Free Secret Society Girl by Diana Peterfreund Page A

the far corner and turned around, he‘d taken a book of matches from his pocket and began striking them, one by one, and letting them burn down to his fingers before flicking the nubs to the curb.

    I shook my head. Boys! Is it like a caveman thing to have to play with fire every chance they get? He looked ready to stand there doing his Prometheus act all night. How many times was I going to have to walk around the block before I got a clear shot at the tomb?

    At last, George seemed to come to a decision. He turned and loped off toward Prescott College.
    I wasted no time scurrying back to the gate. So what if I wasn‘t following the precise directions in the letter? I‘d done every step, despite the delay, and I couldn‘t risk being late again. Who knew how many atomic clocks they had in there?

    The giant double doors at the threshold of the Rose & Grave tomb were weathered to a dull bronze sheen. A large brass knocker shaped like an open book hung at face height; its aged brass pages were engraved with an ―R‖ and a ―G.‖ I took a breath.

    Here goes nothing.

    No sooner had I lifted the knocker than the door flew open. I glimpsed a shadowed face, maybe a pair of hands, then someone threw a burlap hood over my head, grabbed me by both of my arms, and pulled me inside.

    I screamed. Of course.

    ―Silence, Neophyte.‖ More hands surrounded me and I was lifted off my feet. ―You are treading on sacred ground,‖ a man intoned from somewhere in the vicinity of my right knee.

    I wiggled my useless legs. ―I‘m not treading on anything,‖ I mumbled through the hood.

    Someone actually had the gall to slap me on my butt. ―Shush.‖

    ―That had better be someone I know, or I‘m suing for harass—‖

    ―I said, ‗Shush!‘ ‖

    ―Hands off, hood hound.‖ I bucked my body as my captors carried me down a short flight of stairs with a series of bone-jarring bumps.

    I heard a chuckle near my left shoulder blade. ―Tapped a live one here, Lancelot.‖

    Lancelot?

    All talk ceased as the team turned left, halted, then flipped me right-side-up and set me on my (understandably) unsteady feet. Two hands on my shoulders shoved me down onto what felt like a wooden bench, and a third whipped the hood off my head.

    I opened my eyes and gasped.

    Not from shock, I‘d like to point out. The room was still too dark to see much of anything, but what it lacked in illumination, it more than made up for in choking clouds of smoke. I coughed and spluttered, recognizing on my second or third wheeze that the tiny orange sparks invading my field of vision were the lit ends of cigarettes. There were dozens of them. My eyes began to water and I heard a few muffled coughs at my back. Okay, so I was not alone here.

    You indoor-smoking bans, look upon that which you have wrought: a generation of twenty-somethings with zero tolerance for secondhand smoke.

    ―Neophyte!‖ The sparks trembled for a second, then seemed to freeze in air. ―You seek to be Initiated into the Sacred Mysteries of Rose & Grave, to devote the Resolve of your Bone, the Passion of your Blood, and the Power of your Mind‖—

    And the patience of my ears, I thought, to listen to this cheesy crap. Who writes this stuff?

    —―to our Order. This be your wish?‖

    ―You bet!‖

    Someone poked me. ―Say ‗Aye.‘ ‖

    ―Aye,‖ I repeated, hoping I didn‘t sound like a pirate.

    The sparks began dancing again. ―Do not speak in haste, Neophyte. For after this night, there is no turning away from the Path of Rose & Grave. Your mere admittance into our Tomb, your presence here in the Firefly Room‖—

    So that‘s what those cigarettes were supposed to represent. Cute.

    —―has shown you more than is permitted to any Barbarian, but even these Mysteries are but tiny sparks alongside the Lamp of Knowledge. Are you willing to Witness this Light and be brought into its Flame, though it may blind you?‖ (You could totally hear the capital letters