Cross my heart and hope to spy* - Ally Carter* (i have read the book TXT) 📗

the top of one of the mansion's tallest towers, drawing her initials on the window's frosty panes. Liz paced, Bex shivered, and I sat on the floor with my arms around my knees, too tired to get my blood flowing despite the chill that had seeped through my uniform and settled in my bones.

"So that's it, then?" Bex asked. "That's everything your mom and Mr. Solomon said? Verbatim?"

Macey and I looked at each other, recalling the conversation we'd overheard and the story we'd just told. Then we both nodded and said, "Verbatim."

At that moment, the entire sophomore class was probably enjoying our last homework-free night for a very long time (rumor had it Tina Walters was organizing a Jason Bourne-athon), but the four of us stayed in that tower room, freezing our you-know-whats off, listening for the creaking hinges of the heavy oak door at the base of the stairs that would warn us if we were no longer alone.

"I can't believe it," Liz said as she continued to walk back and forth--maybe to keep warm, but probably because...well...Liz has always been a pacer. (And we've got the worn spots on our bedroom floor to prove it.)

"Cam," Liz asked, "are you sure the East Wing couldn't have been contaminated by fumes from the chem labs?"

"Of course she's sure," Bex said with a sigh.

"But are you absolutely, positively, one hundred-percent sure ?" Liz asked again. After all, as the youngest person ever published in Scientific American, Liz kind of likes things verified, cross-referenced, and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Cam," Bex said, turning to me, "how many ventilation shafts are there in the kitchen?"

"Fourteen--unless you're counting the pantry. Are you counting the pantry?" I asked, which must have been enough to prove my expertise, because Macey rolled her eyes and sank to the floor beside me. "She's sure."

In the dim light of the cold room I could see snowflakes swirl in the wind outside, blowing from the mansion's roof (or ... well...the parts of the roof that aren't protected with electrified security shingles). But inside, the four of us were quiet and still.
"Why would they lie?" Liz asked, but Bex, Macey, and I just looked at her, none of us really wanting to point out the obvious: Because they're spies.

It's something Bex and I had understood all our lives. Judging by the look on her face, Macey had caught on, too (after all, her dad is in politics). But Liz hadn't grown up knowing that lies aren't just the things we tell--they're the lives we lead. Liz still wanted to believe that parents and teachers always tell the truth, that if you eat your vegetables and brush your teeth, nothing bad will ever happen. I'd known better for a long time, but Liz still had a little naivete left. I, for one, hated to see her lose it.

"What's black thorn?" Macey asked, looking at each of us in turn. "I mean, you guys don't know either, right? It's not just a me-being-the-new-girl thing?"

Everyone shook their heads no, then looked to me. "Never heard of it," I said.

And I hadn't. It wasn't the name of any covert operation we'd ever analyzed, any scientific breakthrough we'd ever studied. Black thorn or Blackthorne or whatever could have been anyone, anything, anywhere! And whoever ... or whatever ... or wherever it was, it had made my mother miss some quality mother-daughter interrogation time. It had also forced my Covert Operations instructor to hold a clandestine conversation with my headmistress. It had crept inside the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women (or at least its East Wing), and so there we were, not quite sure what a Gallagher Girl was supposed to do now.

I mean, we had three perfectly viable options: 1) We could forget what we'd heard and go to bed. 2) We could embrace the whole "honesty" thing and tell my mother all we knew. Or 3) I could be ... myself. Or, more specifically, the me I used to be.

"The forbidden hall of the East Wing is almost directly beneath us," I began slowly. "All we have to do is access the dumbwaiter shaft on the fourth floor, maneuver through the heating vents by the Culture and Assimilation classroom, and rappel fifty or so feet through the ductwork." But even as I said it, I knew it couldn't be nearly as easy as it sounded.

"So..." Macey said, "what are we waiting for?" She jumped to her feet and started for the door.

"Macey! Wait!" Everyone looked at me. "The security department did a lot of work over the break." I pulled my legs closer, wrapped my arms tighter. "I don't know what kind of upgrades they made, what they might have changed. They were all over those tunnels and passageways, and ..." I trailed off, grateful that Bex was there to finish for me.

"We don't know what's in there, Macey," she said, even though the fact that we didn't know what lay waiting in the East Wing was kind of the point, and I could tell by the look on her face that Macey was getting ready to say so.

"Surprises," I finished slowly, "as a rule ... are bad."

Macey sank to the floor beside me while I told myself that everything I'd said was true. After all, it was a risky operation. We didn't have adequate intel or nearly enough time to prep. I can list a dozen perfectly logical reasons why I stayed on that stone floor, but the one I didn't tell my friends was that I had promised my mother that my days of sneaking around and breaking rules were over. And I'd kind of hoped my vow would last longer than twenty-four hours.

"So, what do we do now?" Liz asked.

Bex smiled. "Oh," she said mischievously, "we'll think of something."

Covert Operations Report Summary of Surveillance By Cameron Morgan, Rebecca Baxter, Elizabeth Sutton, and Macey McHenry (hereafter referred to as "The Operatives")

When faced with the knowledge that faculty members of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women were planning a rogue operation, The Operatives began a research and recognizance mission to determine the following:

1.

2.

3. What was such a big freaking deal that no one wanted The Operatives to know about it?

4. Why were The Operatives no longer allowed in the East Wing? (A change that had added ten and a half

minutes to their average daily commute between classes!) 3. Who or what was Thorn? Or maybe Blackthorne?

(Is it possible that Headmistress Morgan and Mr. Solomon were taking on a group of terrorists-slash-florists?)

4. What does Mr. Solomon look like with his shirt off? (Because, if you're going to set up an observation post, you may as well be thorough.)


When I woke up the next morning I tried not to think about the night before, but it's kind of hard to forget covert and potentially dangerous missions when A) The dirty tower floor left a stain on your best school skirt. B) At breakfast, your mother says, "Good morning, Cam. Did you girls have fun last night?" which everyone knows translates to I'm acting perfectly normal because I totally have something to hide. And C) Avoiding the mysteriously off-limits East Wing means you have to find alternate routes to sixty percent of your daily destinations.

On my way downstairs I walked slowly past the door that opened into the East Wing. It was just another door--dark, solid wood, an old brass knob. There were hundreds of doors like it in the mansion, but this one was forbidden, so like any good spy, I wanted to open that one.

I felt Kim Lee fall into step beside me as she glanced at the door and said, "Going around is such a pain." Of course she didn't think about the fact that half of our teachers could have been behind that very door at this very moment, planning an attack on some rogue florists!

I, of course, was having trouble thinking about anything else.

Not even the sight of Mr. Smith appearing in Countries of the World (COW) with a jar of coins, telling us to make change for a dollar in eight different currencies while factoring in exchange rates, could make me stop obsessing about that door and the secrets it was masking.

Even Madame Dabney's lecture on the art of perfect thank-you notes and their obviously underutilized coded message potential couldn't pull my mind away from the East Wing.

We already had two hours' worth of homework and the promise of a pop quiz on the poisonous plants of Southeast Asia; all the teachers were acting like they either had no idea what was going on, or had sworn to take the secret to their graves (which could have been true, actually).

It was business as usual at the Gallagher Academy, and as we started downstairs after Culture and Assimilation (C&A), it almost felt like the break had never happened.

Almost.

"Well, this is it," Liz said. Bex and I started for the elevator that was concealed in the narrow hallway beneath the Grand Staircase.

"What is it?" I asked. Then I turned and saw that Liz wasn't following us to our next class.

Instead, she hooked her thumbs in the straps of her backpack and took a step away. "I've got Advanced Organic Chemistry."

But Bex and I didn't have Advanced Organic Chemistry. Bex and I had Covert Operations. From that moment on, the two of us were going to be training for a life of missions and fieldwork while Liz prepared for a career in a lab or an office. I thought about the forms we'd filled out last semester, the choice I'd made to walk away from any hope of a safe, normal life--from boys like Josh. So it wasn't any wonder that my voice cracked when I said, "Oh. Okay."

Bex and I stared into the mirror that hid the elevator's entrance, then waited for the red beam to scan our retinal images and clear us for our second semester in Sublevel One. I tried not to think about how, for the first time since seventh grade, Liz wouldn't be beside us.

Bex must have been thinking the same thing, because pretty soon she said, "Are you sure you want to spend the next two and a half years doing experiments and cracking codes?" A wicked twinkle appeared in her eye as she studied Liz's pale reflection. "Because the CoveOps class is gonna do underwater exercises eventually, and you know Mr. Solomon will have to take his shirt off."

A portrait of Gillian Gallagher hung on the wall behind us; I saw her eyes flash green, then the mirror slid aside, revealing the small elevator to the Covert Operations classroom. Liz watched the doors slide closed behind us, then Bex turned around and yelled, "But Mr. Mosckowitz might go topless sometime, too!"

And then I heard Liz laugh.

"She'll be okay without us, right?" Bex asked.

We heard the clanking of a suit of armor falling to the floor and Liz's distinctive "Oopsy daisy."

As the elevator started to move, Bex said, "Don't answer that."


Here's the thing you need to know about Sublevel One: It's big. Like, I've-seen-football-stadiums-that-are-smaller big. And while the rest of the mansion is made of old stone and ancient wood, there's nothing about the frosted-glass partitions and stainless steel furniture of the Covert Operations classroom that could ever be confused with a two-hundred-year-old mansion that