“I’ll sleep better knowing that. Now, what are these guys doing?”
“Systematically disenfranchising you.” She handed me a stack of printouts. “They meet in secret to discuss the details of their society, and have slowly been siphoning off money from the trust.”
“They’ve been stealing our cash?”
“Through the help of interested parties on the TTA board. The unfriendly patriarchs? They aren’t gone, they’ve just transferred their ‘allegiance’ to Elysion. If Elysion gets enough support, enough money, your society will be a joke.”
I skimmed through the e-mails, all of which were addressed to people called things like Theseus-X1 and Hector-X1. Some of the conversations were little more than chatter, or harsh rundowns of what had happened at Rose & Grave meetings and how to avoid such “embarrassments” once the switch took place. They’d increased in frequency ever since the Straggler Initiation Night, and mentioned losing Howard as a catalyst to gain support. Many spoke of money, or how the movement within the patriarchy was gaining ground. “Elysion, huh?” I said. “Like the Elysian Fields, the heaven of the Greek underworld, reserved for heroes?”
“Exactly.”
“So who are they?”
“I’ve been slowly putting together a key to their identities, based on timing and content of the messages. It would usually be easy, given ISP addresses, but the Eli wireless system makes that tough.” Jenny looked at me. “This is all I’ve got so far. Brace yourself.” And then she handed me a list:
ELYSION MEMBERS
Hades = Kurt Gehry
Hector = Nikolos Kandes
Theseus = George Harrison Prescott
Ajax = Benjamin Edwards
Orion = Omar Mathabane
Orpheus = Kevin Lee
Nestor = James Orcutt
I swallowed hard and leaned back against my seat. Stay cool. You don’t have enough energy left to indulge in rage. Deal with it. “Who started this?” I choked out.
“I’m not sure. It hasn’t been discussed on e-mail. But I bet it happened this summer. Nikolos appears to have been one of the first organizers.”
No surprise there. Learn of the thief who can be bought. It was a reference to Graverobber. I was right again. Go, me. “And there are five of them. Every man in the club except—”
“Josh, Greg, and Harun.”
George was on the list. And Poe. How could I not have known this? Of course, Poe was no big shock, though it did make my little street performance ring with a sudden truth. But George! How the hell had he made time for Elysion with all of our other activities? If he was involved in both societies, he definitely wasn’t seeing anyone else. It wasn’t a matter of desire, it was a matter of scheduling.
She picked up another sheet. “I’ve been trying to track the other patriarchs involved as well, but it’s much harder to learn their identities. They don’t send e-mails. Here’s what I’ve got so far….”
But I never got a chance to look. Someone started pounding on the door. “Jennifer Santos!” an angry voice called. “Open this door. We know you’re in there.”
We both froze, but Jenny regained her wits quickly. “Put these in your bag,” she whispered, and handed me a stack of papers. “We’ve got to run.”
“What?” I said. “What if that’s the police?”
Jenny was busy doing something to her computer. Within a few seconds, she’d closed everything down and was pulling out flash drives and unplugging little metal boxes. “Please,” she said. “It’s the Elysions. They’re back, and this time, my super didn’t hold them off. We can’t let them catch us. We can’t let them find out how much we know.”
“I think they know exactly what it is we know,” I said. “Why else would they be here?” Had Poe called them? Had he figured out that I’d ditched him because I’d found Jenny?
The pounding on the door gave way to a much more insidious sound—that of locks giving way. Apparently, some pockets ran even deeper than Jenny’s. Wonder what bribe—or threat—had finally won over the prickly super? So much for all bark and no bite. “What are we going to do?” I said. “This is an apartment. There’s only one exit. They’ve definitely got the fire escapes guarded.”
“Got it covered. Let’s go now.” Jenny pressed a few more keys and all of the computers in the room began making a hideous grinding sound. She grabbed my hand and pulled me across the room to one of the windows. “Go!”
I looked out and down, and for a second wasn’t sure what I was seeing. A ladder stretched diagonally from the window across a tiny space. I stared down into a minuscule courtyard ringed by tall, thin walls studded with windows. “What is this?”
“A light well. Go.”
I swung my bag over my shoulder, gave her a look of skepticism, and went. The ladder was freezing, wet, and slippery. It also bent and popped with every step. I was sure that any second it would slip from its mooring on the lower ledge and send us both clattering to the refuse-littered ground four floors below. The only thing keeping me moving was the sound of the Elysions hammering at the door and trying to get the chain to break off.
At last, I reached the bottom, where the base of the ladder rested against another window ledge on the opposite side of the light well. I slipped inside. Jenny clambered down after me then swung the ladder away from her window. It crashed to the ground.
“They’ll be back down any second,” she said. “We have to hide.”
She pulled me farther into the room. There was a narrow, steep set of stairs leading down into the floor. We descended, and I found myself in some sort of storage area. Giant crates of pop and pallets stacked with snack foods surrounded us. We were in the back room of the bodega.
Jenny leaned against the wall. “So now you see why I’m scared.”
“Yeah. All this on-the-run stuff really does a number on your adrenaline levels.” Speaking of which, I’d just about run out. All-nighters, too much caffeine on top of too little food, and thrilling escapes—not to mention I hadn’t exactly slept well the night before last—and you had a girl ready to drop. “Explain why we ran?”
She blinked at me. “Because they were trying to break into my apartment.”
“Then we call the police,” I said. “We don’t need to hide. What are a bunch of businessmen going to do to us in broad daylight on the streets of Manhattan?”
“This from the girl who a few hours ago thought I’d been kidnapped,” she snapped. “I don’t want to find out what they’d do to me. Hence, I don’t want them to catch me.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “So what do we do now?”
“You mean what are you going to do, Amy. You’ve got the information now. Are you going to let them snatch your society out from under you?”
“It’s your society, too, Jenny.”
She looked down at her feet. “Not anymore. If it ever was.”
So the fifty-dollar bill Jenny had slipped the bodega employee had nothing to do with overpriced Manhattan energy bars. Instead she’d charged him with taking her car out of storage. Within half an hour, we were on the highway heading back to New Haven. I spent the time text-messaging Josh and Clarissa that they could stop worrying about Jenny, but please don’t spread the word until I’d spoken in detail to them both. After that, I tried again to get in touch with my old boss, Gus Kelting, member of the TTA board. Gus was on a business trip to Reykjavik, and according to his secretary, he wouldn’t be available for several days. I was transferred to his voice mail and pressed the 312 code, which I’d learned last summer took me to his special Rose & Grave mailbox. I hoped like hell he was checking his messages from Iceland. If not, we kids would be on our own with this one—though maybe it was time to see if we could hack it without help.
I stayed awake as long as possible, watching to see if we were being followed and debating with Jenny the necessity of our thrilling escape.
“These guys’ idea of being a badass is sabotaging a summer internship, not breaking kneecaps,
” I said, finally agreeing with the argument everyone had been throwing at me since Jenny vanished.
“How about hiring thugs to break kneecaps?” Jenny asked. “I’m from the Bronx. I don’t take chances.”
Fair enough.
I fell asleep soon after, and awoke only when Jenny parked in the York Street garage and turned off the ignition. Home sweet home.
“I don’t want to go back to my room,” she said.
“Why not? It’s nice and clean now.” I gave her a weak, sleepy smile. “Come home with me if you want. Josh will probably be in the room, and we can tell him the whole story. I promise he’ll be more coherent than I am.”
She bit her lip. By this point, I was surprised she hadn’t bit it through. “I don’t know how I can face Josh. I don’t know how I can face any of them.”
Frankly, I didn’t know how she was going to do it either, but hopefully we’d be able to steer quickly past accusations and recriminations and straight on to the issue at hand: Elysion.
Speaking of people we didn’t want to face at that moment, the first person we saw as we entered the gate of Prescott College was none other than George Harrison Prescott himself.
“Hey there, Boo,” he said, his tone jovial and not at all indicative of his months-long duplicity. Cold, man. Ice cold. “Back from New York?”
“Looks like it,” I replied, while Jenny pulled down the brim of her baseball cap, exposing her boyish, shorn nape, and pretended to read the bulletin board.
“Find anything?”
I shrugged, because I couldn’t trust myself to lie to him. I wanted to wring his neck. And what would be the point of making conversation anyway? It was entirely possible he was toying with me, that he and the rest of his Elysion cronies already knew about the break-in at “Ada Lovelace’s” apartment. No doubt the super had told the men about Jenny’s visitor before he’d let them have his keys. “I’m really tired. I’m going to try to grab some sleep.”
“Can I see you later?” He slipped an arm around my waist. Jenny’s back stiffened, echoing, no doubt, my own sudden relationship with good posture.
George noticed my decided lack of thrill when it came to his touch, and dropped his arm. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just tired.” Which was true, or at least half true. I was exhausted, only not “just exhausted.”
“Well, give me a call later if you want to get together. I probably won’t be in until late.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
Jenny and I continued on our way, through the courtyard and up the steps to my suite, which glowed with warm yellow lights. I could see the door to my bedroom standing slightly ajar, and my eyes grew heavy again. Come on, Amy, buck up. Miles to go before you sleep.
“I don’t think he recognized you,” I said, swiping my card at the entryway door.
“I don’t think he recognizes anything he doesn’t classify under the category of possible sexual partner,” Jenny snapped. “So we have that going for us. You aren’t going to call him later, are you?”
“Just tell me you’re not enjoying this.”
Josh and Lydia were seated on the sofa of our common room, digging into a box of pizza. They looked up, and Josh’s mouthful actually fell onto his shirt.
“Oh my God,” he said. “What happened to you guys?”
“Amy,” said Lydia, “you look like shit.”
“Thanks, hon. I’ll love you forever if that’s pepperoni.”
“You loved me forever years ago, but yes.” She grabbed another paper plate.
I checked out my reflection in the glass. Sure enough, there were bags under the bags under my eyes, and my face was streaked with dirt. And this was what George had wanted to get together with later? Blinded by lust, perhaps? “Never mind. I think I need a shower first.”
“Your bedroom’s clear,” said Josh. “I’ve been checking regularly.” Only then did he choose to recognize Jenny’s presence. “Hi.”
She adjusted her bag on her shoulder. “Hi.”
Pleasantries aside, I left the not-so-merry group and took a shower. Say what you will about dorm life, there’s very little to compare with the glory of a scalding hot, elephant-strength Prescott College bathroom shower. Twenty minutes of steam seeping into my pores later, I emerged, reddened and relaxed, shrugged into my robe, and headed back to the suite.
Jenny had clearly related the whole story to Josh by this time, and he, naturally, had mobilized. Lydia had kindly taken her leave of the suite (the note on my whiteboard read: Okay, fine. You get one free pass for turning my common room into your clubhouse. I understand emergencies. Luv, Lyds).
“Do you think she’s going to go tell her society our business?” I asked Josh. “You know every other society on campus is going to crow with delight if they hear about this.”
“Hear about what?” said Josh. “She left before Jenny said a word. That roommate of yours is one classy dame. Can I pick ’em, or what?”
“You’re dating Amy’s roommate?” Jenny peeked her head out of my bedroom, then looked at me. “And you allow that?”
“Shut up, Jenny,” Josh said, following me to the door of my bedroom. “Lydia’s not the only one who knows how to give people the benefit of the doubt. You’re lucky we do.”
“I believe her,” I said.
Josh sighed. “So do I. Everyone’s on their way.”
“Everyone?”
“The non-Elysions,” Jenny said. She returned to my desk and showed me what she’d pulled up on my laptop while I’d been gone. “There’s been more activity on their e-mails. I think there’s a meeting tonight. I just need to find out where it is.”
“Tonight?” I said. “On Saturday?” I probably won’t be in until late, George had said. No kidding.
“That’s why we’re concerned,” said Josh. “It must be important if people are giving up their weekend for it. It may be about the information they think Jenny has passed along.”
Soon after, the rest of the group arrived.
“This had better be good,” said Clarissa. “I’m supposed to be on another date with Mr. Wonderful.”
“Two nights in a row?” said Mara, picking over the pizza. “Wow, it’s true love.”
Greg snatched the last slice of pepperoni out from underneath both of us, and began chomping. “We all canceled plans to be here,” he said. “I expect there’s a reason.”
“I canceled nothing,” said Harun. “And yes, I own my loser status. If you all had parties to go to, the least you could do would be to take me along. Whatever happened to supporting a brother in all his endeavors?”
“We were supporting you in your loserdom,” said Clarissa.
Odile and Demetria arrived and stood on opposite sides of the room. Lover’s spat, perhaps? I raised my eyebrows at Demetria, but she ignored me.
“How long is this going to take?” Demetria asked. “If we’re waiting around for George or Nikolos to get home from the bars, we’ll be here all night.”
“That’s not where they are,” said Josh through clenched teeth.
I’d gotten dressed in Lydia’s room while Jenny worked on my computer, and now the door to my room stood closed.
“I’m getting kind of sick of these constant powwows,” said Odile. “I thought we signed up for two meetings a week, not seventeen.”
“Don’t worry,” said Josh. “This may be the last. Of any kind.” He opened my bedroom door. “Come on out.”
Jenny came forward, and everyone in the room gasped.
“Holy shit, it’s Boys Don’t Cry,” said Odile.
Jenny gave a halfhearted wave. “Hi, guys.”
Only Harun returned her salutation. Everyone else looked pissed.
“So you found her,” sniffed Clarissa. “Great. Can we string her up now?”
“Not quite yet,” said Josh. “Give her five minutes.”
So we listened as Jenny gave a very abbreviated history of her sleeper agent scheme. She didn’t sugarcoat her involvement
, or place any blame on Micah. She stood there, upfront and honest (and under her actual name), and admitted to everyone that what she’d done to them was wrong. I don’t know how many points she earned, but I was proud of her.
And then she segued into the true purpose for the meeting: Elysion. We passed around the printed e-mails and list of participants. To most of the girls, it came as a shock. Mara didn’t look too dismayed, and the boys greeted the news with more disappointment than surprise.
Josh looked at Harun and Greg. “I take it your experiences were pretty much like mine?”
Greg shrugged. “Some of the guys would make these offhand comments,” he said. “I thought they were merely taking the piss out of the girls, and never paid much attention.”
“I think they were judging our responses,” said Josh. “And when we didn’t seem to express any interest in the idea, they didn’t invite us in.”
“I got invited,” said Harun, softly. “At least, in retrospect, I think that’s what they were trying to do.”
All eyes turned to him.
“It was a few months ago, just after Straggler Initiation Night. I went out for drinks with Ben and Nikolos and we were shooting the shit, talking about investment banking, things like that. I didn’t understand how the society worked yet. I thought they were trying to recruit me into some sort of Digger fund-raising committee. I didn’t have time for it—not with all of my other activities. So I said no.” He looked around at all the stricken faces. “I didn’t know what it was. I thought they were trying to get me to volunteer. That was the last I heard of it.”
“So if you’d known, would you have joined?” asked Demetria.
“Hell, no,” Harun said. “I don’t roll with that sexist crap.”
“Really?” said Juno. “I’d have thought—”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Thanks. I seem to have left all my burkas in my other bag, or I’d give you one.”
“Peace out,” said Demetria. “Can we do the racist commentary later?”
“For your information,” Juno said with a sneer, “it has nothing to do with race. I was going to say that Harun told me he didn’t know they let women in until he arrived in August. I got the impression he wasn’t pleased.”
Under the Rose Page 23