“Might as well try it,” Adam said. “It’s not like we have any other good ideas right at the moment.”
The timing for pretending to ignore how upsetting this all is was perfect. Tomorrow was the Diplomatic Dinner party at Goldshire. I had almost forgotten about it with everything else going on, but the reminder alert on my phone buzzed and then we all suddenly remembered about the event. The four of us could all go together, stay close, maybe even talk to some of the people at Goldshire in a casual way to see if anything strange had been going on there, just as Michael had suggested before. Aside from that, we would try our best to just look like we were enjoying ourselves and that we weren’t bothered by any of it.
Tonight, we would rest.
But tomorrow, we would pretend that everything was fine.
The Diplomatic Dinner was a long-standing annual event between the two colleges which was abandoned during the time that David was in charge but reinitiated this season with the change in Lineage leadership. Goldshire had apparently had a change in leadership too, although no one from Lineage knew quite who it was that was in charge. We were hoping to find that out tonight at the dinner.
Dressing the part helped to get my mind off things a little bit. I had put on a sleek black cocktail dress that reached all the way down to the floor but had a slit in the front that reached all the way up to the top of my thighs. The dress was sleeveless and had a deep plunging neckline that pushed everything together in the front and made it look like I had way more cleavage than I actually did. All three of the guys wore black suits with white dress shirts and left the top couple of buttons undone. Apparently, none of them were a fan of ties.
“You guys all match,” I teased as we got ready to leave.
“Well it’s not as if we have quite as many fashion options as you girls do,” Adam teased back.
“I don’t know, you had a lot of options at the masquerade. I could hardly tell who was who.”
I caught Rob’s eye contact after I mentioned the masquerade and an instant flash of being together that night filled both of our eyes.
“You guys ready?” Michael asked as he broke up our frozen stare.
“Yeah,” Rob said as he started to walk out the door ahead of us. “Let’s do this.”
We walked along the same path toward the Goldshire campus, and we passed the stone room. It was still there, and the door was still closed. I guessed that the pile of notes was still inside on the floor. Then we reached the tree at the edge of the campus and I stopped to look at it for a minute. A flood of memories came into my mind of all the times that Julian and I had sat in that tree and then of all the times that Adam had sat in those branches with us too. My favorite memory in that tree was the one when Julian tried to keep me from falling and he laid on top of me on the branch. I remembered feeling his excitement push against me and how hard both of us tried to pretend like it wasn’t there. That had been before we had told each other how we felt. I wished that we had told each other our feelings years before that, then we would have more time together not just as friends, but as lovers too.
Adam gently threaded his fingers into my hand. He looked up at the tree and he knew what I was remembering too.
We crossed the cobblestone street and stepped onto the Goldshire campus. When we got into the main hall there were already tons of people there. One of the apparent new board members came over to introduce herself and shake all of our hands. I hated shaking hands; I just truly didn’t see the point in wanting to touch people you didn’t even know. We were ushered to the long table at the head of the room and seated by other people who were in one role of leadership or another. I looked around at the mingling and conversing of Lineage and Goldshire students and faculty and then looked down the table at all of the administration and wondered which one was the Headmistress or Headmaster. This was the entire point of the dinner, just to join the two schools over a meal with no other agenda other than to eat and drink and talk.
“I think that man toward the end there is the new Headmaster,” Michael whispered in my ear. “I heard someone addressing him earlier.”
I nodded and then kind of glazed over as I stared into the crowd and people-watched as everyone talked and ate. If the point of this was to look as unaffected as possible, then I was pretty sure I could do a good job of that now. I stuck a piece of sweet meat in my mouth and washed it down with a swig of red wine. The food was good at least. The guys seemed to be doing the same as I was. They were enjoying the food and drink, having casual, surface level chit-chat with the people around us at the table, and smiling as if they were having a good time. My eyes wandered from person to person around the room, trying not to really focus on any one thing for too long since I didn’t want to appear rude like I was staring. People moved around the tables as they got up to go sit by friends and meet new people.
When I glanced over to see what a different crowd of people were doing, I saw a face that looked so eerily similar to my mother’s that it made me feel as though I’d seen a ghost. It wasn’t her, though. Obviously. Unlike my father and his faked-death theatrics, I was with my mother after she had been murdered and she was horribly, terribly dead.
But still, the face in the crowd made me feel especially uneasy.
I tried to find it again and noticed the same face look back at me from different places in the crowd. Not only did the woman look a lot like my mother, but she stared back at me as if she knew me.
So, once I finally pulled away from the guys, I got up from the table to go find her.
“Where are you going?” Michael asked when he saw me stand up.
“I saw my mother,” I answered. “I mean not really my mother but someone who looks like her. “I’m going to go find her.”
“Lisette, we need to stay together,” he said.
But I had already stepped away from the table.
It was much more crowded than it had looked from the front table, and as I walked through the swarms of people both sitting and standing, I tried not to bump into them but wasn’t having very much luck. I bumped into the back of one man who whirled around and accidentally sloshed his drink on my dress. It went right down the front and even got an ice cube stuck inside my bodice. Someone threw a white cloth napkin over at me, and when I looked up to thank them, I saw that woman again who was wearing my mother’s smile.
I dropped the napkin on the floor and started to feverishly scan the room.
I felt like every time I saw her and went to where she had been standing, that she then moved again, and it became a game of cat and mouse. I actually broke into a bit of a run at one point, which I’m sure looked strange in my long cocktail dress and heels, as I tried to catch the woman before she disappeared into the crowd again. I didn’t even care that people were starting to stare at me as I went around in circles inside the large hall, though. I didn’t care that I looked positively crazy as I ran around the room. Because whoever this was, she was doing it on purpose.
And I needed to catch her in order to find out why.
23
“Lisette, stop!” Adam said as he grabbed hold of my waist and turned me around to face him.
I noticed that the conversation in the room had gotten quieter and almost everyone in the big room was staring at me.
“What are you doing?” he whispered in my ear as he held me close and pretended to give me a big embrace. “You’re running around the dinner hall like a crazy woman.”
The truth was that I didn’t know what I was doing. I stopped and held his hand and let him lead me out of the room. When we got out into the corridor and away from all of the people, Michael and Rob came out to join us and see what was going on.
“There’s a woman at the dinner who looks exactly like my mother,” I said in a hushed whisper.
“Lisette,” Michael said in a tone that was already beginning to make me angry. “You’ve been under an extreme amount of stress lately and—”
“Don’t you even dare patronize me,” I said to him with a glare.
“I’m not patronizing you,” Michael said. “I just think that you’re tired and stressed, as we all are, and that it’s easy for your mind to play tricks on you when those factors play out.”
“I’m telling you,” I said with more conviction in my voice this time. “That there is a woman inside that room who looks exactly like my mother. I’m not seeing a ghost, I know my mother is dead, and I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any hallucinogens at this party. I am thinking perfectly clearly (well except for maybe the running around in circles part) and I am telling you that there is someone in there that is intentionally messing with me. We’ve been trying to figure out who’s behind all these notes and all of the destruction on Lineage grounds and this is the first solid lead we have. So either help me look for her or get out of my way.”
