Chapter 27
The Subaru’s shattered windshield made the drive from Savin Rock wet and wretched, but it didn’t take long to reach Edgewood. The address was on Hubinger Street, less than a ten-minute drive from campus, though it felt like another planet. The street was quiet, its sturdy houses blanketed in snow.
Despite the cold, Turner was waiting outside when they arrived, his car parked in the drive.
“I got her settled in the downstairs bedroom,” he said, gesturing toward the house. It was two stories, columned porches on both levels, smoke rising from a redbrick chimney. The windows glowed with golden light. “And this is my mother’s home, so you will wipe your feet and you will not swear.”
Darlington held up a hand. “I don’t think your mother will want me dripping on her floor.”
“You can use the dryer, and my brother still has some of his clothes here.”
Alex nodded, pretending to take it all in stride, but as soon as Turner motioned for them to follow and marched up the steps, she was silently mouthing, What is happening?
to Dawes and Darlington behind his back.
Detective Abel—stony, silent, grudging; no, you cannot have my personal cell number; no, you don’t need to know my birthday; why are you so curious about my favorite color—Turner had let them bring Mercy to his mother’s house.
“Shoes off,” he said as they entered.
They shucked off their coats and unlaced their boots. Dawes set her Tevas neatly on the shoe rack. Her feet looked like paws in her nubbly wool socks, her toes anxiously kneading the floor. She wasn’t great with new people, no matter how welcoming the surroundings.
“You come this way,” Turner said to Darlington and herded him through the kitchen to what must be the laundry room.
Alex was pretty sure the house was Victorian, the rooms small, high-ceilinged, and cozy. The walls were lined with family photographs, the hall table set with a bowl of oranges studded with cloves.
When Turner came back, he barely looked at Alex and Dawes, just waved them into the living room.
The television was on, set to the news, the volume turned down low.
A woman in her late seventies wearing a matched maroon chenille sweater and pants was curled up on the couch, reading.
A bearded Gray in a button-down shirt sat beside her. Alex did her best to ignore him.
Turner perched on the edge of an easy chair. His mother set aside her novel, but Turner said, “Don’t get up, Mom. This is Alex and Pamela. They’re students at Yale.”
That was true if not exactly forthcoming.
“Undergrads?” she asked.
Dawes burrowed her hands into her sweatshirt sleeves. “Divinity School.”
“Ah.”
“Mom worked at the School of Management for over thirty years.”
“I left when they moved into that new building. Ridiculous. So many windows it felt like I was being cooked at my desk every afternoon.”
“Thanks for letting us…” Alex began, then realized she had no idea how much Turner’s mother knew about Lethe or the societies or any of it. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Turner.”
“Celeste, please. There’s coffee on, but it’s decaf. I can’t have the good stuff after five or I don’t sleep. You’re welcome to use the kettle for tea.”
“I can make tea,” Dawes said eagerly.
“If it’s okay, I’d like to sit with Mercy,” Alex said. She felt rude, but she also didn’t want Mercy to wake up alone in a strange place.
Celeste studied Alex. “Are you going to be the one to tell me what happened to her?”
“Mom—”
Celeste shrugged. “I said I wouldn’t pry, not that I wouldn’t ask.”
“What exactly is the difference?”
“Such a smart group of people should be able to suss it out.”
Turner threw up his hands. “I knew this was a mistake.”
But Celeste just smiled. She clearly knew how to get under her son’s skin and enjoyed doing it. “Abel doesn’t make mistakes. At least not ones he admits to.”
“We’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible,” Alex said, trying to sound like the kind of person who would be asked back. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
“I like having visitors and I like a little mystery too.” She held up her book. “Abel and I used to read them together, but he always figures out the ending.”
Alex and Dawes exchanged a glance. “He has a real knack for that,” Alex said.
“Just like his grandmother and his great-uncle.”
“Really?” Dawes asked, her curiosity overcoming her shyness.
“Mother—” Turner said warningly.
Celeste waved him off. “Abel says it’s all nonsense, but I know what I know.”
“Come on,” he said to Alex, eager to make his escape. “Room’s down the hall.”
“Grandmother and great-uncle, huh?” she asked as she followed.
“I’m good at my job because I work hard at it, not because Uncle Sal could find a dime in a mountain of pennies.”
“Can’t both be true?”
“I can still kick you out of this house.”
Turner shepherded her down a short hallway to what looked like an office that had been turned into a bedroom.
There was a desk next to the bed with a small TV perched on it.
Mercy was curled up under a blanket. The sound of her snoring made Alex feel a little more hopeful.
She had been so still and quiet on the beach.
“Mom can’t do the stairs anymore,” Turner explained. “But she’s not ready to leave the house.”
Alex remembered that Turner had used the money from Lethe to help out with his mother’s mortgage. “She doesn’t know about us? About the Ninth House?”
Turner shook his head. “No. She worries about me enough. I don’t need to add waging occult war to the list.”
That much Alex understood. She forced herself to say the words she’d been turning over in her head through the frigid drive from Savin Rock. “I’ll call Mira. If she won’t talk to me about my dad, Dawes can … nudge her.”
“What changed?”
Alex nodded toward Mercy sleeping in Celeste’s narrow bed. She looked fine, but Alex knew this wasn’t just going to slide off her. “The artifacts, the golem. Whatever they mean, we need to end this.”
“We might still find the other two pilgrims.”
He was trying to be fair, but fair wouldn’t stop Golgarot. “I’m not sure that would be a good thing. I don’t want to tangle with another monster like Reiter or Kittscher.”
Or something worse. She wanted to believe somehow the soldier had made it through, but if Good Ol’ Hec hadn’t survived or if he’d become his own unique monster, she didn’t really want to know.
And it wasn’t just Reiter or his threats.
Professor Girard had scared the hell out of her, and he hadn’t needed fangs or familiars to do it.
“I need to know if there’s a why to all of this, to … what I can do. Maybe if we get my mom talking she’ll finally have something to say.” Alex paused. “You didn’t sit on the couch.”
Turner frowned, then lifted a shoulder. “That was my dad’s spot. I still can’t bring myself to sit in it. I don’t know why.”
“Don’t you?”
Turner’s gaze was steady, but there was an unfamiliar softness there, the hope that drove them all to want to peer behind the Veil. “Does he … Is he okay?”
“I think so. He seemed happy to me. But I don’t always know what happy looks like.”
Turner gave a brief dip of his chin. “You’d make a good detective, Alex. If you weren’t a complete degenerate.”
“I am a good detective, Turner. I just don’t have to wear a suit. Thanks for bringing us here. I know you don’t like people in your business.”
“I guess you’re not just people anymore.”
He vanished down the hall.
Alex watched Mercy for a while, then pulled one of Celeste Turner’s books off the shelf, a murder mystery set in a quaint English village. She must have dozed off, because she woke with a start to Mercy pushing herself up in bed.
She blinked slowly, then seemed to snap awake. “Where are we?”
“Detective Turner’s mother’s house in Edgewood.”
That seemed to reassure her. Mercy nodded, then gave a full-body shudder as if the memory of the night had just rushed in. She bent her knees and rested her forehead on them.
Alex hesitated, then placed a hand on her shoulder. Mercy shrugged her off. Alex had known it was coming, but that didn’t make it hurt less.
She sat back in her chair. She wasn’t Dawes. She didn’t know how to comfort and soothe. But she did know how to make people pay. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“I flew.” Mercy’s voice was muffled against the blankets.
“What?”
“I was walking by the Dramat. A girl with red hair asked me if I could help prop the door open.”
Nell.
“She said they were loading in scenery for a show.” Mercy looked up, her eyes on the cross above the television set.
“She said she knew me from church. I didn’t recognize her, but I wanted to help …
Then I was flying. Somebody grabbed me and I was …
in the air. I tried to scream, but he put his hand over my mouth.
” Mercy covered her head with her arms, as if sheltering from a storm.
“I started praying. He laughed at me. He prayed along with me. He knew the Lord’s Prayer.
He made the words sound like a joke, like it was the funniest thing he ever heard.
He said…” Her voice hitched. “He said he would make himself my god. I started crying. I think he liked that.”
Alex stayed quiet. What was there to say? Sorry wasn’t going to fix this.
“He told me he was going to kill me. He said it was only right. Penance for my sins. How did he know?”
“He didn’t,” Alex said. “He was just … Demons like to play games.”
She shuddered again. “I need to leave Yale.”
“Mercy, this is all temporary.”
“Is it?”
Alex fiddled with a bent corner of the paperback. “Maybe not.”
“Whatever this is … the lies … the secrecy … it’s built into this place. I want to go home. I can live with my parents for a while, go to a UC. At least I’ll graduate with a slightly less crushing pile of debt.”
“Just … think about it for a bit, okay? You’re not going to leave midsemester, so finish out the year and then you can decide. Things might look different soon.”
“Better?”
“I hope so.”
“But you can’t promise.”
Alex shook her head. “Nope.”