Page 22 of Lessons in Power

Her aunt appeared in the doorway. The woman did not ask what her niece and I were doing in Vivvie’s bathroom. “I see we have a guest,” she said instead. Her accent sounded British—and very posh. Like Vivvie, she had brown skin and black hair, though hers had a bit more natural curl. “Hello, Tess.”

“Hey, Ms. Bharani,” I said.

“Priya,” she corrected. “Please.”

“Priya.”

“I am assuming that Ivy and Bodie know you are here?” Priya asked me.

I nodded. Priya’s gaze lingered on my face for a moment. She wasn’t the type of woman who missed much.

“I hope you’ll stay for dinner,” she said finally.

I got the sense that wasn’t a request.

By the time takeout arrived a few hours later, my picture and Vivvie’s had been joined by more than thirty others. It had started with Anna, Lindsay, and Meredith and spread from there. Their friends. Their friends’ friends.

All Hardwicke students. All girls.

I STAND WITH EMILIA.

“What did you girls do today?” Vivvie’s aunt asked.

Vivvie and I looked at each other. “Nothing,” we chimed in unison.

Priya arched an eyebrow. “I find I doubt that very much.” She tilted her head to the side. “Vivvie, I noticed that Jacques is on duty downstairs. Since it appears we will have leftovers, perhaps you could bring him a plate?”

Vivvie’s eyes sparkled. She whispered something to me about her aunt and the night guard having a surplus of sexual tension before bounding off to deliver the food. Once the front door clicked behind her, Vivvie’s aunt turned her attention to me.

“Ivy has been trying to get in touch with me.”

That wasn’t what I’d been expecting her to say, but the second the words left her mouth, I realized that she’d sent Vivvie out of the room for a reason.

“I cannot give Ivy the information she seeks,” Priya continued. “You may tell her that it would not behoove either of us for certain parties to realize that she’d been making inquiries. I certainly cannot be seen answering them.”

When I’d asked Vivvie what her aunt did for a living, all Vivvie had been able to tell me was that her aunt had worked overseas. Taking in the measured tone in Priya Bharani’s voice and the pleasant smile on her face, I doubted suddenly that she’d been working in an art gallery over there.

Priya put her hand over mine and lowered her voice. “I am grateful,” she said, “for what Ivy has done for my niece. But I cannot tell her that the group she is looking for is known by Interpol as Senza Nome. The Nameless,” Priya translated. “I cannot,” she continued quietly, “tell her that they’ve been on various watch lists since the 1980s, or that they seem to operate primarily through infiltration—of other terrorist organizations, as well as world governments.

“I cannot speak of this—not to your sister, not to her friends at the Pentagon, not to anyone.”

Except for me.I was a teenager. Even a cursory check would show that Vivvie and I were friends. Vivvie’s aunt couldn’t take Ivy’s call. She couldn’t be seen talking to her, or to Adam.

But she could whisper in my ear, and I could whisper in Ivy’s.

The front door slammed, and Priya began clearing away the plates, like nothing had happened.

“So,” Vivvie said, popping back into the kitchen and grinning, “what did I miss?”

CHAPTER 17

I delivered the message. To say that Ivy and Adam weren’t pleased that Priya had made me her messenger would have been an understatement.

Bodie just rolled his eyes. “Intelligence types,” he scoffed. “When things go cloak and dagger, you can’t trust them farther than you can throw them.”

Adam gave Bodie a disgruntled look that reminded me thatAdamwas in military intelligence.

“So Vivvie’s aunt is—” I started to say.