Alex glanced at the man on the table: Michael Reyes. She’d read his file two weeks ago, when he was selected for the ritual. The flaps of his stomach were pinned back with
steel clips and his abdomen looked like it was blooming, a plump pink orchid, plush and
red at its center. Tell me that doesn’t leave a mark. But she had her own future to worry about. Reyes would manage.
Alex averted her eyes, tried to breathe through her nose as her stomach roiled and coppery saliva flooded her mouth. She’d seen plenty of bad injuries but always on the dead. There was something much worse about a living wound, a human body tethered to
life by nothing but the steady metallic beep of a monitor. She had candied ginger in her pocket for nausea—one of Darlington’s tips—but she couldn’t quite bring herself to take it
out and unwrap it.
Instead, she focused her gaze on some middle distance as the Haruspex called out a series of numbers and letters—stock symbols and share prices for companies traded
publicly on the New York Stock Exchange. Later in the night he’d move on to the NASDAQ, Euronext, and the Asian markets. Alex didn’t bother trying to decipher them.
The orders to buy, sell, or hold were given in impenetrable Dutch, the language of commerce, the first stock exchange, old New York, and the official language of the Bonesmen. When Skull and Bones was founded, too many students knew Greek and
Latin. Their dealings had required something more obscure.
“Dutch is harder to pronounce,” Darlington had told her. “Besides, it gives the
Bonesmen an excuse to visit Amsterdam.” Of course, Darlington knew Latin, Greek, and
Dutch. He also spoke French, Mandarin, and passable Portuguese. Alex had just started Spanish II. Between the classes she’d taken in grade school and her grandmother’s mishmash of Ladino sayings, she’d thought it would be an easy grade. She hadn’t counted
on things like the subjunctive. But she could just about ask if Gloria might like to go to the discotheque tomorrow night.
A burst of muffled gunfire rattled through the wall from the screening next door. The
Haruspex looked up from the slick pink mess of Michael Reyes’s small intestine, his irritation apparent.
Scarface, Alex realized as the music swelled and a chorus of rowdy voices thundered in unison, “You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough?” The audience chanting
along like it was Rocky Horror. She must have seen Scarface a hundred times. It was one of Len’s favorites. He was predictable that way, loved everything hard— as if he’d mailed away for a How to Be Gangster kit. When they’d met Hellie near the Venice boardwalk,
her golden hair like a parted curtain for the theater of her big blue eyes, Alex had thought
instantly of Michelle Pfeiffer in her satin shift. All she’d been missing was the smooth sheaf of bangs. But Alex didn’t want to think about Hellie tonight, not with the stink of
blood in the air. Len and Hellie were her old life. They didn’t belong at Yale. Then again,
neither did Alex.
Despite the memories, Alex was grateful for any noise that would cover the wet sounds
of the Haruspex pawing through Michael Reyes’s gut. What did he see there? Darlington
had said the prognostications were no different than someone reading the future in the cards of a tarot deck or a handful of animal bones. But it sure looked different. And sounded more specific. You’re missing someone. You will find happiness in the new year.
Those were the kinds of things fortune-tellers said—vague, comforting.
Alex eyed the Bonesmen, robed and hooded, crowded around the body on the table, the
undergrad Scribe taking down the predictions that would be passed on to hedge-fund
managers and private investors all over the world to keep the Bonesmen and their alumni financially secure. Former presidents, diplomats, at least one director of the CIA—all of them Bonesmen. Alex thought of Tony Montana, soaking in his hot tub, speechifying: You
know what capitalism is? Alex glanced at Michael Reyes’s prone body. Tony, you have no idea.
She caught a flicker of movement from the benches that overlooked the operating
arena. The theater had two local Grays who always sat in the same places, just a few rows