Page 132 of Hell Bent

“It’s been a rough few days.”

“Come in. Sit down. Can I offer you tea?”

Alex shook her head. She wanted to get this over with, but she felt so rotten she let herself slouch in the chair as he set an electric kettle to boil. She just didn’t have it in her to put on a performance, and there was no reason to anymore.

“Well,” said the Praetor as he sorted through a selection of teas. “Where shall we start?”

“The fire last night…”

He gave a dismissive wave. “New Haven.”

So Walsh-Whiteley had believed Turner’s claims of vandalism. Maybe he hadn’t gone inside. Maybe after being summoned from his warm bed, he’d been only too happy to go home.

“It was far worse in the eighties,” the Praetor continued. “New Haven was quite the punch line. Biscuit?”

He held out a blue tin to her.

Alex was baffled, but she didn’t say no to food. She took two.

“There was an upside, of course. We threw some marvelous parties at the old clock factory and there was simply no one around to care. The murals are still there, you know. Some of the students from the architecture school painted them. Beautiful, really, in a crumbling-into-the-tarn kind of way.”

Why was the Praetor reminiscing about his graduate party days instead of lecturing her about the Gauntlet, or her crimes against Lethe and the university, or the process for ousting her and Dawes—or better yet some plan to rehabilitate them? If Alex didn’t know better, she’d think he was trying to build some kind of camaraderie with her. Was he just savoring the lead-up to a grand send-off?

“Now,” said Walsh-Whiteley, settling himself behind his desk with a mug of tea. “Let’s begin.”

“I … Is there something I’m supposed to sign?”

“For the wolf run? No, they all know the risks they’re taking. It’s why they’ll do the mass transformation on land. I believe they’ve chosen”—he consulted his notes—“condors for the air run next semester.”

Alex tried to make sense of what the Praetor was saying. She knew he was referring to the Wolf’s Head ritual scheduled for tomorrow night. They would transform as a pack and have the full run of Sleeping Giant State Park. They weren’t allowed to attempt flight this early in the school year because there had been so many injuries and accidents in the past. But Alex had assumed the ritual would be put on hold until … well, she hadn’t thought about what Lethe would do with no Dante and no Virgil. She assumed Michelle Alameddine would be asked to come back.

So why was the Praetor looking at her like he expected her to bust out a bunch of index cards and start talking about spiritual safety procedures?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you still want me overseeing the wolf run?”

Walsh-Whiteley raised a brow. “I certainly hope you don’t expect me to drag my old bones out to Sleeping Giant in the dead of night. Come now, Miss Stern. Your report on Manuscript was very solid. I expect you to maintain that standard.”

What the hell was going on? Was the board waiting to make a decision on expelling her and Dawes?

Alex felt a skittering sense of worry. There was another possibility. She hadn’t seen or heard from Anselm since he’d interrupted their trip to hell. What if Anselm had never made it back to New York? What if he’d never had the chance to speak to Walsh-Whiteley or the board?

“Sir, I apologize,” she said, trying to get her bearings. “I haven’t had time to prepare.”

The corners of Walsh-Whiteley’s mouth turned down. “I recognize you have a gift, Miss Stern, and perhaps I should not have asked you to … demonstrate it on my behalf. But you should understand that I will not be making allowances for shoddy work just because you were born with an unusual talent.”

“Again, I apologize. I’ve … been under the weather.”

“You certainly don’t look well,” the Praetor conceded. He settled the cover on the tin of biscuits. Apparently cookies were for closers. “But we have an obligation to the societies and there’s a full moon on Thursday. Focus, Miss Stern. There will be consequences if—”

“I’ll be there,” Alex said. She could start the evening with a mass transformation of sixteen undergrads and finish up with a quick trip to the underworld. “And I’ll be ready.”

Walsh-Whiteley didn’t look convinced. “Email me your notes and we can arrange to meet at the Hutch until the repairs are done at Il Bastone. I’ve petitioned the board for funds.”

“You’ve been in touch with the board?”

“Of course I have. And you can be certain that should you not live up to your obligations—”

“Right, yes. Understood.”