A meeting. With a seating chart. Maybe some minted slush punch. Alex felt a wild anger building inside her. “Tell me someone is going to pay for what they did.”
“We’ll see,” said Sandow.
“We’ll see?”
Sandow raised his head. His eyes were fierce, lit by the same fire she’d seen when he’d
faced down a hellbeast on new-moon night. “You think I don’t know what they’re getting
away with? You think I don’t care? Merity being passed around like candy. Portal magic
revealed to outsiders and used by one of them to attack a delegate of Lethe. Manuscript and Scroll and Key should both be stripped of their tombs.”
“But Lethe won’t act?” asked Dawes.
“And destroy two more of the Ancient Eight?” His voice was bitter. “We are kept alive
by their funding, and this isn’t Aurelian or St. Elmo we’re talking about. These are two of
the strongest Houses. Their alumni are incredibly powerful and they’re already lobbying
for clemency.”
“I don’t get it,” said Alex. She should just let it all go, take her boosted GPA and be glad she was alive. But she couldn’t. “You had to know something like this would happen
eventually. Turner’s right. You soup up the car. You hand them the keys. Why leave magic, all this power, to a bunch of kids?”
Sandow sagged further in his chair, the fire leaving him. “Youth is a wasting resource,
Alex. The alumni need the societies; an entire network of contacts and cohorts depends on
the magic they can access. This is why the alumni return here, why the trusts maintain the
tombs.”
“So no one pays,” said Alex. Except Tara. Except Darlington. Except her and Dawes.
Maybe they were knights—valuable enough, but easy to sacrifice in the long game.
Dawes turned cold eyes on the dean. “You should go.”
Sandow looked defeated as he wheeled himself into the hall. “You were right,” Dawes
said when they were alone. “They’re all going to get away with it.”
A brisk knock sounded at the open door.
“Ms. Dawes, your sister is here to pick you up,” said Jean. She pointed at Alex. “And
you should be resting in your own bed, little miss. I’m coming back with a wheelchair.”
“You’re leaving?” Alex hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory. Dawes had saved her life.
She could go wherever she wanted. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“She lives in Westport,” Dawes said. “I just need …” She shook her head. “This was
supposed to be a research job. It’s too much.”
“It really is,” said Alex. If her mom’s place had been a few train stops away instead of a
few thousand miles, she wouldn’t have minded curling up on the couch there for a week or
twelve.
Alex climbed out of the bed. “Be safe, Dawes. Watch lots of bad TV and just be normal
for a while.”
“Stay,” Dawes protested. “I want you to meet her.”
Alex made herself smile. “Come see me before you go. I need to get some of that sweet, sweet Percocet before I collapse, and I don’t want to wait for good nurse Jean to wheel me away.”
She moved as fast as she could out the door, before Dawes could say more.
Alex returned to her room only long enough to retrieve her phone and yank out her IV.
Her clothes and boots were nowhere to be found, taken to be entered into evidence. She’d
probably never see them again.
She knew what she was doing was irrational, but she didn’t want to be here anymore.
She didn’t want to pretend to talk reasonably about something that made no sense.
Sandow could make all of the apologies he wanted. Alex didn’t feel safe. And she had
to wonder if she’d ever feel safe again. We are the shepherds. But who would protect them from the wolves? Blake Keely was dead and gone, his pretty skull smashed to bits. But what was going to happen to Kate Masters and Manuscript, who had unleashed Merity for
the sake of saving a few dollars? What about Colin—eager, brilliant, scrubbed-face Colin
—and the rest of Scroll and Key, who had sold their secrets to criminals and possibly sent