Last time on Gemma, Gemma foolishly agrees to join the alpha wolves’ secret midnight club.
Gemma’s forgotten about it, so she wakes up and realizes someone’s in the room with her and freaks out. She sits up fast and smacks her head.
A surprisingly small hand clamps over my mouth. “Do you want to wake the whole bloody school?” Felicity leans over me, the moonlight catching the planes of her face in such a way that she is all wide, hard angles and milky-white skin. She could be the face of the moon itself.
Well, this does show signs of lesbians. But I find it hard to believe Felicity has that foul a mouth. She can’t afford to just blurt something out like that at the wrong moment. Is this one of those things where the author thinks “bloody” is like a fake swear British people use when they’re too polite to use real words? I mean, the author’s American but she says she did research.
Gemma wants to know what the hell, and Felicity says duh the group thing.
“You didn’t say it would be in the middle of the bloody night,” I say
No, but you should have been able to put one and one together.
1 She said you were invited to the meeting tonight and they’d come get you
+
1 No one came and got you before you went to bed
=
They’re going to come get you after you go to bed.
Anyway, Felicity wants to show her something! Gemma says go away and come back in the morning. Gemma, that’s Chloe talk. Stop being boring and stupid and go find ghosts or demons or ghostdemons.
“I won’t make this offer again. It’s now or never.”
Grudgingly, Gemma crawls out of bed. They start off, and we learn that the headmistress likes a glass of sherry before bed, so no one’s going around to catch them. Gemma responds to this by once again trying to get out of it. Stop doing that, Gemma. The speed of the plot is all you have going for you.
As if on cue, two girls descend the stairs and join us. I’m introduced to Elizabeth, a tiny ratlike creature who offers an opinion only after everyone else has, and the pinch-faced Cecily, whose narrow upper lip curls when she takes in the sight of me.
So if you’re not an alpha wolf, you follow the usual rules of ugly outside means ugly inside.
Ringleader Felicity then leads them out to toward the chapel. She says they have a hazing initiation ritual.
“Can you really have an inner circle with only four people?” I ask, sounding braver than I feel. “Seems more like an inner square, doesn’t it?”
“You’re lucky to be here,” Cecily snaps.
Yes, I feel incredibly lucky to be standing out here in the freezing cold in only my nightgown. Some people might call it remarkably stupid, but I’m feeling quite optimistic.
Yeah, me too Gemma. Usually books maintain semi-consistent characterization a bit better than this. Remember how last time you wanted to sit in their special inner city even knowing full well they were a pair of terrible wolves in teenage girl skin, because you were being a realistic character? Now you’re just one-dimensional snark, and I only put up with that from side characters. Shape up.
They tell her to steal something from the chapel.
The clouds thin into wisps. Buttery moonlight spreads out and down. Felicity’s mouth opens, her tongue rubbing against her top teeth, feeling them. “The communion wine.”
It does have pretty good description, though. A tad on the simplistic, but it really works well, especially combined with the speedy plot.
Gemma tries to argue this is a really bad idea, which only makes Felicity insist the harder. She also says that, like the headmistress, the good reverend likes his drink a bit too much, so if they steal it he’ll just think he drank it. I find that doubtful, alpha alpha wolf, but I get the impression you don’t really care if she gets caught anyway. Plus, if that doesn’t work they can blame it on Gypsies. That I find more reasonable. Gypsies stealing stuff is even more believable than lower class girls stealing stuff.
For some reason Gemma’s getting all creeped out by the idea of stealing, even though she claimed she’s not really traditionally religious or used to churches the last time she was there.
Nor do I think it will help my case that I’m stealing what the Church believes is the holy blood of Christ.
…does the sacrament actually work that way? I just tried looking this up and apparently traditionally Anglicans don’t even believe in transubstantiation, because they want to be boring.
It’s moot because as soon as she walks into the chapel the girls close the door and lock her in.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Gem.What did I expect? How could I have been taken in by that story about wanting me to be part of their private club?
Yes, that’s an accurate summation of your stupidity. Just don’t let it happen again.
She starts trying to find her way out and then suddenly she realizes someone’s in there with her!
There’s something overhead. Dear God, I must be imagining things because something, someone, is flying over my head, landing with a thump in the space between the door and me. A hand clamps over my mouth, trapping my scream there. The other arm pulls me in, pins me tight.
It’s just that kind of night for Gemma, I guess.
Anyway, it’s Hot Indian Boy, as you may have guessed, and his eyelashes continue to frame his huge pretty eyes very nicely.
Gemma threatens to scream.
“No, you won’t. How will you explain what you’re doing here with me in the middle of the night without proper clothes, Miss Doyle?”
Hot Indian Boy is kind of a dick.
Gemma’s embarrassed to be seen practically naked in her nightgown, of course. But then she starts asking questions like a good protagonist. Hot Indian Boy makes a token effort not to talk and she just rolls right over him. Apparently he stowed away to get here, and he needs to talk to her over something about her mother, who he knows didn’t really die of cholera.
Gemma tries to interpret this as being a blackmail threat or something, but naturally it isn’t. He switches over to interrogating her, did she see anything? And Gemma finally spills the beans on everything.
“Your mother took her own life, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” I whisper, astonished that he knows this.
“She was lucky.”
“How dare you—”
“Trust me, she was lucky not to be taken by that thing. As for my brother, he was not so fortunate.”
D: I hope there’s some resolution on why the hell he was following the mom around then.
Then she says that she saw the weird thing again and Hot Indian Boy gets freaked out by that. He tells her not to tell anyone else, and also what the thing she saw is a warning. And if you don’t want other, terrible things to happen, you will not bring on any more visions. Except she’s just been doing it by accident, so…
Actually, ever proactive, she asks him to tell her how to do that, and helpfully, he actually gives her advice about trying to close her mind off.
What if she can’t, Gemma asks.
Without a sound, he reaches out quickly and clamps a hand around the delicate bones of my wrist,
squeezing tightly. “You will.”
And then he says they’ll be watching her and runs off mysteriously right as the drunken reverend wanders down, asking if anyone’s there.
Gemma’s good at multitasking, so she takes the opportunity to steal the wine and then books it.
She then gets dumb again.
And why would anyone want to keep an eye on a girl who wasn’t clever enough to outwit a quartet of boarding school pranksters?
I don’t think he cares if you’re clever, it’s the visions and possibly your mom’s death attracting the attention. Anyway, as Gemma thinks she has no idea how to control a vision, it’s not like she can just think about it hard and it happens, she promptly thinks about it too hard and causes a vision. And suddenly the creepy little slumgirl is there.