hound, and there, one after another, were deeds of acquisition for land all over New Haven, the locations that would one day house each of the eight Houses of the Veil, each
one built over a nexus of power created by some unknown force.
But Darlington had known. The first. 1854: The year the Russell Trust had acquired the land where Skull and Bones would build their tomb. Darlington had pieced together what
had created those focal points of magic that fed the societies’ rituals, that made all of it possible. Dead girls. One after another. He’d used the old editions of the New Havener to match the places they’d died to the locations of the societies’ tombs.
What had been special about these deaths? Even if all these girls had been murdered,
there had been plenty of homicides in New Haven over the years that hadn’t resulted in magical nexuses. And Daisy hadn’t even died on High Street, where Skull and Bones erected their tomb, so why had the nexus formed there? Alex knew she was missing something, failing to connect the dots Darlington would have.
North had given her the dates; he had seen the connections too. Alex sprinted back to
the bathroom and filled the basin of the sink.
“North,” she said, feeling like a fool. “North.”
Nothing. Ghosts. Never there when you needed them.
But there were plenty of ways to get a Gray’s attention. Alex hesitated, then took the
letter opener from the desk. She slashed it across the top of her forearm and let the blood
drip into the water, watching it plume.
“Knock knock, North.”
His face appeared in the reflection so suddenly she jumped.
“Daisy’s death created a nexus,” she said. “How did you find out?”
“I couldn’t find Tara. It should have been easy with that object in hand, but there was no sign of her on this side of the Veil. Just like Daisy. There’s no sign of Gladys O’Donaghue either. Something happened that day. Something bigger than my death or
Daisy’s. I think it happened again when Tara died.”
Daisy had been an aristocrat, one of the city’s elite. Her death had started it all. But the
other girls? Who had they been? Names like DeLauro, Mazurski, Mishkan. Had they been
immigrant girls working in the factories? Housemaids? Daughters of freed slaves? Girls who would have no headlines or marble headstones to mark their passing?
And was Tara meant to be one of them too? A sacrifice? But why had her murder been
so gruesome? So public? And why now? If these really were killings, it had been over fifty years since the last girl died.
Someone needed a nexus. One of the Houses of the Veil was in need of a new home. St.
Elmo’s had been petitioning to build a new tomb for years—and what good was a tomb
without a nexus beneath it? Alex remembered the empty plot of land where Tara’s body
had been found. Plenty of room to build.
“North,” she said. “Go back and look for the others.” She read their names to him, one
after another: Colina Tillman, Sophie Mishkan, Effie White, Zuzanna Mazurski, Paoletta DeLauro. “Try to find them.”
Alex plucked a towel from the rack and pressed it against her bleeding arm. She sat down at the desk, looked out the window onto Orange Street, trying to think. If Darlington
had uncovered the cause of the nexuses, the first person he would have told was Sandow.
He’d probably been proud, excited to have made a new discovery, one that would shed new light on the way that magic worked in his city. But Sandow had never mentioned it to
her or Dawes, this final project Darlington had been pursuing.
Did it matter? Sandow couldn’t be involved. He’d been violently attacked only a few
feet from where she was sitting. He’d almost died.
But not because of Blake Keely. Blake had hurt Dawes, had nearly killed Alex, but he
hadn’t hurt the dean. It had been the snarling half-mad hounds of Lethe that had come to
Alex’s defense. She remembered Blake’s clenched fist. He’d struck her with that hand but
then he’d kept it closed.
She walked back to the hallway at the top of the stairs. Ignoring the dark stains on the