“Can’t we drive?” she asked. “It’s freezing.”
Californians. “It’s fifty degrees and we’re walking three blocks. Somehow you’ll manage this journey through the tundra. I pray you’re not wearing a skimpy cat ensemble
underneath that. We’re supposed to project some measure of authority.”
“I can do my job in hot pants. I can probably do it better.” She executed a half-hearted
karate kick. “More room to move.” At least she’d worn practical boots.
In the light from the streetlamp, he could see she’d heavily lined her eyes and had big
gold earrings on. Hopefully she hadn’t worn anything too provocative or appropriative. He
didn’t want to spend the evening fielding judgmental snipes from Manuscript because Alex had felt the urge to dress as sexy Pocahontas.
He led them up the alley and onto Elm. She seemed alert, ready. She’d done well since
the incident at Aurelian, since they’d smashed a few thousand dollars’ worth of glass and
china on Il Bastone’s kitchen floor. Maybe Darlington had done a little better too. They’d
watched a series of first transformations at Wolf’s Head that had gone without incident—
though Shane Mackay had trouble coming down and they had to pen him in the kitchen
while he shook off his rooster form. He’d bloodied his nose trying to peck the table and
one of his friends had spent an hour dutifully plucking tiny white feathers from his body.
The cock jokes had been interminable. They’d monitored a raising at Book and Snake, where, with the help of a translator, a desiccated corpse had relayed the final accounts of
recently dead soldiers in the Ukraine in a bizarre game of macabre telephone. Darlington
didn’t know who in the state department had requested the information, but he assumed it
would be dutifully passed along. They’d observed an unsuccessful portal opening at Scroll
and Key—a botched attempt to send someone to Hungary, which had resulted in nothing
but the whole tomb smelling like goulash—and an equally unimpressive storm
summoning by St. Elmo at their dump of an apartment on Lynwood, which had left the delegation president and attending alumni sheepish and ashamed.
“They all have the look a guy gets when he’s too drunk to get it up,” Alex had whispered.
“Must you be so vulgar, Stern?”
“Tell me I’m wrong, Darlington.”
“I certainly wouldn’t know.”
Tonight would be a bit different. They would draw no circles of protection, only make
their presence known, monitor the power being gathered at the Manuscript nexus, and then
write up a report.
“How long will we be at this thing?” Alex asked as the street forked left.
“After midnight, maybe a little later.”
“I told Mercy and Lauren I’d meet them at the Pierson Inferno.”
“They’ll be so wasted by then they’re not going to notice if you’re late. Now focus: Manuscript looks harmless, but they’re not.”
Alex cut him a glance. There was some kind of glitter on her cheeks. “You actually sound nervous.”
Of all the societies, the one that made Darlington most wary was Manuscript. He could
see the skepticism on Alex’s face as they stopped in front of a grubby white brick wall.
“Here?” she asked, drawing her coat tighter. The thump of bass and murmur of
conversation floated back to them from somewhere down the narrow walkway.
Darlington understood Alex’s disbelief. The other tombs had been built to look like tombs— the flat neo-Egyptian plinths of Bones, the soaring white columns of Book and Snake, the delicate screens and Moorish arches of Scroll and Key, Darlington’s favorite crypt. Even Wolf’s Head, who had claimed they wanted to shake off the trappings of the
arcane and establish a more egalitarian house, had built themselves an English country estate in miniature. Darlington had read the descriptions of each tomb in Pinnell’s guide to
Yale and felt that, somehow, the analysis of their parts had fallen short of the mystery they evoked. Of course, Pinnell hadn’t known about the tunnel beneath Grove Street that led directly from Book and Snake to the heart of the cemetery, or the enchanted orange trees