washed so many times it was closer to gray than black, but Dawes hadn’t needed to share
her closet. Alex wanted to soak up every kindness while she still could.
As she set out for Belbalm’s house, Alex felt jumpy. She’d wound her watch tight in case the gluma was stalking her, stuffed a jar of graveyard dirt into her satchel, placed two magnets in her pocket, and studied the signs of warding needed to close a portal temporarily. They felt like small protections. The list of suspects in Tara’s murder had become a list of possible threats, and they were all packing too much magical firepower.
Belbalm lived on St. Ronan, a twenty-minute walk north from Il Bastone, not far from
the divinity school. Her house was one of the smaller ones on the street, two stories high,
and built of red brick covered in gray vines like an old woman’s hair. Alex entered through
a garden gate beneath a white lattice arch, and the same sense of calm she’d felt in Belbalm’s office descended over her. The garden smelled of mint and marjoram.
Alex paused on the path. It was some kind of crushed gravel the color of slate. Through
the tall windows, she could see a circle of people gathered in a variety of chairs, a few
crowded onto a piano bench, some on the floor. She glimpsed glasses of red wine, plates poised on knees. A boy with a beard and a wild mane of curls was reading from something. She felt like she was looking into another Yale, a Yale beyond Lethe and the
societies, one that might open and keep opening if she could just learn its rituals and codes. At Darlington’s house she had felt like a trespasser. Here she had been invited. She
might not belong but she was welcome.
She knocked softly at the door and, when there was no answer, pushed gently. It was
unlocked, as if there were never unwanted visitors. There were coats hung in heaps and in
piles along a row of hooks. The floor was littered with boots.
Belbalm saw her hovering in the door and gestured Alex toward the kitchen.
Then Alex understood. She was staff.
Of course she was staff.
Thank God she was staff and wouldn’t have to try to pretend to be anything else.
Over Belbalm’s shoulder, Alex spotted Dean Sandow talking to two students on a
settee. She slipped into the kitchen, hoping he hadn’t seen her, and then wondered why she
should worry about it. Did she really think he had hurt Tara? That he was capable of something that gruesome? In the parlor back at Il Bastone, it had seemed possible, but here, in this place of warmth and easy conversation, Alex couldn’t quite get her head around it.
The kitchen was vast, the cupboards white, the countertops black, the floor a clean checkerboard.
“Alex!” crowed Colin when she appeared. Murder suspects on all sides. “I didn’t know
you were coming! We need extra hands. What are you wearing? Black is fine, but next time a white button-down.”
Alex didn’t own a white button-down. “Okay,” she said.
“Just come over here and set these on a baking sheet.”
Alex fell into the rhythm of following orders. Isabel Andrews, Belbalm’s other
assistant, was there too, arranging fruit and pastries and mysterious stacks of meats on different platters. The food they were serving seemed utterly foreign to her. When Colin
said to hand him the cheese, it took her a long moment to realize it was right in front of
her: not platters of cubed cheddar but giant hunks of what looked like quartz and iolite, a
tiny pot of honey, a spray of almonds. All of it art.
“After the readings and the talk they’ll do dessert,” Colin explained. “She always does
meringues and mini tartes aux pommes.”
“Was Dean Sandow here last week?” Alex asked. If he had been, then Alex could cross
him off their list, and if Colin didn’t know, then maybe he hadn’t really been at the salon all night.
But before he could answer, Professor Belbalm sailed through the swinging doors.
“Of course he was,” she said. “That man loves to drink my bourbon.” She popped a tiny wild strawberry into her mouth and wiped her fingers on a towel. “He said the most