Mike wasn’t going to complain to Sandow. He’d have to explain that his delegation had somehow let the secret to Merity slip free and that he’d handed Alex a dose of Starpower. Alex had used Blake’s own phone to send the new video to all of his contacts, and no one at Omega knew her name.
“Alex,” whispered Lauren. “What is this?”
Around them, the dining hall had exploded into pockets of heated conversation, people cackling and pushing their food away in disgust, others demanding to know what was happening. Evan had already moved on to the next table. But Lauren and Mercy were staring at Alex, quiet, their phones placed facedown on the table.
“How did you do it?” asked Lauren.
“Do what?”
“You said you would fix it,” Mercy said. She tapped her phone. “So?”
“So,” said Alex.
The silence eddied around them for a long moment.
Then Mercy dragged her finger over the table and said, “You know how people say two wrongs don’t make a right?”
“Yeah.”
Mercy pulled Alex’s plate toward her and took a huge bite of her remaining cheeseburger. “They’re full of shit.”
Whether the magic of Scroll and Key was learned or stolen from Middle Eastern sorcerers during the Crusades is not really a matter of debate—fashions change, thieves become curators—though the Locksmiths still like to protest that their mastery of portal magic was gotten by strictly honest means. The exterior of the Scroll and Key tomb pays homage to the origins of their power, but the interior of the tomb is nonsensically devoted to Arthurian legend, complete with a round table at its heart. There are some who claim the stone comes from Avalon itself, others who swear it comes from the Temple of Solomon, and still others who whisper it was quarried down the road in Stony Creek. Regardless of its origins, everyone from Dean Acheson to Cole Porter to James Gamble Rogers—the architect responsible for Yale’s very bones—has jostled elbows at it.
—from The Life of Lethe: Procedures and Protocols of the Ninth House
Sunburn keeping me awake. Andy said we’d be in Miami in time for kickoff no problem, all of it on the books and approved by the S&K board and the alumni. But whatever magic they got cooking went wobbly fast. At least now I’ve seen Haiti?
—Lethe Days Diary of Naomi Farwell (Timothy Dwight College ’89)
17
Winter
Alex had spent the rest of Sunday night in the common room with Mercy and Lauren, Rimsky-Korsakov on Lauren’s turntable, and a copy of The Good Soldier in her lap. The dorm seemed particularly raucous that night, and there were repeated knocks at the suite door—all of which they ignored. Eventually Anna came home looking glum and somnolent as ever. She gave them a flat “hey” and vanished into her bedroom. A minute later, they heard her on the phone to her family in Texas and had to cover their mouths, shoulders heaving and tears squeezing from their eyes when they heard her say, “I’m pretty sure they’re witches.”
If you only knew.
Alex slept dreamlessly but woke in the night to find the Bridegroom hovering outside her bedroom window, the wards keeping him at bay. His face was expectant.
“Tomorrow,” she promised. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since her journey to the borderlands. She would get to Tara, but Mercy had needed her first. She owed more to the living than to the dead.
I’m handling this, she thought, as she downed two more aspirin and fell back into bed. Maybe not the way Darlington would have, but I’m managing.
Her first stop on Monday morning was Il Bastone, to pack her pockets with graveyard dirt and to spend an hour skimming the information she could find on glumae. If Book and Snake—or whoever had sent that thing after her—wanted to try again, this was the perfect time to do it. She’d freaked out in public; she was under the gun academically. If she suddenly threw herself in a river or off a building or into traffic, there would be plenty of warning signs to point to.
Did she seem depressed? She was distant. She didn’t make many friends. She was struggling in her classes. All true. But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive