“Got it,” Darren said, picking up The Count of Monte Cristo off an end table. I noticed a bookmark a good third of the way into the novel. Ah, a fellow speed-reader.

“You must be liking it so far,” I said, pointing at the bookmark. There. Books were a safe topic. Weren’t they?

He flipped through the pages. “It’s okay.” He looked out the window at the rest of my club, then returned his attention to the book. “Hey, I heard something happened at your cabin the other day.”

I nodded, eager to steer the conversation far, far away from Bettina. “It was outrageous! Someone broke in, trashed the place, and wrote all kinds of nasty stuff on all the walls and mattresses with paint.”

“Wow,” he said, though his face was still buried in the pages. “Anything of yours get ruined?”

“Not mine, luckily. They totally destroyed Clarissa’s new purse, though.”

“Designer?”

“Louis Vuitton.” Not that he knew what that meant.

“That’s my mom’s favorite,” he said. Once again, Darren surprised me. Was there anything this kid didn’t know?

“You know,” he said. “I don’t think George is right.”

“About?”

“Me joining Rose & Grave. Wouldn’t it be cooler to, like, join Dragon’s Head or something? I bet they’d love it, all the secrets I could tell them. Aren’t they the big Digger rivals?”

“I may have heard something like that once,” I said. I was so the wrong girl to ask about Dragon’s Head, the bastards. And to bring them up now, after yesterday’s news…I wondered how much this pretriarch actually knew about society happenings. “But still, that’s uncool—to join another society just because you have the goods to betray this one.” Not that I was biased or anything.

“What else am I going to use this info for?” Darren asked. “It’s not worth anything if I just become another Digger.”

“You’ve been reading too much Nietzsche,” I replied. And here my inner Digger was rising up in defense. We were giving this guy room and board on the island, and this was his idea of gratitude? Maybe we should rethink the whole barbarian invite policy.

“Whatever. I probably won’t even end up at Eli anyway.”

“Really? I think you’re pretty much a shoo-in.”

He shrugged. “I might go to Oxford or something instead.”

“That would be cool,” I agreed, glad to get back onto topics that wouldn’t raise my ire at the teen. Who knew what I might let slip if that happened? “I’ve never been to England.” But one of my fellowship applications would take me there. If I got accepted. (Cross fingers!)

“I have. And Oxford’s a better school than Eli, even.”

I bit my lip to hold back a smile and nodded. Okay, now he was just trying to piss me off. Join Dragon’s Head to screw with the Diggers. Go to Oxford because Eli wasn’t good enough. Maybe he was more like his dad than I’d thought. Or maybe he was just a teenager bored out of his skull and trapped on Cavador Key. Either way, I think he’d cashed in his last sympathy point with me, and I was relieved when Odile appeared a few moments later in search of a spare broadsword.

“Greeks didn’t use broadswords,” Darren volunteered. “Their swords looked very different. Besides, they used spears mostly, and I’d definitely have some with me to kill a sea monster.” He pretended to catch himself. “Oops, did I reveal too much?”

I rolled my eyes. The little snot.

Odile, however, was much taken with the young know-it-all, and took him on board as a “story consultant.” He looked very much in his element instructing George on the proper way to tie a toga, which apparently was something the latter had never learned in all his youthful spying on Cavador Key.

“Of course,” the teenager was saying, “a toga’s pretty anachronistic as well. Perseus would have been wearing a chiton.”

“Oh, really?” Odile said, practically batting her eyelashes at him. “Do you know how to make one of those?”

Beside me, Jenny snickered. “You’re so knowledgeable,” she mocked. “So big and strong and masculine, with your ancient costuming know-how.”

Demetria smothered her laugh in a pile of scales. “Aww, have pity on the poor guy. He’s starstruck. It’s a story he can tell his friends at school.”

“He doesn’t have a school,” I said.

“Or access to the Internet,” Jenny added. “Or he’d be the most popular kid on MySpace.”

“Screw MySpace,” Clarissa said. “He’d have some mighty fine pictures to sell to the tabloids if he wanted.”

And I believed Darren would do just that, given our conversation in the rec room earlier.

Done convincing Darren of his profound desire to finish all the hems, Odile sauntered over to the Diggirls and plopped herself down. “So, Amy,” she said, “what do you think of this whole break-in situation? You were so quiet during breakfast. It’s not like you to keep mum on the subject of a conspiracy.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. It’s either the guys on the other island, or Kadie. Honestly, I’m starting to lean toward the other island.”

“Not you, too,” Demetria groaned.

“Why?” Odile asked me.

Because Poe had promised me that Kadie wasn’t involved. Then again, Poe had told me last fall that Kurt Gehry had nothing to do with Jenny’s disappearance, though it turned out that the older man knew exactly where she’d gone and even a good chunk of the reason why. And Poe had been protecting him, as well as the secret of Elysion. Poe, who even now was enjoying an afternoon on Kadie Myer’s boat.

Remind me why I was kissing this guy?

“I don’t know. It just seems a bit sophomoric for her.”

Odile blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know her that well, but I’m inclined to agree. I remember she had quite the ice queen rep on campus when we were freshmen.”

I hadn’t run in Kadie’s circles at all, and she’d passed the torch to a new generation of well-bred queen bees (like Clarissa) by the time I understood the social strata of Eli enough to figure out who she was or what she was like. I’d have to take Odile’s word on that one.

“The temper tantrum bitch-fit wouldn’t appeal to her,” she went on. “She’s more likely to slip poison in your afternoon tea than get her hands dirty with a paint can.”

“How…vivid of you.”

Odile laughed. “Well, someone’s got to pick up the slack if you aren’t going to provide the theories, chica.” She cast me a concerned look. “Still hung up on Brandon?”

“Still?” I echoed. “How quickly do you want me to get over it?”

“Quick. I half expected you to be in the middle of a rebound right about now.”

I swallowed. “With whom? There’s no one here but us Diggers.”

“Never stopped you before,” Jenny snapped.

“I thought we’d tabled this conversation,” Demetria said.

“Huh?” Odile looked at Demetria, confused.

“Society incest is a bad idea,” I said. “In summation.” She didn’t need to know that a rebound was a pretty darn good description for my latest trip to the shower house. “You missed the Diggirls’ last debate on the subject.”

Odile let out a delicate snort. “Society incest might be the most ridiculous term I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Fuck who you want to. It’s not illegal. If you worried about ‘incest’ in L.A., no one would ever get laid.”

“So clearly,” Demetria said, “it’s not something you’ve ever worried about.”

“Can we please change the subject?” Clarissa asked. “I never thought I’d say this, but I really wish Mara were here to encourage us to talk about something other than our sex lives.”

“Or lack thereof,” Jenny corrected. “Please.”

Demetria groaned. “Am I getting that bad? Really? Clearly, I’m the one who needs to get laid.”

Odile shrugged and rose to her feet, brandishing the anachronistic broadsword a bit more skillfully than one would expect for an actress who’d never appeared in a period piece. “Isn’t that what ‘social networking’ is really code for? Besides, we don’t just hook up with one another and talk about sex. We also play dress-up and commit capers. And then sometimes we have those boring political debates.” She sheathed the sword in a leather scabbard. “I prefer the sexy stuff.”