“She’s assisting me,” said Alex.
But Salome was already leading them into the dark foyer. The Bridegroom followed. The tombs were kept unwarded to allow the easy flow of magic, but that meant Grays could come and go as they pleased. It was what made Lethe’s protections necessary during rites.
“Do you have it?” Salome asked. The interior was nondescript: slate floors, dark wood, leaded windows overlooking a small interior courtyard where an ash tree grew. It had been there long before the university and would probably still be stretching its roots when the stones around it crumbled to dust. A magnetic board by the door showed which delegation members were currently at the tomb, a necessity given the size of the place. They were listed by their Egyptian god names, and only Salome’s ankh, labeled Chefren, had been moved to the At home column.
“Got it,” said Alex, pulling the statue from her bag.
Salome seized it with a happy shriek. “Perfect! Keys is going to be so pissed when they realize we got it back.”
“What does it do?” Alex asked as Salome led them back into another dark room, this one with an elongated lozenge of a table at its center, surrounded by low chairs. The walls were lined with glass cases full of Egyptian curios and depictions of wolves.
“It doesn’t do anything,” Salome said with a withering look. She set the statue back in the case. “It’s the principle of the thing. We invited them into our house and they shat on our hospitality.”
“Right,” said Alex. “That’s awful.” But she felt that angry rattle inside her twitch, vibrating against her sternum. Someone had just tried to kill her and this princess was playing stupid games. “Let’s get this started.”
Salome shifted her weight. “Listen, I really can’t open up the temple without approval from the delegation. Not even alumni are allowed in.”
Dawes released a small humming sigh. She was clearly relieved at the prospect of turning right around to go home. That wasn’t going to happen.
“We had a deal. Are you actually trying to run game on me?” Alex asked.
Salome grinned. She didn’t feel the least bit bad about it. And why would she? Alex was a freshman, an apprentice, clearly out of her element. She’d been nothing but quiet and deferential around Salome and the Wolf’s Head delegation, always letting Darlington, the real presence, the gentleman of Lethe, do the talking. Maybe if Lethe had rescued her from her life sooner, she could have been that girl. Maybe if the gluma hadn’t attacked and Dean Sandow hadn’t ignored her she could have kept pretending to be her.
“I got your stupid figurine,” said Alex. “You owe me.”
“Except you weren’t really supposed to do that, were you? So.”
Most drug deals were done on credit. You got your supply from someone with the real connections, you proved you could move it for a good price, maybe next time you got the chance at a bigger bite. “You know why your boy is amateur and will stay amateur?” Eitan had asked Alex in his heavy accent once. He’d hiked a thumb at Len, who was giggling over a bong while Betcha played Halo beside him. “He’s too busy smoking my product to make anyone but me rich.” Len was always scraping by, always coming up a little short.
When Alex was fifteen she’d come back to Len without his money, confused and flustered by the investment banker she’d met in the parking lot of the Sherman Oaks Sports Authority. Len usually handled him, leaving sweet-faced Alex to do runs at the colleges and malls. But Len had been too hungover that morning, so he’d given her bus fare and she’d ridden the RTD down to Ventura Boulevard. Alex didn’t know what to say when the banker told her he was short on cash, that he didn’t have the money right then but he was good for it. She’d never had someone flat-out refuse to pay. The college kids she dealt with called her “little sis,” and sometimes they even invited her to smoke up with them.
Alex had expected Len to be pissed, but he’d been furious in a way she’d never seen before, frightened, screaming it was on her and she was going to have to answer to Eitan. So she’d found a way to pay back the money. She’d gone home for the weekend and stolen her grandmother’s garnet earrings to hock, had gotten a shift at Club Joy—the worst of the strip clubs, full of losers who barely tipped and owned by a tiny guy called King King, who wouldn’t let you out of the dressing room without copping a feel first. It was the only place willing to take her on with no ID and nothing to fill her bikini. “Some guys like that,” King King had said before shoving his hand in her top. “But not me.”
She’d never come back short again.
Now she looked at Salome Nils, lean and smooth-faced, a Connecticut girl who rode horses and played tennis, her heavy bronze ponytail tucked over one shoulder like an expensive pelt. “Salome, how about you rethink your position?”
“How about you and your spinster aunt run home?”
Salome was taller than Alex, so Alex grabbed her by the lower lip, hard, and yanked. The girl squeaked and bent at the waist, flailing her arms.
“Alex!” Dawes yelped, hands pressed to her chest like a woman pretending to be a corpse.
Alex wrapped her arm around Salome’s neck, looping her into a choke hold, a grip she’d learned from Minki, who was only four foot five and the one girl at Club Joy who King King never messed with. Alex fastened her fingers around the pear-shaped diamond drop that hung from Salome’s ear.
She was aware of Dawes’s shocked presence, of the Bridegroom stepping forward as if chivalry demanded he do so, the way the very air around them was shifting, changing, the haze dissipating so that Salome and Dawes and maybe even the Gray could see her clearly for the first time. Alex knew it was probably a mistake. Better not to be noticed, to keep your head down, remain the quiet girl, in over her head but no threat to anyone. But, like most mistakes, it felt good.
“I really like these earrings,” she said softly. “How much did they cost?”
“Alex!” Dawes protested again. Salome scrabbled at Alex’s forearm. She was strong from sports like squash and sailing, but she’d never had anyone lay hands on her, probably never seen a fight outside of a movie theater. “You don’t know, right? They were a present from your dad on your sweet sixteen or on graduation or some shit like that?” Alex jostled her and Salome squeaked again. “Here’s what’s going to happen: You’re going to let me into that room or I’m going to tear these things out of your ears and shove them both down your throat and you can choke on them.” It was an empty threat. Alex wasn’t in the business of wasting a nice pair of diamonds. But Salome didn’t know that. She started crying. “Better,” Alex said. “We understand each other?”
Salome gave a frantic nod of her head, the sweaty skin of her throat bobbing against Alex’s arm.
Alex released her. Salome backed away, hands held out in front of her. Dawes had pressed her fingers to her mouth, and even the Bridegroom looked disturbed. She’d managed to scandalize a murderer.
“You’re insane,” said Salome, touching her fingertips to her throat. “You can’t just—”
The snake inside Alex stopped twitching and uncoiled. She curled her hand into the sleeve of her coat and slammed it through the glass case where they kept their little trinkets. Salome and Dawes shrieked. They both took another step back.
“I know you’re used to dealing with people who can’t just, but I can, so give me the key to the temple room and let’s get square so we can forget all about this.”
Salome hovered, poised on the tips of her toes, framed by the doorway. She looked so light, so impossibly slender, as if she might simply lose contact with the ground and float up to the ceiling to bob there like a party balloon. Then something shifted in her eyes, all of that Puritan pragmatism seeping back into her bones. She settled on her heels.