Page 125 of Dead Beat

Dawes’s voice was stern. “You helped her do this?”

He lifted his hands in an elaborate shrug. “Alex and I go way back. We’re buds.”

“That’s right.” Alex held her knuckles up for a bump and Tripp grinned.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Turner.

But Darlington was watching her closely. “So you stole his football helmet from the gym?”

“There’s a display there with all kinds of vintage stuff,” Alex said. “Reiter finished out his time at Yale. So did Kittscher. But Nick and Hector didn’t. They disappeared from the books, more victims of society overreach. They wiped Good Ol’ Hec from the student body records. They scrubbed him from the Wolf’s Head rolls. But they forgot about his time with the Yale Bulldogs.”

“He was a fullback,” said Tripp. “We don’t really have those anymore.”

She had texted Tripp that morning, when Darlington and the others had been chatting in the kitchen. “I made contact with the Bridegroom and I asked him to use the helmet to locate Hec’s ghost behind the Veil.”

After Alex’s battle with Daisy at the Dean’s house, the Bridegroom had made himself scarce. She’d never been sure if he was angry or hurt or simply grieving. He’d been searching for his murdered fiancée for decades, only to discover she was alive and well and a killer. Because of Alex, he’d found her and lost her in less than an hour. So she hadn’t been sure he would come when she called to him, but she’d filled the sink in the Dante bathroom and dropped a little of her blood into the water for good measure.

“Bertram Boyce North,” she’d said, feeling like an ex leaving a voice message. “Knock, knock. I need your help.”

His face had appeared in the water—mournful, brooding, a mopey poet in a cravat. “Miss Stern.”

“I need a favor.”

“As always I can rely upon you to dispense with any pleasantries.”

“Sorry,” she said. “How’s being dead?”

“What do you want, Galaxy Stern?”

She’d explained what she needed and he’d agreed to bring Hector to Grove Street Cemetery that afternoon—assuming he could be found.

“This creates a debt between us,” he had said. “I hope you understand that.”

Alex understood, but since there was a good chance she was going to die tomorrow, she figured this was the perfect time to put her books in the red.

“So,” Alex asked, looking around the table at her very angry, very baffled friends. “Who wants to party at the cemetery?”

45

Alex had chosen Grove Street Cemetery because she didn’t want any other Grays around to witness their conversation, and Grays hated anyplace and anything that reminded them of death. Maybe she would have been better off going to meet them in the Borderlands and maintaining the illusion that she couldn’t hear the dead, but she didn’t have time to get access to Wolf’s Head or to fuss with an intricate ritual.

As it turned out, everyone wanted to come with her.

“Turner and Dawes can come,” she told them.

“I beg your pardon?” Darlington objected.

“Come on!” Tripp cried.

“The dead don’t like demons,” Alex said. “And I don’t want Hector getting spooked.”

She could see Darlington didn’t like it and she didn’t like it either. She’d gotten used to having him at her side.

“I’m going to walk you out,” he said as they headed down the steps.

“I can manage not to die on the front path.”

He pointed to the roof of Il Bastone, where a dozen barn owls had gathered. “They’ve been there since this morning.”