“Glumae,” murmured Dawes.
“Glumae as messengers to talk to the dead. One of them attacked me. Seems like a solid theory.”
“Alex,” he said gently, a faint scold in his voice. “We knew when you came here that
someone of your abilities had never been in such a position. It’s possible, likely even, that simply being here has disrupted systems we can only guess at.”
“You’re saying I triggered the gluma attack?” She hated the defensive edge in her voice.
“I’m not saying you did anything,” said Sandow mildly. “I’m just saying by dint of what you are, you may have brought this on.”
Dawes crossed her arms. “That sounds a lot like She was asking for it, Dean Sandow.”
Alex couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Pamela Dawes disagreeing with Dean Sandow. On her behalf.
Sandow set his mug down with a clatter. “That’s certainly not what I meant to imply.”
“But that is the implication,” said Dawes in a voice Alex had never heard her use before, clear and incisive. Her eyes were cold. “Alex has indicated her own concerns regarding her assault, and instead of hearing her out, you’ve chosen to question her credibility. You may not have meant to imply anything, but the intent and the effect were
to silence her, so it’s hard not to think this stinks of victim blaming. It’s the semantic equivalent of saying her skirt was too short.”
Alex tried not to smile. Dawes had leaned back in her chair, legs and arms crossed, head cocked to one side, somehow both angry and at ease. Sandow’s face was flushed. He
put his palms up as if trying to gentle a beast— easy now. “Pamela, I hope you know me better than that.” Alex had never seen him so flustered. So Dawes knew how to speak the
dean’s language, the threats that counted.
“Someone sent that monster after me,” Alex said, pushing the advantage Dawes had
given her. “And it isn’t a coincidence that a girl died just days before. Tara’s phone log showed calls to Tripp Helmuth. That points to Bones. A gluma just tried to murder me in the street. That might point to Book and Snake. Tara was killed on a Thursday night, a ritual night, and if you read my report, you know that at the same time someone was carving her up, I saw two formerly docile Grays completely lose their shit.” Sandow’s brows pinched further together, as if such language pained him. “You— Lethe—brought me here for a reason, and I’m telling you that a girl is dead and there’s a connection to the societies. For a minute just pretend I’m Darlington and try to take me seriously.”
Sandow studied her, and Alex wondered if maybe she’d gotten through to him. Then he
shifted his gaze to Dawes. “Pamela, I believe we have a camera facing the intersection at
Elm and York.”
Alex saw the way Dawes’s shoulders softened, her head lowering, as if Sandow had spoken the words to break whatever spell she had been under. She rose and retrieved her
laptop. Alex felt something twist in her gut.
Dawes struck a few keys on her computer, and the mirror on the far wall brightened. A
moment later, the screen showed Elm Street teeming with cars and people, a sea of gray
and darker gray. The time stamp in the corner read 11:50 a.m. Alex searched the tide of
people moving along the sidewalk, but everyone just looked like a bulky lump in a coat.
Then a flash of movement outside the Good Nature Market caught her eye. She watched
the crowd part and ripple, instinctively moving away from violence. There she was, fleeing the store, the owner shouting at her, a girl with black hair in a woolly hat—
Darlington’s hat. She must have lost it in the fight.
The girl on the screen stepped off the sidewalk and into traffic, all of it in cold silence,
a pantomime.
Alex remembered the gluma’s furious grip as it had dragged her into the street, but there was no gluma on the screen. Instead, she saw the dark-haired girl throw herself into the flow of cars, stumbling and wild, screaming and clawing at nothing. Then she was on
her back. Alex’s memory said the gluma was on top of her, but the screen showed nothing at all, just her lying at the center of the street as cars swerved to avoid her, her back bowing and flexing, her mouth wide, her hands clawing at nothing, convulsing.