told him. Maybe if Persey hadn’t scored so dismally on her PSAT test, he’d give her the benefit of the doubt once in a while too. Like when she swore she studied for a test but “only” got a B-minus.
“If your sister paid better attention, she wouldn’t have been kicked out of Allen.” Her dad pretty much took every opportunity to cut her down, even though he was still not addressing her directly.
One of her brother’s buddies bounded up from behind, punching him lightly in the arm. “Dude! You ready for tonight? Party bus picks us up at eight.”
Her dad gave them a knowing wink. “You boys letting loose tonight?” His face was at once conspiratorial and envious.
“Yes, sir,” her brother said. “Just going to blow off some steam.”
“That’s my boy! I remember back in my day…” Then he started to tell some story about his own drunken antics—something about a toga party and a bathtub full of ice that was supposed to be cool and relevant—but Persey’s brother wasn’t listening. Though the permasmile never left his face, his buddy was whispering something excitedly in his ear. Something that made her brother’s eyes widen with excitement. His lips parted, and she saw his tongue pass gently over them as if he was mentally savoring the five-star meal he’d enjoy later that night.
But it wasn’t pan-seared pork belly or Royal Kaluga caviar that elicited such a response in her brother.
A cold chill rocketed down Persey’s spine, numbing her hands and feet. She remembered that day last year when she’d walked into the seldom-used guesthouse and found her brother with the corpses of several animals: possums, squirrels, even a raccoon. Their mutilated bodies had been arranged in a little scene, and her brother stood above them, taking photos with his phone. When he’d turned toward the door where she stood rooted to the ground, stomach roiling with disgust and horror at what she was seeing, he’d had that same look in his eyes. Desire. Hunger. Need.
As she watched his buddy snickering now, Persey wondered what they were up to, then quickly forced any speculation from her mind.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“SHALL WE BEGIN THIS APTITUDE TEST?”
Leah threw open the main doors of the library’s reception room, and Greg entered the lounge. He approached Persey while Leah took up a position near the closet that housed everyone’s luggage.
“Arms out, please,” Greg said, in his now-familiar deadpan voice. “Legs shoulder width apart.”
She complied, assuming this was just part of the first challenge, since Leah had signaled as much, though “aptitude test” seemed like a weirdly academic (don’t panic) way to describe this pat-down. “Is this the beginning of the escape room?”
“Looks more like a first date,” Arlo snarked.
“You’re searching her?” Shaun asked. Only, the questioning inflection was barely present in his voice, like it had started out as a statement and morphed into a question mid-thought. “So you do think she cheated at the Hidden Library.”
“You’re all being searched,” Leah explained, “before I take you to the first challenge.”
First?
Wes jolted off the sofa. “You’re treating us like common criminals.”
“Like suspects,” Kevin corrected him. “They search you before you’re booked.”
“You know that firsthand?” Wes said, curling his lip.
“He’s right,” Riot said, “and you’re tried before you’re a criminal. Innocent until proven guilty.”
“I don’t mind being searched,” Arlo said, though her body language contradicted her words. With arms folded over her chest, her subtext practically screamed I DON’T LIKE THIS. “But I’d like to know why.”
“We want to make sure you don’t have any devices that could aid you in this competition,” Leah explained. “No books. No reference materials. And most importantly, no cell phones.”
On cue, Greg pulled Persey’s smartphone from the pocket of her cargo pants and shoved it in the bag he had slung over his shoulder; then he yanked a device from his own pocket. It looked like a walkie-talkie with some kind of meter readout on its face that blipped back and forth as he swept her body head to toe.
“That’s an electromagnetic scanner,” Leah explained. “To make sure you don’t have any devices hidden on your person.”
“Whoa,” Riot said, taking a step away. “Keep that cancer-causing shit away from me.”
“It’s perfectly safe,” Leah said. “No different than going through a TSA scanner.”
“Which I don’t do. Full pat-down for me. No way I’m letting the government collect a DNA readout of my body.”
Kevin looked at him curiously. “Um, even if that’s true—”
“It is,” Riot said.
“Okay, but why would they want