“I hope it has,” Kevin said.

Clarissa clinked her glass with mine. “Thanks so much, Amy.” Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. But, what was that bit about not liking you before you were tapped? I didn’t even know you.”

I bit my lip. “You knew me well enough to—never mind. It’s in the past.”

“No, tell me.”

“Galen Twilo. Freshman year.”

She narrowed her eyes. “That loser? I don’t think I’ve spoken to him in years. Do you know he stole my BlackBerry to buy pot?”

“Do you know he slept with me and never spoke to me again?”

She grinned broadly. “Then you had a lucky escape, my friend. That guy is such a little prick.”

“Having seen it, I’m inclined to agree. But at the time, I overheard you say he was ‘slumming’ with me.”

Her mouth turned into a little pink O. “I didn’t. Did I? My God, what a bitch move!” She put her drink down, and enveloped me in a hug scented with Chanel and tears. “Now I’m really grateful that you stood up for me. Lord knows I hadn’t done anything to deserve it.”

“You had.” I hugged her back. “You’re my sister now. We shouldn’t be held responsible for stuff we did as teenagers. We’ll just stick that bit in the vault along with all—”

“The other crap my dad was talking about?” She smiled mirthlessly. “I hate the girl I used to be, Amy.”

I met her eyes. “Good thing she’s not around anymore.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do,” I replied. “Because I’ve been looking for her since initiation, and I haven’t seen her once.” And I had. I’d been so ready to judge Clarissa by everything I knew about her, rather than who she actually was. Maybe, if Clarissa could change, then a centuries-old society could as well.

After dinner, Clarissa paid the check and all the girls, true to form, took to the bathroom as a group. “I can’t believe they wanted us to give back the pins,” Demetria said, admiring the way hers flashed in the mirror.

“Yeah, but you weren’t about to let go,” I said. “I think we’d have swallowed them or pinned them straight to our bodies before handing them over to those assholes.”

“It’s too bad they aren’t permanent,” Odile said. Four pairs of eyes met in the mirror.

Jennifer exited the stall. “Hey, guys,” she said, heading toward the nearest sink. “What’s the plan now?”

“Absolutely not.” Jennifer folded her arms across her chest.

“Come on, Jen,” Demetria said, tugging her into the tattoo shop. “I have seven, and they hardly hurt at all.”

Jennifer planted her feet on either side of the doorway and resisted the larger girl’s efforts. “They aren’t safe. You can get hepatitis.”

Odile rolled her eyes. “Please. This is where Ani Di Franco goes. You wouldn’t believe the strings I had to pull to get us in here. It’s perfectly clean, and more important, über hip.”

“You know,” I said, “if she doesn’t want one, she doesn’t have to—”

“Oh, no you don’t, Amy,” said Clarissa. “All for one and all that. We’re Diggers forever after tonight.”

The much-illustrated tattoo artist eyed us warily. “What are you chicks, some kind of girl gang?”

“Something like that,” Odile said, putting the finishing touches on her sketch and sliding the paper to him. “There. In black, red, and green. Put the numbers underneath.”

“How big?”

“Small as you can make it,” Clarissa said. “As Malcolm says…”

We all punched our fists in the air. “Discretion!”

As it turns out, “small as he could make it” was about an inch square, and despite all of Demetria’s reassurances, the damn thing hurt like hell.

“That’s because you’re getting it on your spine, girlfriend,” Demetria called out from her chair, where Manhattan’s second-hottest tattoo artist was mapping out a small hexagon in between the tribal markings already gracing her upper arm. Apparently, Odile’s connections got us double-teamed.

I took a deep breath and looked at Clarissa, who, shirt off, was standing before the mirror and admiring the freshly colored tattoo on her shoulder blade. “Right where my Angel wings would be,” she said. Clarissa hadn’t moved a muscle as the ink was sliced into her flesh, as if the pain of the needles was nothing compared with what she’d already experienced today.

“Okay, do it again,” I said. The infernal buzzing started up and I could feel it in my teeth. A million bee stings formed the shape of the seal of Rose & Grave low on my back, and I squeezed my eyes shut—not that it helped, since I couldn’t see what they were doing anyway. “How many of these have you done?” I asked the guy, hoping it wouldn’t distract him. Since it wasn’t distracting me any, I figured I was safe.

“None so cool as putting a coffin on Odile Dumas’s breast,” he replied. “I gotta get a picture of that for the website.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Yeah, well, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. This is kind of a secret.”

“What do you mean?”

Odile leaned in, her scarlet hair arranged to cover her braless chest. “Have you ever heard of Rose & Grave?” she asked the guy.

“The secret society?” His eyes widened.

Odile smiled and put her finger to her lips.

The buzzing stopped, and the man pulled the tattoo machine away from my skin. “You guys aren’t, like, going to have us killed when we’re done here, are you?”

Clarissa tilted her head to the side. “Hmmm, that’s probably a good idea. What do you think, Lil’ Demon?”

Odile ruffled the man’s hair. “No, but we might dictate what it is you’re allowed to tell Page Six.”

When Demetria was finished, Jennifer asked the artist to take her into the back room, and she returned half an hour later, her eyes watery, and refused to let any of us see her tattoo. “It’s um, private,” she said, eyes downcast.

“That girl,” Demetria whispered, “has more secrets than any five Diggers.”

“I bet she’s really a big kink,” Clarissa added. “These religious chicks often are.”

I was twisted, the better to see my new tat, which the artist was smearing with Vitamin E as he explained to me what to expect from my first few days of being inked. I glanced at Jennifer, who was popping M&M’s (to restore her blood sugar post inking) and laughing with Odile. I touched my skin, which was swollen and tender where the seal had been embedded in my flesh. “We’ll find out when we start the meetings, I guess.” Those C.B.s were guaranteed to be a hoot.

Clarissa beamed. “Yes, and I’ll finally get the equality of hearing some of your secrets. You already heard all of mine.”

Odile joined the group. “Well then, let’s even the playing field. We’ll all tell a secret. I’ll start.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go back into the industry after graduation. There, I said it.”

“Okay, I’ll play.” Demetria ducked her head. “I’m…kind of into John McCain.”

Jennifer chewed her lip for a few seconds, then whispered, “I don’t always agree with my pastor.”

I tried to sit up, grimacing when the tattooed area ached with every move. “I’m writing a novel,” I admitted.

Clarissa laughed. “And here we all thought you were going to tell us if George is a good kisser!”

I turned as red as the skin around my tattoo. “Since when is that a secret?”

“Just teasing,” Clarissa said. “To the Diggerettes!”

Demetria grimaced. “Oh, no, that’s wretched. I’d rather all the usual Gothic shit they say. You know, the whole Sacred Seal of the Holy Order of the Knights of Persephone blah blah blah.”

“That’s not it,” Odile said. “It’s the Flame of Life—”

Jennifer sighed and flipped her braid back. “And the Shadow of Death,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Tonight, however, I could take a few extra capital letters. After all, we’d earned them. We’d taken on powerful, intimidating men, and we’d beaten them. My back stung, and I thought of the ink soaking into my bloodstream, becoming a part of my soul. I lightly traced the numerals that were sketched beneath the seal. “Yours in 312,” I murmured. Tonight, we’d become something more, for instead of the ubiquitous 312 inscribed beneath the symbol, the five of us had 177 etched into our skin. The first Rose & Grave class of women. The ones that changed it all.