Page 153 of Dead Beat

“It’s Reiter,” Dawes panted. “He brought his familiars.”

The vampire was standing in the middle of the street.

“Turner, are you hearing this? Block off the Saybrook entrance so they have to come through the Branford courtyard.”

“I’ve already got a professor on site who I do not believe is here in his official capacity.”

“Don’t let him into the tower.”

Reiter looked like a sliver of ice in his white suit, his pale hair gleaming.

“Shit,” said Tripp. “Should I start wearing suits?”

“Come to do your prince’s bidding?” Darlington asked.

“He’s your prince too, I believe.”

“Not anymore.”

“You may be surprised. But you’ve misread my intentions. I’ve lived free too long to accept servitude again. That’s why I’m going make sure the door to hell stays shut.”

Then Darlington understood. This was why he’d wanted Alex to find the armor, why he’d been so eager to help, not to serve Golgarot but to destroy him. And murder Alex in the process. “He wants to disrupt the ritual.”

Reiter winked. “Two birds with one stone.”

“By all means, try to cross the salt line. I’ll drag you all the way to the water and we’ll see how you like another swim.”

“I think not,” said Reiter. He turned to Tripp. “You’re very new—and practically starving. If you survive long enough and feed well enough, you may acquire many useful skills. But not … just … yet.”

Reiter launched himself into the air.

56

She was on the New Haven Green, standing in front of one of its three churches. Not just one of the three churches, Stern. Surely I’ve done better by you than that.

Gothic, Alex remembered, different from the other churches on the Green, with a stained glass window they’d lit from behind so that it shone out onto the city instead of just sparkling for the people in the pews. Lee Lawrie, the sculptor of Harkness and Sterling, had been a parishioner. So had James Fenimore Cooper—whom Lawrie had wrought in stone and placed atop the tower. He got kicked out. Darlington’s voice in her head like a tether, just as strong as hellfire. He never graduated, but Yale still claimed him. The perks of success. I think you would have liked him.

Why?

A bully beat him up. So he blew up the door to his dorm room. Quite an escalation.

Alex had been pleased. An eye for an eye only goes so far. What happened to the bully?

He was fine. And he graduated with a Yale degree.

That was all before her time. Before this time too. She saw carriages on the street in the early-morning light, ladies corseted and bustled. But when she turned away from Temple Street, she saw the grand building before her was burning. It was four—no, five—stories high and despite the horses and hoses of the fire brigade, the flames were winning.

A man in a fine suit stood watching it all, shaking his head, his soot-stained face streaked with tears, his white hands gripping his hat. “Please,” he begged the fire fighter beside him. “It’s all I have. You must fight on!”

“Started with nothing,” said a man beside her. “Selling dry goods in his aunt’s shop. To build something so noble and watch it vanish before your eyes? A tragedy.”

Alex covered her mouth and nose with her shirt, squinting as the smoke stung her eyes.

“We need you, sir!” a uniformed man cried and she saw that she was wearing a uniform too, a stiff blue jacket with shining brass buttons, trousers, a club at her hip.

The second trial. This time the scene wasn’t from her own life. Was that some kind of clue?

She followed the policeman to a tailor’s shop lined with shelves, bolts of fabric, a counter with a sturdy old cash register.