She moved as fast as she could out the door, before Dawes could say more.
Alex returned to her room only long enough to retrieve her phone and yank out her IV. Her clothes and boots were nowhere to be found, taken to be entered into evidence. She’d probably never see them again.
She knew what she was doing was irrational, but she didn’t want to be here anymore. She didn’t want to pretend to talk reasonably about something that made no sense.
Sandow could make all of the apologies he wanted. Alex didn’t feel safe. And she had to wonder if she’d ever feel safe again. We are the shepherds. But who would protect them from the wolves? Blake Keely was dead and gone, his pretty skull smashed to bits. But what was going to happen to Kate Masters and Manuscript, who had unleashed Merity for the sake of saving a few dollars? What about Colin—eager, brilliant, scrubbed-face Colin—and the rest of Scroll and Key, who had sold their secrets to criminals and possibly sent a monster to devour Darlington? And what about the gluma? She’d nearly been murdered by a golem in glasses, and no one seemed to care. Dawes had been attacked. Dean Sandow had nearly bled out on the hall rug. Were they all really that expendable?
Nothing was going to be dismantled. Nothing would change. There were too many powerful people who needed the magic that lived in New Haven and that was tended by the Houses of the Veil. Now the investigation belonged to Sandow and to faceless groups of wealthy alumni who would dole out punishment or forgiveness as they saw fit.
Alex snagged a doctor’s lab coat off the back of a chair and headed for the elevators in her hospital socks. She thought someone might stop her, but she strolled by the nurses’ station without incident. The pain was bad enough that she wanted to bend double and cling to the wall, but she wasn’t going to risk drawing attention.
The elevator doors opened on a woman with auburn hair in a cream-colored sweater and snug jeans. She looked like Dawes but Dawes winnowed down and polished to a high shine. Alex let her pass and stepped inside the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, she slumped against the wall, trying to catch her breath. She didn’t really have a plan. She just couldn’t be here. She couldn’t make small talk with Dawes’s sister. She couldn’t act like what had happened was somehow fair or right or okay.
She shuffled out into the cold, limped a half block away from the hospital, and requested a ride on her phone. It was late and the streets were empty—except for the Bridegroom. North hovered in the glow of the hospital lights. He looked worried as he moved toward her, but Alex couldn’t bring herself to care. He hadn’t found Tara. He hadn’t done a damn thing to help her.
It’s over, she thought. Even if you don’t want it to be, buddy.
“Unwept, unhonored, and unsung,” she growled. North recoiled and vanished, his expression wounded.
“How are you tonight?” the driver asked as she slid into the back seat.
Half dead and disillusioned. How ’bout you? She wanted to be behind the wards, but she couldn’t bear the idea of returning to Il Bastone. “Can you take me to York and Elm?” she said. “There’s an alley. I’ll show you.”
The streets were quiet in the dark, the city faceless.
I’m done, Alex thought, as she dragged herself out of the car and up the staircase to the Hutch, the smell of clove and comfort surrounding her.
Dawes could run off to Westport. Sandow could go home to his housekeeper and his incontinent Labrador. Turner… well, she didn’t know who Turner went home to. His mother. A girlfriend. The job. Alex was going to do what any wounded animal would. She was going where the monsters couldn’t reach her. She was going to ground.
-
Others may falter and take the false step. What penalty but pride? Ours is the calling of the final trumpet on the horseman’s last ride.
Ours is the answer given without pause and none too soon. Death waits on black wings and we stand hoplite, hussar, dragoon.
Cabsy wasn’t actually any good as far as poets go. Seems to have missed the last forty years of verse and just wants to write Longfellow. It’s ungenerous to carp, what with him losing his hands and all, but I’m not sure even that justifies two hours cooped up at Il Bastone, listening to him read from his latest masterpiece while poor Lon Richardson is stuck turning the pages.
28
Early Spring
Alex woke to the sound of glass breaking. It took her a moment to remember where she was, to take in the hexagon pattern of the Hutch’s bathroom floor, the dripping faucet. She grabbed the lip of the sink and pulled herself up, pausing to wait out the head rush before she padded through the dressing room to the common room. For a long moment she stared at the broken window—one leaded pane smashed, the cool spring air whistling through, the glass slivers scattered on the plaid wool of the window seat beside her discarded falafel and Suggested Requirements for Lethe Candidates, the pamphlet still open to the page where Alex had stopped reading. Mors irrumat omnia.
Cautiously, she peered down at the alley. The Bridegroom was there, just as he had been every day for the last two weeks. Three weeks? She couldn’t be sure. But Mercy was there too, in a belted jacket patterned with cabbage roses, her black hair pulled into a ponytail, a guilty expression on her face.
Alex thought about just not doing anything. She didn’t know how Mercy had found her, but she didn’t have to stay found. Eventually her roommate would get tired of waiting for Alex to show and she’d leave. Or throw another rock through the window.
Mercy waved and another figure stepped into view, dressed in a purple crochet coat and glittery mulberry-colored scarf.
Alex leaned her head against the window frame. “Shit.”
She pulled on a Lethe House sweatshirt to cover her filthy tank top and limped barefoot down the stairs. Then she took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
“Baby!” her mom cried, lunging toward her.
Alex squinted against the spring sunshine and tried not to actually recoil. “Hi, Mom. Don’t hug—”
Too late. Her mother was squeezing her and Alex hissed in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Mira asked, pulling back.
“Just dealing with an injury,” Alex said.
Mira bracketed Alex’s face with her hands, pushing the hair back, tears filling her eyes. “Oh, baby. Oh, my little star. I was afraid this might happen.”
“I’m not using, Mom. I swear. I just got really, really sick.” Mira’s face was disbelieving. Otherwise, she looked good, better than she had in a long time. Her blond hair had fresh highlights; her skin was glowing. She looked like she’d put on weight. It’s because of me, Alex realized with a pang. All those years that she looked tired and too old for her age, she was worrying about me. But then her daughter had become a painter and gone to Yale. Magic.
Alex saw Mercy hovering near the alley wall. Snitch.
“Come on,” Alex said. “Come in.”
She was breaking Lethe House rules by allowing outsiders into the Hutch, but if Colin Khatri could show Lance Gressang how to portal to Iceland, she could have her mother and her roommate in for tea.