19
I stared at the computer screen, unable to look away from O’Connor’s face. It was odd to see him talk again. How long had it been since I last saw him? Weeks? Months? It couldn’t have been that long, but for some reason, the sight of O’Connor, alive and well, made it feel like I’d been slogging through waist-deep muck with the Raptors for years on end. And according to O’Connor, the battle had been going on a lot longer than I originally thought.
“I truly don’t understand how you ended up at Waverly,” O’Connor went on. “You’ll only find trouble here. Fate can be cruel in that respect. Your parents would’ve wanted you as far away from this school as possible. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.”
He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders back. “Nicole, before you were born, both of your parents, Natasha and Anthony, were students at Waverly University. Your father was a member of the Black Raptor Society.”
A chill washed over me. I’d spent most of my childhood questioning the aunt who raised me about my parents. She had never been forthcoming with information. No matter how many questions I’d bombarded her with, she had adamantly refused to answer them. I was finally beginning to understand why.
“At this point, if you’ve gotten this far,” continued O’Connor, “then you know who the Raptors are. You may be wondering how your father was ever a part of that infernal society. Let me reassure you that your father was a good man.” He chuckled to himself. “Don’t get me wrong. I hated him at first. You see, I grew up with your mother. Natasha was one of my best friends, and the thought of her being with some blue-blooded Raptor asshole made my skin crawl.”
That explained how O’Connor ended up as my connection to the past. He had known my mother, and from his words and the glazed look in his eyes, I guessed that O’Connor had wanted to be a little more than friends with Natasha.
O’Connor blew out a sigh. “Anthony proved me wrong, although I expect Natasha had a lot to do with that. Your mother was a determined woman, intelligent and cunning, but she was hard to win over. If you managed to do so, she loved you deeply and with every piece of her heart. I think she would have burned Waverly to the ground if it meant getting Anthony out of the Raptors’ clutches.”
“She knew?” I asked Lauren. “About BRS? Do you think my father told her?”
Lauren shrugged.
“I’m skipping parts again,” O’Connor said with a little smack to his forehead as if to admonish himself. He reached over the camera to pick something up. It was a leather-bound journal, and as O’Connor flipped through it, I could see that the pages were thick with ink. “This is your mother’s diary,” explained O’Connor. “She left it behind when she… Anyhow, I think it’s best if you hear it from her. I’ve photocopied the relevant pages and downloaded them to this computer for you to read. I have to warn you though. It’s not a fun journey. Quite the contrary. I’m so sorry that it had to come to this.”
O’Connor caressed the cover of the leather journal, looking forlorn. “I’m not sure what to do with the hard copy. My senses tell me to get rid of it so that the Raptors will never find it, but it’s the only thing I have left of her.” He looked into the camera again. “I hope this diary finds its way back to you one day, Nicole. You deserve to have the record of Natasha’s accomplishments at your disposal.”
With that, he covered the camera with his hand, and the monitor went black.
I turned to Lauren. “Is that it?”
“There are a couple more video files, but I haven’t decoded them yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was working on your mother’s diary entries.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t watch the whole video.”
She paused, chewing on her lip. “I lied. I just didn’t want you to think I was being disrespectful for not waiting for you.”
I sighed. “Lauren, it’s research, plain and simple. Watch and read everything you find. That way, we’re both on the same page.”
“Well, in that case, I already read the earliest diary entry that O’Connor left for you.”
“Super. What does it say?”
“See for yourself.”
Lauren double-clicked the file, opening a new window to reveal the first page of my mother’s scrupulous handwriting. My chest tightened at the sight of it. I had no memories of my mother—she had died when I was still a toddler—but her penmanship was familiar to me somehow.
March 13, 1985
I’ve finally discovered where Anthony disappears to in the middle of the night. I kept following him to the library only to lose him in the rare-manuscript room. And yes, I understand that tailing your boyfriend is not the best way of convincing him that you completely and utterly trust him, but I was never one to mind my own business, and if someone’s hurting the people I love, I’m going to fight back. Besides, Anthony told me himself that if he could get out of it, he would. What kind of person would I be if I just stood back and watched him suffer?
In any case, I started making excuses to go to the rare-manuscript room whenever possible, and I realized that Anthony’s been leaving me clues. For instance, he left his ring—the one with the weird, black stone—on my bedside table. It might’ve been an accident, but instinct tells me he left it there on purpose. It turns out that Anthony’s involved in some insane club, the Black
