Page 36 of All Saints: Pledge

I look around with renewed interest. “Fascinating.” Now that I know what I’m looking for, I see pipes branching off of the ceiling every few feet before catching myself. "Okay, interesting as this may be, why are we in steam tunnels?"

No one answers me. We walk in complete silence until I realize there’s a hum beneath the silence. At first I think I'm overhearing someone's cell phone—the voices distant and tinny like a speaker-phone pocket dial. But as we approach a branch in the line, I realize I’m hearing people talking down the darker of the two tunnels.

The hushed fervent tones of the conversation reach my ears in snips and snatches. “It's your job to handle her!”

Some muttering and then something that sounds a lot like “I'm handling it!” In a tenor that I have a sneaking suspicion I recognize.

“You aren't handling it. I got a visit from campus authorities.”

My stomach drops. The other voice is Kendall's father.

Our group shifts and starts toward the dark part of the tunnel, one guy scuffing his feet as we approach. Clearly, he's warning Kendall and his father that we're within hearing distance.

“Do. Better.” Kendall's father bites out the words, and then... silence. Just the swish of the guy’s pants fading away, and my own racing heart. We continue down the new tunnel thirty feet or so before the henchman in front of me stops so suddenly that I careen into his back.

“Oof,” I say and I bounce off him. I sprawl backward onto my ass on the cobble stones. “Ow.” I state, my hands and tailbone stinging with the impact. I see why we stopped. There, bracketed by warm light in an open door, is Kendall. Arms folded, staring at my sprawled form with his typical arrogant sneer.

The guy in front of me helps me to my feet and I expect Kendall to join our procession. Instead, I'm pushed toward Kendall and the door. I say door if one can call a large metal grate with hinges on it a door. Probably some sort of mechanical space. It's the absolutely perfect room to murder someone in, if I'm being honest.

Kendal's father just told him to handle me. He doesn't actually mean to kill me, right? I hate that I can’t entirely rule it out. What if they're going to rub me out for being a liability or for the campus police involvement? I have fully emerged from my cocoon. I’ve gone from being a normal political science student to being a liability to a secret society.

“Please don't kill me,” I say to Kendall. He’s already motioned the goons to leave. Which they did without any statements on my behalf. The door grates shut with a grinding squeal, leaving us... yep, in a mechanical room.

My ears pop, shifting from the echoey sound of the chamber to the closer, muffled sound that this concrete box affords us. Lit by a single hanging light that looks like something straight out of a horror movie, I see pipes and gauges lining the walls, all of them rusty and dusty. No big deal, so it's an abandoned mechanical room in a secret tunnel and no one will ever find my body.

I find Kendall’s cool gaze on me when my eyes finally fall on him in my perusal of the room. He raises an eyebrow. “I'll admit you're a pain in my ass in more ways than I can possible enumerate, but I'm not here to kill you, Helena.” He sighs. “I'm here to help you.”

Exactly what a murderer would say. I cross my arms across my chest and take a step back. “Help me do what? Starve in an underground tunnel? Not into that version of weight loss, thanks.”

He looks up like he's praying for patience. “Helena, I swear to God. We have like twenty minutes to get you changed and we don't have time for this. You're going to have to trust me that I'm?—”

“You’re, what? Handling me?”

That stops him, and he narrows his gaze in calculation.

“I heard everything,” I lie, hoping he'll spill so I have some sort of leverage.

“Then you know,” he emphasizes while staring steadily at me, “that my father has made you a personal test for me.”

I snap my mouth closed, which reveals that I have not, in fact, heard everything.

“That's what I thought,” Kendall says, rolling his eyes. He digs in his coat pocket. Probably for his gun, or whatever people in secret societies use. Poison? A dagger cane?

He produces a roll of duct tape.

Yep. Definitely going to kill me. He tosses something sparkly and black at my head, and I catch it out of instinct. Death by... I study the piece of gathered material in my hand... silk and sequins? Well, that doesn’t track. I gape at him. “Is the test to see if you can strangle me with luxury fabric?”

He pauses and his jaw flexes. I don't understand all the things that flit across his face. “If I can get you through to the final test, he'll trust my...” for a second I think he's going to say "taste", but instead he parries the words “commitment to the process,” like a weapon.

Well, that sounds more like Kendall. Assigned to help the underdog as a punishment. Boohoo for him. “I don't want yourhelp.” As much as I would love a leg up for this next test, help from Kendall feels wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Believe me, I don't really want to help you either. I tried to get you to go home earlier, but now you’re here.” He takes a deep breath like this fact pains him. “So. I took the challenge from my father to help mold your application.”

“You don't think I'll get granted my scholarship again without your help?” Ew. “I would rather fail on my own than cheat, Kendall. We might not have been close, but you should know that about me. I would rather go home than do whatever this is.” I motion between us. Playing into some secret challenge his father has for the underdog feels ick.

“Okay, so tell me what you know about tonight.”

The topic change throws me for a loop. “What?”

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