thread, overwhelmed by images of Alex lit by stars, the thought of that black dress sliding from her shoulders, then returning to his rant and a demand for action. The words tangled together, caught on the spokes of a wheel, the points of a crown. But one thought returned again and again as he tossed and turned, fell in and out of dreams, morning light beginning its slow bleed through the high tower window: Alex Stern was not what she seemed.
11
Winter
Alex woke abruptly. She was asleep and then she was conscious and terrified, batting at the hands she could still feel around her neck.
Her throat felt raw and red. She was on the couch of the common room at the Hutch. Night had fallen and the lights burned low in their sconces, casting yellow half-moons against framed paintings of rolling meadows dotted with sheep and shepherds playing their pipes.
“Here,” Dawes said, perching on the cushions, holding a glass full of what looked like eggnog with a little green food coloring in it up to Alex’s lips. A musty smell emanated from the rim. Alex recoiled and opened her mouth to ask what it was, but all that emerged was a faint rasp that made her throat feel like someone had touched a lit match to it.
“I’ll tell you after you drink it,” said Dawes. “Trust me.”
Alex shook her head. The last thing Dawes had given her to drink had set her insides on fire.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Dawes asked.
Yes, but right now she wished she were dead.
Alex pinched her nose, took the glass, and gulped. The taste was stale and powdery, the liquid so thick it almost choked her going down, but as soon as it touched her throat, the burning eased, leaving only a faint ache.
She handed the glass back and wiped a hand over her mouth, shuddering slightly at the aftertaste.
“Goat’s milk and mustard seed thickened with spider eggs,” Dawes said.
Alex pressed her knuckles to her lips and tried not to gag. “Trust you?”
Her throat was sore, but she could at least talk and the raging fire inside her seemed to have banked.
“I had to use brimstone to burn the beetles out of you. I’d say the cure was worse than the disease, but given that those things eat you from the inside out, I think that would be lying. They were used to clean corpses in ancient times, to empty bodies so that they could be stuffed with fragrant herbs.”
That crawling sensation returned, and Alex had to clench her fists to keep from scratching at her skin. “What did they do to me? Will there be lasting damage?”
Dawes rubbed her thumb against the glass. “I honestly don’t know.”
Alex pushed up from the pillows that Dawes had placed beneath her neck. She likes taking care of people, Alex realized. Was that why she and Dawes had never gotten along? Because Alex had refused her mothering? “How did you know what to do?”
Dawes frowned. “It’s my job to know.”
And Dawes was good at her job. Simple as that. She seemed calm enough, but if she gripped that glass any harder it was going to break in her hands. Her fingers were stained with rainbow splotches that Alex realized were the pale remnants of highlighter.
“Did anything try to … get in?” Alex wasn’t even sure what that would look like.
“I’m not sure. The chimes have been ringing off and on. Something’s been brushing up against the wards.”
Alex rose and felt the room spin. She stumbled and made herself take Dawes’s solicitous hand.
Alex wasn’t sure what she expected to see waiting outside. The gluma’s face looking back at her, light glinting off its glasses? Something worse? She touched her fingers to her throat and yanked the curtain back.
The street to the left was dark and empty. She must have slept through the entire day. In the alley she saw the Bridegroom, pacing back and forth in the yellow light of the streetlamp.
“What is it?” asked Dawes nervously. “What’s there?” She sounded almost breathless.
“Just a Gray. The Bridegroom.” He looked up at the window. Alex drew the curtain closed.
“You can really see him? I’ve only seen photos.”
Alex nodded. “He’s very tousled. Very mournful. Very … Morrissey.”
Dawes surprised her by singing, “And I wonder, does anybody feel the same way I do?”
“And is evil,” sang Alex quietly, “just something you are or something you do?” She’d meant it as a joke, a way to solidify the bare threads of camaraderie forming between them,