Ninth House

“Alex loves a working man. That lipstick is way too much.”

“I like it,” said Mercy.

“It looks like she’s going to try to eat his heart.”

Alex stuck the hoops in her ears and blotted her lips with a tissue. “Just right.”

“Who are you, Alex Stern?”

Hell if I know. “If y’all are done, who stole my hoops?”

“What college is he in?” asked Lauren.

“He’s town.”

The sound of something knocking from the next world. Something big. Something that should not be let through.

“Is our Dante drunk?” muttered the Haruspex.

Alex looked right and left at the useless Bonesmen in their ridiculous robes. If Darlington were here, he would stay and fight, make sure the Grays were contained and Reyes was kept safe.

The halogens dimmed, surged.

“Fuck you, Darlington,” Alex muttered beneath her breath, already turning on her heel to ru

“With people getting cut open so Chauncey can redecorate his summer home?”

“Never met a Chauncey,” he’d said. “Still hoping.”

When she’d asked him why, he’d just said, “The crazier the victima, the closer to God.”

“Is that true?”

“It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed,” he’d quoted. Then he’d shrugged. “Their bank balances say yes.”

Ay una moza y una moza que nonse espanta de la muerte

porque tiene padre y madre y sus doge hermanos cazados.

Caza de tre tabacades y un cortijo enladriado.

En medio de aquel cortijo havia un mansanale

que da mansanas de amores en vierno y en verano.

Adientro de aquel cortijo siete grutas hay fraguada.

En cada gruta y gruta ay echado cadenado….

El huerco que fue ligero se entró por el cadenado.

—La Moza y El Huerco

Le Parfum de Thérèse,” Belbalm said. “Edmond Roudnitska. He was one of the great noses of the twentieth century and he designed this fragrance for his wife. Only she was allowed to wear it. Romantic, no?”

Mercy was from a wealthy suburb of Chicago. Her parents were both professors, and she’d written some kind of crazy paper that had impressed even Darlington. She and Alex had nothing in common. But they’d both been the kid with nobody to sit next to in the cafeteria and Mercy hadn’t laughed when Alex had mispronounced Goethe

Some New Haven girl got killed last night. In front of Payne Whitney. You must have walked right by the crime scene this morning!”