Ninth House

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 on ritual nights and during sanctioned inspections. “Gets chilly in Andalusia,” she told him.

The Locksmith hovered in the doorway, eyes on his phone as Alex pretended to search. He swore when the bell beside the front door rang again. Thank you, Dawes. Alex nabbed the statue and shoved it into her satchel. She glanced at the round stone table where the delegation gathered to work their rites—or try to. A quote was carved into the table’s edge, one she’d always liked: Have power on this dark land to lighten it, and power on this dead world to make it live. Something about those words rang a bell but she couldn’t pry the memory loose. She heard the front door slam and hurried out of the room, thanking the Locksmith—now muttering about drunk partyers who couldn’t find their damn dorms—on her way out.

There was a very good chance Scroll and Key would point the finger at her once they noticed the statue was missing, but she would just have to deal with that later. Dawes was waiting around the corner by the Gothic folly that served as an entrance to the Bass Library. Darlington had told her that the stone swords carved into its decoration were signs of warding.

“This is a bad idea,” Dawes said, bundled into her parka and radiating disapproval.

“At least I’m consistent.”

Dawes’s head swiveled on her neck like a searchlight. “Is he here?”

Alex knew she meant the Bridegroom, and though she would never admit it, she was unnerved by how easy it had been to secure his attention. She doubted it would be that easy to shake it. She glanced over her shoulder, where he trailed them by what could only be called a respectful distance. “Half a block away.”

“He’s a murderer,” Dawes whispered.

Well, then we have something in common, thought Alex. But all she said was, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

She didn’t like the idea of letting a Gray get close to her, but she’d made her choice and she wasn’t going to rethink it now. If someone from the societies was responsible for slapping a target on her back, she was going to find out who, and then she was going to make sure they didn’t have a chance to hurt her again. Even so…

“Dawes,” she murmured. “When we get back, let’s start looking for ways to break the link between people and Grays. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with Morrissey peering over my shoulder.”

“The easiest way is not to form a bond to begin with.”

“Really?” said Alex. “Let me write that down.”

The Wolf’s Head tomb was only a few doors away from the Hutch, a grand gray manor house, fronted by a scrubby garden and surrounded by a high stone wall. It was one of the most magical places on campus. The alley that horseshoed around it was bordered by old fraternity houses, sturdy brick structures long ago ceded to the university, ancient symbols of channeling carved into the stone above their doorways beside unremarkable clusters of Greek letters. The alley acted as a kind of moat where power gathered in a thick, crackling haze. Passing through, most people wrote off the shiver that seized them to a shift in weather or a bad mood, then forgot as soon as they had moved on to the Yale Cabaret or the Af-Am Center. Wolf’s Head’s members took great pride in the fact that they’d housed protesters during the Black Panther trials, but they’d also been the last of the Ancient Eight to let in women, so Alex considered it a wash. On ritual nights, she regularly saw a Gray standing in the courtyard, mooning the offices of the Yale Daily News next door.

Alex had to ring the bell at the gate twice before Salome Nils finally answered and let them inside.

“Who’s this?” Salome asked. For a second, Alex thought she could see the Bridegroom. He had drawn closer, matching Alex step for step, a small smile quirking his lips, as if he could hear the hummingbird beat of her heart. Then she realized Salome was talking about Dawes. Most people in the societies probably had no idea Pamela Dawes even existed.

“She’s assisting me,” said Alex.

But Salome was already leading them into the dark foyer. The Bridegroom followed. The tombs were kept unwarded to allow the easy flow of magic, but that meant Grays could come and go as they pleased. It was what made Lethe’s protections necessary during rites.

“Do you have it?” Salome asked. The interior was nondescript: slate floors, dark wood, leaded windows overlooking a small interior courtyard where an ash tree grew. It had been there long before the university and would probably still be stretching its roots when the stones around it crumbled to dust. A magnetic board by the door showed which delegation members were currently at the tomb, a necessity given the size of the place. They were listed by their Egyptian god names, and only Salome’s ankh, labeled Chefren, had been moved to the At home column.

“Got it,” said Alex, pulling the statue from her bag.

Salome seized it with a happy shriek. “Perfect! Keys is going to be so pissed when they realize we got it back.”

“What does it do?” Alex asked as Salome led them back into another dark room, this one with an elongated lozenge of a table at its center, surrounded by low chairs. The walls were lined with glass cases full of Egyptian curios and depictions of wolves.

“It doesn’t do anything,” Salome said with a withering look. She set the statue back in the case. “It’s the principle of the thing. We invited them into our house and they shat on our hospitality.”

“Right,” said Alex. “That’s awful.” But she felt that angry rattle inside her twitch, vibrating against her sternum. Someone had just tried to kill her and this princess was playing stupid games. “Let’s get this started.”

Salome shifted her weight. “Listen, I really can’t open up the temple without approval from the delegation. Not even alumni are allowed in.”

Dawes released a small humming sigh. She was clearly relieved at the prospect of turning right around to go home. That wasn’t going to happen.

“We had a deal. Are you actually trying to run game on me?” Alex asked.

Salome grinned. She didn’t feel the least bit bad about it. And why would she? Alex was a freshman, an apprentice, clearly out of her element. She’d been nothing but quiet and deferential around Salome and the Wolf’s Head delegation, always letting Darlington, the real presence, the gentleman of Lethe, do the talking. Maybe if Lethe had rescued her from her life sooner, she could have been that girl. Maybe if the gluma hadn’t attacked and Dean Sandow hadn’t ignored her she could have kept pretending to be her.

“I got your stupid figurine,” said Alex. “You owe me.”

“Except you weren’t really supposed to do that, were you? So.”

Most drug deals were done on credit. You got your supply from someone with the real connections, you proved you could move it for a good price, maybe next time you got the chance at a bigger bite. “You know why your boy is amateur and will stay amateur?” Eitan had asked Alex in his heavy accent once. He’d hiked a thumb at Len, who was giggling over a bong while Betcha played Halo beside him. “He’s too busy smoking my product to make anyone but me rich.” Len was always scraping by, always coming up a little short.

When Alex was fifteen she’d come back to Len without his money, confused and flustered by the investment banker she’d met in the parking lot of the Sherman Oaks Sports Authority. Len usually handled him, leaving sweet-faced Alex to do runs at the colleges and malls. But Len had been too hungover that morning, so he’d given her bus fare and she’d ridden the RTD down to Ventura Boulevard. Alex didn’t know what to say when the banker told her he was short on cash, that he didn’t have the money right then but he was good for it. She’d never had someone flat-out refuse to pay. The college kids she dealt with called her “little sis,” and sometimes they even invited her to smoke up with them.

Alex had expected Len to be pissed, but he’d been furious in a way she’d never seen before, frightened, screaming it was on her and she was going to have to answer to Eitan. So she’d found a way to pay back the money. She’d gone home for the weekend and stolen her grandmother’s garnet earrings to hock, had gotten a shift at Club Joy—the worst of the strip clubs, full of losers who barely tipped and owned by a tiny guy called King King, who wouldn’t let you out of the dressing room without copping a feel first. It was the only place willing to take her on with no ID and nothing to fill her bikini. “Some guys like that,” King King had said before shoving his hand in her top. “But not me.”

She’d never come back short again.

Now she looked at Salome Nils, lean and smooth-faced, a Connecticut girl who rode horses and played tennis, her heavy bronze ponytail tucked over one shoulder like an expensive pelt. “Salome, how about you rethink your position?”

“How about you and your spinster aunt run home?”

Salome was taller than Alex, so Alex grabbed her by the lower lip, hard, and yanked. The girl squeaked and bent at the waist, flailing her arms.

“Alex!” Dawes yelped, hands pressed to her chest like a woman pretending to be a corpse.

Alex wrapped her arm around Salome’s neck, looping her into a choke hold, a grip she’d learned from Minki, who was only four foot five and the one girl at Club Joy who King King never messed with. Alex fastened her fingers around the pear-shaped diamond drop that hung from Salome’s ear.

She was aware of Dawes’s shocked presence, of the Bridegroom stepping forward as if chivalry demanded he do so, the way the very air around them was shifting, changing, the haze dissipating so that Salome and Dawes and maybe even the Gray could see her clearly for the first time. Alex knew it was probably a mistake. Better not to be noticed, to keep your head down, remain the quiet girl, in over her head but no threat to anyone. But, like most mistakes, it felt good.

“I really like these earrings,” she said softly. “How much did they cost?”

“Alex!” Dawes protested again. Salome scrabbled at Alex’s forearm. She was strong from sports like squash and sailing, but she’d never had anyone lay hands on her, probably never seen a fight outside of a movie theater. “You don’t know, right? They were a present from your dad on your sweet sixteen or on graduation or some shit like that?” Alex jostled her and Salome squeaked again. “Here’s what’s going to happen: You’re going to let me into that room or I’m going to tear these things out of your ears and shove them both down your throat and you can choke on them.” It was an empty threat. Alex wasn’t in the business of wasting a nice pair of diamonds. But Salome didn’t know that. She started crying. “Better,” Alex said. “We understand each other?”

Salome gave a frantic nod of her head, the sweaty skin of her throat bobbing against Alex’s arm.

Alex released her. Salome backed away, hands held out in front of her. Dawes had pressed her fingers to her mouth, and even the Bridegroom looked disturbed. She’d managed to scandalize a murderer.

“You’re insane,” said Salome, touching her fingertips to her throat. “You can’t just—”

The snake inside Alex stopped twitching and uncoiled. She curled her hand into the sleeve of her coat and slammed it through the glass case where they kept their little trinkets. Salome and Dawes shrieked. They both took another step back.

“I know you’re used to dealing with people who can’t just, but I can, so give me the key to the temple room and let’s get square so we can forget all about this.”

Salome hovered, poised on the tips of her toes, framed by the doorway. She looked so light, so impossibly slender, as if she might simply lose contact with the ground and float up to the ceiling to bob there like a party balloon. Then something shifted in her eyes, all of that Puritan pragmatism seeping back into her bones. She settled on her heels.

“Whatever,” she muttered, and fished her keys from her pocket, slipping one from the ring and setting it on the table.

“Thank you.” Alex winked. “Now we can be friends again.”

“Psycho.”

“So I hear,” said Alex. But crazy survived. Alex snatched up the key. “After you, Dawes.” Dawes passed through to the hallway, keeping a wide distance between herself and Alex, eyes on the floor. Alex turned back to Salome.

“I know you’re thinking that as soon as I’m in the temple you’re going to start making calls, try to get me jammed up.” Salome folded her arms. “I think you should do that. Then I’ll come back and use that wolf statue to knock your front teeth in.”

The Bridegroom shook his head.

“You can’t just—”

“Salome,” Alex said, shaking her finger. “Those words again.”

But Salome clenched her fists. “You can’t just do things like that. You’ll go to jail.”

“Probably,” said Alex. “But you’ll still look like a brother-fucking hillbilly.”

“What is wrong with you?” Dawes spat as Alex joined her at the nondescript door that led to the temple room, the Bridegroom trailing behind.

“I’m a bad dancer and I don’t floss. What’s wrong with you?” Now that the wave of adrenaline had passed, remorse was setting in. Once a mask was off you couldn’t just slide it back into place. Salome wouldn’t be calling the cavalry, Alex felt pretty sure of that. But she felt equally certain that the girl would talk. Psycho. Crazy bitch. Whether she would be believed was another thing entirely. Salome had said it herself: You can’t just. People here didn’t behave the way that Alex had.

The more pressing concern was how good Alex felt, like she was breathing easy for the first time in months, free from the suffocating weight of the new Alex she’d tried to construct.

But Dawes was breathing hard. As if she’d done all the work.

Alex flipped a light switch and flames flared to life in the gas lanterns along the red and gold walls, illuminating an Egyptian temple built into the heart of the English manor house. An altar was laden with skulls, taxidermied animals, and a leather ledger signed by each of the delegation’s members before the start of a ritual. At the center of the back wall was a sarcophagus topped with glass, a desiccated mummy pilfered from a Nile Valley dig inside. It was all almost too expected. The ceiling was painted to look like a vaulted sky, acanthus leaves and stylized palms at the corners, and a stream cut through the center of the room, fed by a sheet of water that toppled from the edge of the balcony above, the echo overwhelming. The Bridegroom drifted across the stream, as far from the sarcophagus as he could get.

“I’m leaving,” Salome shouted from down the hall. “I don’t want to be here if something goes wrong.”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong!” Alex called back. They heard the front door slam. “Dawes, what did she mean if something goes wrong?”

“Did you read the ritual?” Dawes asked as she walked the perimeter of the room, studying its details.

“Parts of it.” Enough to know it could put her in touch with the Bridegroom.

“You have to cross into the borderland between life and death.”

“Wait… I’m going to have to die?” She really should start doing the reading.

“Yes.”

“And come back?”

“I mean, that’s the idea.”

“And you’re going to have to kill me?” Timid Dawes who, at the first sign of violence, had curled into a corner like a hedgehog in a sweatshirt? “You okay with that? It’s not going to look good for you if I don’t make it back.”

Dawes expelled a long breath. “So make it back.”

The Bridegroom’s face was bleak, but that was sort of his look. Alex contemplated the altar. “So the afterlife is Egypt? Of all the religions, the ancient Egyptians got it right?”

“We don’t really know what the afterlife is like. This is one way into one borderland. There are others. They’re always marked by rivers.”

“Like Lethe to the Greeks.”

“Actually, to the Greeks, Styx is the border river. Lethe is the final boundary the dead must cross. The Egyptians believed the sun died on the western banks of the Nile every day, so to journey from its eastern bank to the west is to leave the world of the living behind.”

And that was the journey Alex would have to make.

The “river” bisecting the temple was symbolic, hewn of stone mined from the ancient limestone tunnels beneath Tura, hieroglyphs from the Book of Emerging Forth into Night carved into the sides and base of the channel.

Alex hesitated. Was this the crossroads? Was this the last foolish thing she would do? And who would be there to greet her in the beyond? Hellie. Maybe Darlington. Len and Betcha, their skulls crushed in, that cartoonish look of surprise still stuck on Len’s face. Or maybe they’d be made whole somewhere on that other shore. If she died, would she be able to cross back through the Veil and spend an eternity flitting around campus? Would she end up back home, doomed to haunt some dump in Van Nuys? So make it back. Make it back or leave Dawes holding her dead body and Salome Nils to share the blame. The last thought wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

“All I have to do is drown?”

“That’s all,” said Dawes without a hint of a smile.

Alex unbuttoned her coat and drew off her sweater, while Dawes shed her parka, drawing two slender green reeds from her pockets. “Where is he?” she whispered.

“The Bridegroom? Right behind you.” Dawes flinched. “Kidding. He’s by the altar, doing his brooding thing.” The Bridegroom’s scowl deepened.

“Have him stand opposite you on the western shore.”

“He can hear you fine, Dawes.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Dawes made an awkward gesture and the Bridegoom drifted to the other side of the stream. It was narrow enough that he crossed it with a single long step. “Now you both kneel.”

Alex wasn’t sure if the Bridegroom would be so quick to follow instructions, but he did. They knelt. He seemed to want this little talk as much as Alex did.

She could feel the cold of the floor through her jeans. She realized she was wearing a white T-shirt and it was going to get soaked. You’re about to die, she scolded herself. Maybe now isn’t the time to worry about giving a ghost a look at your boobs.

“Put your hands behind your back,” said Dawes.

“Why?”

Dawes held up the reeds and recited: “Let his wrists be bound with stalks of papyrus.”

Alex put her hands behind her back. It was like getting arrested. She half-expected Dawes to slide a zip tie around her wrists. Instead, she felt Dawes drop something into her left pocket.

“It’s a carob pod. When you want to come back, put it in your mouth and bite down. Ready?”

“Go slow,” said Alex.

Alex bent forward. It was awkward with her hands behind her back. Dawes braced her head and neck and helped her fall forward. Alex hovered for a moment above the surface, raised her eyes, met the Bridegroom’s gaze. “Do it,” she said. She took a deep breath and tried not to panic as Dawes shoved her head underwater.

Silence filled her ears. She opened her eyes but could see nothing but black stone. She waited, breath leaking from her in reluctant bubbles as her chest tightened.

Her lungs ached. She couldn’t do this, not this way. They’d have to come up with something else.

She tried to push up, but Dawes’s fingers were claws on the back of Alex’s skull. It was impossible to break her grip in this position. Dawes’s knee pressed into her back. Her fingers felt like spikes digging into Alex’s scalp.

The pressure in Alex’s chest was unbearable. Panic came at her like a dog slipped free of its leash, and she knew she’d made a very bad mistake. Dawes had been working with Book and Snake. Or Skull and Bones. Or Sandow. Or whoever wanted her gone. Dawes was finishing what the gluma had started. Dawes was punishing her for what had happened to Darlington. She’d known the truth of what had gone down that night at Rosenfeld all along, and this was her revenge on Alex for stealing away her golden boy.

Alex bucked and thrashed in silence. She had to breathe. Don’t. But her body wouldn’t listen. Her mouth opened on a gasp. Water rushed into her nose, her mouth, filled her lungs. Her mind was screaming in terror, but there was no way out. She thought of her mother, the silver bangles stacked on her forearms like gauntlets. Her grandmother whispered, Somos almicas sin pecado. Her gnarled hands gripped the skin of a pomegranate, spilling the seeds into a bowl. We are little souls without sin.

Then the pressure on the back of her neck was gone. Alex hurled herself backward, chest heaving. A rush of gritty water spewed from her mouth as her body convulsed. She realized her wrists were free and pushed up to her hands and knees. Deep, rattling coughs shook her body. Her lungs burned as she gulped at the air. Screw Dawes. Screw everyone. She was sobbing, unable to stop. Her arms gave way and she fell to the floor, flopped onto her back, sucking in breath, and wiped a wet sleeve over her face, trailing snot and tears—and blood. She’d bitten her tongue.

She squinted up at the painted ceiling. There were clouds moving across it, gray against the indigo sky. Stars glinted above her in strange formations. They were not her constellations.

Alex forced herself to sit up. She touched her hand to her chest, rubbing it gently, still coughing, trying to get her bearings. Dawes was gone. Everything was gone—the walls, the altar, the stone floors. She sat on the banks of a great river that flowed black beneath the stars, the sound of the water a long exhalation. A warm wind moved through the reeds. Death is cold, thought Alex. Shouldn’t it be cold here?

Far across the water, she could see a man’s shape moving toward her from the opposite shore. The water parted around the Bridegroom’s body. So he had true physical form here. Had she stepped behind the Veil, then? Was she truly dead? Despite the balmy air, Alex felt a chill creep through her as the figure drew closer. He had no reason to harm her; he’d saved her. But he’s a killer, she reminded herself. Maybe he just misses murdering women.

Alex didn’t want to go back into the water, not when her chest still rattled with the memory of that violent pressure and her throat was raw from coughing. But she had come here with a purpose. She rose, scrubbed the sand from her palms, and waded into the shallows, her boots squelching in the mud. The river rose, warm against her calves, the current pulling gently at her knees, then her thighs, then her waist. She drifted past the spiky bowls of lotus flowers resting gently on the surface, still as a table setting. The water tugged at her hips, the current strong. She could feel the silt shift beneath her feet.

Something brushed against her in the water and she glimpsed starlight glinting off a shiny, ridged back. She flinched backward as the crocodile passed, a single golden eye rolling toward her as it submerged. To her left, another black tail flicked through the water.

“They cannot harm you.” The Bridegroom stood only a few yards away. “But you must come to me, Miss Stern.” To the center of the river. Where the dead and the living might meet.

She didn’t like that he knew her name. His voice was low and pleasant, the accent almost English but broader in the vowels, a little like someone imitating a Kennedy.

Alex waded in farther, until she stood directly in front of the Bridegroom. He looked just as he had in the living world, silver light clinging to the sharp lines of his elegant face, caught in his dark mussed hair—except here she was close enough to see the creases of the knot in his necktie, the sheen of his coat. The bits of bone and gore that had splattered the white fabric of his shirt were gone. He was clean here, free of blood or wound. A boat slid past, a slim craft topped by a pavilion of billowing silks. Shadows moved behind the fabric, dim shapes that were men one moment and jackals the next. A great cat lay at the edge of the boat, its paw playing with the water. It looked at her with huge diamond eyes, then yawned, revealing a long pink tongue.

“Where are we?” she asked the Bridegroom.

“At the center of the river, the place of Ma’at, divine order. In Egypt all gods are the gods of death and life as well. We don’t have much time, Miss Stern. Unless you wish to join us here permanently. The current is strong and inevitably we all succumb.”

Alex looked over his shoulder to the shore beyond, west to the setting sun, to the dark lands, and the next world.

Not yet.

“I need you to look for someone on the other side of the Veil,” she said.

“The murdered girl.”

“That’s right. Her name is Tara Hutchins.”

“No small feat. This is a crowded place.”

“But I’m betting you’re up to the task. And I’m guessing that you want something in return. That’s why you came to my rescue, isn’t it?”

The Bridegroom didn’t answer. His face remained very still, as if waiting for an audience to quiet. In the starlight, his eyes looked almost purple. “If I’m to find the girl, I’ll need something personal of hers, a beloved possession. Preferably something that retains her effluvia.”

“Her what?”

“Saliva, blood, perspiration.”

“I’ll get it,” Alex said, though she had no idea how she was going to manage that. No chance was she going to be able to talk her way back into the morgue, and she was all out of coins of compulsion. Besides, Tara might be underground or ashes by now for all she knew.

“You’ll need to bring it to the borderlands.”

“I doubt I can come back here. Salome and I aren’t exactly on friendly terms.”

“I can’t imagine why.” The Bridegroom’s lips pursed slightly, and in that moment, he reminded her so much of Darlington, she felt a tremor pass through her. On the western shore, she could see dark shapes moving, some human, some less so. A murmur rose from them, but she couldn’t tell if there was reason in the noise, if it was language or just sounds.

“I need to know who murdered Tara,” she said. “A name.”

“And if she doesn’t know her attacker?”

“Then find out what she was doing with Tripp Helmuth. He’s in Skull and Bones. And if she knew anyone in Book and Snake. I need to know how she’s connected to the societies.” If she was connected at all, if it wasn’t just coincidence. “Find out why the hell—” A bolt of lightning flashed overhead. Thunder cracked and the river suddenly seemed alive with restless reptilian bodies.

The Bridegroom raised a brow. “They don’t like that word here.”

Who? Alex wanted to ask. The dead? The gods? Alex dug her boots into the sand as the current tugged at her knees, urging her west into darkness. She could ponder the mechanics of the afterlife later.

“Just find out why someone wanted Tara dead. She has to know something.”

“Then let us come to terms,” said the Bridegroom. “You shall have your information, and in return I wish to know who murdered my fiancée.”

“This is awkward. I was under the impression you did.”

The Bridegroom’s lips pursed again. He looked so prim, so put out, Alex almost laughed. “I’m aware.”

“Murder-suicide? Shot her, then yourself?”

“I did not. Whoever killed her was responsible for my death as well. I don’t know who it was. Just as Tara Hutchins may not know who harmed her.”

“All right,” Alex said dubiously. “Then why not ask your fiancée what she saw?”

His eyes slid away. “I can’t find her. I’ve been searching for her on both sides of the Veil for over a hundred and fifty years.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

He nodded stiffly. “If a spirit doesn’t wish to be found, there’s an eternity to hide in.”

“She blames you,” Alex said, fitting the pieces together.

“Possibly.”

“And you think she’ll stop blaming you if you find out who really did this?”

“Hopefully.”

“Or you could just leave her be.”

“I was responsible for Daisy’s death, even if I didn’t deal her the blow. I failed to protect her. I owe her justice.”

“Justice? It’s not like you can seek revenge. Whoever killed you is long since dead.”

“Then I will find him on this side.”

“And do what? Kill him real good?”

The Bridegroom smiled then, the corners of his mouth pulling back to reveal an even, predatory set of teeth. Alex felt a chill settle over her. She remembered the way he’d looked wrestling with the gluma. Like something that wasn’t quite human. Something even the dead should fear.

“There are worse things than death, Miss Stern.”

Again the murmuring rose from the banks of the western shore, and this time Alex thought she could pick out the sound of what might have been French. Jean Du Monde? It might be a man’s name or just nonsense syllables her mind was trying to shape into meaning.

“You’ve had over a hundred years to try to find this mystery killer,” Alex said. “Why do you think I’m going to have any better luck?”

“Your associate Daniel Arlington was looking into the case.”

“I don’t think so.” An old murder that headlined Haunted New England tours wasn’t Darlington’s style at all.

“He visited the… place where we fell. He had a notebook with him. He took photos. I highly doubt he was just sightseeing. I can’t get past the wards of the house on Orange Street. I want to know why he went there and what he found.”

“And Darlington isn’t… he isn’t there? With you?”

“Even the dead don’t know where Daniel Arlington is.”

If the Bridegroom hadn’t found Darlington on the other side, then Sandow had to be right. He was just missing, and that meant he could be found. Alex needed to believe that.

“Find Tara,” Alex said, eager to be out of the water and back to the world of the living. “I’ll see what work Darlington left behind. But I need to know something. Tell me you didn’t send that thing, the gluma, after me.”

“Why would I—”

“To form a connection between us. To make me indebted to you and lay the groundwork for this little partnership.”

“I didn’t send that thing after you and I don’t know who did. How am I to convince you?”

Alex wasn’t sure. She’d hoped she’d somehow be able to tell, that there was some vow she could force him to make, but she supposed she’d know soon enough. Assuming she could figure out what Darlington had discovered—if anything. The factory that had been the murder site was a parking garage now. Knowing Darlington, he’d probably gone there to take notes on the history of New Haven concrete.

“Just find Tara,” she said. “Get me my answers and I’ll get yours.”

“This is not the pact I would have chosen, nor are you the partner I would have sought, but we will both make the best of it.”

“You’re quite the charmer. Daisy like that way with words?” The Bridegroom’s eyes turned black. Alex had to force herself not to take a step backward. “Quick temper. Just the type of guy to off a lady who got sick of his shit. Did you?”

“I loved her. I loved her more than life.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

He took a deep breath, summoning his composure, and his eyes returned to their normal state. He held out his hand to her. “Speak your true name, Miss Stern, and let us make our bargain.”

There was power in names. It was why the names of Grays were blacked from the pages of Lethe’s records. It was why she would rather think of the thing before her as the Bridegroom. The danger lay in connection, in the moment when you bound your life to someone else’s.

Alex fingered the carob pod in her pocket. Best to be ready in case… what? He tried to drag her under? But why would he? He needed her and she needed him. That was how most disasters began.

She took his hand in hers. His grip was firm, his palm damp and ice-cold against hers. What was she touching? A body? A thought?

“Bertram Boyce North,” he said.

“That’s a terrible name.”

“It’s a family name,” he said indignantly.

“Galaxy Stern,” she said, but when she tried to pull her hand back, his fingers closed tighter.

“I have waited a long time for this moment.”

Alex popped the carob pod into her mouth. “Moments pass,” she said, letting it rest between her teeth.

“You thought me sleeping, but I heard you say, I heard you say, that you were no true wife.” Again, Alex tried to pull away. His hand stayed closed hard around hers. “I swear I will not ask your meaning in it: I do believe yourself against yourself, and will henceforward rather die than doubt.”

Rather die than doubt. Tara’s tattoo. The quote wasn’t from some metal band.

“Idylls of the King,” she said.

“You remember now.”

She’d had to read the whole long sprawl of Tennyson’s poem as part of the preparation for Darlington’s and her first visit to Scroll and Key. There were quotes from it all over their tomb, tributes to King Arthur and his knights—and a vault full of treasures plundered during the Crusades. Have power on this dark land to lighten it, and power on this dead world to make it live. She remembered the words etched into the stone table at the Locksmiths’ tomb.

Alex shook free of the Bridegroom’s grip. So Tara’s death was potentially connected to three societies. Tara was tied to Skull and Bones through Tripp Helmuth, to Book and Snake by the gluma attack, and—unless Tara had a secret taste for Victorian poetry—she was linked to Scroll and Key by her Tennyson tattoo.

North bowed slightly. “When you find something that belonged to Tara, bring it to any body of water and I will come to you. They are all crossing places for us now.”

Alex flexed her fingers, wanting to be free of the feel of the Bridegroom’s hand in hers. “I’ll do that.” She turned from him, biting down on the carob pod, her mouth flooding with a bitter, chalky taste.

She tried to push toward the eastern bank, but the river yanked at her knees and she stumbled. She felt herself pulled backward as she lost her footing, her boots seeking purchase on the riverbed as she was dragged toward the host of dark shapes on the western shore. North had his back to her and he already seemed impossibly far away. The shapes did not look quite human anymore. They were too tall, too lean, their arms long and bent at wrong angles, like insects. She could see their heads silhouetted against the indigo sky, noses lifted as if scenting her, jaws opening and closing.

“North!” she shouted.

But North did not break his stride. “The current claims us all in the end,” he called without turning. “If you want to live, you have to fight.”

Alex gave up trying to find the bottom. She wrenched her body toward the east and swam, kicking hard, fighting the current as she plunged her arms into the water. She turned her head to gasp for breath, the weight of her shoes drawing her down, her shoulders aching. Something heavy and muscular bumped her, driving her back; a tail lashed her leg. Maybe the crocodiles couldn’t harm her, but they could do the river’s work. Fatigue sat leaden in her muscles. She felt her pace slow.

The sky had gone dark. She couldn’t see the shore any longer, wasn’t even sure she was swimming in the right direction. If you want to live.

And wasn’t that the worst of it? She did. She did want to live and always had.

“Hell!” she shouted. “Goddamn hell!” The sky exploded with forked lightning. A little blasphemy to light the way. For a long, horrible moment, there was only black water, and then she spotted the eastern shore.

She drove forward, plowing her hands through the water, until at last she let her legs drop. The bottom was there, closer than she’d thought. She crawled through the shallows, crushing lotus blossoms beneath her sodden body, and slumped down on the sand. She could hear the crocodiles behind her, the low engine rumble of their open mouths. Would they nudge her back to the river’s grasp? She dragged herself a few more feet, but she was too heavy. Her body was sinking into the sand, the grains weighing her down, filling her mouth, her nose, drifting beneath her eyelids.

Something hard struck Alex’s head again, then again. She forced her eyes open. She was on her back on the floor of the temple room, choking up mud and staring at Dawes’s frightened face framed by the painted sky—mercifully static and free of clouds. Her body was shaking so hard she could hear the thump of her own skull on the stone floor.

Dawes seized her, wrapped her up tight, and, slowly, Alex’s muscles stopped spasming. Her breathing returned to normal, though she could still taste silt and the bitter remnants of carob in her mouth. “You’re all right,” said Dawes. “You’re all right.”

And Alex had to laugh, because the last thing she would ever be was all right.

“Let’s get out of here,” she managed.

Dawes slung Alex’s arm around her shoulders with surprising strength and pulled her to her feet. Alex’s clothes were bone dry, but her legs and arms felt wobbly, as if she’d tried to swim a mile. She could still smell the river, and her throat had the raw, fish-slick feel of water going up her nose.

“Where do I leave the key?” asked Dawes.

“By the door,” said Alex. “I’ll text Salome.”

“That seems so civil.”

“Never mind. Let’s break a window and pee on the pool table.”

Dawes released a breathy giggle.

“It’s okay, Dawes. I didn’t die. Much. I went to the borderlands. I made a deal.”

“Oh, Alex. What did you do?”

“What I set out to do.” But she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. “The Bridegroom is going to find Tara for us. That’s the easiest way to figure out who hurt her.”

“And what does he want?”

“He wants me to clear his name.” She hesitated. “He claims Darlington was looking into the murder-suicide.”

Dawes’s brows shot up. “That doesn’t sound right. Darlington hated popular cases like that. He thought they were… ghoulish.”

“Tawdry,” said Alex.

A faint smile touched Dawes’s lips. “Exactly. Wait… then the Bridegroom didn’t kill his fiancée?”

“He says he didn’t. That’s not quite the same thing.”

Maybe he was innocent, maybe he wanted to make peace with Daisy, maybe he just wanted to find his way back to the girl he had murdered. It didn’t matter. Alex would hold up her end of the bargain. Whether you made a deal with the living or the dead, best not to come up short.