Rites of Spring (Break) (Secret Society Girl, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 4: Secret Society Girl

Peterfreund, Diana

 
9780385341936: Rites of Spring (Break) (Secret Society Girl, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385341938 ISBN 13: 9780385341936
Verlag: Delta, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Fans of Beautiful Disaster will devour Diana Peterfreund’s Ivy League novels—Secret Society Girl, Under the Rose, Rites of Spring (Break), and Tap & Gown. At an elite university, Amy Haskel has been initiated into the country’s most notorious secret society. But in this power-hungry world where new blood is at the mercy of old money, hooking up with the wrong people could be fatal.
 
A week of R&R on her Rose & Grave’s private island should be all fun in the sun—and an escape from an on-campus feud with a rival society that’s turned disturbingly personal. But Amy is bringing a suitcase full of issues to Florida. Graduation from Eli University looms, not to mention unfinished business with a former flame and the confusing transformation of a mysterious Rose & Grave patriarch from sheer evil to dead sexy.
 
Just when Amy thinks Spring Break can’t get any less relaxing, a distressing accident puts everyone on edge. And that’s only the beginning. It seems that someone has infiltrated the island. There are major Rose & Grave secrets at stake—secrets which could take down one of America’s most loathsome figureheads—but this party crasher is serious about one thing: making sure Amy doesn’t get back to Eli alive.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Diana Peterfreund is the author of Secret Society Girl, Under the Rose, Rites of Spring (Break), and Tap & Gown, among other novels. She graduated from Yale University in 2001 with degrees in geology and literature. A former food critic, she now lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and writes full-time.

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1.

Crooking


Some people pledge to lose weight for their New Year’s resolution. Others quit smoking, or promise to do their homework before Sunday night, or swear that they’ll never again, no matter how many pomegranate martinis they’ve imbibed, give in to temptation and drunk-dial their ex-boyfriends, ex-lovers, or ex-friends-with-benefits and invite them over for a nightcap.

Instead of resolving any of the above (and that last one sounded pretty good), I promised to commit a felony.

On December 31st, as the clock struck twelve, I held aloft a glass of champagne and solemnly swore that I’d join my secret society brothers in their quest to steal back one of our treasured relics from a rival society. At the time, I thought it would be a relatively straightforward operation. Sneak into the Dragon’s Head headquarters, snatch back the knee-high stone statue of Orpheus, and hightail it back to Rose & Grave’s High Street tomb, booty in tow.

Wrong.

Dragon’s Head had grown suspicious over Winter Break, indulging their more paranoid sides. I knew from intimate association with my fellow knights that no one in our crew could have tipped them off on purpose, but perhaps we weren’t as discreet as we should have been during one of our many reconnaissance missions to their York Street abode. Perhaps they had as many hidden cameras trained on our tomb as we had on theirs. Whatever the cause, intel showed, clear as infrared, the Dragon’s Head members removing the purloined Orpheus statue from their courtyard late the previous night. If they were worthy of their admission to Eli, they would have hidden it out of reach in their house’s safe, a move that would make things tricky—but not impossible—for us thieves.

Wait a second. Reconnaissance? Infrared? Intel? What’s going on here? I was a Literature major, for crying out loud, not a CIA recruit. And yet, in the nine months since I’d been tapped into Rose & Grave, my inner spygirl had gestated and emerged as a black-clad, code-speaking, secret-handshake-knowing, card-carrying acolyte of the New World Order.

Or at least, the wannabe New World Order. Despite all the 007 talk, this mission of ours cut a little closer to fraternity prank than military coup. But whatever the flavor of the operation, the practicalities were the same: I was spending my first night back on campus lying in the slush in an alleyway behind the Dragon’s Head tomb, waiting for orders, while my black ski mask painfully crushed my ponytail holder against my scalp.

However, that wasn’t what was causing my headache.

“I say we go now,” said the society brother lying in the slush to my left.

“Bond directed us to wait for his signal,” said the one on my right.

“Listen, old-timer,” said Lefty. “Maybe in your day, you sat around waiting for someone to hand you an engraved invitation, but that’s why we’re running the show now. Your ways are out-of-date. Don’t you agree, Bugaboo?”

I shifted in the slush. Time was, I would have made precisely that statement, and had. But last semester I’d been involved in espionage activities with the guy on my right, and he’d proven quite handy in a pinch.

Whereas the guy on my left was mostly all hands and pinches.

“Listen, Junior,” hissed the party on the right from behind his ski mask, “I concur that we don’t see eye-to-eye. About anything. But if you move now, you’re going to throw off the whole group. Wait for the signal.”

The guy on my left rolled his copper-colored eyes and sat up. “I’m no one’s junior,” he threw over his shoulder. “Dad’s middle name isn’t ‘Harrison.’ ” He sprang into a crouch.

Poe leapt across me to grab Puck before he could give our position away, but it was too late. Puck had already jumped to the top of the wall that separated the Dragon’s Head property from the alleyway.

“Middle name should have been Asshole,” Poe grumbled.

In place of a response, I coughed, politely, and he seemed to notice that he was still lying on top of me, his hands resting in places that weren’t exactly public access.

“Oops.” He stood, and brushed snow off of his pants. “Here’s an idea for next year’s taps, Bugaboo,” he said, and pulled me to my feet, making as if to brush snow off me before I gave him a warning swat, “only tap the ones who are interested in keeping your secret operations secret.”

I laid a finger against my ski mask–covered mouth. I was to blame for many things involving George Harrison Prescott, but not this. “Remind me who it was that tapped our dear Puck?”

“I liked it better when you were playing mute.”

“You always have,” I replied, as the alarm went off.

Alarms in most buildings on campus might bring a few offhand observers, perhaps some threatening glares from light sleepers or heavy studiers, and campus security. Alarms at a secret society bring reporters. And since the offices of the Eli Daily News were right next door, I’d say, Winter Break or not, we had approximately eight seconds before our masked countenances turned downright conspicuous.

“Jump!”

“Right. New signal.” Poe jumped. I followed, missed the ledge, and proceeded to scrape elbows and knees on the stone as I slid down the wall.

Poe’s face shot over the ledge, silhouetted against the purply-orange sky, a signature of overcast New Haven nights. “Can’t take you anywhere, can I?” He reached down and gave me a hand.

I looked over the wall at the virgin snow on the ground inside. Crap. Could we make the leap all the way over to the cleared walkway in the center of the yard? Did it even matter anymore if the Dragon’s Head knights knew where we came from, now that the alarm was blaring loud enough to be heard up Science Hill?

Poe jumped down from the ledge and landed in the snow, and I saw black-clad figures doing the same all around the yard. Guess not.

We convened at the kitchen entrance near the back. “What brain donor was responsible for moving in early?” asked Thorndike, a.k.a. Demetria Robinson. She was rocking her set of broken-in breaking-and-entering duds and picking the lock on the Dragon’s Head back door.

Poe and I pointed at Puck, who gave us the finger.

Angel arrived. The New York socialite most called Clarissa Cuthbert was almost unrecognizable with her fall of blond hair tucked under her ski mask. “That was . . . unexpected. Lucky almost had the alarm system disabled. Bond’s furious. They’ll be along in a minute.” She stared at our motley crew. “Where are the others?”

“Forced to abort.” Lil’ Demon, known to her legions of fans as bad-girl starlet Odile Dumas, leaned against a wall and attempted to catch her breath. “I tried to wave down Tristram and Frodo, but they were totally zoned out.” She squinted at Poe. “Who brought him?”

I shrugged. “He brought himself, as usual.”

“I don’t blame the boys for getting distracted,” said Angel. “We’ve been waiting for half an hour. I almost forgot what we were doing myself.”

“I think the term is ‘woolgathering,’ ” said Poe.

“Yeah, if you’re my grandmother,” said Thorndike, and the door popped open.

“Wait,” I said....

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Verlag
Delta
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385341938
ISBN 13 
9780385341936
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

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