Mercy snorted. “No, you’re not. I can tell. So continues the mystery of Alex Stern. It’s
okay. Mystery is good. I played softball for two years in high school.”
“You did?”
“See? I have secrets too. Did you hear about Blake?”
She hadn’t. She hadn’t heard about anything during the weeks she’d hid at the Hutch.
That had been the point. But according to Mercy, Blake Keely had attacked a woman in
her home and her husband had fought him off with a golf club. Forensics had matched the
knife he’d been carrying with the weapon in the Tara Hutchins murder investigation.
There was no mention of Dawes, or the mansion on Orange, or Hiram Bingham III’s fatal
marble noggin. No discussion of Merity. Not a single word about the societies. Case closed.
“I could have ended up dead,” said Mercy. “I guess I should be grateful.”
Grateful. The word hung in the air, its wrongness like the sour clang of a bell.
Mercy tilted her head back, letting it flop on the arm of the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “My great-grandmother lived to be one hundred and three years old. She was doing her own taxes and swimming at the Y every morning until she keeled over dead in
the middle of a yoga class.”
“She sounds great.”
“She was a total asshole. My brother and I hated going to her house. She served the nastiest-smelling tea and she never stopped complaining. But you always felt a little tougher at the end of a visit. Like you’d endured her.”
Alex figured she’d be lucky if she made it to the end of the semester. But it was a nice
sentiment. “I wish my grandmother had made it to a hundred and three.”
“What was she like?”
Alex sat down in Lauren’s ugly recliner. “Superstitious. Religious. I’m not sure which
one. But she had a steel spine. My mom told me when she brought my father home, he took one look at my grandmother, turned right around, and never came back.” Alex had asked her grandmother about it once, after her first heart attack. Too pretty, she’d said, waving her hand dismissively. Mal tormento que soplo. He was a bad wind that blew through.
“I think you have to be like that,” Mercy said. “If you’re going to survive to get old.”
Alex looked out the window. The Bridegroom had returned. His face was taut,
determined. As if he could wait forever. And he probably could.
What do you want? Belbalm had asked her. Safety, comfort, to feel unafraid. I want to live to grow old, Alex thought as she pulled the curtains closed. I want to sit on my porch and drink foul-smelling tea and yell at passersby. I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.
29
Early Spring
The next morning when Alex set out for class, determined to at least try to make a good
show of it, North was still there. He seemed agitated, cutting in and out of her path, hovering in her field of vision so that she couldn’t see the board in Spanish.
I know you’re not around, Alex texted Dawes when she got out of section. But did you ever find anything about severing connections to Grays? I’ve got a Bridegroom situation.
Temper fraying, she cut into the bathroom in the entryway to Commons and waved
North inside.
“Just tell me one thing,” she said to him. “Did you find Tara behind the Veil?”
He shook his head.
“Then I’m going to need you to fuck off for a good long while. The deal is off. The case is solved and I don’t want to hang with your girl-murdering ass.” Alex didn’t really
believe North had been responsible; she just wanted him to leave her alone.
The Bridegroom jabbed a finger at the sink.
“If you think I’m going to run a bath in there so we can have a chat, you’re wrong.
Take a break.”
She thought about ditching lecture and just going back to the quiet of her warded dorm
room. But she’d gone to the trouble of putting on clothes. She might as well make the most of it. At least it was Shakespeare and not Modern British Novels.
She crossed Elm to High Street and Linsly-Chittenden Hall, and took a seat on the aisle, tucking herself into a desk. Whenever the Bridegroom swooped into her view, she shifted her focus. She hadn’t done the reading, but everyone knew The Taming of the Shrew, and she liked this bit they were covering about the sisters and music.