I was swimming in a pool. A giant waterfall cascaded into it, making the surface of the water pulse and filling the air with a soft roar. There was something entrancing about the water, the way it rippled against my body.
There was a boy in the pool with me. He swam past, and I felt the heat of his wake. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was handsome. His muscles glistened as he stood up and waded over to me. He smiled, and I laughed. He leaned forward to kiss me, but I bent my head to avert his lips, stared at the turquoise water. A few bubbles appeared, floating up from the bottom. The water got warmer. More and more bubbles rose until the whole pool was boiling.
I wanted to get out, but he was holding my shoulders, hugging me to him. As the water churned furiously around us, he tried to kiss me again, and again I turned away. This time, when I looked down, the water was dark red. It was hot now—too hot. It made me dizzy. I closed my eyes to stop the spinning. I felt the water rise around me, only it wasn’t the water moving. It was me. I was sinking.
Even though I’d lived with my grandparents for more than a month, I’d never been inside their bedroom before. I needed a pencil sharpener, and my grandfather had sent me in to fetch it. He’d promised that a small silver one was in a drawer of the antique “dental cabinet,” but I was having no luck finding it.
I was lucky to have found the cabinet at all. I was expecting a white, mirrored compartment on the wall, like in a bathroom, but the dental cabinet turned out to be a huge mahogany dresser with more than two dozen tiny drawers, each with a shiny glass knob. I ran my hands over the smooth, faceted drawer pulls. The little girl in me wished that they were real diamonds.
The thin drawers were stuffed with random objects: pens, coins, matchbooks, a crystal frog, cocktail stirrers shaped like little sabers, corks from long-drunk bottles of wine. I was about to give up when two sparkling discs rolled out from the back of a dark drawer. I picked them up. They were cufflinks embossed with the Tudor rose—exactly like my mom’s necklace. I rolled them between my fingers, staring at the colorful petals.
“What are you doing?” my grandmother called from behind me. I dropped the cufflinks and pushed the drawer shut.
“Nothing,” I said, swinging around to face her. “I mean, looking for a pencil sharpener . . .”
“And did you find one?” she mused. I shook my head. “Well, what did you find?” I didn’t move. She waggled her fingers. “Come on, out with it. I know you’ve found something.”
Obediently, I retrieved the cufflinks and deposited them into her open palm. “Whose are they?” I breathed, afraid I was somehow in trouble.
“They belonged to your father,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten about them. Your mum mailed them to us after he died. Said they were a gift from his work . . .” She closed her hand around the cufflinks.
“Where, exactly, did my dad work?” I asked. I didn’t want to bring up any of Hunter’s crazy suggestions about the Abbey, but I was dying to know more.
“Where do you think he worked?” my grandmother replied.
I sucked in my breath and decided to dive in. “For an international spy agency?”
She bit on her top lip for a few seconds before she answered. “As far as we know, yes.”
“You don’t know for sure?” I pressed.
She shook her head. “It was all very top secret. Once he joined, we heard from him less and less. Then we got a phone call . . .” Her eyes glazed over a bit.
I didn’t want her to stop talking. I needed to know what my grandparents knew about my parents’ secret lives. “A phone call?” I repeated. I sat down on a beat-up leather armchair to show I wasn’t going anywhere. She lowered herself onto the edge of the ottoman.
“Yes. In the middle of the night, your father called. He was quite upset. He said he wouldn’t be able to contact us ever again, and that we should remove all record of him from our lives, even the photographs on the walls, for our protection. Something about being tracked by evil forces . . .” She studied me for a reaction, but I held my face still even though I was panicking inside. Maybe Gavin hasn’t been exaggerating about putting me in danger . . .
“And?” I swallowed.
“Well, of course we didn’t do any of that—at least not at first. But two days later, we got news that he had been killed in a terrible accident, and that your mother had gone into hiding with you.”
“So you didn’t know where we were?” I was shocked. All those years, I’d just assumed my grandparents wanted nothing to do with us.
“No, and it broke our hearts.” She sighed and blinked back tears. “I always felt we should have tried harder to find you and your mum, but we didn’t know where to start. We didn’t even know the name of the agency they worked for, or where it was.”
Seeing her pain, my heart melted for her, for me, for our whole family torn apart by the mysterious Abbey.
My grandmother patted me on the knee and stood up. “What’s done is done. The important thing is that we have you here with us today.”
She smiled at me like she really might love me. I hoped it was true. I needed someone to love me. Everyone else I loved had died or disappeared.
Later that afternoon, I was sitting in my favorite spot, my window seat, trying to finish my homework. Like most of the area, I was stuck at home, imprisoned by the weather. I’d learned that rain didn’t stop Scottish people from most anything, even golf, but when you added a cold wind, they preferred to stay indoors. A teeth-chattering gale had chased all the clouds out of the valley, but somehow added even more darkness to what was otherwise the middle of the day.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a long, black, impossibly shiny car pull up to our house. A man in a black suit climbed out of the back carrying a silver tray, and promptly disappeared onto the porch. The doorbell pinged.
“Maren!” my grandmother called from downstairs.
“Yeah?”
“Come here, please. You’ve got a visitor.”
The only person I knew who drove around—or was driven around—in a limousine was Anders Campbell, but he and Graham hadn’t been at school since their family funeral. I’d heard they went directly to the Bahamas on an annual family trip. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. Must be nice.
My grandmother stood by the open front door. Outside—as if he was too good to come into our common house—stood the man with the tray. As I approached, he held it out to me.
“Miss Maren Hamilton, I presume.” He possessed a snootier-sounding accent than I normally heard in Scotland.
“Yes.”
“This is for you.” The tray was as shiny as the car outside, and it held a thick envelope with my name elaborately scrawled across it in black ink. I picked it up.
“Thank you,” I said. He bowed, clicked his heels together, spun, and returned to his car without a word.
“I’ll leave you to it,” my gran said, eyeing the envelope as if she really didn’t want to leave. “I’ve got to get ready for my ladies’ golf club luncheon.”
“Okay,” I agreed, turning away from her in case it was somehow a message from Gavin. She closed the front door, and walked down the hall without a word.
I flipped the envelope over and found it sealed by a big clump of wax stamped with a cursive C. I slid my finger under it, careful not to get a paper cut, and gently pried up the seal. Inside was an invitation to a gala celebrating the eighteenth birthday of one Anders Campbell.
I hadn’t gotten through reading the first page when the phone rang. “It’s Jo,” my grandfather called from the kitchen. I went in and took the receiver from his outstretched hand.
“Did you get it?” Jo breathed into the phone. I imagined she was just coming out of a back handspring or something. She certainly sounded excited.
“Get what?” I stalled.
“The invite! To Anders’ party!”
“Who?”
“I know you’ve gotten it, because I saw the limo drive toward your house after it left mine. Isn’t it exciting? Anders’ parents throw him an epic birthday party every year. When he was eight, they had the Guards Polo Club come and play a tournament just for him. When he was twelve, it was an appearance from David Beckham. Last year, I heard they had Guy Ritchie, Madonna’s ex-husband, give a special screening of his latest film before it hit the theaters!”
“What do you mean, ‘you heard’?” I said. “Weren’t you there?”
“Of course not. I’ve never been invited.”
“But you’re invited now?”
“Yes, same as you. Probably because of you, actually. We know Anders has a big crush on you, and he probably figures inviting me will convince you to go.”
I cupped my hand around my mouth and leaned into the wall in case Jo’s voice traveled out of the receiver. “First of all, we don’t know Anders likes me. All evidence points to the contrary, in fact. He’s a total jerk to me. And secondly, doesn’t he know you can’t convince me to do anything?”
“Come on, Maren, it’ll be fun!”
“Fun? What’s fun about spending an evening with an egomaniac?”
“Lots—if the egomaniac showers you with attention in front of Elsie and her crowd at his lavish mansion party,” she sang. “Wouldn’t it feel just a little amazing to have a handsome, wealthy . . .”
“Don’t forget obnoxious,” I said.
She ignored me. “. . . aristocratic lord wooing you?”
“Did you really just use the word woo?”
“It’s just one night,” she persisted. “You need to get out and have some fun! All you’ve been doing lately is staying home and moping.” She was right. I’d been miserable since Gavin left. I doubted he was sitting around crying about me. Maybe it would be good to flirt a little, mix things up. Gavin might even sense it and be overcome with a fit of cosmic jealousy. The idea perked me up a bit.
“All right,” I conceded. “I’ll go.”
“Just like that? Don’t you have to ask your grandparents first?”
“Oh yeah, good point.” I glanced over at my grandfather, who was at the kitchen table pretending to read the newspaper. He cleared his throat loudly and shook the pages for effect. “I’ll ask and call you back.”
“Tell them it’s desperately important to your social standing at school.”
“Since when do you care about that?” I asked.
“I don’t, but adults eat that stuff up. And I have to go, Maren, but I can’t go alone! This is my only shot! The gardens, the ballrooms . . . I’ve heard they even have a solid gold toilet. I’m going to pee on that toilet.”
“Fantastic visual,” I said. “Thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome,” she giggled. The funny thing was, I knew she wasn’t joking. Peeing on the Campbells’ gold toilet would be the highlight of her year. “Ring me back soon as you know,” she concluded.
Immediately after I hung up, my grandfather abandoned his paper pretense. “So, what’s this I hear about a party?”
“It’s nothing.” I shrugged. “Just a birthday party for a guy in my class.”
“And what fine gentleman is requesting your company?” he said, eyes twinkling.
“He is a gentleman, actually, by title or something. But I’m not sure he’s fine. His name is Anders Campbell.”
“Campbell?” my grandfather practically spat on the table. “Good-for-nothing clan, the Campbells. Their name means ‘crooked mouth,’ you know. Can’t trust ’em.”
“All of them?” I said sarcastically. “Every single Campbell is untrustworthy?”
“Aye. It’s in their blood. Just ask a MacDonald.”
“The MacDonalds hate the Campbells?” I smiled, since in America those two names suggested french fries didn’t like soup.
“Oh, Murdo,” my grandmother scolded, returning from her bedroom. She was wearing a bright blue sweater with a sparkly, brown brooch pinned to her shoulder. “Don’t tell her such things!”
“But ’tis true, Liz!” he protested. He turned back to me. “The Campbells broke the Highland code of hospitality.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“In Scotland, if someone asks you for lodging, even if they’re your worst enemy, you’re obliged to give it to them, to lay aside any grievances and promise no harm will come to them while they’re under your roof.”
“Don’t listen to him, Maren,” my grandmother said. “He’s talking about the 1600s. The Massacre of Glencoe. Really, Murdo!”
“There was a massacre?” Mention of an ancient mass murder piqued my morbid curiosity.
“Aye,” my grandfather answered, excited that he had my attention. “In 1692, a group of the Campbell clan asked for shelter from the MacDonalds. They were graciously accepted, of course, even had dinner with the clan chief. Late that same night, the Campbells murdered their unarmed hosts in their beds!”
“Murdo!” my grandmother chided again. “Why are you telling her all this?”
“She brought it up!” he protested. “She’s been invited to a party for Alistair Campbell’s son, she has.”
My grandmother blanched. “Oh, well, those Campbells are bad. Your grandfather’s right. Best stay away from their lot.”
Just stay away, I thought. Just stay away from the most popular kid in a class of only eighty-two students? Easier said than done.
I convinced my grandparents to let me go.