rug, the lingering scent of vomit, she got down on her knees and began to search—the slats of the floor, under the runner. It wasn’t until she peered beneath an empty wicker planter that she saw a glint of gold. She wrapped her hand in the sleeve of her shirt and
carefully pulled it into the light. A coin of compulsion. Someone had been controlling Blake. Someone had given him very specific orders.
This is a funding year.
Darlington had brought his theory of the girls and the tombs to Sandow. But Sandow
had already known. Sandow, who was strapped for cash after his divorce and hadn’t published in years. Sandow, who wanted so desperately to keep Darlington’s
disappearance quiet. Sandow, who had delayed the ritual to find him until after that first new moon and who had used that ritual to bar Darlington from ever returning to Black Elm. Because maybe Sandow had been the one to set a trap for Darlington in the Rosenfeld basement in the first place. Even then, he’d been planning for Tara Hutchins to
die—and he’d known only Darlington would comprehend what her murder really meant.
So he got rid of him.
Sandow had never intended to bring Darlington back. After all, Alex was the perfect patsy. Of course everything had gone wrong the year they’d brought in an unknown as a Lethe delegate. It was to be expected. They’d be more cautious in the future. Next year,
brilliant, competent, steady Michelle Alameddine would come back to see to educating their wayward Dante. And Alex would be in Sandow’s debt, forever grateful thanks to that
grade bump.
Maybe I’m wrong, she thought. And even if she was right, that didn’t mean she had to
speak up. She could stay quiet, keep her passing grades, get through her calm, beautiful summer. Colin Khatri would graduate in May, so she wouldn’t have to make nice with him. She could survive, bloom, in Professor Belbalm’s care.
Alex turned the coin of compulsion over in her hand.
In the days after the massacre at the apartment in Van Nuys, Eitan had run all over Los
Angeles, trying to find out who’d killed his cousin. There were rumors it was the Russians
—except the Russians liked guns, not bats—or the Albanians, or that someone back in Israel had made sure Ariel would never return from California.
Eitan had come to see Alex in the hospital, despite the police officer posted at her door.
Men like Eitan were like Grays. They found a way in.
He’d sat by her bed in the chair Dean Elliot Sandow had occupied only a day before.
His eyes were red and the stubble on his chin was growing out. But his suit was as slick as
ever, the gold chain at his neck like some throwback to the seventies, as if it had been handed down by another generation of pimps and panderers, the passing of the torch.
“You almost die the other night,” he’d said. Alex had always liked his accent. She’d thought it was French at first.
She hadn’t known how to reply, so she licked her lips and gestured to the pitcher of ice
chips. Eitan had grunted and nodded.
“Open your mouth,” he’d said, and spooned two ice chips onto her tongue.
“Your lips are very chapped. Very dry. Ask for Vaseline.”
“Okay,” she’d croaked.
“What happen that night?”
“I don’t know. I got to the party late.”
“Why? Where were you?”
So this was an interrogation. That was fine. Alex was ready to confess.
“I did it.” Eitan’s head shot up. “I killed them all.”
Eitan slumped back in his chair and ran a hand over his face. “Fucking junkies.”
“I’m not a junkie.” She didn’t know if that was true. She’d never gotten into the hard
stuff. She’d been too afraid of what might happen if she lost too much control, but she’d
kept herself in a carefully modulated haze for years now.
“You kill them? Tiny little girl. You were pass out, full of fentanyl.” Eitan cut her a sidelong glance. “You owe me for the drugs.”
The fentanyl. It had come into her blood from Hellie somehow, left enough in her system to make it look like she’d almost overdosed too. A last gift. A perfect alibi.