“An acolyte,” said Dawes. “Your only desire is to serve.”

Turner shook his head. “And let me guess, it isn’t a regulated substance because no one’s ever heard of it to regulate it.” He had the same nauseated expression he’d worn when he saw Alex healed by the crucible. “All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Back to the board. Tara is connected to Bones by Tripp, Manuscript by Kate Masters and this drug. Is Colin Khatri her only connection to Scroll and Key?”

“No,” said Alex. “She had words from a poem called Idylls of the King tattooed on her arm, and that text is all over the Locksmiths’ tomb.” She passed the file full of photos to Dawes. “Right forearm.”

Dawes glanced at the autopsy photos displaying Tara’s tattoos, then shuffled hurriedly past.

“That doesn’t feel like a casual connection,” said Alex.

“What’s this?” Dawes asked, tapping a photo of Tara’s bedroom.

“Just a bunch of jewelry-making tools,” said Turner. “She had a little business on the side.”

Of course she had. That was what girls did when their lives fell apart. They tried to find a window to climb out of. Community college. Homemade soaps. A little jewelry-making business on the side.

Dawes was gnawing at her lower lip hard enough that Alex thought she might draw blood. Alex leaned over and peered at the picture, at the cheap knockoff gemstones and dishes of curved hooks for earrings, the pliers. But one of the dishes looked different than the others. It was shallower, the metal beaten and raw, the leavings of something like ash or a ring of lime around its base.

“Dawes,” said Alex. “What does that look like to you?”

Dawes pushed the file away as if she could banish it. “It’s a crucible.”

“What would Tara have used it for? To process the Merity?”

Dawes shook her head. “No. Merity is used in its raw form.”

“Hey,” said Turner. “How about we pretend for a minute I don’t know what a crucible is.”

Dawes tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear and without looking at him said, “They’re vessels created for magical and alchemical use. They’re usually made of pure gold and highly reactive.”

“That big gold bathtub Dawes just put me in is a crucible,” said Alex.

“You’re telling me the thing in Tara’s apartment is real gold? It’s the size of an ashtray. No way Gressang and his girl could afford something like that.”

“Unless it was a gift,” said Alex. “And unless whatever they were making in it was worth more than the metal itself.”

Dawes pulled her sweatshirt sleeves over her hands. “There are stories about holy men who would use psilocybin—mushrooms—to literally open doorways to other worlds. But the drugs had to be purified … in a crucible.”

“Doorways,” said Alex, remembering the night she and Darlington had observed the botched ritual at Scroll and Key. “You mean portals. You said there are rumors of the magic at Scroll and Key failing. Could Lance and Tara’s secret sauce have helped with that?”

Dawes expelled a long breath. “Yes. In theory, a drug like that could help facilitate opening the portals.”

Alex picked up the photo of the tiny crucible. “Do you have this stuff in, uh … custody or whatever?”

“In evidence,” said Turner. “Yes, we do. If there’s enough residue left in that thing we can have it tested, see if it matches the hallucinogen we found in Tara’s system.”

Dawes had taken her headphones from around her neck. She sat with them cradled in her lap like a sleeping animal.

“What is it?” Alex asked her.

“You said Lance was walking through walls, maybe using portal magic to attack you. If someone from Scroll and Key allowed outsiders access to their tomb, if they brought Lance and Tara into their rituals … The Houses of the Veil consider that unforgivable. Nefandum.”

Alex and Turner exchanged a glance.

“What’s the penalty for sharing that kind of information with outsiders?” Alex asked.

Dawes clutched her headphones. “The society would be stripped of its tomb and disbanded.”

“You know what that sounds like?” said Turner.

“Yeah,” replied Alex. “Motive.”

Had Colin Khatri inducted Lance and Tara into the secrets of the society? Had it been some kind of payment, one he didn’t want to continue to make? Was that what had gotten Tara killed? It was hard for Alex to imagine clean, cheerful Colin committing violent murder. But he was a boy with a bright future, and that meant he had plenty to lose.

“I’m going to Professor Belbalm’s salon tonight,” said Alex. She would have preferred to fall asleep right here in front of the fire, but she didn’t intend to piss off the one person who seemed to be looking out for her future. “Colin works for Belbalm. I can try to find out how late he stayed at her house the night Tara died.”

“Alex,” Dawes said quietly, looking up at last. “If Darlington found out about the drugs, about what Colin and the other Locksmiths were doing with Lance and Tara, maybe …” She trailed off, but Alex knew what she was suggesting: Maybe Scroll and Key had been responsible for the portal that had disappeared Darlington that night in the Rosenfeld basement.

“Where is Darlington?” asked Turner. “And if you say Spain, I’m going to pack up my files and go home. My bed is looking real good right now.”

Dawes squirmed in her chair.

“Something happened to him,” said Alex. “We’re not sure what. There’s a ritual to try to reach him, but it can only be attempted at the new moon.”

“Why the new moon?”

“The timing matters,” said Dawes. “For a ritual to work, it helps if it’s built around an auspicious date or an auspicious place. The new moon represents the moment before something hidden is revealed.”

“Sandow wanted you to keep it quiet?” asked Turner. Alex nodded, feeling guilty. She hadn’t exactly wanted to trumpet the news either. “What about Darlington’s family?”

“Darlington is our responsibility,” said Dawes sharply, protective to the last. “We’ll get him back.”

Maybe.

Turner leaned forward. “So what you’re saying is that Scroll and Key may be involved in a murder and a kidnapping?”

Alex shrugged. “Sure. Let’s call it that. But we can’t rule out Manuscript. Maybe Kate Masters found out Tara sold the Merity to Blake Keely and that he was using it on girls, or maybe something went wrong with their deal. If Lance didn’t kill Tara, someone was glamoured to look like him. Manuscript has plenty of tricks and gimmicks that would let Kate spend a few hours wearing his face. And none of this explains the gluma that was sent after me.” Alex reached into her pocket and felt the reassuring tick of the watch.

Turner looked like he might do murder himself. “The what now?”

“The thing that chased me down Elm. Don’t fucking look at me like that. It happened.”

“Fine, it happened,” said Turner.

“Glumae are servants of the dead,” said Dawes. “They’re errand boys.”

Alex scowled. “That was a highly homicidal errand boy.”

“You give them a simple task, they accomplish it. Book and Snake uses them as messengers to and from the other side of the Veil. They’re too violent and unpredictable to really be good for much else.”

Except for making a girl look crazy and maybe shutting her up permanently.

“So Book and Snake is on the board,” said Turner. “Motive unknown. You realize none of this is evidence, right? We can draw no credible connections to these societies beyond what Tripp told you. I don’t even have enough to get a warrant to look inside those forestry greenhouses.”

“I’m guessing Centurion can pull all kinds of strings with his superiors.” A shadow crossed Turner’s face. “Except you don’t want to pull strings.”

“That isn’t the way things should work. And I can’t just go to my captain. He doesn’t know about Lethe. I’d have to go all the way up the chain to the chief.” And Turner wasn’t going to make that move unless he was sure that all of their theories added up to more than some lunatic scrawl on a whiteboard. Alex couldn’t blame him. “I’ll pull the LUDs for the liquor store near Tara’s apartment. It’s possible they were using the store’s phone to do business. Kate Masters wasn’t in Tara’s cell or Lance’s. Neither was Colin Khatri or Blake Keely.”

“If Tara and Lance were using the greenhouses, then they were working with someone at the forestry school,” said Dawes. “Warrant or not, we should try to find out who.”

“I’m a student,” said Alex. “I can walk right in.”

“I thought you wanted me to start pulling strings,” Turner said.

She had, but now she was thinking better of it. “We can handle this on our own. If you go up the food chain, someone might tell Sandow.”

Turner raised a brow. “That a problem?”

“I want to know where he was the night of the murder.”

Dawes’s spine straightened. “Alex—”