Under the Rose Read Online Free PDF

all of her socializing strength. “Sounds less as if she’s saying what she really means than that she’s parroting the words of her cronies.” And then she clammed up completely, as if afraid to say more on the subject.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “She didn’t seem the submissive type in class today. Took on Professor Branch and everything.”
    “Well, we’ll get the scoop tomorrow,” Clarissa said.
    I twirled the glass in my hand. “Hey, guys?” I said, tentatively. “I have to tell you something. Before I came here tonight, I was checking my D-mail, and there was this message….”
    They all froze. They all looked down at their drinks. And then Jenny said, “So, you got it, too?”

 
    I hereby confess:
    Paranoia loves company.

 
    3.
    Skulls and Drones

    I’ll be the first to cop to a certain affinity for overthinking. Most of the time, it’s served me well. (Cf. academic success culminating in admittance to and continuing high GPA at Eli University.) Occasionally, it’s gotten me into trouble. (Cf. habit of constantly attributing mysterious occurrences to the shady machinations of misogynist Rose & Grave patriarchs. But sometimes, it really is their fault. After all, they tried to ruin my life last semester, so a little healthy wariness isn’t a bad thing.)
    But if every girl in the club got a mysterious e-mail, I sat up and took notice. When the club convened before the straggler initiation a few days later, we discussed the bizarre rhyming e-mails and what they could mean. Each Diggirl had received a two-line message sent from her regular Eli account to her Digger-mail; the time stamps showed each e-mail had been sent two minutes apart. When assembled by order of the time stamps, the couplets formed the following ditty:
     
    YOU THINK ITS OVER BUT ITS NOT
FROM WITHIN DOTH PERSEPHONE ROT
THEY WONT LOSE THAT FOR WHICH THEY FOUGHT
PRETTY SOON THEYLL SNATCH YOUR SLOT
TO SEE WHAT KIND OF DOOM YOUVE BROUGHT
CUT THROUGH THE WEB IN WHICH YOURE CAUGHT
LEARN OF THE THIEF WHO CAN BE BOUGHT
FOR THEY HAVE FOUND YOUR ONE WEAK SPOT
BEWARE OF POISON IN YOUR DRAUGHT
OR IGNOBLE DEATH SHALL BE YOUR LOT *2
    “What do you think?” Thorndike asked, after pasting the lines together on her laptop.
    “That whoever it is needs to brush up on diction,” I said. “‘Draught’ is pronounced like ‘draft.’ Totally wrecks the rhyme scheme. And don’t get me started on the lack of punctuation.”
    “Plus,” Lil’ Demon added, pointing at line four, “this part sounds kind of dirty.”
    Thorndike slapped Lil’ Demon’s hand away from the screen. “Can you get sex off your mind for one second?”
    Lil’ Demon pursed her full lips and winked saucily down at Thorndike. “Oh, come on, you thought it, too. Snatch? Please.”
    Lucky blushed. “Moving on, what do we think it means?” For the moment, at least, she’d dropped her derision in favor of helpful discourse.
    “Haven’t the foggiest,” Angel said. She turned to me. “Really? Draft?”
    I nodded. “Who could have sent this? It had to be another Digger, right? Someone who knows our society names and e-mail addresses?”
    “Great,” Clarissa said. “That narrows it down to about 700 living patriarchs.”
    “Well, probably fewer than that who know anything about computers,” Jenny said. “I wouldn’t credit this to anyone older than D150 or so. If it even is a Digger,” she added under her breath.
    “Or it could be a patriarch willing to pay off some geek in the IT department,” I said. “Honestly? It could be anyone.”
    It was a sobering thought, but Lil’ Demon was rarely one for sober. “All right, ladies. Let’s discuss this with the guys after the initiation. Costumes, places, let’s get moving.”
    Little did we know that, post-ceremony, a badly written poem would be the last thing on any of our minds.

    The tomb kitchen on the lower level had been converted into a makeup trailer, which had rendered our aged caretaker, Hale, a