Alex sprang to her feet, but in the next second he was beside her. His fist shot out, cracking across her jaw. Only North’s strength kept her from crumpling. She swung the putter, but the mechanic was already gone. A fist cracked into her from the other side.
This time she went down.
The mechanic kicked her hard in the side, his boot connecting with her broken ribs. She
screamed. He kicked again.
“Get your hands on your head!”
Detective Turner. He was standing at the door, his weapon drawn.
The mechanic looked at Turner. He threw his middle fingers up and vanished, melting
into the mantel.
Alex slumped against the wall and felt North flood out of her, saw him leave her in a
blurry tide, reassuming his form, his face frightened and resentful. Was she supposed to feel sorry for him?
“I get it,” Alex muttered. “But I didn’t have a choice.” He touched his hand to the wound at his chest as if she’d been the one to shoot him.
“Just find Tara,” she snapped. “You have the retainer.”
“The what?” said Turner. He was patting the mantel and the bricked-up hearth beneath
it as if expecting to find a secret passage.
“Portal magic,” Alex grunted out.
North looked back once over his shoulder and vanished through the wall of the
apartment. Pain came at her in a sudden swell, a time-lapse photograph of a blooming flower, as if North’s presence had kept the worst of it at bay and now that she was empty
the damage could rush in. Alex tried to push herself up. Turner had holstered his weapon.
Turner slammed his fist on the counter. “That isn’t possible.”
“It is,” said Alex.
“You don’t understand,” said Turner. He looked at her the way North had, as if Alex had done him a wrong. “That was Lance Gressang. That was my murder suspect. I left him less than an hour ago. Sitting in a jail cell.”
Is there something unnatural in the very fabric of New Haven? In the stone used to raise its buildings? In the rivers from which its great elms drink?
During the War of 1812, the British blockaded New Haven Harbor, and poor
Trinity Church—not yet the Gothic palace now gracing the green—had no
way of accessing the necessary lumber for its construction. But Commander
Hardy of the Royal British Navy heard of the purpose for which the great
roof beams were intended. He permitted them to pass and they were floated
down the Connecticut River. “If there is any place on earth that needs
religion,” he said, “it is this New Haven. Let the rafts go through!”
—from Lethe: A Legacy
Why do you think they built so many churches here? Somehow the men and
women of this city knew: Their streets were home to other gods.
—Lethe Days Diary of Elliot Sandow (Branford College ’69)
21
Winter
Turner had his phone out and Alex knew what came next. Part of her wanted to let it happen. She wanted the steady beep of hospital machines, the smell of antiseptic, an IV
full of the strongest dope they had to knock her into sleep and away from this pain. Was
she dying? She didn’t think so. Now that she’d done it once, she figured she’d know. But
it felt like she was dying.
“Don’t.” She forced the word out in a rasp. Her throat still hurt like it was being squeezed by Lance Gressang’s enormous hands. “No hospital.”
“Did you see that in a movie?”
“How are you going to explain this to a doctor?”
“I’ll say I found you this way,” said Turner.
“Okay, how am I going to explain this? And the messed-up crime scene. And how I got
in here.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I don’t need a hospital. Take me to Dawes.”
“Dawes?”
Alex was annoyed that Turner had somehow forgotten Dawes’s name. “Oculus.”
“Fuck this,” said Turner. “All of you with your code names and your secrets and your
bullshit.” She could see the way he was leaping from rage to fear and back again. His mind was trying to erase everything he’d seen. It was one thing to be told magic existed,