Page 180 of Dead Beat

“Most unholy, I condemn you,” Reed said calmly. He put his hands up and began to chant.

“Stop that,” Darlington snarled. “Or I’ll rip your tongue out.”

Reed stuttered and took a step backward, looking flustered for the first time.

“And you thought I was the difficult one,” said Alex. “Here’s what we have in mind. Admittedly, the details need a little finessing, but see if you can follow along: From now on, all requests for rituals will be reviewed by the members of Lethe. Pamela Dawes and Detective Turner will have final say. New delegates will come not just from Yale but from the city of New Haven. Mercy Zhao will be among the first. Their job is to keep both the students and the city safe. All rituals will be performed under Lethe supervision.”

“So you will create a new nexus?” Reed asked. “What’s your price?”

“It’s steep,” Alex conceded. “I want to put the new nexus right here at Black Elm.”

Dawes and Darlington had explained that Il Bastone couldn’t withstand it. Between the enchanted library and the objects in the armory, if a nexus suddenly opened beneath the house, the whole thing could collapse on itself.

Reed and Girard exchanged a glance.

“It’s a beginning,” said Reed. “What else?”

“You’re not going to like it,” said Alex.

“I can afford it.”

“Let’s find out.”

As soon as he heard her words, Reed’s eyes widened and Alex watched realization take hold. She had wondered if Darlington would permit this, if his sense of goodness and duty would allow it. But Lethe had changed them both.

“You can’t just—” Reed began.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You won’t be missed.”

Alex threw her hand out and grabbed the edge of Reed’s soul. It was slippery and terrified, wriggling to get away from her. But she was the soldier and the Wheelwalker, and he would not be her first kill.

“Alex!” Darlington shouted.

Girard had stepped in front of her and he was holding a gun. An actual revolver. She was supposed to understand violence, but this she hadn’t anticipated. Men like Reed and Girard hired other people to do their dirty work. The weapon looked alien in his hand, a foreign object. Alex lost her grip on Reed’s soul.

Darlington lunged for Girard, but they were both suddenly engulfed in a whirl of snowy feathers. The owls had descended to defend their priest.

Alex knew she had blundered badly. She had miscalculated how much leverage she could claim. She had believed these men wanted her power enough to play a different game. She seized the spokes of the Wheel, searching for the strength of any Grays she could find.

But then she saw it: The owls were ignoring Darlington. Their beaks and talons slashed only at Girard’s face, at Girard’s hands. He dropped the gun and stumbled backward, screaming as the owls attacked.

Alex didn’t have time to make sense of it. Reed fumbled for the gun, and she took hold of his soul. He looked up at her, his eyes wet and frightened.

Come with me.

She tasted burnt sugar, smelled mountain air, heard the whirring of a helicopter blade. She was standing with a group of men beneath the great stone effigy of an owl.

She was dining in the cellar of an ancient vineyard.

She was climbing up the rocky paths of Mount Rainier.

She was slicing open a woman’s stomach and pulling an emerald from her bowels.

She was diving off a cliffside and plunging into a blue and welcoming sea.

She was a child on her mother’s lap and her father was singing to her in Welsh. This world and every world is yours, my son, yours for the taking.

No wonder demons hungered after human souls, the most elaborate of knots, an infinite series of loops and bends and bights, of patterns that became discernible too late, all of it glorious and particular until the great unraveling, when the design became nothing once more, a single anonymous line fading into the horizon. Alex tugged and Alban Reed came apart, never to find his shape again.