Open the door, Alex.
“I know he saved my life and he wants my attention. Relationships have been built on less.”
The rules of Lethe House were opaque and convoluted. Catholic, Darlington had said. Byzantine. Still, the big stuff wasn’t tough to remember. Leave the dead to the dead. Turn your eyes to the living. But Alex needed allies, and Dawes wasn’t going to be enough.
She knocked on the window.
Below, on the street, the Bridegroom looked up. His dark eyes met hers in the light from the streetlamp. She did not look away.
-
Wolf’s Head, fourth of the Houses of the Veil, though Berzelius would argue the point. Members practice therianthropy and consider simple shapeshifting to be base magic. They focus instead on the ability to retain human consciousness and characteristics while in animal form. Primarily used for intelligence gathering, corporate espionage, and political sabotage. Wolf’s Head was a major recruitment ground for the CIA in the 1950s and ’60s. It can take days for someone to shake off the traits of an animal after a shifting ritual. Keep discussions of an important or sensitive nature around animals to a minimum.
I’m tired and my heart won’t stop racing. My eyes look pink. Not the whites. The irises. When Rogers said we were going to fuck like rabbits, I didn’t think he meant actual rabbits.
12
Winter
Alex knew she couldn’t go to Wolf’s Head empty-handed. If she wanted their help, she had a stop to make at Scroll and Key first to retrieve a statue of Romulus and Remus. Wolf’s Head had been badgering Lethe to orchestrate its return since it went missing during their Valentine’s Day party the year before, when they’d opened their doors to other society members, as was tradition. Though Alex had since spotted the statue sitting on a shelf in the Locksmiths’ tomb, with a plastic tiara slung over it, Darlington had refused to get involved. “Lethe doesn’t concern itself with petty squabbles,” he’d said. “These kinds of pranks are beneath us.”
But Alex needed a way into the temple room at the heart of the Wolf’s Head tomb, and she knew exactly what their delegation president, Salome Nils, would demand in payment.
Alex drank one of Darlington’s disgusting protein shakes from the fridge. She was hungry, which Dawes claimed was a good sign, but her throat couldn’t tolerate anything solid yet. She wasn’t eager to leave the safety of the wards when she didn’t know exactly what had happened to the gluma, but she couldn’t just sit still. Besides, whoever had sent the gluma thought she was laid up somewhere being consumed by corpse beetles from the inside out. As for her public fit in the middle of Elm Street, at least there hadn’t been too many witnesses, and aside from Jonas Reed, it was unikely any of them knew her. If someone did, she’d probably be getting a call from a concerned therapist at the health center.
Alex had known the Bridegroom would be waiting as soon as she and Dawes stepped out into the alley. It was almost dawn and the streets were quiet. Her “protector” followed them all the way to Scroll and Key, where she found a harried Locksmith writing a paper and convinced him to let her into the tomb to look for a scarf Darlington had left behind during the last rite they’d observed. Lethe was usually permitted entry to the tombs only on ritual nights and during sanctioned inspections. “Gets chilly in Andalusia,” she told him.
The Locksmith hovered in the doorway, eyes on his phone as Alex pretended to search. He swore when the bell beside the front door rang again. Thank you, Dawes. Alex nabbed the statue and shoved it into her satchel. She glanced at the round stone table where the delegation gathered to work their rites—or try to. A quote was carved into the table’s edge, one she’d always liked: Have power on this dark land to lighten it, and power on this dead world to make it live. Something about those words rang a bell but she couldn’t pry the memory loose. She heard the front door slam and hurried out of the room, thanking the Locksmith—now muttering about drunk partyers who couldn’t find their damn dorms—on her way out.
There was a very good chance Scroll and Key would point the finger at her once they noticed the statue was missing, but she would just have to deal with that later. Dawes was waiting around the corner by the Gothic folly that served as an entrance to the Bass Library. Darlington had told her that the stone swords carved into its decoration were signs of warding.
“This is a bad idea,” Dawes said, bundled into her parka and radiating disapproval.
“At least I’m consistent.”
Dawes’s head swiveled on her neck like a searchlight. “Is he here?”
Alex knew she meant the Bridegroom, and though she would never admit it, she was unnerved by how easy it had been to secure his attention. She doubted it would be that easy to shake it. She glanced over her shoulder, where he trailed them by what could only be called a respectful distance. “Half a block away.”
“He’s a murderer,” Dawes whispered.
Well, then we have something in common, thought Alex. But all she said was, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
She didn’t like the idea of letting a Gray get close to her, but she’d made her choice and she wasn’t going to rethink it now. If someone from the societies was responsible for slapping a target on her back, she was going to find out who, and then she was going to make sure they didn’t have a chance to hurt her again. Even so…
“Dawes,” she murmured. “When we get back, let’s start looking for ways to break the link between people and Grays. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with Morrissey peering over my shoulder.”
“The easiest way is not to form a bond to begin with.”
“Really?” said Alex. “Let me write that down.”
The Wolf’s Head tomb was only a few doors away from the Hutch, a grand gray manor house, fronted by a scrubby garden and surrounded by a high stone wall. It was one of the most magical places on campus. The alley that horseshoed around it was bordered by old fraternity houses, sturdy brick structures long ago ceded to the university, ancient symbols of channeling carved into the stone above their doorways beside unremarkable clusters of Greek letters. The alley acted as a kind of moat where power gathered in a thick, crackling haze. Passing through, most people wrote off the shiver that seized them to a shift in weather or a bad mood, then forgot as soon as they had moved on to the Yale Cabaret or the Af-Am Center. Wolf’s Head’s members took great pride in the fact that they’d housed protesters during the Black Panther trials, but they’d also been the last of the Ancient Eight to let in women, so Alex considered it a wash. On ritual nights, she regularly saw a Gray standing in the courtyard, mooning the offices of the Yale Daily News next door.
Alex had to ring the bell at the gate twice before Salome Nils finally answered and let them inside.
“Who’s this?” Salome asked. For a second, Alex thought she could see the Bridegroom. He had drawn closer, matching Alex step for step, a small smile quirking his lips, as if he could hear the hummingbird beat of her heart. Then she realized Salome was talking about Dawes. Most people in the societies probably had no idea Pamela Dawes even existed.