The first person to enter the room was Lexa. Her jaw dropped slightly when she saw the taps standing there, but she quickly recovered and stormed over. She was wearing jeans and a sweater under her red coat. Her face was scrubbed clean, and there was a crease on her right cheek from her pillow. Ariana felt a twinge of satisfaction, knowing her text to the membership had woken Lexa up.
“You? You called this meeting?” she demanded, looking down the line of pledges. “And what the hell is Adam doing here?”
“If you don’t mind, Sister Becky Sharp, we’d like to wait for the entire membership to arrive before we explain,” Ariana replied coolly. She was not going to let Lexa intimidate her. Right now, Ariana had the power.
Lexa’s green eyes flashed. “Do not use that name in front of him,” she snapped, thrusting a finger out at Adam. “How dare you bring an outsider in here? This is sacred space.”
Ariana could feel Landon and Tahira staring her down. Her face burned under their accusatory glares, but she didn’t flinch. She was in the right here. And she wasn’t about to let them think otherwise. Soon the Tombs were filled with Stone and Grave brothers and sisters, all of whom were staring the taps up and down, murmuring and whispering. Lexa narrowed her eyes at Ariana.
“Well, it appears we’re all here now . . . at your request,” Lexa said with a sneer. “Why don’t you give me one good reason not to throw all six of you out on your asses right now?”
“We’ve got about thirty,” Jasper replied.
He, Ariana, and Landon turned, picked up the backpacks full of Stone and Grave headstones, and placed them at Lexa’s feet. April stepped forward out of the crowd, her red hair back in a ponytail, her coat tied loosely over flannel pajamas, and she gaped down at the bags, dumbstruck.
“Are those—?”
Lexa bent and tugged one of the stones from the first bag. Then she and April unzipped all of them and dumped them out carefully onto the floor, laying them out in front of the taps.
“How did you . . . where did you . . . ?” April stuttered. “I haven’t even cracked the riddle yet.”
Palmer slipped out from the huddle of members wearing gray sweatpants and a navy blue Yale sweatshirt. He knelt down to inspect the stones. “Someone start explaining,” he said, looking up at Landon. “Now.”
“Brother Starbu—,” Kaitlynn began. Then, off a silencing glare from Lexa, her mouth snapped shut. She cleared her throat and started again. “If I may speak?”
Lexa nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Ana thought it would be good for us to take initiative and retrieve the stones,” Kaitlynn said. “As a gesture to you . . . our brothers and sisters. She called the tap class together and she and Jasper figured out the riddle.”
“Is this true?” Lexa said to Ariana.
Ariana was so dumbfounded over the fact that Kaitlynn had just given her credit where credit was due—that she hadn’t even mentioned her own role in the riddle-solving—she could hardly find her voice. Her body tingled with warmth from the top of her head all the way to the tips of her toes. It was in that moment that she knew all of her plotting had worked. She and Kaitlynn were friends again. Really and truly friends.
“Yes,” she said, unable to contain her grin. “It’s true.” Then she took a breath and continued. “But Lillian was the one who remem-
bered the riddle word for word,” she added. “And if it wasn’t for Adam, we would have gotten nowhere with the answer. We never would have found the archives without him.”
“The archives?” Palmer said, standing up and turning to Adam. “They exist?”
“They do,” Jasper replied as Adam blushed in silence. “And thanks to Adam, we now know exactly where they are.”
“The Fellows were keeping our headstones there,” Ariana explained.
“‘All honored memories locked inside, and now your precious gifts I hide,’” April recited, crossing her arms over her chest. “Of course.”
“The archives made sense, but it was Adam who came forward with the information that Martin Tsang had a key to get inside,” Ariana explained. “We followed Tsang and we found the stones.”
“Okay, but how did you get him to give them back?” Palmer asked, crossing his arms over his chest and eyeing them with interest.
Ariana looked at Jasper and laughed. “It’s a long story,” Jasper said. “But let’s just say they didn’t give them up willingly.”
“Let’s just say it was a . . . sticky situation,” Kaitlynn added.
Palmer smirked and Ariana could tell he wanted the whole story, but she and the other taps were still on the hot seat, and now didn’t seem like the moment for a hilarious retelling of the details.
“I still don’t understand how Adam got involved,” Lexa said suspiciously. “I thought we made it clear that this is a secret society. How many outsiders, exactly, did you go to for help?”
“They didn’t come to me. I followed them,” Adam spoke up finally. “I wanted to prove to them, and to all of you, that I deserve to be here. It’s not their fault I listened in.” He paused and smiled, lifting an eyebrow. “I’m just that good.”