Preparing for a high-society gathering at the university president’s house, Alex cleans up, dresses to appear credible, and consults with the ghost of Bertram Boyce North, confirming that the missing girls’ souls have suffered a fate worse than death. She texts Dawes a contingency warning naming Sandow if anything happens to her and heads to the party, comforted by North’s presence despite Turner’s silence.

Inside, Alex encounters Colin Khatri working as catering staff on loan from Belbalm. She notes his calm demeanor despite recent revelations and retreats to the powder room to steel herself. Rejecting the pretense of respectability, she reactivates her tattoos by licking her knuckles, embracing her identity as a fighter rather than a shepherd.

Alex locates Dean Elliot Sandow, who is on crutches, and lures him into a nearby office with a pretext about land deed files. She keeps the door ajar, starts an audio recording on her phone, and confronts Sandow directly, accusing him of Tara Hutchins’s murder on land tied to future acquisition by the Rhinelander Trust.

Sandow, after a brief preamble, admits key facts: he approached St. Elmo’s alumni for money to provide a new nexus, leveraging his knowledge of a recurring pattern of nexus formation in New Haven. When no new nexus appeared, he designed a ritual and needed an offering. He chose Tara, whom he had known through his ill wife’s marijuana use; he acknowledges Tara overheard sensitive matters, became entangled with societies via drugs and rituals, and was easy to target. He denies direct society involvement in historic murders but asserts New Haven’s ambient, hungry magic and chose the intersection for its auspicious power.

Pressed by Alex, Sandow confirms he sent the hellbeast during the Black Elm rite, intended to consume both Alex and Daniel Arlington, but it took Darlington alone. He further reveals he dispatched a gluma to attack Alex at the morgue, and Alex deduces he used a glamour to wear Lance’s face and personally killed Tara after drugging her. Though his ritual failed to produce a new nexus, Sandow says he can still satisfy St. Elmo’s by stripping Manuscript of its tomb and relocating St. Elmo’s, then brazenly asks what Alex wants.

Sandow declares Lethe are beggars at the societies’ table and tries to seize control by ingesting Astrumsalinas (Starpower) from his pipe to compel Alex. Alex reaches for North and lets him possess her, negating the drug’s effect on the dead and, through that, on her. She physically forces Sandow into a chair and tells him Turner is coming and that the societies will face real consequences.

Professor Marguerite Belbalm appears at the door as Sandow calls for help, and the compulsion takes hold of her. Alex tries to invoke her proof, but Belbalm locks the door, halting the attempt to summon aid. Belbalm then reveals chilling knowledge: she knows Alex is carrying North’s presence, addressing him by full name and exposing that she sees through Alex’s strategy.