Darlington tried not to show his surprise, his curiosity, his envy. How could this scrap of a girl have so much power? How could she see into the hidden world that had evaded him for so long? And after a year in hell, why did he still give a damn?

“They never shut up,” she added.

She’s trusting me, he told himself. Alex was handing him knowledge that he knew, with complete certainty, Lethe didn’t have. Another offering. He found he was as greedy for her trust as her power. He pushed those thoughts away.

“What is he saying?”

Now Alex’s eyes shifted uneasily to the toes of her boots. “He says to be free. That you’ve given up enough blood to this place. It’s yours to take or leave. It always should have been.”

Darlington snorted. “You’re lying. What did he really say?”

Alex shrugged and met his eyes. “That Black Elm needs you more than ever, that this is your home by right of blood and treasure, and a lot of rambling about the Arlington legacy.”

“That sounds much more like him.” He paused, studying her. “You know what happened here, don’t you? What I did? Why I survived the hellbeast?”

Alex didn’t look away. “I know.”

“I always wondered if I’d done the right thing.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’d smother him right now if I could.”

Darlington was startled by his own abrupt laugh. Maybe Alex could have stopped him from being eaten that night in Rosenfeld Hall. Maybe she’d wanted his discovery of her crimes to die with him in that basement.

He supposed she had betrayed him. But in the end it had taken this monstrous girl to drag him back from the underworld. There was nothing he could say that would shock her, and that was powerful comfort.

“I’ll be back,” he said, in the hopes that his grandfather would understand what he was about to do. “Better to flee from death than feel its grip,” he quoted, letting the death words cast the old man out, a peace offering to Alex of his own.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do about…” He couldn’t quite manage to say their bodies. He bobbed his chin toward the basement instead.

“We have bigger problems,” Alex said, rising from the counter. “Come on, I called a car.”

“Why don’t we take the Mercedes?” She winced. “Stern, what happened to my car?”

“Long story.”

She locked the kitchen door behind them, and they started down the gravel drive. But after only a few steps, he had to stop, put his hands on his knees, breathe deeply.

“You okay?” she asked.

No, he certainly wasn’t. The sky was heavy, low, and gray, thick with clouds that promised snow. The air was mossy and sweet, blessedly cold.

Some part of him had believed there was no world outside of Black Elm, no street at the end of the drive, no town beyond. He had forgotten how big things could feel, how crowded with life, how beautiful it could be to know the season, the month, the hour, to simply say, It is winter.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Good,” she said, continuing on. Practical, merciless, a survivor who would keep walking, keep fighting no matter what God, the devil, or Yale threw at her. Was she a knight? A queen? A demon herself? Did it make any difference? “I have good news and bad news,” she said.

“Bad news first, please.”

“We have to go back to hell.”

“I see,” he said. “And the good news?”

“Dawes is making avgolemono.”

“Well,” he said as they reached the stone columns that marked the end of Arlington property. “That’s a relief.” He did not look back.

38

Dawes was standing on the front steps of Il Bastone when they arrived, her headphones around her neck, her hands twisting fretfully in her sweatshirt sleeves. Turner stood beside her, leaning on one of the smoke-stained columns. He was in jeans and a button-down, and the sight of him out of a suit was almost as distressing as watching a ceiling cave in.

“Who are these guests I don’t recall inviting?” Darlington asked as the demons moved out of the shadows across the street.

Slowly, Alex opened her door and climbed out, wondering what the driver thought about the odd group of people standing in the road at twilight.

“Demons,” she said. “We brought them back.”

“As an exchange program?”

“It was an accident,” she said as their ride pulled away. “They set fire to the house.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“We were trying to rescue you, Darlington. There were bound to be hiccups.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever noted your gift for understatement, Stern.”

“Demonic hiccups.”

“Alex? Mija?” Alex’s grandmother was standing on the sidewalk, her dark hair shot through with gray, dressed in a soft turtleneck and a long black skirt that brushed the ground. When Alex was small, she’d loved the sound of the fabric trailing over the floor. “But doesn’t it get dirty, Avuela?” Her grandmother had winked and said, “What’s a little dirt when the devil can’t find me?”

Alex knew this was not her grandmother, but her heart twisted anyway.

Estrea Stern had been afraid of nothing, determined to protect her strange granddaughter from her flighty daughter, to shelter her with prayers and lullabies and good food. But then she’d died and Alex had been left with nothing but her mother’s dollar store magic, her crystals, her whey smoothies,

her boyfriend the acupuncturist, her boyfriend the capoeirista, her boyfriend the singer-songwriter.

“Who is feeding you, mija?” Estrea asked, her eyes warm, her arms open.

“Alex!” Dawes shouted, but her voice seemed far away when home was so close.

Darlington leapt in front of her and snarled. His shape altered before Alex’s eyes, his golden horns curling back from his forehead.

Alex tasted honey. Her body burst into blue flame and the grandmother demon squealed, losing its shape, seeming to slide back into the form of a young woman, a hybrid of Hellie and Alex and something unnatural, one shoulder lifted too high, head lowered as if to hide its leering mouth, its many teeth.

Darlington charged forward like a bull, slamming into the demon and pinning it to the sidewalk. He rammed his horns against it as it shrieked. The other demons cringed back into the shadows between the houses.