propped up in her hospital bed on top of the covers, dressed in NHPD sweats. They were far too big for her and dark navy, but otherwise they would have fit perfectly into her grad student uniform.
Dawes turned her head on the pillow. She said nothing when she saw Alex, just wriggled over to the edge of the bed to make room.
Carefully, Alex hoisted herself into the bed and laid down beside her. There was barely space for the two of them, but she didn’t care. Dawes was okay. She was okay. They had somehow survived this.
“The dean?” she asked.
“He’s stable. They put him in a cast and pumped him full of blood.”
“How long have we been here?”
“I’m not sure. They sedated me. I think at least a day.”
For a long time, they lay in silence, the sounds of the hospital filtering down the hall to them, voices at the nurses’ station, the click and whir of machines.
Alex was drifting into sleep when Dawes said, “They’re going to cover it all up, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” Jean Gatdula was a sure sign of that. Lethe and the other societies would use every bit of their influence to make sure that the true details of the night never came to light. “You saved my life. Again.”
“I killed someone.”
“You killed a predator.”
“His parents are going to know he was murdered.”
“Even alligators have parents, Dawes. That doesn’t stop them from biting.”
“Is it over now?” Dawes asked. “I want … normal.”
If you ever find it, let me know.
“I think so,” Alex said. Dawes deserved some kind of comfort, and it was all she could offer. At least now this whole gnarled mess would unravel. Blake would be the thread that pulled it all apart. The drugs. The lies. There would be some kind of reckoning among the Houses of the Veil.
Alex must have fallen asleep, because she woke with a start when Turner wheeled Dean Sandow into the room. She sat up too quickly and hissed in a breath at the pain, then nudged Dawes, who drowsily came awake.
Sandow looked exhausted, his skin sagging and almost powdery. His leg was extended before him in a cast. Alex remembered that white spike of bone jutting from his thigh and wondered if she should apologize for calling the jackals. But if she hadn’t, she would be dead, and Dean Sandow would be a murderer—and more than likely dead too. How had they even explained these wounds to the police? To the doctors who had sewn them up? Maybe they hadn’t had to explain. Maybe power like Lethe, power like the societies, like the dean of Yale University, made explanations unnecessary.
Detective Abel Turner looked fresh as ever, dressed in a charcoal suit and a mauve tie. He perched at the end of the big recliner tucked into the corner for overnight guests.
Alex realized this was the first time they’d all been in a room together—Oculus, Dante, Centurion, and the dean. Only Virgil was missing. Maybe if they’d started the year this way, things would have gone differently.
“I suppose I should begin with an apology,” said Sandow. His voice sounded ragged. “It’s been a hard year. A hard couple of years. I wanted to keep that poor girl’s death away from Lethe. If I had known about the Merity, the experiments with Scroll and Key … but I didn’t want to ask, did I?”
Dawes shifted in the narrow bed. “What’s going to happen?”
“The murder charge against Lance Gressang will be vacated,” said Turner. “But he’ll still face charges on dealing and possession. He and Tara were dealing psychotropics to Scroll and Key, possibly to Manuscript, and we had a look at Blake Keely’s phone. Someone got in there to delete a bunch of big files recently.” Alex kept her face blank. “But the voicemails were enlightening. Tara found out what Merity could do and what Blake was using it for. She was threatening to tell the police. I don’t know if Blake was more afraid of blackmail or exposure, but there was no love lost between them.”
“So he killed her?”
“We’ve been interviewing a lot of Blake Keely’s friends and associates,” Turner went on. “He was not someone who liked women. He may have been escalating in some way or using drugs himself. His behavior lately has been truly bizarre.”
Bizarre. Like eating the contents of a clogged toilet. But the rest made a kind of sense. Blake had barely seen the girls he used as human. If Tara had challenged his