glanced at her. “Any Latin?” She shook her head. Of course not. “They hate reminders of
death. If you want to Gray-proof your room, hang a Holbein print.” He’d meant it as a joke, but he could see she was chewing on what he’d said, committing the artist’s name to
memory. Darlington felt an acute twinge of guilt that he did not enjoy. He’d been so busy
envying this girl’s ability, he hadn’t considered what it might be like if you could never close the door on the dead. “I can ward your room,” he said by way of penance. “Your whole dorm if you like.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I can show you how to do it too.”
“Tell me the rest,” said Alex. Away from the dim cavern of the dorms, sweat had formed in a slick sheen over her nose and forehead, gathering in the divot above her upper
lip. She was going to soak that shirt, and he could see she was self-conscious about it by
the way she held her arms rigidly to her sides.
“Did you read The Life of Lethe?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“I skimmed it.”
“Read it,” he said. “I’ve made you a list of other material that will help get you up to
speed. Mostly histories of New Haven and our own compiled history of the societies.”
Alex gave a sharp shake of her head. “I mean tell me what I’m in for here … with you.”
That was a hard question to answer. Nothing. Everything. Lethe was meant to be a gift,
but could it be to her? There was too much to tell.
They left the green and he saw tension snap back into her shoulders, though there was
still nothing his eyes could see to warrant it. They passed the row of banks clustered along
Elm, looming over Kebabian’s, the little red rug store that had somehow thrived in New
Haven for over one hundred years, then turned left up Orange. They were only a few blocks from campus proper now, but it felt like miles. The bustle of student life vanished,
as if stepping into the city was like falling off a cliff. The streets were a mess of new and old: gently weathered townhouses, barren parking lots, a carefully restored concert hall, the gargantuan high rise of the Housing Authority.
“Why here?” Alex asked when Darlington didn’t answer her previous question. “What
is it about this place that draws them?”
The short answer was Who knows? But Darlington doubted that would cast him or Lethe in the most credible light.
“In the early eighteen hundreds, magic was moving from the old world to the new, leaving Europe along with its practitioners. They needed someplace to store their
knowledge and preserve its practices. No one’s certain why New Haven worked. They tried in other places too,” Darlington said with some pride. “Cambridge. Princeton. New
Haven was where the magic caught and held and took root. Some people think it’s because
the Veil is thinner here, easier to pierce. You can see why Lethe is happy to have you on
board.” At least, some of Lethe. “You may be able to offer us answers. There are Grays that have been here far longer than the university.”
“And these practitioners thought it would be smart to teach all this magic to a bunch of
college kids?”
“Contact with the uncanny takes a toll. The older you get, the harder it is to endure that
contact. So each year, the societies replenish the supply with a new tap, a new delegation.
Magic is quite literally a dying art, and New Haven is one of the few places in the world
where it can still be brought to life.”
She said nothing. Was she scared? Good. Maybe she would actually read the books he
assigned instead of skimming them.
“There are over a hundred societies at Yale at this point, but we don’t concern ourselves
with most of them. They get together for dinners, tell their life stories, do a little community service. It’s the Ancient Eight that matter. The landed societies. The Houses of
the Veil. They’re the ones that have held their tombs continuously.”
“Tombs?”
“I’m betting you’ve already seen some of them. Clubhouses, though they look more