All the spoilers below. It’s spring at present. Alex Stern waits in the Hutch, one of the Lethe House safe houses. She has completely checked out. She’s not checking her email, ignoring her messages from Dean Sandow, her phone is dying, and she’s definitely not going to classes. She’s eaten all the food in the Hutch, including the emergency rations, and then started ordering takeout using Darlington’s account. Even the walk downstairs to get the food is nearly too much for her. No one comes to check on her. There is no one left to do so. She has a nasty wound on her side that is crusted black and oozing pus. A bite that is getting infected. It’s spring now, but all this trouble started a season ago on the winter night that Tara Hutchins died. We go back in time to the winter. Alex is late. She’d fallen asleep doing homework and woken up at half past ten at night. She runs to Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall as fast as she can. She sees Tripp Helmuth lounging next to the lecture hall, probably high. He tells them they started without her. She enters the hall to find that the prognostication (what Skull and Bones calls the ritual in process) has already started. The Haruspex in the surgical mask leans over Michael Reyes who is open on the table, the Haruspex is looking through Michael’s bowels. Alex is here to make sure that Michael makes it out of this alive and taken back to the hospital. The Haruspex calls out a series of numbers he sees in Michael’s bowels; Skull and Bones will use these numbers to trade on domestic and international stock markets. She can hear Scarface being viewed in the hall next door and is reminded for a moment of Len and Hellie. But she pushes them aside, they don’t belong here. Alex sees movement from the theater above the operating arena. It’s two local ghosts, which they call Grays - one a female mental patient who died during a hysterectomy and the other a male medical student who froze to death in an opium den thousands of miles away, but who continues to come here. She can see the Grays (in color) without a potion or spell, it’s the reason she was offered a scholarship to Yale and a job with Lethe House, but she tries not to look at them. Like Darlington says, when it comes to the subway and to ghosts you do not engage, you do not make eye contact, or you might not go home alone. Alex continues to watch the Bonesmen of Skull and Bones to make sure they follow all the right procedures. She’s not okay with what they’re doing, cutting a man open to get richer, but she understands that nothing is going to stop them. And before Lethe, no one was watching over them or keeping them in check. On the table, Michael starts to moan. He stays sleeping and his breathing is even, but the moan grows louder. Strangely, none of the Bonesmen seem to hear it. Alex realizes the Grays are no longer in their seats but leaning over the railing, straining toward the operating theater. They are not acting normally, and she tries to think of one of the spells of protection Darlington taught her. Suddenly, there’s a loud boom and the room shakes. This the Bonesmen feel. It’s something big coming from a different world, something that should not be allowed in. She prepares to scream and tell the others to run but the moaning stops as quickly as it started, and the Grays are now back where they belong. The Bonesmen are staring at her. The Bonesmen finish up the prognostication in the early hours of the morning, Reyes is stitched up and sent to the hospital. Alex will check on him later and make sure there’s no complications. There have been casualties in the past, but only one since Lethe was created, when Bonesmen accidently killed a vagrant in 1929 after the stock market crashed. She decides she will also sprinkle the theater with bone dust, since reminders of death keep the Grays away. She wonders who she can tell about what happened tonight. Darlington would have believed her, but Darlington is gone now. On her way out, Tripp offers to give her some tips for the stock market. He’s a legacy for both Yale and Skull and Bones, and practically made of money, but he’s like a golden retriever. She notices he has a bandage on his arm, and Tripp tells her that he and some of his friends got tattoos earlier in the day. He asks where Darlington is and she says Spain, as she’s been instructed to say. She needs to get back to Lethe House and write her report for Dean Sandow, but she also needs to get all the sleep she can before class. And she needs to shower before sneaking into her dorm room since anytime you mess with the veil, it leaves a strong smell behind. But when she checks her phone, she finds a ton of messages from Lethe’s current Oculus, Pamela Dawes, telling Alex to call in. Alex, Lethe’s current Dante to Darlington’s Virgil, calls Dawes. Alex is told that there is a dead body and she needs to go investigate. Centurion is already on site. We head back in time to the previous fall to when Daniel Arlington, or Darlington, met Galaxy, or Alex, Stern. His job is to teach Alex the ways of Lethe, and he’s determined to do it right like his own Virgil Michelle Alameddine did. He had been looking forward to picking his own Dante, but that was taken from him when Dean Sandow chose Alex. No one is particularly happy about choosing Alex, but it’s an important year for Lethe (a donation year) and Alex can see Grays. Darlington read Alex’s file. Read that she’d been found naked and comatose next to a girl who died from the fentanyl that had also been in Alex’s system. Darlington finds Alex at her dorm, meeting her roommates Anna Breen, Mercy Zhao, and Lauren, and introduces himself as Alex’s cousin. He notices that Alex is dressed in a long-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the neck even though it is hot out. He gives her a tour of the campus, taking her to New Haven Green – the site of the city’s first church and graveyard. He asks what she can see. Darlington can’t see Grays without a potion and every time he uses it, it gets riskier. It did not go well the last time. Alex doesn’t see anything here. That’s not a surprise; Grays stay away from things that remind them that they’re dead. They love what reminds them of life, especially the more dramatic things. Tears, blood, fighting, sex, drama. All the liveliest of things. You want to use graveyard dirt or crematory ash, bone dust, to keep the Grays away. He offers to ward Alex’s dorm for her, so the Grays don’t bother her, and he also tells her more about the job. There are over one hundred societies at Yale, but Lethe isn’t concerned with any but the Ancient Eight. The Houses of the Veil. The landed societies that have continuously held their tombs, a fancy word for a clubhouse. Each of these societies built their tomb over a nexus of power, except for Berzelius. If you think of magic like a river, power nexuses are where the magic gets caught in the flow and builds up. There are twelve nexuses in New Haven and tombs have been built on eight. The other four already have structures, like a train station, and tombs could not be built there. Some of the most powerful people in the world have come out of the Ancient Eight. Darlington takes Alex to a mansion near the heart of Yale’s campus he calls Il Bastone, Lethe House Headquarters. Alex remembers that when they got to Il Bastone that day, Darlington set jackals on her. The jackals were stalking towards her, but Alex kept her eyes on Darlington - who didn’t look worried at all. When Alex didn’t panic, Darlington called the dogs off and helped her up from where she had fallen. In the present, Alex can’t stop thinking about Darlington as she heads toward the scene of the potential murder. She sees Centurion, the liaison between Lethe House and the Chief of Police, also known as Detective Abel Turner. Abel is not a fan of his current role, and he is not super helpful to Alex. But he does tell Alex that there is not a definitive cause of death yet, and there’s no reason to think that a society is involved as of now. The victim was not a Yale student either, so there is no reason for Alex to be involved. Abel will make sure to put that in the report he sends to Dean Sandow. Alex turns and leaves Abel to do his job. She feels like Darlington would be disappointed in her, just taking Abel’s word for it, and when she sees the coroner’s van, she makes a detour and hands the coroner a coin. One of two coins of compulsion that Alex keeps in her jacket lining, which compels the coroner to show Alex the victim’s body. She’d been stabbed violently several times in the chest… in her heart. The coroner tells Alex they’ve already picked up the girl’s boyfriend, he has priors for dealing and possession. This girl reminds Alex of Hellie; her name is Tara Hutchins. She died somewhere around eleven at night, right around when the Grays went crazy. Alex tells the coroner to forget they met before slipping out of the van. She looks around and sees some Grays nearby. Is it her imagination, or do they almost look scared. Last fall, after Darlington had called off the jackals, he explained that they were spirit hounds that are there to help Lethe, but dangerous nonetheless. It’s easy to get carried away by the idea of magic, but Darlington needed Alex to know that they deal with serious things, things that could get her killed if she’s not careful. Lethe House does not have many members. When their Dante becomes a senior, they are promoted to Virgil and chooses a new Dante from the incoming freshman. They, and their Oculus, are Lethe House. Oculus keeps everything running. Their Oculus is Pamela Dawes, who is happy to serve as Oculus while she works on her dissertation. Darlington quizzes Alex about what she knows about Lethe. He asks who Bathsheba Smith was (a seventeen-year-old girl whose body had been dug up by the students to study and found in the Yale Medical School in 1824). They’d been trying to commune with the dead. After Bathsheba’s body was found, locals almost burned Yale down in what is called the Resurrection Riot. Darlington shows her where Lethe keeps their supplies and Hiram’s Crucible, or the Golden Bowl. Drinking an elixir made with the crucible is what allows Darlington to see the Grays. Hiram Bingham, who helped to found Lethe House, “discovered” Machu Picchu in 1911 and stole tens of thousands of artifacts, bringing them to Yale. Most of those artifacts were eventually (begrudgingly) returned, but the crucible was not one of them. The elixir to allow Darlington to see Grays does not work without the crucible. But every time a member drinks from the crucible, they are risking their lives. The elixir is toxic and incredibly painful when drunk. Darlington asks when she first saw the Grays, but she doesn’t remember. They’ve been around as long as she can remember. She thought they were regular people for a long time, until one of them followed her home. He asks her about the apartment on Cedros, which Alex calls Ground Zero. Five men were found there, beaten until they were unrecognizable. It was a bloody mess of a crime scene, where Alex was found with enough fentanyl in her system to kill her and Hellie dead beside her. Alex says she doesn’t know what happened or how she survived. How she was the only survivor. She and Hellie got high, and Alex woke up later in the hospital. Darlington grabs a black wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tells her she will need to remove her shirt. She does so without even asking for more information. She’s covered in tattoos from wrists to shoulders, expanding to her clavicles. He opens the box to reveal moths. He tells her to stay still and lays the moths on her skin. As their wings beat, her tattoos start to fade. She looks at him amazed. This is what he’s been waiting for. The chance to show someone that magic was real, that they’d not been lied to as children. The tattoos disappear and the moths fall from her arms to the floor – they aren’t dead, just drunk on the ink. Address moths like these used to transport classified material. Once ink is drunk, the moths can be placed elsewhere to recreate the document with the correct incantation. Back in present day, Alex stops at the Hutch to shower before going to class and gets a message from Sandow – don’t worry about the murder. She takes it as the opposite of a vote of confidence. He just wants Alex to avoid attracting any attention until they can get Darlington back, which they will try in less than a week during the new moon. She heads to her dorm to change clothes. She doesn’t have many clothes, or much of anything anymore. Her grandmother Estrea was the most stable person in her life, her mother Mira was always looking for her next adventure and dragging Alex with her, and Alex doesn’t know almost anything about her dad - only that he loved the ocean and was a Gemini. Mercy offers to help Alex with her most recent essay, an offer Alex can’t really turn down though she’d much rather sleep. She needs all the help she can get, even with a tutor hired by Lethe. She squeezes two drops of basso belladonna in each eye, a strong stimulant that will at least keep her awake. Mercy discusses the frat party that Alex has agreed to attend the next night. Alex and Mercy are in the dining hall when Alex catches the eye one of her professors, Marguerite Belbalm. Belbalm asks Alex to come to her office and talk. She heads to Belbalm’s office, saying hi to one of Belbalm’s assistants, Colin Khatri (member of Scroll and Key). Once in the office, Belbalm asks Alex what it is she wants from Yale. Does she want stability, a good job? Belbalm wants to know how to motivate Alex. She asks if Alex is interested in a summer job. She would get paid to stay on campus and Belbalm could help Alex improve her writing skills. Three whole months to breathe and learn how to be a real Yale student. But Alex would need to continue to improve until the end of the year and then be able to give Belbalm an answer the next time she asks Alex what she wants from Yale. Belbalm asks Alex to come to one of her salons - the next one is in a week. After her morning classes, Alex goes back to the crime scene. She wonders a) what she’s doing there and b) if Tara had been killed here. Or was she killed elsewhere and her body dumped here. Alex sees the cluster of Grays that includes the Bridegroom. It’s what she calls the Gray who killed his fiancée in his family’s carriage factory before turning the gun on himself. She found his story on a ghost tour of New England; he does occasionally haunt the area that used to be his family’s carriage factory. When the Bridegroom starts to walk toward her, Alex leaves and heads back to her room. Something about the crime scene, about Tara Hutchins, keeps reminding her of Hellie. She uses a couple more drops of the basso belladonna. The first society that Darlington introduced Alex to was Aurelian. That night, he told Dawes they wouldn’t be out late, she confirmed that she’d have sandwiches and soup waiting for them. Darlington quizzes Alex about Aurelian on their way. Founded in 1910. Yale gave them rooms in 1932 in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona (SSS) Hall as a gift for their services - they’d helped the university acquire Sachem’s Wood, which would later become Science Hill, and Aurelian ensured that the purchase would never be challenged. The other societies don’t take Aurelian seriously because they don’t have a real tomb. Darlington explains that Aurelian specializes in unbreakable contracts and binding vows, that sort of thing. They got kicked out of their rooms when some university union contract negotiations didn’t go well and Yale felt that Aurelian screwed up the original contracts. Their work has not been reliable since losing their tomb, but Lethe still needs to be at their meeting to make sure that Grays do not interfere. Grays are drawn to Aurelian’s proceedings because of all the blood. When they arrive, Alex and Darlington find a bunch of Aurelians, including the current president, Josh Zelinski, and the alumna who will supervise that night, who they call Emperor, but whose real name is Amelia. Darlington recognizes her from a rite the previous year. Darlington starts to set up. He explains that they can’t block the Grays out completely since Aurelian’s magic requires the Veil to remain open. They will form a circle of bone dust; he has Alex draw the circle and he tells her to leave channels open at the four compass points. They will each watch two of the openings to make sure Grays do not come through. If she sees a Gray, use bone dust or death words to get rid of them. Darlington points out Zeb Yarrowman to Alex. He wrote a novel his junior year that launched him to the top of the literary scene, but that was eight years ago, and he hasn’t written anything since. The Aurelians will be working a ritual for him tonight. Zeb stands at one end of a table with the Emperor at the other, the members line up between them. They all wear white gloves and a parchment is brought out, running the length of the table. Darlington drinks the elixir that allows him to see Grays. He starts shivering. It’s like this every time, at least until the time it will try to kill him by destroying his liver. But don’t worry, Lethe will find him a donor if that happens. He sees a Gray hovering and tells Alex to deal with him, but she can’t get the vial of graveyard dirt open. The Gray starts toward Alex; Darlington tells her to use the death words instead. She’s scared, but Darlington insists that the Grays can’t hurt her, he stands in between Alex and the Gray and encourages Alex to speak, which she finally does. Then the Aurelians start the ritual. More Grays will be coming. Zeb removes his shirt as they start to chant. A knife is brought out and used to cut a line from wrist to forearm on both Zeb’s arms. He settles his hands over the paper in front of him and his blood drips onto it, flowing until the blood covers the entire parchment. The Aurelians lower their arms until their sleeves brush the blood-soaked paper. They slam their hands down and black spreads, the blood has turned to ink and is rushing back to Zeb, entering his skin and writing words up his arms, over his chest and shoulders. The Grays come faster now, looking for the open gateways as Alex and Darlington dispatch them as quickly as they come. But then Darlington looks at Alex, who has fallen. Grays walk through the circle of protection where the circle has been smudged. He jumps in to help; they can’t allow the Grays to get to the table and disrupt the ritual. If they do, Zeb will definitely die, but so may half of the other people. They can’t beat the Grays back quickly enough, but Alex starts singing and slows the Grays. Darlington tells her to keep going and she doesn’t keep singing, but she keeps using death words that Darlington doesn’t recognize. Darlington says his own death words. When they finally get a break, Darlington redraws the circle. He asks what she was saying and she tells him it was something her grandmother used to say. A combination of Hebrew and Spanish. He warns Alex not to say anything until they’re back at Il Bastone, and do not apologize to anyone from Aurelian. The ritual is now done and both Jeb and the Emperor prowl toward them looking angry, accusing Darlington and Alex of almost ruining the ritual with all the yelling! Darlington whirls on them. Why don’t they tell him what went wrong… have they done this ritual before exactly this way? Zeb almost unleashed a whole host of ghosts that put both him and his Dante at risk. This will need to be reported, Aurelian should not be tampering with the rituals. Josh tries to reassure Darlington, it was just tricky because this was their first ritual with this delegation and he doesn’t want anything bad to be reported, they’re trying to get their rooms in SSS back. Amelia agrees, she can make sure Aurelians donations this year are sizable. Darlington pretends to be astounded that they would try to bribe him, ordering them to get out and consider themselves lucky nothing was damaged. His act has saved them from Aurelian’s wrath. Alex whispers her thanks to him, but Darlington is still angry at her as he starts to clean up the circle. They make sure everything is cleaned up and Zeb is bandaged and stable. He’s already writing in a notebook. He will continue until the story is out of him completely. When they enter Il Bastone, the lights flicker as if the house recognizes their bad moods. Darlington asks what happened and she tells him that one of the Grays grabbed her. More than one of them. He didn’t think that would happen, it’s so rare for a Gray to be able to do that. Alex accuses him of not preparing her properly. He’s taken aback, he has been preparing her for weeks, but she asks about the years before that. All the times that the dead followed her home, or came into her bedroom, her classes, her bath. Lethe has known about her for years, why didn’t they help her then. They didn’t help until she was of use to them. She says that the Grays are not as helpless as Darlington would think. Darlington realizes that he’d allowed himself to think poorly of Alex. To think of her as someone who made all the wrong choices. It doesn’t feel good to know that he’d behaved badly. He asks her if she wants to break something. Of course she does. If there is a Lethe protocol for murder, Dawes would know what it is. But Alex does not have the same relationship with Dawes as Darlington did. Dawes, and everybody else, had loved Darlington. Alex is pretty sure Dawes blames her for what has happened to Darlington. She isn’t going to be asking Dawes anything. She goes into the library at Il Bastone and pulls the Albemarle Book from a shelf. Darlington wrote an entry at the end with the words “Rosenfeld Hall schematics” on the last night he was seen alive. She writes her own entry underneath it, asking the library for protocols on homicide and slides the book back onto the shelf. The shelf rattles and when it stops, Alex pulls it open like a door. Because of the limited space in the library, Lethe created a shortcut. You write what you need in the Albemarle book and the library retrieves what you need from the Lethe House collection of books, it waits inside the secret door. Alex finds many books inside, puling the most recent edition of “The Life of Lethe: Procedures and Protocols of the Ninth House”, which was from 1987. Unfortunately, the book says if a death associated with the societies happens, a meeting is called between the dean, the university president, Centurion, the president of Lethe, and active Lethe House members to decide what to do. Not helpful. She closes the secret door and asks the Albemarle book something else - how to speak to the dead. Alex has seen Grays for as long as she can remember but most of the time, they are quiet and don’t bother her. But when she was twelve and had just changed schools because of her reputation for being weird at the last one, that all changed. She started going by Alex instead of Galaxy. She still didn’t fit in perfectly, but she did have people to sit with at lunch, and she even had a friend. She was doing okay in classes. Alex buddied with her friend Meagan on the morning of a field trip. After the trip was over, everyone went to the bathroom before getting back on the bus. The bathrooms were awful, Meagan decided to hold it, but Alex couldn’t. She went in, pulled down her pants, and froze. She had started her period for the first time. She tried to call for Meagan but got no answer. She hurried out of the stall to find to her teacher, but a man was standing outside of the stall. A Gray. He didn’t move, so she walked through him to the sink behind him to wash her hands. She could still feel him behind her. She felt him as he touched her back. Felt him as he slammed her face into the mirror and tugged her shorts down. She didn’t think they could touch her, but he could. He tried to rape her on the floor of the bathroom. Her friend and teacher found her there with her shorts pulled down and the Gray fled, but the damage was done. They knew that no one was in the bathroom with her, no one alive at least. Their teacher sent Meagan to the bus and helped Alex get cleaned up, but Alex couldn’t look at Meagan on the ride back to school. The teacher called a meeting with the principal and Alex’s mom. Mira was convinced that Alex had been molested but Alex couldn’t tell her what happened. Who would believe her. Mira tried to get Alex to speak to a therapist, but Alex wouldn’t talk. In desperation and desire to have her friend back, Alex told Meagan what really happened when she went back to school, but that didn’t help. She was the weird girl again. She was teased and picked on and eventually Mosh took pity on her. Mosh was a senior but invited Alex to hang out with her and her friends in the parking lot of the mall. Mosh’s boyfriend was the first person to offer Alex a bong hit, even though Mosh said Alex was too young and not to be a creep. Mosh’s boyfriend said he wasn’t a creep and introduced himself to Alex as Len. Later that evening, Alex realized she hadn’t seen a Gray since she took the hit. She started messing around with drugs, finding out what silenced the Grays and what didn’t. What made her see more of them, what made her feel them. And better than that, she had friends. She got suspended, failed a grade, stole from her mom, broke every rule her mom made. When she was fifteen, her mom sent her to rehab. By then, Mosh was off at school but Alex ran into her once when Mosh was home for the holidays. Mosh had apologized to her, but Alex insisted that Mosh saved her. Later that day, Alex was picked up by a scared-straight rehab program, but Alex was quickly able to escape from their van. She walked to Len’s work. Anytime she thought about getting sober, she’d see another Gray and fall off the wagon. Then she met Hellie, and everything had happened, and Sandow met her in her hospital room when she woke up. He had an essay she’d written that described the Grays; he asked her if she could still see them. The night of the Aurelian ritual, all of this came flooding back to Alex when the Grays touched her. Now she takes the information the library gives her, taking notes and pictures of the information when she needs to, before sealing the library back up. She sees Dawes on her way back downstairs and says she needs Dawes to run an errand with her; they need to go to the morgue. She has to talk Dawes into it. They take Darlington’s car. Dawes drives them to the morgue but parks down the road before following Alex inside. She sends a quick text to Abel Turner, telling him she wants to talk, before giving Dawes directions. Dawes needs to wait five minutes before coming inside, then sit like she’s waiting for someone. When the receptionist leaves her desk, text Alex immediately. Meanwhile, Alex walks right up to the receptionist and says she was told by a detective that she could come see her cousin Tara Hutchins. Alex gives Detective Turner’s name. The receptionist decides to call Turner, but Alex uses her phone to call for the receptionist and gets Turner’s voicemail. She knew he would avoid her if she wanted to talk. The receptionist leaves a message as Alex adlibs about Tara. She explains that she can’t come back on Monday, she can’t miss her nursing classes (what luck, the receptionist’s niece is also in the nursing school), and the morgue closes in an hour. The receptionist agrees to let Alex in so she can say her goodbyes. Once inside, Alex sees all of Tara’s tattoos, including a new one on her inner arm. A quote by Tennyson. She performs a ritual that she found in the library, consisting of a chant and placing a scarab on Tara’s tongue before running balm down her limbs and warming the balm with a lighter. Whenever Alex runs the lighter over a spot where Tara had been hurt, a haze appears above Tara’s body. When Alex touches the haze, she experiences how Tara was hurt. A broken bone from hitting the door of a car while riding her bike. Pain from getting her tattoos. She gets to the wounds on Tara’s chest, and she sees the face of Tara’s boyfriend Lance above her. He apologizes before stabbing her over and over again, but Alex doesn’t feel the pain that should come. Did Tara not feel anything? She hears an unfamiliar voice tell her to close her eyes and when she does, Alex is herself again. Now she has her answer. Lance killed Tara and they were probably both high when it happened. When Alex walks out of the morgue, she runs right into Detective Turner. He is furious but Alex doesn’t care. She asks what kind of stuff Tara and Lance were using. Or dealing. Were they dealing to students and if so, who? Turner tells Alex she doesn’t need to get involved – the boyfriend was arrested near the scene; their neighbors heard them fighting a lot, evidence links him to the murder, and he had some powerful hallucinogens in his system when he was picked up - though they don’t know which ones yet. If Alex tampered with Tara’s body, she could have messed with evidence and allowed Lance to get away with the murder. Alex asks him again for the names of who Tara and Lance were dealing to. She can investigate that without encroaching on his murder investigation and Turner relents. It was Tripp Helmuth. He was at the ritual the night that Tara was killed, though Alex can’t say for sure he was there the whole time. Turner says they’ll check Tripp’s alibi. He also warns Alex that he will arrest her if she does anything like this again. She calls him on his bluff. The last place he wants her to be is making noise in the police station. He didn’t like her before, and he certainly doesn’t like her any more after today. Alex drops Dawes off at the divinity school and takes the car back to Darlington’s house. When she gets to Black Elm, she sees a light on in the kitchen and another on in Darlington’s room. She gets this feeling that tells her that Darlington is there. He’s back. She walks up to his room and the whole time everything screams at her that he’s here. She wants him to be there. But he’s not. She sees Darlington’s cat Cosmo, and she cries as she pets him. Alex sleeps in Darlington’s bed that night and when she wakes up, piles on a few of Darlington’s sweaters and types up her report about Tara’s case. She doesn’t bother to hide anything about her visit to the coroner or Tripp’s name, but at the end she says that the murder appears to be perpetrated by Tara’s boyfriend Lance. Centurion will update her on his findings but there does not appear to be any connection to the Houses of the Veil. She goes to the mini-mart, still wearing Darlington’s hat, and when she puts her hand into the cooler she thinks she feels fingertips brush her hand. She pulls it back out quickly, catching the attention of a guy nearby. The guy comes over to stand next to her, way too close, and Alex sees something when he smiles. A beetle that crawls out of his mouth. The guy grabs the back of Alex’s neck and slams her head against the door of the cooler, shattering the glass and cutting her skin. He throws her to the ground, and Alex knows he’s a Gray, but he’s unlike any Gray she’s ever seen before. He stinks of the Veil, and his skin has a sheer look to it, allowing her to see his veins and bones underneath it. Most Grays look like they did when they died. She screams death words at the Gray, but he doesn’t even notice but others in the store do. They can’t see the Gray and assume Alex is having some sort of episode. Alex tries to run out of the store, but the Gray follows her. He grabs her throat and she stumbles into traffic. The Gray squeezes her neck but then Alex sees something cloudy and dark red burble out of its throat. He blows red dust into her face just as he lets go of her throat, forcing her to breathe the dust. It hurts and the Gray sits on her chest so she can’t get free. She hears an ambulance, but Alex knows she will die before it gets there. All of a sudden, the weight on her chest is no longer there. She sees the Bridegroom fighting her attacker. She watches the Bridgegroom swing at the other Gray and Alex doesn’t wait around to see what happens, she takes off running to the Hutch. She needs to get somewhere safe before she passes out. She makes it to the steps, the door of the Hutch opening for her of its own accord and the steps trying to pull her inside, and yet she still doesn’t make it – she falls onto the concrete steps, blood dripping from her mouth. Blood that will attract even more Grays. She sends a 911 text to Dawes but doubts that Dawes is close enough to help her, she’s probably at Il Bastone. Alex drags herself up the stairs and throws up, she sees the backs of beetles in her bile. But then Dawes is there and Alex begs her for help, calling her “Pammie” like Darlington used to. Dawes drags Alex inside and demands to know what happened, so she can figure out how to fix it. She recognizes the way Alex describes the Gray as a gluma – a spirit raised from someone recently dead that can work as a messenger between the living and dead worlds. Book and Snake use them. Dawes gives Alex something to drink to stop the corpse beetles from eating her from the inside out. Once she knows she’s going to survive, Alex smiles. They tried to kill her. Now she knows she was right; there is some connection between the Houses of the Veil and Tara’s death. She’s on to something. Darlington takes Alex to a Manuscript party on Halloween. Alex shows up in a parka and Darlington hopes that she’s not wearing a cat suit underneath it, so he doesn’t have to deal with the comments from the Manuscript members. Alex had been doing well ever since the Aurelian incident, after which she and Darlington had broken a bunch of Il Bastone’s tableware. Since then, they’ve watched rites for Wolf’s Head, Book and Snake, Scroll and Key, and St. Elmo. Halloween night should be easy; they only need to monitor the power drawn at the party and write up their report. They’ll be done by midnight. But Darlington is most wary of Manuscript as a whole and tells Alex not to discount them. Their crypt doesn’t look particularly impressive, but it goes eight floors deep. They just need to make sure no one gets too out of control at the party. Line in 1982, when a girl at one a Manuscript party ate something and started to believe she was a tiger. She never stopped believing it. Manuscript alters consciousness. Alex is warned not to eat or drink anything. All the attendees are being stamped at the door, but not Darlington or Alex. You can’t trust the dye. Kate Masters mans the door and lets them in without the stamp. Darlington explains that there is a spiral staircase leading to the lower floors, representing a divine spiral. The party on the upper floor powers the magic that happens on the lower floors. They perform mirror magic, all about reflection and perception. Alex is dressed up not in a catsuit, but as Queen Mab in black dress and floral tiara. She tells Darlington there are Grays all over the place, but the lower floors are warded so she won’t have to worry about the Grays there. They head down the stairs. The rites are done on the lowest levels. As they spiral down, the levels look different, even smell different. They are a VIP area in a club, picnics in a forest, an orgy in a cathedral, a mountaintop garden, and then a long banquet room lit by fireflies on the fifth level with a two-story high circular mirror. This is the delineation between the culling rooms where magic is gathered and the ritual rooms below. Darlington points out to Alex that several people have purple tongues. They’ve taken Merity – given to Manuscript’s acolytes to give up their free will. A figure comes up dressed as Lan Caihe, one of the eight immortals of Chinese mythology. After some banter and an offer to get rid of Alex’s tattoos for real, Lan Caihe invites them to go further below. Darlington notices that his head feels heavy, his tongue cumbersome. The room starts to shimmer around him. He feels like he’s falling into a cavern, and he can hear a hum coming from the mirror – which appears to be hung on the cave wall. He knows he shouldn’t look in the mirror, but he has to know what it shows. He sees the people sitting at the banquet table now old and weak, eating rotting food. He sees Alex in the mirror as she says his name, but this time she is the real Queen Mab. He can feel the power around her, within her. He drops to his knees in front of her and sees himself in the mirror as a knight offering her his sword. Asking her to choose him. She touches his face and brings her lips to his ear. He sees them twined together, but then she bites his ear and tells him to get his shit together. All of a sudden, he’s brought back to himself - where he is still kneeling in front of her, but he has his hands on her thighs with her skirt pushed above his arms. He falls backward and realizes that it’s the mist that did him in. He didn’t even think about the fog machine. It is a gross overstep to interfere with Lethe members, and he is angry and humiliated. Alex leads him up the stairs even though they should stay, but Darlington can’t. He needs to get out. She leads him to his car outside of the Hutch then she returns to speak to the Manuscript delegation president Mike Awolowo. She assures Mike and Kate that she will handle the report for tonight, they’re terrified Darlington will report them. She asks Darlington what he wants her to write in the report, giving him the chance to omit some of it. She insists that it wasn’t a big deal, but it is to him. It’s unforgiveable, and he asks if she wants to stop working with him. He’d understand if that were true, but she just tells him to shut up. She’s not doing this job without him. She takes him to Black Elm and tucks him into bed. She lays down next to him, over top of the blanket. The drug won’t be out of his system for about twelve hours and he’s wavering between his visions of Alex and what he’d like to do with that black dress, and his demand for Manuscript’s punishment. Alex wakes up after the gluma attack to Dawes hovering over her with a medicinal drink. They’re getting along better than ever, and Alex realizes that Dawes likes to take care of people – something that Alex has never allowed anyone to do for her. The wards of the house keep chiming; something keeps brushing up against them. Alex looks out to see that it’s the Bridegroom. She tells Dawes how the Gray saved her from the gluma, and Dawes warns her against forming ties with the Grays. Dean Sandow arrives (Dawes called him), and Alex begs Dawes not to tell him about the Bridegroom. Actually, don’t tell him anything at all. She’s suspicious of authority figures. Dawes doesn’t know what she would tell Sandow anyway, since she doesn’t know any more about what just happened to Alex than she does about what happened to Darlington! And just like that, all the goodwill between them is gone. Alex hasn’t seen much of Sandow since she started with Lethe. But he was the person that Alex told when Darlington went missing. He had come to Il Bastone that night. He had said that it sounded like portal magic, even though Darlington had specifically said it was not a portal as he disappeared. Sandow insists that it must have been and that Darlington was just scared. He assured her that they would call Darlington home at the new moon. Darlington was probably just transported to a pocket realm and didn’t even know he was gone. They just need to call him back. Alex tells Sandow tonight that Pam helped her, Sandow appreciates that. They can’t have another issue. Speaking of Darlington, he’s got updates. He’s going to pick up Michelle Alameddine on Wednesday so they can do the upcoming rite at Black Elm. But they need to prepare for the possibility that Darlington may not come back. Maybe Michelle could be persuaded to continue Alex’s education, if needed. But they will, of course, do everything they can to bring Darlington home. When Alex tells Sandow that she was attacked by a gluma that she believes was sent by one of the houses, maybe Book and Snake, he laughs her off. She goes on to say she thinks the societies were involved in Tara’s murder, but he retorts that she shouldn’t have been investigating the murder at all. She’s not equipped to do so. He thinks that, as someone with her abilities, she triggered the gluma attack herself. Classic victim blaming, even Dawes thinks so. Alex is amazed that Dawes is backing her up. Alex points out what they know. 1. Tara called Tripp Helmuth (Skull and Bones). 2. She was murdered on a ritual night. 3. A gluma attacked Alex (Book and Snake). 4. Around the time Tara was killed, during the Skull and Bones rite, the two docile Grays acted out of the ordinary. Sandow asks Dawes to pull camera footage from one of the intersections. On it, they only see Alex causing a scene, alone. Sandow tells them that there is no proof that Alex was attacked and if Lethe alumni see this video, things will not look good. Things are precarious enough right now with what happened to Darlington. Turner would pursue the societies if he thought they were connected to the Hutchins murder, Alex is not prepared to investigate on her own. They need to tread carefully; their funding is up for review this year. If Yale decides to cut their support, Lethe is done. But Alex is no longer paying attention. She’s engrossed by the map above the mantle showing New Haven colony when it was first founded. The intersection where Tara’s body was found looks just like the map. The streets mirror the rivers of New Haven, joining at Tower Parkway where the rivers would converge in the harbor. Tara’s body wasn’t dumped; it was placed in the very middle of that triangle. Sandow calls Alex back to the conversation. They’ll get Darlington back and go from there. Alex wants to ask Sandow for help. She doesn’t feel safe. Someone is after her. But she knows Sandow won’t help. When Sandow leaves, Alex asks Dawes how to talk to the dead. Other than Book and Snake, who may be trying to kill Alex, Dawes only knows of one society that can speak to the dead - Wolf’s Head. Alex looks out the window and sees the Bridegroom again. She decides to throw the rules out the window and knocks on the window. She meets the Bridegroom’s eyes when he looks at her and does not look away. He already saved her life; relationships have been built on less than that. Alex can’t go to Wolf’s Head empty handed and it just so happens that they really want their stolen statue of Remus and Romulus back, and Alex has seen it at Scroll and Key. She walks to Lock and Key (while being followed by the Bridegroom) and convinces the Locksmith at the door to let her in to look for a forgotten sweater. She grabs the statue when Dawes distracts the Locksmith. They’ll probably know she took it, but that’s a problem for later. Dawes picks her up around the corner. Dawes doesn’t like the Bridegroom. He is a murderer after all. Alex doesn’t like the idea of being followed by a Gray forever and asks Dawes to help her find a way to break the link, for whenever they need it. They arrive at Wolf’s Head. Salome Nils answers the door. She’s delighted to see the statue again. Alex is eager to start the ritual, but Salome gives her bad news. She needs delegation approval to open the temple for anyone, even for alumna. Something Salome didn’t tell her when they made this arrangement. Once, in Alex’s life before, Len had sent her to collect money that he was owed from an investment banker. He had to give the money to his boss, Eitan, who he sold for. When the investment banker refused to pay her, she hadn’t known what to do and left without the money. Len told her she could face Eitan herself but instead, she went home and hocked earrings she stole from her grandmother and picked up a shift stripping to cover what Eitan was owed. She never came back short again, and she knows how to make people pay up. She puts Salome in a chokehold. If Salome doesn’t let her in the ritual room, Alex will tear her earrings out of her ears. Salome agrees to open the room for her and gives Alex the keys. Before Alex and Dawes go into the room, Alex tells Salome what will happen next. If she tries to tattle on Alex while they’re in the ritual room, Alex will knock her teeth out with the statue. Sure, Alex might get arrested. But Salome will still be missing teeth. As Alex enters the ritual room, Salome yells that she will be leaving. Nothing better go wrong. Dawes explains how the ritual will work. Alex will have to die, cross the border between life and death, and then return. The borders are always marked by rivers, so all Alex has to do is drown to get there. The Bridegroom should be standing opposite her on the western shore. Dawes instructs Alex to kneel and binds her hands with reeds. She puts a carob pod in Alex’s pocket. When Alex is ready to return, bite down on it. Alex goes under the water and Dawes holds her under as she thrashes around. Then Alex looks up and sees constellations. The Bridegroom is across the river from her. She walks into the river and meets the Bridegroom at the center. She asks him to look for Tara Hutchins on the other side of the Veil; he responds that it will be difficult – it’s a bit crowded there. He asks for something of Tara’s that she loved or was a part of her: blood, sweat, spit. Alex tells the Bridegroom that she needs the name of Tara’s murderer and if Tara doesn’t know who did it, to find out what Tara was doing with Tripp and how she’s connected to the societies. In return, he wants Alex to solve his fiancée, Daisy’s, murder. Everyone thinks he did it, but in reality, whoever killed his fiancée killed him as well. He doesn’t know who it was. He’s been searching for Daisy on both sides of the Veil since they were killed but hasn’t found her. Alex says perhaps Daisy doesn’t wish to be found, maybe he should leave her alone. But he feels like he killed her by not protecting her from whoever did the deed. When he knows who it was, he will find that person and make him pay. He reveals that Darlington was looking into his case. Darlington came to the scene of the murders and took photos; he had a notebook with him. The Bridegroom can’t find Darlington either, even the dead don’t know where he is. Alex and the Bridegroom make their bargain and as Alex prepares to bite the carob pod, the Bridegroom, his name is North, quotes a Tennyson quote to her. The end matches the new tattoo on Tara’s arm. Scroll and Key loves Victorian poetry, was Tara involved with them? She is told that any body of water will be a crossing place for them now, she only needs to find one to give North an item of Tara’s. She bites the carob pod and is pulled backward by the current of the river she stands in. North tells her to get back to the land of the living, she will have to fight. She can feel crocodiles bumping into her, but she finally spots the eastern shore, and she swims hard for it. By the time she gets there, she’s exhausted and sinks down into the sand. She wakes up on the floor of the ritual room choking up river water. She and Dawes leave the key at the door as they make their way out. Darlington woke up after the Manuscript party incredibly ashamed, and Alex showed him her report where she left the details hazy. He drove Alex back to the Hutch and when he returned to Black Elm again, it felt emptier than ever. Yet, it had never been particularly populated. He had been raised by his grandfather as his parents ignored him and only popped into his life when they wanted something from his grandfather. He loves the house and never felt unloved or unwanted with his grandfather and the housekeeper Bernadette. He had a slew of tutors teach him whatever his grandfather thought he needed to know: fencing, languages, boxing, piano, mathematics. It wasn’t until he was much older that Darlington realized that his grandfather had been lonely. He began to get irritated when his parents came to ask for more from his grandfather. He was embarrassed by his hope that they’d take an interest in him, even after they had traded him to his grandfather for an apartment in the city. Then his grandfather got sick and his parents came to Black Elm to stay. Not for Darlington, for the house. They wanted to sell Black Elm for the money. When his grandfather died, the house was left to Darlington, but the estate prohibited Darlington’s grandfather from leaving the money to anyone other than his son. His parents tried to get Darlington to sell the house to Yale, but he refused to do it. He had only thirty thousand dollars in a college trust and nothing else but Black Elm. His parents gave up and left him behind without even saying goodbye. At fifteen, he lived off of Gatorade and beef jerky. He got a job to keep the lights on, sold his clothes and furniture. He took care of himself. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to go to school at all. At seventeen, at his lowest point, he made an elixir after researching them for weeks. The UPS man found him on the front steps the next morning bleeding from his eyes and mouth, he’d been trying to get help when he collapsed. He woke up in the hospital with Dean Sandow next to him. Dawes tells Alex that she cannot go to Tara Hutchins’ apartment, that is a step too far. Detective Turner will be upset and will probably arrest her for interfering with an active investigation. But Turner can’t be upset if he doesn’t know. Alex asks Dawes about a name she thought she heard spoken in the borderlands (but she can’t be sure). Jean Du Monde or maybe Jonathan Desmond. The souls were whispering it. Dawes says she’ll look into it. Alex also asks Dawes to find out where North was killed. She thinks about seeing Tara’s memories, when she saw Lance looming above her. She wonders if Lance’s face could have been a glamour. Alex goes back to campus and tracks down Tripp. She asks how he knew Tara, but Tripp swears they just messed around sometimes and he bought from her. He turns into a toddler who is in trouble, head hung and asking Alex why she’s being mean. He tells her who else from the societies he saw with Tara and before he leaves, she assures him that she’s not going to let this hurt him. She won’t tell anyone what he said. Reassuring him before sending him off. Alex calls Turner, who tells her to meet him at the train station. As she waits, she looks up North’s case. He and his fiancée Daisy Fanning Whitlock had been found dead in the offices of his father’s carriage company in 1854, which has since been demolished. At the time of his death, parts of the factory hadn’t been finished. She sees no photographs but reads descriptions of the crime scene and how North had been found still holding his pistol. When Turner shows up, she asks to speak to Lance Gressang, Tara’s boyfriend. She explains that he and Tara were dealing to members of Scroll and Key and Manuscript, but she’s unwilling to divulge the names to Turner. Turner is unwilling to let her mess with his case. He goes so far as to threaten to “find” something in her room if she doesn’t leave his investigation alone, if he sees her anywhere near Woodland. Ding ding, now she knows where Tara lived. And he wants those names! She tells him that Tara met with Kate Masters (Manuscript) and Colin Khatri (Scroll and Key). Instead of going to Tara’s right away, Alex goes back to her dorm to find Mercy crying on the couch. She had gone to a party the night before alone, Alex forgot about it after the gluma attack, and there is now a video of Mercy performing sexual acts on at least two guys. Alex watches the video and notices that Mercy has a purple tongue. She’d been given Merity. Mercy insists that she didn’t have much to drink, and in the video, she is bright eyed. She also gives verbal consent to everything that happens. But Merity is the drug of service, the will of the drugged person is taken away. Mercy thinks the video has been sent to Blake Keely’s friends, he’s the one that took the video. Alex tells their other roommate Lauren to stay with Mercy and try to calm her down, she’s going to fix this. She heads to Omega house. The last time that Alex was in Manuscript was the night that Darlington was drugged. They had slept in the same bed, and she’d woken up to his hand rubbing her breast in his sleep and his body curled around hers. She told him to either stop or sleep with her, and he was very embarrassed. She heads to Manuscript now and calls in her favor for not telling Sandow that they drugged Darlington. She wants Manuscript to perform a ritual to call back the video of Mercy at the frat house. She shows Mike, the delegation president, a screenshot of Mercy’s tongue - but he swears their Merity supply is locked down, and it can’t be made outside of the society. So where did Blake get it? Mike will call in people to do the ritual, but it will take a little bit of time to prepare. He tells Alex to make sure the videos exposure is kept to a minimum until the ritual is done and gives her an envelope of Astrumsalinas, also called starpower. It will make her really convincing for about half an hour, but it’s gross so try not to puke it back up. She will also have a terrible headache afterward (so will everyone else she comes into contact with). Mike tells her to find out where the guy got the Merity from. Alex takes the starpower just before she knocks on the door to Omega house. It makes everyone she speaks to trip over themselves to help her. She finds Blake Keely and takes his phone to find out who he sent the videos to, calling both of those guys (Jason and Rodriguez) into the room. She deletes all of Blake’s messages and a bunch of videos of other girls with purple tongues that she finds in a photo album. He’s having sex in each of the videos. She deletes them all from the phone but is still worried about them being backed up elsewhere. She does the same to Jason’s phone, but when she checks Rodriguez’s phone, she sees that he has already sent the video to two others. Blake tells Alex the others didn’t know about the Merity, which he gets from a guy at the forestry school - where the Yale greenhouses are. Where they could potentially grow the Merity plant, which (according to Mike) only grows in the Greater Khingan Mountains. She remembers how Tripp claimed that Tara and Lance always had the best weed. Blake says he knew Tara and Lance, but he didn’t kill Tara. She takes Blake down the hall to the bathroom to make a video of his own. Alex goes home and tells Mercy that the video is gone. But Mercy is struggling with why it happened to her and worries that the video will resurface. Alex reveals that something similar to this happened to her when she was in California and she let it ruin her life. She tells Mercy that she won’t let that happen to her. In the mess hall, they can hear laughter as they sit at a table with Lauren. Their phones buzz and they see a video of Blake Keely eating out of a clogged toilet. Mike from Manuscript texts Alex next and he’s furious, but she knows he won’t go to Dean Sandow. That would require explaining how Blake Keely got Merity. After spending the rest of the day with Mercy, Alex researches how to fight off glumae and the best she finds is to carry a pocket watch. The ticking confuses them (they think it’s a heartbeat). She finds a pocket watch in Lethe’s inventory. She also takes a mirrored compact and heads toward Woodland. She shines the mirror into the face of a guy leaving Tara’s building before then showing the mirror to the cop that’s guarding the building and gaining entrance. The cop believed Alex was the resident who had just left. On the second floor, Tara’s front door has been removed completely. She slips underneath the caution tape and finds Tara’s retainer. It’s something that Tara would have had to save for and buy as an adult, made sure not to lose, and worn every night just to try to improve herself. This was important to Tara. She fills the bathroom sink with water and drops the retainer into it. North grabs it before it hits the bottom. She turns to leave but now there’s a huge man in mechanic’s overalls standing in the doorway. He runs into her and slams her against the wall, grabbing Alex’s throat. North tries to help but he can’t touch the man. This is no gluma. Alex hits the mechanic in the throat, and then in the groin. She runs for the door, but the mechanic appears in front of her. Is he using portal magic? The man attacks her again. He wants to know who she is and who hurt Tara. When Alex says Lance hurt Tara, he rushes at her again. Alex is bleeding and hurt; she thinks her ribs are broken. He starts to strangle her. North is gesturing wildly, shouting at her to let him in. No one knows she can do this, not even Sandow. Only Darlington guessed. Darlington called Alex to do Lethe work one day, even though it wasn’t a Thursday. But the last time that Rosenfeld Hall had trouble with the grid, the whole campus went dark. St. Elmo’s used to have their tomb here, but when St. Elmo’s needed cash, the university purchased Rosenfeld Hall from them. Yale promised to continue leasing the crypt rooms to St. Elmo’s for rituals, but they did not get an actual contract signed and when new management came to Yale, their lease was not renewed. St. Elmo’s moved to a different location which has been less effective, they’re all but magicless since losing their crypt rooms. Darlington takes Alex to the underground floors of the Hall where St. Elmo brewed the weather. They did it for years and sometimes the weather likes to return, like now. Darlington takes a silver weathervane from his bag and has Alex breathe on it a few times. The weathervane begins to turn like it’s in a storm. Once the vane is spinning, Darlington flips switches in a fuse box, telling Alex to always wear gloves while doing it. They have to do this a couple times a year. On their way out of the basement, Darlington sees a shadow in the corner where it does not belong. A portal. Scroll and Key must’ve been here trying to capture the magic because their own is waning. There’s nothing Darlington can do about the portal now; they will have to get the proper tools from Il Bastone and come back. He and Alex talk. Alex mentions Hellie to him for the first time. Hellie, whose name Darlington doesn’t recognize but he guesses is Helen Watson, who was listed in the police report. He asks Alex if she killed everyone that night – Leonard Beacon, Mitchell Betts, Helen Watson. She says not Hellie. She asks what he’s going to do with this information but he’s not sure. He doesn’t ask her why it happened. Or how. He does point the portal out to her. He will ward it and then they’ll talk more at Il Bastone about her story. But as Darlington wards the portal, something grabs him and sucks him inside. It’s not a portal at all. The trouble that started at Ground Zero, which is what Alex called the place that Hellie died, had started well before that night. Len had been trying to get Eitan to trust him with more than just weed, to make more money, but Eitan liked to say that Len smoked most of his profits and wouldn’t give him anything else. Then Ariel came to town. A relative of Eitan, Ariel always made Alex nervous. She could see that he was dangerous. But Len always amused Ariel. He invited Ariel to Ground Zero and told Alex to make the place look nice, slapping her a little when she said that it was impossible to do. But as soon as Len left the apartment, Alex and Hellie headed out too. They both know they’re expected to be part of the “fun”. It’s not the first time. It started about the time Alex started sleeping with Len, when she was fifteen. Yet she’s always punished by Len afterward, not to mention the shame that she feels. But they’ve heard rumors about Eitan, about his cruelty. About the things he likes to do to girls. Eitan sent his girlfriend out of town as soon as Ariel showed up. Alex and Hellie have been best friends since Len brought Hellie home from Venice Beach. Hellie makes life bearable for Alex. And Alex wasn’t going to let either one of them run into Ariel tonight. The sun was too bright and Hellie asked to see a movie. In the theater, Alex fell asleep and when she woke up, Hellie had already left to go back to the apartment. By the time Alex got back, the party was in full swing. She snuck in and didn’t see either Ariel or Hellie, so she went to lay down on the mattress and texted Hellie. She fell asleep again but woke up when Hellie laid down beside her. Hellie pulled Alex close. When Alex asked if it was bad, Hellie kept repeating the word “no”, but her hands clutched hard to Alex. Alex woke up hours later, around three in the morning, and the apartment was quiet. Hellie was lying on her side looking at Alex, she had vomit on her shirt. Alex greeted Hellie and told her that they were going to get out there for real this time. But when Alex reached to help Hellie take off her shirt, her hand passed right through her friend. The real Hellie was lying on the mattress, dead and already cold. Alex broke down as the ghost Hellie cried. Then Alex started screaming. Len came through the door and freaked out when he saw Hellie’s body. His friend Betcha (Mitchell) came in, and they made a plan to drop Hellie’s body in an alleyway outside of a club. Alex wants to call the cops. Len hits her. Again. And again. She watches Len and Betcha pick Hellie’s body up between them and try to carry her out of the apartment, waking Ariel up on their way. He was asleep on the couch. Ariel giggled when he saw Hellie’s body. Hellie’s ghost asked Alex to let her in. Alex begs Hellie to stay with her. Hellie rushed in and picked up a baseball bat that Len kept next to the door for “protection”. Hellie was left-handed, so Alex swung the bat from the left. They hit Len first, a hard hit to the skull. Then she hit him again. They hit Betcha’s knees before bringing the bat down on his neck and shoulders. They turned toward Ariel and Alex saw herself in the glass door. She was glowing. She chased Ariel and knocked him down. They hit him in the back until the bat broke. Then they used the bat’s broken pieces for the rest of the people in the apartment. When it was all done and everyone was dead, Hellie led Alex to put on her shoes and walk to the river. They let the water wash Alex clean and take the bat from their hands. They put Hellie’s body back in the bed and then Alex lay down next to her. She asked Hellie to stay with her, but when she woke Hellie was gone and a paramedic was checking her pupils. Alex hadn’t been sure what she was going to tell Darlington when they got back to Il Bastone, but it was a moot point once Darlington disappeared. He had said “it’s not a portal, it’s a -” as he was taken and Alex froze. She can’t remember now if she had wanted to help Darlington and couldn’t because of fear or lack of training, or if she chose not to help him. But at night, she thinks of the night he slept next to her, and she believes that she let him die to save herself. In present day, she is being choked by the mechanic, and she grabs a discarded golf club with her right hand while offering her left hand to the Bridegroom. He fights against it, but he is forced into Alex’s body. She uses North’s strength and swings the club at the mechanic, breaking his hand when he raises it. Then she hits his knee and demands to know who sent him. The mechanic disappears. He shows back up next to her, hitting her in the face before disappearing again and reappearing on her other side, hitting her again. She’s knocked down and he kicks her broken ribs until Turner shows up with his gun drawn. The mechanic just disappears. North leaves Alex’s body and he is not happy about what just happened; he’s angry and afraid. Alex tells Turner that the mechanic was using portal magic but there’s something she doesn’t know. The mechanic is none other than Lance, and he’s supposed to be sitting in a jail cell right now. Alex asks Turner to take her to Dawes instead of to a hospital, he’s quite fed up with Lethe’s secrets and code names. Lethe’s bullshit, as he calls it. Alex says she needs to get somewhere warded, where she will be safe. She has basso belladonna that she asks him to put in her eyes, which allows her to walk out of the apartment building herself, but also makes her more aware of the pain she feels. She tells Turner to meet her again a few roads over, before leaving from the back hall. Turner picks her up to take her to Il Bastone. She explains about the portal magic. It’s Scroll and Key magic, she’d been pretty sure before this that Tara and Lance were dealing to them. She tells Turner that Lance asked her who had killed Tara. She doesn’t think Lance did it, he had come to the apartment to get something and when he found Alex, he decided to interrogate her. Turner already looked into the names that Alex gave him. Tripp’s location that night is impossible to confirm, no one saw him the whole night (other than the brief time that Alex saw him). Kate Masters claims she was at Manuscript until after three, but it sounded like they were partying – she could have come and gone without being noticed and she wasn’t far from the crime scene. Turner asks about Colin Khatri. Colin is one of Yale’s brightest students, even doing graduate-level chemistry as an undergrad. Turner says Colin never turned up at Scroll and Key last Thursday even though it was a meeting night. He was at Professor Belbalm’s salon instead, at the same salon that Alex is supposed to attend. They get to Il Bastone. Dawes is there with her headphones on. She sends Turner out for supplies as soon as she sees Alex. Dawes takes Alex upstairs as they wait for Turner to come back. When Alex observed Scroll and Key with Darlington, they were unable to open their portal. Dawes confirms that they’ve been having trouble the last few years with their magic. Dawes tells Alex that they aren’t going to heal her, it’s too messy and unreliable. But they will try to revert her body to a prior state, undoing everything that had been done to it over the last couple hours. Alex strips down to her underwear with Dawes’ help. Dawes wraps her in a sheet; they’ll need Turner to lift Alex into the crucible after it’s filled with goat’s milk. Once she’s in, the pain starts to fade. Turner leaves quickly, he’s had enough. While Alex lounges in the crucible waiting for the magic to finish with her, the goat’s milk turns to water, North shows up to speak to Alex. He shouldn’t be able to be in Il Bastone with the wards, but he can speak to her now wherever water gathers. North wants to know what Alex did to him, but she doesn’t really know. And he knows now what she did at Ground Zero, he saw it when Alex brought him in. She doesn’t care; it’s not like North can tell anyone. But North says there are people on the other side of the Veil that Alex should consider her enemies. Leonard Beacon. Mitchell Betts. Ariel Harel. She wonders about Darlington and Hellie but tells North to stay on task and find Tara. She has enough enemies over here right now; she doesn’t need to worry about the ones on the other side. North thinks that Tara’s brutal death may be delaying finding her, even with her retainer. She may be recovering. But Alex’s enemies found North on their own. Meanwhile, she hasn’t even looked into Darlington’s notebooks to see what he found out about North’s murder. Alex says she’s sorry for what she did at the apartment, but they both know she’s really not. But it wasn’t all bad, North had forgotten what it was like to have a body. She tells him he can come back in if he wants. North hesitates but then Dawes comes in with food. If Alex is going to eat, North wants in. He tells Alex to submerge her hand into the water and he grabs her hand – insisting that he is not a murderer. This time, Alex can see North’s memories. He’s with Daisy in his father’s factory and she is not the prettiest woman, but North thinks she’s exquisite. She’s the only person that calls him Bertie instead of Bertram. Daisy’s maid Gladys is with them, but she walks on the green to give them privacy. They discuss their honeymoon (he’s agreed to go to Paris, but he’d rather go to Vermont), and he kisses her. They hear a creak on the stairs, and then the sound of someone stumbling. Daisy thinks it’s her maid Gladys, but North can still see Gladys walking from the window. He doesn’t see anyone in the doorway, but he hears Daisy gasp. His vision goes dark. Then he feels a pain in his head. He calls out for Daisy. He sees young men standing above him saying there is something wrong and to finish up. They’ve cut open his stomach; he can see his own organs. Then he is whole again and in an office that he doesn’t recognize. The young men want to kill him. They took him from his spot on the train station and offered him money. They wanted to cut him open and take his soul. He hears the name Bertie - but that isn’t his name. He is under a desk, hiding, pulling drawers open, searching inside of them. He finds a gun and hears a woman pleading. The woman m must have been sent by the men to bring him back. There’s a flash of light and the woman is crawling away, crying, then another flash of light. They can’t take his soul now; his own chest has been torn apart. He falls, Daisy next to him – her eyes cold and unseeing. Alex wakes from North’s memories with him none the wiser, too interested in eating to notice what she was doing. She pushes him out. She knows now that technically North did kill Daisy, but he was not North when he did it. He had been infiltrated by someone else. Alex goes to the bathroom and rinses her mouth out – she spits out pink speckled water. Blood that North had swallowed as he died and… parsley. Like what the Bonesmen use in their rituals. Long before Lethe existed to keep them in check, the Bonesmen did a prognostication, choosing an unhoused man that no one would miss, and that man had possessed North. They probably just let the man die when the prognostication went wrong. But what magic had made the man choose to possess North? Alex goes to the Virgil bedroom in Il Bastone but only finds Darlington’s statistics textbook, no notebooks. She heads to the library to ask the Albemarle Book. She can see that Darlington used the book to research North and Daisy, but where are his notes? Dawes tells Alex that Turner is back and needs to show them something. He has brought footage from the prison holding Lance. Lance walks into view of a camera, turns a corner, and disappears. He never shows in the next hallway. But now, he’s back in the prison. In the infirmary with a broken hand – courtesy of Alex’s golf swing. Turner has brought his files on both Tara and Lance to look at. He will need to take them back with him tonight, but he’s giving Alex and Dawes permission to look at the files now. Clearly, something with the societies is going on. Turner asks Alex who she thinks is responsible, but she doesn’t know. She thinks four societies are involved – Dawes grabs a whiteboard. On it, Alex writes Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Manuscript, and Book and Snake. The four societies in the Ancient Eight that may have connections to Tara. Tripp from Skull and Bones was buying weed but also sleeping with Tara - though Alex doesn’t think it was anything more than casual. Likely, Tara knew that. But Tripp is old money and maybe Tara wanted a taste of that. Alex tells Turner she thinks Tara and Lance were dealing harder stuff than pot. She thinks Blake Keely bought Merity from them. Dawes says that’s impossible, but Alex explains that Blake bought from Tara and Lance, and Tripp saw Tara with Kate Masters who is in Manuscript. She doesn’t think Kate sold them Merity but paid them to find a way to grow it, since they lived close to the forestry school and its greenhouses. Maybe Tara and Lance figured out how to grow Merity and started selling it on their own. As for Scroll and Key, Alex thinks Tara was dealing to Colin Khatri. She had a new tattoo from a poem called Idylls of the Kin, that poem is all over the Locksmiths’ tomb. Dawes looks at one of the photos from the crime scene and asks about items in Tara’s bedroom, Turner says they’re jewelry making tools that Tara used as a side hustle. But one of the dishes in the picture looks different than the others. Dawes thinks it’s a crucible. Turner says that if it’s solid gold, there’s no way Tara and Lance could afford it. Unless it was a gift to them and they used it to make something far more valuable than Tara’s jewelry. Dawes explains how holy men may have used magic mushrooms to open doorways to other worlds, but the mushrooms had to be purified in a crucible first. Doorways… like portals. The dish is in evidence; Turner says they can test the residue to see if it matches the hallucinogen in Tara’s system. If Scroll and Key allowed outsiders access to their tomb, that’s unforgiveable within the Houses of the Veil. The society would be stripped of their tomb and disbanded. That sounds an awful lot like motive. Alex plans on going to Belbalm’s salon that night, she is going to try to find out what time Colin left the last salon. She wonders if Darlington found out about the drugs and that’s why someone left a trap for him. They tell Turner everything they know about Darlington (Turner was told he was in Spain), and about the upcoming ritual. After all they’ve discussed, they still can’t explain the gluma that attacked Alex, which is the only way Book and Snake is connected. Another problem, there’s no way to really investigate these leads. Turner can’t get any warrants with what they have, but he does agree to pull camera footage from the liquor store near Tara’s. Maybe they used the phone there to do business since none of the Yale kids were saved in Tara’s cellphone. They also need to find out if Tara and Lance were working with someone at the forestry school in order to use the greenhouses. Alex can handle that; she has access to the greenhouses as a student. Alex thought she might want Turner to pull some strings on his end to get them some answers, but she doesn’t want that now. If he does, Sandow might find out. And Alex wants to know where Sandow was on the night of the murder. He pushed Alex hard not to investigate. Plus, he keeps going on about how it’s a funding year. Lethe House is funded by the societies, is he trying to sweep the societies’ involvement under the rug to ensure that Lethe stays active? Alex asks what Lethe House pays Sandow and Dawes isn’t sure – he has tenure from Yale and makes plenty from that already. But he has also been in divorce court for the last two years. It’s worth looking into his whereabouts on Thursday. Turner agrees to look into Sandow quietly but Dawes (even though she’s upset and doesn’t think Sandow would do anything to hurt Lethe) thinks she should look into Sandow instead. She can talk to his housekeeper without tipping her off. Alex prepares for Belbalm’s salon. Dawes is considerate enough to grab Alex some clean clothes from her own apartment, black like Alex prefers. Belbalm lives close to the divinity school. Alex comes in through the front door and Belbalm points her toward the kitchen. Alex realizes that she isn’t invited to the salon. She is the staff tonight. She actually feels a little relieved not to have to fit in with the guests. She spots Dean Sandow talking to two students. Colin is in the kitchen and gives Alex instructions. Belbalm’s other assistant, Isabel Andrews, is also working. They plate food and Alex asks if Dean Sandow was in attendance the week before. Professor Belbalm comes into the kitchen as she asks and assures Alex that he was. Belbalm tells Colin to grab a bottle of wine and join the salon – the others have the kitchen under hand. Colin is dumbfounded by his luck; he will get to read tonight! Alex asks Isabel if the salon was as crowded last week. It was, she and Colin were cleaning until after two in the morning. Meaning that Colin’s alibi for Thursday night is good. Alex is relieved, she likes Colin. Isabel tells Alex that Sandow drank way too much that night (like always – he’s in the midst of a bad divorce) and slept in Belbalm’s study. Luckily, they finish up earlier this week and leave with leftovers. Alex doesn’t have class the next morning and is able to have a long breakfast, during which she sees North. He hasn’t found Tara, but Alex confirms that Darlington was looking into his case. She can check Darlington’s house for his notes tomorrow night. She will be there for the new moon ritual anyway. He asks what Alex saw in his head that was bad enough to cast him out so quickly and she asks what he remembers about when he died. He doesn’t remember anything. One minute he was standing in his new office with Daisy, the next he was dead. Gladys found their bodies and was interviewed, but she didn’t see the crime happen. He wants to know what Alex saw, but she won’t tell him. On the way to the greenhouses, Alex lets Turner know where she’s going and she calls to check on Michael Reyes from the Skull and Bones prognostication. She’s told by a nurse named Jean that he’s recovering well and will be sent home in the next couple days. There are four huge main greenhouses surrounded by smaller greenhouses. Alex walks around until she can smell something uncanny and knows she’s found the right building. She thinks it has the remnants of a glamour on it – probably the work of Manuscript. But when she opens the door, the greenhouse is empty of everything but overturned pots and one single tendril of a plant, laying in a pile of dirt. She touches the vine and it unfurls, a white bud opening to reveal glittering seeds before withering away again. Outside, Alex asks a woman who uses the greenhouse and is given the name of grad student Sveta Myers. Sveta left a few days ago, she took the rest of the semester off. Alex asks if the woman ever saw a blond girl or a big guy around and she’s seen the woman, Sveta’s cousin or niece. She may have seen the guy a few times too. Alex leaves to meet Turner and tells him what she found. They’ll both look into Sveta. Alex wants to talk to Lance but Turner still says no. Neither of them can talk to him without his lawyer present now that he has representation anyway. Alex thinks she knows a way to get to Lance. She tells Turner to get a briefcase. Alex didn’t think about the cameras at the jail, only getting past the people, so Dawes comes up with a solution. A tempest brewed in a teapot, courtesy of St. Elmo’s. She talks to Alex about why having a tomb on a nexus is so important to the societies and why St. Elmo’s has been petitioning to get theirs back – or to build a new one if necessary. Because the societies use big magic. Lethe doesn’t need a nexus because they use smaller magics. When they get to the jail, the tea in Alex’s thermos (brewed perfectly by Dawes) knocks out all signals. The cameras look like they’re working still, but they’re only recording static. When Lance is brought to a room to speak to them, he doesn’t want to talk – that’s no surprise since he recognizes Alex as the woman who broke his hand. But Turner tells him that they’re trying to solve Tara’s murder. Lance should be scared, but not of them, and no one knows that they’re speaking to him now. Tara knew things she should not have known and now someone is using Lance as a scapegoat. Does he know things he shouldn’t too? Lance tells them he didn’t hurt Tara, he loved her. Tara went to a plant sale a few years ago at the greenhouses and met Sveta Myers, they quickly became friends. They started growing with Sveta and giving her a cut. Alex asks about Blake, and Lance tells her that they sold weed to his frat for a while, then they met Kate Masters. She wanted to know if they could make space to grow something new. She said it was medicinal and really finicky. It took awhile to figure out what the plant needed, but they got it growing well enough eventually. Lance had tried it once and hadn’t even got buzzed from it, but he did sell some to Blake, which Kate didn’t know. Blake kept coming back for more. Eventually Blake brought Colin Khatri with him, Colin wanted to know if they could grow mushrooms. Colin gave Tara the little dish where Tara would mix the mushrooms with other stuff. She was distilling the mushrooms down and making Colin little tablets. Colin kept coming back and Tara was at the greenhouses all the time, Lance didn’t like it. When Colin wouldn’t tell Tara what he was using the tablets for, she told him she wouldn’t cook for him anymore. Colin caved, came to the apartment to get all the tablets that Tara had, and then blindfolded her and Lance and took them to a room. Lance doesn’t know where the room is located, but Alex recognizes what he describes as Lock and Key’s ritual room. Colin and his friends started chanting and a table opened up, Lance and Tara walked through the table onto the top of a mountain. It was incredible (but Lance was sick the next day). They agreed to keep cooking for Colin if Colin would let Tara and Lance see the world. The Amazon, Morocco, Iceland, New Orleans. Colin would try to find out how Tara made the tablets and he was getting angry that he couldn’t figure it out. Alex wants to know how Colin and Blake knew each other, Lance isn’t sure - lacrosse or something. Turner asks about Tripp, but Lance doesn’t recognize the name. Alex can’t tell if he’s lying or not. Lance tells them that he had a tablet on him when he was in his cell, he hid it when he got arrested. That’s how he got to the apartment. You can’t portal long distances unless you use the table, but he thought maybe he could get some money from the apartment and make a run for it. Turner and Alex leave the jail. They’ve got a lot more motives than they originally thought. It could have been any of the Locksmiths who allowed an outsider into their ritual room, but why would they want Tara dead if she was helping them with their magic. Any Manuscript could have created a glamour that made Tara think she was seeing Lance when she died. And now that they know about the tablets, Colin Khatri no longer has an alibi. He could have portaled from the salon, killed Tara, and portaled back without anyone noticing he was gone from Belbalm’s. Turner says he will investigate Colin and Kate the next day. Alex gets ready to go to Black Elm for the ritual to bring Darlington back. When she reaches Black Elm, Dawes is already there and she’s turned all the lights on. Alex looks for Darlington’s notes about the Bridegroom murders. She finds a ziplocked carriage catalog on which Darlington has written “the first?”. North’s family had made carriages. Alex is interrupted when Dean Sandow and Michelle Alameddine arrive. They’ve brought Josh Zelinski – the president of the Aurelian delegation – and Amelia – an Aurelian alumna that Alex has already met. Michelle says she’s not surprised that Darlington got himself into some trouble, when he was a freshman, he was so excited to make a difference, he wanted to jump right in. But she doubts he’s dead or else he’d be haunting Alex. Alex does not like the way Sandow and Michelle are discussing Darlington and making light of his situation, of how seriously he took his job at Lethe - Dawes touches her hand and Alex can tell that she feels the same way. Sandow plans to use a hound-dog casting to locate Darlington, using the deed to Black Elm. If Darlington is really stuck in a pocket or between worlds, it should be enough to pull Darlington back. If it’s not, they’ll have to wait till the next new moon and get Scroll and Key involved. Sandow says that they will leave the northern compass point open for Darlington to use to lead him home. He needs Alex to keep an eye out for Grays. She stands at the north point, Dawes and Michelle man the east and west with Sandow at the south. Amelia and Josh take the deed and stand in the center of the circle. They start chanting, first in English, then Spanish, then Dutch, passing through all the languages that Darlington knows. Alex can hear barking in the distance and Sandow yells that they’ve found Darlington. He tells Amelia to activate the deed, and she touches a candle to the papers. The fire turns green. Words from the deed hover in the air in the flames but then the fire goes dark. All the lights in the house flare, the electronics turn on, and Darlington’s grandfather appears wanting to know who turned the lights on. Amelia says to use the bells and call Darlington home, the ritual is working. Alex hears a crash and people at a party, and Sandow tells them to stop the bells because something is wrong. They all stop moving but the bells keep ringing, just getting louder and louder. The room gets hot, it stinks of sulfur, and she can hear a rattle through the floor. The building shakes. Something is trying to break into their world; Alex can hear the same sound as at the ritual when the Grays acted strangely. Had the Grays been afraid that night? Alex hears Darlington’s angry voice saying “murder”, then she sees a monster looming over the ceiling. Part boar, part ram, part scorpion. Sandow makes his way to the center of the circle and throws his arms open – the windows shatter around them. The bells stop ringing. Dawes is crying, muttering that Darlington is gone. But Alex doesn’t understand, she heard Darlington speaking. Michelle explains that it wasn’t Darlington. The monster was a hellbeast speaking with Darlington’s voice. That means the hellbeast consumed Darlington after someone let it into their world and laid a trap for Darlington to walk into. He’s not on the other side of the Veil. He’s gone, soul and all. No soul can survive a hellbeast. Sandow swears to find out who did this. They clean up and head outside. Alex will take Dawes to Il Bastone where Sandow will meet them later. Dawes asks Alex to stay with her, and Alex refuses to believe that Darlington is gone. She explains that she heard something pounding the night that Tara was murdered too, maybe that was Darlington. Maybe he was trying to warn Alex. But Dawes doesn’t believe it, Darlington is gone for real. But Dawes says Sandow was wrong about one thing. A human can’t survive a hellbeast, but a demon can. Dawes grabs her headphones and prepares to open wine as Alex heads upstairs for a shower, but Alex hears a knock at the door and a compulsion demanding that they let him in. Dawes is also compelled, not even realizing what is happening as she opens the door and is thrown against the stairs, her head hitting the ground hard. Her headphones are thrown from her hand, and Alex shoves them onto her own head as she sees Blake Keely at the door. He is using something, maybe the same powder that Alex had used. Starpower. Alex turns on the house’s stereo panel that plays through the house so she can’t hear Blake, then calls Turner as she runs for the armory. She throws everything she can at Blake, but he grabs the back of her neck and removes the headphones. She claws at his face. He grabs her again and tells her to calm down, she does what he compels her to do. He kicks her in the chest, breaking her ribs. The house has been going crazy around her, dishes falling and crashing, but it goes very quiet now as if it too is calming down. Blake is crying. He asks if Alex can be quiet and she says she can. Tara said the same thing, he tells her. Tara thought she was better than his other girls, but they all get the same from Blake. Alex hears Dean Sandow downstairs and she screams for him to call the cops. Blake has a knife. When Sandow climbs the stairs, Blake tells Sandow to stab Alex in the heart with the dagger. She remembers the first day with Darlington, when he called the jackals on her - spirit hounds bound to serve Lethe. She asks the house to send the hounds, and she hears the pack breaking through the front door. The jackals arrive just in time to stop Sandow from driving the dagger into Sandow’s chest. Alex has no idea how to control them now that they’re here and they are frenzied. She feels one of them bite her in the side, but then hears Sandow say something and the jackals retreat. She is starting to lose consciousness, but she can see that Sandow’s leg is broken completely by the jaws of one of the jackals. She can see the bone protruding from his skin. Sandow passes out and Blake crawls forward toward Alex, he’s been bitten several times. He comes right next to her, grabs her hair, and slams her head into the floor. Twice. Then he falls forward onto Alex, and she can barely breathe under his weight. She is able to roll him off of her and she sees Dawes, who has hit the back of Blake’s head with a marble bust and killed him. Alex wakes up briefly in an ambulance and then again at the hospital, where a nurse named Jean comes into her room. She wonders if this is the same Jean that Skull and Bones paid to take care of Michael Reyes. Jean says that Dawes is down the hall being treated for shock and Alex asks for juice. As soon as the nurse leaves the room, she wheels her IV to see Dawes. Alex climbs into bed with Dawes. Sandow is stable and in a cast. Dawes says she killed someone, but Alex disagrees. Dawes saved her life. She killed a predator. Alex falls asleep and wakes up (still next to Dawes in Dawes’ bed) when Turner brings Sandow into the room. Sandow apologizes for not taking Tara’s murder more seriously. Turner explains that Lance will face charges on dealing and possession, but not for murder. They were able to get into Blake’s cellphone and found voicemails from Tara about Merity, threatening to expose what Blake was doing with it. But Alex insists that Blake was under a compulsion a few days ago and said then that he didn’t kill Tara. Sandow tells her that Blake may have believed he was innocent, maybe he didn’t even remember committing the murder if he was on drugs at the time. Alex asks about the gluma and Sandow promises to get to the bottom of that. They still don’t know who sent it. Colin was questioned and admitted that he got very deep into experimentation with Tara, but when Tara wanted to go further, he wanted to slow down. She wouldn’t let him, not if he wanted her to help his society still. All this happened right under Sandow’s nose and, rest assured, both Turner and Sandow will say how great a job Alex did. How she insisted on investigating because she believed something wasn’t right. Dawes isn’t okay with that. Alex should get something other than praise for almost dying three times. Sandow agrees that he could help Alex pass her classes for the semester. As for the societies, there will be heavy fines, and the trust of each of the Houses has been contacted – a meeting will be held. But at the end of the day, Lethe is kept alive by the funding of the Ancient Eight. Manuscript and Scroll and Key are two of the strongest Houses, both with powerful alumni. Alex and Dawes both know that no one will pay in the end, except Darlington. Dawes tells Sandow to go. She’s picked up soon by her sister to go to Westport. She needs a break. Alex goes to her own room and removes her IV by herself, grabbing her phone. Alex can’t be there anymore. She passes Dawes’ sister on the way out. North is waiting for her on the street. He’s worried, but Alex can’t be bothered with him. She hires a car to take her to the Hutch. Mercy tracks Alex down and throws a rock through the Hutch’s window. She’d followed Alex here a few times just out of curiosity about where Alex went all the time, but this time she brought Alex’s mom. Alex lets them in but closes the door before North can follow – he’s been hovering outside. Alex insists to her mom that she’s not using, she’s just been sick. They tidy up the Hutch for Alex and make sure that Alex eats and is patched up. Mira burns some sage. She has to fly back in the morning; Alex breaks it to her that she might have a summer job lined up and won’t be coming back to California. Mira insists that she doesn’t want Alex to come back. This is where Alex belongs now, this is where she is meant to bloom. As her mom prepares to go back to her hotel for the night, Alex asks if there was anything weird about her dad. She knows almost nothing about him, only that he liked to surf. Did he ever talk about seeing things that weren’t there. Mira responds that being with Alex’s father was absolutely wonderful in the moment, but it was like unknowingly drinking poison. The fallout was terrible. Inside the Hutch, Mercy asks if Alex heard about Blake. Word is, he attacked a woman in her home and was killed by the woman’s husband. He had a knife that was matched to the weapon that killed Tara Hutchins, so they think he killed Tara. The next morning, North is waiting for Alex again and he seems agitated. Instead of going to class, she makes a pitstop in the bathroom to ask if he found Tara. He did not, so their deal is off and she won’t speak to him. Not even when he points to the sink. But he won’t let it go and continues to follow her. In class, she realizes that North enters her body without being invited when she feels a cold gust and a bolt of pain in her head. She can taste tobacco in her mouth. He writes three dates on the page in front of her: 1854 1869 1883. Then he leaves. She leaves class and heads for Il Bastone. He follows, and he’s not sorry for what he did. Her nose is bleeding, she’s yelling at a ghost, she’s scared, and she’s walking furtively toward Il Bastone when Tripp sees her. He thanks her for keeping the stuff about him and Tara quiet and talks about Blake for a minute as North paces back and forth through Tripp. She finally makes it to Il Bastone and sees the windows have been boarded up, but there is still glass on the floor and blood where Dawes hit her head. She cleans up a little, maybe she and the house care about each other after all, then goes to the Albemarle Book. She can’t just put in the dates that North gave her, she will be swimming in information. But she remembers that Darlington was researching this same thing and finds Darlington’s last entry in the book. Above his last entry, he had requested the Daily New Havener. She copies the request. She finds thousands of stacks of flyers. She writes out Darlington’s last request for the Rosenfeld schematics, and she finds a single book waiting for her. Inside the book, she finds a yellow sheet of legal paper from Darlington. On it he has written years, names, and potential causes of death with the most recent in 1958. The last three match North’s dates. 1883 – Zuzanna Mazurski – Phelps – Apoplexy. 1869 - Paoletta DeLauro – Kingsley – Stabbing. 1854 – Daisy Fanning Whitlock – Russell – Gunshot. She realizes that these dates seem familiar. She pulls out the Lethe manual – The Life of Lethe – thinking that the dates line up with when the societies were created, but they don’t. She looks at Daisy’s name again; she’s never seen it with Russell at the end. She realizes that Russell is not part of Daisy’s name, but the name of a trust that constructed one of the societies’ tombs. Phelps and Kingsley are trusts too, all the other entries have trusts listed. She asks the Albemarle book for the deed acquired by Russell Trust on High Street where Skull and Bones has their tomb. This date matches the year that Daisy died. The dates of acquisition for land all over New Haven, locations that would become a tomb for the Houses of the Veil, each built over a nexus of power created by an unknown force. The dead women created a nexus, but what was special about these deaths? She runs to the bathroom and fills the sink with water, calling North. He explains that he couldn’t find Tara in the Veil, which should have been easy with her retainer. Just like he couldn’t find Daisy. Or Daisy’s maid Gladys. Something big happened the day that he and Daisy died, and he thinks it happened again with Tara. She gives him the other names that Darlington found: Colina Tillman, Sophie Mishkan, Effie White, Zuzanna, and Paoletta, asking North to try to find them. She remembers that one of the societies needs a new nexus. Could St. Elmo’s be behind this, they’ve been petitioning for a new tomb for years. A tomb is no good without the power beneath it. Darlington must have told Sandow about this. But Sandow can’t be involved, he was just nearly killed in an attack related to Tara. Except… Sandow hadn’t been hurt by Blake. Alex had been, Dawes too. But Sandow was hurt by the jackals that Alex unleashed. She remembers that Blake hit her with a closed fist, he never opened it. She goes upstairs and searches everywhere - under the rug, the slats of the floor - and finds a coin of compulsion under the wicker planter. Blake was being controlled. Darlington took his theory of the women’s deaths to Sandow, but Sandow already knew. He was broke from his divorce and needed money. He wanted Darlington’s disappearance kept quiet, telling everyone that Darlington went to Spain. He delayed the ritual until after the first new moon, then used the ritual to bar Darlington from returning to Black Elm. According to Dawes, he had said “your tongues are made stone” to silence the bells, then when they saw the hellbeast Sandow said “hear the silence of an empty home. No one will be made welcome.” Darlington had been banned from Black Elm with those words, even if he was still alive and could come back. Did Sandow set the hellbeast trap for Darlington? Sandow had been planning for Tara to die but knew that Darlington would understand what her death meant. The ritual was a ruse; he doesn’t want Darlington to come back. And Alex played right into Sandow’s hands. She would be back next year and forever grateful to Sandow for making sure she passed her classes. After Ground Zero, Eitan had come to Alex’s hospital room asking what she knew about the attack and who could have killed his cousin. When she admitted to the crime, he didn’t believe her and called her a junkie, but he told her that she owed him six grand for the fentanyl. When Eitan left, she called Sandow. She would take the job, but she would need him to pay the money. Just like Eitan said: once you are a chump, everyone can see it. And Sandow could see it in Alex. Alex calls Sandow’s house and speaks to his housekeeper Yelena. Alex says she has something to drop off to Sandow. Yelena says Alex can bring the package, but Sandow is not home. He went to the president’s house for a big welcome back party after his injury. She texts Turner that they got it wrong and to meet her at the university president’s house. She puts Darlington’s list of names in her pocket. Alex contacts North - he can’t find any of the girls. She tells North to meet her outside of the wards of Il Bastone and be prepared, she is going to need to use his strength. She sends a quick message to Dawes. If anything happens to her, it was Sandow. She left a record in the library, ask the Albemarle book for it. Turner doesn’t text her back, so she lets herself into the party at the president’s house and sees Colin, who is working on loan from Belbalm. He doesn’t look angry at her, just tired, and he invites Alex back to the kitchen after she’s done. She remembers when Darlington used the address moths to remove her tattoos and knows that she will never really belong here in this place with these people. He said saliva could reverse the magic; she licks her left hand and watches her tattoos come back. She finds Sandow, who is surprised to see her, and she tells him she brought him the file that he needed. The one on the land deeds dating back to 1854. He escorts her out of the room to an open office. Once inside, she accuses him of killing Tara Hutchins. Or he had Tara killed, on a patch of land that Alex guesses the Rhinelander Trust will now try to acquire. He’s unphased. It doesn’t matter to him that she figured it out. St Elmo’s paid him to do it last year after his divorce took everything, and he still had to pay alimony. They wanted a nexus. He had approached them with a solution. He had guessed how to create a nexus but didn’t think they’d have to orchestrate the murder. They would just have to wait for society to do what society does. As for the previous murders, he doesn’t think the societies plotted the deaths, just profited from them. Sandow told St. Elmo’s that he could prepare a site, but they waited and no one died, so no nexus formed. St. Elmo’s was losing patience and threatened to go to the Lethe board. They wanted their money back. Sandow knew the ritual he made would work, he only needed an offering. He knew Tara from when his ex-wife had breast cancer, she used to buy weed from Tara. Tara knew things she shouldn’t have about Lethe and the societies from Sandow. She had been a nice girl. Sympathetic. Someone he could talk to… maybe more. But then Darlington figured out the pattern and brought it to Sandow - who already had a plan to kill Tara. At that point, she’d taken what she’d learned from Sandow and was dealing to the societies. Darlington would have figured out who was behind Tara’s death and that needed to be prevented. Sandow slipped out of Belbalm’s study using portal magic, put on Lance’s face, got Tara high, then killed her. He sent the gluma after Alex. She wasn’t meant to survive. And the worst part, the ritual didn’t work. No nexus appeared. But Alex saved the day. Now Sandow is asking for Manuscript to be stripped of their tomb because of their work with Tara and the Merity debacle, and St. Elmo’s can move in there. Sandow puts something in his mouth, Astrumsalinas – the drug that compels. Alex reaches for North just as Sandow tells her to stay put, but the dead are not beholden to Astrumsalinas. Alex explains that Turner is on his way already, and Sandow is going to tell him everything that he did. St. Elmo’s won’t be getting a new tomb and she’s going to make them all pay. Belbalm comes into the office unannounced and Sandow cries out that Alex attacked him. He tells Belbalm to call campus security and get Colin’s help with Alex. Belbalm is compelled to do it and she turns to leave, but Alex tries to stop her. She has a recording of Sandow confessing to several things. Belbalm turns back. She already knows exactly what has gotten into Alex… Bertram Boyce North. Belbalm locks them all inside the office. It’s time they had a little chat. Belbalm can see the shape of North nestled inside of Alex. She is like Alex. A Wheelwalker. She invites Alex to let North leave, and he stands next to Alex instead. Belbalm calls North “Bertie” just like Daisy used to. She prefers Marguerite to the provincial Daisy. She wasn’t born in this body – she is North’s fiancée Daisy. She explains that her death wasn’t really North’s fault. It was kind of hers, actually. She had spent her life in communion with the dead but hid her gift, borrowing the dead’s strength and knowledge when she needed it. But she had never been taken over by a spirit until that day. She panicked and pushed the spirit into North. She didn’t even realize she could do that. North couldn’t contain the soul’s anger; it took over his body and shot Daisy. So, she stole a new body. Gladys’ body. Gladys had discovered Daisy and North’s bodies and run up High Street screaming until authorities found her. High Street is where Daisy’s spirit caught her and the first nexus was created. It was where the first of the tombs would be built. It was a fight to take Gladys’ body; the woman tried to fight her off. Daisy ate Gladys’ soul to make room for her own. Sandow says a Gray can’t seize a body in any permanent way, the body will die off. But Daisy is not a normal Gray. She found a way to sustain her new body. She killed those other girls and ate their souls, leaving their bodies behind to be found and creating a nexus in her wake. One living soul can sustain her for years, but she can’t leave New Haven or she starts to decay. Daisy did not eat Tara though, why would she need Tara when there is a feast like Alex just waiting for her. Sandow looks pleased at this thought, but Belbalm is not here to fix his mistakes. He’s going to die too. Sandow starts speaking death words, expelling North from the room and trying to banish Daisy. But Daisy is not affected, she doesn’t fear death. Daisy holds her hand out to Sandow, and he grips the armrests of the chair as he dies. She just ate his soul. Now it’s just her and Alex. Belbalm says she didn’t know what Sophie was when she ate her soul. But it sustained her for fifty years. Then she found Colina and recognized the power she had. They were also Wheelwalkers. That’s why the killings slowed down, the Wheelwalkers sustain her for longer than a normal soul. And now it’s Alex’s turn to sustain her. Daisy holds her hand out to Alex and Alex feels a pain in her chest. She feels herself falling. Belbalm starts to pull out all of Alex’s memories. Alex needs help. She needs Hellie, she needs Pam Dawes. She needs Darlington. Darlington nestled behind her in bed after the Manuscript party, saying he will serve her till the end of days. Darlington shouting death words over the stone plaza of Beinecke and expelling the Grays. Alex has been hiding this whole time. Behind Darlington, behind her grandmother. Hiding from the Grays and not really living. She doesn’t want to hide any more. Alex stops fighting Belbalm, instead opening herself up and accepting the Grays. She feels them all, the Grays that she sees around town and the ones she never allowed herself to look at. She feels North and Darlington’s grandfather. She asks them all for help and they give it. They crowd the office and Daisy recoils. She can see a wheel form around them; she and Daisy stand at the wheel’s center with the spokes reaching out from them. Alex speaks the names of the women that Belbalm consumed. The dead whisper the names back to her. A girl’s spirit comes from Belbalm, emerging from inside of Belbalm’s body. Then a second, a third. Finally, Alex sees Gladys emerge. Alex says the final name. Daisy’s name. Daisy’s spirit comes begrudgingly toward Alex. She casts Daisy’s soul away before it can grab hold of her. The Grays surge toward Daisy, falling through North as he tries to protect Daisy, and falling on her in a horde. The wheel spins and Alex falls, suddenly all the Grays are gone except for North. Belbalm’s body has collapsed into a pile of ash. Alex opens the window to let the ash blow away and wonders where Turner is. She opens her phone to find a text from Turner that he’s working a case and not to do anything stupid. She can hear the party downstairs, going on as normal. She needs North’s help again. She needs him to make sure the hallway is clear before she leaves. He nods the all clear and Alex leaves, pretending everything is normal. Alex can do more than just see Grays now. She can hear them, too. It’s distracting and she really doesn’t want them to know about this new ability. She attends Sandow’s funeral with Dawes, who has apologized profusely for not answering Alex’s texts. Turner was mad to find a dead body when he finally arrived at the president’s house, but Alex assured him that she didn’t kill Sandow. They say he had a heart attack. Belbalm was seen walking into the room where Sandow died and has since disappeared, and an investigation has been opened to find her whereabouts, but they’ve had no luck. Lethe has decided to keep everything under wraps; Blake Keely is still blamed for Tara’s death. Alex turned over her recording of Sandow’s confession, making sure the recording stopped before Belbalm walked into the room. Lethe doesn’t want anyone to know anything about this, to think that they could create new nexuses. It’s too dangerous and Alex has decided not to push for anything further. Michelle is also at the funeral and Alex pulls her to the side. She explains what she thinks she’s discovered about Darlington. She recently traveled to the borderlands and while she was there, she kept hearing the souls murmuring something. It took her awhile to realize the dead only spoke when she mentioned Darlington’s name. They were saying “gentleman demon”. Darlington is not dead, he survived the hellbeast by becoming a demon. Michelle doesn’t think that’s likely, in order to become a demon you have to have committed murder. Alex doesn’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility. After all, Dawes has killed someone. So has Alex, though they don’t know that. Since Darlington is not dead (he’s just in hell scaring the crap out of the souls there), Alex and Dawes are going to go get him - and they want Michelle’s help. Actually, they need her help. They need all the help they can get. But one thing is for sure, they aren’t leaving Darlington there.