Page 12 of Dead Beat

“This time?” Alex said, summoning all of Lethe’s authority. She needed to shut down this line of thinking immediately. “You say that as if there’s going to be a next time.”

“But it worked, right?” Nell insisted. “We summoned a storm.”

Alex stared at her. “Did you control it?”

“No,” she conceded.

“We were almost killed and you almost burned this pathetic excuse for a tomb down.” Alex lifted her chin. She’d been on the receiving end of enough I’m-not-mad-just-disappointed lectures that she could produce more than a passing imitation. “It was one thing when your efforts were harmless failures. But this? Lethe can no longer indulge your delusions.”

“We just need a nexus!” Tyler pleaded.

Alex had been feigning indignation, but she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. It was possible Darlington had caused the ritual to go wrong, but the Weathermen didn’t know that. People were injured. A house lay in ruins. Their lightning could have burned down the block. Their whole delegation could have been crushed, and if Alex hadn’t had a demon by her side, she would have been buried under a pile of rubble.

“Look across the street,” she demanded. “Look. Does that mean anything to you?”

But Tyler wasn’t looking. He was already formulating an argument. “Of course we understand that we’re responsible for this and we will absolutely make amends. The trust will cover all damages. But some type of fallout is inevitable. Alex—”

“Dante. And spare me your listening-and-learning bullshit.”

Nell put her hand on Tyler’s shoulder in solidarity. “You’re not being fair. We did all the right things. This was just an accident. We’re not the villains here.”

“No,” Alex said, touching her fingers to her bruised ribs. “You’re worse than villains. You’re amateurs.”

She turned and limped down the block to where Darlington was keeping one eye on the first responders swarming the St. Elmo tomb while finishing his call.

“Yes, sir,” he was saying. “Of course, sir. We’ll be there.”

“I’m guessing that wasn’t Turner,” she said when he hung up.

“It was the Praetor.”

Professor Raymond Walsh-Whiteley was the faculty liaison to Lethe, and he never called with good news. “What now?”

“The Lethe board wants us to come to New York.”

Alex grinned. “It’s about time.”

5

Darlington connected the Praetor with the St. Elmo’s alum responsible for supervising the storm ritual. The only thing Professor Walsh-Whiteley loved more than delivering a lecture was coupling it with a solid scold, and Darlington was happy to let him go to work. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but he needed to draw a firm line between Lethe and this disaster, and the less the Weathermen were reminded of his presence tonight, the better.

The Hutch was just down the street, but they drove anyway and he parked the Subaru in the alley behind the string of shops on Elm.

“I texted Dawes,” Alex said as the car idled.

“What did you tell her?”

“That something went wrong with the ritual.”

It wouldn’t be enough. Dawes would want to hear the specifics. She would always need to know more. It was a trait they shared.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Alex asked.

“Turner will make sure the reports on the fire lead nowhere but a faulty gas line.” He’d also ensure the police and fire department files referred only to the trust that owned the house without naming the society. That was the actual role of Centurion: keeping a lid on the New Haven pot that was constantly threatening to boil over. But Darlington knew that wasn’t what Alex meant.

He turned off the ignition. The night felt too quiet after the chaos at St. Elmo. “How closely have you read Kittscher’s Daemonologie?”

“You might be surprised.”