Tapping you has fucked up my life.

Then again, maybe I should reserve final judgment until I heard what the senior knights of Rose & Grave have to say about the matter.

Malcolm was back to the cell phone, contacting, I assumed, anyone who’d managed to miss our little showdown. I watched him punch out a few urgent text messages.

RG 911. CC 4 J NOW.

“That’s the best I can do for now,” Malcom said at last, snapping his phone shut. “Come on, Amy. Let’s join the others. We’ll wait for everybody else upstairs.”

“Malcolm,” I said, and my voice had, without my permission, gone rather soft and squeaky. “That guy—”

“Is a world-class dick,” Malcom said. “And no matter what he says, they don’t have the power to kick us out, or do anything else. It’s all hot air. But let’s not talk about it here, okay? Come on, upstairs.”

I followed him into entryway J and we started up the stairs. On the second floor, a suite door opened and the girl with the long brown braid whom I’d first seen when I left Malcolm’s room yesterday looked out at us. I imagined she was curious about the rush hour that had so recently passed on the staircase, but she just looked from me to Malcolm, and her eyes narrowed.

With a good look at her, I realized who the girl was. Genevieve Grady, a fellow junior and the EDN’s current editor-in-chief. I was surprised that she was even home; the EIC of the school’s daily newspaper was a forty-hour-a-week job, whereas mine was relatively cushy—maybe fourteen a month, until we got to publication crunch time. I hadn’t seen Genevieve much at all this year, or even last year, which she’d spent churning out stories and networking at a rate carefully calculated to earn her the coveted position.

Perhaps, I wondered, she’d consent to write the foreword to the “Ambition” issue.

“Back for more, huh, Haskel?” she hissed. “That’s a new one on the fourth floor.”

Malcolm gave her a glance of stone-cold disdain, and ushered me up another flight.

“What’s her problem?” I asked.

Malcolm shrugged. “She’s a bitch. I imagine that knowledge keeps her in a bad mood most of the time.”

He knocked thrice, once, then twice at his own door and it opened to reveal a room in which every flat surface was covered with the behind of a Digger. They clustered on the bed, the futon, the desk, the dresser, and when perches gave out, the floor. I watched Clarissa trying to manipulate her minuscule bottom into an even tinier area of space, and then she waved me over. “Amy, I saved you a seat.”

A quick scan of the room showed it was my only option, so I took it, wondering inwardly why Clarissa seemed so damned determined to buddy up at every opportunity. Had I passed some sort of test? I was a Digger, and therefore deemed an acceptable companion in her estimation?

Of course. Ever since I’d been tapped, people had been treating me differently. The workaday Amy Haskel didn’t spend her Saturday nights flirting with George Harrison Prescott, wasn’t on Clarissa Cuthbert’s radar, and didn’t hold sleepovers with the likes of Malcolm Cabot—even if there was no sex involved. She didn’t engage in shouting matches with distinguished-looking, silver-haired gentlemen who threatened to ruin her life, nor cause older and wiser friends like Glenda Foster to get nervous in her presence.

Some of Rose & Grave’s power might be little more than perception, but perception alone seemed to lend quite a bit of clout.

And I still didn’t realize how much that meant.

“I don’t think we should wait for the others,” Malcolm said. “Let’s come to order.”

The seniors mobilized. Seemingly from nowhere, long black swaths of fabric materialized, and the boys scurried about the room, enshrouding the windows, covering the air vents, and stuffing up the cracks in the door. Soundproofing, though if anyone really wanted to listen in, I doubted that a few pieces of felt would do the trick. Still, in the absence of a real tomb, Diggers couldn’t be choosers.

An apartment over Starbucks, however, might have been preferable. I considered Glenda’s ubiquitous venti lattes. Did she get special treatment over there because she belonged to the society upstairs? Rose & Grave hadn’t even given me a gift card to Cosí.

One of the seniors shrugged. “My turn for Uncle Tony?”

The others nodded and Malcolm grimaced. “Some introduction to the taps, huh?”

“Uncle Tony” picked a paperweight off of Malcolm’s desk and rapped it thrice, once, and twice on the desk. “The time is…III and 30 minutes, Diggers-time. I call to order this…” He looked up. “What meeting is this?” Some of the seniors shrugged.

There was a pattern of three-one-two knocks on the door. Malcolm opened it to reveal Poe, who was scowling and towing along an even more petulant George Harrison Prescott. At once, my heart leapt and sank.

“Seven thousand, one hundred, and twelfth,” Poe announced. “Nice soundproofing, by the way.” Poe pushed George into the room. “Take a seat, kid.”

George plopped down next to Jenny Santos, who made a face and scooted away from him, and he grinned as if he’d just gotten away with something particularly naughty.

The seniors had gone back to padding the entrances to the room, and one was now stuffing throw pillows into the air ducts. When they were satisfied that we’d really blocked out the sound, the one playing “Uncle Tony,” the rotating parliamentary head, started up again.

“In the name of Persephone, Keeper of the Flame of Life and the Shadow of Death…I, um, call to order the Knights….” He trailed off, a sheepish shrug in place. “Sorry. I’m helpless without the Black Book.”

Another senior waved his hand in dismissal. “Whatever. Omnis vincit mors, nos cedamus nemini. Let’s get on with it.”

Poe practically growled in disapproval. “This is precisely the problem. Our club has been entirely too lax with the traditions of the society, and now we’re paying the price for it.”

Personally, I couldn’t see Poe being relaxed about anything. The colonic flexibility required was beyond his bass-ackwards, chauvinistic sensibilities.

“If you want to Tony, have at it,” the senior snapped.

Apparently, one didn’t need to ask Poe twice. He stood, cleared his throat, faced the circle, and started to reach for something on his shoulders, almost by reflex.

His non-existent hood. I met Malcolm’s eyes and erupted into barely contained giggles. By the time I’d regained control of myself (which involved a lot of red-faced swallowing and four fake coughs), Poe had completed the calling-to-order ritual, which I will not deign to repeat here. If you’re looking for the gist, refer to the Initiation chapter of this volume. Suffice it to say that, particularly in the mouth of Poe, it was overlong, needlessly pretentious, relied heavily on Latin-esque gibberish, and possessed far more than its fair share of capital letters. No wonder the rest of the senior knights hadn’t bothered memorizing it!

“Okay, we all know what we’re here to talk about,” began Malcolm—or, as I suppose I should be calling him now that we were in session, Lancelot.

“Yeah,” said my classmate Graverobber, the Greek shipping heir with the unwieldy street handle of Nikolos Dmitri Kandes IV. “Why you never warned us this might happen.”

“Basically,” said another senior, “the board of the Tobias Trust said that if we initiated women, they’d kick us all out. By locking the tomb and speaking to us like barbarians, they’ve made it clear they’ve followed through.”

“That’s outrageous!” Thorndike (Demetria) shouted loud enough to be heard through even the soundproofing. Everyone winced, but I thought it was a predictable reaction from her. Wait until she heard the guy standing at the center of the circle was all for it. He’d be lucky to escape with his genitals intact.