now that she was empty the damage could rush in. Alex tried to push herself up. Turner had holstered his weapon.
Turner slammed his fist on the counter. “That isn’t possible.”
“It is,” said Alex.
“You don’t understand,” said Turner. He looked at her the way North had, as if Alex had done him a wrong. “That was Lance Gressang. That was my murder suspect. I left him less than an hour ago. Sitting in a jail cell.”
Is there something unnatural in the very fabric of New Haven? In the stone used to raise its buildings? In the rivers from which its great elms drink? During the War of 1812, the British blockaded New Haven Harbor, and poor Trinity Church—not yet the Gothic palace now gracing the green—had no way of accessing the necessary lumber for its construction. But Commander Hardy of the Royal British Navy heard of the purpose for which the great roof beams were intended. He permitted them to pass and they were floated down the Connecticut River. “If there is any place on earth that needs religion,” he said, “it is this New Haven. Let the rafts go through!”
—from Lethe: A Legacy
Why do you think they built so many churches here? Somehow the men and women of this city knew: Their streets were home to other gods.
—Lethe Days Diary of Elliot Sandow (Branford College ’69)
21
Winter
Turner had his phone out and Alex knew what came next. Part of her wanted to let it happen. She wanted the steady beep of hospital machines, the smell of antiseptic, an IV full of the strongest dope they had to knock her into sleep and away from this pain. Was she dying? She didn’t think so. Now that she’d done it once, she figured she’d know. But it felt like she was dying.
“Don’t.” She forced the word out in a rasp. Her throat still hurt like it was being squeezed by Lance Gressang’s enormous hands. “No hospital.”
“Did you see that in a movie?”
“How are you going to explain this to a doctor?”
“I’ll say I found you this way,” said Turner.
“Okay, how am I going to explain this? And the messed-up crime scene. And how I got in here.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I don’t need a hospital. Take me to Dawes.”
“Dawes?”
Alex was annoyed that Turner had somehow forgotten Dawes’s name. “Oculus.”
“Fuck this,” said Turner. “All of you with your code names and your secrets and your bullshit.” She could see the way he was leaping from rage to fear and back again. His mind was trying to erase everything he’d seen. It was one thing to be told magic existed, quite another to have it literally give you the finger.
Alex wondered how much Lethe had shared with Centurion. Did they hand him the same Life of Lethe booklet? A long file full of horror stories? A commemorative mug that said Monsters Are Real ? Alex had spent her life surrounded by the uncanny and it had still been hard to let in the reality of Lethe. What would it be like for someone who had grown up in what he believed was an ordinary city—his city—who had been an instrument of order on its streets, to suddenly know that the most basic rules did not apply?
“She need a doctor?” A woman stood in the hall, her cell phone in her hand. “I heard a commotion.”
Turner flashed his badge. “Help is on the way, ma’am. Thank you.”
That badge was a kind of magic too. But the woman turned to Alex. “You okay, honey?”
“I’m good,” Alex managed, feeling a pang of warmth for this stranger in a bathrobe, even as she cradled her phone to her chest and shuffled away.
Alex tried to raise her head, the pain spiking through her like a whip crack. “You need to take me somewhere warded. Someplace they can’t get to me, understand?”
“They.”
“Yes, they. Ghosts and ghouls and inmates who can walk through walls. It’s all real, Turner, not just a bunch of college kids dressing up in robes. And I need your help.”
Those were the words that woke him. “There’s a uniform out front, and I can’t carry you past him without answering a whole heap of questions—and you sure can’t walk out on your own.”
“I can.” But, God, she didn’t want to. “Reach into my right pocket. There’s a little bottle in there with a dropper.”
He shook his head but dug into Alex’s pocket. “What is this?”
“Basso belladonna. Just put two drops in my eyes.”
“Drugs?” asked Turner.
“Medication.”
Of course that