Darlington was not in Spain. He was not home. He was never coming home. And it was all Alex’s fault.
A white shape cut through the dark from the corner of her vision. She leapt backward,
knocking over a pile of books, and swore. But it was just Cosmo, Darlington’s cat.
He prowled the edge of the desk, nudging up against the warmth of the desk lamp. Alex always thought of him as Bowie Cat because of his marked-up eye and streaky white fur
that looked like one of the wigs Bowie had worn in Labyrinth. He was stupid affectionate
—all you had to do was hold your hand out and he would nuzzle your knuckles.
Alex sat down on the edge of Darlington’s narrow bed. It was neatly made, probably by
Dawes. Had she sat here too? Slept here?
Alex remembered Darlington’s delicate feet, his scream as he’d vanished. She held her
hand down, beckoning to the cat. “Hey, Cosmo.”
He stared at her with his mismatched eyes, the pupil of the left like an inkblot.
“Come on, Cosmo. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Not really.”
Cosmo padded across the room. As soon as his small sleek head touched Alex’s
fingers, she began to cry.
Alex slept in Darlington’s bed and dreamed that he was curled behind her on the narrow mattress.
He pulled her close, his fingers digging into her abdomen, and she could feel claws at
their tips. He whispered in her ear, “I will serve you ’til the end of days.”
“And love me,” she said with a laugh, bold in the dream, unafraid.
But all he said was, “It is not the same.”
Alex woke with a start, flopped over, gazed at the sharp pitch of the roof, the trees beyond the window striping the ceiling in shadow and hard winter sun. She’d been scared
to try fiddling with the thermostat, so she’d bundled herself in three of Darlington’s sweaters and an ugly brown hat she’d found on top of his dresser but that she’d never seen
him wear. She remade the bed, then headed downstairs to fill Cosmo’s water dish and eat
some fancy nuts-and-twigs dry cereal from a box in the pantry.
Alex took her laptop from her bag and went to the dusty sunroom that ran the length of
the first floor. She gazed out at the backyard. The slope of the hill led to a hedge maze overgrown with brambles, and she could see some kind of statue or fountain at its center.
She wasn’t sure where the grounds left off, and she wondered just how much of this particular hill the Arlington family owned.
It took her nearly two hours to write up her report on the Tara Hutchins murder. Cause
of death. Time of death. The behavior of the Grays at the Skull and Bones prognostication.
She’d hesitated over that last, but Lethe had brought her here for what she could see and
there was no reason for her to lie about it. She mentioned the information she’d gleaned
from the coroner and from Turner in his capacity as Centurion, noting Tripp’s name coming up and also Turner’s belief that the Bonesman was not involved. She hoped Turner wouldn’t mention her visit to the morgue.
At the end of the incident report, there was a section titled “Findings.” Alex thought for
a long time, her hand idly stroking Cosmo’s fur as he purred beside her on the old wicker
love seat. In the end, she said nothing about the strange feeling she’d had at the crime
scene or that she suspected Tara and Lance were probably dealing to other members of the other societies. Centurion will update Dante on his findings, but at this time all evidence suggests this was a crime committed by Tara’s boyfriend while under the influence of powerful hallucinogenics and that there is no connection to Lethe or the Houses of the Veil. She read through twice more for punctuation and to try to make her answers sound as Darlingtonish as possible, then she sent the report to Sandow with Dawes cc’d.
Cosmo meowed plaintively as Alex slipped out the kitchen door, but it felt good to leave the house behind her, breathe the icy air. The sky was bright blue, scrubbed clean of
clouds, and the gravel of the drive glittered. She put the Mercedes in the garage, then walked to the end of the driveway and called a car. She could return the keys to Dawes later.