gray sweatshirt. She closed the laptop. “Thanks for backing me with the dean. And for saving my life.” Dawes nodded at the carpet. “So what are my other options if I need to
talk to someone on the other side of the Veil?”
“The only one I can think of is Wolf’s Head.”
“The shapeshifters?”
“Do not call them that. Not if you’re looking for favors.”
Alex crossed to the window, pulled open the curtain.
“Is he still there?” Dawes said from behind her.
“He’s there.”
“Alex, what are you doing? Once you let him in … You know the stories about him,
what he did to that girl.”
Open the door, Alex.
“I know he saved my life and he wants my attention. Relationships have been built on
less.”
The rules of Lethe House were opaque and convoluted. Catholic, Darlington had said.
Byzantine. Still, the big stuff wasn’t tough to remember. Leave the dead to the dead. Turn your eyes to the living. But Alex needed allies, and Dawes wasn’t going to be enough.
She knocked on the window.
Below, on the street, the Bridegroom looked up. His dark eyes met hers in the light from the streetlamp. She did not look away.
Wolf’s Head, fourth of the Houses of the Veil, though Berzelius would argue the point. Members practice therianthropy and consider simple
shapeshifting to be base magic. They focus instead on the ability to retain
human consciousness and characteristics while in animal form. Primarily
used for intelligence gathering, corporate espionage, and political sabotage.
Wolf’s Head was a major recruitment ground for the CIA in the 1950s and
’60s. It can take days for someone to shake off the traits of an animal after a
shifting ritual. Keep discussions of an important or sensitive nature around
animals to a minimum.
—from The Life of Lethe: Procedures and Protocols of the Ninth House
I’m tired and my heart won’t stop racing. My eyes look pink. Not the whites.
The irises. When Rogers said we were going to fuck like rabbits, I didn’t
think he meant actual rabbits.
—Lethe Days Diary of Charles “Chase” MacMahon (Saybrook College
’88)
12
Winter
Alex knew she couldn’t go to Wolf’s Head empty-handed. If she wanted their help, she
had a stop to make at Scroll and Key first to retrieve a statue of Romulus and Remus.
Wolf’s Head had been badgering Lethe to orchestrate its return since it went missing during their Valentine’s Day party the year before, when they’d opened their doors to other
society members, as was tradition. Though Alex had since spotted the statue sitting on a
shelf in the Locksmiths’ tomb, with a plastic tiara slung over it, Darlington had refused to
get involved. “Lethe doesn’t concern itself with petty squabbles,” he’d said. “These kinds
of pranks are beneath us.”
But Alex needed a way into the temple room at the heart of the Wolf’s Head tomb, and
she knew exactly what their delegation president, Salome Nils, would demand in payment.
Alex drank one of Darlington’s disgusting protein shakes from the fridge. She was hungry, which Dawes claimed was a good sign, but her throat couldn’t tolerate anything
solid yet. She wasn’t eager to leave the safety of the wards when she didn’t know exactly
what had happened to the gluma, but she couldn’t just sit still. Besides, whoever had sent the gluma thought she was laid up somewhere being consumed by corpse beetles from the inside out. As for her public fit in the middle of Elm Street, at least there hadn’t been too many witnesses, and aside from Jonas Reed, it was unikely any of them knew her. If someone did, she’d probably be getting a call from a concerned therapist at the health center.
Alex had known the Bridegroom would be waiting as soon as she and Dawes stepped
out into the alley. It was almost dawn and the streets were quiet. Her “protector” followed
them all the way to Scroll and Key, where she found a harried Locksmith writing a paper
and convinced him to let her into the tomb to look for a scarf Darlington had left behind
during the last rite they’d observed. Lethe was usually permitted entry to the tombs only