Page 56 of Hell Bent

“So I could have it look for hot fudge sundaes? Women who love microbrews and Patriots football?”

Dawes laughed nervously. “No, it has to be a specific crime. You’re not calling on the map to reveal criminals in general, just people who broke a specific law.”

“Wow,” said Alex, “if only the NHPD knew. Oh, wait.”

“Can I find my murder suspect this way?” Turner asked.

“Possibly?” Dawes said. “It shows locations, not names.”

“Locations,” Turner repeated, frowning. “Not names. When was this created?”

“There’s no exact date—”

“Roughly.” His voice was harsh.

Dawes tucked her chin into her sweatshirt. “Eighteen fifties.”

“I know what this is,” Turner said. “What the actual fuck.”

Dawes winced, and now Alex understood why she had worried about having Turner here.

“This thing wasn’t built to find criminals,” said Turner. “It was made to find runaway slaves.”

“We needed a way to find killers,” she said. “I didn’t know what else—”

“Do you understand how fucked up this is?” Turner jabbed his finger at a grand-looking building on the New Haven Green. “That’s where the Trowbridge house used to be. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad. People thought they would be safe here. They should have been safe here, but some asshole from the societies used magic…” He stumbled over the word. “This is what your magic is for, isn’t it? This is what it does. Props up the people in power, lets the people with everything take a little more?”

Alex and Dawes stood silent in the quiet of the basement. There was nothing to say. Alex had looked into the face of what magic could do. She’d seen it in Blake Keely, in Dean Sandow, in Marguerite Belbalm. Magic was no different from any other kind of power, even if it still thrilled some secret part of her. She remembered standing in the kitchen of Il Bastone, screaming at Darlington. “Where were you?” she’d demanded. “Where were you?” Where had Lethe and all of its mysteries been when she was a child in desperate need of saving? Darlington had heard her that night. He hadn’t argued. He’d known she wanted to break things and he’d let her.

“We can go,” Alex said. “We can smash this thing to dust.” It was all she could offer.

“How many times has this abomination been used?” Turner demanded.

“I’m not sure,” Dawes said. “I know they used to use it to find bootleggers and speakeasies during Prohibition, and the FBI may have tried to use it during the Black Panther trials.”

Turner shook his head. “Finish,” he bit out. “I don’t want to be in this room a minute longer than I have to.”

Hesitantly, they bent their heads, turning their flashlight beams back to the pale violet surface of the map.

A clump of red stains had spread in one corner of the Peabody, a blooming poppy, lush with blood. Alex, Turner, Dawes. A posy of violence.

There were a few blots near the Hill and even two dots in the dorms, or where Alex thought the dorms were now. She couldn’t quite orient herself. The map didn’t look like it had been updated since the late 1800s, and most of the structures she knew well simply hadn’t been built yet.

But High Street’s name hadn’t changed and there was a place Alex had no trouble identifying. The spot where a young maid named Gladys had fled, where her life had been stolen and her soul consumed by Daisy Whitlock. That act had created a nexus of power, and years later, the first tomb of the first secret society had been built over it.

“Someone’s at Skull and Bones,” she said. The building on the map was small, the first version of the tomb, before it had been expanded.

They stood together, looking at that red stain.

“It’s Monday,” said Dawes. “No ritual tonight.”

That was good. If they could get there in time, they wouldn’t have as many possible suspects to sift through, just a few people studying or hanging out.

“Let’s go,” said Turner, the bite still in his voice.

“Are we just leaving it that way?” Alex asked as they scooted back through the secret passage, leaving the bloody table behind.

“Don’t worry,” said Turner. “I’ll be back with a sledgehammer.”