Page 79 of Dead Beat

“Greaves,” Dawes said. “Very old ones. You saw the claim made in the lost catalogue pages about their origin.”

“Is it possible?” Turner asked. “That armor would be thousands of years old.”

“I don’t know.” Dawes gnawed on her lower lip. “Why would Linus Reiter just hand them over?”

“He didn’t just hand them over,” Darlington noted, giving voice to what had been troubling him since he’d had time to really think on it. “He could have had one of his familiars deliver the greaves to our door. Instead, he went to a great deal of trouble to lure Alex out to Savin Rock.”

“He’s a hunter,” said Dawes. “He wanted to feed on her.”

But that felt like a crime of opportunity to Darlington. To his great regret, he understood the workings of a demon’s mind. “Even so, why bring her out to Savin Rock?”

“It’s isolated,” Turner suggested.

“East Rock is more isolated. He could have had Alex meet him at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument or the old clock factory. Why bring her to the seashore, someplace he knew he’d be vulnerable?”

“Are we sure he did know?” Dawes queried.

Darlington considered. “He’s been watching us. He knew Alex would have people looking out for her.”

“People,” Turner said. “But he had no way of knowing how you survived hell or what you became. Michelle Alameddine didn’t have that intel, so she couldn’t share it, and he can’t have any idea what you all got up to inside of Kittscher’s house.”

“True,” Darlington conceded. The last time Alex had faced Reiter, she’d had neither hellfire nor a demon hybrid sworn to protect her. “Look, Savin Rock could mean nothing. But think about the way demons communicate. They love a puzzle.”

“And you believe this is part of the game,” said Dawes.

Turner rotated his teacup in his hands, studying it. “You know I had a drowning turn up there a week ago.”

They waited. Turner did not like when Lethe and his police work overlapped.

“She wasn’t one of Reiter’s kills,” he continued. “She would have shown puncture marks in the autopsy, and there was water in her lungs. She drowned, all right. But I’m not convinced her death was accidental.”

“The prickle?” Dawes asked.

He nodded.

“There are ways to detect if there’s magic involved,” Darlington offered.

“I know.”

“But you didn’t come to us.”

“No.”

“Is it really that hard to trust us?” Dawes asked.

“If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be in my mother’s kitchen.”

Dawes pressed on. “Then why wait?”

Darlington leaned back in his chair. “You think it’s something bigger.”

Turner looked ill at ease. He was cautious by nature, measured in his approach, but tonight Reiter had forced his hand.

He took a sip of his tea. “I’ve been digging through all the missing persons cases I can find that might be related to Reiter. I started in the Old Greenwich area, but there are an unlikely amount in New Haven proper. A disproportionate amount. It can be hard to know exactly when someone went missing. But in a lot of these cases—too many of these cases—the last known sighting lands on a Wednesday, sometimes a late Tuesday night.”

A heavy quiet settled over the kitchen. Darlington could hear the ticking of a clock, the hum of the refrigerator, the distant sound of voices from Celeste’s television.

“Thursday nights are ritual nights,” Darlington said. “You think the societies are involved.”