Chapter 22
Alex felt crazed as she left the office, her body thrumming with adrenaline.
She was going to knock down a building. She was going to burn a forest to the ground.
She was dimly aware of the sound of her boots on the stairs, of the weight of her bag across her shoulders.
But her mind was spinning, remembering Alban Reed’s threats at the Yale Club, the smug look on Girard’s face.
Alex had survived by keeping herself hidden.
She’d learned quickly and cruelly how the world viewed difference, how little anyone wanted to be confronted with someone else’s suffering.
So she’d slid into the margins, invisible and unwanted, and no matter how many times her mother had tried to pull her back onto the page, she had refused.
She had vanished into Len’s miserable little kingdom, an anti-Avalon shrouded in the haze of cheap weed.
And when she had emerged? When she’d let herself become solid once more? It had all ended in blood.
That was when Lethe had gotten a glimpse of her, and Sandow had offered her a new disguise.
College student. Rehabilitated youth. She’d seized her chance and she’d understood she would have to disappear once more into a lie of who she was supposed to be.
The lie kept her safe. The lie meant that when Yale and Lethe were history, she’d have something to show for it, a sane, employable Alex who could live long enough to forget the life that came before.
Alban Reed was threatening all of that. Girard knew she was a Wheelwalker and that meant that others knew.
Even if she dealt with both of them, she had no way of knowing how far her secret had spread.
Alex had power but it was specific in a way that money and influence were not.
No doubt there were spells that could render her pliable, cells that could keep her captive where she’d never be found.
Girard would report back to Reed, everything she’d said—though no doubt he’d sanitize it—and everything she’d done.
She’d revealed too much, but she’d needed to wipe that smirk off his face. She’d needed to see him scared.
Now Alex was going to have to tell Darlington, Dawes, all of them, just how stupid she’d been, how out of control.
Because—and this was the worst of it—Turner was right: She couldn’t do this alone.
Even if they got the remaining pieces of the golem, even if they defeated Golgarot and closed the door to hell, even if they somehow neutralized Reiter or better yet eliminated him, what about all the skunks and bastards left behind?
What about Alban Reed and Professor Girard and the alumni who could pull strings to have a man quietly assassinated at a hotel pool?
The cold knocked her back into her body as she strode across campus, the moist feel of the air, the bare trees fading into shadow as night fell.
She needed normal, just an hour or two in the common room, listening to any record Lauren wanted to put on, eating handfuls of potato chips, and reading Forster.
If Mercy wanted to be mad at her, that was fine.
She could sniff and sneer all she wanted so long as Alex could just sit on their beat-up couch and not think about monsters and millionaires for a night.
Lauren was in the recliner when Alex entered, Miles Davis on the turntable. Alex felt something in her relax. This was the promise of Yale, safety and quiet, surety and calm, if she could just hold on and see it fulfilled.
“Want to order Thai?” Alex asked. “My treat.”
Lauren batted her lashes. “If you’re hoping I’ll put out for pad see ew, I most certainly will.”
“Let’s see if Mercy wants in.”
“She’s not here. She might be doing dinner with her church group?”
“More for us.” She would find a way to make things right with Mercy, through groveling and quality noodles and whatever else it took. She supposed Girard might blab to her about what Alex had done, but she hoped he was too shaken to consider it.
Alex paused in the act of unwinding the scarf from her neck, her attention caught by a stalk of hydrangea lying limply on the couch, its fragile cluster of white blossoms just starting to wilt and turn brown.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know. I was going to throw it out, but then I thought Mercy might be using it for some arts-and-crafts thing and I didn’t want to get yelled at. She has been so moody lately.”
Alex felt a hand close around her throat.
The floor dropped away and she was standing in Linus Reiter’s gracious living room at Sweetwell, surrounded by candlelight and chinoiserie, the vases overflowing with clouds of white hydrangeas, plucked from his own garden, nourished by the bodies of the dead.
“Alex?”
“When did you last hear from Mercy?”
“What? Why?”
Lauren was staring at her, and Alex knew she had to find that normal girl, the mask that would allow her to pretend there was nothing wrong.
“I just … want to ask her about … class.”
“Are you okay? You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I might,” Alex confessed. She sat down on the couch and put her head between her legs. “I skipped dinner.”
“You’ve never skipped a meal in your life.”
“Second dinner.”
She felt Lauren’s hand on her shoulder. “I have edibles or ginger ale? That’s me being nurturing.”
Even the gesture was enough to make Alex want to cry. People being kind always took her by surprise, put her on guard. The fix was in. First kindness, then the kick.
Reiter had Mercy. But how? The room and courtyard were heavily warded.
But not against familiars. Michelle Alameddine had sat in this very common room, chatting with Mercy and Alex, gathering information for Reiter, even as she’d tried to persuade Alex not to use the Gauntlet.
How he’d gotten her wasn’t the problem she needed to solve.
What does Reiter want? If he only wanted to punish Alex, Mercy was dead, maybe already buried beneath the Sweetwell gardens.
Pointlessly cruel, but Reiter was a demon, and it was stupid to try to ascribe human motives to him.
He might just be bored and looking for sport.
Or did he actually want something from Alex?
If he was using Mercy as a bargaining chip, then there was still a chance she was alive and unharmed.
So what? demanded an angry voice in her head. Reiter wasn’t some two-bit dealer or smarmy professor overplaying his hand. He was a ruthless killer, and he was faster and stronger than Alex. She couldn’t beat him. She’d nearly died learning that.
It didn’t matter. She could sit here and have a cry or she could make a plan. She needed to get to Il Bastone.
Alex took a deep breath and got to her feet. “I have to go.”
“What is going on?” Lauren planted her hands on her hips. “You and Mercy are barely speaking and now you look like someone killed your dog and made you watch just because there’s a flower on our couch. I’m self-absorbed, not stupid, Alex.”
“I don’t know how to explain all of it. But … I got Mercy caught up in something that she can’t handle. Honestly, I’m not sure I can handle it. But I’m going to try.”
Lauren frowned at her. She was taller than Alex, built like an athlete. She shone with good health. She looked like a superhero, and my God, Alex wished she were hiding a cape in the closet. “That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“You are deeply weird.”
Alex sighed. “I know that too.”
“Still a great roommate.”
Again Alex felt the ache of tears. “Thanks. I’ll be back soon. I hope.”
She marched down the stairs and back into the cold.
Nell Richmond, the redhead from St. Elmo, was standing in the courtyard. She was holding a bouquet of white hydrangeas.