Alex stepped outside and opened the Albemarle Book again. Darlington had been
working in the library the night he’d disappeared. She wrote out a request for the Rosenfeld schematics.
This time when she pulled the door open, the shelves were empty except for a single
book lying flat on its side. It was large and slender, bound in oxblood leather, and completely free of dust. Alex set it on the table at the center of the room and let it fall open. There, between elevations of the third and fourth subterranean levels of Rosenfeld
Hall, was a sheet of yellow legal paper, folded neatly and covered in Darlington’s tiny, jagged scrawl—the last thing he’d written before someone sent him to hell.
She was afraid to unfold the page. It might be nothing. Notes on a term paper. A list of
repairs needed at Black Elm. But she didn’t believe that. That night in December, Darlington had been working on something he cared about, something he’d been picking
at for months. He’d been distracted as he worked, maybe thinking of the night ahead, maybe worried about his apprentice, who never did the damn reading. He hadn’t wanted to
bring his notes with him, so he’d stashed them someplace safe. Right here, in this book of
blueprints. He’d thought he would be back soon enough.
“I should have been a better Dante,” she whispered.
But maybe she could do better now.
Gently, she unfolded the page. The first line read: 1958-Colina Tillman-Wrexham.
Heart attack? Stroke?
A series of dates followed—coupled with what seemed to be women’s names. The last
three dates on the list matched those North had forced her to write in her notebook.
1902-Sophie Mishkan-Rhinelander-Brain fever?
1898-Effie White-Stone-Dropsy (Edema?)
1883-Zuzanna Mazurski-Phelps-Apoplexy
1869-Paoletta DeLauro-Kingsley-Stabbing
1854-Daisy Fanning Whitlock-Russell-Gunshot
The first? Darlington had believed that Daisy was the first, but the first what? Daisy had been shot, Paoletta had been stabbed, but the others had died of natural causes.
Or someone had gotten smarter about killing girls.
I’m seeing things, thought Alex. I’m making connections that aren’t there. According to every single TV show she’d ever watched, serial killers always had a modus operandi, a
way they liked to kill. Besides, even if a murderer had been operating in New Haven, if
these dates were right, this particular psychopath had been preying on girls from 1854 to
1958—over one hundred years.
But she couldn’t say it was impossible, not when she’d seen what magic could do.
And there was something about the way the dates clustered that felt familiar. The pattern matched the way the societies had been founded. There’d been a flurry of activity
in the 1800s—and then a new tomb hadn’t been built for a very long time, not until Manuscript in the sixties. An unpleasant shiver crawled over Alex’s skin. She knew Skull
and Bones had been founded in 1832 and that date didn’t line up with any of the deaths,
but it was the only year she could remember.
Alex took the notes and padded down the hall to the Dante room. She grabbed a copy
of The Life of Lethe from the desk drawer. Scroll and Key had been founded in 1842,
Book and Snake in 1865, St. Elmo in 1889, Manuscript in 1952. Only the founding date of Wolf’s Head matched up with 1883, but that could be coincidence.
She ran her finger down the list of names.
1854-Daisy Fanning Whitlock-Russell-Gunshot
She hadn’t seen Daisy’s name hyphenated anywhere else. She’d always just been Daisy
Fanning Whitlock.
Because it wasn’t a hyphen. None of them were hyphens. Rhinelander. Stone. Phelps.
Kingsley. Russell. Wrexham. They were the names of the trusts, the foundations and associations that funded the societies—that paid for the construction of their tombs.
Alex ran back to the library and slammed the shelf shut; she yanked the Albemarle Book free again but made herself slow down. She needed to think about how to phrase this. Russell was the trust that funded Skull and Bones. Carefully, she wrote out: Deed for land acquired by Russell Trust on High Street, New Haven, Connecticut.
A ledger was waiting for her on the middle shelf. It was marked with the Lethe spirit