She was afraid to unfold the page. It might be nothing. Notes on a term paper. A list of repairs needed at Black Elm. But she didn’t believe that. That night in December, Darlington had been working on something he cared about, something he’d been picking at for months. He’d been distracted as he worked, maybe thinking of the night ahead, maybe worried about his apprentice, who never did the damn reading. He hadn’t wanted to bring his notes with him, so he’d stashed them someplace safe. Right here, in this book of blueprints. He’d thought he would be back soon enough.
“I should have been a better Dante,” she whispered.
But maybe she could do better now.
Gently, she unfolded the page. The first line read: 1958-Colina Tillman-Wrexham. Heart attack? Stroke?
A series of dates followed—coupled with what seemed to be women’s names. The last three dates on the list matched those North had forced her to write in her notebook.
1902-Sophie Mishkan-Rhinelander-Brain fever?
1898-Effie White-Stone-Dropsy (Edema?)
1883-Zuzanna Mazurski-Phelps-Apoplexy
1869-Paoletta DeLauro-Kingsley-Stabbing
1854-Daisy Fanning Whitlock-Russell-Gunshot
The first? Darlington had believed that Daisy was the first, but the first what? Daisy had been shot, Paoletta had been stabbed, but the others had died of natural causes.
Or someone had gotten smarter about killing girls.
I’m seeing things, thought Alex. I’m making connections that aren’t there. According to every single TV show she’d ever watched, serial killers always had a modus operandi, a way they liked to kill. Besides, even if a murderer had been operating in New Haven, if these dates were right, this particular psychopath had been preying on girls from 1854 to 1958—over one hundred years.
But she couldn’t say it was impossible, not when she’d seen what magic could do.
And there was something about the way the dates clustered that felt familiar. The pattern matched the way the societies had been founded. There’d been a flurry of activity in the 1800s—and then a new tomb hadn’t been built for a very long time, not until Manuscript in the sixties. An unpleasant shiver crawled over Alex’s skin. She knew Skull and Bones had been founded in 1832 and that date didn’t line up with any of the deaths, but it was the only year she could remember.
Alex took the notes and padded down the hall to the Dante room. She grabbed a copy of The Life of Lethe from the desk drawer. Scroll and Key had been founded in 1842, Book and Snake in 1865, St. Elmo in 1889, Manuscript in 1952. Only the founding date of Wolf’s Head matched up with 1883, but that could be coincidence.
She ran her finger down the list of names.
1854-Daisy Fanning Whitlock-Russell-Gunshot
She hadn’t seen Daisy’s name hyphenated anywhere else. She’d always just been Daisy Fanning Whitlock.
Because it wasn’t a hyphen. None of them were hyphens. Rhinelander. Stone. Phelps. Kingsley. Russell. Wrexham. They were the names of the trusts, the foundations and associations that funded the societies—that paid for the construction of their tombs.
Alex ran back to the library and slammed the shelf shut; she yanked the Albemarle Book free again but made herself slow down. She needed to think about how to phrase this. Russell was the trust that funded Skull and Bones. Carefully, she wrote out: Deed for land acquired by Russell Trust on High Street, New Haven, Connecticut.
A ledger was waiting for her on the middle shelf. It was marked with the Lethe spirit hound, and there, one after another, were deeds of acquisition for land all over New Haven, the locations that would one day house each of the eight Houses of the Veil, each one built over a nexus of power created by some unknown force.
But Darlington had known. The first. 1854: The year the Russell Trust had acquired the land where Skull and Bones would build their tomb. Darlington had pieced together what had created those focal points of magic that fed the societies’ rituals, that made all of it possible. Dead girls. One after another. He’d used the old editions of the New Havener to match the places they’d died to the locations of the societies’ tombs.
What had been special about these deaths? Even if all these girls had been murdered, there had been plenty of homicides in New Haven over the years that hadn’t resulted in magical nexuses. And Daisy hadn’t even died on High Street, where Skull and Bones erected their tomb, so why had the nexus formed there? Alex knew she was missing something, failing to connect the dots Darlington would have.
North had given her the dates; he had seen the connections too. Alex sprinted back to the bathroom and filled the basin of the sink.
“North,” she said, feeling like a fool. “North.”
Nothing. Ghosts. Never there when you needed them.
But there were plenty of ways to get a Gray’s attention. Alex hesitated, then took the letter opener from the desk. She slashed it across the top of her forearm and let the blood drip into the water, watching it plume.
“Knock knock, North.”
His face appeared in the reflection so suddenly she jumped.
“Daisy’s death created a nexus,” she said. “How did you find out?”
“I couldn’t find Tara. It should have been easy with that object in hand, but there was no sign of her on this side of the Veil. Just like Daisy. There’s no sign of Gladys O’Donaghue either. Something happened that day. Something bigger than my death or Daisy’s. I think it happened again when Tara died.”
Daisy had been an aristocrat, one of the city’s elite. Her death had started it all. But the other girls? Who had they been? Names like DeLauro, Mazurski, Mishkan. Had they been immigrant girls working in the factories? Housemaids? Daughters of freed slaves? Girls who would have no headlines or marble headstones to mark their passing?
And was Tara meant to be one of them too? A sacrifice? But why had her murder been so gruesome? So public? And why now? If these really were killings, it had been over fifty years since the last girl died.
Someone needed a nexus. One of the Houses of the Veil was in need of a new home. St. Elmo’s had been petitioning to build a new tomb for years—and what good was a tomb without a nexus beneath it? Alex remembered the empty plot of land where Tara’s body had been found. Plenty of room to build.
“North,” she said. “Go back and look for the others.” She read their names to him, one after another: Colina Tillman, Sophie Mishkan, Effie White, Zuzanna Mazurski, Paoletta DeLauro. “Try to find them.”
Alex plucked a towel from the rack and pressed it against her bleeding arm. She sat down at the desk, looked out the window onto Orange Street, trying to think. If Darlington had uncovered the cause of the nexuses, the first person he would have told was Sandow. He’d probably been proud, excited to have made a new discovery, one that would shed new light on the way that magic worked in his city. But Sandow had never mentioned it to her or Dawes, this final project Darlington had been pursuing.
Did it matter? Sandow couldn’t be involved. He’d been violently attacked only a few feet from where she was sitting. He’d almost died.
But not because of Blake Keely. Blake had hurt Dawes, had nearly killed Alex, but he hadn’t hurt the dean. It had been the snarling half-mad hounds of Lethe that had come to Alex’s defense. She remembered Blake’s clenched fist. He’d struck her with that hand but then he’d kept it closed.