Under the Rose (34 page)

“I don’t think he recognizes anything he doesn’t classify under the category of possible sexual partner,” Jenny snapped. “So we have that going for us. You aren’t going to call him later, are you?”

“Just tell me you’re not enjoying this.”

Josh and Lydia were seated on the sofa of our common room, digging into a box of pizza. They looked up, and Josh’s mouthful actually fell onto his shirt.

“Oh my God,” he said. “What happened to you guys?”

“Amy,” said Lydia, “you look like shit.”

“Thanks, hon. I’ll love you forever if that’s pepperoni.”

“You loved me forever years ago, but yes.” She grabbed another paper plate.

I checked out my reflection in the glass. Sure enough, there were bags under the bags under my eyes, and my face was streaked with dirt. And this was what George had wanted to get together with later? Blinded by lust, perhaps? “Never mind. I think I need a shower first.”

“Your bedroom’s clear,” said Josh. “I’ve been checking regularly.” Only then did he choose to recognize Jenny’s presence. “Hi.”

She adjusted her bag on her shoulder. “Hi.”

Pleasantries aside, I left the not-so-merry group and took a shower. Say what you will about dorm life, there’s very little to compare with the glory of a scalding hot, elephant-strength Prescott College bathroom shower. Twenty minutes of steam seeping into my pores later, I emerged, reddened and relaxed, shrugged into my robe, and headed back to the suite.

Jenny had clearly related the whole story to Josh by this time, and he, naturally, had mobilized. Lydia had kindly taken her leave of the suite (the note on my whiteboard read:
Okay, fine. You get one free pass for turning my common room into your clubhouse. I understand emergencies. Luv, Lyds
).

“Do you think she’s going to go tell her society our business?” I asked Josh. “You know every other society on campus is going to crow with delight if they hear about this.”

“Hear about what?” said Josh. “She left before Jenny said a word. That roommate of yours is one classy dame. Can I pick ’em, or what?”

“You’re dating Amy’s roommate?” Jenny peeked her head out of my bedroom, then looked at me. “And you allow that?”

“Shut up, Jenny,” Josh said, following me to the door of my bedroom. “Lydia’s not the only one who knows how to give people the benefit of the doubt. You’re lucky we do.”

“I believe her,” I said.

Josh sighed. “So do I. Everyone’s on their way.”

“Everyone?”

“The non-Elysions,” Jenny said. She returned to my desk and showed me what she’d pulled up on my laptop while I’d been gone. “There’s been more activity on their e-mails. I think there’s a meeting tonight. I just need to find out where it is.”

“Tonight?” I said. “On Saturday?”
I probably won’t be in until late,
George had said. No kidding.

“That’s why we’re concerned,” said Josh. “It must be important if people are giving up their weekend for it. It may be about the information they think Jenny has passed along.”

Soon after, the rest of the group arrived.

“This had better be good,” said Clarissa. “I’m supposed to be on another date with Mr. Wonderful.”

“Two nights in a row?” said Mara, picking over the pizza. “Wow, it’s true love.”

Greg snatched the last slice of pepperoni out from underneath both of us, and began chomping. “We all canceled plans to be here,” he said. “I expect there’s a reason.”

“I canceled nothing,” said Harun. “And yes, I own my loser status. If you all had parties to go to, the least you could do would be to take me along. Whatever happened to supporting a brother in all his endeavors?”

“We were supporting you in your loserdom,” said Clarissa.

Odile and Demetria arrived and stood on opposite sides of the room. Lover’s spat, perhaps? I raised my eyebrows at Demetria, but she ignored me.

“How long is this going to take?” Demetria asked. “If we’re waiting around for George or Nikolos to get home from the bars, we’ll be here all night.”

“That’s not where they are,” said Josh through clenched teeth.

I’d gotten dressed in Lydia’s room while Jenny worked on my computer, and now the door to my room stood closed.

“I’m getting kind of sick of these constant powwows,” said Odile. “I thought we signed up for two meetings a week, not seventeen.”

“Don’t worry,” said Josh. “This may be the last. Of any kind.” He opened my bedroom door. “Come on out.”

Jenny came forward, and everyone in the room gasped.

“Holy shit, it’s
Boys Don’t Cry,
” said Odile.

Jenny gave a halfhearted wave. “Hi, guys.”

Only Harun returned her salutation. Everyone else looked pissed.

“So you found her,” sniffed Clarissa. “Great. Can we string her up now?”

“Not quite yet,” said Josh. “Give her five minutes.”

So we listened as Jenny gave a very abbreviated history of her sleeper agent scheme. She didn’t sugarcoat her involvement, or place any blame on Micah. She stood there, upfront and honest (and under her actual name), and admitted to everyone that what she’d done to them was wrong. I don’t know how many points she earned, but I was proud of her.

And then she segued into the true purpose for the meeting: Elysion. We passed around the printed e-mails and list of participants. To most of the girls, it came as a shock. Mara didn’t look too dismayed, and the boys greeted the news with more disappointment than surprise.

Josh looked at Harun and Greg. “I take it your experiences were pretty much like mine?”

Greg shrugged. “Some of the guys would make these offhand comments,” he said. “I thought they were merely taking the piss out of the girls, and never paid much attention.”

“I think they were judging our responses,” said Josh. “And when we didn’t seem to express any interest in the idea, they didn’t invite us in.”

“I got invited,” said Harun, softly. “At least, in retrospect, I think that’s what they were trying to do.”

All eyes turned to him.

“It was a few months ago, just after Straggler Initiation Night. I went out for drinks with Ben and Nikolos and we were shooting the shit, talking about investment banking, things like that. I didn’t understand how the society worked yet. I thought they were trying to recruit me into some sort of Digger fund-raising committee. I didn’t have time for it—not with all of my other activities. So I said no.” He looked around at all the stricken faces. “I didn’t know what it was. I thought they were trying to get me to volunteer. That was the last I heard of it.”

“So if you’d known, would you have joined?” asked Demetria.

“Hell, no,” Harun said. “I don’t roll with that sexist crap.”

“Really?” said Juno. “I’d have thought—”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Thanks. I seem to have left all my burkas in my other bag, or I’d give you one.”

“Peace out,” said Demetria. “Can we do the racist commentary later?”

“For your information,” Juno said with a sneer, “it has nothing to do with race. I was going to say that Harun told me he didn’t know they let women in until he arrived in August. I got the impression he wasn’t pleased.”

“It was you who weren’t pleased, if I remember correctly,” said Clarissa. “Hypocritical, sure. But you weren’t pleased.”

“Just because I don’t agree with the principle behind a tax cut doesn’t mean I’m not going to pay anyway,” Mara replied.

“All right, guys, leaving behind the sticky logic for a moment, let’s move along to the point where we figure out what we’re going to do next.” The sooner this was decided, the sooner I could go to bed.

Mara eyed Jenny. “Why should we do anything? She’s admitted to lying to us, to using our own fears against us, to tricking us into casting suspicion on one another. How do we know this isn’t Phase Two?”

Now
who was the paranoid one? Of course, if I’d had a few moments of sleep the previous evening, maybe I’d have ruminated on the possibility as well. “That’s awfully diabolical of her, wouldn’t you say?”

“Takes one to know one,” Clarissa said. “What plan to take down a diabolical organization wouldn’t be equally diabolical?”

“You’re speculating,” said Josh, “that these last few days have been part of an elaborate plot to convince us to trust her when she presented information showing a third of our club has been conspiring against us? Wouldn’t we have believed her more readily
before
we knew she’d betrayed us all?”

Clarissa pursed her lips. “Okay, you’re right. When you put it like that it does sound a little unlikely.”

Greg snorted and held up one of the Elysion e-mails Jenny had printed. “Those bastards. Listen to this: ‘We’ve gotten a lot of support for our cause from the willing patriarchs, especially those from whom donations in general have been way down. The only remaining concern is what to do about the balance of the trust. It would be easy enough to redirect a portion of appreciation/dividends into the new account, but this is hardly a worthwhile trust. Yours under the rose, Hades.’ They’re stealing our money.”

“Well,” Jenny said, “they think it’s their money, too.”

“They can’t do that, though, right?” I asked. “Even if it’s all part of the Tobias Trust Association, they can’t just decide on a new budget that includes secret funds to Elysion without the vote of the board, or of the club. Right?”

“Definitely,” Josh said. “And I doubt most of the board even knows about this. You haven’t been able to contact your guy, have you, Amy?”

“He’s in Iceland,” I said. “I left him a voice mail, but…” For all I knew, some Elysian with access to Gus’s Digger in-box could be erasing any message clueing him in on the plot.

“Listen to this,” said Demetria, holding up another e-mail. “‘I doubt the club will meet Sunday night, due to the current atmosphere of scrutiny. Now is the perfect time to decide upon our next move. Why delay? This is our moment. The old order is crumbling. Let’s not get caught in the rubble. Yours under the rose’…et cetera.”

“Who wrote that one?” Mara asked.

“Um, someone named Hector.”

All of a sudden, Odile straightened. “Wait. I’ve heard of this before. Elysion.”

Demetria eyed her. “Don’t tell me you got an invite.”

“No, I read about them. In the annals. They existed once before, when the club first began accepting non-white and non-Christian members. Some of the old guard were upset, so they formed a
secret
secret club.”

“Gross,” said Jenny. “What happened to it?”

Odile shrugged. “I don’t remember the details, but it’s in the Black Books. I guess the rest of the club discovered it and flipped out.”

“So now history is repeating itself,” I said.

Demetria put down the e-mail. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go nail these jackasses to the wall.”

“First we’ve got to find them,” said Clarissa. “Where do we think they’re meeting? It’s not at the tomb. I was just there.”

“Did you go all over?” Josh asked.

“I didn’t search the place, if that’s what you mean, but it was definitely empty. I was upstairs, downstairs—I even went into the kitchen, because someone left the light on down there. Total ghost town.”

I picked up another sheet. “Does it say anything about location in these e-mails?”

“Precious little,” said Jenny. “Which I suppose means they always meet in the same place, since they never feel the need to announce location, only time.”

“When do they meet?” asked Josh. “Maybe we can narrow it down based on that.”

Jenny began flipping through the pages. “Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, here’s a Monday, a Tuesday, a Friday, another Wednesday. There was a Saturday the first weekend in October—”

“I remember that night,” said Odile. “It was the Jane Fonda marathon Kevin insisted we all go to and then he disappeared in the middle of it.”

“George wasn’t there, either,” I said. We’d gotten in a fight about it.

“Do you think they were trying to keep us busy?” Greg said. “If we were all at the theater, then we couldn’t be—”

“In the tomb,” said Clarissa. “But they weren’t there just now. I swear I would have noticed.”

I looked at the e-mails Jenny had discarded. I’d spent so much time with George in the last few weeks. Where had I seen him? One of the Wednesday meetings caught my eye. Like I’d forget
that
night. George and me, in the tomb. But it made no sense. He hadn’t been at any Elysion meeting. He’d been with me.

But I hadn’t heard the door open when he’d come in. And his skin hadn’t been cold from the outside. And he’d
guaranteed me that everyone had gone home for the night….
Oh, God.

“They meet in the tomb,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

Josh’s eyes met mine and a flicker of understanding passed between us. “But where?” he asked. “Not the Inner Temple, surely.”

Is that how George had known there were no cameras? I couldn’t bear to think of it. “And not the Firefly Room or the Library.” I would have heard them. “I think it’s unlikely to be anyplace on the main floor. Are there any rooms in the tomb I’m not aware of?”

“Considering it’s you, probably,” Clarissa said with a smile.

“Who knows?” said Odile. “The blueprints are missing from our archives.”

Everyone turned to her. “What?”

She shrugged. “They’re listed in the card catalog, which, by the way, is a total disgrace, but they aren’t on the shelves. I wanted to use them back when we were planning the Straggler Initiation, but I couldn’t find them.”

Jenny lifted her hands. “I swear that wasn’t me. I drew my own floor plan.”

Time to change the subject. “What do you want to bet they went missing right around the time the Elysians came up with this idea?” I said.

“But how is it possible that none of our big sibs bothered to tell us about some other room in the tomb?” Greg asked.

“Maybe they didn’t know about it,” I said.
Oh, Amy, how could you be so stupid?
“Maybe the only big sib who knew was someone very well versed in Digger history. Someone on the side of the Elysians.”

Someone like Poe. Man, I almost had him in that alcove after we’d visited Edison College. He was obviously trying to figure out if I knew anything about Elysion. He’d practically told me himself. But, like always, I’d resorted to trading snark rather than actually
listening.