After several heavy raps of the bronze lion door knocker, I glance down at my clothing one last time. What does one wear to stake out a secret society? I’d settled on comfort over fashion: jeans, a fading Star Wars T-shirt, low boots. My curls are in a cute bun, high and full on my head. Nothing that screams “spy.”
The door opens to reveal a pixielike girl with short dark hair in a flowy dress and leggings. Her large dark eyes rake over me, then dart around the steps and up the drive, like she’s looking for someone else. “Who are you?” she asks, not unkindly.
“I’m Bree Matthews. Nick told me to meet him here.”
9
SEVERAL EMOTIONS CARTWHEEL across the girl’s face: alarm, doubt, and curiously, hope. “Nick told you to meet him here? Tonight?”
“Yeah.” I add an uncertain frown and waver to my mouth. “Is that… is that okay? He said it would be—”
A squeak leaps from the pixie girl’s mouth. “Yes! Of course it’s okay. If Nick said it, ohmygosh… yes.” She squirms like a caught mouse, and I feel a little guilt mixed with triumph.
When she opens the door farther to let me in, I notice a blue silk ribbon bracelet wrapped around her wrist. Sewn into the center of the fabric is a small silver engraved coin. “It’s just that you’re a little early,” she exclaims. “No one’s really here yet. I can’t let you into the great room without your sponsor, but we have a salon for guests. You can wait there while I call Nick.”
Sponsor? “Sounds great,” I say, and follow her into the foyer.
I immediately recognize the smell and the Southern Living–meets–ski lodge decor, but that’s where the Lodge’s familiarity ends.
I’ve never seen anything so grand in my life.
The stone walls of the three-story foyer extend up into open rafters. On either side hang paintings in gold-leaf frames and heavy-looking tapestries in dour browns and blacks. There are actual, honest-to-God iron sconces lining the entryway before us, but instead of flames behind their glass coverings, there are vintage Edison bulbs. Twin staircases flank the porcelain-white marble floor and curve up to an open balcony connecting the two wings of the second floor.
Bentonville doesn’t have houses like this. Normal people don’t have houses like this. At least not in my world. My parents had renovated an old split-level from the seventies, and we’d moved there eight years ago. Most of the homes nearby are rural farmhouses passed down from grandfathers and great-grandfathers, or middle-class neighborhoods filled with older houses that look like mine.
As I gape, the girl looks over her shoulder with a dimpled smile. “I’m Sarah, by the way. But most people call me Sar.”
I smile back. “Nice to meet you.”
Sarah opens a door tucked under the left staircase. The salon is circular, just like the stone tower above. Four round tables sit in the center of the room, each with a wooden and marble inlaid chessboard embedded in its center, and a leather couch sits in front of a fireplace by the window. Sarah gives a guarded but polite smile and closes the door, leaving me alone.
I walk the perimeter of the room while I wait, studying the frames on the walls. Directly across from the door are two prominent portraits hung side by side under a pair of brass picture lights. The first is a man with bushy brows staring out with unyielding blue eyes. JONATHAN DAVIS, 1795. The next portrait was painted much more recently. Dr. Martin Davis, 1995. Nick’s ancestor and his father. Of course. The Order must be the organization his dad wanted him to join. Like Nick, Martin in the portrait is tall and broad in the shoulders, but his eyes are a deep blue that’s almost black. Instead of the sun and straw strands that fall into his son’s eyes, he has a shock of thick, dark blond hair cropped close at the temples.
I gnaw on my lip, adjusting the information pile in my head. No, piles won’t do anymore. I need drawers and cabinets now. Organized places to add new details that feel important, like the fact that even though Nick seems to despise Sel and maybe even the Order itself, his family portraits are displayed in a place of obvious honor.
Another image draws my eye. To the left of Jonathan, there’s an old black-and-white illustration on yellowed parchment behind glass: five men in long, aristocratic waistcoats with puffy white sleeves, standing around a table in a drawing room. The bronze plate beneath it includes a short paragraph:
PIONEERS FROM GREAT BRITAIN, THE FOUNDERS OF THE ORDER OF THE ROUND TABLE’S CAROLINA COLONIAL CHAPTER WERE STEPHEN MORGAN, THOMAS JOHNSTON, MALCOLM MACDONALD, CHARLES HENRY, AND JONATHAN DAVIS, C. 1792.
The plaque includes brief bios of the men and their achievements:
Served on the legislature. Lieutenant governor. Tobacco baron. Co-owners of one of the largest plantation complexes in the South.
Buzz, buzz.
The door opens, and I turn around with as pleasant a look as possible. This is where my plan gets wobbly; I have no idea what Nick may have said on the phone, so I brace for Sarah’s response.
From the look on her face, my gamble has paid off. “Nick’s on his way. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Perrier? Wine?”
“No, thank you. Did he say how long he’d be?”
“Maybe ten minutes. He lives off campus, but it’s not far.” She stands on one foot, then the other, as though she feels required to play host but doesn’t know how. In the end, she mutters a quick “Okay” and slips out the door.
Part one of my plan is complete. I drop onto the leather couch and wait for part two.
* * *
Ten minutes later, part two surges into the room, his cheeks bright as blood oranges. Nick slams the door behind him and reaches me in two steps.
“What the hell are you doing here?” His normally kind eyes strike me like blue lightning. The force of him, the sheer momentum of his anger, pushes me back against the pillows.
“Getting your attention.”
He studies me, his chest rising rapidly like he’d run here on foot. “We need to leave. Now, before everyone else arrives. Especially Sel.” He leans down, grabbing my elbow. “Come on.”
I can’t help but stand when he yanks me up, but I don’t make it easy for him. I pull against his grip and he pulls back. “Let me go.” I jerk my arm out of his grasp. Before he tries again, I take a deep step into his space so he’ll retreat. It works, and he takes two stumbling steps back.
I take a sharp breath. Because broken hearts strip vocabularies down to their raw bones, and because I don’t want After-Bree to show up and turn this conversation into a tear-streaked explosion, I’ve scripted an admission using as few words as possible: “My mother died three months ago.”
Nick blinks, confused dismay overtaking fury until his expression lands somewhere in between the two. Most people say something right away, like “I’m sorry to hear that” or “Oh God.” Nick doesn’t. It makes me like him more than I should.
“Bree… that’s…” Nick shudders, and there—that response right there—makes me worry he won’t understand. That he hasn’t lost anyone close, so he won’t get it. I plow ahead anyway.
“It was a car accident. A hit-and-run. At the hospital, they took me and my dad into this… this room with a police officer and a nurse who told us what happened.” Hard now. Panic bubbling. Finish fast. “Or at least that’s what I thought. Yesterday, a memory came back. Just a snippet, but enough that I know that police officer was a Merlin. He mesmered me and my father to forget something from that night. If we know the full story, then maybe…” I break off, swallow again. “I just have to know what happened and why he hid it from us. And I need your help.”