“Nope,” Lauren said. “And that is called loyalty.”
It wasn’t until they were settling in for the night that Alex had the chance to ask Mercy about France. “Are you really going abroad?”
“Now that I know magic is real?” Mercy had put on a vintage pajama set and slathered her face with cream. “No way. But wouldn’t it be easier to come and go with all of this Lethe stuff if we didn’t have to worry about Lauren asking questions?”
“I’m not in Lethe anymore,” Alex reminded her. “Neither are you. And we’re being hunted by demons.”
“I know, but … I can’t just go back to not knowing.”
It isn’t up to us anymore. Alex didn’t say it, but she lay awake for a long time, staring into the dark. She’d lived with magic her whole life, even if she’d never called it that. She hadn’t had a say in the matter. The one choice she’d gotten to make was agreeing to take Dean Sandow up on his offer when he’d appeared beside her hospital bed, when she’d been invited into Lethe.
And now that choice was being taken away too. How long could she keep running from men like Eitan? From demons like Linus Reiter? From the monsters in her past who had become so very present?
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she must have because she bolted awake to the sound of her phone ringing.
Dawes.
“You okay?” Alex asked, trying to get her bearings. She’d overslept again. It was after 9 a.m.
“The Praetor just called. He wants to meet with you today.” Was this it? The official dismissal? The formal fuck-you?
“What did he say?” Alex pressed.
“Just that in light of last night’s events, the Praetor requires Virgil’s presence at his office hours.”
Not at Il Bastone or the Hutch. “He still called me Virgil?”
“He did,” Dawes said on a tired sigh. “And he called me Oculus. Maybe there’s some kind of process we have to go through before we’re … I don’t know. Stripped of our offices.”
Alex looked out the window into the courtyard. The morning sky was dark, the pavement damp. Slate-colored clouds promised more rain. It was too cold to be sitting outside, but there was a girl slouched on a bench below in just a T-shirt and jeans. Not Hellie looked up at Alex and grinned, her smile crooked, her teeth too long. Like the wolves they’d fought in hell. As if the longer she went hungry, the harder it was for her to pretend to be human.
But it was the man beside her that sent a bolt of fear through Alex. His hair was long and blond, his suit white, his fine-boned face made nearly gentle by the gray autumn light. Linus Reiter gazed up at her, his expression bemused, as if someone had told a joke he didn’t really find funny.
Alex yanked the curtains closed. Fuck having access to Grays. She needed to ward the courtyard. Maybe the whole campus.
“Alex?”
Dawes was still on the phone.
“He’s here,” Alex managed, the words emerging in a strangled whisper.
“He’s…”
“Who is?”
Alex slumped down next to the bed, knees drawn up, her heart pounding.
She couldn’t quite take a full breath. “Linus Reiter,” she gasped. “The vampire. In the courtyard. I don’t … I can’t…” She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. “I think I’m going to pass out.”
“Alex, tell me five things you see in your room.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
“I … My desk. A chair. The blue tulle on Mercy’s bed. My Flaming June poster. Those sticky stars someone put up on the ceiling.”
“Okay, now four things you can touch.”
“Dawes—”
“Do it.”
“We have to warn the others—”
“Just do it, Virgil.”
Dawes had never called her that. Alex managed a shaking breath.
“Okay … the bed frame. It’s smooth. Cold wood. The rug—kind of soft and nubbly. There’s glitter in it. Maybe from Halloween.”
“What else?”
“My tank top—cotton, I think.” She reached up and touched the dried roses on Mercy’s bedside table. “Dry flowers, like tissue paper.”
“Now three things you hear.”
“I know what you’re doing.”
