“Just try to keep her calm and don’t leave her alone.”
Alex strode back out of Vanderbilt and across Old Campus. She wanted to go straight to Blake, but that would do no good. A group of Grays flickered in the corner of her vision. “Orare las di Korach,” she spat. Her grandmother’s curse felt good on her tongue. Let them be swallowed alive. All of her anger must have gathered in the words. The Grays scattered like birds.
And what about the gluma? If it was out there hunting, would it go running? She would have been glad for a glimpse of the Bridegroom, but she hadn’t seen him since their encounter in the borderlands.
Alex knew she shouldn’t have riled Detective Turner. He might have been willing to help if she hadn’t messed with him. It was possible he still would. Part of her believed he really was one of the good guys. But she didn’t want to rely on Turner or the law or the administration to fix this. Because the video would still be out there, and Blake Keely was rich and beautiful and beloved, and there was a big difference between things being fair and things being set right.
15
Winter
Alex hadn’t been back to Manuscript since the Halloween party. That night, she’d stayed with Darlington at Black Elm, trying to keep warm in his narrow bed. She’d woken to dawn light trickling through the room and Darlington curled behind her, asleep. He was hard again, the ridge of him tucked against the curves of her ass. One of his hands was cupped over her breast, his thumb moving back and forth over her nipple with the lazy rhythmic sway of a cat’s tail. Alex felt her whole body flush.
“Darlington,” she had snapped.
“Mmm?” he murmured against the back of her neck.
“Wake up and fuck me or cut that out.”
He froze and she felt him wake. He rolled off the bed, stumbling, tangled in covers. “I didn’t … I’m sorry. Did we?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“Those assholes.”
A rare swear but a deserved one. His eyes had been bloodshot, his face haggard. It would have been worse if he’d known that the report she showed him over breakfast bore no resemblance to the one she’d actually sent to Dean Sandow.
The Manuscript tomb looked even uglier beneath a noon sun, the circle hidden in its brickwork seeming to appear then disappear as Alex approached the front door. Mike Awolowo waved her inside. The big room and the yard beyond looked airy, safe, all signs of the arcane buried deep beneath the surface.
“I’m glad you reached out,” he said, though Alex doubted that was true. He was an international studies major and had the intense, friendly poise of a daytime talk-show host.
Alex glanced over his shoulder and was happy to see the place seemed empty. Now that Kate Masters was on Alex’s suspect list, she didn’t want to complicate things.
“Time to settle up.”
Mike’s expression was resigned, the look of someone sitting in a dentist’s chair. “What do you need?”
“A way to call back something. A video.”
“If it’s gone viral, there’s nothing we can do.”
“I don’t think it has, not yet, but it could tip any minute.”
“How many people have seen it?”
“I’m not sure. Right now maybe a handful.”
“That’s a big ritual, Alex. And I’m not even sure it would work.”
Alex held his gaze. “The only reason you’re even up and functioning is because of the report I filed on Halloween.”
The night of the party, she and Darlington had stormed out of the tomb, or done their best to, Mike and Kate trailing after in their Batman and Poison Ivy costumes. Darlington was wobbly on his feet, blinking at everything as if it was too bright, clinging hard to her arm.
“Please,” Awolowo had begged. “This wasn’t sanctioned by the delegation. One of the alumni had a bug up his ass about Darlington. It was supposed to be a joke.”
“Nothing happened,” said Kate.
“That wasn’t nothing,” Alex retorted, dragging Darlington farther down the block. But Awolowo and Masters had followed, arguing and then making offers. So Alex had propped Darlington against the Mercedes and made a deal, a favor for a softening of the report. She’d described the drugging as an accident and Manuscript had faced nothing but a fine, when otherwise they would have been suspended. She’d known eventually Darlington would find out, when harsher sanctions never materialized. If nothing else, she’d get a stern lecture on the difference