The Lies We Conjure, page 1
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To Whitney—who helps me keep the magic going, one book at a time
This family is truly desperate.
And when people get desperate, the knives come out.
—Benoit Blanc, Knives Out
Just think of the story we’re going to tell.
—Wren Jourdain, who’s super pissed Ruby got to tell it and she didn’t
PART ONE
THE PARTY
CHAPTER 1
RUBY
SIX DAYS BEFORE
The old woman arrives at the Ye Olde Falafel Shoppe not with an order, but with a question.
“Are you sisters?”
As usual, Wren is manning the register and flirting her way to much bigger tips than I can get, while I fulfill the orders as they slide through the kitchen window of Grand County Renaissance Festival’s most popular (and only) falafel stand.
“Yes, my lady.” Wren smiles at the woman, her festival-mandated British accent sweet in air equally scented with all things fried, excessive sunscreen, and the stink of more than one horse decked out as a knight’s noble steed.
“How old?” the lady presses, lifting huge sunglasses into her cloud of silver hair. Deep set and large, her dark eyes sweep between us, and it’s like she’s checking our features off on a list—tall, pale, brunette, check, check, check. The lunch rush is over, and the moment I slide an extra vat of hummus to a man dressed as fox Robin Hood—tail and all—and he disappears with a tip of his cap, we’re alone. No customers stack up behind her as she continues to peer at us instead of choosing off the menu printed on a medieval “parchment” hanging behind Wren. “Sixteen? Seventeen? Irish twins?”
“Yes, my lady,” Wren answers again, jabbing a thumb in my direction. She announces in her perfectly posh accent, “Ruby’s older, but don’t let the age gap fool you, I’m the brains of this operation.”
The woman chuckles, her attention lingering on our faces with building excitement. I can’t explain why but my gut tightens.
“Their accents are just like yours. Tepidly British and put on for an occasion,” she says mostly to herself before turning to me and ordering, “Let me hear yours.”
For some reason it feels impossible to tell how old our nosy customer actually is—she could be sixty or pushing a hundred. Either way, I realize I’ve seen her before. I’ve served her before. At least two weeks in a row.
I gesture at the menu, and prod in my fake accent, which is way less impressive than Wren’s, “Is there anything I can get you? You ordered the number two with jalapeños last week, didn’t you?”
Wren mutters “Pushy” under her breath. Yet rather than answer my question or agree with my sister’s assessment, the old woman’s obvious elation only grows—her heart-shaped face expanding and elongating in such a way that it resembles an exclamation point.
“Good.”
She then precedes to plant her elbows on the counter and gesture for us to lean in close.
Wren, happily coasting on her four semesters in high school improv class, does so without hesitation, but I must admit to being a little less enthusiastic. The only reason I’m slinging falafel in a wench outfit is because I need more money for my pitiful college fund, and this is far outside the parameters of what we’re paid to do. Not to mention this is the last weekend of the Ren Fest and we literally have five hours left on the job. Our customer ignores my frown, and greets our combined attention with an eager smile outlined in matte maroon lipstick.
“Girls, my name is Marsyas Blackgate. I’d like to hire each of you to pretend to be my granddaughters at a dinner party at Hegemony Manor—do you know it? It’s just outside of Wood Rose.”
Wren’s eyes nearly pop out of her head. “The Hegemony Manor? Of course we know it! Gothic perfection on the hill, with the turrets and the windows and the Wednesday Addams moodiness. Our mom just loved it.”
My breath hitches at the mention of Mom. She did love that place. There’s no way this woman—Marsyas?—could know that, but something unsettling plops in my gut.
Beyond the old woman’s rounded shoulders is a steady stream of humanity wandering by, gnawing on massive turkey legs, crinkling maps, and brandishing kiddie-sized wooden swords. Not a single Ren Fest guest is looking our way. I drop both my hideous accent and my voice. “You want us to impersonate your granddaughters? May I ask why?”
She blinks as if it’s obvious. “You look just like them.”
“But we aren’t them.”
Marsyas straightens and, with a dignified sniff, draws a photograph from somewhere beneath the voluminous fabric of her black caftan. In it, she beams at the camera, bracketed by two tall, pale brunettes. Their heads are smooshed together, the iconic pyramid of the Louvre in the background.
I have to admit, we do look like them.
“My girls live abroad with their mother. I miss them dearly and though they miss me, they haven’t been back stateside in a decade. I’m invited every year to a special dinner party at Hegemony Manor, and every year the other families expect to see Lavinia and Kaysa. Every year they’re disappointed, and I’m disappointed too.”
Marsyas’s chin wobbles, her dark eyes shine, and suddenly she looks like she might be a thousand years old. If it’s an act, her improv lessons have been far more extensive than Wren’s. “This year, I want to show off my girls.”
Wren immediately claws at my hand, her expression pleading. I know my sister just wants to help, even if it’s some next-level psychological bullshit that this woman is propositioning us to pretend to be her living, breathing granddaughters for a night so that her friends will think that they love her enough to cross the Atlantic.
“I—” I start. That tremor of unease in my gut is now a 5.0 on the Richter scale.
But before I can put that into words enough to pull Wren aside to discuss it, Marsyas lays out twenty one-hundred-dollar bills on the counter.
“I’ll give you each a thousand up front and another thousand after dinner.” Her gaze sweeps between the pair of us, that spark returning. “I’m sure you will find that reasonable.”
My jaw drops.
That is more money than we’ve earned—combined—in our six-weekend run at the Ren Fest.
More than I alone earn in a month at my part-time job as a bookseller at Agatha’s Apothecary & Paperback Emporium.
More than enough to pad my college fund so that it isn’t completely laughable.
It’s enough that it’s too good to be true.
So, of course, Wren immediately accepts the offer for both of us.
“Why, that’s more than reasonable, Miss Marsyas. When’s the party?”
In answer, the old woman says, “Call me Nona,” and lays a handwritten card atop the cash advance.
Saturday night. Formal. Wear solid black. I’ll be in touch.
“Wait, what—” I glance up, a new line of questions forming and then immediately dying on my lips.
Marsyas Blackgate isn’t there.
I lean on the counter, craning to see farther left, then right, ready to chase her down for more information, a contact number, more specifics about the deal.
But she’s vanished.
Wren eagerly gathers the bills and stuffs them into the inside pocket of her wench’s apron. She’s neglected the card, and I snatch it up and flip it over, hoping for at least one answer to the flood of questions in my churning mind.
Instead, I find one final order. Or maybe a threat.
Tell no one.
CHAPTER 2
RUBY
The lie isn’t ours.
But we wear it as overtly as our new party dresses and shoes. As our drugstore lipstick and mother’s pearls. As the accents that sit, awkward, upon our tongues, waiting and ready for polite conversation over the course of one gilded evening.
“Fuck, it’s haunted.”
That’s the first thing Wren whispers to me after slamming the chauffeured SUV’s door shut with a decisive echo. She doesn’t use her accent.
Before us, the western sun is hanging over the Continental Divide like a blowtorch, a line of fire trailing along every nook and crick of the Rocky Mountain peaks. It’s beautiful—magical, even—the perfect backdrop for literally any story the night wants to tell. It also lies in stunning juxtaposition to the gothic mansion staring back at us.
Painted a flat black across a solid three-story construction, its windows are stacked like the eyes of a spider, while tu
Hegemony Manor.
We’ve never been so close to it. It’s been perched on the edge of Mom’s tiny mountain hometown for a century and counting, vast enough to house every resident within its walls, its grounds larger than the city limits, all roped off by barbed wire strung for acres until they become miles.
For a few years after the divorce, we lived in Wood Rose with Mom, and drove past the manor on our way to visit Dad and our stepmom, Karen, in Grand Lake. Mom almost always pulled onto the shoulder for a moment’s appreciation of the moody lines of the manor, wishing the Hegemonys would open it to visitors or turn it into a bed-and-breakfast operation. Anything for a peek inside. Then three years ago a drunk driver took Mom away from us. We moved in with Dad and Karen, and the drives past Hegemony Manor became a relic of the past.
In this moment, I can’t believe we’re just feet from the front door.
I wish we could tell her.
Inside the barbed-wire perimeter and massive gates, there’s a beautiful brick drive that loops in a teardrop up to the manor and back out to the private road that leads to the property from the highway. I stand on that drive now, wedging my brand-new stiletto heels between the bricks as I stare back at Hegemony Manor, trying to find solid ground. Suddenly feeling nervous about this plan.
About what we’re about to do to the people who live here.
People who’ve been more rumor than reality in my life up until this very moment.
The rumors at school went like this: Three kids lived behind these great gothic walls and towering, treacherous gates. Two boys and a girl, orphans all. Cousins, adopted by their grandmother. Kept by nannies and tutors before calling boarding school home.
With a collection of rumors like that, as big and bold as the mansion that bears their name, it’s strange that we’re about to make rumor a reality and then lie.
I wouldn’t have said yes to tonight if Wren hadn’t already done it—my sister and her habit of hoovering up experiences to fuel her dreams of stage and screen.
“Do you think they name their ghosts?” Wren’s amber eyes pop wide, false eyelashes like fireworks as she leans in. “Like, ‘That’s just Old Imelda, crying in the foyer again’? Or maybe they just ignore them—too numerous to bother?”
“Please make sure to corner an honest-to-God Hegemony and ask.”
The sarcasm in my voice practically drips onto her dress but she ignores it.
“I just might. They’d probably find that kind of innocent interest endearing after spending all semester with walking icicles in sweater sets and pearls.” Wren adds a self-indulgent hair toss while disparaging the entire female population of the Hegemonys’ boarding school of choice, Walton-Bridge Prep, before a shade of anxiety flashes across her face and she clutches my wrist. “Wait, what do we wear at the Baxter Academy for the Arts?” That’s where the real Lavinia and Kaysa go to school. “If they have some sort of awful green plaid as a uniform, I need to know about it for character development reasons.”
Wren is living for this.
I am not.
She whips out her phone. I pull out mine too, and my palms immediately slip with sweat around my phone case. I resist the urge to wipe my hands on the silk of my dress and try again, swiping away a “Made it to Boulder” text from Dad that I missed on the group thread twenty minutes ago. When my lock screen disappears, it reveals the document I have about the dinner party guests. It’s something Marsyas sent us after we’d accepted her opportunity—details on the families in attendance. Names, pictures, and surface information—employment, schooling, hobbies. Totally creepy, actually.
Evidently, no one besides Marsyas is related to “us,” which was much to Wren’s relief as she’d tagged literally everyone under the age of twenty attending as “so hot.”
Hot or not, these are people who need to believe we’re Lavinia and Kaysa Blackgate, at least for tonight. According to Marsyas, none of them have seen the sisters since the pair of them learned how to read and write. The girls aren’t allowed on social media, and, like everyone at this party, the internet has never heard of them.
“Do you have reception? This won’t load.” Wren stabs at her phone screen as if that will make it do anything. Looks like I don’t have a signal either. “I know, I know, if I’m quizzed on the specs of the Baxter Academy uniform, it’s my cue to recast the small talk to something far more interesting.” She waggles her eyebrows into her thick fringe of bangs. “Perhaps the ghosts.”
She’s about to laugh—until she sees my face.
I’m fairly certain I’ve begun to go green underneath my makeup. My heart is rabbiting against my breastbone, and when Wren ditches her phone to snatch my hands, they’re clammy against her dry grip. “Look, just because you’re allergic to fun doesn’t mean you need to be nervous. You’re going to do fine.”
I shake my head and try to put words to the unease uncoiling in my belly at the thought that this is actually happening. “I just don’t like this.”
Wren rolls her eyes. “It’s not actually haunted.”
It’s not that Hegemony Manor seems scary, per se, it’s just … too right. Too stately, the grass too green and lush for the summer drought, the air too still. It’s like the whole thing is a mirage, and a little dose of reality will slough off the perfection like dead skin.
“I know, it’s just—” I tug on Wren’s hand. Pinky to pinky. “Promise you’ll leave with me if I need to bolt.”
Wren’s lips purse into a lopsided smirk. “Only if you promise not to panic and at least make an effort to have a good time. It’s a party, not a funeral.”
“Girls,” calls a voice with a whisky-warm rasp—Marsyas, or tonight, Nona. Appearing from around the rear bumper of our SUV, Marsyas is a bowling ball of a woman punctuated by a tight chignon. She drops the keys into what truly looks to be a handbag fashioned from a decapitated raven. Like, with feathers and a wing and everything. Satisfied, she flashes that eccentric grin of hers, a mile wide and as treacherous as a canyon. “Let me have a look at you.”
Marsyas addresses my sister first—“Kaysa”—and Wren frowns. She isn’t a fan of the name she’s been given. The old woman’s fingers tug at Wren’s neckline, straightening the drape of silk across her collarbones and the flash of skin at her shoulders. At first I think she’s going for the price tag we left tucked under her collar, but then she removes the string of white pearls at Wren’s throat and deposits them into my sister’s open palm, the meaning clear—put these away. “There.”
As Wren drops Mom’s pearls into her wristlet without a word, Marsyas hits me with the full force of her critical eye. My dress is less complicated, an ankle-length A-line and belted, and it must pass the test because rather than a single adjustment she hums out a “mmhmm” and smiles again, teeth tea-stained and surprisingly wolflike for a grandma. I suppose I’m allowed to keep Mom’s pearl studs. “Perfect, girls. Now, take my hands.”
“Yes, Nona,” we answer in our accents now, as she’s instructed us to do, and sweep our hands into hers, stepping to either side. The black rabbits’ feet she’s clasped on delicate gold chains about our wrists tap gently into her own matching ones.
I’d declined my bracelets when she’d foisted them upon me, but I was informed wearing them was nonnegotiable. A Blackgate necessity.
My bracelets might go missing the moment Nona starts drinking.
This close, Marsyas smells of layers of expensive makeup and roses, and like us is dressed head-to-toe in black. Along with her own dead bunny bracelets, she accessorizes with an elaborate cascade of natural black pearls cloaking her considerable décolletage like a mass of tiny beetles. Her earrings have the unsettling swing of a spider weaving webs through the too-still air, stark against her pale powdered skin.
Marsyas doesn’t lead us toward the gravestone steps rising to the ornately carved doors of Hegemony Manor. Instead, we walk entwined down a strand of star-shaped stone tiles leading around the side to a massive manicured garden that hugs the rear of the house like a cape, its hem disappearing into the Rocky Mountain wilds.
