before. He’d been smiling, gracious, and she’d known in an instant that he hated not only
her but also Darlington and everything related to Lethe. She wasn’t sure why he’d been chosen as Centurion, the liaison between Lethe House and the Chief of Police, but he clearly didn’t want the job.
He stood speaking to another detective and a uniform. He was a full half head taller than either of them, black, his head shaved in a low fade. He wore a sharp navy suit and
what was probably a real Burberry overcoat, and ambition rolled off him like thunder. Too pretty, her grandmother would have said. Quien se prestado se vestio, en medio de la calle se quito. Estrea Stern didn’t trust handsome men, particularly the well-dressed ones.
Alex hovered by the barricade. Centurion was on the scene just as Dawes had
promised, but Alex wasn’t sure how to get his attention or what to do once she had it. The
societies met on Thursdays and Sundays. No ritual of any real risk was allowed without
Lethe House delegates present, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t gone off script.
Maybe word had spread that Darlington was “in Spain” and someone at one of the
societies had used the opportunity to mess with something new. She didn’t think they had
any real malice in mind, but the Tripps and Mirandas of the world could do plenty of damage without ever meaning to. Their mistakes never stuck.
The crowd around her had dispersed almost immediately and Alex remembered how
bad she must smell, but there was nothing she could do about it now. She took out her phone and scrolled through her few contacts. She’d gotten a new phone when she’d accepted Lethe’s offer, erasing everyone from her old life in a single act of banishment, so
it was a short list of numbers. Her roommates. Her mom, who texted every morning with a
series of happy faces, as if emoji were their own incantation. Turner was in there too but
Alex had never texted him, never had cause to.
I’m here, she typed, then added, It’s Dante, on the very good possibility that he hadn’t bothered to add her to his contacts.
She watched as Turner drew his phone from his pocket, read the message. He didn’t look around.
Her phone buzzed a second later.
I know.
Alex waited for ten minutes, twenty. She watched Turner finish his conversation,
consult a woman in a blue jacket, walk back and forth near a marked-off area, where the
body must have been found.
A cluster of Grays was milling around by the gym. Alex let her eyes skim over them, landing nowhere, barely focused. A few were local Grays who could always be found in
the area, a rower who had drowned off the Florida Keys but who now returned to haunt
the training tanks, a heavyset man who had clearly once been a football player. She thought she glimpsed the Bridegroom, the city’s most notorious ghost and a favorite of murder nerds and Haunted New England guidebooks; he had reputedly killed his fiancée
and himself in the offices of a factory that had once stood barely a mile from here. She didn’t let her gaze linger to confirm it. Payne Whitney was always a beacon for Grays, steeped in sweat and endeavor, full of hunger and fast-beating hearts.
“When did you first see them?” Darlington had asked on the day they’d first met, the
day he’d set the jackals on her. Darlington knew seven languages. He could fence. He knew Brazilian jujitsu and how to rewire an electrical box, could quote poetry and plays
by people Alex had never heard of. But he always asked the wrong questions.
Alex checked her phone. She’d lost another hour. At this point she probably shouldn’t
even bother going to sleep. She knew she wasn’t high on Turner’s list of priorities, but she
was in a bind.
She typed, My next call is to Sandow.
It was a bluff, one Alex almost hoped Turner wouldn’t fall for. If he refused to speak to
her, she’d happily snitch on him to the dean—but at a more civilized hour. First she’d go
home and get two glorious hours of sleep.
Instead, she watched Turner take the phone from his pocket, shake his head, and then