Ninth House

On a Thursday night, Alex hurries to a meeting of the Skull and Bones society in a secret operating theatre in one of the classroom buildings. The meeting is a prognostication: The Haruspex, or diviner, uses the intestines of a mentally unstable person to predict the results of various stock exchanges around the world. The vivisection is performed while the person is unconscious; later, they will be returned to their hospital bed. This ritual is routine and happens at the beginning of each fiscal quarter to allow society members to earn money. The person vivisected is different each time, but must have been diagnosed as mentally ill because that supposedly improves the quality of the divination.

Alex’s job as the Lethe representative is to make sure that society members—in this case, the Bonesmen—follow procedures when engaging in magical rituals. From Alex’s flashbacks during the prognostication, it becomes clear that she came to Yale from California despite her lack of qualifications because of her ability to see ghosts, or Greys. Something bad had happened to her back in Van Nuys, resulting in someone else’s death and her arrest. However, because of her ability, Dean Sandow had flown out, interviewed her, and made her criminal record disappear. Despite her fresh start, Alex is unprepared for the academic workload at Yale, which, combined with her obligations to Lethe, causes her to struggle with time management and getting enough sleep. As a result, she often falls asleep while studying, which has now made her late to the prognostication.

In the middle of the ritual, Alex becomes aware of something strange. Two Greys inhabiting the operating theatre, suddenly become agitated and try to break through the protective circle. Since Alex is very new to this, she is unsure what is happening and does not know what to do. She feels as if some kind of force from another world is trying to get in. However, before she can escape or warn the others, everything stops and goes back to normal. Shaken and already unsettled by the gruesome sight on the operating table, Alex throws up. 

Trying to decide what to do next, Alex muses that her mentor Darlington would have been able to help, but he vanished before finishing her training. Alex believes he will be brought back on the next full moon.

On her way back to the dorm, Alex notices that she has several missed calls from Pamela Dawes, another Lethe member. Pamela tells her that a murder has occurred at the Payne Whitney Gym and Alex prepares to go to the crime site despite the late hour and her need to shower off the terrible smell left behind by magic. She is to meet someone named Centurion.

This chapter introduces Darlington, or Daniel Arlington, the last descendent of a prominent family, who was brought up by his old-fashioned grandfather. Daniel is a Yale senior and Alex’s mentor. These roles within the Lethe House are known as “Virgil” and “Dante,” alluding to Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy in which the ancient Roman poet Virgil guides Dante through the underworld. As a freshman, Darlington had been Dante, and now, as Virgil, it is his responsibility to train Alex to take his place.

Daniel is enamored with Lethe and the supernatural and had been looking forward to selecting and training his own replacement. However, Dean Sandow told him that his replacement must be Alex, whose ability to see Greys prompted her arrival from California without a high school diploma or even a GED, and with a possible history of drug possession and distribution. Dean Sandow freed Alex after she was arrested after being found naked and comatose next to a young woman who had died of fentanyl overdose. When Daniel meets her for the first time, his impression is that “she was too sleek, almost damp, less Undine rising from the waters than a dagger-toothed rusalka” (32).

Daniel takes Alex on a tour of campus. He shows her the Green, the central part of New Haven, and tells her that Greys stay away from reminders of death, such as cemeteries, bone dust, or ash. Darlington also explains more about the secret societies. Their headquarters or clubhouses are called tombs and are built in special places called nexuses—“power eddies” in the flow of magic that fuel the magical rituals (41). He then takes her to Il Bastone, the Lethe tomb, a “red brick and stained glass” building on Orange Street (41). 

Alex flashes back to her first impression of Darlington. Like her roommates, she is attracted to his “pretty face, his lean frame, the easy way he occupied space” (43). However, Alex initially believes he is just like all the other privileged young man at the university—“a rich boy in a nice coat”—and that he could easily destroy her without even meaning to (43).

On the first day of her training, Darlington released a pack of jackals at her. Initially, Alex had been very scared, but her experiences in California taught her to always look first at the person in charge. When she noticed that Darlington remained calm, observing her and the jackals, Alex had realized that the entire episode was a test.

Back in the present, the young woman arrives to the gym and sees several police cars with flashing lights. She approaches Centurion, or Detective Abel Turner, a well-dressed and handsome black man who is the liaison between the local police force and Lethe House. Alex believes he resents working with Lethe, but he discloses that the dead person is a local white girl, not connected to Yale or the societies.

Alex uses an enchanted coin to compel one of the coroners to show her the body, which has multiple stab wounds in the heart. The victim’s name is Tara Hutchins and the time of her death coincides with the Greys’ strange behavior. The coroner confides that the police suspect Tara’s drug dealer boyfriend.