Sweet Deceit (Privilege 4)

“Well,” she said with a short laugh. “We won’t be needing this one.” She frisbeed one of the envelopes at the pledges’ feet, and Ariana saw the name Allison staring up at her in silver script. Tahira made a choking sound and covered her mouth. For a second Ariana stopped breathing, wondering if Lexa would react, but she simply ignored Tahira.

“Lillian,” Lexa said, handing over an envelope.

“Briana Leigh,” she said, meeting Ariana’s eyes with a searching stare. Like she was trying to apologize or explain or, at the very least, gauge Ariana’s reaction. Ariana took the envelope and looked past Lexa, hoping her feeling of betrayal wasn’t evident on her face.

Lexa moved along, handing envelopes to Jasper, Tahira, and Lan don. Landon immediately started to tear his open, but Lexa stopped him with a touch of her hand to his forearm.

“You must wait until you are alone,” she said firmly. “And you are to share these tasks with no one. Not even with your fellow taps.”

She stepped back to the center of the line and faced them once more.

“These tasks must be completed by midnight on Halloween if you wish to be considered for membership.”

Right. Like anyone still here didn’t wish to be considered for membership. If Ariana didn’t want to be in Stone and Grave, she would have walked out when they made her strip down to her underwear upon arrival and then threw this awful burlap over her head.

“All right, then,” Lexa said. She turned to her Stone and Grave brethren. “Let’s send them on their merry way, shall we?”

The membership parted and two guys whom Ariana had seen milling around the Privilege House common rooms on occasion walked out from the back of the crowd. Their arms were laden with clothing—soaking wet, dripping piles of clothing—which they dropped at the pledges’ feet with a loud thwap. Ariana looked down and instantly recognized her pink cashmere sweater at the top of the pile, two shades darker from being soaked in water. Her stomach twisted into a million humiliated knots. The membership had submerged their clothes. So now, after over an hour of torture to her skin, she was going to have to pull her soaking wet sweater and jeans on over her chaffed, chilled, sweat-caked skin and step out into the cold autumn night for heaven knew how long of a walk back to Privilege House.

Ariana was really starting to hate Stone and Grave. Even as she was dying to prove she was worthy of them.

“Well?” Lexa said, raising her eyebrows as the membership laughed. “Get dressed and go! You all have a lot of work to do.”

THE TASK

“I can’t believe they cut Allison,” Tahira said as Ariana led the way up the long concrete steps of the tombs.

Behind them she heard the drip-drops of water coming off her fellow taps’ clothing and the sucking sound of wet denim being pulled away from skin. She shivered violently and pulled the sleeve of her sweater past her hands to wring out some of the excess water. It sluiced down her arm all the way to her elbow, making the discomfort worse instead of better.

“I believe they were looking for something a bit more personal,” Jasper said.

“Like Lillian gave them something more personal?” Tahira spat. “‘I’m not at liberty to say. I can’t say,’” she mocked, lowering her voice a few octaves. “She didn’t say anything about herself, but somehow that’s acceptable? This is so effing bogus!”

Kaitlynn gripped Ariana’s arm from behind, clearly trying to bite back her frustration, and Ariana’s toe hit the step in front of her. She tripped forward and nailed her head against something hard.

“Ow! God! Everyone just shut up a second!” Ariana blurted. Landon snorted a laugh and Ariana closed her eyes for a second, waiting for the throbbing in her forehead to pass. Then she took a deep breath and pressed her hand against the cold metal in front of her. Groping around in the darkness, her fingers eventually found a handle.

“Well. Let’s find out where we’ve been all this time,” she said, glancing over her shoulder before shoving the door open. Frigid air rushed in over her soaking wet body.

“Shit it’s cold,” Landon said, jumping up and down.

Ariana held her breath, wrapped her arms around her body, and pushed out into the night air. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. A thick fog had rolled across the grass, completely camouflaging the trunks of a line of trees so that they looked like nothing but a hovering tangle of branches floating over the earth. Ariana took a few steps away from the brick building and looked up.

The library. They’d just come out the back door of the library. So that explained the thousands of shelves of books that surrounded Stone and Grave’s every ritual. The Tombs were actually the basement of the lib

rary—the place where old, obsolete books went to die.

“Wow. I could have sworn we were under the arts building,” Landon said, his teeth chattering.

“Agreed,” Jasper said. “Our kidnappers are clearly practiced in the art of misdirection. We’re practically in the center of campus.”

“You guys, do you realize what this means?” Ariana said.

Everyone turned to look at her, their feet disappearing beneath the fog, their breath mingling to create another cloud over their heads.

“What?” Kaitlynn asked.

Ariana’s eyes shone. “They let us see where the Tombs are.”