Quinn tipped his head to the side. “You want to be at this meeting, don’t you?”
“Damn right.” Behind me, Trey groaned. “Do we know where it’s being held? In the cavern, I suppose.”
Quinn shook his head. “Hell no. The Eldritch Club don’t want to see the god if they can help it. They don’t like to face the reality of what they’ve done. The meeting will be in the reading room of the faculty wing.”
“There’s no way you can get to it,” Trey added, slapping the floor for good measure.
I turned to Trey. “Didn’t you say there was a passage that led from outside the school into the faculty wing?”
“Yes, but—”
“Great. We’ll use that. Problem solved.” I held up an image of Sadie’s face we’d cut from her file. All around our feet were craft supplies – ribbons, sequins, washi tapes and pinking sheers we’d stolen from the art department. “Now, everyone get busy. I want four lines of cheesecloth with these faces stuck on.”
“I can’t see how this craft project is going to scare everyone,” Trey grumbled.
“Of course you can’t. It looks like trash. But it tricked hundreds of people for decades. Add a little low light, some smoke machine, and a room full of gullible people who already believe in the supernatural, and you’ve got mass hysteria… I hope. Even after Helen Duncan was utterly proven to be a fraud, there are still peopletodaywho believe she was a real psychic.”
Trey sighed. “Very well. Pass me the squiggly scissors. I want my cheesecloth to look extra classy.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The day of the school production arrived. Trey went off to have his makeup done and costume fitted with Parris’ book wrapped up under his arm to return to Ayaz. I wish we knew why he needed it back so bad, but I didn’t want to break my promise.
Andre and Loretta left shortly after to get certain things set up. Quinn and I were just about to head out when my phone vibrated. A text from Deborah. “You haven’t left for the production yet? Call me.”
I lifted the phone to my ear, whispering. “It’s me. We’re just on our way to crash an Eldritch Club meeting.” As quickly and quietly as I could, I filled her in on our new plan.
“Be careful, Hazel. I’m worried about you.” Even though it was dangerous to speak like this, my heart lifted at her voice. The line was bad, but we were lucky to get anything at all. Reception at Derleth was practically third world. A dog barked in the background. “That’s Leopold. He’s excited about a road trip.”
“Road trip?”
“Yes. I’ve got the DNA tests for you and Trey back from Gail today. There’s nothing wrong, but I think we need to discuss them in person.”
“In person? You’re coming here?”
Quinn’s eyebrow lifted as he listened to my end of the conversation.
“Yes. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. I figure with all the cars arriving for the production it’ll be easy for me to sneak up without Hermia recognizing me—”
“No. Bad idea,” I growled into the phone. “I don’t know exactly how it’s all going to go down tonight, but it could be dangerous. Trey would kill me if one of the dogs got hurt. You need to stay away. Get a room at the Arkham Grand. I’ll come and see you as soon as I can. When it’s safe.”
Deborah didn’t like it, but she agreed. I hung up the phone and immediately forgot about the DNA tests. Whatever she wanted to discuss would keep until after we got through tonight. If it was life or death, she would have told me.
Quinn took my hand. We went through the tunnel out to the pleasure garden then picked our way through the forest to the north until we came to a row of tiny cabins.
“These are the cabins you used when you pretend to be with your families.” I admired the modern fiberglass pods, so unlike what I imagined when Trey had told me about them. Each cabin had one wall completely made of glass oriented to give views out over the forest. They looked like something you might see on an architecture blog.
“Yeah. They installed these in the first year of ‘Derleth Academy’.” Quinn used air-quotes around the school’s name. “Ayaz drew the design and an architect friend of Vincent Bloomberg II made them a reality. Ataturk got a ton of extra merit points for it. Trey was so pissed.”
“I can imagine.” I smiled. “They look so peaceful. Did you like coming out here?”
Quinn shrugged. “It was kind of like a vacation. We didn’t have to pretend we had a future. We could completely live in the moment, so you bet I fucking loved it. It was a non-stop party. They gave us this as a reward for hurting the scholarship students. They’d ship in crates of the finest Champagne, all the A-class drugs you could imagine and some you can’t, all courtesy of the Eldritch Club. They made it very clear that they weren’t supervising us out here – that as long as we toed the line we could be as wild as we liked.”
From the way he bit his lip I knew he’d taken full advantage of that free pass. Just imagining his hands on Courtney’s body made my skin crawl.
“Sounds fun,” I said dryly. I didn’t want to hear about it anymore.
“Don’t judge – we were teenagers. Technically, we’restillteenagers. Fuck, I don’t know what we are.” Quinn rubbed his head. “Hazy, I’m not… I’m not sure how to deal with this, with what you found out about our families. I can understand my dad doing that, but Mom…”
