administration to fix this. Because the video would still be out there, and Blake Keely was
rich and beautiful and beloved, and there was a big difference between things being fair and things being set right.
15
Winter
Alex hadn’t been back to Manuscript since the Halloween party. That night, she’d stayed
with Darlington at Black Elm, trying to keep warm in his narrow bed. She’d woken to dawn light trickling through the room and Darlington curled behind her, asleep. He was hard again, the ridge of him tucked against the curves of her ass. One of his hands was cupped over her breast, his thumb moving back and forth over her nipple with the lazy rhythmic sway of a cat’s tail. Alex felt her whole body flush.
“Darlington,” she had snapped.
“Mmm?” he murmured against the back of her neck.
“Wake up and fuck me or cut that out. ”
He froze and she felt him wake. He rolled off the bed, stumbling, tangled in covers. “I
didn’t … I’m sorry. Did we?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“Those assholes.”
A rare swear but a deserved one. His eyes had been bloodshot, his face haggard. It would have been worse if he’d known that the report she showed him over breakfast bore
no resemblance to the one she’d actually sent to Dean Sandow.
The Manuscript tomb looked even uglier beneath a noon sun, the circle hidden in its brickwork seeming to appear then disappear as Alex approached the front door. Mike Awolowo waved her inside. The big room and the yard beyond looked airy, safe, all signs
of the arcane buried deep beneath the surface.
“I’m glad you reached out,” he said, though Alex doubted that was true. He was an international studies major and had the intense, friendly poise of a daytime talk-show host.
Alex glanced over his shoulder and was happy to see the place seemed empty. Now that
Kate Masters was on Alex’s suspect list, she didn’t want to complicate things.
“Time to settle up.”
Mike’s expression was resigned, the look of someone sitting in a dentist’s chair. “What
do you need?”
“A way to call back something. A video.”
“If it’s gone viral, there’s nothing we can do.”
“I don’t think it has, not yet, but it could tip any minute.”
“How many people have seen it?”
“I’m not sure. Right now maybe a handful.”
“That’s a big ritual, Alex. And I’m not even sure it would work.”
Alex held his gaze. “The only reason you’re even up and functioning is because of the
report I filed on Halloween.”
The night of the party, she and Darlington had stormed out of the tomb, or done their
best to, Mike and Kate trailing after in their Batman and Poison Ivy costumes. Darlington
was wobbly on his feet, blinking at everything as if it was too bright, clinging hard to her
arm.
“Please,” Awolowo had begged. “This wasn’t sanctioned by the delegation. One of the
alumni had a bug up his ass about Darlington. It was supposed to be a joke.”
“Nothing happened,” said Kate.
“That wasn’t nothing,” Alex retorted, dragging Darlington farther down the block. But
Awolowo and Masters had followed, arguing and then making offers. So Alex had
propped Darlington against the Mercedes and made a deal, a favor for a softening of the
report. She’d described the drugging as an accident and Manuscript had faced nothing but
a fine, when otherwise they would have been suspended. She’d known eventually
Darlington would find out, when harsher sanctions never materialized. If nothing else, she’d get a stern lecture on the difference between morals and ethics. But then Darlington
had disappeared, and the report had never been an issue. She knew it was a punk move,
but if she survived her freshman year, Lethe would be her show to run. She had to do things her way.
Awolowo crossed his arms. “I thought you did that to save Darlington’s pride.”
“I did it because the world runs on favors.” Alex rubbed a hand over her face, trying to
shake a sudden wave of fatigue. She held up her phone. “Look at her tongue. Someone’s