The Homecoming Masquerade (Girls Wearing Black: Book One)

  Chapter 17

  Breathe in me.

  It is a phrase from many centuries past, read Page 4 from Abbot Schneider’s book. The clerics spoke the words to themselves to call upon the Holy Ghost. They wanted the spirit to breathe in them, to take away their fears and give them the strength to fight these monsters from hell.

  Abbot Schneider began and ended every day with the words, repeating them to himself until he was in a sort of trance. He claimed to have trained his mind to respond to the words so quickly that he only needed to say them to himself once and his heart rate would slow down.

  Nicky too said the mantra every morning and night. She sat up in bed and focused on the words, listening to their sound in her mind, trying to let them relax her body. She wore a heart rate monitor Gia had given her to check her progress. According to the monitor, the words had no effect on her at all.

  As August rolled into September and the school year began, Nicky got too busy to spend any more time on the Abbot’s little mantra, and she gave up.

  Now, having made it through the first hour of the Homecoming Masquerade, moments removed from Art and Rosalyn’s attempted wine-spill sabotage, Nicky found the words rolling around in her mind as she walked.

  Breathe in me breathe in me.

  She was approaching the bar. Ryan was sitting alone. Nicky was eying the empty stool right next to him.

  Breathe in me breathe in me.

  She was nervous, that’s why the words had popped in her mind. She was trying to calm herself down.

  Breathe in me breathe….oh stop it, Nicky. Why in the world are you nervous now? The hard part of the night is over. You came in wearing black, you stood up to Kim, you worked the room, now you’re going to talk to Ryan.

  But why? There was no good reason to talk to Ryan. He had rejected her, definitively and without hesitation. He wouldn’t be coming to her party tonight. He wouldn’t be supporting her in the contest. She needed to cut him loose from the plan and move on to somebody else.

  So why was she making a beeline for that empty seat right next to him? And why did the thought of speaking with him now make her feel nervous, so nervous that she felt compelled to speak Abbot Schneider’s mantra to herself as she walked?

  Nicky’s butt was barely on the empty stool before Ryan was standing to leave.

  “Don’t go yet,” Nicky said. “I came here to talk to you.”

  “I think it would be best if we just stayed away from each other,” Ryan said.

  “Is that you talking, or Kim?” said Nicky.

  Ryan looked straight ahead for a second, then got back in his seat.

  “Who do you think it was?” he asked.

  “Those were Kim’s words, not yours,” Nicky said. “She’s told you to stay away from me, hasn’t she?”

  Ryan nodded.

  “What in the world does she have on you that would make you behave like this?” Nicky asked.

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” said Ryan. “Just know that you’re not going to change my mind, no matter what.”

  “I get that. I didn’t come over here to change your mind,” Nicky said.

  “Then why did you?”

  It was a good question. Why did she come over here? To be seen with him? Maybe. But whatever value there was in that was offset by the risk. Ryan had nearly stood up and left the moment Nicky arrived. With all the people watching – a snub like that would have been disastrous. It was only because Nicky had challenged his manhood, reminded him that Kim was holding him on a short leash, that he was still here.

  “I didn’t know where else to go,” she said, a lie. She knew lots of other places she could have gone. With Ryan out of play, she needed to be spending her time on other prospects. The trouble was, she wanted to talk to Ryan.

  “You should figure something out,” Ryan said. “You need somebody with money taking an interest in you. Right now it’s not me.

  “That’s just it,” Nicky said. “If it isn’t you, I don’t know who it is.”

  “We need to come up with somebody pronto, because if we don’t, you and an immortal version of Kim Renwick are going to be put together in a cage next spring, and I don’t care how much of a bad ass you think you are, you’re not going to survive.”

  “We need to come up with something?” Nicky said.

  “Yes, we do. Just because I can’t help you doesn’t mean I want to see you lose. Tell me who you’ve got so far. Who is going to support you? Who is going to your after-party?”

  No one yet, Nicky thought. The plan was structured so that intermission was the time that Jill made her big move, and tried to close the deal with Annika.

  “I don’t know,” Nicky said. “The truth is, I’m telling everyone that lots of people are coming to my party, but I don’t know if anyone is really planning to.”

  “That’s a problem,” said Ryan.

  “I know it is,” said Nicky.

  “What about Marshall Beaumont?” Ryan said. “He’s not rich enough to swing the contest, but he’s somebody.”

  “He’s on my list,” Nicky said.

  “Then you should go find him now,” said Ryan.

  “I don’t want to.”

  Ryan smiled. “Yeah, I don’t want you to either. That guy’s weird.”

  They laughed. Ryan, who was the only person at the bar who wasn’t gulping from a wine glass, took a sip of water. Nicky looked around the ballroom to see who was where.

  She saw Marshall off by himself in a corner in the back, perfectly placed for her to approach him right now. But she stayed put. Marshall would become important later, after Brawl in the Fall, but he wasn’t crucial right now, and she didn’t want to leave Ryan. As useless as he was if he was going to support Kim, it was nice to talk to him. It was nice to take a break from all the espionage.

  She saw Annika, a near-empty wine glass in her hand, a crowd all around her. Annika was telling a funny story, and had everyone in stitches.

  She saw Jill, standing just outside Annika’s crowd, waiting for her moment to strike, and thought about how much better it was to be Nicky Bloom, a fictional character, rather than Jill Wentworth, having to play herself. Nicky got to stay in full play-acting mode, which made it easy to present all the lies she was telling as truth. Jill, in contrast, was straddling the line between fact and fantasy. She had been Jill Wentworth, the rich daughter of a rich family, long before she was a Network operative, and had to reconcile the person she was with the person she now pretended to be. When she told her story about the secret consortium behind Nicky’s entrance, she did so knowing full well that it would have repercussions in all facets of her life. It would cause waves with her parents, with her aunts and uncles, her cousins – people she had known since she was a little child. People with whom she once had been truthful, but now had to lie. Lying to people you know was so much harder than lying to strangers, and to Nicky, most everyone in this ballroom was still a stranger.

  “You know, that was really awesome what you did to Art Tremblay,” said Ryan.

  “Thanks. It was surprisingly easy.”

  “You made Kim so angry. Did you see her stomp out the front door? She knew she was going to blow her top at you, and she knew that wouldn’t help her cause at all, so you made her flee. Good grief that was sweet. Serves Art right for trying that crap. How much you wanna bet that Kim is reaming that guy a new one outside as we speak?”

  “I’m sure she is,” said Nicky, “and he’ll just put up with it. It’s so sad.”

  “Where else is he going to go? He has to support Kim, because if she wins this and he was supporting someone else, then he’ll have an immortal who hates him.”

  “He needs to believe that someone else can win this,” Nicky said.

  “We all do,” said Ryan. “You’re doing okay in here tonight, Nicky, but I don’t think you’ve got anyone convinced yet that you really have a chance. You need to get out of this corner where we’re hiding and work the room some. I
expect people are interested in talking to you, if nothing else than to hear your take on what just happened with Art and Rosalyn.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Nicky said. “Can you come with me?”

  “No, I’m already being careless just talking to you,” Ryan said. “If people tell Kim we were sitting together…well, you know how it goes. We need to separate. See you around, Nicky Bloom.”

  Ryan pushed himself away from the bar. As he turned to leave, he allowed his hand to brush against Nicky’s, and, ever so quickly he gave her fingers a squeeze. It was a tiny gesture, the most he could do without being seen, but to Nicky it was huge. At that moment, she wished all of this silliness could just go away, that Thorndike Academy, the immortals, the Network, and everything else that had Nicky and Ryan going in opposite ways could be pushed aside so she and Ryan could keep on talking. So she could keep on being herself, even if it was only for a little while.