. Then again, whoever sent that text had somehow remotely erased it. Maybe they would know. Maybe it was a test.

There was only one way to find out.

“I’m tired,” I announced, pulling back the covers of my bed. The only way I’d get out of the room without having to explain myself to Hershey was if she was asleep.

“You still have your clothes on,” Hershey pointed out.

“Yeah. I do that sometimes.” I slid underneath the covers and reached for the light. “Good night.”

“Night,” Hershey replied. Still watching TV. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited. She had to be tired. She’d hardly slept last night.

It felt like an eternity before I heard the TV go off. Then Hershey was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. I stole a glance at my handheld. It was ten twenty-nine. I had less than thirty minutes to get out of there. When the water turned off, I slid my Gemini under the covers and deepened my breathing. A few seconds later, the whole room went dark. I lay there and listened. Eventually Hershey’s breath steadied. She was asleep.

As quietly as I could, I slid out of bed, grabbed my boots, and slipped out the door.

I reached the cemetery’s wrought-iron gate at ten fifty-eight. I’d been prepared to hop the fence again, but to my surprise, the gate was slightly ajar. Whoever orchestrated this had a key.

The cemetery was deserted and dark. I didn’t even have the moon to guide me; the sky was black except for a few greenish clouds, remnants of the afternoon’s storm. I pulled my handheld from my pocket and switched on its light. The last thing I wanted to do was trip over a headstone and face-plant on some dead guy’s grave.

As I approached the meeting spot, I checked the time. The words NO SERVICE were blinking at the top of my screen. My breath hitched a little. What was I doing? It was an hour after curfew on my first day of classes and I was in the middle of a cemetery, again, responding to a cryptic, anonymous invitation. I looked up at the angel. The first time I saw him, I thought his hand was pointing at the exit, but now I saw that it was pointing at the sky. Why did he look so angry? Weren’t angels supposed to look . . . angelic?

“Aurora Aviana Vaughn,” a voice said out of the darkness, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. It was unnatural, mechanical-sounding, but clearly male. Whoever had spoken was using a voice distortion app.

I turned slowly, forcing myself to stay calm as I prepared to meet the owner of this voice. It had come from at least ten yards away, so I could still make a run for it. But the figure before me was completely shrouded in a hooded black robe. It hung over his face, hiding both it and the handheld he was using as a mic, and the fabric brushed the ground as he approached me. He stopped several feet from me and held out his arm. His hand was covered by a long velvet glove and held a blindfold made of the same fabric. He expected me to let him blindfold me? Was he nuts?

“If you want to accept our invitation, you have to put this on,” he said, his voice buzzing just a little when he spoke. He took a step forward, and the white rubber tip of a sneaker peeked out beneath his robe. He saw it too, and shuffled a little to hide it, stumbling in the process and cursing under his breath. I swallowed a giggle, no longer afraid. This wasn’t the grim reaper. He was just a guy in a costume using a voice distortion app. This whole scenario was probably part of some club’s hazing ritual, just like I’d thought.

“Okay,” I said simply, and turned around so he could tie it on. The velvet was soft on my skin and smelled like patchouli.

“Open your mouth,” he instructed.

“Why?” I asked, or started to, when I felt velvet brush my lips and tasted cherry on my tongue. He’d put something in my mouth. A thin square of plastic, it felt like, but as I tried to push it out with my teeth, it dissolved. “What was that?” I tried to ask, but couldn’t form the words. Within seconds, the world went black.

My body tensed the moment I came to. I was sitting upright, as if I’d been awake the whole time, my butt on something hard. Stone steps, I soon realized, in a massive circular arena. It reminded me of the pictures of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in my history textbook. How long had I been out? There was no arena of this size anywhere near campus that I knew of. I inhaled deeply, trying to get my bearings, and was surprised at how cold the air was in my chest. I felt something heavy on my head and reached for it. It was the hood of a velvet robe like the one my captor had worn. The fabric hung past my fingertips and pooled on the floor beneath me.

Just then there was a flash of light below as a U-shaped ring of torches caught fire around the perimeter of the center stage, casting a flickering glow that barely reached the bottom row of steps. This place really was huge. I looked up at the sky, but there was no sky. Only darkness, like a void.

I looked to my left and could now see several other figures, also in hooded robes, scattered among the steps. I looked to my right and saw five more. They were sitting, motionless, but their heads were moving, like mine, side to side and up and down, scanning the massive room. I jumped as a loud gong reverberated off the stone. It was impossible to tell where the sound had come from, but it filled the arena with its brassy clang. The gong sounded again, and I saw movement below. Figures emerged from the base of the arena onto the center stage. They were robed, but instead of hoods, they were wearing heads of some sort. Elaborate papier-mâché contraptions that sat on their shoulders, exactly how Liam had described the masks for the Masquerade Ball, adorned with bits of real fur and feathers and skin.

I felt my lungs fill with cold air and relief. If these people had the school’s masks, they weren’t crazy killers. They were associated with Theden like I thought, which meant that I was okay. Feeling my pulse slow, I watched the figures move around the stage, as if performing some odd, silent dance. Then I heard a voice. It sounded female, but I couldn’t be sure because it was distorted like the hooded figure’s had been. It was coming through speakers behind and above me, and it reverberated off the walls.

“All these at thy command,” the voice declared. “To come and play before thee.” In choreographed unison, the figures with the animal masks all sunk to their knees as two more figures emerged. Their masks were human—one male, the other female—and resembled ancient Greek sculptures, with sharp features and blank eyes. I leaned forward to get a better look as another voice spoke, this one deeper and more eerie than the last.

“All is not theirs, it seems!” a voice boomed as the gong struck a third time and yet another figure emerged. It had the same black robe as the others, but its mask was twice as large and about five times as ominous. It was the head of a giant serpent, with layers of scales that looked arrestingly real. “Envious commands, invented with design to keep them low.” Were these words from a play? The way the serpent delivered them, I thought they might be.

As the serpent figure made its way to a platform at the center of the stage, the male and female figures bowed their unmoving faces in reverence. When he reached the platform, he spread his arms wide, his robe flaring out like a dragon’s wings. “Welcome,” he said, looking up at us now. “We are glad you have come.” I wondered whether the voice actually belonged to the person in the serpent’s mask or if we were simply meant to believe that it was. As the voice spoke, the serpent revolved slowly, like a ballerina in an old music box. Behind him, his mask rose into a reptilian hood, like a cobra preparing to strike, and stretched down the wearer’s back like the horny tail of a dragon, fanning out behind him at the floor. Even at this distance I could see how intricate the design was, layers and layers of textured papier-mâché with gold leaf outlining each pointy scale.

“There are some who received tonight’s invitation but were too afraid, or blind, to accept it. You who have come felt drawn—perhaps without knowing why, or how—to join us. The Greeks called this instinct nous. Intuition. Few have it. Your presence here suggests that you do.” I squirmed in my seat. It wasn’t intuition that brought me here; it was the Doubt. My eyes, now fully adjusted to the flickering dim light, quickly scanned the circle, counting the figures seated on the steps. There were fourteen. Envy flickered inside my chest. They were drawn here by instinct while I’d been chided by a figment in my head.

“Now there is another choice to be made,” the serpent said out of the silence. “You have accepted the invitation to know more, and while the full truth must remain obscured for a while longer, we can tell you this: You are being evaluated for membership into a sacred alliance of gifted minds. The next few weeks are a test.”

My heart was beating wildly again, out of excitement now instead of fear. The masks, the torches, the archaic speech. This wasn’t freaking Junior Beta. This was a legit secret society.

The serpent paused again as the figures on the stage rose to their feet. The two humans flanked the reptile while the other animals began to climb the arena’s steps. The figure in the lion mask was directly below me, his painted mesh eyes tilted up toward mine.

“The time has come to choose,” the deep voice went on. The lion stopped on the step just beneath me, its eyes at mine, and held out its gloved hands. There was an oversize playing card in each palm. “If you’d like to continue your candidacy, take the card on the right,” the voice boomed. “And speak of this to no one. You will hear from us again at the appropriate time.” I leaned forward to get a better look. The image was faded but exquisitely rendered, the card a mini painted canvas. The naked woman in the center held a staff in each of her outstretched hands and was hovering above the Earth, encircled by a textured green wreath. Below her were various animal creatures, their upturned faces strikingly similar to the masks I saw onstage. The voice continued. “If, on the other hand, you would prefer not to proceed with the evaluation process, choose the card on the left. No questions will be asked.” I slid my eyes over to the lion’s other hand. There was less to see on this card, just a single figure, a teenaged boy in a feathered plume hat. He looked like some sort of medieval peddler, a knapsack over his shoulder and a thorny white rose in his fist.

Choose today whom you will serve.

For the first time, my stomach didn’t sink when I heard the voice. Instead it lifted a little. Maybe the voice wasn’t the Doubt after all, but intuition, like the serpent said. His words had kindled something within me. I wanted to be whoever these people thought I was.

The arena was completely quiet as the candidates considered their choices. I felt the lion watching me even though I couldn’t see his eyes. “Take your time,” the serpent instructed. But I didn’t need any. I reached for the card on the right.

The lion nodded slightly then quickly withdrew his left hand, the card disappearing into the folds of his robe. With his right hand he took my elbow and turned me around so I was facing away from him, and then he tapped my lips with his fingertips. I opened my mouth and felt the thin strip on my tongue again. “I knew you’d get in,” the lion whispered then. He wasn’t using the distortion app this time, and I recognized his voice immediately. It was Liam.

My awareness returned suddenly, all at once. Liam! The lion was Liam. It felt like a major discovery, but of course he’d given his identity away on purpose. He’d wanted me to know.

I was back in my room, sitting upright in my bed, my boots still on my feet. The hooded robe was gone, and there was a stiff paper card in my right hand. My eyes darted to Hershey’s bed. It was empty. Had she snuck out again or had she been in that arena too?

I looked down at the card in my hands. I could barely make it out in the dark. Soundlessly, I unlaced my boots and crawled back under the covers, pulling my mom’s blanket over me like a tent. If I heard the door unlock, I’d pretend I was asleep.

I held my Gemini up to the card. Unlike the two Liam had offered me earlier, this one wasn’t painted in color. It was a single Z printed in shiny black ink with the number thirty-two beneath it. My graduation year. My heart was pounding as I ran my fingers over the ink. The symbol and number were different, but the design was identical to the one on my mom’s silver pendant.

She was in the society too.

My GoSearch for “secret society at Theden” didn’t produce any results. It seemed impossible, but there wasn’t a single hit with the words anywhere near one another. I tried “ancient alliance Theden” also to no avail. When I removed the reference to Theden, I got millions of hits. Pages dedicated to conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and the Freemasons and Skull and Bones at Yale, unofficial rosters of past members, even fan pages on Forum. But as soon as I narrowed my search, I came up cold. Whatever this “sacred alliance” was, it was completely off the grid. I felt myself smiling at my screen. A real secret society. How cool was that?

I started a text to Beck then quickly erased it. Yes, it was unlikely they could see my texts, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

“Please let me get in,” I whispered in the dark, palming the pendant like a good luck charm. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to will myself to sleep. Too wired to relax, I started running through the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence in my head. My favorite sleep trick. The math nerd version of counting sheep. I’d been doing it for years, anytime I was tired but couldn’t turn my mind off: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1,597 . . . At some point my brain gave up and I fell asleep.