needed to keep the Ninth House alive—more since Berzelius never paid in. Was Lethe that
precious to Sandow?
“What kind of salary does Dean Sandow get from Lethe?” Alex asked.
Dawes blinked. “I don’t actually know. But he has tenure. He makes plenty from the university.”
“Gambling?” suggested Turner. “Drugs? Debt?”
Dawes’s spine seemed to straighten even more, as if she were an antenna being
adjusted to receive information. “Divorce,” she said slowly, reluctantly. “His wife left him
two years ago. They’ve been in court ever since. Still—”
“It’s probably nothing,” said Alex, though she wasn’t at all sure that was true. “But it
couldn’t hurt to know where he was that night.”
Dawes’s teeth dug into her lip again. “Dean Sandow would never do anything to hurt
Lethe.”
Turner rose and began to collect his folders. “For the right price, he just might. Why do
you think I said yes to being Centurion?”
“It’s an honor,” protested Dawes.
“It’s a job, on top of the very intense job I already have. But the money meant I could pay down my mother’s mortgage.” He slid the folders into a messenger bag. “I’ll see what
I can find out about Sandow without tipping him off.”
“I should do it,” Dawes said quietly. “I can talk to his housekeeper. If you start asking
questions, Yelena will go to Sandow right away.”
“Do you feel up to that?” Turner said skeptically.
“She can handle it,” said Alex. “We just need a look at his schedule.”
“I like money as a motive,” said Turner. “Nice and clean. None of this hocus-pocus bullshit.” He shrugged into his coat and headed for the back door. Alex and Dawes followed.
Turner paused with the door open. Behind him, Alex could see the sky turning the deep
blue of dusk, the streetlamps coming on. “My mother couldn’t just take the check,” he said, a rueful smile on his lips. “She knows cops don’t get bonuses. She wanted to know
where the money came from.”
“Did you tell her?” asked Alex.
“About all this? Hell no. I said I hit a lucky streak at Foxwoods. But she still knew I’d gotten myself into something I shouldn’t have.”
“Mothers are like that,” said Dawes.
Were they? Alex thought of the photo her mom had texted her the week before. She’d
had one of her friends snap a picture of her in the apartment. Mira had been wearing a Yale sweatshirt, the mantel behind her crowded with crystals.
“Do you know what my mother said?” Turner asked. “She told me there’s no doorway
the devil doesn’t know. He’s always waiting to stick his foot in. I never really believed her until tonight.”
Turner pulled up his collar and disappeared into the cold.
23
Winter
Alex trudged upstairs to retrieve her boots from the armory. The crucible had healed her
wounds, but she was short on sleep and her body knew it. Still if she’d had a choice, she
thought she might take another brawl, even with a bruiser like Lance, rather than face the
salon tonight, classes tomorrow, and the day after—and the day after that. When she was
fighting for her life, it was strictly pass/fail. All she had to do was survive and she could call it a win. Even sitting in the parlor with Dawes and Turner, she’d felt like she was keeping up, not just playing along. She didn’t want to go back to feeling like a fraud.
But you are still pretending, she reminded herself. Dawes and Turner didn’t really know her. They never would have guessed at what Darlington had learned about her past.
And if the new-moon rite worked? If Darlington returned two days from now and told them all the truth, would anyone speak for her then?
Alex found a stack of clothes on her bed in the Dante room.
“I brought them from my apartment,” Dawes said, hovering in the doorway, hands
curled into her sleeves. “They’re not stylish, but they’re better than sweats. I know you like black, so …”
“They’re perfect.” They weren’t. The jeans were too long and the shirt had been