Grey’s throat grew thick. “They did?” Grey had been fifteen when Alice disappeared. Neither she nor her father had even known Alice was working here until she went missing. By the time Grey was seventeen, her father had informed the captain of the LAPD that he believed his own colleagues were involved in covering up his daughter’s disappearance. Grey had been eighteen when he was fired for it, twenty when he died of a heart attack at his private security job. Twenty and a day when she vowed to finish what he’d started.
“Absolutely.” Nico nodded. “Alice was everyone’s favorite.”
Of course she was—she’d always been Grey’s favorite person. That was the real Alice, the one she remembered—the tender heart. Not the reckless, hard-living girl who’d brought it upon herself. But maybe Alice wasn’t the woman she should be focusing on.
“Nico,” she said, ignoring the servers now gathered around the bar, sighing for the bartender’s attention. “If I take you to a diner after work and buy you some really good pancakes, will you tell me everything you remember about Daisy?”
My students often ask me a version of this question: “Do you think it’s possible to make good choices, be a hero in your lifetime, but still be remembered as a villain by history?” I always answer that history is full of such contradictory characters, one thing in their moment and another through the lens of time.
In histories of social change, for instance, it can be tempting to gloss over the infighting, present retrospective accounts of movements that are smooth and frictionless, as if every member of a cause were on the same page, while the realities on the ground were often anything but. In truth, one of the most dangerous threats to any cause is discord from within.
A point which brings me, as I’m sure you expected, to Isabel Cruz.
Plenty of ink has been spilled about Scout Sage, Cybele Laurent, Miranda Preston, and the other members of the order who would go on to accrue such fame. But Cruz… if sources do ever break their silence about her, you’ll hear one of two refrains: First, that she was nothing more than a sidekick, a mere grunt. Or second, that she was the true mastermind behind Our Ladies of the Dark.
Architect or peon, which do I believe? Neither. At the end of the day, I suspect Cruz was something altogether rarer: The ally turned enemy. The devotee turned snake in the grass. The woman who went rogue.
—Frances Vogel, “Our Ladies of the Dark: A History,” PhD dissertation presented to the UCLA Department of History
Chapter 27Isabel, the Assistant
PRESENT DAY
“You swear this place is off the grid?” Scout pulled her baseball cap lower over her head, then adjusted her bandanna and sunglasses. Barely an inch of her face remained visible. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
The news that Rosie Wright had been found dead in her apartment had hit every major news station two nights ago. Since then, the reporters had been relentless. No gag orders from Scout’s agent could halt the onslaught—everyone wanted to ask Scout if she’d killed Rosie in revenge for the article. And according to Scout’s lawyer, “Do you really think I’m that stupid?” wasn’t a winning response.
Strangely, the only people who weren’t pounding down Scout’s door were the cops. Brooks said he was dealing with Detective Holloway, but the LAPD’s absence made me nervous. It was like the rattlesnake we’d once witnessed on a hike through Runyon Canyon: that perfect, coiled stillness, right before the strike.
“The restaurant’s across from USC,” I assured her, locking my SUV. “You know no one in LA comes to Downtown. And Ridley and Gia won’t breathe a word.”
I hurried across the wide, empty street, Scout on my heels. All of a sudden, I sensed her stop.
“Izzy,” she breathed. “Look.”
I followed her gaze. Past the low walls announcing the entrance to USC, on the side of a tall, redbrick building, someone had painted a mural of Scout’s face against a starlit night. The artist had written the wordsOur Lady Is Watchingin script above her head. It was beautiful—eerie, but beautiful.
“How surreal, It’s like you’re a…” But I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. A hero? A patron saint? All of this, in response to murder accusations, to rumors about what we’d built?
She turned to me. Even through her sunglasses, I could see the apprehension in her eyes. “I don’t deserve this,” she whispered.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“No.” A rough shake of her head. “Izzy, I’m going to disappoint them—”
“Scout?” A group of young women wearing Greek letters and canvas tote bags walked toward us off campus.
“Shit,” I said to Scout, tugging her hand. “Sorority girls. Time to go.”
“Scout, wait,” one of the girls called, but Scout and I power walked across the street. Stupid of me to let her stand out in the open, even for a moment, even in disguise. In a matter of weeks, people seemed to have memorized the slightly hunched way she stood.
“We just wanted to say we’re proud of you!” one of the girls yelled to our backs.
“We love you!” another shouted.
Scout froze mid-step, turning to wave or maybe to speak, but I shoved her through the front door of Gino’s Italian Diner before she could, guiding her to the back of the restaurant, where Ridley Reed and Gia Thomas sat on opposite ends of a table draped in a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth.
“Not to be that girl,” sniffed Ridley as we walked up, “but Chateau Marmont this place isnot.”
