The Third Lie's the Charm Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Lisa and Laura Roecker

  Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Brittany Vibbert

  Original series design by The Book Designers

  Cover image: Marie Killen/Getty Images, Ruslan Kudrin/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  teenfire.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  From Grace Lee’s Journal—August 27

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Back Cover

  To Stacey because you always give copies of our book to your UPS man. And because we love you.

  From Grace Lee’s Journal—August 27

  It’s happening. I guess I always knew it might. They’re changing. We’re changing. It’s only the second day at Upper, and I already caught Kate staring at Bradley Farrow like he was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. And Maddie. God, this is so bitchy, but she’s so much like her mother. She’s always watching, assessing, searching for an angle to get in with the “right people.”

  And where does that leave me? My parents don’t even know what a country club is, would lose it if they knew I snuck makeup or saw the way I hiked up my uniform skirt the second I walked into school. I’m lucky if they let me out of the house on the weekend instead of forcing me to practice piano until my fingers go numb.

  I used to know who I was. I was the girl who wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. It was always my idea to sneak out. My idea to hide behind the gravestones so we could watch the Obsideo ceremony. My idea to play the game where we see how many phone numbers we could collect during one night at a Pemberly Brown dance.

  And so I won. Every time. Until last weekend. Kate ended up with more numbers. I caught her deleting some so I would think I’d won again. It should have made me feel good to see her clinging to the past like me, but then I saw her smile at Bradley and watched how he smiled back and I felt myself slipping.

  Slipping and sliding and becoming less relevant in this new upper-school world where most kids don’t have curfews and the Sacramenta are no longer a dare, but a part of day-to-day life.

  Kate and Maddie are growing apart from me. Everything is shifting. It’s small for now, tiny fissures beneath our feet. But the fault lines are there and the ground is rumbling. Change is coming and it’s going to shake up our world. I just hope they won’t let me slip between the cracks.

  Chapter 1

  I missed Liam.

  It had been two months since he saw me kiss Bradley Farrow. Two months since I told him I needed space. Two months since I started spending all my time with Taylor and Bethany in hopes of finally being inducted into their secret society, the Sisterhood.

  Two months and I still missed him.

  My finger hovered over his name on my cell phone. Maybe if I called him now I could make him understand why I hadn’t returned any of his calls or texts. At first I was just angry. So angry with him for not understanding why Grace was so important to me. Why I needed to be the one to bring down all those who had a hand in killing her.

  But the anger had faded and time apart provided clarity. It wasn’t that Liam didn’t care about Grace. He just cared more about me. He wanted me to be safe and happy.

  It would be selfish to call him. Selfish to string him along. Selfish to expect him to wait around while I worked on ending the Sisterhood once and for all.

  Like a sign from Grace, the moment I put down my phone, the chanting began from outside my window.

  “In vetus amicus novus, numquam vinculum sororum refrigescet.” “New friend into old, the bond of Sisters will never grow cold.”

  I recognized Taylor Wright’s soft voice, her words lifted on the spring breeze, floating through the crack of my open window. When I looked down into the darkness, Grace’s pearls dangling around my neck, twelve girls stood like ghosts in front of the thick trees that lined our backyard. The breeze licked at the hems of their gauzy white robes, and each carried a candle, the flames spitting.

  I eyed the phone, silent and still on my desk, and felt the pull in both directions. One phone call to Liam to explain myself couldn’t hurt. Maybe that closure would be a good thing for both of us.

  But the chanting outside was growing louder. My time was up. I had to decide.

  Involving Liam at this point would only complicate things. I had to accept my official initiation into the last remaining secret society of Pemberly Brown Academy without any strings attached. And my attachment to Liam was long and tangled. There would be time to unravel our feelings after the Sisterhood was destroyed. After Grace was avenged.

  Just as I was about to leave the room, my phone exploded on my desk like a battle cry.

  It had to be Liam. It was a sign that I shouldn’t join the Sisterhood. A sign that it was time to move on or at least try to work things out with him. Things had been a mess with us in the fall, and now it was time to choose Liam.

  Grace. Liam.

  Liam. Grace.

  Liam.

  But lately I’d begun to understand that the choice wasn’t really between Grace and Liam. The choice was between grief and life. I could answer the phone, ignore the girls
on my lawn, and go back to a normal life. No crazy societies involved.

  I slipped back through my bedroom door to the ringing phone, to a new beginning.

  But it wasn’t Liam. It was Alistair Reynolds.

  Part of me wanted to cry, the tiny part of me who wanted to go back to the girl I’d been before, the girl without some crazy vendetta against a secret society. I could almost feel Liam slip between my fingers, just out of reach as always. In his place was the ghost of my best friend, urging me toward the Sisterhood. And if I was being completely honest, I wasn’t ready to let her go. Not yet.

  I briefly debated ignoring Alistair, but I knew he’d just keep calling me back. Ever since the Sisterhood had destroyed the Brotherhood, Alistair’s sole reason for being, he’d been more persistent than ever. He’d come to terms with the fact that the Brotherhood was dead, but that didn’t mean he was ready to let the Sisterhood continue to rule our school. Alistair was one of those spoiled, little rich boys who instead of simply crying over spilled milk knocked over everyone else’s glasses too.

  “What?” I whispered, ducking my head as though the movement could soften the sound even more.

  “Is that how you answer all your calls?” If there was some kind of Richter scale for how much you wanted to punch a person, Alistair would fall between one of those awful media-whore reality-television boyfriends with swoopy hair and a marf (man-scarf) and Ryan Seacrest.

  “I’m kind of busy. Talk fast or I’m hanging up.” By this time, I’d made it downstairs and could see the girls’ phantom-like forms through our French doors. Thank God my parents slept like the dead.

  “You’ve gotta meet me at the Heart tonight, Kate. It’s important.” I was so shocked to hear genuine emotion in his normally smooth voice that it took me a minute to identify it as fear. Alistair Reynolds was scared.

  “As much as I’d love to hear what’s gotten your Burberry briefs in a twist, I’m going to have to take a rain check.” The regret in my voice was real. I still wasn’t sure what to do about the girls waiting for me outside.

  “Kate, I’m serious. I can’t tell you on the phone, but you have to meet me. It’s urgent. Life or death.”

  “I can’t. I really wish I could, but I have a life-or-death situation of my own over here.” I stood on my tiptoes and peered through the glass, wondering how long the girls would wait for me.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t exactly life or death, but at the same time, it felt that way for me. I had to join the Sisterhood so I could end it. The wars between the Sisterhood and Brotherhood had gotten out of control. The secret societies had been vying for control of Pemberly Brown Academy since the ’50s, and they didn’t care who got hurt. They’d killed my best friend, Grace. And just because the Brotherhood had been wiped out didn’t mean I was done.

  And then maybe once I’d fought all my battles, I’d finally be able to fight one for myself and win Liam back.

  “Look, I’m begging you.” Alistair wasn’t giving up. “Please, Kate.”

  “Can’t. Bye.” I felt zero regret hanging up on Alistair’s pleading voice. There was no time and I couldn’t afford to pass up this opportunity. And even if I didn’t have initiation tonight, it wasn’t like I owed Alistair Reynolds anything. He was a big part of the reason Grace was dead. He’d have to figure out his own crap like the rest of us.

  I unlocked the door to my backyard and opened it slowly to avoid a creak, slipping through like a whisper before noiselessly shutting it behind me. I turned around to face my future, Grace’s pearls heavy at my neck, the cold spring air filling my lungs.

  This was it. My moment of truth. No going back now.

  “Numquam sororis vocationi ignotum. Teneat manum tuam.” “The call of the Sister shall never be ignored. My hand is yours to hold.”

  My tongue tripped over the foreign words, and my stomach dropped when the wind picked up and snuffed out all of the tapered candles in one swift gust of air. I was greeted with soft smiles and quiet murmurs of congratulations. They had no idea that a traitor was among them. My eyes caught on Taylor’s bright blue ones peering out from beneath her white hood.

  I was like a neon-haired Trojan horse, and they were finally going to pay for what they’d done to Grace. Eat your heart out, Helen of Troy.

  Chapter 2

  I blinked heavily to ensure that my eyes were truly open. They were. It was the darkness that pressed down on us as we soldiered through the thick woods that snuffed out my sight. I held my arms out in front of me, zombie style, to avoid losing an eye to a tree branch. I liked my eyes. They’re kind of important.

  The shift was subtle and I felt it before I was able to see anything, but I sensed we were at the end of our journey. The trees thinned and spread, and finally we spilled into the open, each girl stepping aside to let me through, forming a sort of tunnel.

  And finally the ruins came into view.

  The breath was ripped right out of my lungs.

  I had no idea the place where my best friend had been killed was this close to my house. It was like someone had spun me around faster and faster and faster and let go, standing back to watch me topple right into Grace’s tomb. You’d think that I’d have been drawn here before, pulled by some sort of magnetic connection, but I had never pushed through those woods before. I avoided the ruins of the chapel that we had all watched burn more than a year ago, just like I avoided going to Grace’s actual grave. I preferred to remember Grace dodging bushes and diving into Pemberly Brown Lake in nothing but her bra and underwear.

  Taking in the charred bricks and burnt beams of wood, I wished more than anything that I could turn around and walk back home. Screw the Sisterhood. Screw revenge. Surely my memories of Grace were more important than destroying the societies that had killed her.

  I took a deep breath through my mouth, careful not to inhale through my nose because the smell of smoke would surely invoke a full-fledged, stage-five panic attack. As I stood at the edge of the clearing, poised to run, the girls’ robes billowed at their ankles and their heads bowed one by one.

  One of the younger sisters lost her hood to the breeze. Her long, dark hair danced in the wind. She caught my eye and smiled shyly. I recognized her as one of the first-years I’d seen tagging along after Taylor and Bethany in the hallways, and I knew I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t run. This girl trusted the Sisterhood. She trusted them with her life. She had no idea how quickly they’d turn on her if she fell out of line or couldn’t keep up. She had no clue how little her life was worth, how little Grace had been worth to them.

  And so I stayed. For Grace, for that first-year, and all of the future first-years who the Sisterhood would surely lure into its ranks like some kind of gold-plated Venus flytrap.

  Reperi tua fata. “Discover your destiny.”

  The girls’ voices nudged me forward to do just that. As it turns out, my destiny was hanging from a tree branch—a robe that billowed like a puffy white cloud against the night sky. I made my way toward the robe through the tunnel of chanting girls. When I reached my fingers up to touch it, the chanting grew louder and more fevered. For a second, my fingers faltered. I couldn’t bring myself to touch the fabric, the robe that stood for all that I’d lost, for everything that I’d given up in my quest to avenge Grace.

  I could still run. I could still change my mind. Go back home and try to be normal again, call Liam. But the decision was made for me when two of the figures in white carefully pulled the robe over my head. In that moment, choice was replaced by destiny. I reminded myself of the look on Liam’s face when I told him I needed space. I tried to channel all of the anger and hurt I felt when he couldn’t understand why avenging Grace was so important to me. I felt the robe flutter across my shoulders and float over my leggings.

  Reperi tua fata. I grew more resolute with every slip and pull of the silk.

  The breeze picked up just as Taylor c
upped her hand around her candle in an attempt to reignite its flame and continue the initiation. She was the leader of the Sisterhood who had sacrificed Grace, left her for dead, destroyed the Brotherhood. And now she thought she had everything she wanted. She thought she had me.

  Under different circumstances, the flickering candle and her cascading robes would have been beautiful. But my friend had died in a fire. A fire started at this very ceremony our first year, so to me the flame looked like a threat. A promise of tragedy to come.

  “Unum, one,” she said. The candle danced. Bethany Giordano stepped forward and angled her candle to Taylor’s. “Duo, two,” she whispered. Naomi Farrow was next, followed by the remaining girls in white. They each whispered their respective Latin as they lit candles, the glow illuminating the pride on their faces. I was last. Sedecem. Sixteen.

  When my candle flickered to life, the girls raised their chins to the sky. Memento vetus, excipe novum. “Remember the old, welcome the new.” I wondered if they’d added the line to remember Grace. Probably not. Taylor gathered every candle together. As each touched the next, the flame became one, growing, feeding off the previous candle. If the hot wax dripping down on her hand burned, she didn’t show it.

  Taylor’s crystal-blue eyes met mine for a beat before she breathed deeply and blew the candles out. A line of smoke twisted upward. I had to choke back a dry heave as the scent wound its way into my nose.

  And I was in.

  “Congratulations!” Taylor tore off her hood and pulled me in for a hug, the gesture so jarring and unexpected that I almost forgot about the bile in my throat. “Let’s celebrate!”

  The girls scattered to set up a party, pulling food and drinks from bags that had been set out beforehand. Music thumped and laughter punctuated the end of one song or the beginning of another. The only thing missing was a campfire and a beach. Even as girl after girl approached me to say congratulations, my legs twitched and my fingers dug into the soft earth, my body still poised to launch myself back to the safety of my house.

  “I know it must be hard.” Naomi’s voice startled me, and I was on my feet in a flash. “I’ve told them a million times we need to stop coming here.” She kicked a charred piece of wood with the toe of her shoe.