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 within. What if it’s not a nonsense rhyme?”

Soze considered this. “Do you want to look into it, Lucky? You can track down users and stuff, right?”

She scowled. “Like I have time for another project?”

I smiled at her. “That will teach you to volunteer.”

But Lucky closed down. “It’s a lesson I’ve already had, thanks. And if no one here thinks it’s important, then why should I spend my time on it? You can all go to the devil just fine without my assistance.”

Um, okay. This chick PMSes like no one’s business. One second, she’s fun and kind of snarky, and the next second—boom—the bitch is back. I never knew what to expect from her. It was all Dr. Jenny and Ms. Hyde.

“Are we all done with dinner?” Thorndike asked to diffuse the tension. She pointed at the grandfather clock (no, not an atomic one) in the corner of the room, which was nearing the all important VIII marker. “I think Bugaboo here has some juicy stories for us.”

There was a ripple of chuckles around the table, and I felt a corresponding turbulence deep in my stomach as we adjourned from the dining room and filed up the stairs to the Inner Temple. The round, domed room had become one of my favorite places on campus in the few short months since I’d been tapped into Rose & Grave. Eli had some gorgeous architecture, but this secret room thrilled me more than all of the Gothic glory of the library or the carved marble starkness along the Presidential Plaza or Memorial Hall. This room was mine—or ours. I was one of the few people who ever got to appreciate its deep blue ceiling, dotted with tiny gilt stars, the rich wood paneling scarred by centuries of Diggers scraping their chairs against the walls and regularly decorated with art, relics, and trophies the members had “crooked” from the college over the years. I was one of the few given the privilege of sinking into the cushy couches we’d been using during the C.B.s. Today, they were arranged in a semi-circle facing the large oil painting of the voluptuous nude we called Connubial Bliss. It was before this portrait I would stand as I spoke about my experiences.

I stood to the side a bit as my brothers got ready to call the meeting to order. Thorndike, this evening’s Uncle Tony, donned a long black hooded robe, took her seat on the dais at the top of the room, and turned a pedestal so that the wooden engraving of Persephone faced the room. She struck a small gong thrice, once, and twice. “The Time is VIII. I hereby call to order this, our Seven thousand, one hundred, and twenty-ninth meeting of the Order of Rose & Grave.”

Keyser Soze, our club’s Secretary, took his seat to the right of the dais, and the other Diggers, including me, followed suit, each perching on one of the couches.

“In honor of Persephone, the Keeper of the Flame of Life and the Consort of the Shadow of Death, we, her loyal Knights, salute and honor her image.”

“Hail, Persephone,” we intoned. Well, most of us. I was sitting next to Lucky, and I noticed she didn’t intone a thing. She didn’t even whisper it. She noticed me staring and rolled her eyes. Clearly, we’d entered the Hyde phase.

“Omni vincit mors, non cedamus nemini,” Soze said.

Thorndike continued with the rather arcane calling-to-order ritual, which included a list of fines incurred in the previous week by members for various infractions:

Lil’ Demon: cursed before the altar of Persephone—$3.

Puck: used barbarian names when Bond had beat him in Kaboodle Ball last Thursday—$2.

Graverobber: twice caught without his society pin—$10. (“Get a tattoo like ours and you’ll be golden,” Angel suggested.)

After that, there was a sort of group-bonding activity in which we turned to our fellow knights and messed up their hair. I liken it to that moment in church where you shake hands with the people next to you in the pew. We sang a few traditional songs (singing is really big at Eli, no matter what activity you’re involved in), which tended to be, at once: spooky, ribald, and filled with literary allusions.

Next up, Bond reported on the developing plans to steal back a small bronze statue of Orpheus that had been recently pilfered from our courtyard. Thanks to some recent surveillance, we were pretty sure the thieves had been Dragon’s Head, and Bond and Lil’ Demon had been combing through the archives in the Library to find records showing how to break into Dragon’s Head and retrieve our property. This tradition of “crooking” from other societies was one of the oldest we had. The tomb was chock full of memorabilia from generations of Diggers who’d been trading trophies back and forth with all the other societies on campus. I thought most of the stuff was junk, myself, but I’m sure to the class of 1937, the mangy stuffed lion’s head they’d swiped from the tomb of Book & Key represented a triumph of criminal ingenuity.