Lydia pursed her lips. “Brandon’s a good guy. I’m sure he wants to be your friend.”

“I don’t know if I can be his friend—not really. I doubt we were ever just friends. There was always the tension, and then the outright flirting, then all the naked stuff. And then we were kind of together. I don’t know how to be friends with him without the sexual element. Maybe I just don’t do the boy friend thing.”

“Especially not at your current pace with Monsieur Prescott, mon ami.”

“You ain’t just whistlin’ ‘La Vie en Rose.’” I plopped down on the couch next to her. “But that’s a whole other headache. I think I’m having a day where I wish all men would simply spontaneously combust and leave our planet alone.” Starting with Micah.

“Mmmm,” Lydia sighed. “I’m not.” She stretched out her feet and wiggled her toes. “Josh is…sublime.”

I rolled my eyes.

“No, really, Amy, if only you knew.” Ha. If only she knew. “I know it’s only been a couple of weeks, and yes, rationally I know it’s my brain exulting over the whole pair-bonding thing and going nuts, but I don’t think I’ve ever known a guy like him before. We can lie around for hours and talk about nonsense or issues and it feels so comfortable. I don’t worry if he’ll think I’m an idiot if the subject matter changes from what we should do in the Middle East to whether the new Star Wars movies are any good. Which, you know, they’re not.”

“Right.”

“But it’s amazing. I feel as if I can tell him things I’ve never told anyone.” Her eyes widened. “Except you, of course.”

“Of course.”

She broke into a smile. “And it’s so weird, but I feel as if he can tell me things he’s never told anyone, too.”

Except me. Of course.

“That’s great, Lydia,” I said, and meant it. Or hoped I did. “I’m really really happy for you. I hope this works out.”

“Thanks, hon. I know the last thing you probably want to hear about right now are my romantic adventures.”

“No, actually, it’s nice to think there is a purpose to all of this.” And nicer to hope that maybe this time Josh would hold himself in check.

Lydia dropped her head on my shoulder. “I think there is. Right now anyway. Ask me again when I’m single.” I chuckled, dislodging her from her perch. “Okay, back to 17th-century political theory.”

The phone rang and Lydia grabbed the receiver. “Lydia and Amy’s Den of Sin.”

Great. When she said stuff like that it was always my mom. We were sitting so close, I could hear the person speak on the other end.

“Lydia, it’s Josh.”

“Oh, hey there, cutie.”

“Are you alone?”

“Um, no, Amy’s right here.” There was a click. “Josh?” She looked at me. “That was weird.”

And then my cell phone rang. I answered it, careful to hold it up to the ear facing away from Lydia. “Hello?”

“Firefly Room. Now.” And then the line went dead.

I hereby confess:

I am my brother’s kept woman.

Within fifteen minutes, Soze had managed to collect most of us in the tomb’s Firefly Room. Lucky was there, looking a little puffy around the eyes and absolutely refusing to recognize my presence, and so was Puck, who had his feet upon an antique hutch in the corner. He’d tracked down Thorndike despite her lack of cell phone, and Bond, Big Demon, Frodo, Juno, and Graverobber rounded out the party.

“Okay, I’m not going to mince words or waste any time calling us to order. Hope you guys will forgive me for dispensing with tradition.” Soze laid his cell phone open in the middle of the table. “But we’re here to talk about this.” He pressed a button.

The tinny, static-filled voice of Kurt Gehry burbled out. “…absolutely unacceptable…would never have stood for it back when Rose & Grave actually meant something to its members…last straw. If you think the patriarchs of this organization are going to stand idly by while you and your pathetic excuse for a club sell off our traditions to some idiot off his medication, then you are not worthy to bear the title of knight. We hold you completely responsible for this fiasco, and if you do not root out this traitor and stop them before they cause any more harm, then we will do it for you. By any means necessary.”

The patriarch’s voice cut out, replaced by the recorded options on Soze’s voice mail for save, replay, and delete.

“I shudder to think this man holds a high position of political power in our nation,” Thorndike said. “Now, would someone please explain what exactly he’s raving about?”

“This,” Soze said, and opened the screen of his laptop. We all leaned in to look. A browser window was open, showing the homepage of a website called “secretsofthediggers.com.” It looked like your standard conspiracy-theorist website, focusing on the alleged omnipotent actions of our shady, secret, and elite society with lurid Day-Glo colors and a disturbing emphasis on exclamatory punctuation. Nothing I hadn’t seen before. Except for this one had a big, bold, flashing paragraph front and center:

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR AN EXCLUSIVE EXPOSÉ WITH AN ACTUAL CURRENT DIGGER!!! APPALLED BY THE SOCIETY’S SECRET CONTROL, THIS MEMBER WOULD LIKE THE WORLD TO KNOW THE SOURCE OF THEIR EVIL POWER!!! EVERYTHING THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW, REVEALED HERE!!!

Frodo blinked at the screen. “This is it? This is what we all got called in here for? Methinks the guy running this site isn’t the only one who’s acting a little unbalanced.”

“Yeah,” said Big Demon. “The phrase I’m searching for is ‘Who cares?’ Isn’t it just going to be the usual Men in Black, woo-woo stuff? Since when do we even care what these lunatics print about us?”

Soze tabbed over to his Phimalarlico mail, then clicked on the group heading for patriarch postings. There were dozens of new messages. “Every patriarch with an e-mail account got an ‘announcement’ from this fellow telling them exactly what they—personally—could expect from this exposé. And judging from some of these e-mails, it was very personal indeed. This knight apparently has a vast amount of information, whoever he—or she—”

“Or she!” I rolled my eyes. “Of course they think it was one of us. Rose & Grave was fine until they let the chicks in, after all. It could be any disgruntled patriarch.”

“The reason they think it’s one of us,” said Thorndike in an odd, choked voice, “is because we’re the ones with the most access to the tomb. We’re the ones with easy access to the Black Books where the Uncle Tonys describe, in detail, what has happened at every meeting—every C.B. — we’ve ever had.”

“That’s correct,” said Bond. “I remember looking through them with Lil’ Demon when we were researching how to get into Dragon’s Head to steal back that statue.”

It instantly occurred to everyone in the room that Lil’ Demon was very conveniently out of town. Thorndike began to sneeze, and then blew her nose.

“And they think it’s us for another reason,” Soze said. “This guy didn’t send an announcement of the upcoming article to the patriarchs for fun. It was a threat. And alongside a threat comes—”

“Blackmail,” said Lucky. “They think we’re trying to get back at them for not supporting us this year.”

“Makes sense, if you ask me,” said Puck with a shrug. “They’re betraying the society, so why is it still our job to keep their secrets?”

“Right, because an attack like this would make them feel so loving and conciliatory,” I said. “Do they really have such a low opinion of us?”

“Says the woman who takes pleasure in kicking the alums out of the tomb?” asked Juno. “Of course they do, and we haven’t been working very hard to convince them otherwise. The question is, what to do now?”