Page 133 of Hell Bent

Alex got to her feet and was backing out of the door before Walsh-Whiteley could settle into his rant. She knew she should try to stay and appease the Praetor, but she needed to talk to Dawes. They had somehow managed to dodge a bullet, and that meant they still had access to all of Lethe’s resources. Maybe they’d gotten lucky. Or maybe Michael Anselm’s luck had run out.

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Something’s wrong,” she told Dawes as she hurried across campus to meet Turner. “The Praetor didn’t say anything about the Gauntlet or disciplinary action.”

“Maybe Anselm changed his mind?”

“He was furious, Dawes. There’s no way he decided to give us another chance.”

“You think something … one of the demons…”

“See if you can find out if he’s been home.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Call his house, pretend you work with him.”

“Alex!”

“Goddamn it, Dawes, do I have to do all of this myself?”

“If ‘this’ is unethical, then yes!”

Alex hung up. She felt frantic, exposed, like Not Hellie could be around any corner. Or Eitan. Or Linus Reiter. Demons aren’t smart, Dawes had once told her, they’re cunning. Alex had to wonder how many people had said the same thing about her.

“Okay, so what would I do?” she muttered to herself, watching her breath plume in the cold air as she hurried toward Chapel Street.

Hang back and watch. Look for an opportunity. Find a way to shift the odds in her favor.

If something had happened to Anselm … well, that would take care of one of their problems. But Lethe wasn’t just going to shrug off his disappearance, not when two faculty members were dead too. Alex stopped in front of the University Art Gallery. Marjorie Stephen. Dean Beekman. Could Anselm be a victim as well? Not if Turner had the right suspect in custody. Ed Lambton’s son had no reason to go after someone barely associated with Yale anymore. Unless they’d been making the wrong connections from the start.

A few minutes later, Turner pulled up in his Dodge and Alex slid into the passenger’s seat, grateful for the heat.

“Jesus,” she said. “Did you sleep at all?”

He shook his head, a muscle ticking in his jaw. He was sharply dressed as always, navy wool suit with the subtlest pinstripe, slate-colored tie, Burberry overcoat laid neatly over the back seat. But he had dark smudges under his eyes and his skin looked ashen. Turner was a handsome man, but a few more nights playing tag with his personal demons and he might not be.

“What line did it use?” Alex asked.

Turner navigated the Dodge back into traffic. “It didn’t show up as Carmichael this time. Thought it would be cute to wait for me in the parking lot dressed up like my grandfather.”

“Bad?”

He gave a single, terse nod. “For a second I thought … I don’t know.”

“You believed it was him.”

“The dead stay dead, right? But he … It looked like him, sounded like him. I felt happy when I saw him, like it was some kind of miracle.”

A gift. A reward for all the pain. Exactly the way Alex had felt when she’d held Hellie. Losing that again had almost broken her.

That was why Turner looked terrible. Not because he hadn’t slept, but because the demon had fed on him.

“I don’t know how much longer I can handle this,” Turner said.

“How did you get free?”

“He told me we were both in danger, that I had to go with him, and I was halfway down the block when I realized how fast he was moving, how light on his feet. My grandfather had arthritis. He couldn’t take a step without hurting. I said … Maybe some part of me knew he wasn’t right. I said, ‘Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed.’”