Page 73 of Dead Beat

It was a beautiful thing, an alarming thing. Under any other circumstance, she didn’t belong in these people’s lives. A cop with a conscience. A grad student who had actively tried to avoid her for the first five months of their acquaintance. And Darlington. Connecticut royalty. A snob with an overdeveloped sense of duty. A knight in a quality overcoat. What would happen when the battle was over and the blood was spent? If she managed to stay alive, was there any real place for her with them?

Are you so eager to be cast out of Eden? Golgarot had asked, wearing his Michael Anselm disguise. No, she’d thought at the time, but she had known she would survive it. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“You okay?” she called after Nell, who was snuffling and limping across the sand back to her SUV.

“Fuck you!” Nell shouted over her shoulder.

“She’s okay.”

“Il Bastone?” Turner asked.

“We don’t know if it’s secure,” said Darlington. “Dawes, can you text Tripp? He needs to make sure Reiter didn’t send any of his familiars there. Tell him not to do anything, just…”

“Observe and report,” suggested Turner.

Darlington nodded. “He’ll like that. Observe and report.”

Alex hated the idea that Reiter might have sent someone to the house on Orange. But that wasn’t the only problem. “Even if Il Bastone is clear, I don’t think Mercy is going to want to wake up there. Especially not if Tripp is around.”

She hadn’t liked him as a human. Seeing him slurping on a blood pouch in a corner wasn’t going to help her recover now.

“Black Elm?” asked Dawes.

“You’re welcome,” Darlington said, “but it’s not exactly fit for human occupation, and the heat still isn’t on.”

Alex couldn’t take Mercy back to the dorms, not with Lauren there, and the Hutch was too small.

“I want her to feel safe,” she said. “I want her to be safe.”

The waves lapped the shore. Turner’s engine rumbled steadily. Safe was a promise none of them could make.

“I know a place,” Turner said at last. “I’ll text you the address.”

Alex stared. “Are we actually going to see your apartment?”

“Absolutely not. And you will be on your best behavior or I’ll send you to a supermax.”

“After Yale? That’s easy time.”

“Just try not to behave like a complete degenerate,” Turner said, stepping on the gas.

Alex had never managed it before, but she could certainly try.

Matching greaves; tin, bronze, silver

Provenance: Sigeion, Anatolia; late Bronze Age

According to Homer, two sets of armor were made for Achilles, both fashioned by a god, the second even more glorious than the first. The first, of course, was gifted to Patroclus, then stripped from him by Hector after his victory. The second became the subject of the storied conflict between Ajax and Odysseus. Did these greaves of “flexing pliant tin” belong to either of these sets? Even the location of their discovery gives one doubt. The site of the supposed tumulus of Achilles has long been debunked, so the acquisition of these greaves in the northwest region of the Troad does not inspire confidence. Similarly, since the second set of armor is said to have passed to Neoptolemus, where does that leave us?

—from the Lethe Armory Catalogue, incomplete entry

27

The Subaru’s shattered windshield made the drive from Savin Rock wet and wretched, but it didn’t take long to reach Edgewood. The address was on Hubinger Street, less than a ten-minute drive from campus, though it felt like another planet. The street was quiet, its sturdy houses blanketed in snow.

Despite the cold, Turner was waiting outside when they arrived, his car parked in the drive.

“I got her settled in the downstairs bedroom,” he said, gesturing toward the house. It was two stories, columned porches on both levels, smoke rising from a redbrick chimney. The windows glowed with golden light. “And this is my mother’s home, so you will wipe your feet and you will not swear.”