Hellie was long gone and so were the people who had hurt her. But someone had hurt
Tara Hutchins too. Someone who hadn’t been punished. Not yet.
Leave it to Detective Turner. That was what the survivor said. Rest easy. Let it go.
Focus on your grades. Think of the summer. Alex could see the bridge that Belbalm had built. She just had to cross it.
Alex reached into her dresser for the basso belladonna drops. One more afternoon. She could give Tara Hutchins that much before she buried her for good and moved on. The way she’d buried Hellie.
Aurelian, home to the would-be philosopher kings, the great uniters.
Aurelian was founded to embrace ideals of leadership and, supposedly, to
bring together the best of the societies. They modeled themselves as a kind of
New Lethe, tapping members from every society to form a leadership
council. That didn’t last long. Lively debate gave way to raucous argument,
new members were recruited, and they soon became as clannish as the other
Houses of the Veil. In the end, their magic has a fundamental practicality
best suited to the working professional, less a calling than a trade. That has
made them the object of ridicule by some with more delicate sensibilities, but
when Aurelian found themselves banned from their own “tomb” and
without permanent address, they managed to survive where other Houses
have foundered—by hiring themselves out to the highest bidder.
—from The Life of Lethe: Procedures and Protocols of the Ninth House
They just lack any kind of style. Sure, they occasionally burp out a senator or an author of middling renown, but Aurelian nights always feel a bit like
you’ve been handed the transcript to a juicy court case. You start out
excited, and by page two you realize it’s all a lot of words and not much
drama.
—Lethe Days Diary of Michelle Alameddine (Hopper College)
6
Last Fall
He started her small—with Aurelian. Darlington figured the big magics could wait for later in the semester, and he knew he’d made the right choice when he came downstairs at
Il Bastone to find Alex perched on the edge of a velvet cushion, gnawing feverishly on a
thumbnail. Dawes seemed oblivious, her attention focused on A Companion to Linear B,
her noise-canceling headphones firmly in place.
“Ready?” he asked.
Alex stood and wiped her palms on her jeans. He had her run through the stock of protections in their bags, and Darlington was pleased to see she’d forgotten nothing.
“Good night, Dawes,” he said as they unhooked their coats from the hall rack. “We won’t be home late.”
Dawes slid her headphones down to her neck. “We have smoked salmon and egg and
dill sandwiches.”
“Dare I ask?”
“And avgolemono.”
“I’d say you’re an angel, but you’re so much more interesting.” Dawes clucked her tongue. “It’s really not a fall soup.”
“It’s barely fall and there’s nothing more fortifying.” Besides, after a shot of Hiram’s elixir it was tough to get warm.
Dawes smiled as she returned to her text. She liked being praised for her cooking almost as much as she liked being acknowledged for her scholarship.
The air felt bright and cold against his skin as they walked down Orange, back toward
the Green and campus. Spring came on slow in New England, but fall was like rounding a
sharp turn. One moment you were sweating through summer cotton and the next you
shivered beneath a sky gone hard enamel blue.
“Tell me about Aurelian.”
Alex blew out a breath. “Founded in 1910. Rooms consecrated in Sheffield-Sterling-
Strathcona Hall—”
“Save yourself the mouthful. Everyone calls it SSS.”
“SSS. During the 1932 renovations.”
“Around the same time Bones was sealing off their operating theater,” Darlington
added.
“Their what?”
“You’ll learn during your first prognostication. But I thought we’d keep the training wheels on for our first journey out.” Best that Alex Stern found her footing among the eager, generous Aurelians rather than in front of the Bonesmen. “The university gave those rooms to Aurelian as a gift for services rendered.”