“You bet,” said Alex. She turned to Darlington. “Aunt Eileen said she’d spring for a new couch, right?”
Darlington’s mother’s name was Harper, and he doubted she even knew the word Ikea.
“Did she really?”
Alex crossed her arms. “Yup.”
Darlington took his wallet from his back pocket and peeled off three hundred dollars in
cash. He handed it to Alex, who passed it to Lauren. “Make sure you write her a thank-
you note,” he said.
“Oh, I will,” said Alex. “I know she’s a real stickler for that kind of thing.”
When they were striding across the lawns of Old Campus, the red-brick towers and crenellations of Vanderbilt behind them, Darlington said, “You owe me three hundred dollars. I’m not buying you a couch.”
“You can afford it,” Alex said coolly. “I’m guessing you come from the good side of
the family, cuz.”
“You needed cover for why you’re going to be off seeing me so much.”
“Bullshit. You were testing me.”
“It’s my job to test you.”
“I thought it was your job to teach me. That’s not the same thing.”
At least she wasn’t stupid. “Fair enough. But visits to dear Aunt Eileen can cover a few
of your late nights.”
“How late are we talking about?”
He could hear the worry in her voice. Was it caution or laziness? “How much did Dean
Sandow tell you?”
“Not much.” She pulled the fabric of her shirt away from her stomach, trying to cool
herself.
“Why are you dressed like that?” He hadn’t meant to ask but she looked uncomfortable
—her black Henley buttoned to the neck, sweat spreading in dark rings from her armpits
—and completely out of place. A girl who managed lies so smoothly should have a better
sense of protective cover.
Alex just slid him a sideways look. “I’m very modest.” Darlington had no reply to that,
so he pointed to one of the two identical red-brick buildings bracketing the path. “This is
the oldest building on campus.”
“It doesn’t look old.”
“It’s been well maintained. It almost didn’t make it, though. People thought it ruined the look of Old Campus, so they wanted to knock it down.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“The books credit a preservation campaign, but the truth is Lethe discovered the
building was lode-bearing.”
“Huh?”
“Spiritually lode-bearing. It was part of an old binding ritual to keep the campus safe.”
They turned right, down a path that would lead them toward the ersatz-Medieval portcullis
of Phelps Gate. “That’s what the whole college used to look like. Little buildings of red bricks. Colonial. A lot like Harvard. Then after the Civil War, the walls went up. Now most of the campus is built that way, a series of fortresses, walled and gated, a castle keep.”
Old Campus was a perfect example, a massive quadrangle of towering stone dorms
surrounding a huge sun-dappled courtyard welcome to all—until night fell and the gates
banged shut.
“Why?” Alex asked.
“To keep the rabble out. The soldiers came back to New Haven from the war wild, most of them unmarried, a lot of them messed up from the fighting. There was a wave of
immigration too. Irish, Italians, freed slaves, everyone looking for manufacturing jobs.
Yale didn’t want any of it.”
Alex laughed.
“Is something funny?” he asked.
She glanced back at her dorm. “Mercy’s Chinese. A Nigerian girl lives next door. Then
there’s my mongrel ass. We all got in anyway. Eventually.”
“A long slow siege.” The word mongrel felt like dangerous bait. He took in her black
hair, her black eyes, the olive cast to her skin. She might have been Greek. Mexican.
White. “Jewish mother, no mention of a father, but I assume you had one?”
“Never knew him.”
There was more here but he wasn’t going to push. “We all have spaces we keep blank.”
They’d reached Phelps Gate, the big echoing archway that led onto College Street and away from the relative safety of Old Campus. He didn’t want to get sidetracked. They had