Rites of Spring (39 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Jamie’s eyes went wide. “
You’re
sorry? Christ, Amy, what for?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t even look at you right now. I’ve been dreading seeing you again, after what I said to you. After what happened.”

“Why?” I asked. This was like in January, when he’d avoided us all after he cracked his head open during the Dragon’s Head raid. “I heard about what you did, stealing the boat to call the police. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to thank you then and there.”

“But that’s not what you wanted.” He wasn’t looking at me, and I think I might be getting a bit better at reading his expressions. Disapproval, resignation, carefully reined frustration. I remembered what he’d done to Micah Price, and that poor boy had only spit at me. Gehry would do well to keep his son away from Poe.

I came closer. “You didn’t know that when you did it. Hell,
I
didn’t know it. You didn’t know anything but that I was in danger. And you chose me over the society.”

“No.”

“Yes.” I sat down next to him. “Like it or not, Mr. Patriarch, you broke the third oath.”

He looked down at his hands and shrugged. “Details.”

Exactly. Amazing how silly they seemed in context. Present a good enough reason, and you realize that the things you thought were important go right out the window. The society was just the symbol. It was the people inside who really mattered. Put me in a room with a man like Jamie, and my well-reasoned case against dating seemed ridiculous. And all the specific arguments against dating him evaporated like frost in the sun.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, and then he spoke again. “Still, it was a pretty stupid move. It took me right out of the game. I wasn’t able to rescue you. I heard it was…George.”

And how that must have grated on him! “You know George is long over, right?”

He nodded. “Yes. I knew it at the time. I don’t know why I said that stupid—”

“I don’t care.” I did then, but it all seemed so petty now. “You were angry. We all say stupid shit.”

“That’s not even it,” he admitted. “It killed me that
I
wasn’t there to save you. Like I didn’t have the right to be.”

“Actually,” I said, smiling, “I kind of saved myself. A week earlier, I would have drowned long before the boat got to me.”

And now he did look at me.

“I think I must be a pretty good swimmer now, if I can do it tied up and drugged.”

“Amy…” All incredulous.

“Here’s the thing,” I said, quickly, before I lost my nerve. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. About the society, and about my relationships—everything.” He was still staring at me, and the words came out in a rush. “And come on. We’ve had so many battles, and you’re just so damn prickly all the time. And my friends would think I’m nuts for…”

“For what?” he cut in. “Making another mistake?”

“No,” I said, and took his hand in mine. “Doing something that might make up for all of them.”

Jamie stared at our hands for a moment, then pulled away. “No. I tried, on Cavador Key, but I hated it.” He caught my stricken expression and amended his words. “I couldn’t—I can’t pretend this isn’t important. I can’t act like it doesn’t exist. It’s ironic, but true. There are a lot of things I’m really good at keeping secret. But I’ve learned I’m not too good at that with you. I can’t pull it off. I don’t want to just hook up. I don’t want a secret relationship.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said, grabbing for both of his hands and holding on for dear life.

Doubt started giving way to recognition, but he needed to hear it. “Why’s that?”

“Because I’m really sick of secrets.”

Acknowledgments

FOLKS I’D LIKE TO THANK

1)
The readers of
Secret Society Girl
and
Under the Rose

2)
The Venerable M.A.E., footnoter extraordinaire

3)
Tracy Devine, master titler

4)
Pam Feinstein, Lynn Andreozzi, Carol Russo, and all the others on the Bantam Dell Team

5)
Deidre Knight (and the gang at TKA), who always rooted for Poe

6)
The Sistahs, TARA, WRW, CLWOW, and the Non-Bombs, for being the only societies I need

7)
Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cecil Castellucci, Margaret Crocker, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson, Jaida Jones, and Justine Larbalestier, for the (in)sanity

8)
Marley Gibson and Cheryl Wilson, who always have my back

9)
Erica Ridley and Carrie Ryan, for screaming in text and in person at the shower scene

10)
Julie Leto, who saved my storyline

11)
The bloggers, blog readers, and lurkers galore

12)
My family, family-in-law, and friends

13)
Fellow sons and daughters of Eli

14)
Those fabulous secret sources

15)
My husband (!!!)

About the Author

DIANA PETERFREUND graduated from Yale University in 2001 with degrees in geology and literature. A former food critic, she now resides in Washington, D.C. Her previous two novels,
Secret Society Girl
and
Under the Rose,
are available now from Delta. Visit the author’s website at:

http://www.dianapeterfreund.com
.

AND WATCH FOR

The Conclusion of Diana Peterfreund’s
Secret Society Girl
Series

On Sale Summer 2009

Please turn the page for a special advance preview.

I hereby confess:
Everyone wants
to be one of us.

You arrived in a state of awe, of wonderment. Maybe you’re the latest in a long line of your family members to matriculate to our fine university. Maybe you’re a celebrity, or foreign royalty, or a sports star, or a genius at the near-lost art of lute playing. Maybe you’re a Westinghouse scholar; a national debate champion; or the valedictorian of your elite, East Coast boarding school where your name was on the register from the moment you were born. Or maybe you’re none of the above. Perhaps you’re just handy with the SATs, rocked grades nine to twelve, and charmed the heck out of the middle-aged lawyer who interviewed you one evening in his satellite office on behalf of his alma mater. Whatever way it happened, you ended up at Eli.

And from the moment you stepped on campus, you heard about us.

For all that we were secret, we remained one of the constants of your college career. You could hardly get to your dorm freshman year without passing our tomb. And you wondered, even if you wouldn’t admit it to your roommates or your singing group friends or your lab partner, what it would be like to be one of us. What we did at our weekly meetings—sequestered, sacrosanct, silent except for the occasional scream.

You hoped that someday you’d find out.

The season is upon us. We, the members of Rose & Grave D177, are graduating and are thusly charged with the tapping of new souls to fill our robes, take up the torch of our traditions, and stand beside us as members of this illustrious, rarefied order. It is a lofty invitation and one that no man (or woman) should accept lightly. We are the standard bearers of a New World Order. We are the key that will unlock the life you’ve only imagined.

You will be judged. Will you be found worthy?

For this
is
what you’ve always wanted.

Isn’t it?

I hereby confess:
I like being his.

1

Pledges

As many of my friends (and a few of my enemies) will tell you, I have a tendency to overanalyze. I’m aware of this characteristic within myself, and I do my level best to overcome it. As a result, I have occasionally been known to make snap decisions that, in retrospect, were probably mistakes.

But here’s what I think now. Life is a bit like a standardized test. Not putting down an answer because you fear it could be wrong
will
lower your overall score. So remember what those nice folks at the Princeton Review told you: Make an educated guess. But be careful. You never know where that decision is going to take you.

Almost a year ago, I accepted the tap from Rose & Grave, Eli University’s most powerful, exclusive, and notorious secret society. I knew my life would change. What I didn’t realize was how. I figured my induction into their order would net me some contacts in my preferred field of business, add an extra
oomph
to my résumé, and provide an insurance plan for the future that loomed just beyond the next set of final exams.

What I didn’t expect was that it would open my eyes to a whole world of my own potential. I no longer even wanted the job I’d once hoped Rose & Grave would help me get. I also didn’t know that I’d have a host of new friends, some of whom I’d never dreamed of associating with before—a few of whom I’d actively disliked. But now I’d move mountains for any of them. I certainly never knew how much danger one little club membership could net me, though I’d spent the last year being threatened, thwarted, chased, conspired against, and even once—bizarrely—kidnapped.

But most of all, I didn’t realize that the following March, I’d be sitting on a couch that looked like it had been fished out of the trash, staring at a guy I’d never even have looked twice at, and wondering if I dared take a risk answering the following:

AMY HASKEL, ARE YOU IN LOVE?

a)
Yes

b)
No

c)
Insufficient data to answer this question

Oh, hell, it’s c, which is why there was no way I was going to let our Spring Break fling end. He couldn’t do the secret hooking-up thing anymore? Fine. Let’s try something new.

“I’m really sick of secrets,” I said, and kissed him.

Brilliant as Jamie Orcutt is, it took him several seconds to parse the meaning of my statement. And when he did, the kiss turned from hesitant to heated in no time at all.

Somehow, we shifted on the couch, from a relatively decent and G-rated side-to-side to something that rated the sort of parental supervision we had zero interest in at the moment. And, say what you will about how the couch looked, it certainly felt comfortable once I was sandwiched deeply between the cushions and Jamie. I clung to his shoulders as if I were drowning and he knotted his fists into my shirt, sliding the material away from my skin as his mouth moved south over my throat.

“Ja…” I said on a sigh, and then, as his tongue flicked over my collarbone, “Puh…”

He lifted his head. “You are never going to get it straight, are you?”

“Unlikely.” I slid my hands down his back, to where his sweatshirt ended and his skin was bare. “It’s already a tough enough effort to think of you as Jamie and not as—”
Poe
. I stopped myself in time to avoid a fine.

“This is troublesome,” he said. “But then again, that’s your society name.” He tapped my nose.

Bugaboo
. Yes, and he’d probably chosen it, too, now that I thought about it. “You want to know what’s even more troublesome?” I scooted up. “Our real names rhyme.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, they do. I never thought of that.”

“People are going to laugh whenever they say things like, ‘We should invite Amy and Jamie to the party next weekend’ or ‘Let’s go on a double date with Amy and Jamie.’”

He frowned. “I’m now required to go on double dates with your friends? Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

Neither was bringing up my friends, the majority of whom had no particular love for him. “I’m just saying, ‘Amy and Jamie’ sounds a bit lame.”

But he was smiling. “I was just thinking how nice it sounds.”

I blushed, and just as quickly, the concerns started crowding into my head. What kind of person gets into a relationship less than two months before graduating from college? Was I mad? Jamie was in law school, here, at Eli, for the next two years. I had no idea where I’d be. When I left town at the end of May, there’s no way our relationship would be ready for the long-distance thing (if it even lasted until then), and I had no intentions of sticking around New Haven for a boyfriend I’d just started dating. This was silly. I was setting myself up for an even worse heartbreak come commencement.

“I should go,” I said.

“What?” he shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t think so. You can’t just show up on my doorstep, drop this bombshell on me, then disappear.”

“I have work to do….” I began vaguely.

“You just got off a twenty-hour car trip.” He caught my hands in his. “You have relaxing to do.” His thumbs slid over the scabs on my wrists and we both winced. He looked down. “I’m glad I wasn’t there that night,” he said softly. “I don’t think I would have trusted myself.”

“You? Mr. In-Control Poe?” Crap.

He wagged his finger at me. “See? And yeah. I might have killed that kid.”