Tap & Gown (39 page)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’d heard this before. But of course you couldn’t trust these witnesses. Diggers lie to protect their own. After all, we were all in training to be the secret leaders of the world.

“… without additional evidence—” the dean was saying.

“But we offered you statements from members of other campus societies, verifying that Blake was not a tap we discussed with them—”

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“More secret society cronies?” Blake scoffed. “Right.”

“I have additional evidence,” said Topher Cox. “Right here.” He stood up and crossed to the table, laying the manila envelope down on it. “This is a notarized statement from a girl named Jessica Townsend. Blake and I went to high school with her, and Jessica explains here what happened between them.”

The chairwoman pulled out the sheet of paper and scanned it. “What does this have to do with the current situation?”

Topher shrugged. “You doubt the uniform accounts by the members of Rose & Grave, despite the fact that they are consistent with the incidents that Michelle describes—incidents that also, mysteriously, have no evidence to back them up. Well, the same thing happened to Jessica. She’s at Kenyon now and has no connection to any secret society on the Eli campus. Call her if you want. Blake did what they say. All of it. He’s done it for years and he’s never, ever gotten into trouble for it.” His expression turned thoughtful. “Given the current atmosphere on campus, I’d hate to hand this statement over to the press.”

“You asshole!” Blake shouted. “You sold me out.” Topher turned and looked Blake in the eye. “You were my best friend, Blake. I’m really sorry it had to go down like this.”

“Yeah. You picked Rose & Grave over me.”

Topher nodded. “Yes. I did.” But he didn’t look happy about it.

Unsurprisingly, the Executive Committee decided that there was not enough evidence to back up Blake’s hazing claims. D177 was safe. However, they did ask Michelle and Blake to stay behind to discuss the other incidents that this case (and Topher’s Jessica papers) had brought to light. I asked Michelle if she wanted me to remain with her for moral support.

She shot Blake a look of triumph. “Nah,” she said. “I think I’ve got him this time around.”

I shook my head. “I should really take lessons from you sometime.”

“Why?”

The committee returned to their tables and the secretary began closing the doors.

“Tell you later.”

Michelle had tried to bring Blake to justice, and had been hampered by bureaucracy and stacked decks.

If I allowed Darren to go unpunished for what he’d done to me over Spring Break, would this be him in a few years? Would I be like the girl at Kenyon, getting a phone call and being asked to testify as to what he’d done to me, oh so long ago? After he’d hurt someone else?

Speaking of … I hurried off to catch Topher, who had shocked us all, and found him on the front steps speaking to Kalani. And Felicity Bower.

“Hello, Amy,” Felicity said to me. Topher and Kalani appeared to be in deep conversation.

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“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Waiting to see if you got expelled.” Felicity gave me her most cloying smile. “Did you?”

“No.”

“Pity.” She stared off over the square and the protest. “Actually, I was waiting to see if Blake Varnham got what was coming to him. You may not have known who he was until recently, but he was on Dragon’s Head’s radar for a bit, before we saw what lay behind the façade.”

“Wait. You knew? You had proof?”

Felicity shrugged. “You did, too. What you didn’t have was the ability to influence your own knights.”

She nodded at Topher, then walked away.

Topher was already being mobbed by the Diggers in my club. With all the backslapping and general congratulations, his demeanor quickly shifted from resentful and ambivalent to his usual smug triumph.

“Of course,” he was saying, “I took an oath. I’m a Digger, aren’t I?”

Someone shushed him and called for discretion, but the boy was clearly on a roll.

Felicity was right. I hadn’t trusted Topher to do the right thing, but with good reason. He hadn’t brought evidence about Blake’s past because it was true. He’d brought it because he realized it behooved him more to keep our secrets than Blake’s. Still an ass, but one on our side.

I only hoped it stayed that way.

I felt my cell phone vibrating in my purse, but the number on the digital readout was not one I recognized. My heart did a little flip. Could it be Jamie, calling from his undisclosed location? Could he have finally gotten my message? I answered it.

“Hello, this is Deputy Morgan from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. May I speak to Amy Haskel?”

Lee County? “This is she.”

“I’m calling to follow up on a report filed two months ago regarding an incident on Cavador Key.”

Oh.
That
Lee County.

“It says here that you were ‘unavailable to provide statement due to severe physical and emotional duress.’ Is that so?”

“It says that?” I asked. I didn’t remember that. I’d been out of it, sure. Between being drugged and almost drowning, I’d slept for about two days straight after getting off the island. But I could have talked to the police. After all, I’d talked plenty to the other Diggers. I’d been incredibly firm that I didn’t want Darren prosecuted, that I didn’t want to press charges when the police came—

Wait a minute. “So you’re saying that you’ve been waiting for my statement all this time?”

“Well …” the sheriff began. “We sort of had a paperwork snafu in the office. The attending officers
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seemed to be a tad confused about whether or not there was an open case or even if the parties were pursuing prosecution. And when the powers that be alerted us to it the other day we went back to computers and there you were.”

“The powers that be alerted you,” I repeated. In other words, the feds stuck their noses into a minor assault case? What were the chances of that? And which feds? He hadn’t said the FBI. Perhaps he meant the State of Florida?

Perhaps he meant some other government agency. One with a brand-new employee who knew very well how to work the system.

“They, um, sometimes get interested when stuff happens out at Cavador,” the sheriff explained. “You know it’s owned by one of those northeast Ivy League secret societies, right?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I know.”

“So, ma’am, I was wondering if you would be in a position to give me a statement now. It would probably only take a few minutes. And, um, if you have any pictures …”

Was I in a position to give him a statement now? Good question. I cast a glance over my shoulder, back at the Dean’s office, where even now, Michelle was probably providing her own statement to the Executive Committee.

“Yes,” I said. “I think I am.”

That night, in the Inner Temple of the Rose & Grave tomb, a hundred candles gleamed—some from skull-shaped sconces on the walls, and far more from the many-forked candelabra and vine-like rows of tea lights. The star-spangled dome could hardly compete, and the flickering light cast hundreds of eerie shadows all over the paneled walls. Even the painting of Connubial Bliss seemed sinister and mysterious, standing there in her proudly naked glory.

The knights of D177 and D178 gathered in a circle in the center of the room and chanted “Drink it!” as Michelle, in the center, quaffed the ceremonial pomegranate concoction from a skull-shaped bowl.

Initiation was long over, but we still had a few knights left to induct.

They hooted and hollered as she took her oaths, and then I stepped forward, my cloak flapping about my heels. There was no Don Quixote costume this time, no mask of wilting red roses. But we didn’t need it. I held out the rusted sword as Michelle knelt before me.

“From this moment on, you are no longer Barbarian-So-Called Michelle Anastasia Whitmore. By the order of our Order, I dub thee Gaia, Knight of Persephone, Order of Rose & Grave.”

Gaia stood up and smiled at the group. “So now we party?” she asked.

Indeed.

After removing our costumes and cleaning up a few splashes of stray pomegranate, we adjourned to the Firefly Room, where a nervous-looking Hale was presiding over a small bar and keeping careful eye on a knot of barbarians, lest any of them choose to bolt toward the private areas of the tomb.

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“I can’t believe I’m standing here,” Lydia said to me as I joined her.

“What do you think?” I asked, as the dance music started up. Around me, the friends and lovers of the Diggers were meeting up with their pals. A few had already started dancing. Kalani was describing how the parties at St. Linus Hall were much better, but we’d eventually get the hang of letting barbarians into part of our tomb. We just had to give it a few decades.

Hale stood in the corner and wrung his hands. I was almost positive I heard him mumble about “the end of days.”

“Honestly?” Lydia asked. “A little shabbier than I expected.”

“Things always are.” Josh came up and slipped his hands around Lydia’s waist. “Want to dance?”

I watched them spin off and join Demetria and her mysterious Shannon and George and Devon on the dance floor. Michelle came over and handed me a glass of wine.

“You know, I don’t really like pomegranate all that much.” She wrinkled her nose. Her lips were stained a deep red.

“Couldn’t be helped,” I said.

“Apparently not.” She smiled. “Now, what was that story you had to tell me? I paid attention to those oaths, you know. We’re not supposed to have secrets from each other.”

“Does that mean you’re going to tell me what questions are on my Geology exam?”

“Not unless you have a burning desire to attend another meeting of the Executive Committee.”

I shuddered. “Pass.”

“Thought so.” She took a sip. “So … was this all worth it?” She gestured around the Firefly Room.

I watched my friends laughing, talking, dancing. “Was what worth it? Letting the barbarians in?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “Being a Digger.”

“I’m always a Digger,” I said. “Got the tattoo to prove it.”

“I mean being a knight,” she said. “Was it worth it?”

The drama, the heartache, the stress? The friendships, the conspiracies, the pranks, the bonding … Was it worth it?

Oh, yeah. But then her words sunk in. Was. Past tense.

For I was no longer an active knight of Rose & Grave.

I was a patriarch.

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