Shaken after inviting the Bridegroom (Bertram North) to possess her, Alex expelled him and grappled with vivid sensations of his death. In the bathroom, she found pink, parsley-flecked water she believed to be residue of blood North swallowed when he died, recognizing the bitter herbs from a Skull and Bones prognostication diet. She concluded that long before Lethe oversight, a prognostication had gone wrong, a victim’s spirit had been expelled and lodged inside North, and that possession—rather than a simple murder-suicide—explained North and Daisy Whitlock’s deaths.

Alex searched Il Bastone for Darlington’s traces and found in the Albemarle Book that Darlington had researched Bertram North and Daisy Whitlock early in the semester, confirming he had pursued the case. Dawes then called Alex to meet Detective Turner, who had jail surveillance footage showing Lance Gressang returning to custody around the time Alex encountered him at Turner’s crime scene; Gressang later appeared in the infirmary with a broken hand.

With Tara and Lance’s files in hand, the trio assembled a suspect board. Alex tied Tara to four societies: Skull and Bones (via Tripp Helmuth and an affair), Manuscript (via Kate Masters and the rare drug Merity), Scroll and Key (via Colin Khatri and Tara’s Idylls of the King tattoo echoed in the tomb), and Book and Snake (via a gluma that attacked Alex). Alex hypothesized Kate paid Tara to cultivate Merity locally near the forestry school to bypass supply, and that Tara and Lance may have sold some to Blake Keely.

Dawes identified in Tara’s room a small gold crucible with residue, suggesting alchemical purification of hallucinogens to open portals—potentially aiding Scroll and Key’s failing magic. Turner confirmed the item was in evidence and could be tested against the hallucinogen found in Tara’s system. Dawes warned that sharing portal secrets with outsiders is nefandum, punishable by disbanding the society, establishing a strong motive if Colin had involved Tara and Lance.

They broadened scenarios: Manuscript could have used glamours to impersonate Lance if he did not kill Tara, while Book and Snake might have deployed the gluma. Turner stressed the lack of admissible evidence and limited warrant options. Dawes and Alex proposed approaching the forestry school directly as students to identify any collaborator in the greenhouses; Turner planned to pull phone records from a nearby liquor store possibly used for communications.

Alex raised suspicion about Dean Sandow’s pressure to halt her inquiry, noting Lethe’s funding ties to implicated societies and wondering if Sandow’s financial or personal issues (ongoing divorce) created motive to suppress scandal. Turner agreed to discreetly look into Sandow, while Dawes volunteered to ask Sandow’s housekeeper for his schedule to avoid alerting him. As Turner departed, he reflected on the moral costs of his Centurion pay and his mother’s warning about doors the devil knows, underscoring his uneasy acceptance of the occult realities.