Dawes frowned. “Well, yes. To create a society that would reassure the administration and keep the other societies in line. An oversight body.”

“You’re saying the oversight body thought it would be a good idea to hide a secret door to hell in plain sight?”

There was color in Dawes’s cheeks now. Her eyes were bright.

“Harkness, Whitney, and Bingham are considered Lethe’s founding fathers.

Harkness was Wolf’s Head, and he’s the one who tapped James Gamble Rogers to build half of campus, including this library.”

“But why would Lethe build it if they weren’t going to use it?” It didn’t make sense.

“Are we sure they didn’t?” Dawes asked. “Maybe they knew they were messing with potentially catastrophic things and they didn’t want people to know.”

Maybe. But it didn’t quite hold together.

“Isn’t the whole goal to see the other side?” Alex asked. “To unravel the mysteries of the beyond? It’s why I was tapped into Lethe. If they’d gone to the underworld, they would have left a record. They would have talked about it, debated it, dissected it.”

Dawes looked uneasy, and that made Alex even more nervous. Something about all of this felt wrong. Why build a Gauntlet you didn’t intend to use?

Why wipe away any record of it? They weren’t seeing the whole picture, and Alex couldn’t help but think someone didn’t want them to.

It was one thing to hurl yourself headfirst into the dark. It was another to feel like someone had deliberately turned off the lights. Alex had the same sensation she’d had the night she’d strolled through Eitan’s door and been tricked into revealing her power. They were walking into a trap.

13

When Alex had seen Marjorie Stephen’s body, she’d wondered if Turner had been imagining things, seeing murder because murder was his job. The professor had looked almost peaceful, the finality of her death barely a disruption. The building and the world around her undisturbed.

Not Dean Beekman. The intersection in front of Morse—the same spot where Tara Hutchins’s body had been found last year—was crammed with police cars, their lights flashing in lazy circles. Barriers had been erected, and uniformed cops were checking student IDs before they allowed access to the courtyard. Turner was waiting for her when she arrived and shepherded her inside without a word.

“How are you going to explain having me here?” Alex asked as she slipped blue booties over her shoes.

“I’m telling everyone you’re my CI.”

“Great, now I’m a snitch.”

“You’ve been worse. Get inside.”

The front door to Dean Beekman’s office was hanging at an angle and mud had been tracked through the entry. The heavy desk had been knocked askew and books lay scattered across the floor next to a spilled bottle of red wine. The professor was on his back, as if he’d been sitting in the chair and it had simply fallen backward. His legs were still hooked over the seat. One of his shoes had fallen off and the lamp beside him had been tipped over.

Had the dean dozed off reading by the fire and been surprised by his attacker? Or had he put up a fight and been shoved back into his chair? He looked silly, almost cartoonish with his feet up in the air that way, and Alex wished there weren’t so many people around to see it. Stupid. What did Dean Beekman care now? Alex had never had a class with him, wasn’t even sure what he taught, but he was one of those professors everyone knew. He wore a tweed bucket hat and a Morse scarf, and rode his bike everywhere on campus, the bell jingling merrily as he waved to students. He was called Beeky and his lectures were always packed, his seminars legendary. He also seemed to know everyone interesting who had ever gone to Yale, and he’d brought a slew of famous actors and authors to tea at Morse.

No one had said a word about Marjorie Stephen in the days since she’d been found dead. Alex doubted anyone but the professor’s students and colleagues at the Department of Psychiatry knew she’d passed. But this was going to be something entirely different.

She didn’t want to look closely at the body, but she made herself peer into the dean’s face. His eyes were open, but they didn’t have the same milky cast Alex remembered from the first crime scene. It was hard to tell if he looked older than he should. His mouth was open, his expression startled but still genial, as if greeting a friend who had appeared unexpectedly at his door.

“His neck is broken,” said Turner. “The coroner will tell us if it happened when the chair went over or before.”

“So no poison,” she said. “But you think this is connected to Marjorie Stephen’s death?”

“This was on his desk.” Turner waved her over to where a typed piece of paper lay atop the blotter: Bewray not him that wandereth.

“Isaiah again?”

“That’s right. It completes the line we found with Professor Stephen: Hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth. Did you find anything at Lethe about it?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t had a chance to go digging.” I’ve been too busy figuring out how to break into hell. “I don’t know anything about Isaiah.”

“He was a prophet who predicted the coming of Christ, but I don’t see what that has to do with two dead professors.”

Alex studied the bookshelves, the messy desk, the rigid body. “Does this

… It feels wrong. It’s too showy. The Bible quotes. The body tipped over.

There’s something…”

“Theatrical?” Turner nodded. “Like someone thinks this is amusing.”

Like someone was playing a game. And demons loved games and puzzles, but their only resident demon was currently trapped in a circle of protection. Was someone at the societies toying with them?

“Did Professor Stephen know Beekman?”

“If they were connected, we’ll find out. But they weren’t in the same department. They weren’t even in the same field. Dean Beekman taught American Studies. He had nothing to do with the psych department.”

“And the poison that killed Professor Stephen?”

“Still waiting on the tox report.”

The societies didn’t like eyes on them, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t gone rogue. Even so, none of it really made sense.

“It’s the clues,” she said, chewing over the thought. “Those Bible quotes don’t fit. If someone was using magic to … I don’t know, get revenge on their professors, they wouldn’t leave clues. That feels unhinged.”

“Or like someone pretending to be unhinged.”

That would mean a lot more trouble. As much as Alex didn’t want these deaths to be her problem, she couldn’t pretend the uncanny wasn’t at work

here. Magic was transgression, the blurring of the line between the impossible and the possible. There was something about crossing that boundary that seemed to shake loose all the morals and taboos people took for granted.

When anything was within your grasp, it got harder and harder to remember why you shouldn’t take it—money, power, your dream job, your dream fuck, a life.

“Tell me I’m jumping at shadows, Stern, and you can go back to lurking in that haunted house on Orange.”

Il Bastone was one of the least haunted places in New Haven, but Alex didn’t see the point of getting into that discussion.

“I can’t,” Alex admitted.

“Can’t you … work your contacts on the other side?”

“I don’t have ghost informants, Turner.”