“I don’t think he likes that,” whispered Dawes.

Is it you? Alex wanted to ask. She wanted to try charging straight through that circle. Would she end in a heap of cinders? A pile of salt? And what was waiting on the other side of that shimmering veil? Darlington? Or something wearing his skin?

“Come on,” she said, herding Dawes out of the ballroom and down the stairs. She didn’t want to leave him, but she didn’t want to be in that room a minute longer.

Alex was locking up the kitchen door when her phone buzzed. She drew it from her pocket, keeping one eye on Dawes, one on the light from the boarded-up windows above. She hesitated when she saw the name on her screen.

“It’s Turner,” she said, pushing Dawes toward the car.

“Detective Turner?” Call me.

Alex scowled and replied: You call me. Remember how?

She didn’t know why she was bitter. She hadn’t heard from Turner in months. She’d understood he was angry after the dean’s death, but she’d thought he liked her and that they’d managed some pretty good investigating together. To her surprise her phone rang almost immediately.

She’d been sure Turner would ignore her. He didn’t like to be told.

Alex put the detective on speaker.

“You do remember,” she said. She nudged Dawes toward the passenger seat and whispered, “I’m driving.” Dawes really must have been hurting because she didn’t protest.

“I’ve got a body at the med school,” said Turner.

“I’m guessing there are a lot of bodies at the med school.”

“I need you or someone to come take a look.”

That stung too. Turner knew better than most what she’d been through last year, but apparently she was just a Lethe deputy now.

“Why?”

“There’s something that isn’t sitting right. Just come by, tell me I’m seeing things, and we can go back to not talking.”

Alex didn’t want to go. She didn’t want Turner to just be able to call her up when he wanted to and not before. But he was Centurion and she was Dante. Virgil.

“Fine. But you owe me.”

“I don’t owe you shit. This is your actual job.”

He hung up. Alex was tempted to stand him up on principle. But better to worry about a dead body than whatever was sitting in the ballroom at Black Elm. She reversed too fast and the tires kicked up a spray of gravel.

You’re not fleeing a crime scene, Stern. Calm down.

She refused to look in the rearview mirror. She didn’t want to see that flickering golden light.

Dawes huddled against the passenger-side door. She looked like she might be ill. “Another murder?”

“He didn’t actually say. Just a body.”

“You don’t … Could it be related to what we did?”

Damn. Alex hadn’t even considered that. It seemed unlikely, but rituals had all kinds of magical blowback, particularly when they went wrong.

“I doubt it,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Part of her did. Dawes was a better representative of Lethe than Alex would ever be. She would know what to look for, what to say. But Dawes was injured inside and out. She needed a chance to heal and wallow a little in her guilt and grief. Alex knew the feeling.

“No, you’re Oculus. This is Dante business.”

Dawes looked absurdly comforted by that. She wasn’t giving in to fear.

She was following protocol.

They drove with the windows down, the night cool around them. They could be anywhere right now. They could be anyone, free of fear or duty, headed someplace good. Vacation. A night out. A house somewhere up the coast. Darlington could be sprawled out in the back, duffel tucked under the seat, hands folded beneath his head. They could be all right.

“Was it him?” Dawes whispered in the dark, the night air snatching her words, casting them out into the sleeping city, the houses and fields beyond.

Alex didn’t know what to say, so she turned on the radio and drove toward campus, waiting to see the lights of Il Bastone that would tell her she was home.

Darlington managed the challenge of the jackals easily—no surprise.

He’s got Lethe written all over him and it’s nice to see someone genuinelyenjoying all Il Bastone has to offer. When I explained the particulars ofHiram’s elixir, he recited Yeats to me. “The world is full of magic things,patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” I didn’t have the heartto tell him I know the quote and I’ve always hated it. It’s too easy tobelieve that we’re being watched and studied by something with infinitepatience, as we rush unknowing toward an irreversible moment ofrevelation.

My new Dante is eager and I suspect my primary task will be tokeep that enthusiasm from killing him. How easily he speaks of magic,as if it is not forbidden, as if it does not always ask a terrible price.

—Lethe Days Diary of Michelle Alameddine(Hopper College)

8

Once they were back at the armory, Dawes walked Alex through a curative for the burns on her fingers, all the while insisting that she was fine and that she was happy to be left alone. Alex could see that she most definitely wasn’t fine, but if Dawes wanted to clap on her headphones and spend two hours not working on her dissertation, Alex wasn’t going to stand in her way. She left the Mercedes parked behind Il Bastone so Dawes wouldn’t get twitchy about her driving it solo and called a car to take her to the med school.

Turner had texted her an address, but she didn’t know this part of campus well. She’d been to the medical library only once, when Darlington had escorted her to the basement and into a pretty paneled room lined with glass

jars, each with a black lid and a square label, each with a full or partial human brain floating inside.

“Cushing’s personal collection,” he’d said, then opened one of the drawers beneath the shelves to reveal a row of tiny infant skulls. He donned nitrile gloves, then selected two for a mid-quarter prognostication Skull and Bones wanted to perform.

“Why those?” Alex had asked.

“The skulls aren’t finished forming. They show all possible futures. Don’t worry, we bring them back intact.”

“I’m not worried.” After all, they were just bones. But she’d let Darlington make the return visit to the Cushing collection on his own.

The building at 300 George was nothing like the beautiful old library with its star-strewn ceiling. The Department of Psychiatry stretched most of the block, big, gray, and modern. She’d expected to see police cars, crime scene tape, maybe even reporters. But everything was quiet. Turner’s Dodge was parked out front beside a dark van.

She stood on the sidewalk a long moment. Last year she’d begged Turner to involve her in his investigation, but now she hesitated, thinking of the creature that might or might not be Darlington sitting in that golden circle.