Dawes pursed her lips but went on. “We’ll need someone to watch over us too, to keep our bodies safe in case anything goes wrong.”
Again Alex had the sense that this was all beyond them. They needed more people, more expertise, more time. “I doubt Michelle is going to volunteer.”
Her phone rang and she swore when she saw the name. Once again she’d fucked up.
“I’m sorry,” she said before Turner could lay into her. “I meant to get to the Bible quote, but—”
“We have another body.”
Alex was tempted to ask if he was kidding, but Turner didn’t kid.
“Who?” she asked instead. “Where?”
“Meet me at Morse College.”
“Just Morse, Turner. You don’t say Morse College.”
“Get your ass here, Stern.”
“Turner thinks there’s been a murder,” Alex said as she hung up.
“Another one?”
No one had confirmed that Marjorie Stephen was a homicide, so Alex wasn’t anxious to jump to any conclusions. And even if there had been two murders, that didn’t mean they were connected. Except Turner wouldn’t be calling her unless he thought they were and that the societies were involved.
“Go on,” Dawes said. “I’ll keep looking around here.”
But there was something bothering Alex. “I don’t get it,” she said, turning in a slow circle, taking in the vastness of the place. She and Mercy usually studied in one of the reading rooms. She’d never been up to the stacks. Even the scope of a building this big was tough to get her head around. “Johnny and Punter’s friends built a Gauntlet. That’s what our buddy Bunchy said.
You really want me to believe it stayed a secret this long?”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Dawes said. “But what if … what if Bunchy got it wrong? What if Lethe built the Gauntlet into Sterling?”
“What?”
“Think about it. People from Bones and Keys working together? The societies don’t share secrets. They hoard their power. The only time they worked together was to form Lethe and that was only to—”
“Save their own asses.”
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.
