The Scarlets Read online

  “If that’s what you think, then they’re doing their job. At first Fal thought you might be one, too, but after meeting you she was convinced you’re clean,” Holliday said. She stepped over to his desk and slumped into the chair, wheeling herself closer to wake up the laptop. Without a hitch, she typed in his password.

  Cal grumbled, making a mental note to change it.

  “Personally I’m shocked you’re not one of them.”

  “Maybe I am,” he said with a snort, “and you just don’t know it.”

  The desk chair squeaked as Holliday swiveled to turn and face him. She lifted one slender black brow. “Yeah. I’m not buying it.” She turned back to the computer. “You’re no Scarlet, but your daddy is.”

  “My . . . ?” Cal joined her at the desk, leaning onto it and over her shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

  But the twist in his guts had turned into something solid, an icy pool that grew and grew, heavier and harder to bear by the second.

  Holliday typed furiously, opening a browser and then several new tabs. “That pipe—you were going to frame Fallon with it, right?”

  Cal hesitated, which was answer enough for her, apparently.

  “That’s what I thought. The administration has been trying to get Fallon and me kicked off campus for the tiniest infractions for two semesters now, and the pipe would have been Fal’s third strike. But you didn’t plant it.” Here she stopped again, tilting her head to the side to stare at him. She had dark eyes, almost black, and a tiny pointed chin. “Why didn’t you plant it?”

  Cal shrugged. “My father kept saying Fallon was trouble and that she was hacking into his stuff. That doesn’t mean she should get booted off campus. Hell, she should get a medal for it.”

  “He’s right. As far as he’s concerned, she is trouble. So am I. Last year our friend Michelle got weird. Like really weird. We thought maybe she was just going straight-edge or something, but then she stopped talking to us, even looking at us. We’d try to wave at her, right? And it was like we weren’t even there. So . . . we might have gone digging in her email. Not great, I admit, but we were curious.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and Cal watched as she brought up the Internet gate for the college archives. “Watch this, okay?”

  She started running various searches, some on “Brookline” and “asylum,” others on “the Scarlets” and “society,” then more on “Camford disappearances.” Few results returned. The articles on Brookline were brief, he could tell, and seemed more like cheery blurbs meant to placate worried parents than actual historical documents.

  “And now this,” she said, opening a new tab and typing a URL that jogged his memory.

  “Didn’t you write something about this on Fallon’s door? About a sub-something?”

  “Yeah, this is our subreddit,” Holliday explained, giving him a quick, approving smile. “Good catch. After we busted into Michelle’s email, we couldn’t really stop looking. There’s way more here. This guy?” She pointed to the screen with a chipped black fingernail, showing Cal the handle $4UL. “He’s got news clippings from the last forty years, plus pictures, theories. . . . But none of this stuff is in the college archives, and whenever Fal or I try to hack them, the encryption is ridiculous. We are talking military levels of security, and why?”

  Cal couldn’t tell whether she expected an answer or not. Either way, hacking wasn’t exactly his expertise. “Maybe because they stored some of the asylum patient files there for posterity? They might not want people looking at those for privacy reasons. Professor Reyes seemed pretty protective of the files in the basement.”

  “I think there’s more. I think there’s way, way more. And we’re going to find out.” Her eyes gleamed, suddenly brighter and less black in the glow of his desk lamp.

  “Shouldn’t we be trying to find Fallon?” he asked, pushing off from the desk and ruffling his hair. “That seems like the more pressing issue.”

  Holliday stood, too, slinking over to him on her spindly legs and grinning up at him. A little crazy, maybe, but he wasn’t going to mention it.

  “We’re not going to find her.” Holliday turned to glance at the pipe abandoned on the bed. “You are.”

  “Me?” Cal looked down at his own shirt, as if maybe she had mistaken him for someone else. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “You and your dad solid?” she asked.

  “Solid? No, not exactly.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to fix that when you text him,” Holliday said, rolling her eyes.

  This was all moving a little fast. “Text him about what?”

  “We have to record your dad admitting he’s involved in the Scarlets, and that it’s not just some innocent academic thing,” she said. She rummaged in her tiny pockets again, coming up with her own phone. “I can hide nearby. You just have to get him to explain how he tried to frame Fallon. Can you do that?”

  God, maybe he should’ve taken Devon up on that dinner invite after all. But he was way past that, wasn’t he? He had to know if Roger really was responsible for Devon asking him out. For Micah and Lara breaking up so suddenly. For Fallon falling off the grid . . .

  “How does this help Fallon?”

  “If we can get him to admit something shady, then we can turn it back on him,” Holliday said, biting her lower lip. It didn’t exactly inspire him with the greatest confidence. “Blackmail the blackmailer, you know?”

  Cal sighed and glanced toward the window. “You really think this will work?”

  “He’s just a man, Cal,” she said, squaring her frail shoulders. “He’s just your dad, yeah? Don’t forget that. He’s just your father.”

  It might technically have been spring, but Cal was freezing as he waited in the quad outside Brookline. Holliday wasn’t far, probably just as cold as she watched him from a clump of trees and bushes a few yards away.

  I tried to put the pipe in Fallon’s room, but she won’t answer the damn door. Suggestions? Can we meet to talk about this?

  He narrowed his eyes, irritated by the too-bright screen of his phone and the message on it. He hadn’t been sure that Roger would even respond to his text. But Holliday had urged him to send it, and now that he had his father’s answer, he had to admit that her whole skull-and-crossbones conspiracy thing was starting to feel less like a conspiracy and more like reality.

  I’m coming to you. Meet me outside in twenty minutes.

  The quad was empty except for Cal. He noticed a shape moving across the courtyard farther along toward the academic side, and then the silhouette resolved into a man roughly Roger’s size. A thin fog drifted across the grass, swirling against the base of the tree where Holliday lay in wait.

  Cal watched his father march closer, reassuring himself that he had not just seen that pale wisp of the ghost child flicker in Roger’s wake. He waited, and trembled, and revised his list in his head: I want my friends to be okay, whether they’re dating or not. I want Fallon to stay at the college. I want to tell her that I liked the comic book. . . .

  “Good,” Roger said, slightly out of breath as he finally approached. He glanced around them, then took Cal firmly by the elbow. “You’re here. That’s good. Come on.”

  Cal followed with faltering steps, feeling his arm bruise under his father’s grip. “Come on where?”

  He didn’t want to get too far from Holliday and her phone. If Roger really was guilty of abducting someone, they needed him recorded and in his own words.

  “Inside. You may have failed to uphold your side of our bargain, but you know too much. You’re one of us now.”

  One of us?

  “One of who?” Cal asked. They were going back inside Brookline, and Cal’s chest filled with a dull ache, a roar, a blood-deep warning that something was very wrong. “What’s going on? Where’s Fallon? She’s not in her dorm, and she’s not answering her phone.”

  “God, I really did raise an idiot,” Roger muttered. “But at least you’re finally cooper
ating.”

  Cal’s mouth went dry. He heard soft footsteps behind them and silently begged Holliday to stay back, to not get too close to this, whatever this was. This wasn’t part of their plan, and he didn’t want her and Roger to end up in the same room together. In his gut he knew where they were going, and he stumbled after his father on unsteady legs as Roger led him to that alcove, that basement with its damned giant lock.

  Roger withdrew his own key, a single one, from his trouser pocket and fit it into the lock.

  “Why do you have a key for this place?” Cal whispered. “What the hell are you mixed up in, Dad?”

  Chuckling, Roger glanced down at him and then hauled him bodily through the door. “You must be truly frightened to call me that.”

  “Not frightened,” Cal said quickly. He had to play the charade and convince his father he was on his side. Think. “I just had no idea being a Scarlet gave you access to so much.”

  That gave Roger pause. He nodded, slowly, making a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. “It gives you access to everything, Cal. This college—this town—is the Scarlets. But you’ll see.”

  Increasingly, Cal was certain he didn’t want to see.

  “The Brandt girl was close, oh, she was close. And sneaky. I’m guessing she and her friend aren’t the last of the fools snooping around. We haven’t taken care of them all yet, and we might never, but by God, we can send them a warning.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Cal tried to keep his voice even. “You sound paranoid.”

  “Not paranoid, just prepared.”

  Cal’s throat itched from the dust as they descended to the lobby and the basement level. He heard voices, scratching sounds. He hoped again that Holliday would stay back.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” Cal asked, honestly curious.

  Roger let go of him, seemingly satisfied that Cal really was there on his own terms. They moved through the snowy softness of floating dust motes, leaving behind the lobby and entering the corridor Cal was familiar with. The scratching and voices grew louder, and he heard a solitary laugh like a flutter of wings in the dark.

  “I told you, I like to kill two birds with one stone when I can.”

  Roger showed him his teeth, not a smile exactly, but a flare of the lips, a tasting of the air. Like a predator. An animal.

  Cal heard the voices grow louder, though they never rose above a constant, monotone mumbling. Roger stopped outside room 3 and took Cal by the shoulders, making him stare up into his face.

  “This means you’ll be one of us now, son,” Roger told him solemnly.

  Cal blinked and tried not to run. It was finally sinking in that he already was a part of this. Whether or not he had meant to end up here, he was going to be part of whatever was in that room. He hadn’t stopped it, and maybe that made him as bad as the rest.

  Just stay back, Holliday. Stay out of this.

  “Now,” Roger said, squeezing his shoulders and giving a true smile, an ecstatic smile, “let’s get this problem sorted.”

  Firmly, he guided Cal by the shoulders into room 3. It was just like Cal remembered—the crumbling walls with their spreading stains of damp and mold; the tiny, lightless window; the forlorn little cot and table. . . .

  But there was more there now, a chair, sturdy and new, with cuffs for the arms, legs, and neck. Fallon was in that chair, struggling against her bonds.

  Cal could feel the little ghost boy there, watching, accusing.

  “I’m not here to help, am I?” he murmured, his chin trembling suddenly. “I’m like them, too.”

  “What did you say?” Roger asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “Never mind that.” He raised his voice, turning slightly and calling toward the door. “Get the other one. She was scuttling around in the shadows behind us.”

  Footsteps, a pair of them, clattered down the corridor. Then Cal heard a cry—Holliday’s—and not a moment later she was being wrestled into the room by two cloaked figures. They were wearing red robes. Cal shuddered, feeling his father’s grip on his shoulders tighten.

  “Let me go!” Holliday was thrashing, fighting. “You psychos! Let me go! You can’t hurt me.” Her tone was rising and getting desperate. “You can’t hurt me!”

  Roger laughed softly. “Down here we can.”

  Fallon stared at Cal from her bonds in the chair. The brightness had gone out of her turquoise eyes. A swatch of duct tape kept her mute, but he could hear her trying to shout behind it.

  “I do not think Ms. Brandt will go hunting for secrets anymore,” Roger was saying behind him. “No, she and her friend were always trouble, always meddling. Meddlesome girls can find themselves poking into dark corners where they don’t belong.” He lifted his hand, swiveling to indicate room 3 and the basement beyond. “Like this one. Such girls might, say, fall down a rotted staircase. Get lost. Disappear.”

  Disappear? What did he mean, disappear?

  That invisible barrier, the one Cal hated but knew like a friend, was gone. He was here, really here, and the full feeling of being present was almost too much. He feared now, and hated, and he wanted the barrier back. He didn’t want to feel this.

  Cal glanced up, holding back another wave of nausea. There was the chair with Fallon in it, and a figure beside her all in black. Next to them was a table with strange medical instruments. . . .

  “Calm down,” Roger barked, turning to Holliday. The robed figures were still trying to subdue her. One of them finally managed to get a strip of tape across her mouth. But Holliday had seen the table and the tray with the shining, sharp instruments. She fought harder, tossing. “Those aren’t for you, not if you behave yourselves and do as we say.”

  “We?” Cal wrenched himself out of his father’s grasp. “I have nothing to do with this! This is all you, you and your Scarlets, with . . . with this!” He pointed at Fallon in the chair. “So what if they were hacking you? Expel them, I don’t know, but Jesus, just let them go!”

  “You said he was with us.” It was the figure in black speaking now. The voice sounded familiar, feminine but dampened by the mask. He couldn’t quite place it, and now he didn’t know where to look—Holliday was being dragged out of the room, kicking and tossing, and that black-robed figure was advancing on him, holding up a long, silver spike, like a pick.

  “Calm him down,” she was saying. “Or I will.”

  “No need for that,” Roger said, putting up his hands. He approached Cal slowly, carefully. “I thought we were all on the same page, son. I’ve upheld my side of the bargain, have I not? I’ve given you everything you wanted.”

  Cal laughed, crazed, and crouched low, trying to find a way out. He couldn’t get around his father, and that shiny silver spike was getting closer. . . . “I don’t want this, you sicko! Who do you think I am?”

  “I have no idea,” Roger said gently. “And that’s exactly why you’re a problem.”

  Cal saw his father nod. Was that a signal? Behind her gag, Fallon cried out, warning him. Cal spun, seeing the black-robed figure appear right behind him, that spike in her hand. More footsteps echoed down the corridor. They were done with Holliday and coming for him. He would be swarmed, outnumbered.

  He didn’t think. Cal lunged, grabbing the spike and twisting it out of the stranger’s hand. Then Roger was on him, trying to yank him down to the floor. With a furious grunt and all of his strength he spun and threw himself at his father. Roger stumbled back against the doorway, too slow. He recovered fast, aiming a punch for Cal’s gut that never connected. Cal swung, arcing his arm over and down, slamming the spike into his father’s eye.

  Cal felt the blood hit his face, sudden and warm, and he stumbled back, sickened, maybe blind. Was there blood running in his eyes? He couldn’t tell. . . .

  Fallon stopped shouting behind the tape.

  Something came down hard on his head, splintering his vision and knocking his legs out from under him. He could hear his father screaming, thrashing
, and the blood on Cal’s face grew sticky and thick.

  There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.

  The world went black and then gray, shifting and breaking apart, streams of particles that he watched bleed together. Like the upside-down buildings. Like his phantom dreams.

  His father went on screaming as a shadow fell across him, the last dim image Cal saw before the darkness swallowed everything.

  “It’s all right. We’ll get this cleaned up.” It was a soft voice and low. The figure in black. “You’re one of us now, Cal. We’ll take care of you. We’ll take care of everything.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks, as always, to Kate McKean for her help and support. I’m so relieved Cal was deemed likable enough to warrant his own slice of the story, and it was gleeful fun getting inside his head. The belief in him is in large part due to Andrew Harwell, who seems to like the jerk as much as I do. The HarperCollins team really pulled it out for the design of this one, and I’m always in awe of their hard work and creativity. Thanks to my family and friends for never letting me explode into a supernova of stress and worry. Jean Rhys and Lee Falk were huge inspirations for this novella—Wide Sargasso Sea being one of my favorite books and The Phantom being a vast and wonderful comic series. With that, I have to also give acknowledgment to Steve Wright, who introduced me to Wide Sargasso Sea in the first place, in one of his many influential courses. Finally, a word of thanks to Jeff Kurtenacker for the soundtrack that played for 90 percent of my work time on this—a writer is always indebted to a good soundtrack.

  EXCERPT FROM SANCTUM

  THE PAST IS BACK TO HAUNT THEM.

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at Sanctum, the mind-bending sequel to the New York Times bestselling Asylum.