Hello followers and new readers.
My last series was a fairly significant departure from my first offering but now I'm returning to that "universe" as it were. Hopefully those of you who were disinterested or put off by the extremes of that series will like this one better.
For new readers, this is a continuation of my first series "The Spa Game". I've tried to put in helper notes that outline some of the current and historical relationships between the characters. Hopefully I've achieved a balance that lets new readers figure out what's going on without having to read the previous series, without so much infodumping that returning readers are annoyed. All that said, if you want a fuller understanding of the history of some of the characters I recommend you read the other series first.
This will be a long-form series and sometimes it takes a bit to get to the "good stuff" but there's at least some of it in every chapter, and the chapters aren't oppressively long. Also, I try to choose the most applicable category for each story, but there are elements of many different interests in many chapters. I recommend those interested in finding or avoiding specific topics check the tags on the stories. That said, I don't believe anything is or will be too extreme.
I hope everyone enjoys this. Ratings and particularly comments are appreciated.
Prologue: Recruitment Meeting
Cynthia Towers mused that the house she sat in probably hadn't had this many people sitting in its actual sitting room in quite a while.
The house was technically owned by the tall, amazingly well-built red-haired Irishman standing at the end of the table flicking his finger across a propped tablet, but that was largely a formality. In reality the house was used by the Spa, the secret group established by the highly elite and obscenely wealthy students at The Veretrum Institute. It was invite only and had very particular interests.
Usually they held meetings from Friday evenings to Sunday mornings on weekends school was in session, but this being the first weekend of a new year things were different; the meeting hadn't occurred until Saturday morning, no card games were occurring, no betting took place, and every bedroom and plush piece of furniture was safe from any sort of defilement or abuse.
Unless someone spills some red wine
Cynthia thought.
The group attending this meeting was also smaller than usual for a few reasons. First of all, given it was the start of a new year all of their previous members who graduated were no longer eligible to attend, something that was generally a mixed blessing; certain members were always missed but some breathed sighs of relief when certain members aged out. The second reason was the meeting was a recruitment meeting and despite all current members being eligible to vote, some members either had no candidates to put forward or no interest in deciding on the membership.
Vincent McCabe, the aforementioned Irishman, led the meeting because, though the club had no real hierarchy everyone in the room deferred to him most of the time; apart from his intense personality and charisma, he was literally royalty.
"So our graduates from last year were Purna, Susan, Bill, and Carl," Vincent said.
"Purna's a loss," Charles said from his chair halfway down the table. Charles wasn't terribly popular but he didn't cause trouble; he just consistently had a higher opinion of his abilities than his performance could back up, in many aspects of his life.
"I'll miss them all," said Amy, a somewhat flighty girl who occasionally worried Cynthia; she often seemed out of it and unconcerned with her own well being and safety.
"Susan barely ever showed up, and when she did all she usually did was play, Carl and I didn't have anything the other wanted, and Bill just kept Sylvia on his leash all the time, though now Cyn's stepped in to fill that role, apparently," Charles said, using Cynthia's more well-known nickname.
"I'm maintaining the same arrangement Bill did. It'll probably be even less noticeable here; we're setting very clear boundaries and our spa activities will be even more distinct from our personal ones than she and Bill maintained," Cyn said.
"We also had a withdrawal by Kathy," Vincent said.
That announcement imposed an uncomfortable silence among the crowd. Kathy had been an aggressive, nearly abusive member of the group, but halfway through the previous year after Cyn had maneuvered her into a very compromising position, she'd vanished from their group. Many people assumed there'd been some sort of confrontation with Vincent, but he'd said nothing either way.
"We're now taking nominations for new members. We can fill at most five slots," Vincent said.
Cyn paid attention to the nominations but didn't have much of an opinion on most of them. Charles nominated a guy named Ammad Bashir who Carl claimed was attractive, discreet, and bisexual. He'd overemphasized the last point, which didn't win him points with the crowd (Carl had often been accused of offensive hypocrisy as he'd shown interest in lesbian pairings while almost obsessively avoiding gay ones), but Zach, a rather flamboyant and exuberant senior member, backed up the nomination. Noelle, a very short, small Asian girl with a bubbly personality and an un-ignorably large chest, nominated a girl named Kim Tanaka and gave few details, other than saying she'd "more than make up for anyone we lost."
"Standard one month waiting period would apply," Vincent said.
Noelle nodded. Sylvia, a waif thin, short, senior girl sitting next to Cyn with a decorative metal choker on, leaned over when Cyn beckoned and explained that Freshman nominees weren't approached for at least a month to allow them to acclimate to the school and to allow other members to observe them, since they wouldn't be known on campus.
Another name was brought up by Zach during that explanation that Cyn didn't hear, but then Cyn's attention was grabbed when Sylvia said, "Victoria Sylva."
"What?" Cyn said, turning to look at her friend and roommate in disbelief.
"You want to object, Cyn?" Vincent said.
"Yes," Cyn snapped immediately.
"On what grounds?" Vincent said.
Cyn paused as she realized she didn't have any solid ones, but she spoke to buy herself some time. "Vicky's my best friend, or at least she was before I joined the spa and we sort of drifted apart."
"So you think your friend's going to be mad? That's it?" Noelle asked.
Cyn wracked her brain for legitimate objections and landed on one she'd thought of a long time ago. "The girl is horrible at keeping secrets. She treats confidential information like gossip. Some of it is inexperience but a lot of the time she doesn't care. She'll be talking about her weekends with us before her creative writing class every week."
