Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(14)

The room settled into an uncomfortable but familiar silence. To be one of the Nine was to live with the twitching underbelly of feeling, and dramatic pauses were common.

Yash stood, wobbling a bit.

“Right, well . . . I’m . . . I have to . . .”

With that, he left the room, taking a slightly sinuous path that included a direct hit on a side table and the edge of the door. A minute later, the distant sounds of retching came into the room, echoing from one of the downstairs loos.

“I can’t believe you sometimes,” Sooz said after a while. “Betraying Rosie and Yash in the same moment. A new achievement for you.”

“I didn’t . . .”

“You did.”

Julian got up and started walking around the edges of the room, running his hand along the books on the shelves. He cut the figure of a romantic poet in the flickering candlelight, with his sparkling eyes and beautifully furrowed brow—he was Lord Byron in a flannel shirt, oversized jeans, and shell necklace.

“I didn’t betray Yash,” he said. “He hadn’t even spoken to her yet. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“And Rosie? Well, that’s a given, isn’t it? You certainly betrayed her. But that train is never late, is it?”

“Sooz, are we going to do this forever? Can we do anything else? Is it always Berate Julian O’Clock?”

Sebastian broke into a dramatic snooze and a sharp snort.

“What’s that?” he said. “I died just a moment there, when you two were doing the thing you do where you yell at Julian for being Julian and you, Julian, do the dramatic thing and try to get out of whatever you’ve done by being good-looking. You two—either shag each other or shut up. Make a choice. I don’t care which you choose, but you have to choose one.”

Sooz made a disgruntled noise and went to the window facing the front of the house to get as far from Julian as the room allowed. From the loo in the hall, there was a final cluster of retching coughs and the flush of a toilet.

“I’m fine,” Yash called weakly to no one. This was followed by the sound of him unevenly ascending the stairs, punctuated by one or two full body falls.

More silence after that. Julian kept his position on the far side of the room, and Sooz was riveted to the window. Sebastian sighed.

“Boring,” he said. “Sooz, come back over. I’ll tell you a terrible story I just heard.”

Sooz remained at the window, her focus fixed at something out on the lawn.

“There’s someone out there,” she said. “I just saw a torch flash. Did you give Rosie or Noel a torch?”

“No,” Sebastian said. “Torches are for seekers.”

“They must have found one, because I just saw a torch flash by. They must still think we’re hiding. I’ll go get them.”

She went out to the main hall and yelled to them from the front door, her theatrical voice pushing back against the storm.

“Nothing,” she said as she came back into the room. “There’s no way they didn’t hear me just now. It seems like they don’t want to come in.”

“Should we go out and get them?” Julian asked. “I mean, it’s absolutely shitting out.”

“Let’s leave them to whatever it is,” Sebastian cut in before any more discussion of Julian and Rosie resumed. “It’s a violent night, but they have each other. Now. Who’s hungry? Fish fingers? Oven chips?”

And so, Rosie and Noel were briefly forgotten, superseded by some frozen fish dumped onto a baking tray and shoved into an unheated oven. The rain beat on against the windows and walls of Merryweather, as if to mock its name.

Sebastian was right—it was a violent night. Just not in the way that he meant it.





3


“WHAT DID YOU ALL DO THIS TIME?” LARRY SAID AS A GREETING.

Security Larry had been fired over the course of the events of last year, and then subsequently rehired after he trekked up the side of a mountain in a blizzard to help Stevie and some others who were stranded there. He was now at his traditional position by the front door of the Great House, at his desk with his tin mug of coffee. He regarded the four students before him with a resigned sigh, which was Larry’s way of showing affection.

“You know I don’t answer questions like that without my lawyer,” Stevie replied. “And they had pumpkin maple rolls left over from this morning.” Janelle slid over the container.

“What’s the mood?” Stevie asked.

“She was humming when she came in.”

“What does that usually mean?” Vi asked.

“Hard to say. Might be good, but one time she was humming after she saw someone on an electric scooter ride into Lake Champlain. You can go up.”

Stevie let her gaze float up the grand staircase, to the balcony above, where Dr. Quinn was waiting in the lofty quiet.

The Great House was at the heart of the Ellingham Academy campus. When Albert Ellingham constructed his school in the 1920s, he’d built himself a mansion right in the middle of it. It was an elegant monster, made of tons of imported hardwood, cut crystal, stained glass, and marble. It had been the scene of great tragedies, which were immortalized in a family portrait that hung at the landing—a surreal image of Albert, Iris, and their daughter, Alice, as painted by Leonard Holmes Nair.