Free Under the Rose by Diana Peterfreund

is out there; we’ve been arguing about it since school started. And we will figure out a way to fix it. No quitting, okay?”
    I nodded. “And before we go about setting up a false dichotomy of ‘involved patriarchs hate women’ and ‘slacker patriarchs say Go girls! ’ let’s remember that my internship—however it might have been arranged”—I shot Poe a dirty look—“was, in fact, arranged by one of the members of the board of trustees. A more involved Digger you couldn’t hope to find. Those are the people we need to be reaching out to.”
    “As well as trying to win back those we’ve alienated,” Soze said. “I’ve done it before for candidates in much more dire straits. Before you dismiss us for lack of current alumni connections, remember our club alone wields some significant firepower.”
    “My dad thinks we’re cool,” Puck said. “And, historically, the Prescott contributions have been no small part of the Trust.”
    Graverobber slumped against his seat, conceding the point. We’d dodged the bullet for another meeting. But how much longer before his threats to quit took shape in reality?
    The danger of attrition was twofold. First, the obvious: We’d tapped a person for a reason. We clearly wanted him to be One of Us. Anytime we lost a tap, we lost every bit of potential he offered us in terms of future accomplishments, influence, and money. We lost a dynamic team member, a valuable brother, and someone with a potentially entertaining C.B. No matter how much Graverobber pissed me off, I couldn’t deny that when he bothered to speak on any other topic, he had many worthwhile things to say. And we were all still smarting from Howard’s dis on Straggler Initiation Night. I’d only spoken with him for a few moments, but he still seemed like someone I’d love to get to know. Now whenever I saw him around campus, I felt a definite pang of regret for what could have been. Had we all handled ourselves better, he might have been our brother. (I’d had to steel myself on several occasions from walking up and saying hi. I wondered if he would recognize me sans cloak and glow-in-the-dark face paint.)
    The second danger was to our storied secrecy. For instance, Howard had been in the tomb and seen much of our initiation before opting out. How much worse would it have been had he been a fully-fledged Digger before he quit? Someone like Graverobber, for example, who was not only fully initiated, but understood so much of the day-to-day running of the society? He had access to all the Phimalarlico e-mail, had explored the entire tomb with the rest of us last spring, and at this point had even sat in on several C.B.s. I couldn’t imagine a guy like that on the loose, no longer bound by his oaths.
    Assuming, of course, they were oaths he’d ever taken seriously. Here I was about to tell my deepest, darkest secrets to the room, and I wasn’t even sure I could trust them all.
    “Not to veer away from such a scintillating topic,” Angel said, proceeding to do exactly that, “but has anyone given any more thought to that weird e-mail we got?”
    “ You got,” Big Demon corrected. “Whoever was threatening didn’t see fit to send it to anyone but the girls.”
    “If they were even threatening,” said Juno. “It was just a nonsense rhyme.” I got the distinct impression our newest female knight was a bit jealous she hadn’t been included on the Diggirl list. But she hadn’t even been a Digger yet.
    “You think so?” Lucky asked, playing with the wishbone on her plate. “But who could have sent it, and why?”
    “Who cares?” said Graverobber. “You haven’t gotten any more messages and nothing dreadful has happened. It was a prank. Probably some other society who got their hands on our club’s roster.”
    “If you say so, Graverobber,” said Lucky. “I’m surprised you of all people are so dismissive, considering your constant insistence that this society is indeed rotting from