Afternoon light streamed through the stained-glass windows, leaving bright patterns of blue and yellow on the polished slats of the floor. Maybe she would sleep here tonight, even if it did mean she had to go to class in sweats. She was literally running out of clothes. These attempts on her life were playing havoc with her wardrobe.

The bathroom off the big bedroom had two standing pedestal sinks and a deep claw-footed tub that she’d never used. Had Darlington? She had trouble imagining him sinking into a bubble bath to relax.

She cupped her hand beneath the sink to drink, then spat into the basin. Alex flinched back—the water was pink and speckled with something. She stoppered the drain before it could vanish.

She was looking at North’s blood. She felt sure of it. Blood he had himself swallowed nearly a hundred years ago when he died.

And parsley.

Little bits of it.

She remembered Michael Reyes lying unconscious on an operating table, the Bonesmen gathered around him. Dove’s heart for clarity, geranium root, a dish of bitter herbs. The diet of the victima before a prognostication.

There had been someone inside North that day at the factory—someone who had been used by Bones for a prognostication, long before there was a Lethe House around to keep watch. They cut me open. They wanted to see my soul. They’d let him die. She felt sure of it. Some nameless vagrant who would never be missed. NMDH. No more dead hobos. She’d seen the inscription in Lethe: A Legacy. A little joke among the old boys of the Ninth House. Alex hadn’t quite believed it somehow, even after she’d seen Michael Reyes cut open on a table. She should check on him, make sure he was okay.

Alex let the sink drain. She rinsed her mouth again, wrapped her wet hair in a fresh towel, and sat down at the little antique desk by the window.

Bones had been founded in 1832. They hadn’t built their tomb until twenty-five years later, but that didn’t mean they weren’t trying their hand at rituals before that. No one had been keeping an eye on the societies back then, and she remembered what Darlington had said about stray magic breaking loose from the rituals. What if something had gone wrong with that early prognostication? What if a Gray had disrupted the rite, sent the victima’s spirit flying wild? What if it had found its way into North? He hadn’t even seemed to recognize that he was holding a gun—a shadow in my hand.

The terrified victima inside North, North inside Alex. They were like a nesting doll of the uncanny. Had the spirit somehow chosen North’s body to escape to, or had he and Daisy simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, two innocent people mowed down by power they couldn’t begin to understand? Was that what Darlington had been investigating? That stray magic had caused the North-Whitlock murder?

Alex climbed the stairs to the third floor. She’d spent little time here, but she found the Virgil bedroom on her second try. It was directly above the Dante room but far more grand. Alex supposed that if she survived three years of Lethe and Yale, it would one day be hers.

She went to the desk and opened the drawers. She found a note with a few lines of poetry inside, some stationery stamped with the Lethe hound, and not much else.

There was a statistics textbook on the desk. Had Darlington left it there the night they’d gone to the basement of Rosenfeld Hall?

Alex padded back down the stairs to the bookshelf that guarded the library. She pulled down the Albemarle Book. The smell of horses rose from its pages, the sound of hooves on cobblestones, a snatch of Hebrew—the memory of the research she’d done on golems. Darlington had used the library regularly and the book’s rows were full of his requests, but most seemed focused on feeding his obsession with New Haven—manufacturing history, land deeds, city planning. There were entries from Dawes too, all about tarot and ancient mystery cults, and even a few from Dean Sandow. But then there it was, early in the fall semester, two names in Darlington’s jagged scrawl: Bertram Boyce North and Daisy Whitlock. The Bridegroom was right. Darlington had been looking into his case. But where were his notes? Had they been in his satchel that night at Rosenfeld and been swallowed up with the rest of him?

“Where are you, Darlington?” she whispered. And can you forgive me?

“Alex.”

She jumped. Dawes was standing at the top of the stairs, her headphones clamped around her neck, a dishrag in her hands. “Turner’s back. He has something to show us.”

Alex retrieved her socks from the armory and joined Turner and Dawes in the parlor. They sat shoulder to shoulder at a clunky-looking laptop, matching frowns on their faces. Turner had changed into jeans and a button-down shirt but still managed to look sharp, especially next to Dawes.

He waved Alex over, a stack of folders piled beside him.

On the screen, Alex saw black-and-white footage of what looked like a prison hallway, a row of inmates moving along a corridor of cells.

“Look at the time stamp,” said Turner. “That’s right about the time you were headed into my crime scene.”

Turner hit play and the inmates shuffled forward. A huge shape lumbered into view.

“That’s him,” said Alex. It was unmistakably Lance Gressang. “Where does he go?”

“He turns a corner and then he’s just gone.” He struck a few keys and the scene changed to a different angle on another hallway, but Alex didn’t see Gressang anywhere. “Here’s number one on the long, long list of things I don’t understand: Why did he go back?” Turner hit the keys again and Alex saw a wide view of what looked like a hospital ward.

“Gressang went back to jail?”

“That’s right. He’s in the infirmary with a busted hand.”

Alex remembered the crunch of bones when she’d hit him with the putter. But why the hell would Gressang have returned to jail to await trial?

“Are these for me?” Alex asked, gesturing at the folders.

Turner nodded. “That’s everything we have on Lance Gressang and Tara Hutchins right now. Look your fill, but they’re going back with me tonight.”

Alex took the stack to the velvet sofa and settled in. “Why such generosity?”

“I’m stubborn, not stupid. I know what I saw.” Turner leaned back in his chair. “So let’s hear it, Alex Stern. You don’t think Gressang did the murder. Who’s responsible?”

Alex flipped open the top folder. “I don’t know, but I do know Tara has connections to at least four societies, and you don’t get stabbed over the occasional twenty bag, so this isn’t about a little weed.”

“How do you tally four societies?”

“I’ll get the whiteboard,” said Dawes.

“Is it a magical whiteboard?” asked Turner sourly.

Dawes cast him a baleful look. “All whiteboards are magical.”

She returned with a handful of markers and a whiteboard that she propped up on the mantel.

Turner rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, give me your list of suspects.”

Alex felt suddenly self-conscious, like she was being asked to work a complicated math problem in front of the class, but she took a blue marker from Dawes and went to the board.

“Four of the Ancient Eight may have connections to Tara: Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Manuscript, and Book and Snake.”

“The Ancient Eight?” asked Turner.

“The Houses of the Veil. The societies with tombs. You should have read your Life of Lethe.”

Turner waved her on. “Start with Skull and Bones. Tara was selling weed to Tripp Helmuth, but I don’t see how that’s a motive for murder.”

“She was also sleeping with Tripp.”

“You think it was more than casual?”

“I doubt it,” Alex admitted.

“But if Tara thought so?” asked Dawes tentatively.

“I’m guessing Tara knew the score.” You had to. All the time. “Still, Tripp’s family is real old money. She might have tried to get something out of him.”

“That sounds like a soap opera motive,” said Turner.

He wasn’t going to be an easy sell. “But what if they were dealing in harder stuff? Not just pot? I think a senior named Blake Keely was getting a drug called Merity from them.”

“That’s impossible,” said Dawes. “It only grows—”

“I know, on some mountaintop. But Blake bought from Lance and Tara. Tripp said he saw Tara with Kate Masters, and Kate is in Manuscript—the only society with access to Merity.”

“You think Kate sold Merity to Tara and Lance?” asked Dawes.

“No,” said Alex, turning the idea over in her head. “I think Kate paid Tara to find a way to grow it. Lance and Tara lived within spitting distance of the forestry school and the Marsh greenhouses. Kate wanted to cut out the middleman. Get Manuscript its own supply.”

“But then … how did Blake get his hands on it?”

“Maybe they started growing their own stash of Merity and sold it to Blake. Money is money.”

“But that would be …”

“Unethical?” asked Alex. “Irresponsible? Like handing a sociopathic toddler a magical machete?”

“What exactly does this drug do?” Turner sounded reluctant, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“It makes you …” Alex hesitated. Obedient wasn’t the right word. Eager didn’t cover it either.