Page 137 of Dead Beat

Dawes’s brown eyes were bright as gemstones. “Oculus is why Lethe functions. I am not a glorified secretary or some loyal handmaiden. I am the bridges and roads of the Ninth House. I am the keeper of the archives and the armory and I have served this institution well for six years, longer than your tenure at Lethe as a delegate and as Praetor combined. We are done with task forces and reports and bureaucracy. You will listen to what we have to say or I will go to the board to argue for your removal myself.” Alex knew she was bluffing. They could not go to the board. But the Praetor didn’t know that, and Dawes was positively alight with fury. “Centurion,” she commanded, “make your case.”

Turner sat up straighter, cleared his throat, and tapped the files in front of him. “Right. Yes. Absolutely. We have reason to believe the societies have been performing unsanctioned rituals.” Turner laid it all out: Bathsheba Smith, Jennie Cramer, the Malleys, Kylie Sanz, Teddy Rinearson, the pattern in his missing persons cases. He closed with an appeal to both the Praetor’s pride and what he’d witnessed with his own eyes. “You can’t tell me the board has taken any real action to stop Reiter. They weren’t surprised by his activity or particularly concerned about it. Have they responded to your own attempts to push for concrete steps where he’s concerned?”

Walsh-Whiteley opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. “No.”

“This evidence goes back over one hundred years. It offers a rational explanation for the board’s … dillydallying on Reiter.”

Dillydallying. What was next? Shenanigans? Turner really had learned to speak Walsh-Whiteley.

The Praetor was quiet for what seemed an eternity. Then he studied each of their faces in turn. “There’s something else at play here. Something you’re not telling me. You all look like you’ve aged a lifetime since we returned from New York.”

He was a blowhard and a pedant and blatantly, unapologetically sexist, but he wasn’t stupid. They sat silent, children before a parent, unwilling to fess up.

“Professor,” Alex ventured. “You once told me you believed in what Lethe might be, what it should be. It may be hard to believe, but that’s what we’re trying to live up to. We are the shepherds. We may not be who you had in mind for the job, but … we’re the ones who answered the ad.”

Darlington’s lips twitched, and Turner cast his eyes heavenward.

Walsh-Whiteley let his gaze move over them again, and now his look was assessing, a general inspecting his troops. He frowned, his jowls quivering slightly.

“All right,” he said at last. “Issue the ban. I’ll deal with any fallout from the board. We’ll need to come up with a strategy for presenting them with this evidence and a suggested plan for moving forward given that members of Lethe may well have been complicit.”

“Agreed,” said Darlington, and they all gave dignified nods, their air of solemnity maintained, though Alex knew they were cheering inside.

Walsh-Whiteley sighed, his withered body seeming to deflate. “I have lived my life in certitude. I am too old and too tired to give it up now, and yet you all seemed determined to pry it from me.”

He rose and wrapped his Trumbull scarf around his neck. Alex got to her feet too. She cast a warning glance at the others. Now that they had what they needed, she wanted to talk to the Praetor on his own.

“Professor,” she asked as they headed downstairs to the front door, “can you tell me anything about Charlie Girard?”

He scoffed. “Exactly the kind of poseur the university persists in being seduced by. His degree from Oxford is decidedly less impressive than the department wants to admit, but he consulted on a few films and had his picture taken with a movie star, and apparently that’s enough for tenure these days. Why do you ask? I hope you’re not considering him as an adviser. You can do better, Miss Stern. Yes, even you.”

Alex found herself both flattered and insulted. “Understood.”

“Anything else?”

She glanced up the stairs to the tearoom. She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but Walsh-Whiteley had been presented with plenty of opportunities to sell her out and he never had.

“You might want to make yourself scarce on Thursday night. Go to New York, see a show, stay with a friend.”

“I see,” he said. “And that’s all I can expect by way of explanation?”

“Yup.”

“Ours is not to reason why, and so on?”

“Something like that.”

“Perhaps Tennyson is less appropriate than Cole Porter in this moment. We shrink at any oath except a soft ‘Beelzebub’; we’re out-Elizabething the Elizabethan Club.”

“Not sure I know that one.”

“A lesser bit of work. From his college days. He was in Scroll and Key, you know.”

Alex did know. She was pretty sure she’d glimpsed him slouching and humming around the entry.

The Praetor placed his hat carefully atop his white hair and headed out into the cold. He looked back only once.

“I’ll say good luck, Miss Stern, and hope that this is not goodbye.”