she singsonged.
Daniel Arlington made it into the car, and the Range Rover took off in a spray of gravel.
“Thanks, Cosmo,” Alex murmured as the cat leapt from her arms and pranced toward the back of the house to hunt. “And you.”
She shoved the old man out of her mind with all her might. He appeared in front of her, bathrobe flapping, his naked, emaciated body peppered with white hair.
“That was a one-time ride,” she said. “Don’t think about trying to hijack this particular train again.”
“Where’s Danny?” the old man growled.
Alex ignored him and marched back to Dawes and Turner.
16
When Dawes was upset, she drove even more slowly, and Alex thought it might take them two hours to get back to campus.
“They’re going to get lawyers involved,” Dawes complained.
“They’re not.”
“They’re going to pull in the Yale administration.”
“They won’t.”
“For Pete’s sake, Alex!” Dawes yanked the steering wheel to the right, and the Mercedes veered to the side of the road, nearly jumping the curb.
“Stop pretending everything is going to be okay.”
“How else are we supposed to get through this?” Alex demanded. “It’s all I know how to do.” She made herself take a deep breath. “Darlington’s parents aren’t going to come back with lawyers or involve Yale.”
“Why wouldn’t they? They have money, power.”
Alex shook her head slowly. She’d seen so much in the old man’s memories, felt it all. The only time she’d been through anything like that was when she’d let the Bridegroom in and experienced the moments of his murder. She hadn’t just known he’d loved Daisy. She’d loved Daisy too. But this time there had been so much more, a lifetime of small pleasures and endless disappointment, every day and every thought shaped by Black Elm, by bitterness, by the hunger for something that might outlive his brief, weightless life.
“They don’t have either,” Alex said. “Not the way you think they do.
It’s why they keep pressuring Darlington to sell Black Elm.”
Dawes looked scandalized. “But he’d never sell.”
“I know. But if they find out he’s missing, they’ll try to take it from him.”
They sat in silence for a long minute, the engine idling. Through the window Alex saw a narrow stretch of park, the leaves of its trees not yet ready to turn, but she was back at Black Elm, feeling its pull, the way it demanded love, lost in the loneliness of the place.
“They won’t get lawyers involved because they don’t want anyone looking at them too closely. They … Darlington’s grandfather basically bought them off. He wanted to raise…” She’d almost said Danny. “They just left him there, and I think they kept the old man prisoner when he got sick.”
Until Danny had set him free. That was why he’d survived in hell, not just because he was Darlington, steeped in knowledge and lore, but because he had killed his grandfather.
It didn’t matter that his grandfather had asked him to do it any more than it mattered Dawes had smashed in Blake’s skull to save Alex’s life.
“But they’ll be back,” Dawes said.
Alex couldn’t argue with that. She’d scared the hell out of Darlington’s father, but monsters didn’t just go away with a warning. Harper and Daniel Arlington would come sniffing around again, looking for their share.
“Then we bring back Darlington and he can send them packing himself.”
He’d been Black Elm’s protector, and he was still the only one who could defend it. “Who’s going to help us find another murderer? I’m running out of favors with the societies.”
“No one,” said Dawes, but her voice sounded strange. “We’ll need to get into the basement of the Peabody. But it’s under renovation and there are cameras everywhere.”
“We can use the tempest you brewed up last year. The one that messes with all of the electronics. And let’s pull in Turner. If we need to look up someone’s record, he can manage it.”
“I don’t … I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“We either trust him or we don’t, Dawes.”
Dawes flexed her fingers on the steering wheel, then nodded. “We keep going,” she said.
“We keep going,” Alex repeated.
To hell and back.
Alex found Mercy and Lauren having a late lunch in the JE dining hall. The chatter was subdued, even among the Grays, and the room seemed bigger and colder, as if the college had dressed itself in mourning for Dean Beekman.
Alex filled her tray with a giant heap of pasta and a couple of sandwiches she
