Five teens tore up and out.
Bridget frowned. Justice hid her smile. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been trained here and had waited while an older classman went on and on about stuff that seemed irrelevant.
She turned to Bridget, watching the others go with that frown still on her face.
What was that about? Hmmm. “We should get the Troublemakers to rename that unit.”
Justice inclined her head toward the stampeding teens. At the landing, one of the girls used the banister to slingshot herself up the next staircase. “They’re more Fast and Furious than Vampire Academy.”
Bridget smiled. “Yeah, but we nailed the Troublemakers. Those three. Sheesh. They need meditation.”
Justice picked up her towel and cell phone. “Or Xanax.”
Bridget laughed. Her eyes turned contemplative. “Whoever started the idea of letting the older unit be in charge of naming the unit directly below them?”
Huh. Who had started it? Momma had been adopting lost girls since she was twenty-three, for over forty years. The first unit, Fantastic Five, Momma had named. Justice’s unit was the third of seven. “Momma, I guess. But we have the A-Team to thank for our awful name, Spice Girls.”
Bridget shook her head. “God, Tony hates that.”
“You mean Sporty Spice? Yeah. He does. I still think the youngest unit has it the worst. Really, the Lollipop Guild. I guess it’s all part of having a big family. Teasing.”
Bridget frowned. “Things have gotten a bit contentious in these past years. More fights. More issues.”
They exited the gym and stood together in the front hall. “Yeah. I guess. I mean it’s a mansion full of kids. A mansion full of kids, sorted into units based on age, not when they were adopted. We have our own freaking culture. Do you think that’s the problem?”
In the hall, the echo of Vampire Academy teens running around upstairs crashed down the steps. Whoa. Bulls at Pamplona up there.
Bridget glanced up the steps as if she could see the offenders. “I don’t know. Do you think we’re doing right by any of them?”
What? “We saved them. Taught them to fight. Taught them not to be victims. Yes, we’re doing the right thing.”
Bridget’s face heated. “I know. I know that. It’s just…the violence.”
“They have a choice. We all have a choice.”
“Do they?”
A buzzing reminder of Bridget’s earlier words zipped through Justice’s head: If something makes you uncomfortable, pay more attention.
What the hell was up with Bridget? Could she be trying to undo the school, expose it or make it feel threatened enough that covert ops were stopped?
“What would you have us do, Bridget?”
Her lips thinned and tightened, like the boom gate falling across a train track. For a moment, Justice was sure the conversation was over, but Bridget’s lips unclenched. “It’s like with the yoga. I mean, the Sanskrit. Words matter. It’s brain food. So if you give a child thoughts that are like junk food, you have to expect they’re going to have bad reactions. Thoughts can destroy us, Justice.”
“So, what? We should teach them only good, happy thoughts?”
“No. That’s not… Maybe we should teach them how to do a mental detox. The same way we tell them to avoid bad food, we can teach them how to step away from thoughts.”
Oh. Boy. How come when people went all cosmic interface, they forgot what was weird? “Bridge, we’re a school. We can’t go around teaching kids how not to think.”
Bridget’s lips tightened again. A firm, disappointed line on a face that was usually bright and open. She fiddled with the black belt around her gi. “You know, I get that a lot of times you and the others make fun of me. Act like what I do makes me a pie-in-the-sky hippie, but you’re wrong. Meditation allows me to see a macro-view, not just of my own thoughts, but of the thoughts of people around me. It’s incredibly enlightening. It’s almost a superpower.”
A cold knife of fear unsheathed itself and pressed to Justice’s throat. That was very Pinky and the Brain. “So, you’re smarter than the rest of us?”
Could macro-viewpoint Bridget have plotted against the family to show them the error of their ways?
“Not smarter. Just less attached to the thoughts that might keep your mind looping, keep you from seeing the bigger picture.”
“Keep me from seeing the bigger picture? Like we should just hold hands with sex-slavers?”
Bridget looked down. Shook her head. “It’s like with your humanitarian—there are other ways to help.”
“He’s not my humanitarian.”
“He’s not? But he’s okay with all of this? With what you do?”
“He’s implanted, so yeah, I assume he’s okay with it.”
Bridget’s eyes slid sideways toward Justice. “You should definitely ask him.”
She walked away, leaving Justice to stand in the hallway contemplating doubts and bad choices and bad decisions she would never be able to take back.
Chapter 48
Sandesh’s truck idled before the Mantua Home’s front gate. Armed guards checked his credentials. They had some serious campus security. How could people not realize just how serious? Did every school act like they expected an attack by armed gunmen? Okay. Stupid question. Every school in America probably expected armed gunmen.
Still, none of this mattered if the threat was already inside. His cell rang. He picked up. “You ready for my family?”
“Ready and willing.” Knowing their phones had end-to-end encryption, he asked, “What’d you find out today?”
“Dada’s sleeping with her Brothers Grim informant.”
Maybe he should take back the ready part of his statement. “Can’t be good.”
“Yeah. Betting money’s on her or Bridget right now.”
The guard approached his truck. “One sec, Justice.”
The guard handed back his ID and a printed pass with a barcode, and told him to put it on his dash. He did.
Another guard withdrew the mirrored pole she’d used to check beneath his truck. They waved him inside.
He entered slowly, necessitated by the speed bump, and came to rest at a stop sign. To his right, the campus stretched over rolling hills. Brick school buildings, dorms, the library, and cafeteria hub, and winding among all of them, walkways lined with elegant streetlights. The overcast and misty afternoon couldn’t lessen the beauty of the campus. Of course it would be beautiful. A school this prestigious had a reputation to uphold.
Girls of varying ages walked here and there. They all looked so young. Innocent.
Was it possible for Walid to find his way here? Sandesh tightened his grip on the steering wheel. No. Mukta Parish had kept this school safe for forty years. He had to remember that.
“So we’re not thinking Gracie?” Having to send away your son and the love of your life because he found out the family secret could be a reason to try and expose the group.
“I don’t know. Bridget said some weird things today. She thinks she’s got some kind of super-brain that can tell what people are thinking. Or something like that. It was really weird.”
That was strange. Turning left on School Drive then right on
Parish Court, he headed up the hill to the big house. BIG house. “And your brother, Tony?”
“He thinks the League is reverse sexist. He told me that he’d given Momma a plan before the BG mission, to take out the Brothers separately. She never brought it up to the team. He seemed pissed about it.”
“Have you seen the plan? Could we use it to get Walid?”
She paused as if that hadn’t occurred to her. “I’ll reach out to Leland. Ask to see it.”
He crested the top of the hill. “I’m out front.”
“Almost ready. Be down in a sec.” She hung up.
He pulled around the fountain and parked in one of the few open spaces. He turned off his truck, got out, and surveyed the 1914 stone mansion.
He’d heard they’d done a massive renovation thirty years ago, but he couldn’t tell the old from the new. The three stories, finely crafted cornices, arches, and long, elegant windows fit together seamlessly.
With enough money, you could do anything. Even run a secret society of vigilantes in your huge mansion.
A lean, sixtyish woman with a military-straight posture, shiny silver hair, pale-blue eyes, paler-white skin, black suit, and a jagged scar across her nose approached him. A butler?
She greeted him with a brisk, “Welcome, Mr. Ross. My name is Martha. I’m head of home security. I’m here to show you to the dining room.”
Okay. Not a butler. Head of home security. So, if he had it right, there was home security for the house, internal security for underground ops, and external security for the grounds and the school.
Huh. Seemed pretty damn secure.
* * *
In many ways, going to dinner at the Parish residence felt like going to a dance at an all girls’ school.
Lots of beautiful dresses. Not a lot of guys.
Sandesh matched Martha’s brisk stride down the richly carpeted hall. She led him to a long dining room that looked more like a banquet hall, complete with multiple doorways.
Martha gestured toward the table. “Would you like me to show you to your seat, or would you prefer to wait for Justice?”