Her phone pinged. A Call me text from Turner. Why didn’t he ever just call her?
When she hung up with Dawes, she checked the group chat: Everyone had checked in, and Dawes issued her warnings regarding Reiter. They were all armed with salt and they would meet at Il Bastone before dark. They’d be safer when they were behind the wards together.
Alex called Turner, expecting to hear he’d sighted Big Car lurking at the station.
“You okay?” she asked.
“What? Fine.” Of course Turner was fine. He was the mighty oak. “We picked up Ed Lambton’s son.”
It took Alex a beat to remember who Lambton was. The professor at the center of the double murder. “I thought he was in Arizona.”
“Andy Lambton is in New Haven. We apprehended him outside the apartment of one of his father’s fellows.”
“One of the people who falsified data?”
“Exactly. We’d put a protective detail on the other faculty involved with his censure and on the fellows who worked in the lab.”
So the Charles II lead had been right, the son avenging the father. But it all seemed so theatrical, so bizarre. “He really killed two people because he thought his dad got the short end?”
“It looks like it. I want you to meet him.”
“Worst blind date ever.”
“Stern.”
“Why, Turner?” The detective had been willing to involve her on the periphery of the case, a look at the crime scene, a chat about theories, but meeting a suspect was a very different thing. And now that Alex might be out of Lethe and Yale forever, she wasn’t sure she had the heart or the will to dig into a murder mystery. “You’ve never wanted me in your business before.”
“There’s something wrong here and no one else seems to agree.”
“He’s got an alibi?”
“His alibi didn’t hold up. And he confessed.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Do you want to meet this guy or not?”
She did. She liked that even after she’d fallen out of favor with Lethe, Turner still gave a damn what she thought. Besides, if Turner believed something was off, there was. She’d been in his head, looked through his eyes. She’d seen the world as he did, the details of it, the signs and signals everyone else missed or ignored. She’d felt the prickle at the base of her skull.
“I have to meet with the Praetor this afternoon,” she said. “I can go after that. But you’ll have to give me a ride over to the jail.”
“He’s not at the jail,” said Turner. “He’s at Yale New Haven.”
“The hospital?”
“The psych ward.”
Alex wasn’t sure how to respond. She’d spent enough time in and out of rehabs, scared-straight programs, and twenty-four-hour observation holds that she didn’t ever want to set foot on one of those wards again. But she also wasn’t going to tell Turner any of that. Maybe she didn’t have to. He’d seen her life through Hellie’s eyes.
“I need to know what you told the cops and the Praetor about the fire,”
she said.
“Vandalism,” said Turner. “No way to pass it off as an accident. They didn’t find accelerant and the fire didn’t build, it just went up. That’s a mystery they aren’t going to unravel.”
Hellfire? Something else? Which weapons did the demons have at their disposal? Maybe Turner could just arrest Linus Reiter and save them all a lot of trouble.
As she dressed, she tried to think of anything but the Praetor and what might come next. She wanted to go back to Il Bastone. She wanted Turner to post uniforms outside the house to keep it safe. She wanted some promise of protection for her mother, her friends, herself. She’d thought of Il Bastone as a kind of fortress, buttressed by magic and history and tradition. She wondered if Not Hellie knew just how much the fire had shaken her.
She touched her wrist where the salt snake had wound around her skin.
She wasn’t helpless anymore. At least next time she tussled with the thing that wasn’t Hellie or the monster that wasn’t truly Lionel or Linus Reiter, it might be closer to a fair fight.
Alex muddled through her morning classes, trying to shake the dread that sat heavy in her gut. Was this the last lecture? The last hasty breakfast between classes? The last time she would sit in WLH and try to think of something clever to say in section?
Professor Walsh-Whiteley held office hours from two o’clock to four o’clock in the afternoon, and Alex thought about waiting until the last possible moment to show up, but the worry was too much for her. Better to get it over with, to know how far she’d fallen so she could start dragging herself back to high ground.
She popped into Blue State to get a coffee and a bagel to fortify herself.
There was always a young Gray outside the empty building next door, dressed in a plaid flannel, sometimes hovering behind the window near where there had once been a jukebox when it was a pizza place.
Occasionally, she thought she heard him humming the singsong strains of
“Hotel California.” But today, he was sitting on the steps, as if he was waiting
for the door to open so he could buy a slice. Alex let her eyes pass over him, then stumbled when someone gave her a shove from behind.
