Ninth House

²³ Winter

Alex trudged upstairs to retrieve her boots from the armory. The crucible had healed her wounds, but she was short on sleep and her body knew it. Still if she’d had a choice, she thought she might take another brawl, even with a bruiser like Lance, rather than face the salon tonight, classes tomorrow, and the day after—and the day after that. When she was fighting for her life, it was strictly pass/fail. All she had to do was survive and she could call it a win. Even sitting in the parlor with Dawes and Turner, she’d felt like she was keeping up, not just playing along. She didn’t want to go back to feeling like a fraud.

But you are still pretending, she reminded herself. Dawes and Turner didn’t really know her. They never would have guessed at what Darlington had learned about her past. And if the new-moon rite worked? If Darlington returned two days from now and told them all the truth, would anyone speak for her then?

Alex found a stack of clothes on her bed in the Dante room.

“I brought them from my apartment,” Dawes said, hovering in the doorway, hands curled into her sleeves. “They’re not stylish, but they’re better than sweats. I know you like black, so…”

“They’re perfect.” They weren’t. The jeans were too long and the shirt had been washed so many times it was closer to gray than black, but Dawes hadn’t needed to share her closet. Alex wanted to soak up every kindness while she still could.

As she set out for Belbalm’s house, Alex felt jumpy. She’d wound her watch tight in case the gluma was stalking her, stuffed a jar of graveyard dirt into her satchel, placed two magnets in her pocket, and studied the signs of warding needed to close a portal temporarily. They felt like small protections. The list of suspects in Tara’s murder had become a list of possible threats, and they were all packing too much magical firepower.

Belbalm lived on St. Ronan, a twenty-minute walk north from Il Bastone, not far from the divinity school. Her house was one of the smaller ones on the street, two stories high, and built of red brick covered in gray vines like an old woman’s hair. Alex entered through a garden gate beneath a white lattice arch, and the same sense of calm she’d felt in Belbalm’s office descended over her. The garden smelled of mint and marjoram.

Alex paused on the path. It was some kind of crushed gravel the color of slate. Through the tall windows, she could see a circle of people gathered in a variety of chairs, a few crowded onto a piano bench, some on the floor. She glimpsed glasses of red wine, plates poised on knees. A boy with a beard and a wild mane of curls was reading from something. She felt like she was looking into another Yale, a Yale beyond Lethe and the societies, one that might open and keep opening if she could just learn its rituals and codes. At Darlington’s house she had felt like a trespasser. Here she had been invited. She might not belong but she was welcome.

She knocked softly at the door and, when there was no answer, pushed gently. It was unlocked, as if there were never unwanted visitors. There were coats hung in heaps and in piles along a row of hooks. The floor was littered with boots.

Belbalm saw her hovering in the door and gestured Alex toward the kitchen.

Then Alex understood. She was staff.

Of course she was staff.

Thank God she was staff and wouldn’t have to try to pretend to be anything else.

Over Belbalm’s shoulder, Alex spotted Dean Sandow talking to two students on a settee. She slipped into the kitchen, hoping he hadn’t seen her, and then wondered why she should worry about it. Did she really think he had hurt Tara? That he was capable of something that gruesome? In the parlor back at Il Bastone, it had seemed possible, but here, in this place of warmth and easy conversation, Alex couldn’t quite get her head around it.

The kitchen was vast, the cupboards white, the countertops black, the floor a clean checkerboard.

“Alex!” crowed Colin when she appeared. Murder suspects on all sides. “I didn’t know you were coming! We need extra hands. What are you wearing? Black is fine, but next time a white button-down.”

Alex didn’t own a white button-down. “Okay,” she said.

“Just come over here and set these on a baking sheet.”

Alex fell into the rhythm of following orders. Isabel Andrews, Belbalm’s other assistant, was there too, arranging fruit and pastries and mysterious stacks of meats on different platters. The food they were serving seemed utterly foreign to her. When Colin said to hand him the cheese, it took her a long moment to realize it was right in front of her: not platters of cubed cheddar but giant hunks of what looked like quartz and iolite, a tiny pot of honey, a spray of almonds. All of it art.

“After the readings and the talk they’ll do dessert,” Colin explained. “She always does meringues and mini tartes aux pommes.”

“Was Dean Sandow here last week?” Alex asked. If he had been, then Alex could cross him off their list, and if Colin didn’t know, then maybe he hadn’t really been at the salon all night.

But before he could answer, Professor Belbalm sailed through the swinging doors.

“Of course he was,” she said. “That man loves to drink my bourbon.” She popped a tiny wild strawberry into her mouth and wiped her fingers on a towel. “He said the most inane thing about Camus. But it’s hard not to be inane about Camus. I’m not sure why I expected better—he has a Rumi quote framed beside his desk. It pains me. Darling Colin, please make sure we always have white and red at hand?” She held up an empty bottle and Colin’s face went ashen. “It’s all right, love. Grab a bottle and come join us. Alex and the others can keep things under control here, yes? Did you bring something to read?”

“I… yes.” Colin drifted from the kitchen as if his ankles had just sprouted wings.

“Meringues,” commanded Isabel.

“Meringues,” repeated Alex, walking over to the mixer and handing the bowl to Isabel. She snapped a picture of the kitchen for her mom and texted, At work. This was the way she wanted Mira to think of her. Happy. Normal. Safe. Everything Alex had never been. She texted Mercy and Lauren too. At Belbalm’s salon. Fingers crossed for leftovers.

“I cannot believe Colin gets to read tonight,” Isabel complained, piping the meringue onto a baking sheet. “I’ve been with her a semester longer than he has, and I aced her Women and Industrialism seminar.”

“Next time,” murmured Alex, brushing melted butter over the tiny apple tarts. “Was it this crowded last week?”

“Yes, and Colin bitched the entire night. We were here cleaning up until after two.”

Then Colin’s alibi was good. Alex felt a rush of relief. She liked Colin, liked sour Isabel, liked this kitchen, this house, this comfortable space. She liked this piece of world that had nothing to do with murder or magic. She didn’t want to see it disrupted by brutality. But that didn’t mean she could cross all of Scroll and Key off her list. Even if Colin hadn’t killed Tara, he’d known her. And someone had taught Lance portal magic.

“Did Sandow stick around for the whole salon last week?”

“Unfortunately,” said Isabel. “He always drinks way too much. Apparently he’s been going through some kind of awful divorce. Professor Belbalm tucked him away in her study with a blanket. He left a ring of urine around the powder room toilet that Colin had to clean up.” She shuddered. “On second thought, Colin totally deserves to read. You have so much to look forward to, Alex.”

Isabel had no reason to lie, so Dean Sandow’s bad aim had just earned him an alibi. Dawes would be glad. And Alex supposed she was too. It was one thing to be a murderer, quite another to work for one.

It was a long, late night in the kitchen, but Alex couldn’t resent it. It felt like working toward something.

Around one in the morning, they finished serving, tidied up the kitchen, packed bottles into the recycling bins, accepted air kisses from Belbalm, and then floated into the night with platters of leftovers in hand. After the violence and strangeness of the last few days, it felt like a gift. It was a beautiful taste of what life might become, of how little the societies mattered to most people at Yale, of work that asked nothing of you but time and a bit of attention in a house full of harmless people high on nothing more than their own pretensions.

Alex saw a Gray in Rollerblades ahead of her, weaving her way between the lampposts, drawing closer. Her skull and torso looked like they’d been crushed, a deep dimple left by the wheels of some careless driver’s car.

Pasa punto, pasa mundo, Alex whispered, almost kindly, and watched the girl vanish. A moment passes, a world passes. Easy.

Alex didn’t have classes the next morning. She got up early to eat breakfast and to try to do a little reading before trekking up to Marsh, but as she was finishing her pile of eggs and hot sauce, she caught sight of the Bridegroom. His expression turned disapproving when she followed up with a hot fudge sundae, but ice cream was available at all meals in every dining hall, and that was not an opportunity to be squandered.

After breakfast, she ducked into the bathroom off the JE common room and filled the sink. She wasn’t eager to talk to him; she wasn’t ready to discuss what she’d witnessed in his memories. But she also wanted to know if he’d had any luck finding Tara.

After a moment, North’s face appeared in the reflection.

“Well?” she said.

“I haven’t found her yet.”

Alex flicked the surface of the water with her finger and watched his reflection fracture. “Seems like you’re not much good at this.”

When the water stilled, North’s expression was grim. “And what have you discovered?”

“You were right. Darlington was interested in your case. But his notes weren’t in his desk at Il Bastone. I can look at Black Elm tomorrow night.” When the new moon would rise. Maybe then Darlington would be able to answer the Bridegroom’s questions himself.

“And?”

“And what?”

“What did you see when you were in my head, Miss Stern? You were distressed when you cast me out.”

Alex contemplated how much she wanted to tell him. “What do you remember from the moment you died, North?”

His face seemed to go still, and she realized she’d spoken his name out loud. Damn it.

“Is that what you saw?” he asked slowly. “My death?”

“Just answer me.”

“Nothing,” he admitted. “One moment I was standing in my new office, talking to Daisy, and then… I was no one. The mortal world was lost to me.”

“You were on the other side.” Alex could see how that could mess with your head. “Did you ever try to find Gladys O’Donaghue behind the Veil?”

“Who?”

“Daisy’s maid.”

North frowned. “The police interviewed her. She found our… bodies, but she wasn’t even there to witness the crime.”

“And she was just a maid?” said Alex. Guys like this never noticed the help. But North was right. Alex had spotted Gladys outside enjoying the spring weather herself. If Gladys had seen or heard something strange at the scene, she had every reason to share that information with the police. And Alex suspected there had been no one to see—just magic, invisible and wild, the frightened spirit of a man who had been brutalized by the Bonesmen and somehow found his way into North. “I’ll let you know what I find at Black Elm. Quit following me around and go hunt down Tara.”

“What did you see in my head, Miss Stern?”

“Sorry! You’re breaking up!” Alex released the plug in the drain.

She headed out of the common room and texted Turner that she was on her way to the Marsh greenhouses. On her way, she placed a phone call to the hospital to ask after Michael Reyes. She should have checked in on the victima from Skull and Bones’s latest prognostication sooner, but she’d been more than a little distracted. It took her a while to get the right person on the line, but eventually Jean Gatdula came on to tell her that Reyes was recovering well and would be sent home in the next two days. Alex knew “home” was Columbus House, a shelter far away from campus. She hoped Bones at least left him with a pocketful of cash for his trouble.

The Marsh Botanical Garden sat at the top of Science Hill, the old mansion topped by what looked like a bell tower, the grounds of the former estate rolling down the slope toward the apartment Tara had shared with Lance. There was no real security and Alex blended in easily with the students coming and going from the facility. Four massive forestry school greenhouses stood near the back entrance, surrounded by a cluster of smaller glass structures. Alex had worried she wouldn’t be able to identify where Tara had tended her dangerous garden, but as she made a circuit around the grounds, she detected the stink of the uncanny beneath the smells of manure and turned soil. Though the little greenhouse looked ordinary enough, Alex suspected it had the remnants of a glamour on it—probably courtesy of Kate Masters and Manuscript. How else would Tara have cultivated her crops without inviting suspicion?

But when Alex pulled open the door, she found nothing but empty planters and overturned pots on the tables. Someone had cleaned the place out. Kate? Colin? Someone else? Had Lance opened a portal from his jail cell and come here to destroy potential evidence?

A single, slender tendril of some unknown plant lay in a pile of dirt beside a toppled plastic container. Alex touched her finger to it. The little vine unfurled, a lone white bud appearing from its leaves. Its petals parted in a burst of glittering seeds like a firework, with a soft but audible puh, and it withered to nothing.

Outside, Alex found a lean woman in jeans and a barn jacket digging through a bucket of some kind of mulch with gloved hands.

“Hey,” she said, “can you tell me who uses that greenhouse?”

“Sveta Myers. She’s a grad student.”

Alex didn’t remember her name from Tara’s case file.

“You know where I can find her?”

The woman shook her head. “She left a couple days ago. Took the rest of the semester off.”

Sveta Myers had gotten spooked. Maybe she’d done the work of destroying the greenhouse herself. “You ever see her with a couple? Skinny little blond girl and a big guy, looked like he lived at the gym?”

“I saw the girl here a lot. She was Sveta’s cousin or niece or something?” Alex highly doubted that. “I might have seen the guy once or twice. Why?”

“Thanks for your help,” said Alex, and headed for the gates.

She tried to shake off her feeling of disappointment as she made her way back down the hill. She’d hoped to find more of Tara in the gardens, not just piles of dirt heaped like a fresh grave.

Turner had said he’d meet Alex outside Ingalls Rink, and she spotted his Dodge idling by the curb. It was blessedly warm inside.

“Anything?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Someone cleaned the whole place out, and the student they were working with skipped town too. Someone named Sveta Myers.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but I’ll see if I can track her down.”

“I’ll check the alumni rosters to see if she’s connected to any of the societies,” said Alex. “I want to talk to Lance Gressang.”

“You’re back on that?”

Alex had almost forgotten she’d feigned interest in talking to Gressang before. “Someone has to question him about the new information we have.”

“If the case goes to trial—”

“It will be too late. Someone sent a monster after me. They killed Tara, stole all her plants. Maybe they got to Sveta Myers too. They’re cleaning house.”

“Even if I could get an interview with Gressang, I’m not bringing you with me.”

“Why not? We need Gressang to believe we understand more about all of this than he does. It will take him about thirty seconds to realize you don’t know your ass from a hot rock.”

“What a colorful turn of phrase.”

“I saw you in that apartment, Turner. You almost wet yourself when Lance disappeared through that wall.”

“You have a real way about you, y’know that, Stern?”

“Is it my charm or my looks that you can’t get enough of ?”

Turner twisted in his seat to give her a long stare. “You don’t always have to come out swinging. What are you so angry at?”

Alex felt an irritating jolt of embarrassment. “Everything,” she muttered, gazing at the fogged-up windshield. “Anyway, you know I’m right.”

“Maybe so, but Lance is represented by counsel. Neither of us can talk to him without his lawyer.”

“Would you like to?”

“Of course I’d like to. I’d also like a rare steak and a moment of peace without you yapping in my ear.”

“Can’t oblige. But I think I can get you an interview with Gressang.”

“Let’s say that’s true. Nothing we learn will be admissible in a court of law, Stern. Lance Gressang could tell us he killed Tara twelve times over and we wouldn’t be able to pin it on him.”

“But we’ll still get answers.”

Turner rested his gloved hands on the steering wheel. “I’m pretty sure when my mother was talking about the devil, she had you in mind.”

“I’m a delight.”

“If I said yes, what would we need?”

Turner already had a nice enough suit. “You own a briefcase?”

“I can borrow one.”

“Great. Then all we need is this.” She pulled the mirror she’d used to gain access to Tara’s apartment from her pocket.

“You want me to walk into a secure jail with a compact and a nice attaché case?”

“It’s worse than that, Turner.” Alex flipped the mirror in her hand. “I want you to believe in magic.”