Ninth House

by Leigh Bardugo

  “Where are you, Darlington?” she whispered. And can you forgive me?

  “Alex.”

  She jumped. Dawes was standing at the top of the stairs, her headphones clamped around her neck, a dishrag in her hands. “Turner’s back. He has something to show us.”

  * * *

  Alex retrieved her socks from the armory and joined Turner and Dawes in the parlor. They sat shoulder to shoulder at a clunky-looking laptop, matching frowns on their faces. Turner had changed into jeans and a button-down shirt but still managed to look sharp, especially next to Dawes.

  He waved Alex over, a stack of folders piled beside him.

  On the screen, Alex saw black-and-white footage of what looked like a prison hallway, a row of inmates moving along a corridor of cells.

  “Look at the time stamp,” said Turner. “That’s right about the time you were headed into my crime scene.”

  Turner hit play and the inmates shuffled forward. A huge shape lumbered into view.

  “That’s him,” said Alex. It was unmistakably Lance Gressang. “Where does he go?”

  “He turns a corner and then he’s just gone.” He struck a few keys and the scene changed to a different angle on another hallway, but Alex didn’t see Gressang anywhere. “Here’s number one on the long, long list of things I don’t understand: Why did he go back?” Turner hit the keys again and Alex saw a wide view of what looked like a hospital ward.

  “Gressang went back to jail?”

  “That’s right. He’s in the infirmary with a busted hand.”

  Alex remembered the crunch of bones when she’d hit him with the putter. But why the hell would Gressang have returned to jail to await trial?

  “Are these for me?” Alex asked, gesturing at the folders.

  Turner nodded. “That’s everything we have on Lance Gressang and Tara Hutchins right now. Look your fill, but they’re going back with me tonight.”

  Alex took the stack to the velvet sofa and settled in. “Why such generosity?”

  “I’m stubborn, not stupid. I know what I saw.” Turner leaned back in his chair. “So let’s hear it, Alex Stern. You don’t think Gressang did the murder. Who’s responsible?”

  Alex flipped open the top folder. “I don’t know, but I do know Tara has connections to at least four societies, and you don’t get stabbed over the occasional twenty bag, so this isn’t about a little weed.”

  “How do you tally four societies?”

  “I’ll get the whiteboard,” said Dawes.

  “Is it a magical whiteboard?” asked Turner sourly.

  Dawes cast him a baleful look. “All whiteboards are magical.”

  She returned with a handful of markers and a whiteboard that she propped up on the mantel.

  Turner rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, give me your list of suspects.”

  Alex felt suddenly self-conscious, like she was being asked to work a complicated math problem in front of the class, but she took a blue marker from Dawes and went to the board.

  “Four of the Ancient Eight may have connections to Tara: Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Manuscript, and Book and Snake.”

  “The Ancient Eight?” asked Turner.

  “The Houses of the Veil. The societies with tombs. You should have read your Life of Lethe.”

  Turner waved her on. “Start with Skull and Bones. Tara was selling weed to Tripp Helmuth, but I don’t see how that’s a motive for murder.”

  “She was also sleeping with Tripp.”

  “You think it was more than casual?”

  “I doubt it,” Alex admitted.

  “But if Tara thought so?” asked Dawes tentatively.

  “I’m guessing Tara knew the score.” You had to. All the time. “Still, Tripp’s family is real old money. She might have tried to get something out of him.”

  “That sounds like a soap opera motive,” said Turner.

  He wasn’t going to be an easy sell. “But what if they were dealing in harder stuff? Not just pot? I think a senior named Blake Keely was getting a drug called Merity from them.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Dawes. “It only grows—”

  “I know, on some mountaintop. But Blake bought from Lance and Tara. Tripp said he saw Tara with Kate Masters, and Kate is in Manuscript—the only society with access to Merity.”

  “You think Kate sold Merity to Tara and Lance?” asked Dawes.

  “No,” said Alex, turning the idea over in her head. “I think Kate paid Tara to find a way to grow it. Lance and Tara lived within spitting distance of the forestry school and the Marsh greenhouses. Kate wanted to cut out the middleman. Get Manuscript its own supply.”

  “But then … how did Blake get his hands on it?”

  “Maybe they started growing their own stash of Merity and sold it to Blake. Money is money.”

  “But that would be…”

  “Unethical?” asked Alex. “Irresponsible? Like handing a sociopathic toddler a magical machete?”

  “What exactly does this drug do?” Turner sounded reluctant, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “It makes you…” Alex hesitated. Obedient wasn’t the right word. Eager didn’t cover it either.

  “An acolyte,” said Dawes. “Your only desire is to serve.”

  Turner shook his head. “And let me guess, it isn’t a regulated substance because no one’s ever heard of it to regulate it.” He had the same nauseated expression he’d worn when he saw Alex healed by the crucible. “All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Back to the board. Tara is connected to Bones by Tripp, Manuscript by Kate Masters and this drug. Is Colin Khatri her only connection to Scroll and Key?”

  “No,” said Alex. “She had words from a poem called Idylls of the King tattooed on her arm, and that text is all over the Locksmiths’ tomb.” She passed the file full of photos to Dawes. “Right forearm.”

  Dawes glanced at the autopsy photos displaying Tara’s tattoos, then shuffled hurriedly past.

  “That doesn’t feel like a casual connection,” said Alex.

  “What’s this?” Dawes asked, tapping a photo of Tara’s bedroom.

  “Just a bunch of jewelry-making tools,” said Turner. “She had a little business on the side.”

  Of course she had. That was what girls did when their lives fell apart. They tried to find a window to climb out of. Community college. Homemade soaps. A little jewelry-making business on the side.

  Dawes was gnawing at her lower lip hard enough that Alex thought she might draw blood. Alex leaned over and peered at the picture, at the cheap knockoff gemstones and dishes of curved hooks for earrings, the pliers. But one of the dishes looked different than the others. It was shallower, the metal beaten and raw, the leavings of something like ash or a ring of lime around its base.

  “Dawes,” said Alex. “What does that look like to you?”

  Dawes pushed the file away as if she could banish it. “It’s a crucible.”

  “What would Tara have used it for? To process the Merity?”

  Dawes shook her head. “No. Merity is used in its raw form.”

  “Hey,” said Turner. “How about we pretend for a minute I don’t know what a crucible is.”

  Dawes tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear and without looking at him said, “They’re vessels created for magical and alchemical use. They’re usually made of pure gold and highly reactive.”

  “That big gold bathtub Dawes just put me in is a crucible,” said Alex.

  “You’re telling me the thing in Tara’s apartment is real gold? It’s the size of an ashtray. No way Gressang and his girl could afford something like that.”

  “Unless it was a gift,” said Alex. “And unless whatever they were making in it was worth more than the metal itself.”

  Dawes pulled her sweatshirt sleeves over her hands. “There are stories about holy men who would use psilocybin—mushrooms—to literal
ly open doorways to other worlds. But the drugs had to be purified … in a crucible.”

  “Doorways,” said Alex, remembering the night she and Darlington had observed the botched ritual at Scroll and Key. “You mean portals. You said there are rumors of the magic at Scroll and Key failing. Could Lance and Tara’s secret sauce have helped with that?”

  Dawes expelled a long breath. “Yes. In theory, a drug like that could help facilitate opening the portals.”

  Alex picked up the photo of the tiny crucible. “Do you have this stuff in, uh … custody or whatever?”

  “In evidence,” said Turner. “Yes, we do. If there’s enough residue left in that thing we can have it tested, see if it matches the hallucinogen we found in Tara’s system.”

  Dawes had taken her headphones from around her neck. She sat with them cradled in her lap like a sleeping animal.

  “What is it?” Alex asked her.

  “You said Lance was walking through walls, maybe using portal magic to attack you. If someone from Scroll and Key allowed outsiders access to their tomb, if they brought Lance and Tara into their rituals … The Houses of the Veil consider that unforgivable. Nefandum.”

  Alex and Turner exchanged a glance.

  “What’s the penalty for sharing that kind of information with outsiders?” Alex asked.

  Dawes clutched her headphones. “The society would be stripped of its tomb and disbanded.”

  “You know what that sounds like?” said Turner.

  “Yeah,” replied Alex. “Motive.”

  Had Colin Khatri inducted Lance and Tara into the secrets of the society? Had it been some kind of payment, one he didn’t want to continue to make? Was that what had gotten Tara killed? It was hard for Alex to imagine clean, cheerful Colin committing violent murder. But he was a boy with a bright future, and that meant he had plenty to lose.

  “I’m going to Professor Belbalm’s salon tonight,” said Alex. She would have preferred to fall asleep right here in front of the fire, but she didn’t intend to piss off the one person who seemed to be looking out for her future. “Colin works for Belbalm. I can try to find out how late he stayed at her house the night Tara died.”

  “Alex,” Dawes said quietly, looking up at last. “If Darlington found out about the drugs, about what Colin and the other Locksmiths were doing with Lance and Tara, maybe…” She trailed off, but Alex knew what she was suggesting: Maybe Scroll and Key had been responsible for the portal that had disappeared Darlington that night in the Rosenfeld basement.

  “Where is Darlington?” asked Turner. “And if you say Spain, I’m going to pack up my files and go home. My bed is looking real good right now.”

  Dawes squirmed in her chair.

  “Something happened to him,” said Alex. “We’re not sure what. There’s a ritual to try to reach him, but it can only be attempted at the new moon.”

  “Why the new moon?”

  “The timing matters,” said Dawes. “For a ritual to work, it helps if it’s built around an auspicious date or an auspicious place. The new moon represents the moment before something hidden is revealed.”

  “Sandow wanted you to keep it quiet?” asked Turner. Alex nodded, feeling guilty. She hadn’t exactly wanted to trumpet the news either. “What about Darlington’s family?”

  “Darlington is our responsibility,” said Dawes sharply, protective to the last. “We’ll get him back.”

  Maybe.

  Turner leaned forward. “So what you’re saying is that Scroll and Key may be involved in a murder and a kidnapping?”

  Alex shrugged. “Sure. Let’s call it that. But we can’t rule out Manuscript. Maybe Kate Masters found out Tara sold the Merity to Blake Keely and that he was using it on girls, or maybe something went wrong with their deal. If Lance didn’t kill Tara, someone was glamoured to look like him. Manuscript has plenty of tricks and gimmicks that would let Kate spend a few hours wearing his face. And none of this explains the gluma that was sent after me.” Alex reached into her pocket and felt the reassuring tick of the watch.

  Turner looked like he might do murder himself. “The what now?”

  “The thing that chased me down Elm. Don’t fucking look at me like that. It happened.”

  “Fine, it happened,” said Turner.

  “Glumae are servants of the dead,” said Dawes. “They’re errand boys.”

  Alex scowled. “That was a highly homicidal errand boy.”

  “You give them a simple task, they accomplish it. Book and Snake uses them as messengers to and from the other side of the Veil. They’re too violent and unpredictable to really be good for much else.”

  Except for making a girl look crazy and maybe shutting her up permanently.

  “So Book and Snake is on the board,” said Turner. “Motive unknown. You realize none of this is evidence, right? We can draw no credible connections to these societies beyond what Tripp told you. I don’t even have enough to get a warrant to look inside those forestry greenhouses.”

  “I’m guessing Centurion can pull all kinds of strings with his superiors.” A shadow crossed Turner’s face. “Except you don’t want to pull strings.”

  “That isn’t the way things should work. And I can’t just go to my captain. He doesn’t know about Lethe. I’d have to go all the way up the chain to the chief.” And Turner wasn’t going to make that move unless he was sure that all of their theories added up to more than some lunatic scrawl on a whiteboard. Alex couldn’t blame him. “I’ll pull the LUDs for the liquor store near Tara’s apartment. It’s possible they were using the store’s phone to do business. Kate Masters wasn’t in Tara’s cell or Lance’s. Neither was Colin Khatri or Blake Keely.”

  “If Tara and Lance were using the greenhouses, then they were working with someone at the forestry school,” said Dawes. “Warrant or not, we should try to find out who.”

  “I’m a student,” said Alex. “I can walk right in.”

  “I thought you wanted me to start pulling strings,” Turner said.

  She had, but now she was thinking better of it. “We can handle this on our own. If you go up the food chain, someone might tell Sandow.”

  Turner raised a brow. “That a problem?”

  “I want to know where he was the night of the murder.”

  Dawes’s spine straightened. “Alex—”

  “He pushed to make me stop looking, Dawes. Lethe is here to keep the societies in line. Why did he yank so hard on the reins?”

  We are the shepherds. Lethe had been built on that mission. Or had it? Had Lethe ever really been intended to protect anyone? Or were they just supposed to maintain the status quo, to make it look like the Houses of the Veil were being monitored, that some standard was being kept to without ever really checking the societies’ power? This is a funding year. Had Sandow somehow known that if they looked too closely, they’d find connections to the society rosters? Bones, Book and Snake, Scroll and Key, Manuscript—four of the eight societies responsible for funding Lethe. That added up to half the money needed to keep the Ninth House alive—more since Berzelius never paid in. Was Lethe that precious to Sandow?

  “What kind of salary does Dean Sandow get from Lethe?” Alex asked.

  Dawes blinked. “I don’t actually know. But he has tenure. He makes plenty from the university.”

  “Gambling?” suggested Turner. “Drugs? Debt?”

  Dawes’s spine seemed to straighten even more, as if she were an antenna being adjusted to receive information. “Divorce,” she said slowly, reluctantly. “His wife left him two years ago. They’ve been in court ever since. Still—”

  “It’s probably nothing,” said Alex, though she wasn’t at all sure that was true. “But it couldn’t hurt to know where he was that night.”

  Dawes’s teeth dug into her lip again. “Dean Sandow would never do anything to hurt Lethe.”

  Turner rose and began to collect his folders. “For the right price, he just might. Why do you think I said yes to being Cent
urion?”

  “It’s an honor,” protested Dawes.

  “It’s a job, on top of the very intense job I already have. But the money meant I could pay down my mother’s mortgage.” He slid the folders into a messenger bag. “I’ll see what I can find out about Sandow without tipping him off.”

  “I should do it,” Dawes said quietly. “I can talk to his housekeeper. If you start asking questions, Yelena will go to Sandow right away.”

  “Do you feel up to that?” Turner said skeptically.

  “She can handle it,” said Alex. “We just need a look at his schedule.”

  “I like money as a motive,” said Turner. “Nice and clean. None of this hocus-pocus bullshit.” He shrugged into his coat and headed for the back door. Alex and Dawes followed.

  Turner paused with the door open. Behind him, Alex could see the sky turning the deep blue of dusk, the streetlamps coming on. “My mother couldn’t just take the check,” he said, a rueful smile on his lips. “She knows cops don’t get bonuses. She wanted to know where the money came from.”

  “Did you tell her?” asked Alex.

  “About all this? Hell no. I said I hit a lucky streak at Foxwoods. But she still knew I’d gotten myself into something I shouldn’t have.”

  “Mothers are like that,” said Dawes.

  Were they? Alex thought of the photo her mom had texted her the week before. She’d had one of her friends snap a picture of her in the apartment. Mira had been wearing a Yale sweatshirt, the mantel behind her crowded with crystals.

  “Do you know what my mother said?” Turner asked. “She told me there’s no doorway the devil doesn’t know. He’s always waiting to stick his foot in. I never really believed her until tonight.”

  Turner pulled up his collar and disappeared into the cold.

  23

  Winter

  Alex trudged upstairs to retrieve her boots from the armory. The crucible had healed her wounds, but she was short on sleep and her body knew it. Still if she’d had a choice, she thought she might take another brawl, even with a bruiser like Lance, rather than face the salon tonight, classes tomorrow, and the day after—and the day after that. When she was fighting for her life, it was strictly pass/fail. All she had to do was survive and she could call it a win. Even sitting in the parlor with Dawes and Turner, she’d felt like she was keeping up, not just playing along. She didn’t want to go back to feeling like a fraud.